Battleground Fun and Ragefire Chasm

Warsong Gulch…again

I decided to run my Priest through a few more battlegrounds to get to level 16 so I could purchase the Heal spell.

Battlegrounds are definitely a faster method of leveling than quests, especially if you’ve leveled a few toons and are tired of doing the same quests over and over again.

So…back to Warsong Gulch where we would win a few, lose a few – same as the last time with the usual compliment of idiots.

On incident made me laugh – a player on our team was spending a lot of time raging about how horrible we were and generally filling up the battleground chat with “*$&$(#*” and “noob”.

Just for fun I typed in “Okay, what’s your plan?”  Battleground chat suddenly stops.  I guess it takes a lot less brain power to rage than to formulate a winning strategy.

I’m certainly no expert but I don’t rage and call people names.  Often I’m not sure what to do except find the players engaged in combat and keep them healed, or follow the flag carriers and try to keep them alive.

One thing I can always count on is getting killed – a lot.  I have surprised myself a few times by killing a Horde player without any help – a Psychic Scream followed with a Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Pain and few Smites will sometimes work.

Except for those Rogues with their Sap – love them if on my team, hate them if they sneak up and get me.

As a Hunter I’d just put a Hunter’s Mark on them or use a Flare to counter their Stealth ability, but a Priest doesn’t have any of those so it’s always a “surprise.”

I also picked up a couple of more Achievements – “Not In My House” and “500 Honorable Kills”.  My healing dipped a bit in the meters a couple of times but as I’ve said before, “dead healers can’t heal.”

My Draenei Priest

Ragefire Chasm

I was getting a little tired of spending most of my game time in the graveyard, so I queued up for a Random Dungeon and got Ragefire Chasm.

Since Alliance players wouldn’t normally get to see this instance except through the Looking for Dungeon tool or a suicide run through Orgrimmar, I was looking foward to seeing something new.

The other players were quite friendly and polite – ah, would they all be like this it would make the game a lot more fun!

Our tank was a Druid who tanked in bear form and went along at a good enough pace to keep things moving and giving me enough time to drink if I needed mana.

We had a couple of bad spots where the mobs decided I was the most interesting target and I died twice, but the Druid resurrected me, no player drama and we finished the run just fine.

I was hoping the Crystalline Cuffs would drop but they didn’t so I just passed on all the loot.  I was more interested in getting healing experience and I also received the “Ragefire Chasm” Achievement so that was good enough for me.

The only bad part about the entire instance….I didn’t see any of it.  I was so busy watching everyone’s health bars, especially the tank’s health, that I couldn’t even tell you what the mobs or even the bosses looked like.

I remember an elemental beating on me and some lava but that was all.  Now that I think about it, I don’t even remember what other classes were in the instance except the Druid.  Everyone looked like a health bar.

I know this is probably the easiest instance in the entire game but healing in my first dungeon was a little challenging.  It’s quite a juggling act to balance player health, spell cost and mana.  I can’t even imagine what a logistic nightmare it would be healing in a raid!

I’ve done a bit of research on the Priest class and although there appears to be a lot of discussion about damage – spell priorities, rotation, etc. there is very little on actually healing.

So I had to make a “best guess” – save the big Heal for the tank and Lesser Heal/Renew for the other players unless their health became very low.

I’m pleased to report no one died while I was alive, so hopefully I guessed correctly.

Although I didn’t get the Crystalline Cuffs I received the Tumultuous Cloak of the Moon in my Satchel of Helpful Goods that was a nice upgrade for me.

Healing in an instance was quite a refreshing change from battlegrounds, and with an excellent group of players, one of the more enjoyable moments in the game.