New Eclipse and other things.

Solar, Lunar, Both?
Just when I thought I had the whole spam wrath till Solar proc thing figured out, a surprising thing happened to me in VoA last night: I got to see how the new Eclipse mechanic worked.

Wow. It's odd, feels weird, but kind of nice all at the same time. Not sure how I want to handle it though in the next raid I dps for, however. I just recently changed my spec to drop some points in Meditation, but realized it was too easy to burn through my mana while maintaining the Solar-Lunar cycle consistently. I will say that once I figured out what was going on, my dps did see an improvement but time will tell as more experimentation goes through. The new change to innervate may help on some fights, and of course, I still have a healthy supply of mana pots.

Empowered Touch
On the healing side of things, I have not changed my spec to take advantage of the new Empowered Touch. This is largely because of my raid role and, frankly, I haven't healed in a raid yet. Our guild took a week off of regular raiding while folks were dealing with the patch and the 10 man we did play around with, I was boomy. In a five man situation, I could see it being very effective, as Nourish is my second most effective spell in ToC.

I am just not quite ready to give up GotEM or Revitalize yet. I may move some points away from Gift into Empowered Touch, but again, I need to see things in a real raid setting.

OMGZ! I HAF OVERHEALZ?!
I recently read on Restokin that our HoT overhealing are now being shown in the combat logs, which means people will finally see how much our hots are NOT doing. I for one will not change how I play and really, any druid worth their salt shouldn't either. As a raid healer, I use hots very preemptively. I toss them on before I big aoe, I toss them on in between waves, etc. Rejuv is going even though I know my target will be snap up by the disc priest or pally because it will still be there when they have moved on.

To change how we heal just to look good on the numbers would be a mistake. HoTs have always been the buffer between direct heals, and just because they now have a numerical, definitive value attached to the overhealing, doesn't mean we should hold back.

However, I read that someone suggested that this overhealing will cause agro. This makes me scratch my head and ask "It does?" And honestly, I do not know. I play a Disc priest and a Resto druid, and while I never looked for it before, I didn't notice anything regarding this mechanic. Perhaps on the next raid it might show up. But, I have my doubts about this claim or else our Pally healers would have been snapping up agro left and right.

I look forward to us coming back from our raid break to test these things out.

Dpsing reduces my IQ

I don't what it is about being a DPSer. See, when I am healing, I stand in strategic places, I am aware of my surroundings and chuckle when others don't move from things like Hurricane.

Yet, when I switch to DPS, all of that intelligence flies out the window. Maybe it's me watching my Squawk and Awe timers and waiting for the tanks to get agro or whatever, but as soon as I change from Bark to Feathers, I end up doing the dumbest things.

Like, last night. How many times I have done the tunnel to Hodir? Plenty, but sure enough I back up a little to spread out from others and I walk straight into a snowpile. Out pops little worms and I say over vent "Damnit." I apologize profusely while continuing to cuss to myself.

Someone suggested to just clear that pile since every night someone runs into it. I was the first to say No, it's better to mock those who ran into it. Then the MT says something about folks not positioning themselves properly only to get thrown up into the snow. I countered with "I wasn't thrown. I walked into it, thank you very much."

Perhaps its the fact that I dps so rarely on a raid that I tend to get a little overloaded with things. Healing is half automatic because I do it so often, whereas DPSing changes how I think about everything. Watching my timers, threat, positioning all matter and all require different skill sets. With more practice I imagine all that would be easier.

Yes, some would argue that DPS is easier than healing. And certainly there are cases where that is true. But, I put a lot of pressure on myself to be able to perform well not matter the role I am in. In addition, it's not like I have never done the fights before, so there are no real excuses for the little mistakes. Put all of that together and makes for awkward moments.

Please believe, I still don't want to DPS full time. I like my job as a healer. I just need to breath a little bit while nuking so I don't make dumb mistakes.