Category: cataclysm

PTR Build 13156 – Quick thoughts.

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, healing, paladins, ptr, ramblings

According to MMO-Champion, holy paladins are getting buffed.

  • Divine Light base healing increased by 10%
  • Flash of Light base healing increased by 10%
  • Holy Light base healing increased by 10%
  • Holy Shock base healing increased by 10%
  • Walk in the Light (Passive) now increases healing by 15%, up from 10%.

So, 10% more base healing to all three of our casted spells, plus Holy Shock (our most-used spell) AND 5% more healing to everything we cast.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this. In fact, for months, I’ve been saying that the Walk in the Light passive we get that increases our healing vs. a prot or ret in healing gear, has been pretty lame at 10%. 15%… well, it’s an improvement, to be sure, and when added to the extra healing we’re now getting on FoL, HL, DL and HS, it’s going to feel like a bit more.

I’m definitely happy about these changes, although since they’re happening on the PTR, I won’t be able to play with them until they make it over to beta. (The beta client is supposedly acting as a PTR client, but mine isn’t working and I’m not installing 13+ more gigs of WoW on my computer.) I imagine this will make us more willing to use some of these casted spells instead of relying on Holy Shock and Word of Glory so very much.

I still think there’s something just very wrong with holy paladin healing right now in the beta. Is it just the change to a three-heal system? I don’t think so. Is it just the overall weakness of our healing, which these changes are trying to alleviate? I don’t think so.

I think there’s something very “wrong” with relying so extensively on Holy Shock and its clone, Word of Glory.

I feel like they’ve taken the paladin and not only turned it upside down, like all other healers (poor freaking druids) but also inside out. FoL is expensive, contrary to what it’s always been. HL is cheap, contrary to what it’s always been. Paladins are suddenly going to be a very mobile healer, contrary to what we’ve always been. We’ve lost some raid utility (JoL, JoW) and we’ve always BEEN the “utility” class for the Alliance.

I’m almost certainly going to play a holy paladin in Cataclysm. Apart from anything else, I KNOW the class and I KNOW the changes.

But it feels to me like we’ve been changed beyond recognition. Paladins in Cataclysm barely resemble paladins when I first started playing, and even those paladins are somewhat removed from how they were at launch.

Anyways. I’m rambling and I should get to sleep. It’s been a long day and tomorrow promises to be even longer.

Weekend Update

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, beta, cataclysm, gear, healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

(Sadly, I am not as cool as Tina Fey.)

– I’m one Manalicious quest away from Chef.

– On Saturday, I actually HAD the Blacktip Shark IN MY BAGS and used Aspect of the Cheetah to run to the NPC and while clicking on him, heard the sound when he got the Master Angler of Azeroth achievement precisely two seconds before I would have. SAD PANDA.

– ICC10 on Friday went okay, cleared Lower Spire, did Blood Wing (one-shotted Council with me on orbs, if you can imagine!) and went through some hiccups on BQL, but got her down. Tried Dreamwalker, but it didn’t go very well because we were 9 manning it and I was on my shammy for that part.

– I had an absolutely lovely Vent conversation with a blogger I’ve only known about for a couple of months, Oestrus, from The Stories of O. Previously a RL friend of Codi’s, they reconnected with each other in the WoW blogosphere. How awesome is that? It’s pretty awesome. Even more awesome? Oestrus has stuck her priest in Apotheosis to get a feel for us to see if we’re where she wants to be for Cataclysm. She came to ICC10 Part 2 on Sunday night, too.

– Seriously, I HAD THE BLACKTIP SHARK. <flails>

– Beta guilds were wiped, so if you were in my beta version of Apotheosis on Lost Isles, you may want to hit me up on Twitter at some point to get a re-invite.

– ICC10 Part 2. Went better than expected. O joined us on her priest and we promptly wiped on Plague trash. /facepalm. Nice first impression. ;) I think we made up for it, though, when we one-shot Rot, Fester and the good Professor. Dreamwalker was cake and, for the first time ever, I did that fight without healing in the portals. I kited zombies! It was kind of awesome, although I have never wanted to be able to cleanse my own magical debuffs more than right then. Stupid frostbolt volleys. Anyways, then it was on to Sindragosa. Despite some lapses in attention and despite some miscommunication, the Apotheosis INFAMOUS LAST ATTEMPT rule kicked in and we got her down for the first time. (Well, first time on these toons for many of us, anyways.)

– O will fit in beautifully if she decides to stick with us. She’s already on the “I tease Kurn, therefore I am” bandwagon. Things like “Eh on Hands” instead of “Lay on Hands” and “Hey, I need my I’m on a Boot achievement!”… Naturally, the guildies cracked up. :P

– After the raid, Football and X and I went to MC. Football’s after Sulfuron Ingots and the Eye of Sulfuras for Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros. I was hoping I’d get my Eye of Divinity for my priest off Domo, and X was along on his warlock until we got to Domo, at which point he got his 72 hunter, in case the Ancient Petrified Leaf dropped. The Eye of Divinity dropped and, after a couple of embarassing wipes on Ragnaros, off I went to the Eastern Plaguelands!

– And finally, as you were perhaps able to tell from the video above, I’ve managed to find a decent video setting for videos! This has some huge implications, particularly when I get a decent rig either later this month or in November.

ICC 25 heroic Putricide and Sindragosa tonight. Fingers crossed for the swift deaths of these two pains in my ass, if only for the hopes of my current guild’s Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25) drakes.

What Holy Paladins Need to Know for 4.0.1

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, guide, paladins, patches, ptr

*** All content copyright © Kurn’s Corner, 2010. Reproduction of this guide in full or in part without express permission from the author (“Kurn”), represents copyright infringment and violation of copyright law. Please, if you like this guide, link to it, do not copy it. ***

*Small updates on Monday, October 18th, 2010 – Spell coefficients, a note about Enlightened Judgements vs. Paragon of Virtue*

*Update on Monday, November 22, 2010 – Glyph section somewhat out of date, links to 4.0.3a post.*

With 4.0.1 here as of Tuesday, October 12th, there are several things every single holy paladin absolutely needs to know. I’m going to try to break this down into TALENTS/SPELLS,  GEAR/STATS and GLYPHS. With regards to gemming, both Runed Cardinal Rubies and Brilliant King’s Ambers turn into Brilliant Cardinal Rubies, giving us 20 intellect. We can no longer gem for spellpower. I’m not changing out my gems quite yet, but as we gain levels, we might want to re-examine our gemming.

TALENTS/SPELLS

1) We cannot spec 31/5/5 at launch, because we only get 36 talents at 80. We are not going to be balanced for content at 80 with only 36 talents to spend. Assuming the talent trees stay the same, we have to drop 31 points into holy and then have a tough choice to make. Where do we put the remaining five talents?

Our only real choices:

0-3/3 Divinity: 0%/2%/4%/6% extra healing done to and by us. This is the same talent as the one that exists on live today, only it’s three talent points instead of five.

0-2/2 Eternal Glory: 0%/15%/30% chance for our Word of Glory not to consume Holy Power. This is an amazing talent that allows us to throw out more mana-free heals.

0-3/3 Crusade: 0%/10%/20%/30% extra healing (and damage) on Holy Shock (and lots of damage stuff by 30%). I kid you not, Holy Shock is an amazing spell in Cataclysm. 30% extra healing to it is not insignificant.

0-2/2 Improved Judgement: 0/10/20 extra yards on the range of Judgement. Combined with the extra 5/10 yards on Enlightened Judgements in the holy tree, we are looking at regaining our 40 yard range by dropping two points here.

My recommendations:

3/3 Divinity: 6% flat increase on healing. Do it.

0/2 Eternal Glory: Mana matters, but is not as huge an issue at 80 as it is at 85. The mana costs at 80 are not huge.

From a very early beta build:

Flash of Light: 1658
Holy Light: 263
Divine Light: 1842

Holy Light did get bumped to 9% of base mana sometime after I got these values, which is about 396 mana at level 80. I’m not sure if these values are even still remotely accurate. However, I know that mana wasn’t a huge problem until I hit 82-83. Bear in mind that a lot of things have changed since I was level 80 in beta and I might change my mind on this, but based on the trees right now and my beta experience so far, Eternal Glory doesn’t need our extremely precious two points. If mana is terrible, this should get consideration, but the level 80 values weren’t too bad.

2/3 Crusade: No, really, my hand to God, Holy Shock is used constantly. Holy Shock reduces cast time on FoL, HL and DL and is not an insignificant heal itself. We want Holy Shock to hit as hard as possible. Which means…

0/2 Improved Judgement: I hate that I’m not picking this up, but we’re out of freaking points and we have the base distance of 10 yards on the judgements and an extra 10 yards over in holy. Plus, there’s no more Judgement of Light or Judgement of Wisdom. Judgement is seriously JUST damage and to proc Judgements of the Pure. Judging is now a selfish thing that you do once a minute, so it’s not worth it, with so few points available to us, to drop even a single point here.

So, as of right now, my recommended spec for 4.0.1 is:

31/3/2

Bear in mind that 2/2 Enlightened Judgements can be swapped to 1/2 and you can grab 2/2 Paragon of Virtue, although I think the range is a better choice for us right now in Wrath content.

2) The Holy Power Resource. I nearly forgot to mention this, actually. Holy Power is a secondary resource, meaning it’s used alongside mana, not instead of it.

As you can see, you can have 0, 1, 2 or 3 charges of Holy Power.

For the moment, the only thing that a holy paladin can really use Holy Power for is to heal with our new heal, Word of Glory. Word of Glory with 1 charge of Holy Power heals for less than 2 charges, which heals for less than 3 charges. Word of Glory is an instant-cast heal that is basically a clone of Holy Shock, only there’s no cooldown and it doesn’t use mana. It’s solely dependent on Holy Power.

How do you generate Holy Power?

a) Crusader Strike, which is now baseline for all paladins. (This will be, admittedly, not something we probably use to generate Holy Power all that often.)

b) Using Holy Shock, which is now a passive just for picking holy as your spec. Every time you use Holy Shock, you get a charge of Holy Power.

c) Directly healing your Beacon with Flash of Light, Holy Light or Divine Light. Doing so generates one charge of Holy Power, if you’re specced for 3/3 Tower of Radiance. And you should be.

3) There is no more Flash of Light spec/style, no more Holy Light spec/style. These distinctions are gone. You cannot spam Flash of Light. It is expensive in the new Cataclysmic world. You cannot spam Divine Light, our new big heal, which is sort of equivalent to Wrath’s Holy Light. It’s also expensive. Holy Light is dirt cheap, but heals for itty bitty chunks. We need to adjust to our new heals – the potency of Holy Shock, the weakness of Holy Light, the cost of Flash of Light and the additions of Divine Light, Word of Glory and Light of Dawn. Holy Radiance only comes into play at 83, so we can ignore that for the moment. (But it’s a lot of fun.)

4) Mana matters. We have lost Illumination. Seal of Wisdom is gone, replaced with Seal of Insight, which works a bit like Seals of Light and Wisdom combined, but procs from Seal of Insight only grant us 4% of *base* mana, not *maximum* mana the way Seal of Wisdom did. Further, Divine Plea is nerfed: 10% of mana over 15 seconds, two minute cooldown, reduces healing done by 50% while active. This can be glyphed to 15% of mana back, but that’s still a huge change. We cannot rely on it the way we have throughout this entire expansion. Nor can we rely on Innervates — your druid companions will almost certainly be using this on themselves. Innervate will also only work off the casting druid’s maximum mana, so feral Innervates will be useless. Even Replenishment has been changed. Instead of 1% of maximum mana per 5 seconds, it’s 1% of maximum mana per 10 seconds. What’s that? Mana Tide Totem will still be awesome? HAH. It will now increase party members’ Spirit by 200% for 12 seconds, on a 3-minute cooldown.

I say again, mana matters.

5) Beacon of Light only heals for 50% of what you heal others for. That’s right, the OP awesomeness of our beacon is gone. Combined with the Tower of Radiance talent, it’s clear that we are no longer going to want to set a beacon on someone and just ignore that target except for refreshing beacon, as we currently do.

6) Sacred Shield is gone and its effect has been rolled into our mastery. Mastery is a new stat that all 30 specs can make use of and each spec has its own. Ours is called Illuminated Healing and it means that when we cast a heal on someone, we create a shield the size of 8% of the heal on them, which lasts for six seconds or until it’s been consumed by damage. The 8% scales up with more mastery, which is increased by getting gear with mastery rating on it. Word has it that these shields our heals create are supposed to “roll” or at least not have a smaller shield replace a bigger shield.

7) Blessings have changed. For starters, Blessing of Wisdom is gone. You can find its mana regen properties in Blessing of Might, along with the attack power bonus. Blessing of Kings now only adds 5% to various stats and adds some token resistence to magic schools. Kings does NOT stack with Mark of the Wild. They are identical. Further, these are all 60-minutes and raid-wide and require no reagents.

8) Divine Intervention is gone. Farewell, old friend.

9) Resistance auras have been merged together. So have resistance totems.

10) In case you missed it above, Judgement NO LONGER applies the Judgement of Light OR the Judgement of Wisdom debuff to mobs. Goodbye, passive healing and goodbye passive mana regen.

11) Lay on Hands cooldown reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes.

12) Our spell coefficients have changed. Thanks to Ophelie from The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon for doing all the scary math for us. Here are the new spell coefficients.

GEAR/STATS

1) In order to benefit from our armor specialization, you need to wear all plate. Wearing all plate grants us an extra 5% intellect. This is godly, since our spellpower is based on our intellect. Do it.

I’m currently wearing two mail pieces: Heroic Unclean Surgical Gloves and Earthsoul Boots. I plan to swap to Gauntlets of Overexposure from the Emblem of Frost vendor, which are identical to Fallen Lord’s Handguards from regular Lady Deathwhisper on 25m.

Ideally, Halion will drop his boots, Foreshadow Steps, (although Walks and I both know these are clearly a myth and do not actually exist). If they don’t drop for me by the time 4.0.1 drops, I will probably switch to my old 258 boots, Boots of the Courageous from Icehowl in TOGC 25, since I didn’t get the Protectors of Life crafted. The Earthsouls were better. Anyways, obviously not everyone is killing Halion with regularity, not everyone is killing Deathwhisper on 25 every week, so your options may be a bit more limited.

I would be inclined to say switch to plate however you can, but keep in mind things like haste (see point #2) as you do so.

2) The amount of haste we want is going to rise. Bear in mind that Judgements of the Pure is dropping from 15% haste to 9% haste and the 3% haste from Swift Retribution/Improved Moonkin is GONE. That means the soft cap for haste that you want to aim for just jumped up from 676 to something like 1017 haste or thereabouts for a 1s GCD, given JotP + 5% spell haste (from a variety of sources — moonkin aura, shadowform’s aura and a shaman’s Wrath of Air). *** This number changes to 894 haste in 4.0.3a ***

That’s a large number, I know. Do not panic.

Why did we want to hit a 1s GCD in Wrath of the Lich King? We had a lot of spells that we needed to cast that were instant. Things like Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield, judging regularly, using Divine Shield and Divine Sacrifice… these are all on the GCD and with 1s GCDs, we’re able to hit these and get back to healing that much faster.

With the removal of Sacred Shield, the movement of Divine Guardian way out of our reach, the fact that we only need to judge once a minute, can we afford GCDs that are longer than 1s? Maybe. Though we’re losing Sacred Shield and judging 2-3 times a minute, we are gaining Holy Shock as a useful spell, which, thanks to Speed of Light, also gives us 30% haste to our next Flash of Light, Holy Light or Divine Light.

This haste can offset the longer cast times of Holy Light (3 seconds base, 2.5 seconds with 3/3 Clarity of Purpose, no more Light’s Grace!) and Divine Light, but it means using Holy Shock pretty much on cooldown.

We also gain Word of Glory, which is essentially a clone of Holy Shock, only it’s dependent on Holy Power instead of mana. Just like Holy Shock, Word of Glory is also instant. We also have Light of Dawn as our 31-point talent, which is an instant, conal heal that doesn’t heal for a ton, but can hit a lot of people at once. So, we lose:

– Sacred Shield (1/minute)
– Frequent judgements (2-3/minute)
– Divine Sacrifice/Guardian (1-2/fight)

Our commonly-used instants are now:

– Beacon of Light (refreshing every 60-90 seconds, depending on glyph)
– Holy Shock (6s cooldown, glyph no longer lowers cooldown, more if Daybreak procs)
– Judgement (1/minute)
– Word of Glory (when 3 Holy Power is accumulated)
– Light of Dawn (situational, but up to every 30 seconds)

So is it important to maintain as close to a 1s GCD as possible? Yes, I would say so. However, the other major benefit to haste rating is the lowering of cast times on various heals and that’s where Holy Shock and Speed of Light come in very handy. That’s why you shouldn’t panic. A 1.2s GCD isn’t as optimal as a 1s GCD, obviously, but don’t panic because your casted heals after a Holy Shock are still going to be pretty snazzy.

Some early beta build numbers are below. Bear in mind that in order to proc Speed of Light, you have to cast Holy Shock before the casted spell.

With 1026 haste only:

Flash of Light: 1.14s cast
Holy Light & Divine Light: 1.68s cast

With 1026 haste and JotP:

Flash of Light: 1.05s
Holy Light & Divine Light: 1.54

With 1026 haste and Speed of Light (3/3):

Flash of Light: 0.879s
Holy Light & Divine Light: 1.29

With 1026 haste and JotP AND Speed of Light:

Flash of Light: 0.806s
Holy Light & Divine Light: 1.18s

A Speed of Light-hasted Holy Light casting in 1.18s is even a bit faster than I currently get on live.

I’m going to do my best to maintain my current haste rating of 1036, which I add to with 40 haste food. However, as previously noted, I need to replace my boots and my gloves with plate equivalents. IF I get the boots from Halion, I’ll be at 1016 haste. If I don’t, I’ll be at 1006, since I’ll drop to my TOGC 25 boots. (I ALWAYS keep everything I wore in the previous tier, just in case I need a resist set or something.)

3) Librams are now stat-sticks. That’s right, we get our very own ranged weapon slot for our relics (and many will no longer be class-specific in Cataclysm!) and they add to our stats. What this means is that, almost certainly, the higher the ilvl libram or relic you have, the better stats are on it. Pallies with the Libram of Renewal will want to get Libram of Veracity which turns into this lovely thing or, if you can spare the Emblems of Frost, the Libram of Blinding Light. (I know. I kind of died inside.) But it turns into this:

GLYPHS

*** This section is outdated for 4.0.3a, please see the 4.0.3a post for updates on some Glyphs and some Glyph choices ***

Glyphs are changing. They’re not going to be consumed any longer, but rather learned. We also have a new kind of glyph: Prime glyphs, in addition to Major and Minor.

Keeva at Tree Bark Jacket says that we’ll get 1 Prime/Major/Minor at 25, 50 and 75, so we’ll have all 9 slots at 80.

What this means for holy paladins is that we want to get all of our glyphs and we want them ASAP.

First off, what glyphs do we want?

Prime Glyphs, by the way, are supposed to be the no-brainers of the glyph world and they exist in order to let us be more choosy in terms of major glyphs, while minors are supposed to be more cosmetic.

PRIME

1) Glyph of Divine Favor. Divine Favor has changed, as you can see by the talent in the talent tree. This glyph extends the duration of Divine Favor by 10 seconds. This is lovely.

2) Glyph of Holy Shock. No longer does this reduce the cooldown of Holy Shock by 1 second. This now increases its crit by 5%.

3) Glyph of Seal of Insight. This works just like the current Glyph of Seal of Light. While you have Seal of Insight active, all your healing is increased by 5%.

4) Glyph of Word of Glory. Increases the healing done by Word of Glory by 10%. Get this.

I would start out with Holy Shock, Seal of Insight and Word of Glory and eventually get enough crit to drop Holy Shock and pick up Divine Favor.

MAJOR

1) Glyph of Beacon of Light. Unchanged from live, it makes your Beacon last 90 seconds instead of 60 seconds. Yoink!

2) Glyph of Cleansing. Reduces the cost of your Cleanse by 20%. Not something I would personally invest in.

3) Glyph of Divine Plea. This used to be for prot pallies, but this is ours, now. This allows you to get an extra 5% mana back when you use Divine Plea, so you’re getting 15% mana back every two minutes instead of 10% mana back.

4) Glyph of Divinity. Same as on live, will grant you mana back and grants double the mana it normally does to its target. Actually has a spot in my glyph book, now.

5) Glyph of Light of Dawn. Reduces the cooldown of Light of Dawn by 10 sec and the amount healed by 20%. I wouldn’t touch this. LoD already heals for such a small amount (3k or so per target) that we do not need LESS healing done more often. I don’t think, anyways. This is a situational glyph, but I’ve been glyphed for it more often than not. This is golden on Infest on the Lich King, although this spell and its glyph are both changing in 4.0.3a.

6) Glyph of the Long Word. Your Word of Glory heals for 50% less up front, but provides an 50% additional healing over 6 seconds.

So what I would take here is Glyph of Beacon of Light, Glyph of Divine Plea and Glyph of Divinity. I’m not a fan of Glyph of the Long Word.

MINOR

1) Glyph of Lay on Hands. Reduces the cooldown of Lay on Hands by 2m. Since Lay on Hands is a 10m cooldown now, this brings it to 8m. Lovely.

2) Glyph of Insight. Reduces the mana cost of Seal of Insight by 50%. Doesn’t sound like much, but at 85, that’s like, 1500 mana savings or something, since the seal costs over 3000 mana.

3) Glyph of Blessing of Kings. Reduces the mana cost of Blessing of Kings by 50%.

4) Glyph of Blessing of Might. Reduces the mana cost of Blessing of Might by 50%.

Obviously, Glyph of Lay on Hands, particularly since I recommend Glyph of Divinity. The other two are up to you, but those are the only minors a holy would find at all useful.

Also, El (of El’s Extreme Anglin’) says that there are several glyphs that will be turned into new ones.

Here’s the conversion chart.

Among them, some that affect holy paladins:

Flash of Light -> Word of Glory
Holy Light -> Divine Favor
Seal of Light -> Seal of Insight
Seal of Wisdom -> Light of Dawn (so many people will have this — make sure to replace it!)

Okay, I think that sums it up. It’s a long post, I know, but I will definitely update this post going forward, since there will undoubtedly be changes to the beta and PTR before 4.0.1 launches and probably some 4.0.1 changes that will, uh, surprise us…

And for those of you who like to tank in your spare time (or tank most of the time and heal in your spare time), here’s the Righteous Defense guide to Everything you need to know about Prot and 4.0.1 at 80.

Please bear in mind that this guide is somewhat out of date as of the launch of 4.0.3a. Please see that post for updates.

*** All content copyright © Kurn’s Corner, 2010. Reproduction of this guide in full or in part without express permission from the author (“Kurn”), represents copyright infringment and violation of copyright law. Please, if you like this guide, link to it, do not copy it. ***

Cataclysm Beta Build 13066

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, paladins

A new beta build, 13066, was released on the weekend. Here are the changes from the MMO-Champion post that I believe affect holy paladins.

Holy

* Spiritual Focus no longer gives you hit based on your Spirit. Renamed to Paragon of Virtue – Reduces the cooldown of your Divine Protection by 10/20 sec and the cooldown of your Avenging Wrath by 30/60 sec.
* Enlightened Judgements now also grants hit rating equal to 50/100% of any Spirit gained from items or effects.

Okay, so hit is now dumped into Enlightened Judgements. We now have our range and our hit and we get some passive healing every time we judge. Okay.

Paragon of Virtue is interesting. Avenging Wrath is only 3 minutes anyways, so being able to pop it every 2 or 2.5 minutes is… interesting. Also interesting — actually, you know, I’d go so far as to say nifty — is that it changes Divine Protection’s cooldown, which is currently one minute. 20% less damage for 10 seconds every minute is hot. 20% less damage for 10 seconds every 40-50 seconds is downright nifty. Especially considering the prot changes.

Protection

* Divine Shield’s Forbearance effect no longer affects Divine Protection.
* Hand of Protection’s Forbearance effect no longer affects Divine Protection.

So we can now pop Divine Protection without getting Forbearance on us, which means we can still bubble if something’s coming to get us. And I just tried it out — Avenging Wrath does not prevent you from bubbling and does not give you Forbearance. I was able to pop wings and bubble immediately thereafter.

How, then, does this change what I found to be the ideal build?

Not too darn much, actually.

31/5/5

It’s pretty much the same as the last build. I’m in favour of 2/2 Enlightened Judgements. Not only does it give us our extra 5/10 yards back, but it now also adds hit rating from our spirit AND gives us passive healing.

If I could find a way to do it, I would sneak a point to grab 2/2 Paragon of Virtue. But I don’t see where to steal the point.

But wait, there’s more!

MMO-Champion is reporting that build 13082 is coming out to the PTRs and that there’s a change in the ret tree.

Rule of Law no longer increases the critical effect chance of Holy Shock, affects Hammer of the Righteous instead.

Now, this was to be expected, really, if you’ve been reading blue posts.

Ghostcrawler said on the 25th:

We’re going to try to get the 10 points Holy spends in other trees to be a little less cookie-cutterish. Options include making Divinity or Rule of Law not healing related.

And there we have it. Rule of Law is not healing related except for the extra crit to Word of Glory. But as it is, Divinity is worth more than Rule of Law as it stands (extra crit to Holy Shock and Word of Glory) but now, that option has effectively been removed from us, at least in 13086.

My question here is, how on earth does removing Rule of Law from our equation make things less cookie-cutter? We had some great discussion about where to put points and if Divinity is worth it or not and so if we chose not to pick up Divinity, we could grab Rule of Law. Now without Rule of Law, it’s literally a no-brainer.

You go for 6% extra healing done to and by you. You go for 30% chance for your WoG not to consume holy power. You go for 20 extra yards on judgements. You go for 30% extra healing done by Holy Shock.

What are your other options? Filling out Protector of the Innocent (which is horribly bugged at the moment, healing the target of your heal and mirroring that fully via beacon)? What about Denounce? Oh, wait, I know! Let’s get Arbiter of the Light. :P

If they keep the change to Rule of Law AND change Divinity to not be healing-related, I’d fill out Paragon and get two points in Pursuit of Justice or Guardian’s Favor:

32/2/7 or 32/2/7

Honestly, I don’t know how removing our healing options gets rid of the cookie-cutter. Anyone out there able to explain it to me?

In other beta news, I healed a regular Lost City today. It was fine. A quest was bugged in that we didn’t get credit for it, but I really do like this whole notion of questgivers right inside the instance entrance, much like Utgarde Pinnacle.

That’s about all for now. More at some point later. I’m feeling pretty bewildered by all this at the moment.

The Weekend of the Slacker

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, beta, cataclysm, facepalm, healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

I spent my weekend not doing much in terms of Beta and doing very little in terms of reforming my guild.

I think I logged on to Beta twice. The first time, I got into a Stonecore (regular) run wherein the first boss absolutely ruined us. Well, no, the trash ruined us and THEN the first boss ruined us. Five deaths and I was done. Either I was doing something horribly wrong or the group’s DPS wasn’t capable of downing the boss. Even using Mr. Grumpy Man (my guardian), Holy Radiance, Light of Dawn, keeping beacon up, keeping Judgements of the Pure up, none of it did anything. Yes, I used Lay on Hands, I made great use of WoG and Holy Shock and even sp0t-healed with Flash of Light and made use of Divine Light. And we all still died. I don’t get it. Every time I lose a person, I feel like that was my bad, although it probably wasn’t. I’ve done the Stonecore before. That boss was more annoying, not HARD. Now I’d have to say that, with the group I was with (82-84, then me at 85), that boss was hard. The group broke up. And I didn’t get a chance to heal the other time I was on beta, so… that was beta for you. (Yes, I have 13066 post coming.)

In terms of guild stuff, I was more productive. I snagged us a healing priest who’s relatively new to the game, but is very experienced in Wrath and seems like just the kind of player we’re looking for. The transfer will, I’m sure, be closer to Cataclysm, but it’s nice to know I have a commitment from at least one person to be a healing priest. That gives us, uh, one priest! ;)

On Friday, my brother pestered me to go to ICC10. And basically to lead it. Because he doesn’t know the instance well enough.

So I did. On my hunter.

We started out with 10 guildies, then lost one who wasn’t feeling well after Marrowgar, replacing her with a holy paladin. (Oh God, oh God, so much fail!) We also lost a guildie after Marrowgar due to GF aggro and pulled in someone who was in LFR who actually turned out to be the GM of another guild, a guild some of my old peeps had spent time in during Wrath. Hah. I really need to research the politics of Eldre’Thalas before I do that again.

We did 7 bosses (clearing Plague) without issue. All were one-shots. Everyone got at least one upgrade, which was sweet. The failadin even got Lockjaw. At least they were smart enough to know Lockjaw is good!

It was pretty awesome to one-shot Putricide. I actually got disconnected at the start of P3, but it worked out okay anyways and we got him down. Once again, the key is to have a clean transition to P3 with no adds up. My calls to stop DPS, burn the add and then burn the boss were basically right-on (I probably could have stopped DPS on the boss a little bit later, but anyways) and we trigged the tear gas just before the Gas Cloud would have dropped. Beauty.

We couldn’t do Blood Prince Council, though. Why is this?

The first two attempts were due to my brother dying to Empowered Shadow Lance (he was the Keleseth tank and had been last week, too). It just looks like the Dark Nuclei kept falling off him.

The third attempt, the bear who was tanking Valanar and Taldaram just up and died. Why? Well, it appears that the failadin wasn’t listening to my instructions.

There is one thing that pisses me off beyond all measure when I’m leading a raid or when I’m healing lead. That is people not listening to my instructions. If I tell you to beacon the paladin tank and heal the druid, that is what I expect you to do. I do not want you to beacon the druid and heal the paladin. I do not want you to beacon yourself and heal the raid. I want you to beacon the flippin’ paladin and heal the druid.

The failadin in question beaconed the druid and healed the paladin tank (and themselves). They let beacon fall off. They barely touched the druid for the remainder of the fight, it appears. Their most-used spell was Flash of Light. They did not judge a single time. This is also the paladin who didn’t have pally power AND DID NOT BUFF. I mean, we had to plead with them to buff kings. PLEAD. I basically just said “fuck it” and hit my drums now and again. It’s a team activity. Be an active member of the team or GTFO of my raid.

So we called it after 4 wipes on Blood Prince Council. We tried having the warlock (hi, X!) be the Keleseth tank on the last try, and Empowered Shadow Lance got him since 3 of his 5 Nuclei had fallen off or died.

… okay, I just looked more in-depth at the logs.

The holy paladin pug did not judge even ONCE. NOT ONCE in all my log data. That’s Deathwhisper, Saurfang, Festergut, Rotface, Putricide and 4 attempts at Council.

They used Sacred Shield… twice.

THIS is what is wrong with the players of today. I don’t care if there’s a 30% buff. I don’t care if it’s 10-man normal. If you’re not doing the very basics your class allows you to do (proper buffs, from kings on people in your raid to keeping JotP up and Sacred Shield)… then you have no business being in a raid instance. None whatsoever.

ANYWAYS.

I also did Blackwing Lair a couple of times this weekend. Our very own Football is going for Thunderfury. He has both bindings and we’re now farming him up Elementium Ore, which his pally, my shaman and my brother’s hunter can now all smelt. We cleared the room with the technicians twice and the second time we went all through the instance. Can I just say three things about Blackwing Lair?

1) No way, no how, no chance in hell could Fated Heroes have done Razorgore. Ever. Even if we could have, there is absolutely no way we could have gotten Vael. EVER EVER EVER.

2) The Suppression Room sucks beyond anything else I could have possibly imagined in this game and I cannot express how happy I am that I never had to herd 40 people through that craptastic place.

3) Nefarian is quite large. And I forgot to bring a second bow. Melee huntard ftw!

Having done that, I did manage to turn in my Broodlord’s head quest to the Cenarian Circle over in Silithus. Once Football was like “I need to do BWL” I was like “THERE IS A BWL QUEST. I MUST GRAB IT!” So I did. And I turned it in. And now I can rep grind with the Brood of Nozdormu.

Percent chance of me actually repping up with the Brood: 0.17%.

Honestly, I really do miss the epic quests and epic feel of classic World of Warcraft and getting the Agent of Nozdormu is a part of those huge quest chains. Did you know that in order to get the gates of Ahn’Qiraj open, you had to do a STUPIDLY long quest chain? I knew it was a really long chain, but had no idea how involved it was until a couple of years ago, well after BC had launched. The chain included grinding to exalted with the Brood of Nozdormu — without AQ actually being open. The next time you see your friendly, neighbourhood Scarab Lord, congratulate them on the grind. I still can’t even fathom how long that quest chain was, and I’ve helped a friend of mine on parts of it.

Percent chance of me seriously considering trying to do the Scepter quest chain: 43.2%.

Percent chance of me actually trying to do the Scepter quest chain: 0.17%. (see: grinding rep with Brood)

Percent chance of me considering farming some Silithid Carapace Fragments for money: 62.8%.

Percent chance of me actually farming some Silithid Carapace Fragments for money: 7.3333%.

Anyways. That’s just me being silly. I have too much stuff to do in-game ALREADY. There’s still a retrospective screenshot project I want to do, some old dungeon runs I want to record and narrate, not to mention a requiem for Zul’Gurub. Plus I should probably do another Holy How-To at some point, and then there’s beta stuff.

And on that note, I have a lot to do today, so I leave you all with an admittedly random, yet handy-dandy, “Which Edge of Madness Boss Is It?” calendar:

http://www.hogit.org/eom

Cataclysm PTR Build 13033

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, ptr

Just to be clear, I haven’t screwed around at all on the PTRs. I’ve really kept all my activity to the beta realms and even that activity has dwindled since I hit 85. However, MMO-Champion is reporting a new PTR build that significantly affects the paladin talent trees, particularly the holy tree.

Holy changes:

* Enlightened Judgements now also Increases the range of your Judgement by 5/10 yards.
* Divinity is gone, moved to Protection
* Protector of the Innocent is now a Tier 1 Holy Talent and has been revamped – Casting a targeted heal on any target, including yourself, also heals you for 1240.83 to 1427.62. (Multi ranks, but currently all with the same value)

Well, at first, I thought we were going to get 40-yard judgements again. Wrong. The ret talent has been changed to 10/20 yards from 15/30. So this is a big change and we basically need to grab Enlightened Judgements now, just to maintain a 30y range. I don’t care about the self-healing component at all. Like Walks was saying to me tonight, they seem to be in love with the idea of us passively healing ourselves. Screw that, I just want my range back.

Divinity being gone from the holy tree is, in my opinion, a bad move. With the change to Arbiter of the Light several builds ago, removing the critical chance for Holy Light, we now only really actively want Judgements of the Pure on our first tier. We don’t want to play with Arbiter of the Light. That left us with Divinity. Except now Divinity is gone, swapped with Protector of the Innocent, which has been changed.

Again with the passive healing. What is this, some sort of perma-mini-beacon on us? I don’t want this. Give me back the ability to increase healing done to and by me, which is infinitely more useful than this, which is PVP-only at best and completely useless except in the most dire circumstances at worst.

Prot changes (that affect us):

* Divinity is now a Tier 1 Protection talent.
* Protector of the Innocent is gone, moved to Holy.

So if we want Divinity, we now need to spec 3 points into prot, along with the 2 we already put there for Eternal Glory. But that leaves us unable to access Rule of Law!

Okay, don’t get me wrong. I was very happy to see that we can maintain our judgement range, which adds to the 20 yards from the talents in ret. They nerfed ret’s range and gave us the chance to pick up those 10 yards. But now we’re all kinds of screwed up in terms of trees.

Here’s the build I came up with for PVE healing:

31/5/5

Let’s walk through it.

Holy

Tier 1

0/2 Arbiter of the Light. We gain nothing from improved crit on our judgements and we have no way of accessing Templar’s Verdict.

2/3 Protector of the Innocent. Well, it doesn’t add to our overall healing, but it will heal us a wee bit and is, therefore, slightly more useful than Arbiter of the Light. I’ve decided to take the minimum points possible here to go up to the next tier, which is 2 points.

3/3 Judgements of the Pure. Even if it’s 9% rather than the 15% on live, haste is haste is haste.

Tier 2

3/3 Clarity of Purpose. Reduced cast time is reduced cast time. Snag this.

2/2 Last Word. It was a talent that was lacking, but in recent builds there’s really been nothing else to get us down to the next tier. This is fine, particularly since people will be staying at low health longer in Cataclysm. But I wish we didn’t need it to get to the next tier.

0/2 Blazing Light. Damage by Holy Shock and Exorcism. Pass.

Tier 3

0/2 Denounce. With the change to Enlightened Judgements, we REALLY have no room for this in a PVE healing spec. The only way I would consider dropping points in here is if it gave us mana back.

1/1 Divine Favor. Spell haste and spell crit by 20% for 20 seconds every three minutes? Yes, please.

2/2 Infusion of Light. Still a great talent even if it doesn’t cause instant Flashes of Light anymore. It still reduces the cast time on Holy Light. Really, using Holy Lights after IoL procs is the best use of Holy Light, from what I can tell. I’d take this even if it wasn’t linked to Speed of Light.

2/2 Daybreak.  I would be tempted to drop this, although it’s a very nice little talent. I would have considered dropping it for other talents elsewhere, except that we still need two points to get to Tier 4 and to have our 31 points in holy. It’s not a bad talent, but it’s another talent that I feel I am cornered into taking in order to get to the next tier. I feel that way about three talents so far, because they are simply better for PVE healing than the alternatives. That’s kind of tragic. But yes, take Daybreak.

Tier 4

All of it!

2/2 Enlightened Judgements. Pretty sure the tooltip on the talent calculator is wrong. This is almost certainly 5/10 yards, not 50/100 yards, which brings us to 30 yards with the 2 points in Improved Judgement in ret. Oh, and also, it’s more passive healing! I’m tired of seeing passive healing *to myself* in my tree.

1/1 Beacon of Light. Do it. Everyone likes bacon.

3/3 Speed of Light. Fantastic spell for haste to FoL, HL and DL, plus the shortened Holy Radiance cooldown (30s from 60) and the speed boost during the first four seconds of Holy Radiance. These are the best three points you’ll spend in all of Holy.

1/1 Sacred Cleansing. Magic debuffs suck. Pick this up.

Tier 5

3/3 Conviction. 9% extra healing, even if it’s based on procs and not 100% uptime, is still 9% extra healing.

1/1 Aura Mastery. This has saved my ass a ton this expansion. It is unchanged. Pick it up.

1/2 Spiritual Focus. In order to maintain only 31 points in Holy (the minimum before we can spec into other trees), I went with 1/2 Spiritual Focus, meaning half of my spirit is converted into hit rating. Let’s face it. We’re holy. We’re not expected to hit all that frequently. Judgements are basically all we want to hit, if we’re indeed “supposed” to be standing at range. (And believe me, I am a staunch supporter of standing way the hell in the back.) So we can skimp here, but I do like this talent very much.

Tier 6

3/3 Tower of Radiance. Anything that adds to Holy Power is good.

0/2 Blessed Life. Except this. We’re not supposed to be hit in PVE content, so if we’re being hit, chances are, things are going downhill anyways. This talent had about five seconds worth of being a PVE talent in beta, but it’s still firmly in the realm of PVP.

Tier 7

1/1 Light of Dawn. The no-brainer. We’re all supposed to love and hug our 31-point talents.

Protection

Tier 1

3/3 Divinity. We almost have to take this. It’s 6% extra healing and really still belongs in Holy. If we could swap this out with Arbiter of the Light, I’d drop Spiritual Focus altogether to pick up all three of these points and spec out of Protector of the Innocent.

0/3 Seals of the Pure. There’s no reason to take this, no healing is involved.

2/2 Eternal Glory. Yaaaaaay for Holy Power! Snag it.

Nothing else affects healing in the prot tree.

Retribution

Tier 1

0/2 Eye for an Eye. Worthless for a holy paladin.

3/3 Crusade. 30% extra healing to Holy Shock is certainly worth 3 talent points. It’s one of our most-used spells and we should be using it on cooldown. (I know, that still just feels very strange to say.)

2/2 Improved Judgement. Previous builds had this at 15/30 yards, but this has been tuned down to 10/20 yards. This makes snagging Enlightened Judgements in Holy even more important.

And… we’re out of points.

Losing out on the chance to get Guardian’s Favor and Rule of Law in Tier 2 of Retribution, not to mention Pursuit of Justice, kind of sucks. But Eternal Glory is just SO GOOD that we need to take it. And Divinity boosts my healing by 6%, which is extremely hard to say no to.

Other builds I would consider:

“Utility” Build: 31/3/7: Divinity and Guardian’s Favor, no Eternal Glory.

“Weak” Build: 31/2/8: No Divinity, but Eternal Glory and Rule of Law. I say “weak” because although you gain extra crit from Rule of Law, which is extremely awesome, you lose the 6% extra healing done from Divinity.

Honestly, you can swap points between Enlightened Judgements and Spiritual Focus too, but there’s nothing else you want or, more importantly, need to take in the holy tree for PVE healing.

That’s a pretty sad state of the holy tree. To not actively want more than one talent in your first tier? I really do need to get my feedback posts up on the beta forums. This is worse than the over-bloated Holy Priest tree back in BC, only it’s the opposite. Instead of having a hundred talents you WANT, I have trouble finding places to spend all 31 I absolutely must drop into holy.

Cataclysm Beta Build 12984

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, paladins

MMO-Champion is reporting new beta build changes, indicating that a new build is around the corner.

Holy changes are being reported as follows:

* Holy Light base healing has been reduced by 25%. Mana costs changed to 9% of base mana, up from 6% of base mana.

Wait, so you’re taking the one heal that’s got a cast time that we can use a lot, even though we don’t usually, because it’s so weak, and you’re making it weaker? AND more expensive?

* Light of Dawn base healing has been increased by 10%. Can no longer consume Holy Power to increase healing.

I’ll have to see what these numbers are like without charges of Holy Power. I’m thinking instead of around 4-4.5k for 3 charges, we’ll be lucky to see 3.5-4k.

* Improved Concentration Aura is gone.

That’s okay. They’re making all spell pushback base 70% resist. Regular Concentration Aura is fine.

* Daybreak now has a 10/20% chance to make your next Holy Shock not trigger a cooldown if used within 12 sec. (Old – 15/30% chance to reset Holy Shock’s cooldown)

I liked the first iteration of Daybreak, but this allows for two Holy Shocks in a row. We’ll be even more dependant on Holy Shock with a weaker Holy Light.

* Spiritual Focus (Tier 5) *New* – Grants hit rating equal to 50/100% of any Spirit gained from items or effects.

Well, that’s good. Yay for our judgements hitting.

Then in prot tree news, this:

* Guardian’s Favor is now a Tier 2 Retribution talent.

That makes it easily accessible to holy paladins for a reduced CD on Hand of Protection. I’ve always loved my shorter BOP cooldown, so this may fight for points.

However, it should be noted that Eternal Glory will be gone from ret and dropped into Tier 1 of the prot tree.

This means we’re looking at 31/2/8 as our ideal build for PVE healing, where we make a choice between Rule of Law (extra 5/10/15% crit to Crusader Strike, Holy Shock, Word of Glory) and Guardian’s Favor.

Note that this hasn’t been released on the beta yet and this is just what I’ve gleaned from reading MMO-Champion, but… Well, I’ll keep you posted on how healing is once this has launched.

This is probably a kneejerk reaction, but basically, I just want to say “So really, what do you want me to heal with going forward?” because that’s kind of how I feel right now. They have just augmented our absolute dependency on Holy Shock by weakening Holy Light and by changing Daybreak, which will allow two Holy Shocks in a row.

It feels very much like I have two spells:

1) Holy Shock: Instant-cast heal with a cooldown. Creates charges of Holy Power.

2) Word of Glory: Instant-cast heal with no cooldown, but dependent on charges of Holy Power.

And that’s it. That’s how it *feels*. I haven’t played much yet in instances and not at all with this build. But I’ll keep you posted.

Please feel free to ask me questions and I’ll do my best to respond.

Ding, 85.

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, healers, paladins

After 22 hours spent at 84 (much of that running around, testing things, not getting XP in instances and the like), I finally hit 85 on the beta.

Suffering through zones and quests that weren’t itemized, meaning I get beat on within an inch of my life was probably not the best choice, but I wanted to get to 85 and get my guardian dude thing and then focus on instances and not questing (as ret, no less).

Some quick numbers.

At 85, the following spells cost…

Flash of Light: 6323 mana

Holy Light: 1405 mana

Divine Light: 7026 mana

Cleanse: 3279 mana

Holy Shock: 1873 mana

Beacon of Light: 1405 mana

Light of Dawn: 4918 mana

Holy Radiance: 9368 mana

Yeah, I want to cry, too. I have about 60k mana, I think it is.

At 85, I also got Guardian of Ancient Kings. He looks like a moron. (Click for a larger image.)

He’s wearing some kind of bastardized Lawbringer armor, it looks like, is carrying a Val’anyr and is wearing a mask reminiscent of Batman.

Not only that, but he’s on a 5-minute cooldown. He lasts 30 seconds or 5 heals, whichever comes first. Here’s the effect.

I haven’t run an instance with him or anything, but… ugh.

And he … cries out in what sounds like pain. Or anger, according to Walks.

I want to heal on beta later today and report back on some of the instances. At the very least, I’ll comment on this post MMO-Champion put up. It’s by our friendly neighbourhood Lead Systems Designer, Ghostcrawler:

Right now on the Beta videos a lot of the healers seem to be spamming the weak “Heal” for 90% of the time. So spamming is ok and we are expected to spam for most of the fight as long as what we’re spamming is a weak spell? is this truly what is intended for Cata healers?

No, that’s not the intent. We made those heals very cheap so that healers wouldn’t be in constant terror of running out of mana. We also are making the normal modes easier than the heroic modes. You’ll have to pair the right heal for the right situation to a greater degree in heroic modes. I think part of what you’re seeing is that healers are using the base heal because they can get away with it. It’s also possible that in our effort to distinguish them from the more expensive heals that we made the base heals too cheap or efficient. (Source)

I have so many things to say in reply to this and I just don’t even know where to start.

Anyways, more later as the day goes on. Gotta love Tuesdays!

Quick Hunter Thoughts

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, hunters

Don’t have a lot of time today, but I did want to chime in on the whole “hunter’s pet is a replacement for X buffs, including Heroism” thing.

On the one hand, as a hunter, it would be nice to have that kind of raid utility. Half the reason I made a paladin was in order to buff people, I’m not kidding. (I was a level 50ish hunter at the time and was very jealous that my brother, a druid, could give people Mark of the Wild and Thorns.)

On the other hand, you must be joking. You’re giving an exotic pet, which is the sole domain of Beast Master hunters, the equivalent of HEROISM? The pet ability system, as it stands, consists of abilities which can be auto-cast or triggered by the player.

Imagine auto-cast heroism right on the pull courtesy of THAT HUNTARD in your group who has no idea how and when to use heroism.

So it’s not only not enough that mages get heroism (through Time Warp) but they’re giving it to HUNTERS?

Look. I’m not the best hunter there ever was, but I know how to play my class. I know how to play my class enough to know that there is a staggeringly large percentage of people playing hunters who deserve to be called huntards. Giving THIS GROUP OF PEOPLE heroism with the ability to be on auto-cast is probably one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard.

Beyond that, what about personal choice of the hunters for a pet? I don’t think I like that, in a 10-man scenario, I might be asked to bring a boar or hyena for the extra bleed debuff. Or that my trusty wolf, Sparky, is going to be a replacement for Leader of the Pack/Rampage.

So instead of basically any class, you can bring a hunter and have them bring a specific pet to buff your group.

I thought we had something with the Drums of Forgotten Kings, Drums of the Wild, Runescroll of Fortitude and such.

This seems like a really, really bad call because I truly believe, with all my heart and soul, that they’re SERIOUSLY overestimating the intelligence of the vast majority of people who play hunters. Like, the people who figured out how to tame a pet at 72. Or the people who still autoshot… and that’s it. Or the people who melee. You know, people who would never even think to google “how can i be a better hunter?” or something.

Sure, I raid primarily as a paladin, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know the basics of being a hunter. I can pull with the best of them, I can kite pretty damn well and I pull stupid hunter tricks all the time (hi, soloed my way to the Elder in Halls of Stone for the achievement). I do pretty decent DPS considering how poor my gear is and I take pride in making a warrior tank think twice about NOT giving me his vigilance in a heroic random.

What they’re doing to hunter pets represents two things:

– further consolidation of the classes, which I loathe.

– the removal of a hunter’s ability to choose what pet is best suited for his or her DPS.

It’s now going to be the hunter’s job to fill in for what’s missing in terms of raid buffs. No shaman? No mage? Get a BM hunter with a Core Hound. Never mind that the hunter might loathe Beast Mastery and might prefer Marks or Survival. You NEED to be BM for the Core Hound which is the pet with heroism.

Does this sound selfish? Perhaps. But maybe not. Hunters are crowd-controllers and ranged damage-dealers. There are several points throughout ICC where a hunter has a specific job to do — dispel the enrage on the Shambling Horrors on Lich King, use his or her pet to help take care of orbs on Blood Prince Council, potentially use their pet for healing purposes on Valithria Dreamwalker. There may even be a time when, due to a complete and utter lack of shaman (and therefore a nature resistance totem) that a hunter may be asked to take a huge DPS loss for Aspect of the Wild. A good hunter should do all of these things (and then beg for a shaman for the next time they do that encounter).

But asking us to provide those missing buffs on a regular basis, especially with some of those skills (heroism, healing, fort, healing debuff) tied to a spec most people dislike and a spec that, at least in Wrath, was not regarded as competitive raid DPS… that’s where you go too far.

If I tamed Sparky because I liked his old Furious Howl and how it upped my DPS, that was my choice. I could make the choice to go with, I don’t know, a cat, and do less DPS. But it was primarily affecting me. With hunter pets getting various group buffs, raid leaders are going to want to control what pet hunters bring.

“Kurn, if you want to raid on your hunter, I need you to have a BM spec and tame a Core Hound. I also need you to bring a wolf, a boar or hyena, a bear and maybe a fox.”

“What?”

“You know, in case we need heroism, Leader of the Pack, Mangle, Demo roar and Thunderclap.”

I have very little interest in being a hunter when our pets will be determined for us by our raid leaders or we likely won’t be able to raid. You can tell me to research my class, to research my gear, to even research my pets, but ultimately, those should be my choices and my choices should not have to constantly revolve around what is best for the raid group. They SHOULD revolve around what is best for my DPS and, on occasion, I will take a DPS hit by using Aspect of the Wild or being on dispel duty or kiting duty or something.

But tying pets to the buffs belonging to other classes? No thanks.

At least, I suppose, this almost certainly means I won’t raid as the hunter. That leaves five 80s to choose from. Wonder which class I’ll rule out next?