Vaishevik | Resto shaman

Tell us tell us a little about yourself.
Heya! I’m a Canadian and a Pisces who likes puppies and commitment and long walks on the beach… nope, wait, that’s my Tinder intro.

I really am Canuckistani, though, and the puppy part is true. I’ve been RL friends with Plaguedipped and Permetheus for over a decade. Every summer we go backpacking in the Rockies, and by the end of every trip they convince me to hop back into WoW since I quit in 2011. This excitement usually lasts until I log in, then I remember why I left (graphics, and I hated leveling by collecting yet another 10 yeti spleens). This is the first time since Cataclysm was released that I’ve stuck with it for more than an evening; I’m actually enjoying the non-linear questing and graphics.

I love tabletop gaming and painting miniatures; currently the game Infinity is my favorite, after years of painting and playing WH40k and Confrontation. Painting gives me a much-needed creative outlet. I’ve won a few awards for my work, and enjoy teaching new painters.

I was a graphic and web designer for over 20 years, but have been moving into the IT realm in recent years. Now I’m excited to be starting school in a couple weeks to learn SharePoint development.

I have two fantastic daughters. They’ve grown up and moved out, so I’ve tried to fill the empty nest with three Chihuahuas. Sure, they’re not quite the same, but at least they never talk back or put an empty milk carton back in the fridge. On the other hand, the girls never pooped on the rug… well, not since they were four, at least. (...and it was the ceiling. Long story.)

Tell us about your WoW experience.
I started WoW shortly before TBC was released with a Tauren shaman, but quickly flipped to Alliance on Proudmoore to join my friends in a fantastic Hawaiian guild called Lanakila. I healed my way through raids in TBC and WotLK, but burned out with the release of Cataclysm. It just seemed uninspired and too familiar. I levelled up a warrior as well, but have always gone back to shammie. I enjoy their versatility, and find raid healing more rewarding than DPS. My favorite content was Karazhan and Zul’Aman.

What class and spec(s) are you applying with? What other classes have you played?
Resto shaman. This is the third shammie I’ve maxed out; yes, I need help. The first was Horde, then I started again with Alliance. When I came back last month I realized that the class had changed in the last five years, so I started yet again to get familiar with the new rotations. I’m not quite max level yet, as I’ve been taking my time enjoying the new content.
I’ve also been a healer in the other MMOs I’ve played; SWTOR, Champions, and Rift.

When did you start playing? What guilds were you in? How much raiding have you done?
Summer 2006. I was in Lanakla, a Hawaiian guild that also included a large number of Canucks. It had a fantastic atmosphere and taught me about raiding etiquette. I also played in Winterborne during WotLK. I started losing interest once Cataclysm was released, and stopped completely when Rift was released in 2011. I played Rift as a cleric raid healer until 2014, when their second expansion turned out to be an uninspired exercise in remedial blandness. It had a good run, though, and I felt the graphics and gameplay were superior to WoW’s. I was sorry to see it fall so far.

PVP much?
I enjoy the lemming-rush of battlegrounds, but not arenas. I generally prefer to focus on the winning conditions like capturing the flag or running with the McGuffin more than burning faces, and healers quite often have good survivability and tricks for accomplishing scoring conditions.

What is your Weakness?
I care too damn much!

Haha, no.

I’m out of practice and need to get back into the groove for raiding again in WoW. I want to be good at my role (which is why I stick to learning one class), but I need to be aware of the strategy ahead of time or I tend to lose situational awareness. I don’t know what the specific abilities and weaknesses of other classes are, so I need to practice to work as a team player again.

What do you struggle with? What are you working on improving?
Boss fights that require movement. Chain heal is a great ability, but it was easy to get too reliant on it, rather than spot-healing with instant single-target abilities that allowed me to be more mobile. Fights like the Dance in Karazhan would get me; I'd see a DPS about to die while dodging green lava, so I'd try and throw in one last quick heal and we'd both die. Once I started using macros and Grid (I think that’s was the name of the healing add-on I used) I found I could spot heal on the fly using mouseover-targetting, and stay out of the fire. I still need to work on tunnel vision though.

What was your favorite gaming moment?
I won the Amani War Bear mount on the very last night it was available, with a roll of 99. We had been trying the ten-man speed run for months, and it was the last chance. I ended up giving it to the raid leader. He was the one who put in the effort of cat-herding twice a week, improving our speed and efficiency, and I thought it was pretty cool that even on the very last night he gave the rest of us an equal chance for the prize.

In any case, I was more excited to get the last piece for my shaman Amani Mail set. It looked bad-ass, way cooler than a silly bear. :D That reminds me, I’ll have to get that set again for transmog on this toon. And I read that the bear is available again? Add that to the "to do" list.

Can you link a Warcraft Logs raid parse? How about a screenshot of your interface?
Nope. As a shammie I had top numbers on raids where the entire party took damage, but considerably less on encounters with high spot-damage. That was chain-heal before it got nerfed. I need to look at the current add-ons and rewrite my macros to be raid-ready again.

Thanks for reading! :) I'm not looking for a raid spot until I can get comfortable with healing again (and hitting max, obviously) but would love to be in a guild again to be able to catch up on the what's new in the game.

Cheers.