First Raid!

I did a raid for the first time in WoW this evening.

I think it went pretty well. We got the first two bosses of Emerald Nightmare down, after a bit of struggling but not too bad. Took us two tries to get the first boss down, and then a few tries for the second boss (we did the spider boss second).

I had been leveling both my Holy and Shadow artifacts, on recommendation from the raid leader to keep both options open. Today, at basically the last second I got both artifacts to the point where I've unlocked one elite skill each. I was ultimately told to heal for the raid, so I did.

Beginning started out a bit rocky for me. I haven't healed in over a week, and have been playing Shadow pretty much non-stop, trying to level it to a decent point. Holy was already waaay ahead, so I've been focusing on Shadow to get it up to par.
Of course, because of this, my gear is also relatively low, I think. Our requirement was 830+ and I went in with 838 or so. I haven't been doing dungeons and the idea of Mythics gives me anxiety. Raiding is different, since there's other healers to support me, but healing by myself for a group is very anxiety-inducing for me.

Basically the entirety of both attempts of the first boss I was dead. I think I was placing the puddles fine, but when it came to the enlarged bugs I kept getting messed up. I wish they had an indicator around them. I had no idea if I was too close! I have the GTFO addon, but when I'm in full-on healing-panic-mode I can hardly hear / notice it or DBM. I don't think I survived the first bug phase in either attempt. Sooo, I have not too much to say on this fight, okay?

Trash between the first boss and the second was pitiful. We melted through it. Minimal damage.

Spider boss took a few more attempts. First attempt we didn't place puddles correctly, so they were just all over the place. That was fixed by the next attempt though, so no big deal really. The rest of the attempts we'd just basically lose too many DPS during the part where you need to swap platforms, and we wouldn't have enough DPS to take down the boss. We figured out that it would be a good idea to send some healers to run across the webs too, rather than having all the healers take the feathers across. Due to the fact that Holy Priests have very, very little in terms of on-the-go heals, I was assigned to get a feather instead, so I don't know the specifics of how the web runs went.
I did die during the first transition phase from the wind attack, but someone in the raid got me back up and I was able to stay alive the rest of the fight until the absolute very end when I died again (again, during a transition), but at that point the boss had so little HP that it didn't really matter how many people were down (which I think was me, one or two other healers and a handful of DPS), because we were going to clear it at that point. I just want to point out that I didn't die in the transition phase once during all the other attempts until the last one, where I proceed to die to every transition :|


All in all, it was a good experience. I really like my guild and the raid group. They are very laid-back and nice.

I will say though, that this foray into WoW raiding has made me realize that I don't really like the style of WoW raiding. I already knew I didn't like the style of WoW's dungeons, but I thought maybe raids would be a bit better for me. I'm coming to realize that I really am just a FFXIV sort of person and should perhaps stop denying that so often. I really, really love the way FFXIV's dungeons and raids work. They feel faster paced, more complicated mechanically and yet more simple (colored circles and cones showing where the enemy is targeting is an amazing thing that I miss immensely). Trash in WoW is too numerous and is either extremely difficult or like wet bread. And you know, as much as everyone complains about the constant circular or square boss platforms in FFXIV, they're a bit of a blessing as well.

I also just don't really like healing in WoW as much as in FFXIV. Don't get me wrong, I like healing far more than DPS, but it just isn't as comfortable. Damage in WoW is really spiky and stress-inducing. I don't feel like my heals have as much of an effect, and I don't feel like I have a big enough toolkit. I feel like I have a whole lot of skills that just straight up heal a single target, and not much else. I have an AoE heal that seems to hardly do any healing, an AoE targetable heal that is affective but difficult to use in most situations, and Prayer of Healing which seems a bit unreliable. And none of these feel nearly as effective as, say, Medica. The damage in FFXIV feels more sustained and less spiky. It's more like a bunch of smaller hits rather than a couple of huge hits. Considerably less stressful.
WoW is also missing the sheer satisfaction that is avoiding a ton of damage to the group by playing a Scholar and using Succor + Sacred Soil. Best feeling as a healer, I swear. Maybe Disc Priest is similar, but I'm not about to go switch to that. Sounds too stressful (although our raid's Disc Priest was amazing).

Healing just feels more powerful in FFXIV. I feel like in FFXIV, I can help carry a group. I feel like in WoW that I am weighing down the group. I've been told I'm a good healer, but I still feel like I am weighing down the group. I feel like a bad healer because I see these huge bursts of damage going out, and I see damage happening so fast that I don't even have time to cast Flash Heal and I don't have Holy Word: Serenity available because I just used it to heal through the last big burst, you know?

All in all, I will still raid with my guild. I like them, and I said I would. I'll keep with my commitment. They want me to raid with them; it's not like I'm going to turn them down! But I may look into getting into FFXIV again, perhaps more seriously than before.