I Feel Like a Priestard.

Ahh, the discipline priest.  Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis.  Penance and Prayer of Mending.  The tools are all there for a discipline spec’d priest to work their mojo with some heals and some damage mitigation.  

Nigiri is Naxx 10 man geared for the most part (in her healing gear) and I know how to create a macro and assign hot keys.

Why then do I feel so useless lately in raids when healing with Nigiri?  

The main healer (resto druid) for our guild has numbers that dwarf mine (no pun intended).   I have come to the conclusion that he is an amazing healer, but has been dpsing a lot lately.  The last Naxx run we did made me continue to question my ability to raid heal.

With three pug members (a hunter, druid and priest) we did not too bad with the four wings.  Some minor issues, but all the bosses easily down.  To make a long story short, we ran into trouble on  Kel’Thuzad.

The Kel’Thuzad fight was different that I remembered it.  In phase 1, the adds around the outside usually make their way into the middle slowly.  The ranged and melee dps take them out as needed.  Any of you who have been healers know that when you heal during this phase, you build up threat on all the adds still on the outside edge of the room.  In the normal pace of the fight, the tank can easily pick up an add before they have made it to the healers.  For reasons that weren’t initially clear to me, the adds were coming in groups of 3, 4 and 5 at a time last night.  My guild is more than capable to handle this kind of add rush, but only if we know it’s coming.  The adds rushed in haphazardly.  It turns out that the druid and priest pug members we brought in were purposely (?) pulling in extras.  The priest had switched to disc since our pally healer need to go to bed and Holy Fire doesn’t cast itself on adds.  The druid would run out of the centre and bring three abominations back with him.  One or two of them would hit me and me or the other healer were dead … or there would be between 4 and 10 adds to deal with at the end of phase 1 when we would have to pick up Kel’Thuzad.  A few people would die and it would be over. 

I know I’m too busy looking at health bars to see I’m standing in a Shadow Fissure or I’d die while being ice blocked by Frost Blast.   I know I’m a bit of a ‘tard when it comes to watching where I’m standing but after our last attempt with the pug’ers I was surprised by a comment from the druid.  He very briefly, but succinctly explained to me that it was my fault that we couldn’t do it.  If I could learn to stay alive (remember my healing threat on the adds), there wouldn’t have been a problem.

The three pug members left after the 7th attempt.  I figured we were going to call it a night since my guildies were furious with the pulling of extra adds.  After hearthing to Dalaran, I learned we were trying again with a regular warlock we raided with and a few other pug members. 

One attmept.  That’s all it took.  Kel’Thuzad down.

This seems pretty straight forward but why do I feel so useless?  Am I still too hardwired not to be able to ignore recount numbers at the end of fight?  I am hesitant to follow my guild into Ulduar (though I’ve have been a few times so far).  I think I need to see a gaming shrink.  Get my virtual reality gamer meta personality’s self esteem up somehow. 

If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

~ by Robert Stewart on May 26, 2009.