Brecht's Solution
1 day ago
About two weeks ago, I sat in my most boring class typing away on my laptop. I generally try not to do that, as I think in classes that aren't taught in a huge lecture hall this is unforgivably rude, but I don't understand a word that comes out of the professor's mouth anyway, so I just sit and type up all my notes. I also like to chat with Fuu, who alerted me to the fact that I had missed the entire pre-xpac event. I missed all the quests, all the Deathwingness, all the limited time boss encounters and such. I missed everything to such a degree, that I don't even know what all I missed because I've been so focused on school.
Sitting there in that classroom, surrounded by my classmates, I actually started to cry.
After class, in the grad student room, as I blew my nose and tried to stop crying, a few of my classmates asked me what was wrong, and I laughed. I told them it was the absolute stupidest thing to bring me to tears, when I think of all the other things on my plate... getting married, moving, exams, thesis, etc. I haven't shed a single tear about classwork this quarter, even after a week of 18 hour stints on campus. But I had so been looking forward to Cataclysm. My friends at school didn't make fun of me, as I expected them to do. One of them shrugged and said she was very much looking forward to a WWF wrestling match on TV, so how could she judge? That cheered me up quite a bit.
Cataclysm was released the day after my Stats final exam, and two days before my Remote Sensing exam (about which I wasn't too worried anyway). Cataclysm was the light at the end of a very long tunnel of all-nighters and papers and labs and grading and everything else that grad school entails. While I have not been posting here on my blog, I have been playing WoW over the past few months while in school... precisely 2 hours every week, on Monday nights, where we finally managed to take down the Lich King 2 weeks before Cataclysm was released.
And now it's the break between Fall quarter and Winter quarter at my university, and I have been glued to my computer in our new apartment, leveling my beloved priest. I do have other things I really ought to do over the break, but all quarter long I intended Cataclysm to be my reward for working my ass off in school for 11 weeks. I managed to pull off straight As (A- totally counts btw) and I refuse to feel any guilt for spending all day long, every day, playing WoW.
It's Tuesday, and for the first time in a very long time, I tried to log in, and I remembered this thing called "maintenance day", and the customary disappointment that goes with such a day. But I'm in a WoW frame of mind, so here I am, for any of you who still have Miss Medicina in your reader, and wonder where she is... I'm here! I'm alive! I'm still around, I promise! Though I haven't been posting, for quite a few very good reasons, I'm still buzzing around on Twitter, though I'm much quieter there than I used to be. I am officially "out of the loop".
It brings me great pain to say this folks but... I have no idea how to heal anymore. Imagine if you had essentially walked away from wow for 4 months, during which all the stats and classes had changed drastically, and tried to come back to it. The only thing I really understand at this juncture is that I have loads of health, but when it comes down to it, no mana. I throw heals on people and it is the perfect example of a drop in an ocean.
In terms of this blog, it is not going anywhere, though obviously its usefulness is much decreased. I'm keeping everything up, all the leveling and newbie healing guides, as an artifact of how our class used to be, because I've always found those things interesting. I am sad to say that until I finish classes this spring, it is highly unlikely I will be able to update any of my guides. They were very time-consuming when I wrote them the first time around, and I have to accept the fact that when I wrote them, I had quite a bit more spare time. If this past quarter is any indicator, I won't even have time to post my random thoughts, or even read my favorite blogs.
I'm so wrapped up in the world of an academic nerd right now that there is little room for the geek to get any satisfaction! So while I may not be blogging these days, I do hope to start again once my coursework is finished.
It is possible I will be changing the title of this blog, however, since I am no longer Miss Medicina... I am Madame Medicina, as of October 15th :)
I miss you all! <3
p.s. Best quest-line ever? Wildhammer Dwarves. Jessabelle wants a man with an arse like an anvil.
Sitting there in that classroom, surrounded by my classmates, I actually started to cry.
After class, in the grad student room, as I blew my nose and tried to stop crying, a few of my classmates asked me what was wrong, and I laughed. I told them it was the absolute stupidest thing to bring me to tears, when I think of all the other things on my plate... getting married, moving, exams, thesis, etc. I haven't shed a single tear about classwork this quarter, even after a week of 18 hour stints on campus. But I had so been looking forward to Cataclysm. My friends at school didn't make fun of me, as I expected them to do. One of them shrugged and said she was very much looking forward to a WWF wrestling match on TV, so how could she judge? That cheered me up quite a bit.
Cataclysm was released the day after my Stats final exam, and two days before my Remote Sensing exam (about which I wasn't too worried anyway). Cataclysm was the light at the end of a very long tunnel of all-nighters and papers and labs and grading and everything else that grad school entails. While I have not been posting here on my blog, I have been playing WoW over the past few months while in school... precisely 2 hours every week, on Monday nights, where we finally managed to take down the Lich King 2 weeks before Cataclysm was released.
And now it's the break between Fall quarter and Winter quarter at my university, and I have been glued to my computer in our new apartment, leveling my beloved priest. I do have other things I really ought to do over the break, but all quarter long I intended Cataclysm to be my reward for working my ass off in school for 11 weeks. I managed to pull off straight As (A- totally counts btw) and I refuse to feel any guilt for spending all day long, every day, playing WoW.
It's Tuesday, and for the first time in a very long time, I tried to log in, and I remembered this thing called "maintenance day", and the customary disappointment that goes with such a day. But I'm in a WoW frame of mind, so here I am, for any of you who still have Miss Medicina in your reader, and wonder where she is... I'm here! I'm alive! I'm still around, I promise! Though I haven't been posting, for quite a few very good reasons, I'm still buzzing around on Twitter, though I'm much quieter there than I used to be. I am officially "out of the loop".
It brings me great pain to say this folks but... I have no idea how to heal anymore. Imagine if you had essentially walked away from wow for 4 months, during which all the stats and classes had changed drastically, and tried to come back to it. The only thing I really understand at this juncture is that I have loads of health, but when it comes down to it, no mana. I throw heals on people and it is the perfect example of a drop in an ocean.
In terms of this blog, it is not going anywhere, though obviously its usefulness is much decreased. I'm keeping everything up, all the leveling and newbie healing guides, as an artifact of how our class used to be, because I've always found those things interesting. I am sad to say that until I finish classes this spring, it is highly unlikely I will be able to update any of my guides. They were very time-consuming when I wrote them the first time around, and I have to accept the fact that when I wrote them, I had quite a bit more spare time. If this past quarter is any indicator, I won't even have time to post my random thoughts, or even read my favorite blogs.
I'm so wrapped up in the world of an academic nerd right now that there is little room for the geek to get any satisfaction! So while I may not be blogging these days, I do hope to start again once my coursework is finished.
It is possible I will be changing the title of this blog, however, since I am no longer Miss Medicina... I am Madame Medicina, as of October 15th :)
I miss you all! <3
p.s. Best quest-line ever? Wildhammer Dwarves. Jessabelle wants a man with an arse like an anvil.
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While I didn't miss the pre-events as thoroughly as you, I wasn't really around for much of it, being busy with work. i can't imagine how tough it must be, feeling so out of the loop and uncertain about how to do something you once did so easily and so well.
However, GRATS on your straight As, and you definitely deserve this "all WoW, all the time" break. :)
Don't feel bad about healing. I have a Disc priest that just dinged 82, and ran my first instance last night. (have not even run Heroics with random PuGs because been busy with RealLife(tm) too.)
We wiped. THREE TIMES! (once on the first trash pack, ouch!)
luckily, we all chuckled and admitted the tank, me-healer, and one DPS had jsut dusted off their WoW and were having to re-learn everything. It's different, a LOT different feeling, but it'll come back to you (and me hopefully) eventually.
The biggest thing was I simply could not rely on Flash Heal as my main "spot heal when shields and renew and PoM were still going". It's way WAYY too expensive.
Smite-healing is kinda kick-ass fun though if you can spare the GCDs to stack up Evangelism and give you HEALWINGS!! :)
And all the while, I'll still keep this site on my RSS.
Welcome back! It was a huge change for me when 4.0.3/a hit, when the new spells and such came about. Even though my main healer is a pally, with arguably, the least amount of tools of any healing class, the change was still pretty dramatic.
The start of cataclysm was also a big shock. I think for me the biggest adjustment is like you said, the health pools are just sooo much bigger. Even my "big heal" will bring a dps up to 2/3? at most. Considering the mana and time it takes to cast it does feel very underpowered.
I think on the whole we need to unlearn the twitch healing we've all been doing since Wrath. Hmmm, maybe I have a topic to write about now hahaha.
Damned straight "A-minus" counts. Well done, and enjoy your break - you deserve it! :)
And also grats on the nuptials (at least I guess that's what all that 'madame' business is about)! As the Krimbo Elves* say, Mazel Tov!
====
* Totally gonna be the new race in XP 5
Good to see you back again!
I'd not worry about the healing issues. I suspect it will take some time for everything --including the buffs and nerfs that everyone knows is coming-- to shake out.
Besides, I think that schoolwork, wedding work, and other stuff are a wee bit more important than WoW.
Now that you're back, and the weather is perfect for indoor activities (cold), have some fun!
A-'s definately count... B's get PhDs, so you are ahead.
I strongly recommend only running dungeons with guildies, carrying 100+ drinks at all times, large numbers of the new mana potions, and getting your hands on the Stonecore and Halls of Origination trinkets as soon as possible. I have both on "normal" and run with food buff and scroll/flask/elixir at all times. There will soon be a running joke in guild about Nzete the Lush... but hey... it is working.
Welcome back! :) I'm just happy to hear that you're doing well in real life and that it didn't just swallow you up in an unpleasant way. ;) Though I am looking forward to the occasional post from you again when time permits!
Rest assured, you did NOT miss Deathwing! While you're running around questing he will come mess you up. I barely missed him in Uldum on like Friday and managed to get killed by him in Twilight Highlands on Sunday.
If the skies suddenly turn red/orange, look around for him!
You're still alive!
Healing is less OH SHIT and more oh... shit... It's the OOM with the boss at 10% and praying that the tank knows where his CDs are.
You'll pick it all up and get to tell people what to do soon enough. :)
Welcome back! Don't worry, everyone is just as confused. Healing has changed a LOT, and the priests in my guild (who never took a break) are furious. I haven't touched my own priest for a long while, but druid healing didn't feel *that* bad after I broke out of my bad habits. Regrowth (Flash Heal for you) is A Very Bad Thing. Don't use it unless you want to be OOM very, very fast. Your heals will feel very weak, but they do work, since people die slower.
Good luck getting back in the game! (And you totally deserve playing non-stop.)
Congratulations on getting married!
Congratulations on getting straight As -- especially because you're in grad school!
It makes me glad to see you around again, MM, even if you're just dropping in to say "hi, I'm still alive" until spring term is over. :D
Welcome back hun, we missed you too <3 Grats on finishing the semester and your lovely marks!
Grats again on all the fantastic things happening for you!
My boyfriend is a priest healer (my baby one is only 70) and he was a die hard Disc priest, now he is loving holy so you will get to go back to your holy roots :).
Have fun with your WoW overload. If I had the chance I would be doing the same thing.
I will totally be looking forward to any future posts from you :D.
Miss! So good to see you back! (Its Pyo!) And don;t feel bad about not knowing how to heal- I was in the same boat until recently. Its different now, but you'll pick it back up!
First off, congrats on your big day!
Secondly, I want to thank you profoundly for returning to this blog, I've been missing you on my economics-classes!
As it's been stated, Deathwing's still flying around frying people's behinds (he got me at Uldum, too, during a very awful fight with a very big elite dude). You didn't miss anything in that regard.
And as always, RL > WoW ;)
Yay! Welcome Back Jess! I miss you, we all do miss you! Regarding about your worries and the cataclysm stuff, dont worry about it, more importantly is your getting married! Congrats by the way and school are most important right now, this is why you took a break from blogging and playing wow (or maybe i missed something) but anyway, glad to know what's up Just hang in there, and I want to tell you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your family. Take care hon. =D
Welcome back M. Medicina! I had just discovered your blog in September when you got busy with coursework and I thought I had come along too late to appreciate a fellow healer's blog. I fully understand the limited wow time, as that's just reality with a family and being an attorney. however, when you do get to enjoy it, it's not worth musing over the world events and things you may have missed. You'll see the truly important content, the stuff that is not temporary. Cheers!
First of all - congratulations Madame! And also congrats on the results and that Lich King thing too!
But great to hear from you in whatever little capacity you have - given I've removed myself from the twitter universe (to basically take steps towards more or less where you've been) I've been missing your input at random times of the night (for you!).
You've been missed - can ya tell? ;)
Congratulations on your wedding! That's so exciting! (moreso than Cata... but just by a little bit =x)
Healing in Cata's been interesting. I don't feel as guilty about holding off on healing the DPS that won't pay attention to where they're taking extra damage. I did play with Smite-healing for a little bit, but at this point I simply haven't got the cooldowns for it to viable with the group I play with.
I miss Penance. I'm back to crunching on Greater Heal (which isn't even as efficient as Heal, but it's the only thing I've got that makes health bars move UP rather than just sort of balancing in one place - and my tank needs more health, darnit, because whatever he's fighting is hitting for 40k every 2 seconds T_T).
Welcome back, Madame Medicina. Even if you're busy out there, it's pleasant to have your light flickering back on the radar every so often.
Miss-ahem- Madame Medicina! So good to see you on here. The matters of life change our priorities sometimes. I, too, got out of the loop right after our LK kill. It was a relief, but it also killed my skills to be away from the game for months and months. HOWEVER, while I was away, I worked my arse off to get a promotion at work.. and a raise. I admit- Cataclysm was a complete shock to my system.. and the heroics? Sheesh! But taking that step back was totally worth it! I am now plugging away at a much slower pace. The PRIEST GAME has changed, and I really don't have the patience to try to figure it out as quickly as I used to. I guess I am.. getting old? LOL
I was so happy to read that you got married and are doing well in school. That is wonderful! People say WoW players should "get a life." Well, I think we have lives, but like I said, sometimes things change.
Welcome back to the game, and Happy Raiding, Happy Healing and the like. I can't wait to read your tips as time goes on.
Exanna- of the now defunct blog, OMG.. Priest!
I echo everyone else's sentiments in saying that is positively lovely to see you posting again. I know I was checking back regularly, hoping something new would be posted and I was tempted to follow you on Twitter, too - but I didn't want to seem like an overeager fangirl!
Your site definitely paved the way for us priests and a good number of us would not be here, doing what we do, if it weren't for your humor, your guidance and your advice. You certainly are a trailblazer and personally, I cannot thank you enough.
I'm glad to hear that real life is being kind to you and I hope that it continues to do so.
Good luck and don't be a stranger! :)
Hey, I just discovered you blog, but I'm bummed you won't be updating your tips for a while. I had been having a lot of fun battlegrounding and levelling as a smite priest until cataclysm came and they took all the dps away. Now I'm just starting to feel like a decent holy healer in the battlegrounds, but I feel like I'm just hacking at it and would love to see your take on it. I'll be back to read more!
First of all, welcome back!
Secondly, I would implore you to not feel too out-of-place in a new WoW world. I think there are plenty of us out there who feel that way and we've played the whole time. I have a druid that I heal with, and a pally who heals as an off spec, and the healing game has definitely changed. IMO, its gone from "keep everyone topped off" to simply "keep everyone alive", which these days requires a bit more thought than it did in the days of overgeared Wrath heroics. So just remember, you're not alone in facing the stats reset. I think every role, not just healers, have had to re-adjust to the stat reset.
Looking forward to more great reading on your site!
Welcome back to Cataclysm! And it is totally alright to cry over missing it :-( But don't feel bad, it was a lot of stuff to do, and I missed it on almost all my characters due to school/work also.
Now that I still have a few holiday days left...I am going to play WoW, WoW, and more WoW.
Oh and subscribed! I look forward to your next update! :-)
*hugs*
We missed you too. I'm always glad when I see a post.
And many grats on the academic nerdism :)
Take it this way: if you have mana probs as healer then you are not to late for cataclysm.
Congratulations, Madame! Much happiness to you and your new family. As a fellow healer who wandered off for personal reasons as well (in my case, to have a baby), I find myself feeling just as lost and a little sad as I step back into WoW and realize how much I've missed and how much I'm kind of starting over in the game. But I'm also finding that WoW is a bit like riding a bike - I may be out of practice, but it's coming back pretty quickly. Since this comment is a month late, I'm sure you've already discovered that for yourself. :) Either way, welcome back, congrats again on your out-of-game achievements and I hope you find your heal-y self again soon enough!
congratulations on your grades.
And welcome back, in whatever blogging capacity you can manage.
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First off let me say: You're still alive!?!?
Congratulations on getting married! And congratulations on getting straight As...
When I started healing your site was the first I found, and still the site I prefer using. I find I still go past once or twice a week to see if you have posted anything new...:(
So what are the chances of us hearing from you again anytime soon...?