Resto druid 10m Heroic Amber-Shaper Un'sok strategy

Final heroic boss we will clear in 2012. Most of the main raid is going on vacation/spending time with family.
By now, most people have already seen the "unintended" kill strategy which Blizzard has hotfixed. So that strategy doesn't work anymore. However, this boss isn't that hard to kill even with the hotfix (though our raid leader says.... dps check fight!). I thought it was easier and more fun than Imperial Vizek, but that's just me being lazy because I find dodging more painful than pressing 1,2,3,4. Anyway, let's begin.

Number of Healers: 2. HPS-wise and mana wise, I could solo heal this fight (phase 1 I know I can solo heal to the end of time since we did try the "unintended" method for 2 hourish before the hotfix, phase 2 & 3 I solo healed a majority because other healer turned into a construct 3 times, though mana was a bit tight near the end, but that's easily remedied if I was prepared for it), but why let the raid wipe in phase 2/3 if I turn into a Mutated Construct? So 2 heal, 3 heal is completely unnecessary, unless you're expecting huge explosions (not supposed to happen); those usually will kill off 1 or 2 persons instantly anyway unless DRs are popped.

Differences from Normal:

1. Adds will revive from the amber pools they drop. So during phase 1 and most of phase 2, your Mutated Constructs must drink all the pools. Adds explode after they die causing a small AoE, not sure if they do this on normal, but on heroic, can actually see the HP dip a little.
2. Final phase, boss summons 2 orbs that will target people, must have the 2 orbs touch to kill the orbs. If the orbs touch another player, everyone in 30 yard radius will die. 

Talents: I used Soul of the Forest and HotW. Soul of the Forest because I definitely didn't want the idiot trees mindlessly spamming healing touches, esp into the person with the debuff, and I didn't see any particular time where Tree Form MUST be used, since damage is burst then stop burst then stop, so it's not like a huge burst occurs and there's no time to recover.

Symbosis: I recommend Ice Block again? Well, just so you can Ice Block off the Parasite in phase 2/3, it's always nice to have that option before using a Tranq, unless you want to be suicidal. If no mage available, DK or Brewmaster is fine, damage reduction is still better than nothing. When we got the kill, my ice block was still unused though, but better not used than need to use and not have imo.

Basic Strategy: 
Phase 1: Trivial phase, just make sure your tank constructs keeps stacks on boss and drink all pools left by the adds. Healing is trivial, parasite is the same as on normal, so just heal the same way. Hold all dps until boss has about 40 stacks on the debuff (this number could be smaller depending on how close to berserk you are on phase 3) and do a super burn (HotW!!!) on the boss while he does amber scalpel (makes phase 3 shorter).

Phase 2: Ick phase...

1. Pool drinking: Mutated Constructs have to drink as many pools as possible. We did tank that was leftover from phase 1 drink 2 so he can get dpsed out faster. Then, the next non-healer person that goes in drinks 5, healers will only drink 4.  It's best to do Attack drink drink Attack drink drink but if you're pro, Attack, drink drink drink drink is even better.
2. Keep the stacking debuff attack on the Monstrosity on cooldown, except when there's about 8 seconds left for Amber Explosion, in which case, wait for the Explosion and interrupt.
3. Have the Construct leave only after a 2nd person turns into a construct to make sure all Amber Explosions from Monstrosity are interrupted.
4. Near the end of this phase (raid leader decides when that is, we did 4 mutated constructs), Leave the last person in and they only drink pools now to keep from running out of energy, and when a 2nd person turns into construct, have them both spam the debuff onto the Amber-shaper (and of course interrupt Monstrosity's Amber Explosions). To make it easier, we had person 1 spam boss, person 2 refresh stacks (throw extra debuffs onto Amber-shaper) on Monstrosity and interrupt explosion.

Phase 3: Burn phase...
This phase doesn't last long, only thing to watch out for is if you get the orb on you, run out of raid and find the 2nd person that's targetted and try to run the orbs into each other. If this fails (and let's just say we haven't had it succeed yet) just kite the orbs around and try again, after a while they'll change focus targets. This phase doesn't last long, so just kiting the orbs is probably easier than trying to destroy them, but that's raid preference.

Healing cooldowns:
Tranquility I used in Phase 2 1 attempt just to recover mana, the time we cleared I used at the beginning of Phase 3, but regretted and decided should've held it for middle of phase 3 instead, but also decided there was a chance I'd get orb targeted and would have to run and can't use Tranq when I wanted. So just decide accordingly.
Our other healer didn't even use his cooldown, since he got stuck in a construct, so...it's not necessary to make sure cooldowns are popped at specific times, just pop when necessary or just pop for mana recovery, etc.


Once again I'll mention we are Recruiting.... 

Christmas Time Soon

Happy Holidays. Going on mental vacation... back in 2 weeks. :D
I hope for a great present from santa...

Resto druid 10m Heroic Imperial Vizier Zor'lok strategy

Anyway, cleared this boss finally. We used the idiot proof strategy because we are bad at mechanics, but sure good at dpsing. Anyway, onto phase 1-3 strat. Anyway as promised, I will finally post all the strategies we used for this boss.

Healer Number: 3 (2 for strategy 3, the super overgear strategy). Healing output is not really the issue, it's more 3 because there's a chance for both healers to get Mind Controlled on platform 3 and phase 4. Hence, causing 0 healer situations which usually results in wipes. O yeah, if you do 2 healer, just split the healers (so 1 healer on atten side and 1 on MC side, obvious...but i'll mention anyway), and dps out healer first instead of 2nd if healer gets MCed.

Differences from normal:

1. Platform order is the same: Force and Werve, Attenuation, Mind Control. 
2. When boss leaves for next platform, he will now leave an Echo on the platform. The Echo will do the same attack as the boss did on the platform.  For example, if boss goes from Platform 2 to 3, he will leave Attenuation Echo on Platform 2, while he's on Platform 3 doing Mind Controls.
3. Attenuation will now shoot out these extra green orbs in addition to the usual yellow ones. Dodging these is a pain but there's videos all over the place showing you how to dodge. However, let it be known, when someone (looking at our bad tank) hits yellow or green orb, it'll break the orb into 2 and kill people behind them. I especially look at our tanks because they don't die when they hit the orbs and so we didn't notice it was the tanks screwing up the dodging until looking at logs the next day. Instead we blamed the poor people who died.... we are sorry.
4. In phase 4, boss will create an Echo that will do Attenuation about 10 seconds after the boss does Attenuation.

Symbosis: Hunter or Mage for deterrence/ice block so you don't die during Attenuation, it's a crutch, but I sure like having a crutch. However, if you get Mind Controlled or if your Symbosis target get mind controlled, there's a high chance the AI will cancel your symbosis. So annoying since the only part you really need the crutch is during phase 4 when both Echo and boss is attenuating. I think this is a bug, but blizzard doesn't cares about druids and our symbiosis anyway.  I did find out that if the person you symbiosis isn't on the same platform with you, there's less chance of cancelled symbiosis.

Talents: HotW, use it during hero burn phase. I don't really see any point to getting ToL or Force of Nature this fight, so might actually use Soul of the Forest... though.... Force of Nature during Attenuation dodging might be nice and good for saving someone. However, if your raid dodges correctly, this is not necessary. I actually used Nature's Vigil for this fight in the end (I'm not sure why? I think I just left it from the previous boss and didn't change), but it doesn't matter that much.
O yea, get Disorienting Roar!! can't stress this enough. It's absolutely necessary for Mind Control phase.

General Strategy:
Platform 1: Trivial, same as normal.
Transition: Send Tank and Healer (i don't recommend druid, since 2 target tank healing is not our strong suit and Force and Werve hurts when not in bubble) to Platform 2 to tank the boss, while the rest of the raid kills Echo on Platform 1.
Platform 2: Dodge Attenuation until boss is about 61%, then send Tank and Healer to Platform 3 (this time you can send druid, we used to send paladin, but during MC the paladin was too annoying).
Transition: During the Echo's first Attenuation, send 1 more healer, 3 dps over to platform 3. So 4 people will remain on Platform 2 and kill Echo.
Platform 3: Disorient Roar the MCed people and help CC with cyclone if necessary. O yeah, have your group use up their non-talent AoE CCs before they arrive on the platform (otherwise, they'll just use it if they get MCed), so warrior fear, priest fear. If you have a priest, do have them talent into a 2nd fear, that one is used for CCing, but put on cooldown the one all priests have.  Basically, druid is the least scary class to get mind controlled. Have hunters and mages put their deterrence and ice block on cooldown too so they don't go "invul! wahahahaha"  When boss transitions this time, he doesn't leave an Echo.
Phase 4: Boss will fly to mid, don't bother running to him, just stay on Platform 3 and dps. Boss will pull raid in when the cloud's gone. Basically rest is an Attenuation nightmare. 2 strats, one is the regular way: pull boss into corner so that the Echo will spawn in the corner, then leave a tank and healer (the ones used in Transition of platform 1 to 2) with the Echo, rest moves all the way across to the other side with the boss and dodge Attenuation by running away from boss and hope the Echo's Attenuation doesn't reach the main raid. We used strategy 2 and later 3. Strategy 2 requires 3 healers, you pull the echo in the middle and the boss into the corner, burn down echo, so you only get 1 double attentuation, well that's how we cleared it first time, but later we found out it's much more trivial to do strategy 3 once you're overgeared. Strategy 3 only uses 2 healers, which is a bit tougher during the force and verves, but nothing that bad. Then just burn the boss as soon as he transitions into phase 4, survive 1 double attentuation and he's dead before the next force and verve.

Healing Strategy:
Tranquility the Force and Werve of the 1st Platform, and it'll be up again by phase 4 when you need it. You can try healing during Attenuation dodging, but I recommend just watching yourself, since if they get hit once, unless they started the orb chain in the 1st place (in which case other people in group will probably get hit) high chance rejuvs will not save them.
That's pretty much it... it's not a healing intensive fight, in fact, i spent the a good solid 80% of the time casting wrath... it's just annoying Attenuation dodging in phase 4 with 2 Attenuations going simultaneously.


Once again I'll mention we are Recruiting.... 

Windows 8 Minesweeper Achievements & Medals

So new Windows 8 has a much cooler Minesweeper with Adventure Mode and Achievements.
Being the fan that I am, I decided I will sacrifice my statistics so I can complete all the achievements and medals.

Achievements  (these are trivial):

1. Savior of the World: Just win a game on each board size (Getting this will probably get you the other 3 achievements).
2. Good Start: Just complete a minefield (easy mode is fine)
3. Good Memory: Completed a minefield without using flags (do this in easy mode)
4. Happens to Everybody: Trigger your first mine

Medals:

1.  Click Click BOOM! : Trigger a Mine on 2nd click, you can do this consciously or just get it naturally while attempting other medals.
2. The Sea of Flags: Just flag 100 mines. It can be done over multiple boards.
3. Burgeoning Explorer: Uncovered 1000 squares. Again, can be done over multiple boards. 
4. Quick and Easy: Win East in under 30 seconds.
5. One With the Chord: Win 3 games where the only moves you made were Chords and Flags (with exception of 1st tap). Trick here is win 3 this way, no taps allowed. I just did 3 easy modes. The wins don't have to be consecutive, but it's better to do them in a roll so you don't lose count. And if you're wondering what Chord is, it's when you mark all the mines for a number and you click both left and right mouse button together. For example: if there's a # 2, mark the 2 mines it's touching, then duo button click the #2 and the 4 that are not marked mines will be clicked.
6. I Guess I Was Right the First Time: Mark a mine w/ a flag then changing to question mark, then unmark it and detonate.
7. Flag It Up: Disarmed  1000 mines. Once again, can be done over multiple boards.
8. Bug Collector: Found 50 ladybugs without disturbing them. Change the theme to garden and flag 50 ladybugs, can be done over multiple boards.
9. Oh COME On!!!!: Thank you poster in the comment section! This achievement is annoying... because I think it's written in counter-intuitive way... but anyway, make sure you mark the "safe" tile with a mine flag and explode the final mine. So the final picture will be all mines correctly marked except for 1 (will have X on it).

The rest of the medals are for adventure mode. Basically tedious but doable. I'll update this another day.

Resto druid 10m Heroic Wind Lord strategy

Healer number: Um, we 2 healed, because our dps can't kill boss in 3 recklesses otherwise. Btw, imo, 2 healing this fight is a lot more fun than 3 healing, I would recommend highly if your raid's not dying from lack of heals. 2 healing is probably only possible because of OP disc priest, though I can see monks able to do the same, since it's another atonement type class. 3 healers is fine, since worst comes to worst, you need another set of reckless which makes execution a tiny bit harder. Berserk timer is no where close, we killed it with 3 minutes to spare.


Differences from normal: Corrosive Resins do a whole lot more damage now, so running is necessary not an option.
Amber prison affects people near you, so run out of raid but close to someone to click you out.
Um, nothing else is different for healers. Though CCers do have to know that there can only be 3 CCed at once instead of 4.

Talents: I used HotW for reckless burn, plus 2 healing, it's nice to have the extra int just for constant throughput. So.... I experimented with Nature's Vigil, and came to the conclusion: don't use Nature's Vigil, since it does "smart" dps and ends up breaking CCs if the person you're healing happens to be standing close to a CCed target.  Sure it doesn't happen all the time, but happening once could screw up the CC and dps, etc etc, so why use it and risk an extra wipe, especially when HotW works just as well if not better?
I used Force of Nature instead of Tree Form because Force of Nature's 1 minute cooldown matches up completely with Rain of Blades. Tree Form 3 minute cooldown is kinda... well, only time you need the extra AoE healing is during rain of blades, and since that's 1 minute, you'd miss 2. That's my argument anyway. Feel free to play with SotF, but my only beef with that is, you have have a swiftmend/wild growth ready during that, and if you're not careful (i.e. wasn't watching timer)... when it's on farm, you don't have to worry as much, but on progression, I'd just don't want to have to worry about that extra timing issue, just summon dumb trees and heal as usual (i'm lazy...).

Symbosis: I recommend Ice Block (esp if 2 healing) for getting out of Amber Prisons or not running during corrosive resin (save this for during rain of blades, especially later in the encounter when healing gets a bit tighter).

General Strat: So dpses need to get adds low, then boss to 90% and then kill add sets one at a time. Reckless does not stack, so don't kill all the adds at once.

Healing wise, just heal heal, nothing special. Like I said, Force of Nature 2 seconds before pull (might as well, it's free healing, you can wrath and moonfire a bit in the beginning for kicks), and they'll be up for all the Rain of Blades except one at the end, that is when you use Tranquility.
Use HotW and burn when boss gets recklessed. Don't step in Wind Bomb.

An extra advice if you have shadow meld, use it when adds respawn during the final reckless (I got slaughtered by these adds once before figuring out that when I see them running at me, they really are running at me and not the tank and hence should shadow meld), or stand close to tanks (but not too close, don't want to spawn wind bombs under them) and hope your tank picks up adds fast.


Once again I'll mention we are Recruiting.... 

Resto druid 10m Heroic Garalon strategy

So finally progression-ing again. And H Garalon is down :).
Healer Number: 2.5 heals is not really necessary, but we did it this way, since disc priest atonement is... whatever, basically blizzard favors priests. Though 2 healers is definitely doable I feel.

Differences from normal: Garalon now crushes on timer instead of when pheromone is passed. It will still crush when people pass under him. Debuff after taking pheromone is now 4 minutes, so it forces almost everyone in the raid to kite pheromones at least once.

Symbosis: Mage (ice block), hunter (deterence), basically invul abilities is nice.

So 2 things to work out: kiting order, healing cooldown. But! if your dps doesn't meet check, it's not clearable no matter how well you do kiting, healing. Our clear attempt was about 30seconds from berserk, but previously we did hit berserk.

Kiting:
So only hint I can give is kiting order should be 2 tanks (3 crushes), healer (1 crush), dps (1 crush), healer (1 crush), dps (1 crush), healer (1 crush), dps (1 crush), dps (should be no more crushes at this point), 2 tanks again.  Obviously if you have 2 healers only, replace one of the healers w/ dps.

So when kiting, when crush occurs, ice block, and you'll be immune to stun and the crush damage, so it's super nice.  Same w/ deterrence and divine/bop from paladin.

If you don't have invuln abilities, don't be a stupid kiter, before a crush, make sure you run a bit from the yellow dot that forms to warn you where the amber pool will be, so you don't get crushed on an amber pool and just die.

Cooldowns:
So at start, heroism should be up, HotW dps boss, but not the legs.... let dps/atonement priest pad w/ legs. Once again, I choose Force of Nature this fight to help weave in heals during every other crush. But you can pop Force at the start to derp and they'll be up by 2nd crush. First crush don't really need healing cooldowns because of heroism.


Positioning: ranged all stack together on top of healer (mark the healers), melee will hang out w/ legs and tanks with 1 more healer. healer 3 will be kiting. Requires sorta working out, but not really... since majority of the time, all players except tanks would be in range of all non-kiting healers.

General advice:
Save as many legs as you can near the end, so once the boss stops crushing, you can take down 6% of his hp just by using the extra legs.

As always, open to discussions/questions in comment section. I don't quite like what i'm writing on this boss, it feels like a disorganized mess... but it's really not a healer dependent fight (once you get used to the damage, etc).

Once again I'll mention we are Recruiting.... 

Too much to do on WoW...

Last night I logged onto WoW, I looked at my toons, let out an "Ugh...." and logged off. I think for the first time ever I'm burned out by WoW. Sure I quit back at the end of BC, but that's because real life called and not answering is not a good idea.
This time, it's more "Even if I log on, I can't finish all the valor point collecting on 2 toons, so why bother logging on at all?" People said that Cata was awful because people'd log on and there's nothing to do. I liked that, nothing to do, but still means I can choose to solo old raids or farm the remaining rep for Insane in the Membrane, and if I don't feel like doing anything, then log off, sleep or do real life things without a shred of guilt.
I'm probably one of those rare species of player that is casual (play <3hours a day, except on weekends) but raid in a relatively top end progression raid. I truly like raiding with my RL friends. My friends tailored the raids on weekends just for my schedule and it's the only reason I haven't quit playing. And therefore, in order to not drag the raid down, maxing out valor to upgrade gear is mandatory, not an "option," (so is research the fights beforehand, but they usually send me links to read). Hence, actually not logging on to max valor creates guilt, but logging on and not finishing, what's the point....
All in all, I'm tired out and hoping for a break. Don't want to bother my friends about it and don't want to get flamed on forums. So venting on my happy little blog.

No progress due to Thanksgiving

This week's gone by, our raid made no progress. Well, since we are a weekend raiding guild, this Thanksgiving pretty much meant only 6 of our core 12 people wasn't out of town. So... no progress = no new strats to type out. But we all had a great thanksgiving. :D so thankful for that.

Mistweaver vs Resto druid

I'd want to update this a tiny bit with patch 5.1. In 5.1 monks got a huge nerf and ever since I would say for the moment, I cannot switch to mistweaver, since my druid gear is just so much better. In fact, if you want to only compare healing output, I heard that monks aren't that much greater than druids anymore, so what I said about never picking druid over mistweaver is no longer valid.

So I got to playing mistweaver in lfr a few weeks now. My gear is still pretty bad, greens with blues and 2 heroic pieces (1 of which is a dps neck... but I was ilvl padding to get into lfr), but I can now finally get top 1 or 2 healer consistently every boss. Anyway, all in all, if I was to compare the two class, I would say resto druid is gimper numbers wise. I can consistently put out equal hps fistweaving on mistweaver (as long as I don't oom, which I do since I only have 5k spirit atm) and on top of that I can put out 20k dps without breaking too much of a sweat (and on fights like Garalon or Stone Guards, the dps and hps is even more impressive). Yea yea, lfr has less mechanics to dodge, but there's not that much to dodge for melees anyway this patch. So basically, only looking at numbers and given a choice, I would never bring a restore druid in place of a mistweaver. Though they are gimping renewing mist/uplift next patch, so we'll see how that goes.
On the other hand, fistweaving for me creates an issue where I have trouble single targeting heals. So if a single person was to take a huge drop, switching target to spam surging mists on them is a little difficult for me. I would blame my key/mouse binds for that and mana management, since usually 1/2 through the fight I'd be drinking mana teas just to keep renewing mists up, so obviously will not have mana to pour out surging mists.
Druids are much more controlled, brings raid utility like extra tranq/deterrence/ice block, and raid healing numbers aren't that bad, but I would say it's by far the weakest healer this expansion. Monks do have the option of just doing ranged healing, but then I feel like monk becomes lesser druids, since it's less mana efficient and without fistweaving, chi generation becomes a bit more problematic, no chi = no uplift (unless gylphed) and less mana tea, etc.
I don't thinking playing either class is harder or easier, in fact, being counted as melee and staying in melee range is actually advantageous on most fights, except Will of Emperor, since dodging devastating combos = not outputting dps to fistweave, but you do get an extra big attack on the boss afterwards. But since Blizzard did give the option not to fistweave, it's not that bad for monks.

Thanksgiving past again....

Another year's gone by. Last year was full of extreme joy and extreme horror. If one were to total it all, I wonder if we'd come out ahead or behind. Well, in the end, I believe and hope that all will balance out, so that when we do leave the world behind, the balance would be zero. We arrived with zero and leave with zero, that would seem the most quaint.

Here's hoping for a great next year.

Lazy Resto Druid BIS List Updated 11/21/2012

Now that all 16 bosses are out in heroic, time to make my BIS list and of course these are all heroic versions. This is all my personal opinion, just going by stats and ilvl!  So my old list from icy-veins is obsolete, guess it's getting deleted or something.
I'm color coding the location of drops.... Orange = ToES, Red = HoF, Green = MGV


Hat - Tier 14 piece - Terrace of Endless Springs Boss 4 or for the unfortunate Hood of Cursed Dreams - MGV Feng 

Neck - Zian's Choker of Coalesced Shadow (502 mastery) - MGV Spirit Kings vs Korven's Amber-Sealed Beetle (crit 509) HoF Boss 4 I would pick mastery probably... though higher ilvl.... :-/

Shoulders - Tier 14 piece - Terrace of Endless Springs Boss 3 or for the unfortunate Spaulders of the Divided Mind MGV Garajal

Back - Drape of Gathering Clouds - HoF Boss 2 (woohoo, my first bis)

Chest - Tier 14 piece - HoF Grand Empress or for the unfortunate Robes of Eighty Lights HoF Boss 3

Wrists - Bracers of Dark Thoughts - MGV Spirit Kings   seriously???? no mastery or haste bracers out there???

Hands - Tier 14 piece - HoF Boss 4 or for the unfortunate 496 crafted or the 509 Gauntlets of Undesired Gifts - HoF Boss 1

Waist - Stonecinch Belt (502)- MGV stone guards vs Weaver's Cord of Eternal Autumn (509)-Terrace of Endless Springs Boss 2   well, I would say stonecinch unless you can make the 6652 haste bp w/o it.

Legs - Magnetized Leggings - MGV Will or Tier 14 piece is bad imo

Feet -  Asani's Uncleansed Sandals (516 heroic elite) - Terrace of Endless Springs Boss 1
Ring 1 - Watersoul Signet (516 heroic elite) - Terrace of Endless Springs Boss 1 

Ring 2 - Seal of the Profane - HoF Boss 5

Trinket 1 - Spirits of the Sun - Terrace of Endless Springs Boss 2

Trinket 2 - Valor Trinket w/ +int and chance to proc + spirit.

Main Hand - Kri'tak, Imperial Scepter of the Swarm HoF Boss 6

Off-hand - Fan of Fiery Winds - MGV Feng

Terrace of the Endless Springs

This instance on normal is so easy, that none of the bosses took more than 3 attempts. I am looking very forward to the heroic versions. I feel like most of the mechanisms would make heroic quite challenging (except the first boss maybe...).
Since everything's trivial to heal, don't feel like just retyping what other people have already mentioned/streamed.

Now my personal opinion, I like Terrace, it's all outdoors and nice and bright. Pretty on the eyes, doesn't make me squirm with insects.

Resto druid 10m Heroic Will of the Emperor strategy

Um, this fight is strange. It's another execution type fight. It feels easier than spirit kings in that sense. Healing this is pretty easy if you have the proper soakers.

Symbosis: Hunter (Deterrence)
Talent: Doesn't really matter, I used HotW and Force of Nature.

Difference from normal: So there's no more titan gas phase, there's just a constant raid wide damage, which is very easy to heal through as a druid.
The Rages and Strengths create Titan Sparks after dying, which needs to be soaked without letting the Sparks reach the raid or the sparks will 1 shot non-damage reduction people within 8 yard range. Since the sparks spawn after rages die, be sure to typhoon and ursol's vortex the Rages so they're as far from raid as possible when they die.

Soaking: Hunter is OP for this, they can spec into 1minute deterrence, which means their deterrence will be up every other Titan Spark. Then fill in the gaps with priest dispersion, rogue shadow cloak, etc.

Strategy:
2 Healers, as little melee as possible, we brought 2, paladin to tank the Strength and rogue to soak rogue Titan Sparks left by Strengths with feign, etc.
Best to split healers into tank healing and raid healing, that way less running around for both healers, but do have tank healer call out if they need to move out of tank range to kite or avoid and the other healer will move in to help. Druids obviously prefer raid heal. Neither tank nor raid takes that much damage if they tank properly and soak properly.

Encounter is repeating between rage/strength spawns then break (in normal mode this is the titan gas phase, but in heroic, it's a nice calming period to regen and for dps to derp the bosses) I used the calm break period to HotW and dps too.

Rages strat
Some groups do CC first batch of Rages and AoE them down, our raid comp isn't very AoE friendly, so we chose to down the Rages asap and soak, until before the 2nd Courage spawn, then we CC, kill Courage then Rages. Works pretty well for us, but if your raid comp is different, you can try the other strat.

For healers, this is not hard at all, just stay in the middleish with the raid, tanks will tank to the sides, back up in a straight line through middle as needed, that way don't get hit by bosses. Since damage is constant, it's nice to throw Force of Nature in the center on cooldown and just let them do their thing while you run away or move accordingly.  Since there's no huge burst damage, Tranquility is use on see fit. Don't really need to plan it out with other healer. I used mine once when the Rages were kinda getting out of control during the 2nd Courage spawn due to CCs breaking early.

Oh, another thing is there seems to be a bug, where the bosses will magnetic pull healers when they first spawn. Not sure how to avoid it, but as long as you're not getting pulled back and forth between the bosses (happens sometimes) just hang out with the tank for 10 seconds after getting pulled, otherwise it'll just keep pulling you back.



Don't just tunnel on your grid though, watch where the rages are and where the sparks will spawn so you can run out of the way or kite accordingly.

That's pretty much it if your dps meets the dps check.

Once again I'll mention we are Recruiting....

Resto Druid 10m Heroic Blade Lord Ta'yak strat

Um, this boss is relatively easy... only thing new in this phase is boss does an extra ability that sucks players to him while he whirlwinds. It's not that bad, just makes it so that you have to keep healing while running. And of course, all of his abilities do more damage.

We ran 2.5 healers and as a note, disc priest is godly for this fight. Disc priest spends the whole fight doing 2 things, shielding everyone and smite atonement...

2 Phases, exactly like on normal.

Symbosis: Shaman (spiritwalker + tranq = OP during phase 2), Mage (ice block for Wind Step in Phase 1/getting out of tornadoes in phase 2)

Talents: HotW, I ran Tree form, but next time I'd want to try Force of Nature instead (well :-/.... most of my healing needed is during Phase 2 when tree form instant regrowth lifeblooms are great.... but... feels like less hps during phase 1.)
So I did try out Force of Nature, I like it more, just because during Phase 2, I'm going spiritwalker tranq anyway, so the tree form lifeblooms and regrowths aren't as useful after all. And since the trees aren't blown by the wind, could consider leaving them midway up to the boss to let them heal stragglers, or just blow them at the start of phase 2 to help heal everyone to full faster before run.
Without spiritwalker, tree form is pretty necessary, since other than monks, druids are probably the best running healers.

Phase 1:
Boss does abilities in the same order each time. As long as tanks don't mess up, tank healing is minimal and the rest is a dps check.
Ability 1: Tempest Blade, throws a tornado at a ranged person. The tornado never goes away and knocks back a little bit. Make sure you assign a column for all the ranged, so they can move south in their column gradually as the fight progresses without getting in 8 yard range w/ each other or let the tornado into melee area.

Ability 2: Wind Step. This one ticks 150k per 3 second now instead of 80k on normal, so you can't have 2 in raid at once or else it's pretty OMG for the healers. So every ranged needs to be >8yards apart. So the boss casts this whenever the previous one expires (25seconds or so?), so can never have >1 Wind Step in raid unless dpses were <8 yards and all got Wind Stepped. If mage ice blocks it off, that's basically 25 seconds for healers to relax.  O yeah, never ever let person with Wind Step dip below 40% hp if you can help it especially before ability 4.  To heal the Wind Step, shift lifebloom onto the person + rejuv + regrowth if omen procs + swiftmend + nourish/healing touches. It's pretty painful for druid solo, so probably need other healer to also heal wind steps with you.

Ability 3: Unseen Blade. Everyone except the person with Wind Step needs to stack together and take a huge hit in the face. If the person targeted for Unseen Blade is the person with Wind Step, have a Paladin BoP or priest pain suppression or Ironbark, 'cause otherwise high chance of death from Wind Step ticks after the blade. The stacking must be done well, stand in front of the boss's blade, otherwise if <5 people takes the hit... they'll all probably die.

Repeat Ability 1 and 2 then

Ability 4: I forgot the name, whatever that stupid Whirlwind attack is. Basically, he sucks you in, you run out and keep running until it ends. Stampeding roar is nice, but not necessary. During this time, all healers throw all instant casts on the person with Wind Step. Rejuv, Lifebloom, Nature Swift if necessary.

This cycle of abilities will continue until the boss hits 25% and starts Phase 2, pushing people to one side of the room and making you run tornadoes.

Phase 2:
As soon as this phase starts, don't start running yet, top off raid to nearly full, then start running. When people are getting <50%, Spiritwalker Tranquility! If you get caught in a tornado and fall behind, you might just have to cat form and sprint your way back up and hope other healers didn't mess up and can heal before you get there. O!!!! tree form actually gets cancelled by stampeding roar!! I did stampeding roar in tree form and it turned me into a bear!!! anyway, just something to watch out for.

When boss hits 12%, everyone, except for 1 tank + maybe a dps who can survive without healing for  a while, needs to ride the winds on the side back to the other side of the room while the left behind tank/dps brings the boss to 10% hp and he flies to the other side where the rest of the raid is already waiting. Then dps the boss down and hope it's before berserk.

When we cleared it, we had 2 dead dps when boss was 10% and so we hit berserk timer :). And everyone except our tank died, but he survived just long enough to shave off the final 0.4% hp. Epic epic.

Once again I'll mention we are Recruiting.... 

Resto druid 10m Heroic Four Kings strategy

Four Kings are down this week. Thanks to more gear and blizzard berserk timer increase.

Four Kings, ordering needs to be Subetai 2nd in order to have highest success rate. So lots of resets :( Better reset than wipe :).  *Update* well, apparently blizzard finally saved players the trouble and stopped randomizing the ordering (and mind you, they now set the 4 kings in the easiest order, so this boss is pretty easy now, but eh, doesn't really change the guide, since I didn't mention how Maddening shout during the orb kiting can wipe the raid anyway, but this won't happen anymore, so whatever.

Healer Number: 2 healers.
This whole fight is execution. Only difference from normal version for healers is once the boss hits 30%, 2nd boss will come alive. So need to heal 2nd tank. The Qiang and Zian also get shields that need to be mass dispelled (Qiang's can't be purged, purging counts as an attack, we think it's a bug... *update* they might have fixed this bug, since tranq shot is working fine now) because of huge raid damage if people attack with shield up.

Anyway, for this fight, I like Heart of the Wild and Force of Nature. There's not a specific moment to use tree form, but Force of Nature is nice in my opinion because it frees up healing so can help dps the bosses during transitions. And can use them during flankings or maddening shouts or just whenever you can use some free healing to rest your mana or running and don't want people to drop from lack of heals, the cooldown is so short that it really doesn't matter usually, except when you want to use HotW.

Symbosis mage is nice, ice blocking pinning arrows and other gonna die moments is nice.


Phase 1 Qiang:
Plant mushrooms on the raid that's stacked. Follow tank around and don't get hit by flanking order/annilihation.

Phase 2 Subetai:
Raid needs to stack until Qiang dies, so dps really needs to burn Qiang hard but don't forget to watch the shield. Here, force of nature, heart of the wild and help. If Qiang doesn't die before pinning arrow, then it's pretty wipe for the raid.  As a druid, we don't have anything that takes us out of pinning, so symbosis mage, a 2nd tranq is not very necessary. Depends on your raid comp I guess, but we only used 2 healing cooldowns + s.priest vamp.

Phase 3/4: Depending on Meng or Zian, burn healing cooldowns on Meng's Maddening shouts. Zian is not special for healers, just kite orbs. O yeah, I forget if it's Meng or Zian, but one of them causes spell reflection DoT, so you have to yell at dps to stop dpsing until topped off if their HP drops below 40%.

When left with only boss 4, help dps or keep raid alive depending on if it's zian or meng, but careful you don't explode raid if it's zian.


This fight is easy for healers. The rest of the job is really hoping for no silliess (can't dodge volley, flanking, annilihations, attacking Qiang & Zian's shield)/over kills during maddening shout/people not stopping dps with the DoT that reflects spells back at them (i forgot if that's from meng or zian) and hoping your dps knows how to interrupt/stun, etc.

I need a new anime to watch...

Um... so I finished un-go, that was surprisingly better than I thought it would be. Usually any mystery show that goes supernatural loses my interest, because well... magic made the closed room, so kinda stupid. But this show sticks to only one premise and that is the detective can extract one honest answer from a person at a time, deeming the mystery still sorta mind boggling and interesting to figure out.

Restarting on One Piece, but honestly, the mermaid island arc is stupid.... villains aren't interesting, I hate the low IQ princess and her crybaby mom. I was so happy when Otohime died, though that's unintended by oda-sensei i'm sure. Anyway, hopefully this arc will wind down, I heard good things about the next arc.

Really want a new anime to watch, one that isn't going to be ongoing into oblivion like Detective Conan, one that doesn't always end with the girl getting together with no one because the manga is ongoing or game has her picking from 8 guys. Meh..... headache.... I wonder sometimes do most animes feel generic to me now because I've watched so many? or has the industry really stopped churning out unique fun animes. Or maybe I'm just spoiled, thinking that the year Death Note, Code Geass, Ouran High, Melancholy of Haruhi dominated the top 4 (imo any one of those could've stood at the top if they were released separately in any of the later years) would be the norm when that year is the true outlier. Granted last year had Mahou Shoujo Madoka, steins gate, but really.... they pale in comparison.

Resto druid 10m Grand Empress Shek'zeer strat

Ah, I didn't want to do this boss because I'm a bit burnt out by raiding in general, but I got called in last night anyway, because raid's pug healer was just too stupid.  Since we downed it, might as well write up a strat. So 3 phases.

Phase 1:
Tank and spank with a little nuance.
Mechanics 1: Empress summons randomly in the room 2 yellow swirly areas that has HP. Their HP will drop and when their HP reaches 0, they will explode and do AoE damage to the raid. So having 2 explode at the same time is bad. In order to have their HP dip faster, a person has to be inside or super close to it casting spells (so sitting in ice block inside is not the way to go). The person to go inside should usually be the person debuffed with Cry of Terror (mechanics 2) and once inside cannot be healed. Always have people go inside the lower HP swirly so it'll explode before the other one.
Healing cooldown all the explosions since won't need the cooldowns in phase 2.

Mechanics 2: Cry of Terror, random raid member debuff. With it on, that raid member will do mild raid damage ticks to the raid, it's healable, but if they run inside the swirly thing, only the person with the debuff will take damage. They just need to beware and run out when their HP is low to get healed and don't run into the yellow swirly if the yellow swirly is close to exploding unless they have an invul ready.

Phase 2:
So all these mean adds come running at the raid, 2 big ones, 6 little ones. Tanks need to pick them up and kite them. Therefore, it's best to Stampede Roar for the kiting tank when he needs one.
The little ones will fixate on random raid members and if they catch up, close to 1 shot them (so can take 2 hits). These guys are really slow though, so kiting is pretty trivial.
Meanwhile, the fixates will also spawn resins on the ground, they're little orange/yellowish fizzy areas. People need to pick them up by walking over them and (here i'm a bit don't care...) either touch another player or another player also with resin to form a bubbling orange pool. Then 3 more resins need to be ran into the pool (careful you don't form extra pools and waste resins when running resins), that makes the pool turn into an Amber Trap. Form 2 of these, kill all the little adds (very important, because little adds can break traps) and tanks need to kite the 2 big adds into the trap. After which the big adds will auto die when the trap ends. Both big adds need to get trapped and die, or else it's pretty wipe. Phase 1 will repeat again around this time.

Phase 3:
This starts when boss HP drops below a certain point, should be before a 2nd phase 2 starts. This phase, boss summons purple stuff on the ground, run out of that and stack on boss.
2 raid members will be targeted with "future" fear and explosion. So the targeted people need to run out before they get feared and also explode on the raid, but not too far as to make them undispellable by healers. O yeah, feared player will also take ticking damage. I died during this phase because 2 healers got feared, didn't get dispelled, and fear ran me all the way to the other side of the room and ticking damage killed me :D. The fear lasts very long, greater than 12 seconds :).
Dps burn burn burn, and she'll die.

This whole fight I didn't plant mushrooms :( but next time we kill, maybe I'll be a little more free to experiment.

Comments, suggestions, questions, even debates are welcome.

Resto druid 10m Amber-Shaper Un'sok strat

Um... actually the first 4 bosses is pretty trivial healing wise. So I don't really want to write about it.
Gah... this is my 4th title edit, apparently this boss isn't called Shapeshifter :D.

Amber Shaper is pretty easy to heal too, just beware of the Amber Parasite. I'm lazy and tired today, so just going to type out strat phase wise.
Amber Parasite: this is a DoT that increases DoT damage with healing put into the person. Basically, as little healing on the person as possible (no overheals for sure) and HoTs are actually nicer than big heals because it'll gradually build up ticks, instead of spurt huge ticks.  These ticks are magic damage.

Phase 1: All about the tanks and dps. Amber Parasite is trivial to heal in this phase, especially for druids. If on a player, have no healers heal the player until player is at <50% hp. Then, put a rejuv on the player and wait a few more seconds, and start pouring a few healing touch/nourish on the player.
During this phase, you can also have the dps, bubble, divine, ice block, cloak, or whatever to get the debuff off themselves. However, I recommend saving these cooldowns for phase 2 if phase 2 is going to start soon.
 As a druid, if the debuff falls on me, I'm really happy. I wait for my hp to tick to 50%, pop a barkskin, wait 2 more seconds, rejuv, and then 1 healing touch, done. Don't have to think about it at all.

Phase 2: Now it gets tricky? Not really if your group isn't stupid and everyone knows how to interrupt the big add and their own Amber Explosion. Save healing cooldowns for those Amber Explosions that doesn't get interrupted and hope it's less than 3 or 4 times total during the whole phase. Now, if you use tranquility or any healing cooldowns that heals during this phase, you have to tell the person with the Amber Parasite on them to remove the debuff or go invulnerable, whatever, or they will die. In which case, have a rebirth ready, since there's probably no saving them, since adding more heals on them will only make them tick larger and just die in 1 tick. When that happened on me, I did get saved by our shadow priest who did a HP swap at the last second so the final tick put me at 2% hp, but if your comp doesn't have a shadow priest...

How to pilot the construct: I decided to add this because apparently people get confused by the timers and what not. And since healers can get turned into one.... so our raid figured out that to keep the debuff on the big add without worrying about missing the cooldown for the Amber Explosion, just cast 1 whenever the big add casts something. So if it's casting Fling/stomp, whatever (it doesn't interrupt those but you get to refresh the debuff)... as long as you cast 1 then, your cooldown will be back up before the next attack/explosion. Ta-da.... less freaking out about dbm timers and only need to watch boss cast, your cast, and i guess the yellow energy bar.

Phase 3: Finally easy phase again, if you reach this phase, healers just heal people who aren't mutated. If you are mutated... well, just pilot the construct and it is great fun. Spam 1, interrupt yourself, drink pools, etc.

Btw, we cleared this boss with everyone mutated, so when the boss died, everyone died. Hilarious hilarious :D.

Monk switch?

I've been a druid since vanilla. Been with it through the highs and lows. However, this time, it may finally be time to say good-bye? I say this without trying out mistweaver yet, but it'd be nice to hear some pro-restore druid comments to hold me as druid.
I never felt gimped as a restore druid before. Back in vanilla, restore druids were the healers that got to nature's swift tanks and cast healing touch (the biggest single target heal back then) along with rejuvs, we weren't buffer than priests or as mana efficient as paladins, but we were still necessary in the raid since we had combat rez! Oh, the days when restore druids can't rez, only had 1 combat rez and had to group with shadow priests or tanking paladins or hope to god not more than 1 person dies in your group per 30minutes, but I digress into nostalgia lane.  In BC, druids became more HoT healers, which is again fine and dandy. I quit completely during wotlk, but back in Cata to find druids more raid healers than ever and loved it, to be honest. Restore druids are not a very vocal group of people, we're sorta happy being in our own little niche raid healing corner. Other healers compare with each other, so you have disc priests going paladins are buff, shamans are gimp, etc because they're pretty much tank healer w/ some raid healing. But druids happily sit on our high raid hps by ourselves watching the days go by. MoP changed druids a bit. No more bear cats for one. However, Blizzard didn't really touch the resto druids. Our raid role and healing rotations, etc remained the same. It would be fine, but suddenly, they introduce the mistweaver monks? Not only do mistweavers take leather int gear, which I'm fine with, but they are also raid HoTers (o yeah, and they have Mark of the Wild equivalent buff). And on top of that, they're much better tank healers than restore druids from what I hear.
So all things being equal, where is the value of the restore druid? We have symbosis...? fat lot of good that does when in the 10m comp, I usually only use it on shadow priest for extra tranq (but I get stupid leap of faith) or a mage for ice block, but mage gets useless healing touch?  Tranq, monks have a version. Ironbark? that almost completely worthless spell? Combat rez... well that's was our monopoly until the end of cata when warlocks, DKs can perform that same feat.
I'd like to see some arguments against switching to monk, maybe I'm just seeing the greener grass on the other side (despite the wow logs showing every fight heals being topped by mistweavers)? I mean I have tried to defend my restore druid for weeks now, but it's getting harder and harder to justify (other than I don't want to lvl to 90...) O yeah, and mistweavers are getting buffed more during 5.1, whereas restore druids are unchanged... Is it because we don't make enough noise that blizzard is ignoring us until we dwindle to nothing?
O yeah, please don't say my skills as a restore druid is bad and hence feel gimped because what I want to compare is same player playing 2 classes, so top notch restore druid vs top notch monk or bad resto vs bad monk, etc. I only want ability/objective parsing comparisons.

Resto druid 10m Heroic Elegon Strategy

Four Kings is now down, so strat's in a later post. On to Elegon.
First off, difference from normal mode (for healers, the tanking difference not my responsibility):
Now all people inside the circle getting debuffed are no longer in line of sight of people outside the circle and vice versa. This will change the mechanics of the fight a bit. I will elaborate in the phase 1 portion.
Closed circuit now hits 3 people instead of 2.

This is a 2 healer fight! Disc priest for 2.5 heal is unnecessary.

Phase 1:
Closed Circuit on 3 people isn't really deadly or anything, just need to dispel the third person off before the next set of closed circuit pops.

The tank tanking the extra add, needs to have full HoTs (lifebloom, rejuv, regrowth even) before he heads outside the circle with the add. If he's really low outside (i.e. <30%) and lifebloom's not blooming any time soon or already bloomed, run out w/ a nature's swift before total annilihation starts and run back into the circle.
Go ahead and plant mushrooms outside or inside, since it doesn't take line of sight into account, it's great for healing the tank outside if he's low and you don't want to run out.
Total annilihation, which happens outside the circle, will never hit the raid inside now. So no healing cooldown needed here (esp if your tank is good and never let it tick inside the circle pre-total, though 1 or 2 ticks is usually healable, more than that is pretty wipe). One person does need to go outside and soak the total annilihation or the raid auto dies. The soaker can be a shadow priest or mage or rogue. After the soaker soaks, 1 healer (preferrably one with good instant heals, i.e. not druid) will go out and heal them back up to 80% hp so they can unroot and move back into the circle. Even though, with healthstones, only our rogue needed some healing afterwards, the spriest and mage are pretty dandy most of the time.

Phase 2:
Same as normal, except your dpses might be running in and out of circle, so you have to do the same to heal them up. Have your ranged dps stack with you, plant mushrooms, add a few rejuvs and nourishes, recover mana during this phase.

Phase 3:
Same as normal, damage the pillars with Heart of the Wild up or just rest your mana when HotW is down.  I noticed our tank's pillar does die slower, so even w/o HotW, moonfire/wrath away, unless your mana is low.

Phase 3 to 1 transition:
Now it gets crazy for the healers. First off, adds now hit like a truck. Instead of tank tanking them, CC/slow is the way to go. We don't do mass entanglement anymore unless all the adds are already gathered by the tank, but then the roots just break right away due to AoE damage. Ursol's vortex might be okay.
Tree form right before the final pillar falls, use tree form to lifebloom everyone, etc, while running to middle. Once everyone is in middle (but before platform's back up), have a healer that doesn't need to stand still burn a cooldown (i.e. shaman spirit link or healing tide totem), granted I find spirit link by itself works really well with tree form. After the platform's back up, everyone run towards the boss (but don't let elegon breathe the raid, so that's sorta tank's job) AoEing down the adds, during this time, Tranquility if necessary.
After the adds are down, move back into positioning of phase 1 and repeat.

Final 25% time healing cooldowns well (1 after another in a row isn't a good idea, preferrably, be able to wait a bit between each) and if your dps check is met, elegon will drop.


Once again I'll mention we are Recruiting.... 

Resto Druid 10m Heroic Spiritbinder Garajal Strategy

Resto druids are just really weak for this fight. Our first kills I sat for paladin instead. First, let's not even get into the spiritual innervation (paladin beacon OP...). Let's just talk about cooldowns: Paladins get 2 BoPs + devo. Shamans have spirit link, healing tide. Disc priests can at least dps their heart out+barrier. I feel like druids are being left in the dust. All druids get is Ironbark?!?!? 20% damage reduction during voodoos are just sad compared to what the other healers get. Okay, we have tranq too, but.... that's no reason to sit say a shaman instead.  Anyway, enough complaining.

2 healers only.
The fight is exactly the same as normal, except people who've been down to the spirit realm can't go again for 30 seconds. And spiritual innervation becomes a bigger issue.
I'd like to play with how the stacks work more, but to get 21 stacks of spiritual innervation my usual rotation is Rejuv, Wild growth, regrowth crit spam x 4 times. Swiftmending in the middle too. However, I usually find myself a bit short on time to do that on myself too, so.... I usually end up leaving w/ like 10 stacks only, but it's better dps gets the buff. On the other hand, I find using Force of Nature for this to be nice and simple. Since the trees spam healing touch for you and usable on cooldown whenever you go down, that's free healing stacks that you don't have to think about. Though the throughput might not be as good as tree form, but tree form's cooldown is not feasible for going into spirit realm.

This fight, spirit isn't critical, so reforge/regem away into int, haste 6652, mastery, crit.
 Spiritual innervation stacks didn't end up mattering that much for the group after we got a warlock, basically downstairs was clean as a whistle. What became more important was actually the usage of healing damage reduction cooldowns on the tanks reducing voodoo damage. Like I said, this still makes druids gimp and sad. Paladins BoPing tanks work really well, it reduces tank's dps, but if the other dpses can reach the check, not a big deal. None of the healers had mana issues and hps total wasn't much higher than the other heroic bosses. So rest of the fight would be a dps check.

Resto Druid 10m Heroic Feng Strategy

First of all, this fight is trivial compared to stone guardians and spiritbinder. Once again, not really a healer heavy fight. It's more of a dps check and tank not stupid fight.
Order we did the phases: Arcane Resonance phase, Shield phase, Epicenter phase, Draw Flame phase.
Glyphs: Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Wild Growth
Spirit: I cleared this fight w/ 7.2k spirit. Didn't really go oom, but pretty close, as in can pretty much can only cast lifeblooms and nourish when we got the kill. So if you want to go higher or lower is up to you.
Talents: Oh.... Ursol's Vortex is a must this fight! I did this fight with Tree. I sorta just popped tree form whenever I felt like it, preferrably early as possible so can pop it more often. HotW was nice in the beginning, was pumping out 50k dps in the first 40 seconds of the fight.
Symbosis: Um, tank I guess? Doesn't really matter.
Healing strat: 3 healers. Druids aren't that bad for this fight.
So healing the 4 phase strategies:
Plant mushrooms in the center before pull.
Arcane Resonance: So we didn't hero this phase, since our dps could force the phase shift after 3 arcane velocities. The gist of it goes like this: see someone get hit w/ arcane resonance, everyone except the arcane resonanced person, stack on tank in mid. Explode mushrooms and heal the person outside, while the inside is damage nullified and spread before next arcane resonance hits. 2nd arcane velocity, no one needs to move (so have dpses derp like crazy), have your healers pop cooldowns, so Tranquility + devo aura is enough. Plant mushrooms in center again. Repeat w/ stacking for 3rd arcane velocity. Phase change!
Shield Phase: This phase is interchangable w/ epicenter phase imo, but our tank preferred this phase more because he didn't have a shield up for the 1st epicenter and our 2nd tank needed time before copying lightning fist. Um, so this phase, everyone must be stacked, and as soon as shield drops on the floor, raid moves away from it, even a little bit is enough. Place Ursol's Vortex down on the stack (I can preemptively guess where the stack is moving so can put it down while you run, but it's not that big of a deal). Dps should AoE these down while tank's shield is not up. Next one, stack doesn't move, derp like crazy, tank uses nullification shield. Repeat until phase change. This phase should be a mana rest period, save mana... use rejuvs and nourishes only.
Epicenter Phase: This phase mushroom the area where your raid is stacked (i.e. on tank). Stack on tank a few seconds before epicenter, and tank should nullify the damage, explode the mushroom for slow stackers. Then, if your copy tank isn't stupid, he'd stun the next epicenter. Repeat. This phase should be easy and mana regenning phase too.
Draw Flame Phase: Hero and burn! Well, this phase should only last 2 draw flames. Not much to watch out for, just everyone stack near tank still, run out to the sides (never behind) if you have the debuff. For the un-nullified draw flame, burn all healer cooldowns, Tranquility, devo, etc. And the boss should drop like a fly.

Cooldown: Tranquility is popped during 2nd arcane velocity in phase 1 and un-nullified draw flame phase. Innervate on cooldownish?

Resto Druid 10m Heroic Stone Guardian Strategy

First of all, I hate this fight. We cleared it, but it felt 5 hours late, since we got under 10% 3 times before actually getting the kill. We got the kill with a pug healer healing 30k hps... so as you can tell, this fight isn't that healer dependent as long as your healers can sum up to 170k hps (maybe less if you have good pretrifications).  So basically, if your group is not suiciding or killing each other, and tanks tank properly, and dps high enough to not hit berserk, it's a kill. Yea, yea, to have all those conditions align is a miracle for a lot of guilds. The worst thing about this fight is if a healer dies at all before final phase, even w/ combat rez, the fight becomes hard to recover from + if a tank dies, combat rez will not save the raid, the dogs will usually just go explosion chain and instant death everyone. So yeah, hope you only get 1 to 2 dumb dpses who die, instead of tank or bad healer.

O yeah, so 10m version has the retarded RNG depending on the guardians up and running around. We got Jasper, Cobalt, Jade.
Glyphs: Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Wild Growth
Spirit: I cleared this fight w/ 7.2k spirit. Didn't really go oom, but pretty close, as in can pretty much can only cast lifeblooms and nourish when we got the kill. So if you want to go higher or lower is up to you.
Talents: Only ones that matter is SotF vs. Incarnation and HotW vs. NV. I did this fight with Tree, since during the transition and a little bit pre-transition, that extra bit of healing/life bloom/mana save is just so nice. HotW is not useful for this fight really, since I wasn't ever dpsing, though the extra 6% int/stam passive is always good. I would imagine that NV is just as useful, if not more, but I just preferred always having the 6% int + 1 less button to think about.
Symbosis: Hunter is my favorite, Druid gets Deterrence = cobalt mine clearing & Hunter gets sprint = faster to light up titles
Healing strat: 3 healers. Druids are meh for this fight, well only in the sense that monks have about the same raid heal + decent good tank healing, paladins are super good tank healers, shamans have good healing cooldowns (spirit link + mana tide + healing tide!!!) and disc priests with infinite spirit + damage buff is godly.
3 Phases, they're not really phases, it's more just when the dogs hits 75% hp, 50% hp, and 25%, the tiles will reset, and hence happy 80% spirit boost does away. So suddenly mana goes down faster, and dpses are scrambling to get tiles lit up again, running w/ jasper chains improperly sometimes, and not always in range or line of sight anymore. Just messy.
During the fight, no matter how much I want ranged to stack, it felt like a lost cause, since you have ranged running tiles in the beginning of each phase and afterwards they get linked and refuse to move from where they were standing. So mushrooms, you can plant if you're free or super pro casting and planting at the same time, but don't expect that much use.

Handling doggy abilities:
Clearing cobalts as druid during cobalt phase is pretty easy (since our attempt had no Amherst dog, I don't even bother shapeshifting out unless I get Jasper linked). However, clearing cobalts during non-cobalt phase is best done with deterrence, running in without deterrence during Jade pretrification with full hp and barkskin will allow you to survive w/ ~5% hp, but if you happen to get chained or if it's not during Jade, good luck surviving, basically just don't do it!
Jasper chains, break only during Jasper phase, the phases aren't completely RNG but that's your tanks' issue. Otherwise, running healing for druid is still doable, but hopefully you're lucky and get chained to other healers and not a shadowstepping rogue (omg, that's just death... tell your rogues, no shadowstep talent! switch it to anything but that). Just don't step into mines when you're running. As a side note, I think deterrence does not stop Jasper chain damage (I died once to chain damage while I cast it and I saw the cooldown go off, thought i had deterrence up, but I could be wrong and deterrence didn't actually go up when I died).
Jade AoE raid damage, this is painful, since rejuvs are not enough to cover the damage during non-Jade petrification. So to conserve mana, I'd cast nourish when everyone's rejuved, wild growth is on cooldown, but if that's not enough, a few regrowths must be used.

Cooldown: Tranquility is popped only during phase transitions. O yeah, best to wait for a new cobalt mine to spawn before channeling, otherwise, having a cobalt mine spawn under you during your channel, you have to run out if it's not cobalt phase and end channeling. For our group, I popped it 1st transition and cooldown is up for 3rd transition, but not 2nd, so if you need cooldown timing info, that's the gist. Innervate on cooldown in case that wasn't obvious.

Resto Druid Mogu'Shan Vaults 10m Normal strat

So last week went by and normal progression through the vaults is done. I went to sleep before doing Will of Emperor, so no strategy there yet, but really it's not the bottleneck fight, whereas Elegon is.
I'm not a super great druid healer or anything, just a mediocre learning each fight normally type. The super hardcore people will probably disagree with me, but I'm just saying what worked/didn't work for me.
Healing rotation stuff is obvious for druids, so the usual lifebloom tank, rejuv, swiftmend, wild growth. I like Nature's Swift a lot, since it's great for emergency single target heal. I'll only mention if there's something super special to do w/ rotation, otherwise it'll be general and vagu-ish.

1) Stone Guardians to start:
Glyphs: Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, optional 3rd (I used healing touch since I was trying SotF and didn't switch it out)
Talents: Only ones that matter is SotF vs. Incarnation and HotW vs. NV. I did this fight with SotF, but in retrospect my play style favors using tree form more, so next time I will probably be a tree. HotW is not useful for this fight really, since I wasn't ever dpsing, though the extra 6% int/stam passive is always good. So I ended up clearing with NV.
Symbosis: Doesn't matter really.
Healing strat: 2 to 3 healers. (We cleared with 2 heals + disc atoning) (we didn't get cobalt dog, but being a druid, rooting shouldn't be a problem for us, so I would volunteer being the one to detonate the cobalt mines) Ranged stack, but avoid puddles. I like to throw mushrooms in this area, but because people do move out, sometimes have to replant or explode a bit prematurely. Chains damage wasn't that bad, unless ranged got linked w/ melee and ranged doesn't run in, but that's not really healing problem as much as people not paying attention.  Otherwise, this fight is pure tanking. Good tanking makes easier healing.
Cooldown: Just take turns use healing cooldowns whenever necessary (i.e. after explosion chain that drops everyone low). So don't really need to save it for a certain point in the fight.

The fight itself is relatively easy, but I found myself a bit mana starved. Innervate is gimper since it's a percentage of mana pool. Raid heal is more mana efficient than tank healing, so I recommend druids leave the tank healing to your healing partner.

2) Feng the Accursed:
Glyphs: Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, optional 3rd (I used healing touch since I was trying SotF and didn't switch it out)
Talents: I did SotF on this fight too, once again, I plan to use tree form in the future. NV is also my choice for this fight.
Symbosis: Shadow priest would be nice... but we didn't have one this fight, so just did DK
Healing strat: 3 healers to be safe, probably doable with 2. (We cleared with 2 heals + disc atoning) This is still a relatively tank dependent fight. Phase 1, range start sorta stacked but not in center for fear of Lightning Fist. However, during this time, plant mushrooms in the center. When Feng does his Epicenter, raid will stack in the center, during this time, explode the mushrooms, even if tank put up a purple damage nullifier. Raid will spread again, mushroom center again. Next epicenter, a healing cooldown will be used. Repeat until phase 2.
Phase 2, ick, you have the whole raid stacked in center, so mushrooming the center is fine, but I don't remember doing it much, i'm probably just being bad. Have people run out to left or right side (never behind) if they have wild fire. Here, if done properly raid barely takes damage, otherwise, pop heal cooldowns, it'll probably be a wipe but at least it might be recoverable.
Phase 3, pretty easy if your group doesn't have a stupid person who keeps running into the stack and 1-shotting everyone when they have arcane resonance. Rotate healing cooldowns that you have left during the stacking. Healers have to heal the person with arcane resonance outside the stack.

3) Spiritbinder:
Glyphs: Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Regrowth (I really think regrowth is great for this fight)
Talents: I did HotW and SotF (doesn't really matter but I'd try tree next time). HotW I like because of the extra stat buff, plus you get to dps the boss in the beginning or you can dps the little adds in the spirit realm w/ moonfire dots.
Symbosis: Shadow priest! Extra tranq is just wonderful at the end.
Healing strat: 2 healers, 3 healers is unnecessary and makes final burn difficult. Healers take turns going into the spirit realm, as long as not Voodoo Dolled. If you're Voodoo Dolled, other healer has to go in for you. Healers need to heal everyone that went into the spirit realm w/ you to full at least once asap, hence I do regrowth glyph, faster to heal to full. O yeah, so after going down once, healers will get infinite mana for 15 seconds, so regrowth spam away :D. I recommend moonfiring a few adds, rejuving the dpses, and then just leave spirit realm around 5-10seconds left. Repeat this until the boss is pretty low. Then everyone will stop entering spirit realm, stack, and burn. Burn phase, coordinate your healing cooldowns w/ other healers and extra tranq from shadow priest :D. As long as dps isn't bad, this is an easy fight.

4) Spirit Kings
Glyphs: Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, optional: I did Regrowth because i didn't switch after spiritbinder
Talents: HotW and Tree (I finally switched, but I don't think it matters at all this fight)
Symbosis: whomever.
Healing strat: Er...2 healers. This fight is just so easy with a good tank. All I remember is following tank during P1, rejuving while running. Then spreading during P2, then just avoiding flanking orders and arrows, and boss went down. So... no advice, sorry :(

5) Elegon (The hardest fight so far! I will go into a lot of details)
Glyphs: Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Wild Growth (ah, yes, Wild Growth, it's just more mana efficient and there's not a shortage of AoE damage so that extra 6th person tick is useful except during phase 3 for a short while.)
Talents: I see lots of people using NV, but I just can't, I keep forgetting to use it during this fight. So I stuck with HotW and helped dps orbs during phase 2.  Tree.
Symbiosis: Shadow Priest!!! This fight having an extra tranq is just wonderful!
Healing strat: 2 healers. 3 healers is not doable unless your group's dps is superb and ours is not superb, it's not bad, but not epic either. Druid raid heal, other healer tank heal.

Phase 1: Ranged stack close to the edge of the circle. Mushroom the stack, but don't explode yet.
2 random players will be debuffed w/ Closed Circuit. So divide dispel duty with your other healer, we did responsible for own group, if 2 in same group, healer will always dispel themselves first, or wait to see what the group's healer dispels first and dispel the other one. Whatever works.
When add spawns, start making sure everyone is pretty topped off. While the add is doing its AoE at 25% hp, explode the mushrooms or wait for total annilihation then explode, depends on your ranged stack's hp. During each total annilihation a healing cooldown needs to be used. Since we had a shadow priest, we had him use Vamp for the 1st one. If you have a paladin, devo aura before the explosion, don't have him stupid and use it after or not at all. I saved my tranq for phase 2, but if you don't have the healing cooldown to spare, tranqing phase 1 is fine too.
The add spawned only 2-3 times during phase 1 for us, but whether or not more will spawn depends heavily on how fast dps downs the boss's hp. The time we cleared, we got a 4th add during the 2nd phase 1, and that was a bit painful since we had no more healing cooldowns to burn and just had to brute force heal the damage.
Tree of Life, use it when an add spawns before a total annilihation that you're not tranqing.
Innervate, use early and then on cooldown.

Phase 2: I was running into the middle and back out at 6stacks pretty safely, that way I can also help out healing the group on the other side. If your tranq's not down, can also tranq in the center, it didn't hit everyone, but better than nothing. However, if your other healer is skilled enough and don't need the help, stay on your side, heal your group and HotW help dps the orbs. At first I was a bit panicky and regrowthing the orb damage... only to find out, if you have rejuv and wild growth up on everyone, the damage from the orbs won't kill the group, as long as you heal them up w/ Nourishes before they kill the next set of orbs.

Phase 3: This is a rest period, very very light healing, just plant some mushrooms, wild growth maybe and don't stand in the lightning circles. 2nd time we hit phase 3, I use focus potion to make sure my mana pool is very healthy before going into the 25% phase.

25% phase: Run in to where the ranged usually stacks in phase 1 as soon as the floor comes up and pop a tranquility, whether it's yours or the shadow priests. During this time, dps will down the adds. Now, have your ranged run out of circle and back in, reset the stacking debuff at 5 stacks instead of 10 stacks. This is a little counterintuitive, since damage taken outside is huge, but only 1 tick of that is healable and resetting the stacks makes the damage inside easier to heal, so can hold off on healing cooldowns a bit longer and buy more time for dpses to burn. During this phase, planting mushrooms is a no-no for me, just didn't feel like there's the time, but feel free to experiment.

Opinion on 1st Debate

I don't like to comment on politics, religion, and money. Since they're usually all opinions that people feel strongly about, and since human brain enjoys finding facts that support their view and ignores facts to the contrary, no matter what is said and supported with facts, usually there's some anti-fact waiting.
That aside, I decided I'll write my opinion on the 1st debate anyway, since no one reads this but me anyway, and I feel strongly enough that I have to vent a little.

Most experts felt Romney was the clear winner in the debate. I'll agree. Romney looked energized, spoke fluently, while Obama looked tired, talked in broken thought bursts, and all of his attacks got deflected.
However, what I really really hated was how vague Romney's responses were, but yet people felt he did a good job. So Obama said "Your tax plan will raise taxes for middle class" Romney says "No it won't because I will not raise taxes on the middle class.""  When Obama said how will you pay for your tax plan, he says "I will create new jobs." Then Romney says he will repeal Obamacare, but keep the good parts, he will repeal the Wall Street regulations, but keep the good parts. /facepalm

First of all, I want to see the math, the full math, on how Romney's tax plan will not raise taxes on the middle class. I have the time and most people have the intelligence to comprehend it, after all it's just addition/subtraction/multiplication/division and at worst statistics. It's not like you're doing Nth-order differentials.  Just saying "I will not raise taxes" is stupid, I can say I will not raise taxes on anyone and I will create magic money from thin air too! Just show the numbers and shut the critics up once and for all. Otherwise, spouting "I will"'s and "I will not"s are just empty rhetoric that apparently most people are actually buying???
Second of all, he says "I will create new jobs" but his plan is once again vague! I can say "I will create 100 million jobs and end world hunger and bring world peace by being self-reliant, cooperate with our allies, and force everyone to hug puppies" but where is the solid proof? You can't just spout imaginary scenarios and say it will work! Being president isn't a magic wand, your policies can get blocked by congress, declared unconstitutional by the supreme court, and who's to say there will be enough puppies for people to hug? Definitely not the president!
Third, saying you're repeal stuff but keep the good parts, without naming the good parts is once again vague, but people are buying his arguments! This is like saying in front of a table full of people, I will toss away the full course meal on your table but keep the good parts. The people who likes dessert will think, yes, he will be keeping dessert on table, people who likes salads will think, yes, he will be keeping salads on table. All the while, he didn't say salad or dessert, for all anyone knows, he only wants to keep the brussel sprouts that he loves and screw the rest of you at the table. But you'll never know and apparently he says he doesn't even know what he wants to keep on the table until he is elected. Wow... good luck arguing with him on that.
Worse part is, no matter what the argument or claim is against him, all Romney has to do is deflect by saying 'if I get into office, what you're saying won't happen and what I'm saying will,' end all debate there, after all, how can anyone disprove or prove something that hasn't happened yet? So the only way to disprove or prove his words is to elect him into office? Very well played Romney.

I will say Romney played the first debate very well and Obama lost this one in terms of energy and aura, but I'm still not buying Romney's policies.

Mogu'shan Vault Resto Druid Loot by Boss

This page is now obsolete. I have the new one up that contains loot from all 16 bosses, not just the early 6.


Since I have to decide which bosses to charm, I'm reorganizing the loot table of epics I want via boss. Not arranged in kill order yet. So by the looks, I'll be charming Feng this week, since I highly doubt we can kill Jan-Xi. As for the other bosses with only 2 pieces of loot, um... well, we'll see.


The Stone guardians
   Cloak
   Belt

Feng the Accursed
    Head
    Ring1
    Off-hand

Gara'jal the Spiritbinder
  Shoulders
  Ring2

The Spirit Kings
   Neck
   Wrists

Elegon
  Feet


Will of the Emperor (Jan-Xi)
  Legs
  Trinket
  One-Hander

Inscription Ink/Herb list

So I finally found the info for herb and ink on http://www.elsprofessions.com/inscription/milling.html#herbs_pomaces. But being the lazy person that I am, I'm copying it over here so I won't lose it and if the site is ever unavailable I can look at this. Not claiming credit or anything, so hopefully I don't get sued.

1	Earthroot, Peacebloom and Silverleaf	Alabaster Pigment	-	Ivory Ink Moonglow Ink
25	Briarthorn, Bruiseweed, Mageroyal, Stranglekelp and Swiftthistle	Dusky Pigment	Verdant Pigment	Hunter's Ink Midnight Ink
75	Grave Moss, Kingsblood, Liferoot and Wild Steelbloom	Golden Pigment	Burnt Pigment	Dawnstar Ink Lion's Ink
125	Dragon's Teeth, Fadeleaf, Goldthorn and Khadgar's Whisker	Emerald Pigment	Indigo Pigment	Jadefire Ink Royal Ink
175	Arthas' Tears, Blindweed, Firebloom, Ghost Mushroom, Gromsblood, Purple Lotus and Sungrass	Violet Pigment	Ruby Pigment	Celestial Ink Fiery Ink
225	Dreamfoil, Golden Sansam, Icecap, Mountain Silversage and Sorrowmoss	Silvery Pigment	Sapphire Pigment	Ink of the Sky Shimmering Ink
275	Ancient Lichen, Dreaming Glory, Felweed, Mana Thistle, Netherbloom, Nightmare Vine, Ragveil and Terocone	Nether Pigment	Ebon Pigment	Darkflame Ink Ethereal Ink
325	Adder's Tongue, Deadnettle, Fire Leaf, Goldclover, Icethorn, Lichbloom, Talandra's Rose and Tiger Lily	Azure Pigment	Icy Pigment	Ink of the Sea Snowfall Ink
425	Azshara's Veil, Cinderbloom, Heartblossom, Stormvine, Twilight Jasmine and Whiptail	Ashen Pigment	Burning Embers	Blackfallow Ink Inferno Ink
500	Desecrated Herb, Fool's Cap, Green Tea Leaf, Rain Poppy, Silkweed and Snow Lily	Shadow Pigment	Misty Pigment	Ink of Dreams Starlight Ink