Just ran this HEROIC with the guild. Yesterday I got enough upgrades from normal dungeons to qualify for Heroics ( iLvl 329 average). I barely squeaked by. I didn't consider myself at all ready to actually heal heroics. Today some guys from the guild asked if I'd heal a heroic for them. I told them that I just got to 329 and that I probably wasn't geared for it yet, but said I'd give it a shot anyway. We ended up in Halls of Origination, which I hadn't even run on normal yet!
It went very well. We one-shot all bosses. In fact our only wipe was 3 trash pulls into the instance. I lagged or had a brain fart and tried to keep a dying DPS up. The tank got an extra mob on him and started dropping fast. A dps and the tank dropped, while we had 2 mobs still up. We ping-ponged one of the mobs between DPS until it was dead ( it was pretty close already), then the mage polymorphed the other mob. We were then able to wait until the tank and 2 dps were able to run back in. Guess technically we didn't wipe, but other than that it was groovy.
Impressions
My first impressions of heroics? They're SOO much harder than Wrath heroics. To be honest Wrath heroics were hard at first, but these are at the level of Wrath raids. I truely felt like I was in a raid ( and not just cause it took 2+ hours to do the heroic). The trash pulls had to be CC'd, and I was on my toes the whole time.
Interrupts are crucial. In one of the fights (Temple Guardian Anhuur) its absolutely required that there be an interrupt capable DPS to do the fight well. We happed to get a compitent PUG DK with us. He did very well and stayed up on the platform on his own. He was even able to keep himself up with Death Strikes until the ground phase was done and I could sprint back to heal him up. To Riakk of Wyrmrest Accord, you were awesome. He did very well considering that was also his very first heroic.
A lot of fights required more twitch healing than I thought it would. A few times I absolutely had to use Flash of Light because anything other than a Holy Shock + 3HP Word of Glory wouldn't have been quick enough and hit for hard enough to make it.
Mana
Mana was a much bigger issue in Heroics than in Normals. With casting Judgement on every CD, and heavily favoring my mana-efficient spells, I was able to heal pretty well. I'd have around 30% of my mana left at the end of a fight. But if ever started to neglect casting Judgement my mana would plummet and I would be OOM very quickly.
Also, if I ever let the tank get too far down, it takes an extraordinary amount of mana to catch up. I had to do it a few times and it wasn't fun. Good choice in healing spells was important as well. Sometimes everyone is just taking so much damage that you NEED to use your AOE heals. Being a pally healer having AOE heals is new to me and as such under stress I go back to the furious whack-a-mole style healing that's ingrained in my muscle memory. In some situations this was simply not an option. Holy Radiance was very very useful. When everyone was getting low and I just absolutely needed to do a crazy amount of healing, there's nothing popping Guardian of Ancient Kings, Avenging Wrath, Holy Radiance, then a 3HP Light of Dawn towards a melee heavy group. The entire screen lights up with green number and the little green bars shoot up like jack's beanstalk. Its a sight to see. Of course you hope this is towards the end of the fight because its difficult to regen enough mana to be useful much longer.
All in all it was a good experience, and I gained some upgrades. There really is nothing than a trial by fire to hone your skills and see how you do. If Heroics are already so epic-ally raid like, how are the raids going to be?
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