Where does that portal land you in Vash? I’ve actually made it to the area where the gnome wants you to blow up his balloon so far.
When I took it, it dropped me in the initial shipwreck area. I’ve read that it tracks your progress to some extent, though; no idea if that’s true.
My first votekick. Whee.
I got roped in to heal a Stonecore group last night with a bear, two clothies and a ret that was doing amazingly low dps. No CC, no clearing groups that might pull. This led to multiple wipes because I’m not Elune, plus I’m having to deal with the changes to holy healing. >_<
Final wipe came on the priestess when the group is taking too long to kill the adds and I’m ducking them in addition to all the other crap coming up, going almost oom even with Shadowfiend etc. Booted without so much as a word.
Guh. I’ve healed that run several times before successfully, and that was just bad. Enough groups like that and it’s no wonder that it’s much tougher to find a healer in the RDF now.
jayjay, the portal to Vash is in the upper level of Org, where you get the quest to go to Vash in the first place (that ring of stones place). The portal is available to you after you go to Vash the first time on the ship, I think. It always seems to take you back to the last quest hub you were at. So you can set your hearth in Org, and just take the portal back to Vash each time and you’ll be put in the right spot.
I’m sure you’re familiar with the phenomenon: “Blame the healer”. This is why I haven’t played a healer in a pug in…months. Maybe years. It’s thankless, nerve-racking, technically demanding, and, if anything goes wrong, you’re the first one the group looks sideways at.
I suspect the group did no better with their next healer than with you.
Clueless PUG: “Geez…can’t anyone heal anymore? What’s wrong with all these priests?”
At one time, I could have sworn that the place you got dumped to had a return portal, at least once you’ve gotten through the quest chains to an “adequate” point. But I can’t find a return portal from Vash’jir’s Horde dump point (Tenebrous Cavern). And I could have sworn there was a return portal in the Inn at Ramkahen city (Uldum), but I can’t find it any more.
That leaves the bidirectional portal in Dragonmaw Port, Twilight Hilands, and the Org portal in the Temple of Earth in Deepholm. (I haven’t played Hyjal yet, so I don’t know about its portal arrangements)
Are there supposed to be symmetrical portals in the new zones?
I like anything that puts more money in the guild bank. We won’t even have to put more gold in voluntarily any more…just keep grinding away to do your part. It also gets bumped up to 10% of looted gold at level 16, which makes it even less to sneeze at. Also, you get Reinforcements 1 & 2 at guild levels 7 & 9 respectively, which kind of works like a “repair discount” that you mentioned.
I don’t think i’ve been vote kicked myself, but the other night when i was pugging Heroic Deadmines (had one guildie with me) we had a rogue that was a complete jack wagon, though, admittedly he was top dps pulling around 11K. Eventually someone had enough and initiated a vote to kick him and , of course, it passed. Reason given for kick: Douche.
I lol’d.
I never noticed a portal from Tenebrous Cavern, but I might have missed it. I did see the one at Temple of Earth though. I haven’t been to Uldum yet.
My priest is doing Hyjal and I haven’t seen any portals to Org yet, but he hasn’t gotten too far in the questline yet. Also it’s not that far to fly to Org from Hyjal, unlike Vashj’ir.
No portal, but Hyjal is a fairly short flight from Org (and I guess Darnassus or wherever).
What’s been especially great about running with guildies is that I don’t have to CC at all in normals, and not even on all Heroic trash pulls.
Org and SW each have a portal hub for all of the new zones. Each zone has to have its portal unlocked by you, however, by doing the initial breadcrumb quest plus some small way into the first chain in the zone. (For instance, in Uldum, I initially hearthed out right after doing the escort into the zone and getting out of the cage–only to find that I didn’t have a port back. So I returned and kept going with the next couple of quests, until I was at a place with an Innkeeper, at which point I checked again and there was a live portal.)
Not always at the healer–sometimes it’s at the tank. And a knowledgeable group will generally lay the blame squarely where it belongs.
AFAIK, the only zones that have return portals are Deepholm, Twilight Highlands, and Tol Barad.
Thanks for the support, all y’all. I’ve been a puggin’ healer since pretty much day one, so I’m not unfamiliar with the concept. But up to last night I hadn’t encountered a group quite… that special. All of them, including the tank. 
And yeah, atm it’s looking like priests are the redheaded stepchild of healing. Holydins are about the only ones who can still chain heal like they used to and they’ve already been nerfed once.
Couple of weeks ago, I pugged into a group for Occulus, and the tank immediately said he had to do something IRL and asked to be voted off…:rolleyes:
Me: “You can quit.”
Tank: “Just vote me off.”
Me: “Hey, if there’s a hot chick waiting on your sofa, then quit.”
Tank: “Just %&$?!*# vote me off, dammit!”
Me: “Why…so you can leave us without a penalty and queue somewhere else? We’re not idiots…”
Tank: “Fine…I’ll just sit here and do nothing.”
Me: That’s ok, I can spend fifteen minutes farming stuff away from the dungeon…no skin of my back, Sparky."
Tank: <quits>
Group: What an A-hole…this is one of the best dungeons to rack up JP and gems.
Douche.
I’d heard it was Druids who got hit the worst, especially with group healing.
I don’t know how things got sorted out at release, but I know that during the runup to the expansion there was a lot of discontent that Resto Druids were getting so little compared to other classes, even though GC explained it was because they already had all the right tools.
Based on my brief experience in 4.0, I suspect the reason Druids are getting hurt so bad, if they are, is because the healer relied on blanketing the group with endless Rejuvenation, hitting Wild Growth on cooldown, and spot-healing with Regrowth and Nourish. Now, Rejuvenation costs a hell of a lot of mana and you will go OOM rapidly if you try to keep it up constantly on everyone, which I think is screwing Druids who can’t adapt. Druids have to main-heal with Nourish now, which is really different.
Exacerbating this is that, while Paladins got hit the same way when their Holy Light spam was made obsolete, there was a lot of press about the change so a lot of people knew about it. The changes for Druids are a lot more subtle and got a lot less attention.
Disclaimer: the above is pretty much 100% speculation and probable BS.
I like the disclaimer. 
That’s true. So we’re just third on the list One of the guilds on my server had every resto druid except one go dps, which would seem to say something about the class/spec capabilities at the moment.
I just spent some time respeccing and changing up macros to see if that helps. Basically moving away from the Wrath renew intensive spec to one geared more for mana maintenance. Picked up Surge of Light and Lightwell again, plus a point in Veiled Shadows for the shorter Shadowfiend CD. I guess we’ll see if I can train people to click on the nice Lightwell. 15K over 6 sec isn’t bad.
Oh, sorry for confusing Crowley and Godfrey. And of course,
[spoiler]Sylvanas IS a chump. Down at the bottom of it she has a weak moral character. She was kinda an also-ran even in life, and did not improve in Death. She completely scrweed up her government via Varimaathras, and she’s a heartless soulless monster who hates all life. Blizz never once portrayed her or the Forsaken as very sympathetic. Almost everything they did of worth was in the past.
I haven’t healed a group on my priest yet, but holy pally healing has not been bad, even with the last nerf. I can’t constantly spam HoL, but I can use it when I need it. Pallies who relied only on HoL now have to adjust to using WoG and Holy Shock, which have both become useful and good to your mana pool.