Just as an FYI…

Yes, I know tomorrow is April Fool’s.

No, I will not be writing any kind of jokey post. And no, I promise, this post is not an April Fool’s post, either.

No, I will not comment on the silly people who believe whatever it is Blizzard will put up this year (although, let me tell you, I totally bought into the BT attunement for a good five minutes, until I finished reading it all, by which point I was doubled over in laughter).

Basically, this post is to let you know that there’s going to be a LOT of misinformation across the board popping up, starting today and probably going through ’till Hawaii goes through the last hour of April 1. Don’t believe anything you read, from people quitting blogging or guilds merging or anything of the sort.

So, if it’s okay with you, I’ll just go sit over here and shake my head at all the gullible people believing stuff over the next day or so and stay out of the fray of insanity. Instead, I’ll just freak out about the fact that we’re going to be doing ICC25 hard modes and wondering what I ever did to Blizzard that deserves me getting to deal with Malleable Goo on Festergut and Vile Gas on Rotface in heroic modes.

Kurn's Q&A #12

I really relish my Tuesdays off. I get to watch Lost and the newly-returned V and get to do WoW stuff that *I* want to do. Which includes writing on the ol’ blog. :)

1) best way to heal heroic falric with a shammy

Well, I don’t know if it’s the best way, but this is how I do it.

The real problem with Falric is the Defiling Horror for two reasons. The first is because it’s a horror effect, so Tremor Totem does nothing. The second is because everyone takes 16k damage. So what I do is endeavour to keep everyone topped up as close to max as possible before he casts the horror.

To recover from it, I cast Riptide on the tank and, using my hasted Healing Waves from Tidal Waves, I heal myself and a caster. Then I’ll Chain Heal off the Riptided tank, which will hopefully hit the tank and 2 melee. Then I’ll RT/HW anyone else who still needs health. Total time, with my crappy haste (400 haste + Wrath of Air) is about 8-9 seconds. I usually have enough time to get everyone to full, or close to it.

Apart from that, try to stay close together and bunched up for Chain Heal to get the maximum use possible from it.

2) choker of filthy diamonds or soulcleave pendant

Choker of Filthy Diamonds has more haste and mp5. Soulcleave Pendant has more crit. I definitely prefer the Choker for a holy paladin or possibly a resto shammy and likely a resto druid, since the nerf to Gift of the Earthmother, leaving the crit to priests. Maybe? I’m not sure how crit is for a holy priest these days, but I know crit is still awesome for a disc priest.

However, the Choker is off Rotface and the Pendant is off Saurfang. Really depends how far you’re getting into 10-man ICC, I think.

3) divine plea timer

Okay, I’m assuming you want a timer to tell you when Divine Plea is back up. For this, and any other cooldowns, I use OmniCC. It was my first-ever addon, as I recall. And it’s the one addon I cannot play without.

If you were looking for a timer to tell you how much of the 15 seconds your Divine Plea is still up for and such, I recommend Power Auras Classic to monitor if the buff is active on you or not.

4) hos divine shield holy macro wow

I haven’t actually tested this out, but this ought to work:

/cast Divine Shield
/cast [@target] Hand of Sacrifice
/raid Hand of Sacrifice is up!
/in 10 /raid Hand of Sacrifice is done!

That’s four lines and should work with two button clicks or presses. I highly recommend that your shield come FIRST in the macro, lest you be ruined in the face by whatever insane damage is hitting your target. Also, your @target could be @focus as well or even this:

[@mouseover,help,nodead]

5) paladin group buffs how to

Oof. Okay. The first thing to know here is what buffs other classes give that are equivalent.

Warriors: Battle Shout is equivalent to unimproved Blessing of Might. Improved Blessing of Might (2/2) requires the warrior to have 5/5 Commanding Presence to be equivalent. That’s in the third tier of the Fury tree. This is not part of a typical warrior build, as I understand it.

Shamans: Mana Spring Totem is equivalent to unimproved Blessing of Wisdom. Improved Blessing of Wisdom (2/2) requires the shaman to have 3/3 Restorative Totems which is the fourth tier of the Restoration tree. However, it leads to Mana Tide Totem which virtually all restoration shammies take.

This is the general order that I, personally, recommend for pally buffs:

Death Knights (DPS): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings
Death Knights (tank): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might
Druids (bear): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might
Druids (kitty): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings
Druids (moonkin): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Druids (trees): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Hunters (survival/marks): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might, Blessing of Wisdom
Hunters (BM): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Mages: Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Paladins (prot): Blessing of Sanctuary, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might, Blessing of Wisdom
Paladins (ret): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Paladins (holy): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Priests: Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Rogues: Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings
Shaman (enhancement): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Shaman (elemental/resto): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Warlocks: Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Warriors: Blessings of Kings, Blessing of Might

Of course, if you have a warrior in the group, it’s likely more beneficial to have them pop Battle Shout and you do kings than it is for no kings and your might, even if it’s improved. Same deal for wisdom and mana spring.

Alternately, you can buff everyone with Drums of Forgotten Kings and then give physical DPS might and healers and casters wisdom.

6) dk tanking halls of reflection

Note: I am not a death knight, nor am I a great tank. However, if you’re going to do the LOS method on Falric and Marwyn, just drop Death and Decay and hide around the corner. For any casters or the riflemen, Death Grip is great. For the chase scene, D&D is still awesome to use and you’ll want to Death Grip or Strangulate the Witch Doctors to bring them close if they’re a little far out. Blow your cooldowns when you can, saving Army of the Nub Dead for the second spawn of adds at the fourth wall on the chase scene.

7) list of cuts a purple gem can be cut to

Here’s a list of epic, level 80 purple gems. And here’s the list of rare-quality ones.

8) melee dps toravon guide

Hit boss. Don’t touch Frozen Orbs unless there are basically no ranged. Collect loot.

9) shammy tanking gear 3.3

Okay. You can equip a shield. This does not make you a tank. There is no mail gear out there at level 80 that has any kind of defense on it and very little leather, due to the druid changes. You would basically have to stack resilience. The major problem with shaman tanking, apart from the fact that you’re squishy as all get-out, is that a key to tanking is avoidance, like dodging, blocking and parrying. Your parry talent, Spirit Weapons, also reduces threat. Bad combo.

I don’t advise shaman tanking unless you’re doing it for fun with friends OR your tank on Lady Malande on the Illidari Council in Black Temple DROPS and your resident enhancement shaman thinks quickly, throws on a shield, pops Shamanistic Rage causing your raid leader to shout out over vent “ALL HEALS TO DUPER, ALL HEALS TO DUPER!”, which never had been heard before and never would be heard again. Ever. ;)

10) soul shriek aggro reset

Nope, there’s no aggro reset associated with Soul Shriek, as far as I can tell. It IS, however, a silence. Make sure someone is assigned to cleanse this magic effect off your tanks!

A night off? HAH.

So, given that, you know, everything in ICC was dead, we headed to Trial of the Grand Crusader 25 tonight. We had yet to down Anub’arak on heroic 25m and so we decided to go in there tonight. With 2 new healer apps and two of the other healers had never been to TOC/TOGC with us before.

Tonight involved a LOT of typing to healers. Yikes.

Northrend Beasts – ugly. At least two people died to TRAMPLE. Seriously. New people, two apps (not the healers) so I don’t know if they were expecting a speed buff or something.

Lord Jaraxxus – peachy keen, healers did great, no one got silenced by the kiss, no one blew up the raid because incinerate flesh hadn’t been healed. And, ta-DAH! Solace of the Defeated! Kind of insane that I got it, really. I guess most other healing classes have latched on to spellpower ones out of ICC or from the badge vendor. Geez. I still have my Pandora’s Plea, though. I wiped to Mimiron for WAY too long to just throw that crap away, not to mention the something like 9 or 10 or 15 weeks or HOWEVER long it was that it took me to get the drop.

Faction Champs – OUCH, they still burst people down FAST. But we won.

Twin Val’kyrs – got them down in 3 phases. Dark Vortex and both shields. No Light Vortex stupidity for us, YAY!

And so we faced Anub’arak with 50 attempts left.

13 attempts later, we called the raid and we are going back to our long kiting method.

Still, I got to try out a new holy pally app, a new holy priest app and got to get our regular holy priest to go disc and try that out for a bit. I think he secretly likes being disc but he likes his numbers a lot as holy. But he’s always eager to go disc. I really do like that particular healer a lot. He’s very solid.

In other news, I got a comment today from Chase Christian asking if I wore a 4pc T10 gear set to my LK kill.

The answer is no, I wore 2pc T10 (helm and shoulders), Holiday’s Grace, the 245 healer/caster cloak off Onyxia (for real), Rot-Resistant Breastplate, Crypt Keeper’s Bracers, Unclean Surgical Gloves, Lich Killer’s Lanyard, Legplates of Failing Light, Earthsoul Boots, Ashen Band of Endless Wisdom, Marrowgar’s Frigid Eye, Pandora’s Plea, Talisman of Resurgence, Misery’s End, Bulwark of Smouldering Steel and the Libram of Renewal.

I have my tier chest, gloves and now legs so that I can have a bit of wiggle room when it comes to upgrading my gear to 277 level. Right now, I use my T10 chest and gloves as part of my spellpower set, which I only really use for Dreamwalker healing at this point. But I do have the 264s of all those pieces and am ready to upgrade them at any time. ;)

Tomorrow, though, IS a day off. I’m really looking forward to it, too. Whew.

Holy How-To #4 – Frequently Asked Questions

Welcome to my Holy How-To for PVE Paladins. This is the fourth of what I hope to be a great many posts aimed at helping holy paladins succeed at PVE content. I will focus primarily on max-level talent specs, glyphs, enchants, gems and the like, including tools, tips and tricks that I use, but I hope to touch on levelling content and advice as well.

Today, we’ll talk a bit about some of the most frequently asked questions pertaining to healing in current PVE content. This is NOT what I actually wanted to go over for my fourth Holy How-To. I actually have a half-written post sitting in Notepad at the moment about healing meters and why they suck. However, I’ve been looking for a new holy paladin for my guild (to replace the one who ninja-transferred) and I just kind of /facepalm when I see some of their armories. So inside, quick questions and answers for holy PVE paladins!

Continue reading “Holy How-To #4 – Frequently Asked Questions”

Uh…

So, uh… didn’t see this coming.

25-man Lich King down. And though I use the pieces in different sets, that’s me in 5/5 Sanctified Lightsworn Garb.

Yeah, I have NO idea how we pulled that one off…

(Edited after just being in shock for 20 minutes.)

It’s kind of terrifying how many bosses I’ve personally downed at the appropriate level. Talk of this and such below.

Continue reading “Uh…”

Ignis, Trial of the Champion and failure of all kinds.

Ladies and gentlemen, the weekly quest this week on Proudmoore is for Ignis the Furnace Master. You know, one of the three bosses available after Flame Leviathan in Ulduar. Pretty easy mechanics, not a terribly difficult fight.

My buddy Majik (a DK frost tank) and my brother (on his hunter… who is now Officially Better Geared Than Kurn!) wanted to go do the weekly. Well, why not? It’s not like it’s Marrowgar.

So, on my druid, I started up a group, inviting them, then converting to raid. “LFM,” I bellowed in Trade, “Ignis the Furnace Master Must Die!” I was, of course, overwhelmed with whispers.

I got two shammy healers (the only healers who whispered, of course) and asked them if they could 2-heal it. “Yeah, sure,” they said. So I said that Majik and myself would be tanking.

One of the healers, who had whispered me previously to say they could heal and tank, whispers me to invite a friend of theirs. So I invite their friend, a warrior.

Who here sees where this is going?

Well, we fill the group, head up to Ulduar, I warn people not to talk to anyone and that I would talk to Brann Bronzebeard instead of the Lore Keeper of Norgannon, to ensure we don’t accidentally do 4-tower Flame Leviathan. :P

Surprisingly, the trash to FL goes quickly, as does the FL fight. People (including. but not limited to (!), me) interrupted Flame Jets in the siege engines and we got Shutout without issue. My brother “engineered” FL’s corpse and off we went to Ignis.

The giants caused a bit of havoc, but it wasn’t too bad.

The rest of the trash wasn’t too bad either — except I kept losing aggro.

I noticed, from my Grid, that the only person in range of me was a warrior. There were two warriors in the group, including the one the shammy had me invite. So I assume, as I generally do, that he’s out-threating me, because I KNOW I can’t keep aggro off a well-geared DPS warrior. So I keep taunting off of him.

But he always ends up with the damn mob!

So I mark Majik’s trash targets with the Skull and, when I see the warrior on my mob again, I say in raid “Skull”.

Warrior stays on my target, which keeps switching to the warrior, in an attempt to bash his face in.

And then, I finally, finally notice that the warrior is wearing a shield.

“… is the warrior PROT?!” I ask over Vent, to just Majik and my brother.

“I don’t know,” Maj says, “wait, yes, there’s a shield.”

Sigh. “Switch to DPS please, [warrior name]”

And yet, there he is. On the very next bloody mob I’m trying to tank. Again. I mean, seriously. I’M A FREAKING BEAR. You can’t tell that I’m a tank? Rawr?

Finally, we get the trash cleared out.

“[warrior], do you have a DPS spec?”

“No.”

/facepalm

The shammy says in raid: “that’s why I said I could heal and tank!”

“I thought you meant you had another toon of yours who could tank,” I respond. Majik asks me in Vent if I want him to go DPS, but knowing that his DPS spec is a PVP one, I figure I’ll just go resto.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I very much LIKE having three healers in a 10-man. It’s even helpful on Ignis if a healer gets put in the Slag Pot. But my problem is that I did not do a ton of research on the group, figuring that 2 healers, 2 tanks (one of which being a DK, who not only does more damage than your average prot warrior, but has a ton of cooldowns) and six DPS is going to render the Ignis fight easy.

Take away a DPS, though, and you have a slight problem for the strategy we were going to use.

You see, I’ve done Stokin’ the Furnace. It requires burning the boss hard while the OT holds all the adds. So even with just five DPS, I figured hey, we can do it this way anyways. Everyone should be in at least T9, right? Which is better than most of the junk out of Ulduar. It’s obviously easier to tell everyone to just burn the boss than to expect anyone apart from my brother and the actual well-geared DPS warrior to switch targets to the adds.

Of course, we don’t have a “tank healer”. Which is a bunch of crap, IMHO, since I think that, if circumstances dictate, any class can “tank heal”, but I will admit that were I in there on my paladin, it would have made the fight a ton easier.

We also don’t have a healer with any defensive cooldowns. No Guardian Spirit, no Pain Suppression, no Hand of Sacrifice or Divine Sacrifice.

Still, I don’t think we have a problem.

Until we’re about at the 3 minute mark and I suddenly realize that we are NOT going to be done in four minutes. We’re sitting at about 60%.

“HERO” I type, all in caps, in a raid warning.

Heroism goes up and I start making sure Rejuvenation is on everyone in the raid, in addition to rolling Lifebloom on Maj. I keep Swiftmending either myself or him because the stacks of Strength of the Creator were just getting out of hand. I don’t remember what they were at, because I was busy healing the crap out of Maj, but he was taking TONS of damage and rotating ALL of his cooldowns, sacrificing his ghoul, everything.

Shockingly, 5m13s after we pulled, Ignis died, everyone alive.

Great healing by the shammies, really. And very good off-tanking by the OT, to be honest. I probably couldn’t have stayed up as long as he did with the same number of adds. Although, if I was going to tank, we wouldn’t have had the same number of adds, because we would have had six DPS and killed the sucker earlier. :P

So part of that is my failure for not researching the group well enough. Part of it is the warrior and the shammy’s failures for not realizing I said Maj and I were going to tank. It all just led to extra stress, which no one needs when doing a stupid weekly.

But all that pales in comparison to the priest that healed most of my Heroic Trial of the Champion yesterday. I was tanking.

We get Eadric the Pure, we down him, but the rogue dies. The hunter pointed out to the priest that they still had the Argent Lance equipped.

The following is a paraphrased reconstruction of the conversation that ensued.

Priest: so?

Hunter: So… maybe if you had your healing weapon on, the rogue wouldn’t have died.

Priest: lol no its fine, I can heal with the lance

Hunter: I think you might heal better with your real healing weapon.

Priest: we killed him didn’t we?

Hunter: That’s not the point, the point is that you might have been able to keep the rogue up with your healing weapon equipped.

Me: I’m with [hunter].

Priest: i was chatting with someone when he died

Somewhere in all of this, someone (not me) started the Black Knight event. The rest of this is, honest to God, what happened, as I’m copying from my screenshots.

The Black Knight says: I’ve come to finish my task.

Priest: i looked away and talked until he died

Hunter: so that makes it alright?

Priest: he died and i said “oh someone died hang on”

<Deadly Boss Mods> The Black Knight engaged. Good luck and have fun! :)

The Black Knight yells: This farce ends here!

King Varian Wrynn yells: Don’t just stand there; kill him!

Priest: fuck you [racial slur for a person of African descent].

Priest leaves the party.

Okay. The priest didn’t say exactly what I wrote. They ACTUALLY used the n-word. I refuse to use that term, even while quoting someone on my blog.

So, I was tanking, I slammed on the “yes, I would, in fact, like to find a replacement for the healer who just left my group” and popped every single cooldown I had — Survival Instincts, Barkskin, Frenzied Regeneration, Lifeblood, Glyph of the Indomitable.

A pally joins the group and all I can think is “please, dear God, let him see I’m in trouble and heal the crap out of me”. But he was still zoning in. I died. I ran back. Everyone else died, they all ran back.

Everyone was discussing the racist priest and I was like “Uh, didn’t the priest and the warrior in the group know each other? Same server. :P” And then the warrior left the group. We got a mage, the pally apologized for zone lag, it was all good, we all had another shot at the Black Knight and we even got I’ve Had Worse.

FYI, the racist priest is Emisana from Khaz’goroth and the warrior was Obsession (?) from the same server. I highly recommend anyone on Bloodlust just ignore the priest right away. Terrible healer, worse person. :P

Okay, my ranting is done for now.

General updates.

1) Emerald Vigor now has a combat log entry!!! Rejoice, readers of parses!

2) As you may be able to tell from my recent achievements, I have started doing arenas with Majik and my brother. I did some 2s with Maj yesterday, will do some 2s with my brother today, then the three of us will do some 3s today. All I have to say is that I hate warlocks more now than I ever did in BC. But Majik’s new unholy spec works very nicely to give us the burst we need and my PVE spec is actually not half bad for arenas. I decided to get on the arena bandwagon with the guys because I did a VOA25 and my Wrathful legs dropped… and I won them. Heh. With some honor and some emblems of triumph, combined with other drops I’d previously gotten, I still have crappy resilience, but it’s better than none at all. I don’t feel like what priests must feel they’re wearing. And we actually won 7 (and lost 7), most of the wins coming after Majik switched specs.

3) Got bitten last night on Blood Queen, which was just WEIRD. It was in the last minute of the fight, though, so I didn’t have to bite anyone. I think someone screwed up significantly for me to get bitten. But hey, it got me my achievement!

4) My brother has applied to a casual raiding guild and he did ICC10 for the first (real) time last night. (He’d previously gone in and attempted Festergut on a pug a couple of times and done a couple rep runs.) I looked at his parse and he didn’t do too badly at all. He’s a good player, don’t get me wrong — this isn’t surprising or anything. But it seems so weird that he’s a HUNTER. My brother has only ever been a resto druid or a rogue in raids. He was very good at what he did. He’s very good at what he’s doing now, too. I’m kind of proud of the kid. I’m less proud of the fact that I explained all the fights to himĀ  in detail, rather than have him go to tankspot.com, mind you. ;)

5) Emerald Vigor! Combat log entry!!! YAY! :D

More later, including the insanity that was Ignis the Furnace Master Must Die! I just wanted to share those bits.

Kurn's Q&A #11

As it’s patch day for 3.3.3, I highly anticipate servers dying and being unavailable and such, so I thought I’d sit down and hammer this out. (Speaking of, I’ve been very quiet on the subject of 3.3.3. This is primarily because they aren’t nerfing paladins or hunters. Which is a shocking, but welcome, change. Seems like they ALWAYS nerf one of the two.)

1) divine shield mutated plague / “mutated plague” mechanics / grid mutated plague

Okay, let’s talk about Mutated Plague then, shall we? ;)

Mutated Plague is the debuff that the tanks get in phase 3 of the Professor Putricide encounter. The debuff causes raid damage. The more stacks on a target, the more damage the raid takes. This is why a 2-tank strategy in 10m and 3-tank strategy in 25m is usually recommended. They taunt the boss in turn, rotating who gets stacks to help control the raid damage.

In my 25m raids, the taunt rotation goes thusly:

Tank 1 – 2 stacks of Mutated Plague -> Tank 2 – 2 stacks -> Tank 3 – 2 stacks -> Tank 1 – 1 additional for 3 stacks -> Tank 2 – 1 additional for 3 stacks -> Tank 3 – 1 additional for 3 stacks – > Tank 1 – 1 additional for 4 stacks

And so on. So it’s 2 stacks, then a total of 3, then a total of 4.

Thing is, if the stacks drop, you heal Putricide for a certain number multiplied by the number of stacks on the tank who dropped them. That means that if the stacks drop, for ANY reason, you just healed him for a ton of health. Divine Shield WILL wipe off stacks (Divine Protection will not, Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian will not). And so will death. So to get through Putricide, it’s pretty imperative that no tanks drop their stacks.

Anyone using Grid who wants to know when the taunt is supposed to happen should ABSOLUTELY put it in Grid.

Status, Auras, Add new Debuff, type in Mutated Plague. Then, Frame, Center Icon, add a tick next to Debuff: Mutated Plague.

Voila.

2) icc loot 10 man holy paladin

Honestly, I’m not terribly familiar with ICC 10 loot, but let’s take a look. I’ll just post some pieces from 10m normal. Obviously, if the piece isn’t plate, make sure no one of that armor class needs it more than you. Pass to your shammies, druids and casters and don’t be a dick. :) And, of course, this is all my humble opinion, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt. I’m evaluating all the loot on its own merits (or potential merits, in terms of tier possibilities) and does not take into consideration all the stuff you’re probably wearing. Note that I highly recommend 2pc T10 if only for the set bonus!

From Lord Marrowgar:

Coldwraith Bracers: Nicely itemized for a holy paladin. Haste, intellect, a socket for another +20 int gem. Don’t let the lack of crit scare you off; since the Illumination nerf to 30%, mp5 is a more reliable method of mana regeneration than crit is.

Ancient Skeletal Boots: Ehhhhh. No haste. Despite being a higher ilvl, not a significant upgrade from 245-level Boots of the Courageous. There are better boots in here for you.

Frost Needle: I know, I know. It has hit on it. Don’t steal this from any caster who has a legitimate use for the +hit. This is a nice sword for us, though — haste, intellect, spellpower. I’d value this over another weapon that drops later, actually.

Corrupted Silverplate Leggings: Sweet legs. I’d prefer mp5 to the crit, to be honest, but these are a solid pair of pants. Given that our tier pants kind of blow, IMHO, you should definitely pick these up if you can.

From Lady Deathwhisper:

Boots of the Frozen Seed: Moonkin loot, really. But if your boots suck, go for it. Great stats.

Deathspeaker Disciple’s Belt: Great belt.

Gunship:

Ice-Reinforced Vrykul Helm: Not too bad, compared to our T10 (251) helm. It’s actually better in a couple of aspects. However, if you ever think you’ll be in a 25m for a token or a 10m heroic for a token to upgrade a piece of tier to 264, the clear winner would be our T10 helm. Otherwise, it’s a nice hat!

Bracers of Pale Illumination: The Marrowgar bracers are, IMHO, better than these. Don’t go for the socket bonus for +4 intellect; it’s not worth what you’d lose from 20 intellect to 10 or something. If the socket had been yellow, it would have had a fighting chance. As it is, get the Marrowgar bracers if you can. These are still a good second choice, though.

Deathbringer Saurfang:

Soulcleave Pendant: Beauty. Snag it!

Festergut:

Festergut’s Gaseous Gloves: On the surface, better than the 251 Tier 10 gloves. And better than the 264s. Actually, they’re pretty darn good gloves to have over the tier, all the way up to 277 level. I personally prefer the Gauntlets of Overexposure from the Emblem of Frost vendor for 60 Emblems. Two sockets, like the Festergut gloves, but haste (which neither Festergut’s gloves nor any of our tier pieces have), a goodly amount of crit and intellect. So really, I’d pass on the gloves off Festergut unless you really have no way of ever getting 60 Emblems of Frost and your gloves are crap. Dreamwalker has a nice pair, though.

Signet of Putrefaction: Pretty ring! Very nice if you can’t get Marrowgar’s Frigid Eye, which is BOE. Your other ring, of course, should be your rep ring from the Ashen Verdict.

Rotface:

Shuffling Shoes: Remember that I was talking about better boots for you? These are the ones I was talking about. The leather ones off Deathwhisper have more haste, but these have haste, mp5 and two yellow sockets for an extra bonus of +4mp5 if you’re stacking +20 intellect gems. Earthsoul Boots are still better, but in a 10m setting, these are very nice.

Choker of Filthy Diamonds: Comparable to the Soulcleave Pendant. Based on your current stats, you’ll either want the tiny bit of extra int and the crit from the Pendant or the extra mp5 on the Choker.

Putricide:

Chestplate of Septic Stitches: Ooh, pretty! Too bad all the sockets are red. And there’s no haste. (Yes, hi, I’m a haste whore.) Honestly, I’d save up for the Lightsworn Tunic. But if you’re at 676 haste or more without your chest, then this is a solid upgrade for you out of 10m ICC. Still, there are other options.

Rippling Flesh Kilt: Pretty much awesome for pants. Even if they’re a kilt. Snag ’em if you can’t get the Marrowgar pants.

Princes:

Heartsick Mender’s Cape: A cloak with a socket and haste on it, unlike the Emblem of Frost vendor cloak? Yes, please!

Cerise Coiled Ring: Good alternative to the Signet of Putrefaction, but definitely second-best, IMHO.

Blood Queen:

Chestguard of Siphoned Elements: Amazing itemization for a paladin. This is actually better, IMHO, than T10’s 251 chest, but again, the T10 is upgradeable. This is not.

Tightening Waistband: My goodness, look. It’s plate. Why is all the great gear built for shammies? :P Honestly, though, you want Belt of the Lonely Noble (BOE from ICC 25) or Lich Killer’s Lanyard from the Emblem of Frost vendor. If you have neither, this is a great option out of 10m ICC.

Dreamwalker:

Emerald Saint’s Spaulders: Meh. I much prefer the Lightsworn Spaulders for the haste, but 2 sockets vs. 1 makes the Dreamwalker 10 shoulders very appealing.

Stormbringer Gloves: Another strong option for gloves.

Sindragosa:

Shoulderguards of Crystalline Bone: Better than the Emerald Saint’s Spaulders, to be sure, particularly with the haste.

Lost Pavise of the Blue Flight: No-brainer. Get it! Great itemization. Too bad there’s no socket, but honestly, this is a beauty.

Lich King:

Valius, Gavel of the Lightbringer: Stats are so-so. But hey, it’s from the Lich King, is ilvl 258 (same as Trial of the Grand Crusader) and it’s like, UTHER’S mace from his holy set! Heh. :)

Whew.

3) blessing of protection on sindragosa

Does absolutely nothing, sorry. :(

4) how to make a spell power set for dreamwalker

Without totally regemming everything that you regularly use? Yeah, not the easiest thing in the universe. I bought my tier chest and my tier gloves and gemmed them for spellpower (since I wanted to have my full tier anyways, even if I’m not using it) and I swap out Glyph of Seal of Wisdom for Glyph of Seal of Light. I have a pair of shoulders I use that are gemmed up with spellpower, too. Apart from that, you can always go back a tier and use T9 stuff. Heck, you can get T9 from emblems of triumph, so you can always get the T9 pieces and wear 3 of those (maintaining 2pc T10) if you don’t have old gear, etc.

5) should healers only run back?

Absolutely not. People who can resurrect should rez people if they die after the fight. If your rezzer runs, you run. Period.

6) warrior rage mechanics “shielded”

Check out WoWWiki: “As of Patch 3.1, will still allow warriors and druids to generate rage from damage absorbed.” So it’s fine. :)

7) stop casting divine plea

You can right-click it off, or use a macro like this:

#showtooltip divine plea
/cancelaura divine plea
/cast divine plea

So on your first click, you’ll cast Divine Plea. On your second click, you will cancel it. I do NOT use this macro because if I accidentally click twice (in the clicking-furiously process), I’m screwed.

Alternately, have

/cancelaura divine plea

as a separate button.

8) how do i keep judgements of the pure

Make sure you judge at least once a minute to maintain your Judgements of the Pure buff. Be aware that your judgements can MISS.

9) how to tank as a druid

Use Maul, use Swipe, use Mangle, use Lacerate. Done. ;) Seriously, check out this post at Big Bear Butt.

10) old school flasks elixir master

Yep, elixir masters can proc old-school flasks like Distilled Wisdom. Not that I proc often…. but I HAVE procced it. :)

Ideas and Conversations (and an unexpected development)

I originally started this blog because, well, I have things to say, darn it! :) My earliest posts are about professions, BC raiding, levelling a priest and the like. Scattered through the next few months were posts about Wrath’s beta, the launch of Wrath, the trials and tribulations of my own guild and my subsequent departure from Eldre’Thalas, my move to Bronzebeard and eventually to where I’m at now.

It was only while I was on Bronzebeard, freed of the Raid Leader/Guild Leader titles, that I felt I could devote any time whatsoever to blogging. It was only in December, with the advent of Patch 3.3 (and the LFG tool) that I really started being remotely prolific over on this little blog o’ mine. It was in December that I wrote my guides on how to be a tank, healer or DPS in dungeons, along with my Halls of Reflection guide. All these were inspired, of course, by the huge amounts of fail I witnessed in my random groups. These guides were linked over at TenTonHammer after I contacted Xerin about their existence. He’d previously contacted me about cross-promotion and such (which made me laugh, because I was convinced I had no readers) so I mailed him, he posted the link at TenTonHammer and I still gets hits from there even four months later.

Throughout all this, I’ve never really considered myself part of the “blogging community”. I’m a fairly opinionated individual who loves to express ideas through writing. More, I have a lot of stupid knowledge about this game which is obscure enough that I don’t think it would ever even come in handy on Jeopardy! like most other obscure bits of knowledge. So, whenever I encounter fail (or, much less frequently, win!) and feel like that could have been averted, if only someone had freaking read up on the encounter/etc, I tend to write something about it. My primary purpose here is to write about my frustrations and take steps to ensure I have no frustrations by virtue of writing what are hopefully informative posts about X, Y and Z that annoyed the crap out of me that day.

I also write to document my own experiences. I also obviously use my blog as a form of stress relief by discussing guild happenings while obfuscating people’s names and such as much as possible.

So, it’s kind of weird and confusing to me that, in February, I suppose that I stirred up a wee bit of controversy… I am, of course, referring to my epic-length posts about Chase Christian, the WoW.com holy paladin blogger.

Continue reading “Ideas and Conversations (and an unexpected development)”