3.2 - First impressions

So 3.2 hit the servers last night, and I eagerly logged in to check out the situation. I immediatly was assulted by LUA errors all over the screen. Ah, how I love mods on patch day. After updating a few, disabling some, and using weird work arounds I had a mostly functional interface. Rather than just list the patch notes, I'm going to just provide an overall impression. I was able to run 2 heroics as a healer, the new 10 man as a healer, and the 25 man as a DPS.

Totem Bar:
I still have not seen the default version, as I use dominos for my action bars. I had 3 bars that I could place a set of 4 totems in. I configured my "default" totems to assume I had my normal raid buffs. I then made my second set the same but with a tremor in it for fights with fears. My final set I assumed I would be providing missing buffs in a 5-man situation. It is very easy to adjust these on the fly just by dragging a new totem to the slot, so I will be switching as needed depending on the group. It is very nice to be able to plop down a group of 4 in one GCD, and dropping my totems no longer felt like a chore.

Healing Changes:
Healing felt a bit different. First, the mp5 buffs seemed to make our mana go further. During the 10-man I kept thinking I should mana-tide soon but when I would look at my mana it was far higher that I thought it would be. I think the improved water shield no longer consuming charges probably helped as well, because in the past if healing got intense my sheild would fall off and I would not notice or have time to renew it on occasion.

I did not like the new LHW proc from Tidal Waves. I have gotten so used to perma-hasted LHW casts that it felt like I would healing in mud or something. Those casts feel LONG to me now. I was still using my old style of Riptide with LHW, but I was unsure now if that is the best way to go for tank healing. I imagine on raid heals where people are spread out you would still do that, but on a tank HW might now be back on top since it is only .2 slower because it still gets the haste proc. I will have to look into it a bit and do some more testing.

The new CH is awesome! Just the jump distance alone was a huge buff. I was far less hesitant to cast it. I even would throw it at the tank if I saw melee needed any healing as well. No longer was I constantly getting single heals, and it was reliably jumping to anyone else in the general area. I would really like to see Mimiron P2 as a healer now just to see the raw throughput I could generate with it.

New raid:
Only the first boss is available this week. I have to say.....disappointing. We went into 10-man an hour before our real raid so our GM and myself could get a look at it so we would be able to formulate our startegy. We did not expect to kill it, but just to start figuring it out. Needless to say, when all of them were dead at our feet on our second attempt, I was a little shocked. It was almost Naxx level difficulty. Hell, we probably could have 1 shot it if I had explained how to posion cleanse with the fire debuff before it was too late. I hope the second boss is a bit of a step up in difficulty. Of course we went in with the full 25-man and easily killed it as well.