Friday, March 19, 2010

Help Kick Me Up a Notch.



Our guild, KNR, likes to do things the hard way. These past several weeks, we have been attempting to raid Icecrown Citadel with some degree of success, despite the fact that we have raided little else since Karazhan long enough to finish it. Marrowgar is now a pushover, if we aren't goofing off, and we figured out Lady Deathwhisper this week (smiling guild kill shot above) and the gunship battle(me posing with Blizzard's homage to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy below). We found ourselves in the middle of that famous family argument between Saurfang the elder and Saurfang the younger last night. And we hit our wall.



Up until this fight, I have been on healing duty. Let me be quite honest in saying, though I have said before I don't mind healing, what I really don't mind about healing is that it gets me into places I don't get to go as shadow. Healing and I have become tolerant acquaintances. Last night, we started out with nine people. This is a normal raiding night for us, though usually it takes us until half an hour or more past start to get that many. As we were finishing our first wipe on Saurfang, a guild mate who plays a pretty mean tree healer logged in. And the word was that one of the priests would go shadow. "Shawndra, do you have your dps set ready?" I was already in shadow form, twiddling with my hit rating, which is way too high right now. Hubby told the raid in Ventrilo that I was literally jumping in my chair. And I was.

We formed up, and selfishly I stuck to the boss. We had two mages and a hunter on the blood beasts, so I thought I would be fine. We wiped with him at full health. The strategy of getting the beasts down ASAP was explained again (to be fair I didn't get much of the strategy speech the first time, as my system was lagging horribly and hubby had blues screened and the toddler was not going to bed...). We started over, and got him to 40-ish% before wiping. The tree was having mana regeneration problems. He twiddled with his gear to grab a bit more regeneration, and we tried again. We wiped at a little lower 40-ish%. We gave it one more try. The same 40-ish percent. We called it a night, with our fearless and my favorite pally tank saying that we need to gear up a bit more for this fight, but that we would continue with the first part of the Citadel and slide some TOC in there to help people gear better.



So, I have to ramp up my damage per second. Here is Delgada in all her shadowy gear and spec. Yes, I know some of the gear is healing gear! That will be replaced soon, as I am now concentrating on getting badges for that set. I may be taking some points out of hit giving talents and popping them into other places to compensate for the over abundance of hit rating available to me. Last night, I hit about 3500 dps on average. During a three set of heroics afterward, it climbed to over 4500.

I'm guessing my buffs are not at fault, though the spec may need some tweaking, and the gear could use some upgrading. I also know I am clipping spells like Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch, and possibly missing my first available second to cast Mind Blast. I'm adding MikScrollingBattleText to my add on library so that I can set it and get reminders on my screen instead of squinting to see if my debuffs are still on the mob.

So, as I twiddle on my own over here, does anyone have any suggestions for me? Although I believe I am quite capable of fixing this on my own, I welcome comments, because I know you guys have some tricks up your sleeves that I may not be using or even aware of!

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