Heaven aint close in a place like this...

So... Melvin and Magebert just got their second chars to 80. Both ret pallies. Neither have really bothered with anything vaguely like end game. I think both are expecting to gear their chars by accumulating points via sub 1400 arena teams.

Melvin refuses to believe that Unbound can kill ret pallies. Unbound refuses to believe anyone with any sort of self respect would play a ret pally, and therefore euthenasia is the proper treatment for the poor dears. If only it didn't take 5 minutes. Note to Blizzard... for god's sake, make those bastards run outta mana already.

Resto siliness. I got three glyphs. Lesser healing wave (must have). Water mastery. And healing totem.

Now a quick rundown on why...

Lesser healing wave glyph increases effects of the spell on a target with earthshield by 20%. This makes my LHW as effective as HW, with a much faster cast time. I'm sorry... at this point, after having run all the heroics, a 2.5 cast time general heal is insanely slow. Dont even bother putting HW on your toolbar. True, after putting 13 points in various talents, HW will give you better Healz Per Seconds... but only after the third cast on the same target.

Healing totem glyph. +20%. Hmm... right now, thats about 270 every 2 seconds. I was doin end boss of heroic Old Kingdom... and well, you know the locusts? They do about 700 every tic. See the math. Love the math. Also awesome for Loken :)

And water mastery... +30% water shield mana regen. Thats, um... 30 mp5. How many gems would that require? 5, 6? Yeah, sign me up.

Here's my take on glyphs. The glyphs you use should at least be worth a talent point. As in... I would spend at least a talent point to get that. If it's worth two... grab it. Must have.

Glyphs I'm not quite ready to try...

Chain heal. Your chain heal heals one more target. Inna 5 man setting... not so useful. The odds of 4 of your party being close enough to get hit by chain healz is not good... later on, raid wise, maybe.

Healing wave. You get healed for 20% of whatever your healing wave healz for. um... some fights, this would be freaking awesome. Problem is... if I cast this, the tank will bloody die... Not sure I wanna take this risk, especially since as thing currently stand, the member of my party with the lowest health gets a 40% heal every time my LHW crits. And I have a talent that adds 60% to my healing crit for a limited time. (which I need to use more...)

Earthliving glyph. +5% chance to apply earthliving effect (normally 20%.) I have to admit, I was EXTREMELY suspicious of earthliving when I saw it. It's a relatively puny little hot... however... with talents, it has a 100% chance to apply to someone who's health is below 35%. AND it gets a spell coefficient. Currently, mine is about 3500 over 12 secs. Um... thats freaking sweet. Chain heal loves this... three diff chances to proc. It's always up on my tank, usually. And any druid will tell you... lottsa hots on tanks prevent... "accidents." Only prob... that 5% aint enough to justify the glyph slot. Unless I get the chain heal glyph... then maybe... 4 chances to proc?

So, at this point, I'm missing ONE FREAKING H Old Kingdom boss for the every heroic achievement. And there's gear I need outta Old Strat. Aside from that, I'm pretty much done with heroics. I got enough emblems... and Naxx runs will get me whatever else rep or emblems I need. I'm 15 from my tier 7 chest... but got the season 5 chest outta Vault, so that gear upgrade is less pressing. I could use that healing trinket... but truely, it isn't that much an upgrade.

So... can I preen? At this point, shammy healerz seem to be head and shoulders above all others... single person healz we can hang. And that's our weakest point. Group healing, even CoH priests can't come close. Poison/Disease cleansing? We haz it. A priest will get you dead on the venomancers during the last boss of Heroic AN. Druids? I can haz bloodlust, plz? And windfury? KK, thx, bai. Paladins? Holy pals are so useless now, blizzard refuses to put any of their gear in the end game.

It's weird. I'm mental enough to check the chief raiding guilds on my server to see how badly I outgear their resto shammies. And then there's the tank issue...

Is it just me, or have warriors achieved significant separation? All the druids seem to have gone boomkin. All the pallys ret. DK's havent been around long enough to tank, so it's hard to judge them. But I've been mostly seein prot warriors tanking, with a few prot pallies hangin on. My one run with feral was a disaster.

Then there's the threat issue. My favorite tank blogger has gone from "you can't pull aggro offa me if you try!" to "well, they just have to be more careful with threat..." and "you know, you generate a lot of threat asa healer!"

Of course this was during a fight where I blew by 2k heals per second. You should see what I do during Loken. Even if certain foul smelling dwarves think its ALL ABOUT THE DPS. I did the Loken fight with a hunter that got too far away from the chain healz, and died at the first AoE. With 2 dps, we killed that bastard. So, you deviant kitty sniffer... may I politely suggest Loken issa healing check? With decent dps, I've downed him in 45secs. Without decent healing, you don't make it past the first smash of the hammer... do Heroic AN with a priest, then get back to me. When you do, don't forget stone form.

Anyway, part of this is that Herk is still a bit undergeared. An undergeared tank is problematic... he needs better dps and healz to compensate, but has problems keeping aggro with them. Tanks should usually outgear everyone else... its kinda an imperative. My guild tank is very well geared... and a riot. In vent he won't shut up while tanking.

"I AM A ROCK! YOU SHALL NOT PASS!

"MESS WITH MY HEALER AND I GET MEAN!"

"TRY THAT ONE SHOT MY DPS CRAP WITH *THIS* TAUREN!"

Which leads to interesting questions about the scaling of tank threat... as dps gets its feet under it... will tanks be able to keep up? I'm beginning to see dps threat cap itself, even with great tanks. Considering how blizzard sprinkled raid buffs all over the classes... that proc in battle... tanking has become even more complicated. BANG! +15% melee haste, +10% ap, +15% crit... all hitting when dps is burning cooldowns... and suddenly threat can double, or so. And I think tanks are having problems keeping up with these spikes. Or will when the dps catches up gear wise.

And last.. really, no one liked the Twilight link last post? Damn... must haz feedbacks...