Month: May 2011

4.2 PTR Update – Word of Glory Buffed

Kurn / / healing, paladins, patch 4.2

While I have my own personal thoughts about how 4.2 will make T11 content easier by modifying a ton of encounters and the like, the major thing for holy paladins in this latest update from Blizzard is a single sentence long:

Walk in the Light now improves Word of Glory healing by 30% in addition to its current effects.

Walk in the Light is one of the passives we get for choosing the holy specialization, so all holy paladins will have this.

My first thought upon reading the update was “well, there goes LoD/Beacon healing!”

But then, I decided to do the math.

Of course, I ran into a snafu with the math, as is what usually happens to me when I attempt to do “math stuff”.

I wanted to go back in the logs and pull the numbers for a 3HP Light of Dawn cast on six targets and being redirected to the Beacon and add that up, then look at a 3HP Word of Glory heal and then look at what a 3HP Word of Glory heal + 30% would look like. (Bear in mind that the LoD is cast while glyphed, as is the WoG.)

Only, when I went to look at the logs, the numbers didn’t add up. There’s all kinds of math that is not making sense, primarily because of Divinity and Field Dressing. So bear in mind that although the transfer heals are NOT exactly 50% of the LoD heal, this is due to the tank’s talents and the amounts are correct, although I’m not sure why certain heals are double-dipping and certain heals are not.

[23:41:34.945] Madrana Protector of the Innocent Madrana +3992
[23:41:35.218] Madrana Light of Dawn Enhancement Shaman +6506
[23:41:35.218] Madrana Light of Dawn Feral Druid +7943
[23:41:35.218] Madrana Light of Dawn Resto Shaman +6670
[23:41:35.218] Madrana Light of Dawn Disc Priest +6608
[23:41:35.218] Madrana Light of Dawn Frost DK +*9951*
[23:41:35.218] Madrana Light of Dawn Frost DK +6506
[23:41:35.452] Madrana Beacon of Light Prot Warrior +0 (O: 1996)
[23:41:35.890] Madrana Beacon of Light Prot Warrior +0 (O: 3448)
[23:41:35.890] Madrana Beacon of Light Prot Warrior +0 (O: 3508)
[23:41:35.890] Madrana Beacon of Light Prot Warrior +0 (O: 3535)
[23:41:35.890] Madrana Beacon of Light Prot Warrior +0 (O: 3503)
[23:41:35.890] Madrana Beacon of Light Prot Warrior +0 (O: 5274)
[23:41:35.890] Madrana Beacon of Light Prot Warrior +0 (O: 3448)

So on that one Light of Dawn, the following healing went to the raid: 44,184

The following healing went to the tank, including Protector of the Innocent’s transfer: 24,712

Now a look at a 3HP Word of Glory on a target that also has a 6% buff to healing received:

[23:39:33.759] Madrana Word of Glory Prot Paladin +20306

So a 6-target, 3HP Light of Dawn heal will hit the beacon target for more than a single 3HP Word of Glory. This much, we already knew, and many people, including my buddy and fellow holy paladin, Walks, do this very well.

If, however, we add a flat 30% extra healing to Word of Glory (and this could be the way it’s calculated — but it may not be!) we get:

20306 x 0.3 = 6091.8

6091.8 + 20306 = 26397.8 = 26398 healing to the Word of Glory target.

This dwarfs that 24712 heal via Beacon transfer, even with the Protector of the Innocent thrown in. This is 26398 without factoring in another 2k (1996) from Protector of the Innocent.

For healing on your beacon target, assuming this change stays in the game through the PTR period into live, and assuming I’ve done my math right, Word of Glory will become the best way to get the most healing done to your Beacon target.

Word of Glory will not be the best way to get the most overall healing done, as you’ll still do a good amount of healing to your beacon target AND heal the raid, using Light of Dawn. If the raid is taking damage, that is.

So, a Word of Glory buff is almost certainly going to be viewed as a “nerf” to the LoD/Beacon style of healing. Leave it to paladins to see a buff as a nerf, eh? ;)

Hitting Our Stride?

Kurn / / apotheosis, blackwing descent, raiding, ramblings

So, on May 12th, we killed Heroic Maloriak for the first time.

On May 17th, we killed Heroic Magmaw for the first time. Took us 12 pulls. It was surprisingly easy fight, probably because we used a DK-kiting method. Honestly, I hate that method, but we’ve already gotten Parasite Evening several times without a “stack on melee, kite adds” method, so I feel marginally less lame for doing heroic the way most people seem to do it.

And then, last night, on May 22nd, we killed Heroic Atramedes for the first time.

Three progression bosses in 10 days?

Not to sound ungrateful or anything of the kind, but what the hell is that all about?

We’re making progress AND we’re doing it relatively easily, despite some issues.

What kind of issues? Well, on Tuesday, we knocked out regular ODS, Heroic Magmaw and tried Heroic Chimaeron for a couple of attempts, but he didn’t die. So we walked in there on Thursday knowing that Chimaeron and Maloriak were both up, along with heroic Atramedes and (for now) regular Nefarian.

However, Dayden, our tank lead, had plans on Thursday, so organizing the tanks was largely going to be on my brother’s shoulders.

So there we are, merrily attempting Heroic Chimaeron with one of our OS tanks as a “real” tank for double attack/feud soaking.

It was reading Rhidach’s post about the very same fight, the next day, that I finally managed to put to words the problem we appeared to be having:

We managed to down the fight after six attempts — though, admittedly, we probably could have done it a little sooner if not for my constant confusion of who was tanking what when and why. It was like “who’s on first”, but without the timeless humor.

Midway through our H Chim attempts, my lights flickered, but I stayed online. And then my brother, who does not live all that far from me, promptly went offline. He tweeted me from his phone:

@kurnmogh just lost power.

Well, THAT wasn’t good news.

So we got our other OS tank to swap to tank gear/spec and we had a couple of pulls like that.

And then Fog got back online! Yaaaaaay!

Two more pulls and Chimaeron was dead, with everything having gone right with taunts and swaps and healing. Whew.

On to Maloriak, to attempt to repeat our kill from the week before!

Before the first pull, my lights flickered again. And again, Fog goes offline.

So rather than get both OS tanks going on Maloriak and pull in yet another melee DPS, we went to look at Heroic Atramedes.

8 pulls and lots and lots of people eating discs, bombs and the like, and yes, I am one of the worst offenders. My computer is crap (although I have a new one arriving this week or next!) and so even though I KNOW I’m supposed to move, even though I’m hitting my strafe key as though my actual life depends on it, my toon decides to just stand there. Like a champ.

So we did 8 pulls and tweaked a few things and called it a night, without Fog regaining power.

Sunday: Maloriak time! I was a little nervous about this one. Repeat kills are never a stress-free experience for me. I want to always prove that the first kill was not a fluke.

Four pulls is all it took to repeat our Maloriak kill. Insert me slumping with relief HERE.

And from there, it only took us four pulls to kill Heroic Atramedes. Granted, it was messy as hell and I was certainly dead on the floor, but we did it! I got a battle rez on the first attempt, at Dayden’s request, and after that attempt, I was like “you know, not that I don’t appreciate it or anything, but for right now, I am likely THE WORST POSSIBLE choice for a battle rez.”

So 12 pulls each for Heroic Magmaw and Heroic Atramedes.

I’ll take it!

I know that ODS is going to be more difficult. I know that Valiona & Theralion will be more difficult. I know that Conclave will be more difficult.

But right now, my guild’s killed 3 progression bosses in 10 days and I will take that, thank you very kindly. :D

80! Again.

Kurn / / achievements, archaeology, baby paladin adventures, facepalm, healing, lfg, ramblings

Ding! My baby paladin is now 80. (Actually, 81, but anyways…)

Regardless of whether or not I end up transferring my baby paladin to Skywall, to help out the fine people of Choice, I’m really glad I started a new paladin.

I know, you think I have a screw loose, but it’s given me some FANTASTIC perspective.

I tanked my way from 68-80, which was alternately amazing and failtastic. Getting Oculus about 9 times in two days, completing it only three times and having my drake bug out on me no less than seven times was pretty bad. By “bug out”, I mean that, at different times, I could not dismount or, shockingly, I could not use my abilities on the drake AND I couldn’t dismount.

The only thing that worked — and even then, it wasn’t guaranteed — was logging off and logging back in.

Only I would log back in and I wouldn’t be in The Oculus. Nope. Nor would I be in the location I was in when I accepted the LFG queue. No, all of that would make sense!

I would end up in the Sentinel Hill graveyard in Westfall. Alive.

Each and every time this happened, that’s where I would end up.

I maintain that Sentinel Hill is the black hole of Azeroth.

At any rate…

So I hit 80 in The Oculus, wherein my drake bugged out TWICE, and then finished up the group. I wasn’t going to abandon these poor people without a tank in Oculus. That’s just mean.

After the run, I race-changed from dwarf (as adorable as male dwarves are) and went human female, as I usually prefer to be, regardless of the class. There are a few reasons for it — Diplomacy, The Human Spirit, Every Man for Himself — but also because I don’t think I could get used to being that short as a dwarf in a raid situation…

Anyhow! Then I started scrambling for gear so that I could queue up as a healer for Cataclysm instances.

Problem 1) Heirlooms listed 1-80 do not work at 80 any longer. They might have, once upon a time, but that no longer works.

Problem 2) I had essentially nothing in a few spots and spent some cash here and there. My shoulders, sadly, are now the Ornate Saronite Pauldrons.

The ilvl requirement for Blackrock Caverns and Throne of the Tides is 226. I laughed. That’s 25-man Ulduar-level stuff! It’s kind of neat to see how much gear has changed so much. I did Ulduar two years ago and 226 ilvl stuff is now what your average should be in order to get into the entry level dungeons for Cataclysm.

I suppose it’s because it was just so easy to gear up to T10 at the end of Wrath but they also wanted to let those who maybe hadn’t done anything since Ulduar come in and get right into things.

I managed to get that ilvl up to 230 and finally, I could queue up. That was ALSO very strange to me. That I had to try to gear up for these starter dungeons? I walked straight into BRC, TotT, Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle on Madrana without being challenged by the LFG tool. I guess being in mostly 277 gear will do that. Even Kurn, who was in mostly 251 gear, had zero issues queueing.

Things are blurring together for me. I dinged 80 and picked up the Patina-Coated Breastplate and the Bands of Fading Light. It seemed very weird to pick up those items to head towards Blackrock Caverns or Throne of the Tides instead of Naxxramas, let me tell you. I feel as though I’m skipping current content by skipping out on the WotLK raids, although I know I’m not. It just seems so strange to not raid those instances at 80. The disconnect between my “normal” pally and my “baby” pally is messing with my head.

I finally was ready to queue up for the entry-level Cataclysm dungeons and I looked, in horror, at my mana bar.

I had about 30,000 mana.

Do you know the last time I saw the number “30,000” next to my mana bar on Madrana? I was raid-buffed in Ulduar as we worked on Vezax. My raid thought that I had bribed a GM to give me extra mana.

So I queued up and was teleported to BRC and realized I was pulled in to a group that had lost their healer.

I took the portal that was up and found myself at the forge area.

The mage, who was the group leader, was an offensive jackass, whose first words are not “Hi, guys” or anything, but rather “dk i hope you know this fight cuz the last 3 tanks didnt.”

“I know all the fights,” he responds.

“we’ll see,” says the mage.

I’m like “wtf did I just walk into here?”

The DK pulls the boss, since the trash is done, and he, himself, stands on the grated outer ring. And the boss is, you know, nowhere near the center flame area.

After about 10 seconds of this, the mage says “lol might as well give up he will never die”

And I got pissed, because all of this could have been prevented if only the mage had said “please don’t forget to move the boss in and out of the fire in the middle so he gets the debuff.”

But he didn’t. Instead, he was like “I hope you know the fight” and the poor tank is then forced to be on the defensive.

So, while healing, I manage to type out “(tank’s name), please move him in and out of the central fire to debuff him.”

Instantly, the DK drags the boss into the central fire.

And proceeds to stand there.

And wipe us.

So I release and run and NO ONE ELSE IS. “Run back, please,” I say.

Two people (the tank and a DPS) release, one person goes offline and the obnoxious mage says “no i’m waiting for the tank to drop group because i’m not fucking running with him”

I tried to vote-kick the mage, but couldn’t initiate any more party kicks (I guess that means they vote-kicked people out before?). And when he still wouldn’t release after the rest of us got back to the instance, I dropped group.

LFG tool: 1, Kurn: 0.

My next queue took me to a partly-finished Throne of the Tides where the group was at Erunak. The paladin tank was all KINDS of vile, spouting profanity (which I don’t generally have an issue with) and teaming it up with perjorative terms against a variety of minorities, gay people in particular.

He pulled the boss and then, partway through the fight, dropped group. >.>

Not that I was upset to be rid of him or anything, but wow. What a champ.

The mage then remarked, “what a fuckin homo”.

I was about halfway through typing something along the lines of how equating “gay” and the like with “stupid” is not cool, but the rogue in the group beat me to it.

“Homophobic much?”

“yea,” responded the mage.

“Did you know that over 800 species on the planet can be gay, but only one can be homophobic?”

I LAUGHED. “Well-said. I’m with you, man.”

That effectively shut up the mage and the rogue and I chatted a bit in whispers about why homophobes are annoying mouth-breathers. Good times.

Finally, we get a new tank, a druid. And the group is suddenly awesome.

We had zero issues with Erunak or the last dude and then requeued for BRC specifically. Easy full clear, then randomed up again and got BRC again, whereupon I got a tanking shield and a healing shield. Then another requeue and we ran a full TotT run.

The fifth member of the group changed a bit — it was a DK, then it was a DPS warrior, then it was an enhancement shaman — but the druid, the rogue, myself and even that mage made a pretty good team, despite the earlier ugliness.

I went on one more BRC run later on, whereupon the tank pulled one of the fire elementals around Karsh and accidentally pulled Karsh, too. I was like “greaaaaaat, that’s going to be a wipe,” BUT NO.

The tank was superb. Not only did he make sure to get the boss debuffed, but he picked up the other add when it approached us and marked it with a skull. He used Divine Guardian, used all of his own cooldowns. I used Aura Mastery and HoSac (OH GOD, I have missed that spell!) and everything was fine. HORRIBLE pull. FANTASTIC execution.

The one major complaint I have about my experiences getting to 81 through the dungeon finder tool is this:

No one seems to know how the hell to interrupt.

Every conceivable BAD spell that could be cast DID get cast, without interruption, almost without exception.

I was that exception and Rebuke has a 10s cooldown.

Shadow Strikes on the Evolved Twilight guys in BRC? All me. Never could reach Corla to interrupt that Dark Command and, as a result, got feared and my worshipper evolved at one point, but anyways.

And that’s even asking them to do so. Like, “Hey guys, it’d be really useful if you could interrupt that Healing Wave on that mob, or Bore on this mob or Shadow Strike…”

Nothing.

Alas.

Still. Level 81. Getting there!

My ilvl is now 270, which is HILARIOUS, considering it’s all greens and some blues and my beautiful Vibrant Alchemist Stone. I keep looking at the ilvl and going “so that’s midway between ICC25 and ICC H25…” and wondering if I could heal heroic Dreamwalker. ;)

I’ve also been digging like a fool on Kurn (for the baby pally, for the Ring of the Boy Emperor and potentially Tyrande’s Favorite Doll. I’ll reforge the mastery to spirit on the ring and the doll will be useful while I wait to make/turn in a Tsunami deck.) and I am sad to report I got the More Skills to Pay the Bills achievement the other day. 525 in all four secondaries. I kind of hate myself.

There are guild updates, too. I need to boast about our heroic Magmaw kill and such, but we’ll see if we can nail heroic Atramedes tonight, too and then I’ll put it all in a single post.

4.2 – Build 14133

Kurn / / paladins, patch 4.2

Thanks to Boubouille at MMO-Champion, we have a list of forthcoming changes to holy paladins for the 4.2 patch.

Holy

Well, now. Isn’t that interesting?

Let’s look at them one-by-one.

The Beacon of Light Change

My preferred method of healing is to beacon the tank I am healing for Tower of Radiance procs when I inevitably use Divine Light or, occasionally, Flash of Light, to heal my target. During “down times”, I can easily toss Holy Shocks or Holy Lights on the raid and I do that frequently on normal-mode fights and even on heroic Chimaeron (since I’m not tank-healing that fight and my beacon is on the “DPS” tank).

The change to Beacon means that we can put our Beacon on a tank and not look at them too often, particularly if we’re healing other targets (including another tank, perhaps) a lot with Holy Light. This still isn’t enough for us to solo-heal two targets, the way we did in Wrath of the Lich King (heroic Saurfang was a great spot for this) but it’s a welcome change. During periods of low tank damage, I can spread the love around the raid with Holy Light and know that my tank is still getting 100% of those heals.

My Holy Light hits for a modest 11k or thereabouts, critting for close to 16k. But in 4.2, with 100% crits, that Holy Light that will transfer from a raid member to my tank will hit for ~22k if it crits.

Suddenly, the Beacon of Light change looks a LOT better and so does healing “off-target”, so to speak.

Holy Shock

I mentioned this in an earlier post, but I guess it got posted because the change has actually made it into the PTR build. While Holy Light, Divine Light and Flash of Light will all get bumped in cost, Holy Shock will drop in cost, if only slightly. And it means that, with our 2pc T12 bonus procced, Holy Shock will only cost us 1% of base mana (234 mana), which isn’t too bad.

Infusion of Light

Man, I remember when this made Holy Light instant-cast in the Wrath beta… Anyways, this is most likely a PVP-related change. That said, this could be clutch for getting your target an extra 20k or so, on a non-crit. And, again, with 100% healing crits in 4.2, that’s potentially an instant 40k when Infusion of Light procs.

Tweeting about this the other night was amusing.

I said:

WHOAH. HOLD THE PHONE. “Infusion of Light now also affects Flash of Light.” Instant FoLs again????

Chase Christian, of WoW Insider, responded:

@kurnmogh Instantly drains your manas!

Although I laughed at that, he’s not wrong. In 4.2, assuming the mana cost remains 31% of base mana for Flash of Light, that’s 7261 mana for each cast of that spell. I mean, sometimes you might need to haul it out, especially if it’s instant, but Flash of Light is REALLY still just an emergency heal.

Other Stuff

That post at MMO-Champion also links some new data-mined items, including intellect plate items. The off-set helm is very similar to the tier helm, but instead of haste, has mastery. Definitely worth checking out to see what we can expect to drop in Firelands.

It's Going to Be Legen-waitforit-dary!

Kurn / / apotheosis, facepalm, gear, patch 4.2, ramblings

I don’t mean for this to be me bitching (I swear), but I’ve spent time over the last week working on a fair, equitable process for determining who’s going to get the legendary staff. Note that I haven’t selected anyone, but I have recently proposed a fairly lengthy and detailed process to the officers of my guild.

I was pretty pleased with it. It promised to be long and tedious for some people (mostly the officers) but it seemed like the fairest way to do things.

There is a substantial amount of resistance from the officers thus far.

I won’t describe my process (at least not yet, but I’d like to do so at some point in the future), nor what some of my officers are countering with, but I wanted to post because if they aren’t going to accept my method, I need another suggestion. So I am now looking at backup plans. Of course, the last one took me a week to refine, so if I’m going to counter, I need to spread my net a little bit.

Please comment about legendary selections that you’ve seen in the past! Tell me about the best AND the worst selection processes for a legendary you’ve ever seen. Tell me why you liked one and why you didn’t like one. Have you ever gotten a legendary? If so, the process obviously worked out for you, but what flaws did you see in the system? Have you been passed over for a legendary? If so, the process obviously did NOT work out for you, but what did you LIKE about the process?

Finally, how is your guild dealing with the legendary staff?

Can’t wait to read your responses. :)

It's Not Easy, Bein' a Baby Holy Paladin

Kurn / / baby paladin adventures, healing, paladins

When 4.0 hit and we got our new, smaller talent trees, it seemed to work out just fine.  There was an adjustment period, obviously, and we didn’t have all the talent points we’d have at 85, but we had 36 of them and could snag a lot of useful talents.

As I work on getting my baby paladin to 85, I’m realizing that the talents are horribly placed for a toon that’s not at least level 80, who is doing a lot of PVE healing and very little questing. The baby pally is level 75 and I’ve seen a plethora of issues with our tree as I’ve painstakingly put talent after talent into our Holy tree.

Let’s look at the first tier of the Holy tree.

Arbiter of the Light – a healer won’t take this.

Protector of the Innocent – Still a dumb talent, seven months after 4.01 dropped, despite the fact that I now have 3/3 points in this at 85. As I gained levels on the baby paladin, I ended up putting two points here just to advance to the second tier.

Judgements of the Pure – Haste? Really? At level 10, I need 3% more casting/melee speed? Nope, I really don’t think that I do.

None of this really helps healing in low-level dungeons. By the time I was 15, I had 3 points in JotP and 1 point in PotI and, honestly, it didn’t feel like those four talent points — points that are supposed to be meaningful, or else we’d have unlimited specs — were doing a lot for me at that level.

Anyways, I then added a second point into Protector of the Innocent at 17 to go with my 3 in Judgements of the Pure, so I could get to the second tier.

Clarity of Purpose – More haste stuff. I don’t know about you, but with Holy Light, Flash of Light, Holy Shock and Word of Glory as my only healing spells at level 17, I don’t need all that time off of Holy Light. Divine Light isn’t even in my spellbook at level 17, and it won’t be. Not until level 62, I discovered. Why give us access to a talent that helps out a spell you get 45 levels later? Still, I took 3/3. What else was I going to pick to get me to the third tier?

Last Word – Okay, this was actually a bit useful. 2/2 here, despite the fact that, at level 85, I typically only have one point here.

Blazing Light – As someone who quested very little and instanced quite a lot, I ignored Blazing Light.

On to the third tier at level 27!

Denounce – Ignored it.

Divine Favor – Well, I took it, but only because you never know what idiots you may be running with in random pugs.

Infusion of Light – Finally, something sort of useful. Increased chance of Holy Shock crits and… wait, what’s this? More cast time reduction on Holy Light. And Divine Light. Something that, at level 27, I still won’t get for another 35 levels! Left with Denounce as an option, I took IoL instead so I took 2/2.

Daybreak – Yummy. 2/2 here. So far, this is probably the best talent in the tree because we have two of the three spells that proc it and it’s a handy proc.

On to the fourth tier of our tree, meaning we should now be level 37.

Enlightened Judgements – Meh. We’ll come back to this.

Beacon of Light – Finally, we have our Beacon and actually can heal the tank via healing other people. I was quite pleased to pick this up in the middle of Uldaman when I dinged 37.

Speed of Light – Are you KIDDING me? More spell haste? Holy Radiance cooldown? I’m sorry, I can pick this up at level 37 and I won’t get Holy Radiance for another 48 levels! Still, you take it, because what ELSE are you going to take?

Sacred Cleansing – I got this right after Beacon, so at 39. Dispelling magic effects is win.

Level 47 means we can hit the fifth tier of our talents.

Conviction – Well, yeah. Pick this up.

Aura Mastery – So very, very useless at this level. Completely and totally useless for PVE scenarios. I can see where Aura Mastery + Concentration Aura would be nice for silence/interrupts in PVP, but AM+Devo or +Ret is pretty useless when you’re rolling through Scholomance. I always like being able to use Resistance Aura with AM, but… we don’t even have Resistance Aura for another 29 levels! Skip this for now.

Paragon of Virtue – Well, we HAVE Divine Protection, but we almost certainly don’t need to use it. And what’s that? Avenging Wrath? We only get that at level 72, 25 levels from now. How about Hand of Sacrifice, you ask? Wouldn’t that lowered cooldown be useful? Sure, if we didn’t get Hand of Sacrifice at level 80. What were the designers thinking, making PoV available when only one of the three spells affected by it are even trainable by level 47?

So I got 3/3 Conviction and then pondered what to do.

I decided on 1/2 Enlightened Judgements and, since I had Beacon of Light, I threw in that last 3/3 point for Protector of the Innocent. I still hate that, but I have to admit that PotI is more useful than PoV at this level.

Level 57 brings us to tier six in our talent tree.

Tower of Radiance – a no-brainer. Snag it!

Blessed Life – I skipped it. I wasn’t getting hit enough to justify putting points here.

I still needed two more points somewhere to get to Light of Dawn.

Eventually, I dropped them into Aura Mastery after all, and 1/2 into Paragon of Virtue, then picked up Light of Dawn at 67. Your mileage may vary. You may prefer 2/2 Enlightened Judgements or something else, butthat’swhat I decided on.

You see what I mean, though, right? From level 10 to 67, there are just so many awkward moments where you don’t know where to put your talents because the talents are aiding spells you don’t even HAVE yet a lot of the time.

You get Divine Light at 62. However: Judgements of the Pure, Clarity of Purpose, Infusion of Light, Daybreak and the first point of Tower of Radiance all involve or affect Divine Light use… when we don’t have it.

How about spell haste? We have: Judgements of the Pure, Clarity of Purpose, Divine Favor, Infusion of Light and Speed of Light that all have to do with improved our casting speed… but you don’t need your casting speed improved when you’re healing Deadmines. Or Zul’Farrak. Or even Hellfire Ramparts, really.

So what’s the real issue here? Well, the holy tree is clunky for someone who is using the dungeon finder, primarily, to heal and level.

I believe that the reason for it is so that prot and ret paladins cannot access talents that really improve healing, lest they become very imbalanced. (They have a 20-second cooldown on Word of Glory since 4.1 hit because it was deemed that both those specs were doing too much healing – likely prots in PVE and rets in PVP.)

So you can’t have anything that affects the baseline paladin healing spells in the first two tiers, lest you buff prot and ret. And you can’t spend 10 talents in the holy tree all buffing the one spell we have early on that is inaccessible to other paladin specs, Holy Shock, because, well, Holy Shock does not have 10 talent points worth of  modifications to undergo. It’s a simple heal, it’s an instant heal and while it would be nice to bring it to a 5 second cooldown with those three points in Clarity of Purpose, I don’t really see where else we could buff it substantially without us being too overpowered.

This, naturally, leaves all kinds of “useful” (I use that term loosely) talents to pick up in the first two tiers. It’s the utility stuff. Increase your self-healing. Increase your haste when you judge. A 3-second Divine Light cast time at 85 would suck so they put it in reach of the prots and rets, if they want to snag Clarity of Purpose for some reason, but it doesn’t do my level 19 holy paladin much good to drop a talent point in there and get .15 seconds off my Holy Light.

Having said that, I want to be clear that just because I understand why they do it that way doesn’t mean that I like it, nor does it make it any easier to tangibly feel as though I’m improving my character when I drop a point into Paragon of Virtue at level 59, without having two of the three spells affected by that talent. As if the fact I don’t have them yet isn’t enough, they’re not even within arm’s reach, either. These are spells that I won’t get for 13 levels, in the case of Avenging Wrath, and 21 levels in the case of Hand of Sacrifice.

Of course, when you’re 80, you don’t notice most of this. You just drop your 31 points into Holy and 5 points elsewhere and, at the Shattering, I was fine with that. I had absolutely no idea how clunky, awkward and just downright nonsensical the holy tree was for the paladin who was not max level at the end of Wrath of the Lich King.

The baby pally is now 75 and I’ve taken to tanking my way through Wrath content, after seeing far too many would-be tanks who are clearly incapable of understanding what a tank is and should do.

The prot tree, from what I can see, does not suffer from these issues. If it does, the issues are nowhere as serious as in the holy tree.

Prot Tier 1:

Divinity – All healing done by you and healing effects ON you by 2/4/6%. Well, gee. Tanks get healed. That’s certainly useful!

Seals of the Pure – more damage! Damage equals threat. True, we only have Seal of Righteousness at the time we can put points in here, but that’s just a damage modifier for basically all of your seals. It’s not like it’s a modifier for your casted spells or usable abilities, most of which you don’t have yet. It’s modifying something you always have up, regardless of which one you use most. (Well, apart from Seal of Insight.)

Eternal Glory – nummy, but we’ll come back to it.

Prot Tier 2:

Judgements of the Just – The thunderclap effect for paladins. Useful for tanks so you don’t need to rely on someone else to slow the attack speed of the boss. A USEFUL TALENT. (And useful to ret/holy PVPers  for the Seal of Justice modifier.)

Toughness – Increased armor up to 10%. These are all TANKING talents! In the tanking tree! Shocking!

Improved Hammer of Justice – whatever, any remotely knowledgeable tank is going to take the other talents for PVE situations.

You can see that ret and holy would both love Toughness, Improved HoJ, Eternal Glory and Divinity for PVP situations for sure, but these are all useful, right from when you get them, as a baby prot pally.

I still maintain that .15 seconds off my Holy Light is not useful at level 17. At level 85, I love it. But not at level 17.

The holy tree is unpleasantly broken for characters who aren’t 80 yet and does a great disservice to those who wish to immerse themselves in the spec so that they may feel more comfortable and competant in the holy spec at max level. However, because they can’t put talents that are useful to holy at level, due to possibly buffing the rets and prots among us, and because this isn’t an issue of balance or tuning for those who are at max level, I don’t think we’ll see any reorganization of the tree or even a change of when we get our various class abilities. (Seriously, Hand of Sacrifice at 80? What are these people on??)

Our old talent trees, as bloated as they could be, didn’t have this problem. Spiritual Focus, which is baked-in now, was useful to us, granting us 70% pushback protection on our casted healing spells, meaning that with Concentration Aura up, we were able to cast without fear of pushback. In a low-level dungeon, this is surprisingly useful, given that you will almost certainly get healing aggro since the chances are quite good that your tank will have no idea how to tank at all. Healing Light, which was extra +healing to our healing spells, was useful to us. Divine Intellect gave us 10% extra intellect towards the end of Wrath and was, shockingly, useful to us at level 16 or level 80. And now, we have Judgements of the Pure, Protector of the Innocent, Clarity of Purpose and Last Word for those 10 talent points. There’s just no comparison. The old talents buffed our healing and intellect. These talents buff our cast times, give us a silly self-heal in Protector of the Innocent that will transfer through beacon (which we won’t have for another 27 levels if we max out PotI as soon as we can) and gives us a situational healing buff if someone is under 35% health.

Underwhelming.

I don’t have statistics on  how many holy paladins are quirky enough (like me) to level primarily as holy, whether from 80-85 or 1-85 or some bunch of levels in there, but given that the dungeon finder is a viable alternative levelling method to questing, I feel strongly that my talents should mean something, even in the early levels. Right now, my talents feel like they might eventually pay off, and that’s only because I know what I want my holy spec to look like at 85. That’s why I eventually picked up 1/2 in  Paragon of Virtue. I still need to respec so that I drop to 1/2 in Last Word and put 2/2 in PoV, but it feels ridiculous to do so now because, even at 75, I still only have two of the three spells Paragon of Virtue modifies! I have to wait until 80 for Hand of Sacrifice before it feels as though a respec would make sense.

It’s a very frustrating experience and if this is meant to be this way, if we’re supposed to be frustrated that we’re not yet max-level and that’s why half our talents don’t do what they’re supposed to, yet, that’s a pretty poor incentive to level, if you ask me.

Patch 4.2 – PTR Build 14107

Kurn / / paladins, patch 4.2, raiding

Another day, another batch of 4.2 news, courtesy of MMO-Champion.

*    Denounce has been redesigned. It still reduces the mana cost of Exorcism. However, it no longer has a chance on Holy Shock of making Exorcism free and instant. Instead, it has a 50/100% chance to prevent the Exorcism target from causing critical effects for the next 6 seconds. This effect can be dispelled.
*    Holy Shock mana cost has been decreased to 7% of base mana, down from 8%.
*    Speed of Light now reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance by 40 sec, up from 30 sec.

First up, Denounce. A talent that doesn’t have a lot of use in PVE, but I still pick it up for Chimaeron P2 and for soloing purposes. This now makes it firmly a PVP talent, as I see it.

Next, Holy Shock. Flash of Light, Holy Light and Divine Light are all going UP in cost, but Holy Shock goes down a percent. Given the 2pc T12 set bonus for holy paladins, this is pretty sweet. Having a 40% chance for your Holy Shock to cost 234 mana instead of 1640 is a very nice bonus. I think, anyways.

And finally, Speed of Light’s change means that we can use Holy Radiance every 20 seconds. I don’t think anyone’s mana pool could sustain such use, but hey. It’ll be nice that it’s basically always up.

So far: increased mana cost on our three casted spells, slight decrease in mana cost on Holy Shock, Denounce being changed for PVP and the ability to use Holy Radiance every 20 seconds.

Druids got a new mastery. I wonder if we’ll get one eventually. I don’t even need it now, but it sure would be nice to have a new one for 4.3 or 4.4 or something during this expansion. I don’t want to go a whole expansion hating our mastery.

T12 Bonus Changes, Mana Costs

Kurn / / cataclysm, gear, healing, paladins, patch 4.2, ramblings

MMO-Champion has the new T12 set bonuses for us, as well as a post by the blues about why they’re raising our mana costs significantly.

Old set bonuses:

Paladin T12 Holy 2P Bonus: Casting Flash of Light, Holy Light, or Divine Light on your Beacon of Light target has a 40% chance to grant you 2% of your base mana.

Paladin T12 Holy 4P Bonus: Your Divine Light also heals a nearby injured target for 20% of the amount healed.

New set bonuses:

Holy Paladin 2-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced — Healing with Holy Shock has a 40% chance to grant you 6% of your base mana.

Holy Paladin 4-Piece: Old bonus removed and replaced — Your Divine Light, Flash of Light, and Holy Light spells also heal an injured target within 8 yards for 10% of the amount healed.

My thoughts: (Edited May 14, 2011)

The 2pc is a lot better. 40% of the time you cast Holy Shock, you will only spend 1% 3% of your base mana instead of 9% (which is the current cost) or 7%, which is the new 4.2 cost (at least as of build  14107). Actually, you will probably need to have 7% mana (1640) in order to cast, but when this procs, you will probably get a refund of about 1406 since the real cost will be around 234 mana. Since Holy Shock is our cheapest heal that costs mana in 4.2 (Holy Light will be 12%) and is our primary method of Holy Power generation, this is a nice little bit of mana back. Remember, though, this could be on an internal cooldown, much the way Eternal Glory is!

With this bonus, it seems that they want to further emphasize the use of Holy Shock and so it is now taking Flash of Light’s place as an uber-cheap heal. In the old days, Flash of Light was stupidly cheap and even if you had pretty much no mana whatsoever, you could always afford a Flash of Light.

The 4pc is better, but not a ton, IMHO. They halved the healing of the splash heal to 10% from 20% but let us use more of our spells AND there’s no “you must heal the beacon” requirement. We still have to use a casted spell, but it can be any of the three casted spells. Even with the increase in mana to Holy Light, we’re still going to be using that quite a bit.

Mana Costs

Zarhym said:

We increased paladin mana costs because they were too efficient at healing. In raid encounters, for instance, paladins were sitting at 40% of their mana while the other healers were flat out of mana. Paladins were casting Divine Light as their main heal because they didn’t need the efficiency of Holy Light. You personally may not have been in that situation, but when looking at the overall picture, as well as running plenty of tests, this was our conclusion overall.

To which I say, “you know what? This is what you get when you design mana-free heals. You have now introduced Holy Power to the paladin class and the holy paladins now have two resources with which to heal.” But no other class has that. Blizzard now has the unenviable task of balancing holy paladins between the maximum amount of holy power one can possibly generate (through use of Holy Shock, Crusader Strike, Tower of Radiance and the Blessed Life talent), plus their mana costs and regen rates in current gear levels VERSUS everyone else’s mana costs and regen rates.

Essentially, they’ve screwed up by giving us Holy Power and we are forever going to be overpowered if they tune our mana to what other healers have, but forever underpowered if people don’t make smart use of Holy Power or, perhaps more importantly, don’t smartly generate Holy Power.

It’s still early in the expansion and I’m still trying to find what’s right for me. I like to tank heal. So I have Tower of Radiance. But on a fight like Chimaeron, where I am not tank healing, I don’t pick up Tower of Radiance. Instead, I take advantage of the crazy raid damage that fight has and I pick up two points in Blessed Life. The last time I killed Heroic Chimaeron, I picked up 12 Holy Power that way instead of the 0 Holy Power I would have generated since I am emphatically NOT healing my beacon target on that fight.

There are much better players than myself out there, much more progressed players than myself, who have probably figured out the balance as it works best for them and it’s probably also a very efficient way for them to heal, which is likely why they’re better players than I am. (Though I would challenge anyone to heal through heroic Maloriak, keeping their tank alive, at 3fps at some points, though. I would totally win.)

So my thoughts are that Blizzard has screwed up. We will never be tuned “properly” because of Holy Power, unless they specifically limit the rate at which Holy Power is generated. They’ve already taken steps to do so — Holy Light on the beaconed target no longer gives Holy Power, as it used to with Tower of Radiance. Blessed Life now has an internal cooldown and cannot occur more than once every eight seconds.

There’s already a limit on how often we can cast Holy Shock (6 seconds) and Crusader Strike (4.5 seconds) and there’s a less-tangible limit on how much Holy Power we can gain from Tower of Radiance, due to the exorbitant mana costs of Flash of Light and Divine Light — which are only going to get more expensive.

I don’t think the limits are firm enough, though, and it’s going to make balancing us a really difficult job for the next few major patches.

My two cents.

Perseverence

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, blackwing descent, raiding, ramblings

It’s said that insanity is defined by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Raiding can be kind of insane.

You rely on 10 or 25 people to do their jobs perfectly each and every time. In the beginning of raid content, even the slightest error can mean a wipe. As you gain gear and experience and familiarity with the content, slight errors happen with very little issue. Even huge mistakes can be forgiven, later on. But as you’re learning it and just after you’ve gotten that sweet, sweet first kill, execution is everything.

Last night, on our 65th overall attempt on Heroic Maloriak, we got him down.

65 times we went up against this guy. 64 times, we wiped, usually in hideous combinations of Dark Sludge, Scorching Blast, Frost Orbs and Flame Jets. Oh, and Arcane Storms during green phases. Ow.

This incarnation of Apotheosis is very different from the Burning Crusade version. We were learning, all the way throughout BC about how to lead a guild, how to lead/organize raids and how not to be douchecanoes.

We’re a lot more experienced now, after getting through BC together and the start of Wrath together before going our separate ways and seeing what else was out there for us. I know I learned a lot about my personal desires and personal limits when it comes to this game, as well as how NOT to run a raid group. I picked up a lot of tips on how to be more businesslike about running raids and guilds.

The biggest difference between now and then, though, is the attitude the people bring with them to a raid night. In Burning Crusade, it was like “aw, man, we’ve wiped on this guy for an hour. BLAH, I don’t want to do this anymore,” but obviously, progression means wiping and learning. This version of Apotheosis is very, very into killing bosses and new challenges. I rather suspect that if I were to poll them, 90%+ of the raiders would prefer trying a brand new boss fight than farming old content.

I like a good farm night just like anyone else, but once the fight is done successfully, it’s time for me to turn my attention away from it and move forward to the next. Or at least, that’s what I’m supposed to do. In Burning Crusade, I was constantly re-organizing old fights, re-explaining, just for repeat kills, at least in SSC and TK. (It got better in Hyjal and BT.) Shockingly, I CAN turn my attention to future challenges with Cataclysm’s Apotheosis. We have (knock on wood, lest I jinx us) never not done a repeat kill successfully the next time. Some are messier than others, some are super clean, but the second kill is always better than the first.

Getting the first kill is always such a relief, for me. It means that the effort we’ve invested in the fight together has paid off. It means those wipes were all worth it.

Currently being 3/13 on 25-man, in a guild comprised of my long-time WoW friends, is totally worth it all to me.

Yes. Even worth this. ;)

So we’ll keep trucking along. Don’t know that we’ll go 13/13, don’t know that we’ll get heroic Nef or Cho down before 4.2 arrives. But this group really doesn’t have much quit in them, I’ll tell you that. They make me proud to be their guild master.

More Baby Paladin Adventures!

Kurn / / baby paladin adventures, dungeons, facepalm, gear, healers, lfg, ramblings, tanks

At this point, the “baby” paladin isn’t all that little. Well. He’s still a dwarf, so he’s little in that sense, but he’s, er, level 70.

I told you. I must have a screw loose!

Of note, at level 64, I soloed Banthar, Bach’lor and Gutripper as ret.

At 65, right after Gutripper’s quest dinged me, I soloed Tusker.

/flex

Bach’lor was actually rough due to the knockbacks, but I kited a bit, stunned a bit, used WoG, Flash of Light, Lay on Hands… Win. Tusker was a bit rough too, but I got through that in three tries rather than the SEVEN Bach’lor required.

If I ever see Mana Tombs or Auchenai Crypts again, I will cry and/or scream. I had never been so happy in my LIFE to see Sethekk Halls after a certain point. Hell, I was even HAPPY to get Escape from Durnholde. The first two times, anyways.

As soon as I hit 68, I started selecting Utgarde Keep specifically in the dungeon finder. There was no WAY I was going back to Auchindoun!

And before you knew it, I was 69.

That is where the suck began.

I had so many awesome tanks in the 60s, in BC content. (Lots of crappy ones, too, but mostly the DPS were crappy versus the tanks.) And as soon as I set foot in Utgarde Keep, I started getting idiots. I’ve run UK about 14 times now. I have had two good tanks from pugs. I’ve run it three times with the pally tank alt of a guild rogue, Tikari, which is great, but the realization slowly dawned on me: if I want a good tank, I’m going to have to do it myself.

Trouble was, my ret gear consisted largely of the heirloom Shadowcraft (leather) stuff. Farm heroics for Justice Points? Me? Hah! Why would I do that when I had a bonus 20% XP anyways and would never, ever inflict my fail retness on others?

I had the heirloom valor helm and the heirloom agi cloak, so if I was going to tank, I needed the tanking cloak ($$$), the tanking heirloom chest and tanking heirloom shoulders. I could deal with the helm, even if it’s mostly geared for DPS. At least it’s stam and strength and it’s plate.

Thus began the grind.

I can’t tell you how many heroics I’ve run in the last two days. Probably about 13 or so. I capped out Madrana’s VP via dungeons and then two more because healers had Call to Arms (3 Golemblood Potions and an Obsidian Hatchling for my troubles) and then did several on Kurn. At least four, since I got three Chaos Orbs and lost out on one.

That is more level 85 heroic dungeons in 48 hours than I’ve done since December.

And along the way, some notable groups:

– An all-guild group consisting of four people who were incredibly racist and vulgar, all of whom I reported after the run. They tried to recruit me, since I was healing on Madrana. Despite their douchebagginess, they were spectacular players and heroic SFK went quickly and smoothly.

– By contrast, a heroic SFK I got today had a “tank” who had less health than I did. Now, I know, I’m in some heroic raid gear, but I should almost never have more health than the tank. Really. After he got me to blow Lay on Hands AND Hand of Sacrifice on him IN THE SAME PULL, I looked at his gear, saw it was almost all the ret PVP gear, none of it gemmed or enchanted and he was using a spellpower sword. Vote-kicking him felt good.

Having said that, I think he might have been better than a fail DK tank I had in UK on the baby pally, though. Imagine, if you will, a level 71 worgen death knight “tank” who is:

* dual wielding
* not using Death and Decay or, apparently, spreading any diseases, meaning that any time I dropped even a HOLY SHOCK on him, the other 3-4 mobs would charge me and kill me
* using Rune of Lichbane on his two weapons and only using Death Strike and Heart Strike
* apparently unable to use Dark Command or Death Grip

Vote-kicking him felt less good than the fail pally “tank” from H SFK because this guy wasn’t even 80 ot 85 yet. 71. He clearly didn’t know his class that well, but my feeling bad for him evaporated the third time we wiped because mobs killed me and he didn’t know how to taunt.

– Oh, and there was that dipstick of a druid tank in heroic Lost City. He berated everyone (except me) in the group repeatedly for being “fucking retarded” and “total fail, epic fail!”. They weren’t that bad, they just weren’t putting out much more than 7-8k damage each.

This caused the tank to yell at the ret pally so much that when the tank DEMANDED the ret pally leave… he did. I feel bad for the ret, even if he only did 5k DPS on the first boss.

We had a trash wipe on our way to the third boss and the tank just LOST it on the DK (who had replaced the paladin) and I’d had enough at that point. I initiated a vote kick and the reason I gave? “Jackass.”

It passed in about 2 seconds.

We got a very nice (albeit less geared and less skilled) DK tank to replace the abusive druid tank and finished up the instance without any issues.

– On Kurn, there was a fail H Deadmines run that actually was finished successfully, but in the middle of the nightmares, my bow broke. That’s how bad the run was and how often I died. I actually tried to rez people with Mass Rez and it was still on cooldown. Squishy tank who didn’t know the instance very well and undergeared healer. Like, my resto shaman who is just barely qualified for heroics has about 15k more mana than the resto shaman who was healing us.

– Also on Kurn, a group where the shaman healer didn’t know he could (and should!) keep Flame Shock up on Ozruk in Stonecore. So he kept getting stunned (and I did, too, at the start). I don’t know WHY, but Serpent Sting doesn’t count as damage or whatever and it’s been that way for quite some time. Luckily, I always keep some Sulfuron Slammers on me, which breaks the paralysis.

So yeah, lots of “interesting” runs.

But mission accomplished! The heirloom Might chest and shoulders are mine!

And I’ve tanked!

I actually tanked with just the chest, the tanking heirloom cloak and the valor helm (and my ring, of course) twice and then once I got the shoulders, I couldn’t resist going again.

This is the first time I’ve tanked on a paladin since 4.0 dropped.

I’m still not great, I’ve never been a GREAT paladin tank. I’ve been at least adequate most of the time, though.

I gotta say, it’s a little horrifying to realize you don’t REALLY know what the hell buttons you’re supposed to be pushing. Apart from anything else, I FORGET to Word of Glory myself to keep Holy Shield up and I keep hitting Shield of the Righteous when I only have one charge of Holy Power. I know, I know… fail!

So the baby pally is almost 71 and is tanking ’till 80ish. At that point, time to race change to human and then we’ll see how the tanking situation is. The Wrath content tanks are awful from just about every run I’ve done and I KNOW that content as a tank (thanks to tanking on Madrana in heroics back in the day and thanks to tanking on my druid, also back in the day), so it’s just easier to adjust to the new pally tanking methods and going to town on Wrath instances.

I just hope no one looks at my trinkets. They’re level 60ish blue healing trinkets…