Day Ninety Nine to One Hundred Three - 21-30 Sep 2011

Something really fascinating happened over these days. I know it messes up my Centennial, but there wasn't anything special to differentiate between these days exactly. I only played a few minutes each morning, running the Coren Direbrew dungeon group. I'd log on, run at least one and maybe a few more if nothing interesting dropped, and I've had a few interesting things drop:

• Bubblier Brightbrew Charm on 9/21
• Petrified Pickled Egg on 9/22
• Brawler's Trophy on 9/23
• Milthril Stopwatch on 9/25
• Tremendous Tankard O'Terror on 9/30

I ran at least one other day in there without winning a greed roll. Besides my Justice Points and some gold, I found Great Brewfest Kodo in my Keg one day, which added to the achievements and feats of strength this holiday:

• Direbrewfest
• Have Keg, Will Travel
• A Brew-FAST Mount

Now about the fascinating bit. I ran Holy and queued as the Healer.

Now I've run dungeons as the Healer, but never a random. It was always with friends teaching me what to do. This time my inexperience was inflicted on unsuspecting randoms, but the Coren Direbrew event was perfect for learning. It's short. If I was horrible, folks weren't going to be around long. It gave me a simple environment to experiment with known issues.

I loved it. If anything, I'd have been happy queuing up far more often, just for the experience. However, after running a few times I wanted a break to think and research changes for next time. What did I learn? I learned what I needed to cast before the pull: Beacon on the Tank and either Blessing of Might or Kings, depending if a Druid was in the party. I learned that I could ignore adds on myself. I was plate and rarely did I need to cast a heal on myself. I learned that if I was messing up and letting the tank drop too low, a quick Lay on Hands fixed that. I really didn't need to worry about saving any of my cooldowns.

Another thing learned was my healbot set up. I was switching between our main computer and the laptop, and would forget to change my settings. I found DBM could pop a warning thing right on top of my healbot frame and intercept my mouse clicks! I was casting, but the tanks health kept dropping!

Finally, I concluded the exercise wasn't a great test of my use of cooldowns, but it was better than nothing. If the tank was well geared, I had plenty of time to cast my judgements and even holy wrath or a crusader strike or two, although my DPS was always miniscule. However, I've become comfortable with my role as a healer.

I hope this means I'll be running LFD again soon. The big reason I haven't has been confidence that I'll have an hour or more uninterrupted, which just hasn't been the case. Now the family schedule has settled down, maybe that will change.