Month: November 2009

I have no words…

Kurn / / facepalm, gear, general, healing, paladins, ramblings

Seriously, I ran a VOA 25 pug today with, bar none, the worst holy paladin IN THE WORLD. I feel so bad for him that I’m not even going to post his name. It’s just so TRAGIC.

Some of his stats:

1616 bonus healing

15.08% chance to crit (20.08% holy crit)

13819 mana

(All unbuffed.)

His ONLY spec is holy, 51/20/0 and yet he’s wearing TANK SHOULDERS and using the exalted AV trinket (yes, I’m serious) AND … Majestic Dragon Figurine. Seriously.

Surprisingly, his spec isn’t utter crap. There’s just a couple of points I’d re-allocate, but it’s a decent spec.

The glyphs are criminal.

Glyph of Flash of Light… which… unless you’re doing a spellpower/FoL build/gear set, I would never use.

Glyph of Judgement. … right, because it’s so much better for a holy paladin than any other glyph you can take, right? 10% extra damage on your judgements? AWESOME, right?! /facepalm

And then… the pièce de resistance…

Glyph of Crusader Strike.

Oh. And 0 minor glyphs.

When I noticed, after the tanks died on Koralon and he himself died on Emalon, that he had 16k mana, raid-buffed, I whispered him and said “Hey I know you’re probably new to being 80 or being holy. I raid as a holy paladin and one of the best sites I ever stumbled across was http://www.bananashoulders.com/ so you should definitely check that out for gear, gemming and enchanting advice for holy paladins. :)”

He wrote back with “ty for tip”

I can only PRAY he’s currently reading everything Siha has ever, ever written.

I uploaded the logs (because I log damn near everything) and was pleased to see my overall damage on my hunter, but then curiousity got the best of me and I saw that the paladin in question really failed hardcore, and that’s when I started armorying him.

Oh, the pain.

Blizzard, I don’t care what you do to your game. It’s your game, after all. But you certainly have to understand that there are some very good players out there who run into these completely misguided, uneducated and plain dumb individuals… and it makes us want to cry. A lot.

Observed.

Kurn / / paladins, raiding, ulduar

So on Sunday the 22nd, my guild finally got this:

observed

Yep. Defeated Algalon for the first time. AND it comes with a snazzy title!

astralwalker

Woot!

Algalon is not exactly a difficult fight, honest. It’s just making sure the black holes are closed properly, you don’t stand near collapsing stars, you don’t stand near cosmic smash and that you avoid big bang. Oh, yeah, and the tanks are taking obscene amounts of damage, too. He hits hard and *fast*. To the point where me and the other holy pally use 4pc T8 for the Sacred Shield thing — it’ll proc the damage reduction by Sacred Shield every 4 seconds instead of every 6.

That said, my fellow holy paladin died. Twice. Subsequently, this is how I finished the fight:

algalonmana

That’s right. 816 mana. Divine Plea on cooldown. Divine Illumination on cooldown. Divine Favor on cooldown. Wings on cooldown. Mana potion on cooldown. And I couldn’t run to melee Algalon because if I stopped casting for too long, the tank would die, period. I’d rather get yelled out for being completely oom than be yelled at for whacking on the boss to regain mana and not spam healing the tanks. Basically, it’s a damn good thing we got him down when we did, or else it would have been a wipe. (Incidentally, that total mana pool is a less than my usual buffed mana pool, since I’m in 4/5 T8 instead of 4/5 T9. Normally, it reads 38,989 mana. Which is gross, but I love it.)

So after we downed Algalon, it was back to Trial of the Grand Crusader.

Twins were already down, so we were going to attempt Anub’arak.

We really haven’t had a lot of practice on the encounter, for two reasons:

1) Attendence has been crappy. And I really can’t blame people. TOC is a shitty raid instance.

2) Our MT, who is the add tank on heroic Anub, is trying to do the “I’ll tank all four adds by myself and will not be hit and will block every attack for more damage than they can deal to me” strat.

As I understand it, and I am not awesome at math, Nerubian Burrowers (there are four of them each wave) hit for a base of 6.8k damage. If your tank is wearing a block value set and is 102.4% unhittable (yes, that’s unhittable, not uncrittable), the tank takes 0 damage despite the fact the adds are buffing themselves with haste or something and you can AOE down the adds on top of Anub, doing double damage, basically.

Guess who doesn’t have 102.4% unhittable status? That’s right. Our MT.

So he’ll dodge, parry and block a LOT… and then he’ll be unlucky.

Now, see, here, he blocks a couple of time and COMPLETELY blocks all of the damage:

[01:23:29.348] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Miss
[01:23:29.348] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Block (3614)
[01:23:29.348] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Parry
[01:23:29.348] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 10347
[01:23:29.348] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Dodge
[01:23:29.356] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Dodge
[01:23:29.509] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Block (4505)

Of course, that’s 7 hits by 4 adds in the same second. Eek.

And then he gets unlucky. In the same second.

[01:23:29.746] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 12616
[01:23:29.762] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Dodge
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Miss
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 10486
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Dodge
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 2050 (B: 3410)
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 3651 (B: 3410)
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Miss
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Dodge
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 2100 (B: 3410)
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 9392

That’s like, 40k damage. And he doesn’t have much more than 40k health in his block gear.

Surprisingly, this is not what killed us, primarily because us healers are leet.

What killed us on our best attempt was Hand of Protection.

The goal is to basically use as little of the ice as possible on heroic Anub, because the frost orb things do NOT respawn. You get six for the entire encounter. So, when Anub pursues people during the burrows, this is what happens.

Burrow 1, first person chased runs towards a patch of ice we drop at the entrance. It’s far, they stand there and run Anub into the ice.

Burrow 1, second person chased stays with the majority of the raid over by where Anub starts out (which is where we fight him). A paladin (can you see where this is going? haha!) casts Hand of Protection on this second target when Anub is almost on top of them. They wait until the buff is down to about 2 seconds left and then strafe on to the patch of ice they’re standing next to.

Burrow 1, third person chased kites for ~7 seconds.

Burrow 2 works in exactly the same way. And if you have a third burrow, you’re fucked.

So my RL friend, the resto druid and healing lead, assigns us our BOP cooldowns (seriously, I can’t say HOP with a straight face. I’ve tried.).

Since both the other holy paladin and I have 2/2 Guardian’s Favor, this is how it was organized:

I have people on the odd burrows (1/3, if needed) and the other holy paladin has people on the even burrows (2/4, if needed). So the second person on the first and third burrows gets BOPped by me and the second person on the second and fourth burrows gets BOPped by the other paladin.

It was, I believe, our third time getting to the burrow. I’d been BOPping people as assigned.

Burrow 1: I BOP a warlock.

Burrow 2: I’m the person who needs to be BOPped.

The MT/RL says, in raid chat:

“BOP at the last second, Mad.”

And I’m like “boy, I hope the other holy pally read that…”

And then I die to the impales from Anub’arak’s spikes.

The MT/RL says: “or just die.”

So the other pally is like “but I bopped the warlock” and I’m like “no, I did”. My BOP still had 30+ seconds on its cooldown.

It was only after I logged off that I remembered that Hand of Protection CAUSES FORBEARANCE and that there is NO WAY both of our BOPs could have been on cooldown! And since mine *WAS*, he was LYING to me! And made me out to look like a complete, total idiot in the raid!

I was SO angry that I uploaded the logs and checked them… and then I got even angrier. Because I was wrong. And oooooh, I hate being wrong!

[01:43:18.796] Madranah casts Hand of Protection on  Warlock
[01:43:18.903] Other Holy Paladin casts Hand of Protection on Warlock
[01:43:19.016] Warlock gains Hand of Protection from Madranah
[01:43:19.016] Warlock’s Hand of Protection fades
[01:43:19.016] Warlock gains Hand of Protection from Other Holy Paladin
[01:43:29.058] Warlock’s Hand of Protection fades

What the hell is that? That is some really fucking dumb luck right there. That we synched to the point where they BOTH landed on the warlock at EXACTLY the same time is just unfathomable to me. But the logs prove that he didn’t lie. He cast it.

Of course, he shouldn’t have cast it on the warlock. But at least he’s not a lying bastard.

Anyways, that’s basically all the news that’s fit to print.

Ugh.

Kurn / / general, healers, healing, paladins, ramblings

So I screwed up my Grid for my pally by messing around with it on my shammy. /facepalm. I spent about an hour redoing it, including all my custom buffs and debuffs. I tried to install GridStatusRaidDebuffs or whatever it’s called, but all I got were general LUA errors stemming from it, so I went back to doing things manually. I just hope I didn’t forget anything.

I also changed some Clique configurations. Previously, though I used Clique a lot, I didn’t have a couple spells bound to clicks. Now:

Left-Click: Flash of Light

Right-Click: Holy Light

Middle-Click: Cleanse

Thumb Button: Holy Shock

Shift-LC: Target

Shift-RC: Sacred Shield

Shift-MC: A macro to cast Beacon of Light on my focus target

I don’t make enough use of a focus, so I thought I’d try that last one out and see how it works. Typically, I am assigned one tank and told to keep beacon up on another. So I’m hoping to save time in binding a click to a focus/BOL macro.

And speaking of BOL… I finally have, at least temporarily, given up my Holy Shock Glyph. For the time being. Beacon of Light is just so freaking expensive and I’m wasting tons of mana on it per fight. How much? In just a five minute fight like Twins, I’m casting BOL five times. If I had the glyph, I’d be casting it 4 times.

Time / cast # for me / cast # with glyph

00:00 / 1 / 1

01:00 / 2 / 1

01:30 / 2 / 2

02:00 / 3 / 2

03:00 / 4 / 3

04:00 / 5 / 3

04:30 / 5 / 4

Each time I cast Beacon of Light, I’m spending 1461 mana (1538 minus 5% from Glyph of Seal of Wisdom). So, in a short fight like Heroic Twins, that’s 1461 mana I’m saving.

But I’ll still miss my 5-second Holy Shock. :(

And finally, I switched from crit on my shoulders and helm enchants (35 crit strike rating combined) to mp5 (18 mp5 combined). 18 mp5 isn’t a huge amount, but I have a ton of crit and I do NOT have a ton of mp5, so I’m hoping that’ll help out a bit. (If I ever get a Heroic Solace of the Defeated, I’ll go back to crit. :P)

So we’ll see how I do in Sunday and Monday’s raids, given all these changes. I just hope I can remember my new clique bindings!

Hee.

Kurn / / general, hunters, ramblings

Every so often, I get the urge to go flex my hunter muscles. And it always sort of surprises me when I don’t fail utterly.

I did a GREAT Ony 10 yesterday on the hunter, which started off with a really bad/stupid wipe and we had to replace the OT, but honestly, the second attempt was successful and beautiful.

We had two tanks, two healers and six DPS.

I did 4.6k DPS, we got her down without a deep breath and we got the speed kill. I was third on DPS, and I’m pretty sure that’s only because I did two volleys on the whelps instead of four, like the other hunter.

And you know, I’m not in terrible gear, but it’s really not amazing. Seven of my pieces of gear are ilvl 200 (cloak, staff, ring, ring, trinket, trinket, boots), three are ilvl 219 (chest, gun, bracers), one is ilvl 226 (belt — which I just realized I had more than enough conquest badges for), three are ilvl 232 (helm, shoulders, pants) and two are ilvl 245 (neck, gloves).

Any time I get the chance to go be a hunter for a little while, I’m pretty happy to do so. I know I’m not going to top DPS in general and I know that it’s much easier to find a good DPSer than a good healer, so I do continue to heal, but it’s nice to have a change of pace now and again.

One of the reasons I chose to continue healing on Madrana for Wrath was that I really felt I could make a bigger difference by healing for my guild rather than DPSing for my guild. It’s also frustrating to have to care much about DPS. As a healer, I care about DPS to the point of “did we hit enrage or were the healers totally OOM?”. As a DPSer, I care about it to the point of “ffs, 2.5k DPS isn’t going to do it. What’s your hit rating? WHAT?! Go gem hit, for crying out loud, and do NOT come back without being hit-capped!” or whatever. (Well, 8% hit, but anyways.)

I really wish I could do some fun stuff on the hunter, get back into the swing of it, shake off the dust and get some boots that aren’t BLUE. :)

Sigh.

Kurn / / apotheosis, ramblings

I have 5/5 T9 (ilvl 245). I have a couple pieces of 258 gear. My paladin is basically pimped out. I’m doing okay in terms of healing, when I don’t have six people sniping my heals. I’m blowing my cooldowns when I should be. I’m in a guild that clears 25m TOC with ease and has done TOGC 25m Anub’arak attempts. I’m even healing with one of my dearest RL friends.

And yet, I miss the days when I looked forward to a raid. I miss logging on for three hours and having raids that were spending time with friends. I miss the idle Vent chatter, the crazy raid warnings, the feeling of success that came from downing a boss we’d spent FAR too much time on. Like Vashj or Kael. Or even Leotheras or Bloodboil.

I miss the days of attunements, of epic-feeling quests, of non-puggable content.

I miss knowing that some of my guildies put their minds to it and, by golly, got themselves ZA bears.

I miss helping people out with their specs or rotations or gems.

I miss sitting in a passworded channel for over an hour every night after a raid, with one of my officers, talking about the utter fail from some people in the raid and how it was amazing we’d made it as far as we had, as we went over the logs together.

I miss the sense of family, friendship and belonging from my old guild.

I miss Apotheosis.

I’m basically in my current guild (for as long as they’ll have me — I’m still a recruit) because of my RL friend and because I know this guild will kill Arthas. It won’t even be a race — which will happen first, the death of Arthas or the new expansion? And that’s what it was for Illidan for us.

But I logged so many hours with my crew, so many nights of wiping, so many nights of laughing, that I find it’s those days I’m nostalgic for. I can hack it in a tough guild. I can get gear with ease. And ultimately, that’s not what matters most to me.

It’s taken me the better part of four years to figure that one out. I’d suspected it, but I’d never known, for sure, until recently.

I wouldn’t trade our Illidan kill for a server-first Illidan kill. I wouldn’t trade our Vashj kill for amazing gear. I wouldn’t trade my Hand of A’dal title for Astral Walker. I wouldn’t even trade my Hammer of the Astral Plane, which I got from Apotheosis’ first-ever Naxx10 clear, for Val’anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings. I wouldn’t trade Majik or Shadow or Toga or Kam or Kut for any of the people I raid with these days. Except maybe the RL friend, but she’s a resto druid and we ALWAYS needed resto druids in Apotheosis, and the others I mentioned are a mage, warrior, hunter, warlock and rogue/warrior. ;)

Maybe for Cataclysm, eh? I guess we’ll see.