Category: classes

Thoughts on “Meta” Specs & General Updates

Kurn / / classes, dps, dragonflight, expansions, healers, ramblings, tanks, the war within

My Updates

First up, updates. My mage and my warlock and my priest have all hit 70. It really was easy. I didn’t even have to do any of the pre-patch event to ding them. So I have 8 level 70s. And, once my timewalkers come over, I will have 10 level 70s. I feel like that’s probably 7 too many… But I am set to make some serious cash at the outset! I am very excited about this. More excited than the fact that Warband Banks work (although that is awesome), and more excited about it than the pre-patch event that I dipped a toe into today. Meh. I’m not all about cosmetic/transmog rewards, so I’ll probably just do things through once and be done with it. That gives me a bit of time to relax and not level something for a while.

Okay, enough of my updates. I wanted to talk about THE META. This is a good, old-fashioned Kurn rant, complete with examples to illustrate my points, so get yourself a drink of your choice and settle in for the next, uh, 1700 words and change. :)

The Meta

I don’t know if it’s because I started raiding when we were lucky to get 20 people into ZG for a couple of hours to kill Venoxis, or if it’s because we only ever hit up Molten Core with a full 40 people once (and once, we 27-manned Gehennas!), but I’ve never really understood the whole concept of what is the “best spec” at this time.

Okay, let me rephrase that — I’ve never really understood why people seem to care so much about what is “meta” and what isn’t.

When I started raiding, there wasn’t any room for this “optimization” nonsense. Three warlock curses up on a boss? HAH. We didn’t have three warlocks! We were lucky to have two warlocks on any given night in Vanilla and like 6 warriors who could hold aggro on Garr’s adds while the warlocks banished the other two. It was not a fun time, but we (usually) made it work. Because that’s all we had, you know? We didn’t have the luxury of saying “sorry, resto druid, we don’t have a spot for you because we have 8 priests healing”. We needed healers! We needed everything.

So when people talk about “the meta”, I want to acknowledge that yes, there are likely specs and classes that are performing really well right now. Heck, back in Burning Crusade, Beastmaster Hunters were all the rage. There was a single macro you could just hit over and over and over and over again and boom, you topped damage meters. On Gorefiend in Black Temple, I had to actually swap from my holy paladin to my hunter, Kurn, in order to not mess up the whole raid. I raided on a shitty laptop with an integrated graphics card and things did not cooperate with the encounter. I couldn’t function as a Vengeful Spirit quickly enough to take care of the shadowy constructs that would spawn, and if I was the FIRST person killed, then it was going to be a wipe. So I came in as Kurn (swapped to BM, even though my forever-Marks-heart broke at it) and would feign before every Shadow of Death cast, leaving me able to avoid dealing with constructs and death on that fight at all. And, because I think we had four BM hunters in the same group that night, I did quite well, considering all I had was crafted gear and a couple things from Karazhan.

“But Kurn,” you say, “switching to BM for Gorefiend is playing the meta!”

Kind of. The only reason I did it was because I was incredibly undergeared for T6 content on my hunter, having basically a couple pieces of the equivalent of T5 (from my Leatherworking) and some scattered epics from Karazhan. Had I thought I could keep up with my hunters in any other way, shape or form, I guarantee you I would have gone in as Marks. But the whole point of my swapping to my hunter was to not mess up the raid. So I pulled out all the stops and did everything my hunter possibly could do not to mess it up. In this sense, I played the meta to compensate for crap gear.

The way I see it, when we look at all things being even, I don’t particularly care about the meta and, I guess, that’s why I don’t understand why others care so much. Granted, I’ve never been in a guild that has pushed world firsts. I’ve never been much of a PVPer, so I don’t care if the combo of, for example, frost mage, holy pally, sub rogue, would suck in arenas, if I wanted to play with Majik and Fog.

But that’s the thing, right? Everything has to be even. So when we look at my guild’s first kill of Gorefiend, back in the day, my gear was not even, so I had to step it up with the spec to make sure we had enough DPS. (Not going to lie, the stacks of Ferocious Inspiration, my using a flask and food, etc, really helped.)

So what happens when things aren’t even? Let’s take, for example, Magister’s Terrace, again, back in Burning Crusade. At the end of the instance, you’re flying around the room, trying to kill Kael’Thas, but he’s throwing crap at you and you can hardly stand still. You’re dodging arcane spheres, phoenixes, flame strikes, all kinds of shit. How do you think that went for a holy paladin? Answer: badly.

I could reliably heal three of five people on the fight. Myself, my tank, and one DPS. That’s it. If we didn’t have healthstones from a warlock or didn’t have healing potions or didn’t have bubbles/ice blocks/etc, at least two people would die. And I was in full tier five gear. The gear should have been more than equal to the task. I daresay my skill was, too. But the fight was unfair for a holy paladin, because I had one instant-cast spell (holy shock) on a 15s cooldown. This was before beacon.

I had a priest alt at the time and did the instance in scattered blues and a couple of epics from Karazhan. Healed it without any issues. Like EZ MODE. Compared to my T5 paladin. That is ridiculous.

I did not let one challenging fight have me switch my raiding character, though. Were things harder to heal as a holy paladin than a holy priest? HELL YES. Did I care? No! Apart from dreading Shadow Labs (for Grandmaster Vorpil — the teleporting always screwed me up), and hating Magister’s Terrace, I could do anything any other healer did, barring a battle rez. (Okay, and healing while moving was hard even with Divine Favor and Holy Shock.) But my class and spec had so many benefits! Blessings of Might, Wisdom and Kings! Blessings of Sacrifice and Protection and Freedom! Crits returning 100% of mana cost! (I miss you, Illumination.) I loved the utility of my class. Hell, the very first time I killed the Lich King, both tanks had just eaten it, LK was at 11% (so 1% to go), and I bubbled and taunted the mofo and, yes, then died shortly afterwards when my bubble expired, but I bought the team an extra few seconds to DPS the crap out of him. And we won! And it was my Lay on Hands that crit Dayden as we took down Lady Vashj for the first time!

Show me a priest who can tank the Lich King for 10 seconds without dying. (I mean, apart from the priest who tanked Onyxia, who was shadow…)

The thing is, though, that even if all gear is equal and all instances are equally balanced for all specs of everything, the one thing that is never going to be equal is skill.

When doing most things in WoW, having skill that’s about average will still get you pretty far in the game. If your skill is higher than most people’s, it’ll get you further — mythic raids, high mythic key dungeons, that sort of thing. I still maintain that if your skill is high enough, you probably don’t need the added bonus that “the meta” will give you. If you can pull together your ideal group and it fits the meta, great! But if you pull together your friends and your classes and specs aren’t perfect, that’s okay too. Hell, I did the 45m Baron run in Strat UD in Vanilla in 39 minutes with 2 mages (one frost, one fire), a warlock (destro), a holy priest and myself as a Marks hunter. My CAT (that’s right, my CAT) tanked. No bear, no turtle. A cat. And we did it in 39 minutes. We used shacks and traps and then the mages and the warlock would go AOE down the towers while me and the priest drank. That was emphatically not the best group to do the Baron run with, most of us in a hybrid of T0, T0.5, ZG and possibly a tiny bit of AQ20 gear and a couple pieces of MC gear. We weren’t overgeared for the instance, though our gear was probably higher than some attempting the run. But our group composition was ridiculous. And we did it to see if we could. And we could!

I guess what I’m trying to say in all of this is… think outside the box. Use your class and spec skills to their fullest extent. Did you know that you could cast Divine Intervention on a hunter pet? Well, you could. I can’t advise you do so, but you can definitely do it. Similarly, you could mind-control and sheep the same mob (or is it vice-versa?). Weird? Yes, definitely. But play around with your skills.

Dungeons and raids, even outdoor mobs, they’re all just puzzles. Can you brute strength your way through them? Absolutely. But can you sit there and be patient and do something you have absolutely no business doing just because you thought you’d try? Yes, you can.

Challenge Yourself

Coming this new expansion, that’s my challenge to you. Go do something really dumb on your favourite character. Try to solo something that is not typically soloable. Try to make creative use of your abilities to do something neat. Don’t break the game, don’t get caught making “creative use of game mechanics” to exploit anything. But go do something fun and stupid.

Example 1: I would take night elf hunters to Dire Maul East to kill Lethtendris with me as an application. They would need to make great use of feign death, shadowmeld, track demons, and would need great pet control. If we killed Lethtendris without too much trouble, you were in.

Example 2: I would take dwarf hunters (due to the lack of shadowmeld) to Winterspring and get them to kite… I think it was Azurous, to Everlook, whereupon the guards would help you beat him up. If they did it successfully within a certain number of attempts, they were in.

These are fun and stupid things that test your skill and your ability to think outside the box. Yes, this is a game about the holy trinity of tanks, healers and damage-dealers, but it’s also an open world. The world is yours to explore. Do so! :)

Kurn's Q&A 22

Kurn / / addons, alchemy, blogging, classes, dungeons, facepalm, gear, general, healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, professions, q&a, raiding, ramblings

Good evening, or perhaps good morning! Had a lovely Tuesday, including dinner with the family at my parents’ house, then got to login and play with the new chat features a little bit. Again, as stated before, please don’t be offended if I choose not to include you in my Real ID network. I feel that the tools they give us are still rather clunky and not remotely refined enough for my tastes to consider sharing with people I don’t already know in real life.

Having said that, BOY HOWDY, do we have a bunch of interesting terms this week! You’d think someone had been BORED TO DEATH at work or something! As such, starting this week, I’ll have an anonymous form for questions you’d like to ask me for this Q&A-style post. Look for it on Wednesday or Thursday.

In the meantime…

I clearly made a mistake last week when I said:

“I like seeing myself in search terms. It’s cute.”

1)

kurnmogh, why is majik the best tank?
kurnmogh, how did majik redefine the mage class and why was he so good?
kurnmogh sucks and majik rules
why is kurnmogh just not as good as majik at wow?

And my personal favourites:

how come kurn can only play any given class in world of warcraft just about half as well as majik?
how has kurnmogh played and lived in the shadow of majik for so long?

Let’s tackle these burning questions individually.

1a) Majik is the best tank because he is a stupidly good player. It’s like he’s an idiot savant.

1b) Majik was key in redefining the mage class because he was frost and he was competitive DPS through ’till Hyjal. His approach to playing his mage was one that involved using Billy, the water elemental, to his full extent, making sure to be hit-capped and generally not dying to stupid things. However, it should be noted that, while still drunk from the traditional pony keg booze after Maulgar, Majik did blink into Gruul, causing a wipe. He was so good because, as previously noted, Majik is an idiot savant when it comes to the World of Warcraft. It also helped that he was a meter whore throughout the ENTIRETY of Burning Crusade and this drove him to swap to an Arcane/Frost rotation which meant that he was constantly Arcane Explosioning on Hyjal waves. Like a tool. Sure, his numbers were huge, but I do believe he started dying more frequently at this point, which had a negative effect on his overall DPS.

1c) We’ll pair the next two together, as they’re essentially the same. It’s true, dear readers, I am not as good as Majik is at WoW. I just don’t have the instincts that he does when it comes to, well, basically anything. Majik is ten times better at this game than I am and doesn’t have this habit of forgetting to do things like pop class-specific cooldowns the way I do. (Nature’s Swiftness? What’s that?)

1d) My favourite questions! Hooray!

– Majik has four level 80s and is working on his fifth. The classes are: mage, druid, shaman and death knight. Kurn has six level 80s and they are: hunter, paladin, shaman, mage, druid, priest. As you can see, there’s some overlap. Majik’s hunter is in his 40s, Majik’s highest paladin toon still would get beat down by Hogger and Kurn hates death knights in general, so the comparison is really versus each other when it comes to a mage, a druid and a shaman.

– Given that Majik raided full-time on his mage for years, that’s not a fair comparison. This leaves us with two alts, the druids and the shaman. I fully agree I can only play the druid and shaman half as well as Majik can. Why? This is largely because I have spent all my time really focused on the paladin and the hunter.

– Thus, while I fully admit I can’t play a mage, druid or shaman as well as Majik, due in part to my not being an idiot savant, if he wants to try to level up his hunter or paladin to get a good comparison going, he is welcome to do so.

– As to living in his shadow, I’ve got to say that it was cold there in his shadow, to never have sunlight on my face. I was content to let him shine, that’s my way. I always walked a step behind. So he was the one with all the glory, while I was the one with all the strength. I wonder if he knows that I’m really his hero or everything he wishes he could be? Clearly, I am the wind beneath his wings.

Now that I’ve learned from my lesson regarding search terms, let’s move on!

2) unbound plague ticks damage

Here’s a parse of a mage in the raid having Unbound Plague for 10 seconds before passing it off:

[23:34:40.353] Mage afflicted by Unbound Plague from Professor Putricide
[23:34:41.515] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage Absorb (999)
[23:34:42.459] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage Absorb (1249)
[23:34:43.463] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage Absorb (1561)
[23:34:44.410] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 1410 (A: 541)
[23:34:45.424] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 2439
[23:34:46.359] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 3049
[23:34:47.507] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 3811
[23:34:48.433] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 4764
[23:34:49.354] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 5955
[23:34:50.399] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 7444

Here’s me in the same raid for 11 ticks:

[23:37:09.981] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 681  (A: 289)
[23:37:11.135] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 1212
[23:37:11.978] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 1254 (A: 261)
[23:37:13.153] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 1895
[23:37:13.965] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 2368
[23:37:15.331] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 2960
[23:37:15.877] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 3701
[23:37:17.203] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 4626
[23:37:17.827] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 5782
[23:37:19.300] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 7227
[23:37:19.964] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana Absorb (9034)

So you can get an idea of the damage: it starts out very low and ramps up hugely. The damage it does isn’t too bad, but if someone with Plague Sickness gets it, that damage is increased by 250%.

3) any new way to cheat unbound plague

Well, I don’t condone cheating. Are you talking about better plague visibility now that AVR and AVRE have been broken? If so, you may want to look into using HudMap:

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/hudmap.aspx

4) dbm mark vengeful shade

Okay, here’s the problem with Vengeful Shades; they’re not able to be targetted. That means you can’t click on them to mark them, you can’t hit V and see their health bars. You just have to watch for them when they spawn and run the hell away.

5) does feign death work on frozen orbs on toravon

Yes.

6) elixir mastery will double flasks?

Okay, let’s explain this again.

As an alchemist, you get this fun thing called “Mixology” which doubles all elixir and flask *durations* and increases their effects slightly.

In order to have the *possibility* to proc extra flasks, you must be an elixir-specced alchemist, that is an Elixir Master. This will not proc all the time. This will not double your haul. This happens approximately at a 10% rate from what I’ve noticed. So for every ten flasks you make, you will roughly get one extra.

7) how many people go into frostmourne on 25 lk

On normal, this is one at a time, approximately once a minute throughout the final phase when he casts Harvest Soul on someone. On heroic, EVERYONE goes into Frostmourne.

8) lightning-infused leggings worth it

I recently crafted mine, replacing the heroic Legplates of Failing Light. After looking at the Ruby Sanctum loot tables at MMO-Champion there are NO new legs being added. That means that there are no legs higher than ilvl 264 with haste on them. So yes. Definitely worth it for any holy paladin.

9) server transfer raid lockout

It all gets cleared. I had done my daily random heroic before I transferred my paladin. Then I transferred and ran another — none were barred from me, and I also got 2 extra Emblems of Frost by virtue of doing another “first” random.

10) shadow trap lich king

Don’t stand in them. It’s not rocket science, folks.

Healing Classes and History

Kurn / / classes, druids, general, healers, healing, paladins, priests, ramblings, shamans

(or, Why the Hell do I Have All Four Healing Classes??!?!)

Yep. It’s true. I finally have all four healing classes at max level. I’m still not sure why, exactly, but I do. As such, I feel the need to discuss some of the differences and such between them. This isn’t going to be a direct comparison between all the four classes and five specs, but more my own history and views on each. I feel that I’ve spent a lot of time recently giving out information, which I love to do, but haven’t spent a ton of time on me/my classes/my history, despite the whole “I hate my guild” post last week. So this is a fair amount of rambling about my history with my healers in the game. You’ve been warned. ;)

Continue reading “Healing Classes and History”

Updates ahoy!

Kurn / / cataclysm, classes, general, healers, healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, priests, raiding, ramblings, shamans

So, a variety of updates tonight/this morning.

1) Saurfang heroic down (one-shotted!), bringing our totals to 7/12 hardmodes down. Remaining are Deathwhisper, Festergut, Putricide, Sindragosa and Lich King.

Pro tip: 3 holy paladins on Marks of the Fallen Champion on heroic Saurfang = win.

2) I still hate heroic Dreamwalker, despite the fact we one-shot the encounter on our second week of attempts on her (we got her on the 4th last reset). I didn’t miss a portal this time (until the last one; I should have gone in, but I stayed out) but I got an orb like, 6 seconds before we dropped out, sadly, so my buff fell off. And then I got an orb ninjaed from me! I TOLD them all to wait for people inside, but noooo. ;)

3) The healing lead-type situation has gotten moderately better. My RL friend the resto druid SHOULD, with any luck at all, be back next week. Her RL issues have lessened (though work picked up, but should be settling down again soon) so I’m totally ready to give her the healers back. In the meantime, I’ve been doing healing since she’s been gone, basically, which is something like a month (full-time) and a few raids before that.

The caster officer/raid leader (shadow priest who goes disc for us on occasion) and I have a good rapport, really, so we’ve talked a LOT about healing and healers. He’s been my main contact with the officers, playing messenger boy between me and the tanks. Until this week.

The guild has a funny structure. Apparently those who are “officers” don’t have access to officer chat. Their “officer” discussions take place in a custom chat channel.

This channel is one that the raid leader asked me to join this week. Hooray. I’ve been in there since Sunday and it’s a little intimidating to be in there with the MT/guild leader who yells at people, the former GM who plays casually these days and others. At least the hunter/physical DPS officer is there. She’s pretty awesome and is basically my only real “friend” in the guild besides my friend the druid.

I have to say that the disconnect between the MT’s MT personality and his officer-chat personality is staggering. He can be yelling at people in raid and then discussing a new restaurant he wants to check out at the same time in the “officer” channel.

Anyways, the situation that had me questioning people’s opinions of me has been pretty much settled. I’m the stand-in healing lead, period. And they (mostly!) listen to me. I can see this being a good thing if my RL friend needs a night off. “Kurn,” she could say (or, you know, use my real name), “can you do healing tonight? I need to get to bed early.” It would be nice to do it occasionally. Just not all the time.

4) The problems I’m encountering now while leading the healers through heroic encounters (FML, I hate these things!) is that the healers have very little sense of cohesion, no team identity. And no wonder. With one exception, I’m the most senior of the current, active healers and I just joined in September.

We’re apping two holy paladins at the moment, two resto druids, three priests (all disc/holy dual specs) and basically two resto shammies. I’m struggling to find room for them all in the raids, particularly as I’m only being given six spots in the vast majority of encounters. Granted, that should be plenty, but I wish I could keep my disc priest AND a holy priest AND two resto shammies AND two holy paladins AND a resto druid all at once. But I can’t. So the shammies get swapped around a lot. The priests have a very minimal rotation, largely because the one who’s primarily holy is just THAT GOOD and I like the disc very much, he’s been with us longest of all the priests. I’m swapping the two holy paladins around whenever I can. I had T in with us for Marrowgar (H), Deathwhisper (R), Airship (H), then brought in L for Saurfang (H) and kept all of us intact through Princes. Then I swapped out T and kept L for BQL. Then brought T back in for Dreamwalker.

Whew. So personnel and cohesion is a bit of a challenge these days. Anyone have any fun team-building exercises that are doable on a forum? I really just want the healers to get to know each other better so we can learn to rely on each other more.

5) As previously mentioned, I’ve been doing arenas with my brother (survival hunter) and our buddy Majik (unholy DK).

a) Teams with names like “u ju we ez bake oven” should be taken to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. I’m not Jewish, none of my family members were directly affected by the Holocaust, but the very fact that people think this is an acceptable arena team name makes me sick to my stomach and makes me wish that I stuck to things like Space Quest. Freaking MMOs. I hate people. And yes, I report each and every offensive arena team name I see. :P

b) Speaking of hating people, I hate warlocks. Fear, fear, fear, fear, curse of tongues, unstable affliction, shadowfury, felhunter and/or succubus, fear, fear, fear, fear, dead. Know what I need resilience to do? Reduce the amount of time I spend running around like a moron being feared.

c) Oh, let us not forget freaking druids. Cyclone, regrowth, cyclone, lifebloom, cyclone, lifebloom, cyclone, rejuvenation, travel form, lifebloom blooms, druid is at full health and full mana again. And then continues to cyclone me. UGH. (R, you have never cycloned me. Thus, you are immune to my hate.)

d) And then there are priests. Euphie, Kaleri, you know I love you, but bloody hell, do I hate priests. If there is a sound out there that I hate more than any in all of World of Warcraft (yes, even over Jaina’s whining tones in Hyjal!), it is the sound of Mana Burn. It strikes fear and dread into my poor heart. Psychic Scream is no fun, either.

e) Surprisingly, we nearly got to 1300 rating pretty easily. We even had 9 wins in a row at one point. But we fell short and have since tanked our 3v3 rating back down to 1226 or so. It seems like every game we win gives us 3-7 points and every game we lose drops us 10-20. Pray tell, how the hell are we supposed to beat a team with a holy paladin, a disc priest and an arms warrior? It would seem logical to take out the warrior, but without pressure on a healer, there’s no way to outdamage two healers healing him. So you go for the squishy? Sure. But then I’m stuck kiting the stupid warrior around while the paladin bubbles, heals to full, judges my team’s DPS to get mana back and keeps the damn priest alive.

What about the resto druid and double rogue team? How to beat THAT?

f) And don’t get me started on how seriously OP an elemental shaman is in an arena. Good GOD, does Lava Burst hurt!!!

6) Class previews? Cataclysm beta has to be incoming. Having said THAT, of course everyone else’s preview is this week and the paladins have to wait ’till next. Of course. I’m expecting changes drastic enough to make me want to switch raiding toons. I will say this, though — I love the idea of “healing wave” and “heal” as the middle spells for shammies and priests. It’s exactly what *I* want for a paladin. So I’m envisioning Flash of Light, Holy Light and Greater Holy Light. Or something like that. They really can’t slap “divine” on too many more spell names or abilities for paladins, can they? Maybe FoL, Divine Light (medium spell) and Holy Light (for the big one)? I guess we’ll see.

The shammy and priest changes seem interesting. Not sure how to feel about Healing Rain, but HEY EUPHIE! Guess what spell you’re going to use on ME all the damn time?! THAT’S RIGHT, LEAP OF FAITH, BABY. AHAHAHA!

I used to tell my raiders, back in the day “Look. I can’t move you out of the fire on Archimonde. I really wish I could. But I can’t. So please move out of the fire. Please.”

But in Cataclysm, you will be able to.

Hilarious!

Power Word: Barrier seems nifty, too.

I’m nervous as hell about the hunter changes, by the way. My inner huntard is cringing, waiting for the nerfbat smackdown. AND, BY GOLLY, I WILL MISS MY MANA BAR.

I should end this post. My ideas are starting to degrade into OMGCAPS-like flickers of thought.

So that’s what’s new with me.

Healing meme!

Kurn / / classes, druids, healers, paladins, priests, ramblings, shamans

Swiped from Miss Medicina:

Post this questionnaire, with your answers, on your blog. Pick the healing class you know most about (or is the focus of your blog) for the questionnaire, and then send it over to another healing blogger you know and love who heals with a DIFFERENT class. Include a link to the blogger who sent you the questionnaire, as well as a link to the blogger to whom you are sending it.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

Madrana(h), holy paladin.

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

25-man raids.

What is your favourite healing spell for your class and why?

Honestly, I’m a bit of a sucker for Holy Shock. I’ve always used Holy Shock, even when it sucked. Particularly when volcanos would spawn on my face on the Supremus fight in Black Temple.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

I think I use them all a lot. I use Holy Light most, Beacon of Light a lot… I think I use all my healing spells a lot.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

My Holy Lights crit for 20k. With Beacon of Light, I can drop those heals on two targets for a kind of ludicrous amount of healing.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?

Pick one: group healing or movement. Both suck. Glyph of Holy Light isn’t even a smart heal like Circle of Healing. :P

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?

Ideally, in a 2-tank fight, I should be assigned to one tank, who I shield and heal and have my Beacon on the other tank.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

I’ve healed with all four classes — my paladin and shaman at 80, my paladin and priest at 70 and I have a 71 druid who is dual-specced tank/resto. But honestly, after months of standing there in front of Gruul and spamming the tanks and not being able to move lest the tanks die, when I got the opportunity to heal on my priest at one point, I LOVED it. I ran merrily around, casting Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending and Renew around the raid. I’ve yet to try disc healing, though. I think I like healing with a priest the best, but I like being on a paladin most. I’ve got the throughput to get through a lot, I can cleanse 3 debuffs and I won’t get one-shotted by an add. Usually. :)

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

Maybe my shammy. I just can’t stop healing the tanks. ><

What is your worst habit as a healer?

I occasionally have trouble letting other people do their assignments. That’s to say, I’ll occasionally cross-heal. I mean, a lot of people do, but my reasons are generally because I don’t trust so-and-so to keep their target up.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?

From other paladins: Idiots casting Sacred Shield over mine. From other healers: not respecting assignments. (Yes, I’m a hypocrite.) From tanks: blaming healers for their 2-shot death. From DPS: standing in fire/etc and then blaming healers for their deaths.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?

Honestly, when you take a big-picture view, yes. Paladins are solid at tank healing and can usually help two tanks at once, in conjunction with a disc priest’s mitigation, a holy priest’s occasional CoH, a shammy’s earth shield with a druid’s hots… Really, I think all five healing specs work very nicely together.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

If my target lived, I win at life. But I also check out WorldOfLogs.com parses.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

That we never run out of mana. I’m sorry, I used to chain mana pots in BT and I would still be doing so today if I could. There are just so many times when using Divine Plea is going to result in a tank death that it’s hard to use it on cooldown or at the precise moment when it’s most useful to do so.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

How to juggle Judgements of the Pure, Sacred Shield, Flash of Light’s HoT, Beacon of Light and use them all effectively.

If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?

In a 25m-raid? Huge overhealing, good dispells/cleanses, Holy Light, Beacon of Light and possibly Glyph of Holy Light as my top heals.

Haste or Crit and why?

Haste. I’ve got 35% Holy crit, unbuffed, and am very close to the amount of haste I need for 1s GCDs on my gear. With Judgements of the Pure, Wrath of Air totem and Swift Retribution aura, I need 673 haste to hit that. I’m at about 640 or so, thus my choice of buff food is +40 haste.

What healing class do you feel you understand least?

Resto druids. I have my 71 druid, but I don’t know how to be efficient when playing it. Lifebloom is EXPENSIVE, yo.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?

Grid, Clique, clcbpt (tracks pally stuff).

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

All intellect all the time! Pallies get mana, spell crit and spellpower from intellect, as well as regen (through crit and through Divine Plea being based off maximum mana). There’s no reason to stack anything else if there’s an intellect enchant available.

Sigh.

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

2-piece HOLY T9 bonus is extending the duration of our judgements by 10 seconds, to last 30 seconds.

Blizzard hates us.

Not only that, but I’m trying to figure out what to do with regards to the Illumination nerf. 30% of mana back on a crit instead of 60% (and all that is instead of the original 100%!!!).

Do I stack spellpower so my FoL/Sacred Shield hot is huge? Do I keep stacking int so that I can cast close to forever? Do I stack even more crit so that even if I’m only getting 30% of mana back on a crit, at least 50-60% of my heals ARE crits? Do I respec back into ret for the +crit?

I should probably go read up on this stuff at EJ, PlusHeal and other places, but part of the problem is that I’m just so SAD about our bonuses and our nerfs. And I’m sorry, I don’t particularly like the idea of beaconing the tank and healing the raid so that the heal can transfer .5 seconds later, even if it’s now going to count overhealing. I’ll probably still beacon the other tank and spam heal the current tank. The only places in current content where I can see beaconing the tank and raid healing as viable are:

– Freya +any elders (’cause the tank doesn’t take a lot of damage, but good LORD, does the raid)

– Head tank on Mimiron, MAYBE?

– Thorim in the arena, I guess? I still foresee a squished tank.

I’d like to take this opportunity to say that I LOATHE Beacon of Light with all my heart. I use it so sparingly. I use it on a second tank, I use it on my tank on Mimiron’s Plasma Blasts and use Hand of Sacrifice and then heal the crap out of myself, I use it on myself on Kologarn and Iron Council and Hodir… and that may be it.

I want the new expansion to come out and I want a decent 61 point talent, please. Sigh.

Improved Judgements… Why?

Kurn / / classes, facepalm, paladins, raiding, ramblings

When speaking of PVE content, one of the typical holy paladin specs is 51/5/15. Another is 51/0/20. And another is 53/0/18.

All three of these specs bring you deep into the Retribution tree to pick up Conviction (15 points) and then perhaps Sanctity of Battle (3 points).

What cheeses me off is the idiot holy paladins who pick 2/2 Improved Judgements over 2/2 Improved Blessing of Might as they spec down into the Ret tree.

Why? Honestly, why on earth would you ever pick something that lowers your Judgement cooldown?

There’s one reason I could possibly see for PVE content: do more DPS.

What the hell? You’re a holy paladin. You heal people. Your DPS is poor at best. Judgements of the Pure lasts a minute, not 8 seconds. Your global cooldowns should not be used in order to judge more often than is necessary to either:

a) Keep your judgement up (which is ~20 seconds)

b) Keep Judgements of the Pure up (which is 1 minute)

I’m lucky in that I’m rarely a paladin who must judge. We have a prot paladin and a ret paladin, both of whom are regular raiders, and I’m not always the only holy paladin in a raid, so JoL and JoW are both generally up and I don’t absolutely need to judge, most of the time, unless I want to keep Judgements of the Pure up.

You may not be as fortunate as I am, but there’s still very little excuse to lower that Judgement cooldown for any PVE reason whatsoever.

But, you may argue, what if we always have a ret paladin with improved might?

So what if you do? What if he or she is out of town for a week? Do you think your melee or raid leaders will be okay with crappy might? Is your raid really going to rely on Battle Shout? Hah!

So Improved Might wins over Improved Judgements and don’t get me started on Heart of the Crusader. That’s win, too, even if you have an elemental shaman. They can die, you know, and there goes 3% crit, unless you keep up Heart of the Crusader when you judge.  Or maybe they’re out of range, like on Thorim. I judge Light in the tunnel on every mob for the additional healing (which won’t interfere with anyone else’s judgements, as I’m the only paladin in there) and for the crit buff, and I’m especially careful to do it when we don’t have an elemental shaman in the tunnel with us. It helps us get through the tunnel faster and who knows when that ten seconds we shaved off will be the time we need to get to Thorim before Sif leaves?

So, TL;DR version:

– Improved Judgements for PVE holy paladins = bad

– Improved Might for PVE holy paladins = good if you’re going for Conviction or anything else deep into the ret tree

– Heart of the Crusader for PVE holy paladins = good, just like Improved Might

And in other news…

Kurn / / classes, paladins, priests, raiding

Priest healing is hacks. No joke, no lie, Circle of Healing, Renew, Prayer of Mending, all total hacks. I love it.

I completely blew up the healing according to WWS in my first-ever guild raid on my priest on Proudmoore. No joke. #2 on the night, with 15% of the heals. #1, a very geared resto shammy with 24% of heals. #3 was the healing officer, a holy paladin (I swear, she’s pretty much the equivalent of me over in that guild) with 15% of the heals (I beat her by 23k healing). Rounding off the bottom three; a shammy healer, another Circle of Healing priest and a resto druid. I should note all of these people, barring the other CoH priest, have more +healing than I do, and the other priest is around my level.

Continue reading “And in other news…”

Paladins and buffs and groups, oh my!

Kurn / / classes, general, guide, paladins, priests, raiding

So I realized today that it’s been forever since I updated this blog and didn’t talk about my guild. Back when I started it, I had all KINDS of conversational topics that I wanted to use to inform people about various misconceptions and such.

But I promptly forgot them all.

Until tonight! Tonight, I was reminded about paladins and their blessings and how they work completely differently from any other buff in the game, basically. I don’t generally think about this, because, well, I play a paladin daily. So I know how it works, and take for granted that others do too, because my guild was basically built on holy paladins being the core of the healers. So every learned about pally buffs early on.

But now, you see, I’ve taken my holy priest and gone forth and joined a raiding guild on Proudmoore. Without giving up my guild on Eldre’Thalas. In fact, Apotheosis (my E’T guild), is still my priority, but I thought I could relax and have fun with the priest by raiding content I already know in a guild that’s trying to work its way back to being 3/4 in TK and 5/6 of SSC.

The inspiration for today’s post came when I heard a mage calling for Salv on “Group 1” over Vent.

Continue reading “Paladins and buffs and groups, oh my!”