New UI Possibly?

I turned off my raid frames and decided to use my Healbot as my raid frames. I also turned off Decursive and I'm going to try out using Healbot for dispelling too. Well, here it is. Comments are appreciated.
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ToGC Faction Champions

Well done Elitist! Three attempts this week!

The fight took forever, but we stayed organized. And I stayed alive the whole time. And beat the dispel meter. Woo! Not much to say about this fight. We didn't change our strat, just reorganized and focused. We killed shaman first, then priest, mage, warlock, warrior, rogue, death knight, hunter, shadow priest and lastly the paladin. I think I mixed up some of the melee, but that was the general kill order.

We then started on Twin Valkyrs. I had to turn my graphics down for this fight. Standing in the doorway with all of our raiders plus all the orbs made me lag like crazy. But the strategy I keep seeing everywhere is the strategy that my guild is very skeptical of. This strategy says for the majority of the raid to not switch colors. For the opposite color vortex, a paladin has to pop Divine Shield + Divine Sacrifice and you have to have Aura Mastery. For the same color shield, you pop Bloodlust and all your dps cooldowns. Other than that, you just heal through everything. I'm going to research this strategy a little more, as I'm sure everyone else in my guild will.

So sadly FC didn't drop the BiS cloth boots, but it did drop my resto shammy friend's boots. So yay for her!

Here was my achievement for the weekend:
Mag'har of Draenor
It didn't take any time at all. Started at neutral on Saturday morning and spent a half day on the quests. The quests themselves got me to Revered. Then I just farmed ogres and their Obsidian Warbeads all Sunday while cleaning my apartment and doing laundry.
After getting the 8 Talbuks, I had 56 mounts. So I got my Albino Drake as well!

So! Next week, we should get down Twin Valkyrs! Or at least get somewhere on it. I also plan on seeing if we can get our Ulduar 10 hard mode group back together. And my achievement for next weekend:
Flying High Over Skettis

Miss Medicina's Healing Questionaire!

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
Nymarie, Discipline priest

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
25 man raids usually, some 10 man raids just for funsies

What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?
Penance, I mean come on, who doesn't love Penance?

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
Renew-it's crap for Discipline

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
Lol the same strength that Miss Medicina gave! The versatility! I can be a tank healer or a raid healer or just fill in the gaps.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?
No real throughput. When Penance is down, I can't really compete with a holy pally.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?
The best assignment for me is as the support healer. Healing both tanks and raid so that I can get all my best spells out there and be the most useful.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?
Resto shammy. One of the coolest healers around. Pretty versatile and fun to heal with. And Chain Heal makes a neat sound when it goes off.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
Another Discipline priest. It sucks when you go to bubble somebody and see they already have the Weakened Soul debuff.

What is your worst habit as a healer?
Deviating from my healing assignment. My target usually doesn't ever die when I do this, but I do tend to be bad at throwing shields around the raid while tank healing.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
When people yell "HEAL ME" over vent unless it's a tank saying "I'm picking up such and such mob, heal me." Or when people say "I didn't get heals" when asked why they died to fire...

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?
At the moment, not quite. I think Discipline is good yes. But I think they focused too hard on making Discipline so versatile that we no longer excel at either tank or raid healing like other healers do.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
Did the tanks die? No? Good. Every once in a while, I'll pull out a Dispel meter, but healing meters (even those who attempt to measure absorbs) suck.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
Hmm...there are a few. First and foremost is the one that's the most annoying: that's a PvP spec! No...no it's not. The next one is "Discipline is only for tank healing." Not anymore.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn? A few things, especially if they've healed before. First, it takes a while to adjust to the fact that your spec is based on absorbs not throughput. And I see Discipline priests stacking spirit instead of int, because everybody knows that pallies and shammies use mp5 for regen and druids and priests use spirit right? Not quite...new Disc priests do not realize that they will get more regen and benefit from Intellect. But they learn.

If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?
Very low overhealing, sometimes below the spriest and ret pallies. Average throughput and heavy absorbs. And lots of dispels. I am the DISPELLING MASTA!

Haste or Crit and why?
Both! They're both so beneficial that I can't choose just one!

What healing class do you feel you understand least?
Holy pallies. The only healer class I haven't played before.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
xPerl for raid frames and Healbot for shielding or healing dps. I still prefer keybinds to hard core macros.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
I like a balance, but the stats I tend to balance are spell power, intellect and crit. Usually in that order.


Well there it is! I meant to post last night but I got busy.

Hey guess what healers! Nym turns 21 today!

ToGC10 Fully Cleared

For several weeks, I have been unable to run ToGC10 with my guild. The first week I missed was the night I had no electricity til 4 am. Then after that, I didn't get an invite for whatever reason. I assume it's due to my spec. So on Friday, my guild tried what someone suggested to me about going shadow for Anub with 2 healers, a druid and a pally. This worked great every time…til phase 3. In phase 3, there was too much raid damage going around. So the guild leader and I put our heads together and this is what we came up with. Bear with me because this is a strange strategy but it worked.

Using 3 healers in phase 1 and 2 of Anub is overkill. That's why most strategies tell you to use two. My first job as the discipline priest was to drop the Frost Spheres. This way the dps could focus on the boss and adds and we didn't have a healer sitting around doing nothing. After dropping the four spheres in the four corners (basically) of the room, I targeted the boss and smite spammed his ass. That's right, smite spam. Well....more like holy fire, penance, smite spam. Anyway, point is this. I dpsed hard core, making sure to use my Arcane Torrent whenever it was up. When the boss got to 35% (and we had plenty of time), I shielded the entire raid. Then I waited for a few sec for my group to get to 50% and popped Power Infusion, healing them with Prayer of Healing. After Power Infusion went down, I pulled out the shadowfiend for mana and a tiny bit of extra damage. Then I rotated between using Prayer of Healing and shielding my group. When I got to 50% mana again, the boomkin tossed me an innervate. Not sure why, but he paid attention to my shadowfiend and when I had already used it and I was at 50%, he was gave me an innervate. Needless to say, I did NOT run out of mana.

Once I got my rotation down, my group did not die. The amusing thing is that the tanks were in the group the druid healer was focusing on. So...the druid's group had him and the pally healer on it. Yet they were the ones dying. Not my group. But after Dema and I organized this strange strategy we downed him in only a few attempts. I felt good after that night. But I still want to know how groups 2 heal this. Our pally+druid couldn't do it, and that's supposedly the best comp.

Last night was 25 man raid night. We wiped on Faction Champions for 4 hours. This is the only fight in the game I hate. But I did notice something that made me happy. At the end of the night, my dispels for the entire raid was at 955. The next closest was a holy priest who goes discipline for FC at 611.

Yeaaaaah, I think I've secured my raid spot for a long time.

Sickly...ugh...

Well guys, I've been pretty sick lately. Missed work since Tuesday...woo...

On a happier note, I spent my sickly time getting Netherwing rep and I'm the proud owner of 6 gorgeous Netherwing drakes. I got the free one and then logged on this morning and my significant other had bought the other five and stuck them in my bank to surprise me. He says it's my birthday present since I turn 21 on Thursday.

Well, back to farming frost lotus for raid tonight. Hopefully we'll get somewhere on Faction Champions.

ToGC25 NrB and Jaraxxus down! And a few other things on my mind

Very proud of Elitist today. Well done guys!

Northrend Beasts
We wiped a few times but we knew we had it. We ended up doing this with 6 healers. Healing was a little strained in Phase 2 and 3, but we were ahead of every single timer. Avoiding Icehowl's charge was what finally did it for us. All we needed to do was have every single raider paying attention. We also had a wait list threatening those who consistently died to stupid things. How shocking...very few raiders died.

Jaraxxus
Easy sauce. Our first try we got him to 20%. Our mistake was not arranging where our healers were. But that didn't take long to figure out. We put 3 healers on the left of Jaraxxus and 3 on the right. The ranged spread out in 2 groups, one to the North and one to the South. Anybody who got Incinerate Flesh ran towards the melee. This strategy worked and we killed him after about 4 attempts.

Faction Champions
This fight goes from being a hard burn to controlled CC. Without CC, it's impossible. I think the most viable way of doing it is locking down the healers and killing the painful dps. I'm kind of biased here though since the melee dps like to force me to eat dirt (or wood) every time I cast mass dispel. I'm pretty sure my rotation was Mass Dispel, Fear, run like hell, Mass Dispel, Fear, run like hell. I'm also pretty sure that I died early on the majority of our attempts because our CC wasn't well organized. We spent an hour on this fight and then it was bedtime. It didn't feel like we accomplished much besides realizing that we needed to do some research. But I think that no matter whether or not we decide to burn the healers first, CC will make this fight for us.

My guild doesn't run guild 10 mans usually. We don't get to do a lot of 10 man content because of this. Those who go to ToGC10 are friends of the person who hosts it. I go with a group outside of the guild. I was originally picked up as a pug healer for another guild's 10 man. They had been having trouble finding a third regular healer and were relieved to find that I wasn't a fail pug. So they asked if I would become their regular third healer. I told them I'd like that, seeing as how I don't have a regular ToGC10 group. With that group I hope to kill Anub on ToGC10 on Sunday afternoon. But tonight, my guild leader is hosting a "super leet" Ulduar hard mode group. I think he wants to get to Algalon at least, if not kill him. I was invited, signed up and hope I get to go. Here's to hoping I get to meet Algalon!

One more thing before I stop being such a chatty Cathy. I'd like to know other discipline priests' thoughts on gear. In our guild, druids and priests do not bid on mp5 gear and shamans and paladins do not bid on spirit gear. I have one such druid in my guild who finds it completely irritating that I can basically use anything, whether it has spirit, mp5 or neither. I informed him last night when the mp5 ring dropped that I would not be bidding against the shamans and paladins. I told him that once our two resto shamans and our holy paladin have the ring, then I will bid on it if it drops again. He was flabbergasted and asked me why I would limit myself when there is no reason to. I told him that I wanted to be fair to the other healers and as such I will bid on what a holy priest would bid on, unless the other healers (shamans and paladins) do not want it. I guess it didn't cross his lootwhorish mind that I could possibly think of the other healers when considering a bid. However, when it comes to dps, I don't hold back on bidding. Sorry guys, but you can bid on hit gear and I can't.


Figured out the "ban". Thanks to Apollia. My payment is pending, so I can't post til it goes through. How stupid is that...

Invisible fire-1 Nym-0

I'm resisting the urge to kill my guildies today. We got to Phase 3 on almost every single attempt of 25 heroic NrB. Our problems were either we lost too many people on Phase 2 because people weren't spread out, or weren't letting the tanks get aggro, or were too close to the worm. One of the dps actually died to standing in poison! That's pug stuff! If we made it to Phase 3 with everybody alive and both worms dead, somebody had to get hit by Icehowl's charge. Anyway, we got super close but...no cigar.

Guess who was the first person to die to fire. Me. Yeah, uh huh, Nym died to fire. You know how often that happens? Never. Nym is the one that the raiders are saying "just freaking die Nym so we can zone in". After that wipe, which we did get to the end of phase 2, my guild leader says "Nym...no one died on Phase 1 except you. What happened?" So I read my combat log to him. Here's a brief overview of what it said:
Nym takes initial damage from fire bomb (2k ish)
Nym gains Nym's Power Word: Shield
Renewed Hope spam!
Penance at tank
Some other spell at tank
Nym takes 7k! Damage from the 4 stack fire bomb dot
Nym takes 7k! Damage from the 4 stack fire bomb dot
Nym takes 7k! Damage from the 4 stack fire bomb dot
Nym has died.
Abuh??
The best part was watching the warlock who usually stands next to me skirting around the fire to look at my body. He then announced in vent, "Invisible fire-1, Nym-0". There was no fire near my body. Probably about 10 ft away was the fire that had hit me initially, but there was no other fire. The holy priest and I then decided that Levitate would be the way to go. While our specific tank wasn't tanking, we hit every dps and healer in range with Levitate. He stood on the right side of the boss and I stood on the left. This made Phase 1 smooth as glass. Not only did NOBODY die to fire after that, but ranged dps sky rocketed because they didn't have to continuously move of fire. I would suggest doing this for hard mode NrB. For one, it reduces the amount of raid healing you have to do so you can focus on tanks. It raises your ranged dps. And it altogether avoids the invisible fire bug.
Anyway, if we don't get this boss down on Thursday, I'm going to be very surprised and very annoyed. So much progress last night!

On a happier note, we did regular ToC25 first and I finally won a second trophy.
Tier9.25 Pants FTW!
Zabra's Leggings of Triumph
Gemmed with:
+23 Spell power
+20 Intellect