Down in the Deeps

I've continued my romp through the low level instances with Tomakan, hitting the Stormwind Stockades and Blackfathom Deeps last night.  Not having done the Stocks before, it was a pretty intense 15-20 minute run.  Luckily we were geared enough (and I had enough mana potions) that I didn't run into mana issues like I did in the Deadmines.

I actually was kicking myself after the Stocks run because I could have used some of those rings that dropped, but I was in my Northrend 5-man heroic mode and basically greeded everything.  I paid much closer attention in BD, but nothing I could have used dropped.

Blackfathom Deeps demonstrated that I miss my Blood Elf, at least in terms of judging distances between jumps.

It was embarrassing to be in a 5-man and miss the jump on the rocks not once, not twice, but three times.  I was cursing up a blue streak under my breath, suddenly grateful that I wasn't on Vent or anything.  But at least everyone stopped and waited for me while the big ol' lug finally jumped over the pattern of rocks.

I also had a Shaman in BD who, almost from the get-go, asked if I could handle this place and he could step in if I couldn't.  I kept assuring him that no, I was fine, but that all I missed was Cleanse for the dispelling the ice related debuffs from the nagas.  (I get it in the 30s, I think, so I have to get used to not having it for a while.)  In fact, the run was noticeable in that I don't think the tank's bar dipped below 50% more than once or twice until the final fights.  I didn't want to spam heal, so I typically waited until his health dropped enough that Flash of Light would have a full impact.  We also had some DPS that wanted to pretend they were the tank and pulled some of the trash, and I was surprised that the tank didn't call them out on it.  If I wasn't constantly watching the bars, I'd have said something, but really, the group could handle it.

That last boss fight with the Twilight's Hammer character, that was rough.  Not him per se, but the trash that flew to us after the fight ended.  A portion of them aggroed on me, and I was frozen in ice so I couldn't run to the tank.  Hand of Salvation didn't do diddly either, so I used Lay on Hands on myself and Hand of the Naaru on the tank, and hoped that when I freed up I wasn't watching a full party wipe in action.  After that initial onslaught, things settled down and we survived.

After the instance was over, the Shaman told me he healed a bit in that last fight.  Normally, I wouldn't have cared --I do that from time to time on Northrend 5-mans-- but for some reason that kind of irked me.  The entire run was pretty much a non-event until the final fight, and while it may not have been his intention, his comment came across with an "I told you so" attitude.  Perhaps it's my stubbornness in wanting to be perfect; on my first healing stint last fall, I used to take it as a blow to personal pride if the party wiped on my account, and I thought I did a decent enough job for the run.

Oh well.

A few things I learned:

• Tanks can get lost.  The tank in BD got lost after the initial pulls.  "Where do I go now?" he asked.  "This is so not inspiring," one of the DPS said.
• For a world tree, Teldrassil has a lot of smaller ones on top.
• I can get used to the female Night Elves.  The males still don't look right, but the females are slowly growing on me.
• I haven't seen a warlock since the Glimmer Twins in the Deadmines.  And I like it like that.
• While I was waiting at the dock in Teldrassil, I was parked next to a Tauren DK.  The boat arrived, we got on.  The Alliance people getting off razzed him a bit --"Stupid Horde!" (as if he could read it)-- but the whole thing was amusing to me.  When I got the Explorer achievement it was on a PvP server, and I wouldn't have been caught dead doing what the Tauren did.
• Oh, did you know that Tyrannus has a bug?  Apparently if you start the fight before he does, the entire last boss fight tries to reset itself.  What eventually happens is that things go haywire and you have to leave the instance.  I found that out this morning, much to my dismay.

Which Way to the Deadmines?

Tomakan dinged 20 last week, acquiring Flash of Light in the process.  I'd promised myself that once he got FoL, I would be ready to try my hand at healing PuGs.

I also promised myself I'd ease back into this by getting Ragefire Chasm first.

For a Horde player, Ragefire is the first instance you go through, although Wailing Caverns is a close second.  For me, Ragefire typically wins out because it's so easy to get to:  there's no "just how do I get there?" moments while trying to traverse the hills in The Barrens.  (Alliance players take note:  Ragefire is smack dab in the middle of Org:  you see a path heading down, you take it.)    You also don't have a 8-10 deep quest chain that takes you into Ragefire, either.  You can pick up a one-off quest in The Undercity, or if you go about 4-5 quests into a chain started by Thrall you have your excuse as well.

So, I dialed up Ragefire before it disappeared from my radar, and away I went.  (I'm used to queuing as DPS, but instant gratification has it's advantages too.)

I was admittedly overpowered for Ragefire, but I was perfectly fine with that.  This was the perfect intro for me, since the last time I tried healing any instance was that ill-fated Trial of the Champion --with four or more wipes on Confessor Paletress without so much as denting her armor-- before I dropped healing for good.

Ragefire went as smooth as possible:  the pulls were one at a time, Flash of Light was my mainstay, and I hardly had to drink at all.  The tank told us to yell at him if he got lost, but I didn't need to say anything.  For the first time in Ragefire in a group and not as a loot monkey, the instance was as easy as pie.  I breathed easier, knowing that I could handle this.

Thus emboldened, I just decided to let 'er rip on the LFD tool.

An unfamiliar instance picture popped up on my screen.  Okay, I thought, Deadmines or Stockade, which is it?

It was Deadmines.

Before I even got my hello out of the way, I confessed this was my first time through Deadmines.  "I typically play Horde, so this one is new to me."

"Not a problem," the tank said.  "This is my favorite instance."

"I play Horde too," one of the two (!) Gnome Warlocks said.  "This is only my second Alliance character."

(Note to Souldat:  You were wondering about the friendliness of the Alliance side?  It's the Battlegroup.  I guess the others we've been on are more cutthroat.)

We started in through the Deadmines, and I have one thing I'm grateful for:  there's a single path through the instance.  No multipath instances like Halls of Stone here.  However, that first set of trash set my teeth on edge:  one after the other after the other.  I had to keep Judging Wisdom on the first trash pulls just to keep my mana up.  Once the room was clear, only then could I drink.

This was more like what I was used to; the Watcher sequence in A-N, but quicker.

After that first room, things got easier.  I settled into a pattern:  Judging Wisdom once the tank had aggro to keep my mana up, and using FoL on everyone who needed it.  When someone dropped around 50%, I brought out Holy Light.  (I'd made a point of picking up the Holy Light Glyph, so the extra spam heal it gave was a godsend.)

I pulled aggro by healing more often than I preferred, but the tank was typically able to yank it back.

However, things weren't all sweetness and light.  With not one but two Gnome Warlocks, I kept having to heal them because they'd use me as their gas tank when they swapped health for mana.  Yes, I know that's a class perk for Warlocks, but I'm a Holy Spec Paladin Healer.  My specialty is in healing tanks, not every single caster who decides I'm his meal ticket and doesn't have to stop and drink.  I don't have AoE heals.  (Yet.)


The Locks also ran OOM frequently during a fight, and I made a point of laying down Consecration when my mana pool could swing it so we weren't down to one DPS on those longer fights.

We survived fairly well until we got to the bottom of the spiral slope before you get to the boat areas.  We not only had the regular trash mobs but the Overseer mob as well, and I could see things were pretty bad.  I kept up spamming the tank with everything including the kitchen sink (Gift of the Naaru), but it was just too much.  The tank bit it, and I did shortly thereafter.

You want to know who survived?  The Gnomes, naturally.

Anyway, I discovered the joys of running back to get to The Deadmines.  "Where the hell is the entrance?" I asked, frustrated.

"It's in the barn," the tank told me.  "Go upstairs and head down into the mines."

I went to the barn.  Looked pretty open to me; only one floor too.  Oh.  He meant that barn over there.  I followed his instructions and found myself in the caverns before you get into the Deadmines.  "Naturally, the entrance to a set of mines is in the second floor of a barn."

I then got lost in the caverns before the instance entrance itself.  "This is worse than Uldaman," I said.

"No, Uldaman is still worse."

Finally, after about 10+ minutes trying to find the darn place I got back inside and we hooked up with the rest of the group.  In the intervening time the most annoying of the two 'locks split, so my life was instantly made easier.  We then proceeded through the instance, wiping only on the plank heading to the top of the ship.  The comedy of errors continued on the runback, not because I didn't know the way, but because the hunter and then the tank kept wiping on respawning trash, thus necessitating further runbacks.  We lost and gained several DPS in the process, one at least asking why I couldn't Rez the tank.

"He already released."

"Oh."

The Van Cleef fight was almost anti-climatic at that point.

So, what did I learn? 

• That Blizz figured out how to make instances easier to find by the time the two expansions hit.
• Low level Warlocks can be just as annoying as their high level Boomkin counterparts.
• That I see a male Night Elf, and the first thing that pops into my head is "Where's the Weed, man?"
• That the entrance to a major mining and processing operation is through the second floor of an abandoned barn.
• The ICC 5-man instances are nice and straightforward compared to this.
• I'm going to need more mana potions if I'm going to do this.
• Oh yeah, one more thing:  that I can heal instances.

Seems Like Old Times

Last night was the first night in a couple of weeks that I was able to hook up with Soul for a good batch of runs. Although Soul's wife was unavailable, it was good to get back into the swing of running some instances with the old Death Knight again.

The runs this past night were very enjoyable; I'd snuck in a Culling of Stratholme run just prior to hooking up with Soul, and I discovered that I was pulling threat from the tank. I knew I outgeared the tank -a Warrior- by a minimal amount, but I suspect it was the boost that Paladins get from attacking undead and demons that was causing the problem. Therefore, I was in an uncomfortable position of having to slow down my attacks a bit and keep a careful eye on the threat meter.

You know one good thing about running instances with Soul? He doesn't lose threat much -I can't say "at all", since I've seen it happen with Boomkin every so often- but I don't have to worry so much about losing threat and can pay more attention to important things. Like, say, that puddle of green goo I'm standing in.

Our first run, through The Old Kingdom, turned out great. The early morning runs for some reason avoid two of the bosses and head straight for Ye Olde Herald, so it was refreshing (not to mention nice for the achievement) to actually hit all of the bosses in the instance. The PuG was great and worked well together, and when this run was over four of us stuck around for Violet Hold and Drak'Tharon. The Warlock, Mikaya (sp?), did a great job without overloading on threat, and the Priest Cezz was great too. There was one point in Ahn'kahet where I thought that Soul might have pulled too much at once as I saw his health teeter below 10K and heading rapidly in the wrong direction, but Cezz pulled him back. Having been a healer, I was impressed.

Mik split after the Drak run, but we ran an instance of Forge of Souls afterward. By mistake it was a non-Heroic run, and I had to split for bed before they queued up for a Heroic version.

All in all, an enjoyable night. I didn't wipe -always a good thing- and I got to see some real skill in action. Mik didn't talk too much, so I didn't get to tell her what a good job I thought she did, but Cezz was very chatty and easy to work with. As I told Soul afterward, it's too bad that she is on The Underbog server, because you can never have enough good healers.