So my question about heroics has been answered. Foo suggested that it might be the ‘lucky’ buff for players in a randomly assembled group. This is a definite contribution, but it is not the underlying reason why heroics feel like Wrath for me.
The answer to the riddle revealed itself quite unexpectedly. Monday evening, I jumped into a random heroic and it was nothing like the others had been. All of a sudden I had to work, and I mean work to keep everyone alive. It was Cataclysm shock all over again. We still attacked the place with no crowd control but everything else felt different. We even wiped once, it wasn’t nearly as graceful as my previously noted runs had been.
Puzzled by this recent twist, I started hunting for answers. I really couldn’t ask anyone or scour the forums for clues because how do you explain that things feel different? My only option was to examine what was different about me. If the Tank and DPS were doing their jobs, what was I doing different?
I started with the wipe. The answer here was obvious, the tank and the DPS failed to GTFOOTF and I was soon over run with mobs due to healing aggro. Even the ranged DPS died standing in the fire. The rest of the instance wasn’t so obvious. I wasn’t doing anything different and all my buffs were comparable to the previous runs. I even dissected the mechanics of each of my healing spells to see if I was missing something there. I came up empty handed at each turn.
Frustrated I ended my hunt and decided to do some daily quests to get my mind off the situation. I find that sometimes it is better for me to step away from confusion in order to see things a bit clearer. Since the daily quests are in a PVP zone, I always switch into my Balance spec and then my DPS gear. As I clicked the button on my gear manager I sat stunned. A number of armor pieces were swapped out.
I am sure the average player would expect the results I just mentioned, for me it was a total revelation. It is important to remember that healing Druids and balance Druids can use the same gear. The only item that should have been swapped when I hit that button was a single trinket, nothing more. I noted at least five items that swapped. That was not good.
Somewhere along the line, I never updated the healing set, to match the dps set. Like I said the only difference is the trinket so bad toon maintenance is the culprit here. As a general rule I have three gear presets for my Druid, a healing set, DPS set and a PVP set.
After some recent upgrades, I had obviously updated my DPS preset but not the healing. Instead of manually swapping in/out the trinket I chose to hit the button. Things were starting to make a bit more sense.
I instantly switched specs and que’d for a heroic wearing all of the appropriate gear. The difference was immediate and dramatic. No struggling, no desperation and no deaths. My mystery was now solved, I out gear the heroic content. I have reached a tipping point with my gear; my healing is now strong enough to once again cover for the mistakes of others. While I am relived to find the answer to my question, I am kind of saddened by the answer. I was really hoping that this wouldn’t happen this early in the expansion. Some of my readers told me I was crazy thinking so, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
