Tomatoes, cucumber, salami and bread.

In a non-special special, today threatened to be incredibly boring, pulling my second Stockades run so far. It was a depressingly simple thing, meaning it incorporated all the things you expect of a lowbie run; disconnect, subsequent fourmanning, and me and two dps staying behind to kill another pull to grab that ding - 25 in my case!

Probably initially subconsciously, after having read Pink Pigtail Inn's recent post on the anonymity and businesslike manner of pugs, I endeavoured to make it a little chatty.

Which failed horrendously seeing as how a Stockades "run" takes about eight minutes.

Those quotation marks, should you be curious, are saying, in a sort of indignant and probably high pitched voice, oh so it's all just beeline to the important boss nowwadyas eh, well, when I was young..

Voice doesn't have much of a point in an instance that has not yet grasped the concept of loot, though. The only real drop from Stockades* is from a rare spawn.

I realize by now that I've spent half a page saying that there was nothing to say.
Not sure what to make of that.

I'm halfway watching/listening to MLG's saturday thing.

So I figured, let's do another. There has to be something more interesting out there. Something to write about.

Like Gnomeregan.

You just know when that loading screen - which I have not seen before - pops up, that there's gonna be a story. Or multiple ones.
Problem is, catastrophies are good reading, success stories aren't, apparently.
You sick bastards.

No, sadly, I got a tank - 5 copper if you can guess which class - who clearly knew what he was doing in every sense, i.e. taking charge and pointing the way through the entire instance, choosing some funky paths I am pretty sure never existed before he gazed upon them. It may have been a space-time continuum tunneling bear.

The other option being that someone knows anything in this game better than me - even Gnomeregan - is clearly not even half as likely.
Toss in two stable dps, and one unstable dps in a pally who heroically involunteered** to find out how much damage the explosion on the cave collapse event does (answer: enough to kill a 1200hp pally) to be replaced by a warrior of the stable, silent variety. End result is a 30 minute Gnomeregan clear.

There's not a lot to say about any specific happenings in that run, since the druid tank calmly handled every sticky situation admirably. No deaths were had, not even when the warlock peered over the edge in one of the tunnels, rewarding us with a Train of Doom. It was a rather social and nice group with "Nice healing!" and "Nice tanking!" being outnumbered only by polite grats'es on dings. Instead of commenting on minutinae with no relevance, I thought I'd say a few words on the state of healing as a resto shammy at this point. The point, currently, is L25.

First off: I have no AoE heal. For a shaman, specifically, this means I lack my laser heal. Since, while mana cost scales smoothly with level now, - as a step taken to prevent downranking - I pretty much prefer whichever heal of LHW and HW is the recentmost upgraded, rankwise. For me, this means I am sitting around waiting for someone to take 450 damage so a HW doesn't overheal.

The result here, I expect, will be that people sit around 70% and cry "omg heal!". It hasn't happened yet, but it damned well will. Walk it off, soldier, I say!

Of course, it's not that bad. Enter healing stream totem!. I went so far as glyphing it, and I am prioritizing talenting it too. Having a passive 12 hp per tick, 6hps, partywide for a pittance of mana does wonders to patch up the wounds that an actual heal would partially overheal, destroying my mana.

I love the damn thing.

And yes, I generally forget to bring drinks, so mana is a concern for me. I'm sure this makes me a bad healer, but so far I've managed fine by the occasional drink I loot. Today I found two melon juice during the run, and I tell you, I was never happier for an epic than for those two consumables.

Another interesting aspect of relying on Healing Wave, as my most efficient heal at the moment, is that I actually find myself spending a lot of time in combat, out of the five second rule. Spirit is actually helping a damn lot, and as an mp5 caster, it feels very wierd but a little good and funny too. Were this at 80, I would probably be dps'ing if I had a ten second period where no healing was needed.
Instead, I stand around looking doing my best impression of a deer caught in headlights, then killed in the crash, but gently, so that the hobby-taxidermist who ran it over is able to save it, and places it in Gnomeregan, for some reason.

Point is, doing nothing can be damn comfortable. It may be my motivation for pumping that talent to 3/3 as soon as possible.

Four down, still only one death, still no horrible experiences, and at least one downright pleasant run. I'm almost disappointed, but plenty more dungeons to go at any rate!


*Meaning: With a pleasant blue color.
**Volunteered, involuntarily. Basic wordsmithing.