This week marked the official start of our raid group’s ventures into the Emerald Nightmare, an event I’ve been looking forward to with no small amount of trepidation. Would I be competitive with other healers, especially those of my own class? Would I get stuck in a puddle of bad and doom us all? Would I have to use 3 ridiculously overpriced flasks instead of 2?
My favorite encounter was Ursoc. He looked amazing, and I found the charge mechanic to be a lot of fun. We did struggle a little bit initially with keeping both tanks up, but then the other Restoration Druid — named Shae(llistrae)! — and I talked and divided them up between us, and things went a lot more smoothly. I also really enjoy the mechanic of 1-required bosses, followed by 4-bosses you can kill in any order, followed by two more bosses that must be killed sequentially, although it did make for a lot of pre-raid research that went unneeded the first night (and that will likely have to be repeated to refresh my memory).
Something I had not anticipated was how difficult the movement would be, particularly on the Dragons of Nightmare encounter. Because I couldn’t risk introducing latency by using voice commands to run/stop — as I generally do when playing in most other areas — I was forced to rely on my foot switches almost exclusively. At least partially due to the fact that my foot switches were positioned too low for my legs to reach them comfortably, by the end of the night, my knees were throbbing. Rather than pushing myself, I gracefully bowed out of our second night of raiding on Monday and am currently investigating other options for controlled movement that do not involve my foot switches.
I did develop a great system for healing using the in-game [raid#] macro parameter that I will explain in greater detail in a future post. I am hopeful that, if I am able to overcome these early issues, I should be fairly mobile while retaining my ability to blanket my friends in Rejuvenation at will.
And, in case you missed it, here are some other posts about first forays into Emerald Nightmare from blogs that I love:
- Casual Raiding at Coffee Cakes and Crits
- Raiding – There’s a Bear in there… and a Dragon as well at the Daily Frostwolf
Please feel free to respond in the comments with your own experiences in the Emerald Nightmare so far!
That is rough on those knees. Can you use your elbows?
I liked the first boss and Ursoc because it felt predictable and that our raid could learn to move as a group. I know that in time, as the DPS goes up, we’ll find the rhythm of each fight pretty soon.
Grats on your raid!
Haha.. I can only imagine my poor elbows!! I am looking at an Xbox controller to engage run in situations where I can’t wait for voice latency. Thank you for commenting!
Steam Controller might be a good solution too. It works wonders in games that don’t officially support gamepads (like WOW). Alternatively, have you looked at a stinkyboard in place of the footswitches? It’s a 4-way board that you rest your foot on and then rock to activate. (no connection other than that I own one…)
Good hunting!
Whoa, I had never heard of the Steam controller. That looks amazing! I will definitely put that on my Christmas list this year.
As for the stinky board, I tried one for about a week. It seemed too large for my lady-feet (thankfully, haha) and required too much pressure, even on the lowest tension level (probably for the same reason). I have a review of that device almost completed. Glad to know others are having good luck with it, though!