Mend Pet

It’s Friday again, and Anna has not let me down with her Friday Five post!  Here are my responses to this week’s questions.  Feel free to check out my answers to last week’s questions here.

Brajana, Troll Hunter

1. When is your character’s birthday? Does she know? Brajana was born in the spring – She figures it was some time in early May.  Trolls don’t especially celebrate their birthdays as much as their birth seasons, so the date isn’t exact.

2. What is your character’s favorite place in the world? Why? The more remote parts of Winterspring.  Even though she’s a jungle troll, Brajana loves the winter.  She loves how silent, peaceful and crisp the mornings are nestled up between the trees and the mountains.  It’s the one place she can go when feeling particularly pugnacious that will always calm her down.  … Or Thrall’s Chamber.

3. What kind of sense of humor does your character have (if any)? She’s a bit of a flirt.  She doesn’t mean anything by it, but she has made her fair share of sexual innuendos!

4. Is your character introverted or extroverted? She’s mostly extroverted, unless she’s around particularly large groups of people.  She feels most comfortable with a small group of friends, and in these situations, the leader in her is brought out.  But the larger the group gets, the more she tends to stick to her self and keep her mouth shut.

5. What just irritates the hell out of your character? Night Elves.  That’s all I have to say about that.

Ferguson, Undead Priest

1. When is your character’s birthday? Does he know? Ferguson can’t remember the exact date of his birth, or even the year of it.  He lost track of time and dates, as they take on little meaning in undeath.

2. What is your character’s favorite place in the world? Why? Felwood.  Something about the way the nature and the corruption have collided – and how no matter how corrupted it gets, he can still see healthy life emerging from underneath.

3. What kind of sense of humor does your character have (if any)? Ferguson doesn’t have a major sense of humour, but he enjoys light-hearted conversations with the ocassional chuckle.

4. Is your character introverted or extroverted? Very introverted.  Ferguson likes to think, and overthink.  He enjoys sitting back and observing people going about their business.

5. What just irritates the hell out of your character? Failure.  He blames himself every time something goes wrong when he’s with a party, he takes on too much responsibility and it makes him sick when something goes wrong!

Part-time Face Melter

That’s right – Our dear holiest of the holy priests converted to the Dark Side temporarily this past weekend to finish off some quest grinding to save up for that epic flying skill!

Ferguson is not only my healer, but he’s also my herb farmer.  But 375 Herbalism means nothing if you are riding a flying slug.  So, I decided to take advantage of the fact that I’d skipped two entire zones when leveling, and get some nice quest gold!  But unfortunately – it seems that holy spec’d priests aren’t so great when it comes to killing stuff.  Sure, I’ve managed to Smite my way through the SSO dailies for a few weeks, but some of these quest mobs are a bit tougher, and Smite just wasn’t doing the trick.

So I snuck over to Orgrimmar and paid a quick 15g to respec.  I just made up a talent spec – I know there are cookie cutter specs out there, but they are mostly for raiding.  A shadow priest that’s not grouping doesn’t need 25% reduced threat or even Vampiric Embrace.  So I just put the points where they seemed to make sense.

And the result?  Wow.  When I was leveling, I only had enough points put in the Shadow tree to get me Shadowform, but this time I poured almost all of my points in there, and boy can I kill things FAST.  I also no longer run out of mana… like, ever.  The new gear I’ve gotten has way more mana regen than the gear I was using to level.  It also has more +dmg, even though it’s healing gear.

I must admit – I’m enjoying playing as a Shadow priest.  However, I could never see myself raiding or even instancing as shadow – just not as much excitement as I’d like.

Anyway… after a weekend in Shadowmoon Valley and selling everything I could spare on the Auction House, I managed to conjure up the 5200g required to net myself a shiny Swift Purple Windrider!

Will I stay shadow?  Well, for the rest of the week maybe.  Finish off some more quests, I won’t be raiding much this week due to a big move happening.  It’ll give me something to do.  But I’m sure it won’t be long before I miss healing, and I’ll be back at it before you can say “pugnacious!” (Yeah, I’m not reeeally using it in a sentence.  But at least it’s there!)

Just a few short (or rather, long) levels ago, Ferguson was running a Blood Furnace PUG.  In my group, was an “extra special” hunter, whose pet kept taking extraordinary amounts of damage.  True enough, there is a lot of AoE in the Furnace, so I did what I could to keep it healed up, but it was eating away at my mana.  I flip my Recount around to the healing meters to see that I’m the only one who’s been doing any healing.  I don’t mind helping a hunter out when the damage is just too much for the Mend Pet HoT, but I figured, it simply is not the healer’s job to look after the pet.  When I questioned this hunter about why he hadn’t healed his pet at all, his response was “He’s not taking any damage… he hasn’t even died once!”

I suppose, in the end, it was partially my own fault that he wasn’t healing his pet.  The group was doing well otherwise, and I’d been pretty good about keeping his pet healed up.  Maybe he didn’t realize that during a boss fight, I simply can’t focus on it.

This got me thinking – are there other hunters out there that rely too much on their healers?  What about healers who refuse to pay any attention to pets?

What if the two were to collide?!

… Anyway, I’d like to discuss this issue that affects me doubly – under what circumstances should healers heal hunter pets?  I decided that I need to get some input on this issue, since if I’ve learned one thing through PUG-ing, it’s that everyone has different strategies and expectations when it comes to healing.

I e-mailed a few Hunter and Healer bloggers, and they were all kind enough to respond with lengthy discussions on the topic.  All were very insightful, but it seems that we all unanimously agree on what seem to be two basic logical points:

A Hunter should be responsible for their pet.

A Healer should not be completely ignorant of pets.

From a Healer standpoint, pets take the lowest priority.  It is irresponsible of a healer to let a player die while they are trying to save a pet.  However, in my opinion, it is against the principle of being a healer if pets are completely ignored.  Even if it means watching them die as you wait for a chance to toss a Renew on them, it’s imperative that you at least know what is going on and keep them in the back of your mind.  Hunters should understand if you don’t get to heal their pets, but on the other hand – if you are sitting around twiddling your thumbs while the pet is at low health, show the pet some lovin’.  Lassirra of The Hunter’s Mark discovered the same thing as me while leveling up a priest after a hunter: there are more opportunities for this than I had thought there were.

Ego from the Egotistical Priest, told me about how she has a separate group in her raid UI (using XPerl) for pets.  It is less prominent than the regular raid groups, but when she has a couple seconds of free time and mana, she can quickly have a look and give a hunter a hand.

As for hunters, pet management is key here.  Proper pet management means knowing when to toss a mend pet, and when to recall your pet to your side.  It also means not really having to worry about the issue of getting heals from the healer!  If you are keeping good control of him, your pet should not need heals!  Unfortunately, especially when still leveling, some hunter’s haven’t really taken the time to learn how much is too much for their pet, Bremere of Healing Anonymous has had similar problems with hunters in lower level instances.

But there are situations, like when a pet is off- or even main-tanking.  At that point, Mend Pet shows itself for what it truly is, an ersatz Renew.  You wouldn’t expect a tank to survive on just Renew, especially if it’s a cute little kitty-cat?  This is one of those times when the healer priority list needs to be fumbled up.  Yet still, some healers somehow forget to help a hunter out even in this situation, much to Pike’s frustration (Apect of the Hare).

Matticus of World of Matticus brought up an excellent point about PvP.  Since obviously, I’m not a big participant in the arenas, I really hadn’t thought about the value of a pet in that situation.  Those things can be deadly to a caster – and if you can keep them up a little longer, it’ll probably do you some good.

In the end, it depends on a number of factors like group composition, amount of group damage taken, spare time and spare mana.  Hunters should do what they can to take care of their pets – but when its appropriate, heals are always welcome!

I’d like to quote something Jez from DPS: We Deliver said to me:  “It’s kind of like getting a mage table in BGs – you can’t expect it, but it sure is nice when it happens ”

Thanks to all those who gave me input to help me write this post!

At 4:24 this afternoon, in the heart of Netherstorm… Fergy entered the wide world of LEVEL SEVENTYISM!

It was a long couple of days, but I made it! And I’ve already managed to max out my tailoring, craft an entire Primal Mooncloth set and respec to holy!  I am determined not to be a ersatz healer!

I MUST thank a few key people that helped me – Teiya and Stangz for helping me finish some nasty group quests, Fooli for drudging through all the Mastery quests with me, Dublin for helping me aquire a few much-needed Pirmal Lifes, for Koukou, Tharaks and Tharina for donating their Primal Mooncloth cooldowns, and most of all…

BOOSTAH!  For scaring me into finally getting my booty to 70!  And also, for giving me a CRAPLOAD of Netherweave and Primals.  If it weren’t for him, I’d probably still be level 66 hanging out somewhere between Terrokar and Nagrand.

What a busy weekend!

/sleep