Month: February 2010

Attention "tanks" of the Bloodlust Battlegroup

Kurn / / facepalm, gear, lfg, ramblings, tanks

To all warriors, death knights and paladins of the Bloodlust battlegroup… please, do not opt to “tank” in a random heroic if you do not have at least 535 defense rating.

To all druids of the Bloodlust battlegroup… please, do not opt to “tank” in a random heroic if you do not have 3/3 Survival of the Fittest.

I know that I’m not a particularly strong healer on my druid. I just dinged 80. I’m not trying to do Halls of Reflection or anything. But I do know that I can bloody well keep up tanks on trash in heroic Old Kingdom. Tanks who ARE immune to critical strikes by mobs.

So if you don’t have 535 defense, or Survival of the Fittest, GET THE HELL OUT OF MY RANDOM GROUPS, dumbasses.

Kurn's Q&A #6

Kurn / / q&a, raiding, ramblings

Woo, I’m a veritable posting machine today, aren’t I? Here we go, with another Q&A post based on search results that led people to my site. I take ten of them that I KNOW my site doesn’t adequately answer (or that I find really serious enough to answer) and post the search terms and my responses here.

I am absolutely not going to delve into Toravon stuff, because I’ve already answered a lot of that.

1) death knight tank stack all strength gems

Uh. No. Please don’t do this. Please stack stamina (traditionally) or things like parry and dodge if your avoidance is particularly low, or defense, if you’re not at 540 yet. Strength gems, particularly the +20 epic strength gems, are DPS only. Got it? Good.

2) grid dreamwalker

I know, right?! Seriously, make a focus macro and put it on a really easy to mash keybind and hit it whenever you zone out of the portals. I spent Dreamwalker healing my focus frame, meaning I could still target other mobs and judge them as well as spam cast Holy Light at the dragon.

3) lvl 74 druid tank gear 3.3

I’m probably not the best person to ask for this, but honestly, I felt that the BOA leather stuff worked really nicely for me as I tanked through the lower 70s. That’s the Stained Shadowcraft Spaulders and Stained Shadowcraft Tunic. Good stam, good agility (which are really your primary stats for health, dodge and armor). For everything else, I went for anything that had dodge on it, followed by stamina and agility. No joke, I tanked with Writhing Longstaff (with 35 agi on it) forever. ETA: Read the comment below by “gnome of zurich”, who really has a great breakdown of what bears should go for!

4) rhok delar bow without black dragon sinew pre tbc

Not sure what you’re trying to say here, but regardless, you cannot make Rhok’delar without the Mature Black Dragon Sinew. You can’t. That’s the string of your bow. But never fear, if you’re on the quest after getting the Ancient Petrified Leaf you can farm Burning Steppes black dragons for the sinew.

5) slime spray tremor totem

No reason to drop Tremor Totem at all on Rotface. There’s no fear or charm attached to his Slime Spray.

6) valithria dreamwalker gaining buff

I’ll presume you mean you gaining Emerald Vigor. I basically suck at getting and keeping the buff, but here’s what you should theoretically do. Zone in to the portal as soon as you can. Hit jump to fly directly up. You should have some green orb thingies right above you. Hang out in them for a bit, they’ll eventually burst as you move across them. Keep moving into the orbs and watch your timer for the end of the portals. Do your very best to hit an orb with like, 2-3 seconds left. That should afford you enough time to keep the debuff (it’s a debuff, not a buff, go figure) stacking between portal phases.

Pain in my ass. :P

7) valithria dreamwalker vigilance

Okay, I don’t have proof for this, but I would imagine this would be silly. First, she’s not generating any threat. Secondly, she’s not taking any damage. The suppressors channel to make her take less healing, but I’m pretty sure she’s not being damaged at all.

Buffs that DO work and are useful include, but are not limited to: Guardian Spirit, Sacred Shield, Power Word: Shield (for disc priest buffing purposes)

Good thinking outside the box, though. I’d recommend dropping Vigilance on any healer who stays outside of the portals.

8) glyph of holy wrath citadel

I don’t think that Glyph of Holy Wrath is ever better than any other major glyph you can use, as a paladin. Certainly not for a holy paladin. But ultimately, there are WAY too many boss fights that don’t have any undead adds to justify that glyph for a DPS rotation or as part of a tanking rotation, IMHO.

9) name of gem purple +ap/mp5 cut

You’re looking for an Infused Dreadstone or Twilight Opal. Having said that, if you’re a hunter or an enhancement shaman with mana issues… there may be bigger issues than you looking for mp5 on your gear.

10) sindragosa los in corner

I haven’t done Sindragosa yet, but this sounds suspiciously like a sort of an exploit. Exploiting is bad. Don’t do it.

I got lots of Rotface search terms too, but I’ve already addressed most of those. I should really get going on that ICC raid guide, one of these days.

A post regarding weekly raids…

Kurn / / facepalm, raiding, ramblings, weekly raids

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a simple request for you. If you plan to attend a weekly raid, please be familiar with the fight in question AND the required fights beforehand.

For example, if your weekly raid was Lord Jaraxxus in Trial of the Crusader, as it has been for those of us on Proudmoore, I would expect people to be familiar with the Jaraxxus fight as well as the Northrend Beasts fight.

That includes, but is not limited to:

– knowing what to do when a Snobold lands on you (run to the melee)

– knowing not to stand in fire

– knowing to run to the flame tank when afflicted with Paralytic Poison and vice-versa

– knowing to run away from Icehowl when he charges

– knowing to heal Incinerate Flesh

– knowing to run away from Legion Flame

– knowing to DPS adds and then return to the boss

I witnessed failure on every one of those points in my 10m TOC PUG today while on my hunter. Three wipes later (two on Northrend Beasts!) we did manage to kill Jaraxxus, but good gravy, the content, particularly on 10-man, is NOT that difficult. It’s not like it’s Faction Champs or something, where everything seems random.

“But Kurn,” you say, “I don’t know where to get familiar with the fights! I don’t raid, so I don’t even know what fights come before the weekly raids!”

Well, the best place to start, hands down, is WoWWiki. Look up Lord Jaraxxus, for example, and you get this page. The first sentence tells you that Jaraxxus is the second encounter in Trial of the Crusader, which will let you go browse through the instance bosses to find out who the first boss is, which, as I already said, was Northrend Beasts (or, as they call it, Beasts of Northrend).

Once you know what fights you’re looking at doing for the weekly, read through the fight description at WoWWiki and then, I cannot stress this enough, check out the relevent movies at Project Marmot at TankSpot.com. These movies are amazingly detailed and well done to show you various important parts of the fights, and usually have a very helpful narration to go along with them.

I think, at most, you’ll only have to check out two separate fights for any weekly quest. Yep, I’m right, check out the page at WoWWiki. There are 12 different possibilities for the weekly raid quest.

Four of them are in Naxxramas, the four first bosses of any given wing. That’s Anub’Rekhan, Instructor Razuvious, Noth the Plaguebringer and Patchwerk. So that’s just one boss fight to do.

Two of them are standalone fights, Malygos and Sartharion, located in the Eye of Eternity and the Obsidian Sanctum, respectively. That’s just one boss fight to read up on.

Four of them are in Ulduar. One is the first boss, Flame Leviathan. After that, you have a choice of Razorscale, Ignis or XT-002. So at a maximum, you’re looking at two fights.

One of the quests is Lord Jaraxxus, the second boss in Trial of the Champion, as I’ve already mentioned.

And the last one is the first boss of Icecrown Citadel, Lord Marrowgar. I would imagine this would be the most challenging of the weekly quests, just due to the fact that Emblem of Triumph gear does not make the encounter laughably easy.

I really do like the weekly raid quests and I hope to see less fail in various groups in the future. :P

The Light and How to Swing It — Kurn's Issues, Part 2

Kurn / / facepalm, healing, paladins, ramblings

Welcome to Part 2 of my issues with the current holy edition of The Light and How to Swing It, a column written by Chase Christian at WoW.com. This post will focus primarily on the three articles written thus far by Mr. Christian as well as expound on the reasons why I believe his lack of experience as a holy paladin will be detrimental to the holy paladin community as a whole. If you’d like to read the post I wrote detailing his lack of experience and the apparent false justification Mr. Adam Holisky offered to me regarding Mr. Christian’s appointment to the column, you can do so here.

Continue reading “The Light and How to Swing It — Kurn's Issues, Part 2”

The Light and How to Swing It — Kurn's Issues, Part 1

Kurn / / facepalm, healing, paladins, ramblings

Okay. I am not *generally* a bitch. But, sometimes, when properly motivated, I can be very, very good at being a bitch.

In this post, I will discuss the fact that Mr. Chase Christian, better known as the  rogue columnist at WoW.com, got the position of the Holy Paladin columnist as well. Further, I will explain how I feel that the justification used to placate me when I was intially outraged appears to be false.

Continue reading “The Light and How to Swing It — Kurn's Issues, Part 1”

I had it coming.

Kurn / / dungeons, gear, ramblings

It’s been a weird few days of heroics and randoms and such, but after a couple randoms/regular dungeons today, I hit 80 on my druid and my brother hit 78.

After I hit 80, I trained (GOOD GOD, 19g a spell?!) and organized some of my gear, bought some new relics to replace the pieces of crap I had. The 2 Emblems of Triumph per daily random is really very nice. I had 50 badges to spend and spent 40 of them on my new relics.

So then, I thought I should probably run something, get some quick badges to help get my gear up to par. Naturally, I would be laughed out of the instance if I tried to tank with my awesome 23k health or whatever, so I figured I’d heal. After all, as long as I was in tree form and no one died, they wouldn’t really think to inspect me, right? Right.

But which instance? I looked at the ones that were already unlocked for me and when I saw Halls of Lightning, I elected to not choose a random instance.

So I picked The Nexus. I needed a new mace anyways, plus it’s five badges, so hey, what could go wrong?

14 minutes after zoning in, I’d lost just one person (a DPS warrior who was standing next to the first mini-boss on a whirlwind) and we were on Keri.

And she dropped it. That’s right. On my very first trip to The Nexus, she dropped the War Mace of Unrequited Love. This is unheard of. Madrana ran The Nexus about 9 times before it dropped — easily. Katarah ran it a bunch, too. So for it to drop for me on the very first run?

I totally had it coming. Keristrasza OWED me that much.

Now, if only all of my druid’s drops would be that easy…

Thinking about spellpower.

Kurn / / healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, raiding, ramblings

I am pretty much a die-hard Holy Light spammer. As such, I stack intellect. I’m happy with my 42k mana pool in raids.

But it means virtually nothing  on the Dreamwalker fight.

So, I’m thinking of pulling out some old gear (and getting the 251 versions of my pants and gloves, which I don’t have yet) and gemming/enchanting entirely for spellpower.

Raid-buffed, I would go from 2883 spellpower to 3205, assuming chardev.org is right. That’s a difference of 322 spellpower. I’d also drop 8000 mana… but regen is not an issue on that fight. And since the “debuff”, Emerald Vigor, means 10% more healing for each stack on you, wouldn’t that mean that every point of spellpower makes a HUGE difference? I’d keep eating haste food, lest I drop below the 1s GCD with JotP up, but I’d flask for spellpower, gem and enchant for spellpower, even using the Ember Skyflare meta for 25 spellpower and 2% intellect, instead of old faithful, the Insightful Earthsiege Diamod (21 int, 600 mana back proc).

Really, it would only require spending badges I should probably spend anyways (to get 4 of my 5 T10 pieces, if only so I can upgrade them to the 264/277 versions later) and some cash to get a bunch of Cardinal Rubies.

I’d need 10 Rubies, 3 Dragon’s Eyes, 1 new meta gem, 1 new helm enchant (+crit instead of +mp5), 1 new shoulder enchant (+crit instead of +mp5), 1 30 spellpower enchant to wrists, 1 28 spellpower enchant to gloves, 1 new spellthread for my pants… ooh, and maybe Purified Lunar Dust, too, which would bump me to 3358 spellpower. Of course, I don’t have the badges for new pants AND new gloves AND a crappy trinket I will never use except on Dreamwalker.

Hm. Maybe I’ll go do a VOA 10 on Madrana and pray T10 holy pants drop, eh? ;D

I’m not sure I’m going to do this, but at least I know I CAN do it and at least I know what it would take in order to do it.

Anyone have thoughts?

Kurn's Tale of the Level 75 Fail Paladin

Kurn / / facepalm, lfg, paladins, ramblings

As you may or may not be aware, I’ve been levelling my druid with my brother (and his hunter) and my buddy Majik (and his DK). I’m a bear/tree depending on my spec, but because Majik’s been tanking damn near everything, I’m usually healing (and using my innervate on my brother, haha!).

Last week, before I got seriously sick with the plague, Majik and I ran a Drak’Tharon Keep.

In the group: the two of us plus a mage, a shadow priest and a retribution paladin.

I don’t normally do this, because it’s just plain mean, but the fail is on-going even a week later, so I’m going to name the paladin who is the failest pally in all the world.

His name is Furtor. I’ll link his armory in a sec. But first, I took some screenshots of Furtor’s gear and such.

He was, at the time, level 75.

Way to not place your talents, buddy. That he has 59 points in ret is probably the least bad thing about him. How is that possible? Check out some of his gear.

“Wait, Kurn!” you say. “Those aren’t terrible bracers. Those are actually okay.”

Yes. You’re right. Too bad he REPLACED THEM with the Darkweb Bindings he won on the run.

And, for the grand finale…

Just inspecting him made me want to cry. And then I armoried him. 1 each in Mining and JC. 2 major glyphs that suck and 0 minor glyphs. The dude was pulling 700 DPS at most at any point in time, compared to the mage and the shadow priest, who were around his level, pulling 1200-1400 DPS. Not that numbers are everything, but in this case? They were a GREAT indication of the level of nubness going on with Furtor. He is, in all respects, an amazing example of how NOT to be a paladin… particularly because his armory now shows him in much the same gear but he’s exchanged his crappy 2H of Intellect for a 1H melee sword and a spellpower shield.

Anyways, I hope to have another Holy How-To post coming up this weekend or Monday and I definitely have another tale of what I consider to be paladin failure, which I’ll share Saturday or Sunday.

Valithria Dreamwalker

Kurn / / healers, healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, raiding, ramblings

Well, I’m back to raiding. I took Sunday night and Monday night off, then showed up on Wednesday and was feeling okay, if a little worn out. I was feeling much better on Thursday when the raid began, though. We raided for 3 full hours, killing the blood princes and then cleared to Dreamwalker (killing a sort of a miniboss in there? I got an extra Emblem of Frost from some damn mob).

I was both totally prepared and not remotely prepared for the Valithria Dreamwalker fight.

Under the Totally Prepared umbrella, we have:

– Glyph of Seal of Light (instead of my typical Glyph of Seal of Wisdom – although I brought an extra one of those, too, obviously, to reglyph back to my regularly scheduled awesomeness)

– Libram of Tolerance (instead of my typical Libram of Renewal, although I’m thinking of picking up the ilvl 226 Libram of the Resolute)

Under the Totally NOT Prepared umbrella, we have:

– no spellpower flasks or elixirs

– bad flying coordination inside the portals to stack the buff effectively

– bad timing inside the portals to ensure the buff wouldn’t fall off between portals

– had no idea how freaking often the damn portals SPAWN

– had no idea what the best way to TARGET the stupid dragon was

I realized on my first attempt (the guild has already done Dreamwalker on both 10/25, but I missed out on the 25 due to being sick and the 10 by virtue of being sick and hating 10s) that targetting the dragon was going to be a problem.

“… target the dragon with your mouse, Kurn, then spam Holy Light. WTF.”

I know. I did that for my first attempt. It was very poor. I was trying to judge mobs to keep Judgements of the Pure up (ahahahaha, forget THAT nonsense in the freaking chaos) and all the time I lost in switching targets and also in switching targets back to Dreamwalker meant I was getting frustrated as crap.

“So… use a focus, Kurn. Geez, this isn’t rocket science.”

Well, that’s exactly what I did on my second attempt. (We had 9 wipes before getting her down… up?? on the 10th.) Except that HEY, focus targets that you’re focused on in one phased area VANISH if they’re not targettable in another phase!

So not only is Dreamwalker not sitting there on my Grid, but the focus mechanic is basically useless to me, right?

Third attempt, I made a macro.

/focus Valithria Dreamwalker

Then I edited my Clique frames to include my ShadowedUF Focus frame (I use ShadowedUF) as well as my Grid frames. So all my happy Clique bindings now worked on my focus frame. I dropped my macro someplace useful on my bars and would hit that as soon as I came out of every portal phase and went back to my regular Holy Light bombing.

At that point, having gotten the mechanics of healing the great damn dragon in front of me down properly, I turned my attention to not sucking at getting green orbs.

The most stacks I had at any point was about 16, and that was twice in all of our attempts. In other words, I FAIL REAL GUD. I was getting better at getting a quick rebuff once I was back inside the portals, but if I didn’t have at LEAST 3 seconds left on the buff before zoning back into the portal, I was screwed.

And, on our final (successful) attempt of the night (yes, Apotheosis, the Infamous Last Attempt is not just a phenomenon that happens to us!), some dick ninjaed my portal from me at one point, leaving me to deal with this thing called “regular mana regen” for a full portal phase. Ugh!

I’m seriously considering buying the 251 level versions of two more pieces of tier and gemming/enchanting them with spellpower, along with chunks of T9 and other old gear, so that I basically have a spellpower set specifically for Dreamwalker. I’m going to have to sit down with my gear in my bank and figure out if that’s at all possible, but I’m thinking that it can’t be a bad thing to try to boost my spellpower for that fight.

Oh, the best part about the Dreamwalker fight? 9% overhealing.

I don’t remember the last time I saw that number. Ever.

Circle of Healers #2 – The Follow-up

Kurn / / healers, healing, paladins, ramblings

Totally forgot that Saunder posted a follow-up to Miss Medicina’s original surveyish post and her recent post in response to Saunder reminded me it was something I needed to post, too! :) I snagged all six of Saunder’s questions and the two additional ones from MM.

1. Reread your original answers to the questions. With the benefit of hindsight, score your own work in terms of its cringeworthyness.

Eh, I’m not horrified by my previous responses. I don’t use Lay on Hands enough, though — and I hadn’t mentioned it at ALL in my previous post. I think I probably forgot it existed for a few minutes when writing the original answer for “least used” healing spell.

2. Has your healing improved in the area you identified as your weakest?

Not a whole lot, really, but there’s not a lot I CAN do about my lack of heals on the move and my lack of group heals. But I have pulled some huge numbers on Blood Queen attempts that just remind me that I’m usually at my best with a persistent damage aura going. It means that the tank and OT both benefit from my direct heals (well, one of them with Beacon) and the melee benefit from my Glyph of Holy Light splashes. It’s always fun to see huge numbers.

3. Have you changed your ‘least favoured class to heal with’?

Nope. Still don’t like healing on my shaman. I don’t feel any more powerful than I do on my paladin, even though I can chain heal four people at once versus dropping a 20k heal on a single person.

But apparently, this was meant to be “what other class do you not enjoy healing alongside you on your healer?”

Four months or so ago, I would have probably said a disc priest. Not that I don’t like them, but because I had my doubts that, in a 10-man, a disc priest and a holy paladin would have been able to get through Saurfang together. But then I did that in December or early January and it wasn’t just “fine”, it was “great”. So I guess maybe a second holy paladin would be my answer now. ALL FOUR other classes/specs that heal regularly have better raid-healing capabilities than I do as a holy paladin.

4. Did you read the entries from others in the webring, especially your class?

I did indeed! And still traipse through other entries if I’m bored. :)

5. If Yes to #4, did you learn anything that made you a better healer?

Not with regards to pally stuff, I don’t think (it’s been a while!) but I think I remember a priest writing about using Holy Nova to heal while on the run, which I thought was freaking brilliant and have used that when moving on my little 72 disc priest.

6. What tools/resources or information do you think you would need to improve as a healer and how could that help the community at large?

Maybe the ability for the combat log to record locations of people, movement and stoppage in movement. I love WorldOfLogs and love that they can show us the breakdown over time, show us combat log snippets… but it really doesn’t show us where we are in relation to others. That’s the one thing that I’ve really, REALLY wanted to see and it’s not a failing of WoL’s, because the combat log just doesn’t record that information at the moment. I think it would be GREAT for the community, though, if only to see where people are standing during fights, when they move as a group, singly, etc.

7. What did you identify as your worst habit as a healer? Have you improved in this area?

I said it was my cross-healing. To be honest, it’s not that I’ve necessarily improved in this area, but I am EASILY the healer in my guild who cross-heals the least. So I look good because other people are worse than I’ve ever been.

8. What did you list as your favorite healing spell and your least used healing spell for your class? Are these answers still true? If they have changed, what caused the change (i.e. patch fix, different healing environment, etc)?

Still a sucker for Holy Shock, but I’m using it less often now. I swapped to the Glyph of Beacon of Light from the Glyph of Holy Shock, but I’m debating getting the new libram and going BACK to Glyph of Holy Shock. The least-used (well, we’ll imagine I said Lay on Hands for that)… still don’t use it nearly enough, but I’ve used it on at least two Putricide kills, so even if I never use it again, I used it when it counted, at least twice. :)