Internet Dragons

EA is killing those internet dragons!

It took us most of the night and 4 wipes (a couple to frustrating lack-of-movement mistakes), but we had good DPS all around and killed Sindragosa dead with time to spare on the last run.

We tanked her turned to the right as you face from the door out to her ledge.  Run to the stairs when she pulls you in, run to the stairs when she starts her air phase.  The five marked players spread out along the bottom step just far enough not to take too much damage from the ice tombs coming down.  DPS the tombs at the proper speed so that they come down just after the last ice bomb from her.  Stop DPS after 4 or 5 stacks of Chilled to the Bone and let it fall off.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Move to Phase 2.

That part we had pretty well down, except for one frustrating oops during the ice tombs that entombed nearly half the raid.

We struggled mostly, on 3 of our 4 wipes, with not losing players during the transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2.  But once we figured it out we were fine.  Start by the back leg.  Person with mark move to the front and get ice blocked, THEN everybody follow.  Get behind, drop Mystic Buffet and DPS the tomb, then back on Sindy near the front leg.  Marked player run to the back leg and get tombed.  Everybody except half the melee DPS (we only had 5, so it was easy) run to the tomb, drop stacks, and kill the tomb.  Player with mark run to the front, get tombed, and everybody except the OTHER half the melee DPS do the tomb thing again.  Wash, rinse, repeat. 

Even on the winning run we had a couple of mistakes - one of our ice tombs ended up behind her tail and left for dead, and we'd lost enough folks by the end that our marked players were just instructed to get the heck away from everybody else before getting tombed, and left in the tombs to die.  But in the end it was another victory for EA, another step to finishing ICC before the Cataclysm reshapes WoW.

On to other news...

Although I don't heal at the moment I've kept up with tree-like Druid news.  I hate the current implementation in beta of Tree of Life, but I don't think I'm alone in that.  What I actually wanted to mention was about the Restoration Mastery.

In it's original incarnation, the Restoration Mastery provided extra healing to your HoT spells if they had lower HP *when the HoT was cast*.  This caused quite a stir in the resto community, as well it should have - it's exquisitely terribad.  When the proverbial fecal matter hits the proverbial air movement device, the last thing we want to be casting on a player is a HoT.  It may be more mana efficient over the length of its application, but it doesn't get the player healed NOW, which is what is needed at that time.  Combine that with Blizzard's push to get us to stop blanketing with HoTs and you have a recipe for disaster.

On a side note, it actually wouldn't have been an awful Mastery if they had allowed it to recalculate for each tick.  I think that would have encouraged thoughtful proactive pre-hotting without giving too much benefit to raid blanketing... but I digress.

The Mastery now provides additional healing to our spells cast on players who already have a HoT ticking on them.  This is most beneficial, IMO, to give us some more oomph as tank healers, as the tanks will *always* have HoTs ticking on them.  It also happens to discourage clipping, which I'll explain in a minute.  What it really allows is for the better healers to cast a Rejuv or other HoT on a target we expect to take damage, then when the damage hits and we need that extra oomph the HoT is already there to boost our heals.  I like it.

About the clipping thing?  Yeah, so if you are healing the tank, and you cast a Rejuv to boost the rest of your heals, and then you start a Lifebloom stack, it becomes important not to clip the Rejuv, since you'll only refresh the original, not recognize that there are already HoTs ticking.  This is true on the rest of the raid, but not quite as important as on the tank.  Once it falls off, you can reapply and get the boost because the Lifebloom is ticking... Which, when you refresh, will still be getting its bonuses.

I haven't seen nearly as detailed information about Feral Masteries, but I really like the fact that (at least at the moment) shifting forms allows us to shift our masteries.  We still can't shift gear, but it should help with those fights were we want/need to be able to do both roles...

As for Arthas... you better bring it, buddy.  Go big or go home.  EA's coming for you.