Saga commented that she sometimes feels wary of speaking on vent, especially if they have pugs in the group. I completely empathise with this and was very nervous of speaking, but knew that it's something I want to do increasingly and freely. So when /ra was getting spammed and I wanted clarification on something I piped up, to my delight my question was answered and we moved on, simple as that. I spoke a couple of times after that, but mostly resign myself to /ra for now.
Afterwards one of the officers asked if he could have a word, we chatted about mechanics and mana regen for a while and then he let me know that he expects I will integrate fully into the guild and the banter and everyone's very pleased to have me as a positive and effective raider, but should there be any aggro because of my gender then the officers will step in unless I've handled it myself. I appreciated the thought and I also took the opportunity to let him know that my only concern with the matter, as I spoke about yesterday, is to ensure that I will not get treated any differently or let off lightly or helped more because I'm a girl. He and the other officers respected that.
Actual stuff about the actual game, actually:
The raid itself was fantastic, it was our first run at the Omnitron Defence System and, although we didn't down him, the difference in performance at the beginning and end of the raid was night and day.
Raid composition: x2 tank, x2 healers, x6 DPS
From a Hpriest perspective:
- Mana, mana, mana. We had myself and a Spriest using Hymn of Hope, mine at half way and his at about 20% and I was still running into trouble if aoe hit at a point when everyone wasn't topped off. Will be working on some new gear this weekend as by the end of the night I couldn't have been doing much of a better job of mana management and on the best run didn't cast FH once and still ran in to trouble.
- I'll also be respeccing into Surge of Light, I didn't take it when I was only thinking of HC runs but now it looks like a couple of free Flash Heals might be the difference between that last 10% and wiping, at my current gear level anyway.
- Electron was sometimes tanked too close to where ranged & heal were standing in Arcanotron's Power Generator, so although DPS and mana regen was up, so Electrical Discharge was hitting a few people frequently and was hurting my mana management as, if it was followed up by Incineration, I had to spam Flash Heal 3 or 4 times, which isn't really an option for me at the moment. This Electrical Discharge issue wasn't actually realised until after the raid, the thing about this encounter is that there are so many obvious things to be watching out for as the constructs rotate, that an ability sapping health more discreetly was being overlooked.
- Slightly squishy Warrior tank. I don't know much about warrior tanking but I know they've nerfed something in warrior talent trees that might have been tuned down a little too much by the sounds of things because he's a very good tank who outgeared that fight.
- Heal gearing discrepancy. There's a real gap that needs bridging doing this fight with two healers. In terms of the power of the heals going out I'm almost matching our Hpala, but when I start to get into a pinch with mana it plummets and I feel this is a real spirit gear issue on my part.
So the plan is I upgrade another item, use spirit flask from the word go and carry on fine-tuning my mana management. With a little luck on the construct rotations Tuesday I will be fussing about taking a kill screenshot.
~Reala
