Category: facepalm

The problem with Real ID

Kurn / / facepalm, general, patches, ramblings

The problem with Real ID is not necessarily that it violates people’s privacy by linking their real name to people their Real ID friends know, although that sucks.

The problem with Real ID is that it has created a significantly awkward social situation.

Real ID has been out for all of a day and a half. How many people have you actually accepted or become Real ID friends with? How many have requested it of you? How many people have you requested it from?

Before I had even patched my client, I had requests (via other methods of communication) from my buddies Euphie, Shadowcry, Osephala and Carmentes.

I love them to death, but I am not Real ID friends with them and I won’t be unless this “feature” gets a lot more refined.

How does this make my buddies feel? Well, I can’t imagine it made them feel GOOD. These are people I’ve raided with — for practically four years, in the case of Shadow — and people I really like and respect. And they’re all excited about swapping IDs and then they find out that their former GM and/or healing lead isn’t going to friend them?

Frankly, I’d be pissed if I were any of them, and I appreciate the understanding they’ve shown after I explained my reasons to them. I’d STILL be pissed. ;)

I can understand Blizzard. They want to keep us playing, so what they’re trying to do is move us to communicate within their framework. They think it’s super easy to use and convenient. They know that people play a variety of Blizzard games and want us to be able to talk to each other across those platforms.

This is not bad. This is actually pretty cool. I’m all for convenience and easy communication and honestly, I enjoy the idea of chatting with my brother on Proudmoore while I raid on Skywall. It was actually a fun thing to do while I was in ICC 25 last night.

What is bad is that people aren’t thinking about the consequences. I’m seeing people in my new guild throw around their email addresses in a flurry. I love my new guild, but I don’t know them terribly well and I DEFINITELY don’t want most of them to know my “real life” name and identity at this point. Shit, they’ve found this blog and I was totally unprepared for that. :P Not only that, but do I really want my new guild to be able to find me on Proudmoore or something? Not particularly. If I’m on Proudmoore instead of Skywall, it’s because I’m doing something ON PROUDMOORE. I have five 80s there. I have things to do! :)

And yet, there’s this social pressure — not necessarily with my own guild, but I’ve had hints of it there — to friend everyone you’re friends with in WoW.

Apart from the fact that this completely redefines “friend”, it puts anyone unwilling to jump on that bandwagon in a very awkward situation.

How do you tell people you truly like and whose presence you enjoy in your raid that you don’t want them to know about your alts? How do you tell these same people that you don’t want to share your real name with them? Or your real email address with them? Or the names of YOUR friends?

There are three answers.

1) You tell them straight-out that you don’t want to be Real ID friends with them. This is hard to hear and I swear it’s harder to say. But it sucks for both individuals.

2) You tell them that you’re reserving Real ID friend use to a very small group of people; likely people you actually HAVE met IRL, whose real names you already know and use and that’s it. This is what I’ve chosen to do because it’s TOO COOL to be able to chat with people on other servers while I raid.

3) You don’t tell them how you feel and, instead, get peer-pressured into using Real ID when you’re actually a little hesitant or uncomfortable.

Why has this happened? This has happened because geeks have a problem with social niceties.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m very geeky. I really think that I am that rare kind of person who can understand where geeks are coming from and translate their behaviour to non-geeks and vice-versa. I understand both the geeks and the non-geeks.

The geeks see it like this, I’m thinking:

“Man, I wish I could talk to Majmaj while he’s playing SCII and I’m wiping in heroic ICC25.”

Which leads to: “Hey, if I built a system that was common to both and I used email addresses as the actual destination/recipient identifier but used the name linked to the account as the name representing the email address, that could be done! Oh my God, how cool would that be?!”

And then, being geeks, they CAN create that system. So they do. Voila, hello, Real ID. How’re you doing?

Being geeks, however, they have completely ignored the social niceties required in a situation like this.

The social niceties required are as follows, in my not-remotely-humble opinion:

– a character privacy scale: let the person see all your characters (as it presently is) or certain characters only, where you would get a list of all your toons and select the ones they could see.

– a RL privacy scale: let the person see your full real name (as it presently is) or just your first name.

– a Real ID friends privacy scale: let the person see all your Real ID friends’ names (as it presently is) or select which friends you want them to be able to see through you.

– a self-Real ID friends privacy scale: allow yourself to be visible (as it is now) or hidden to Real ID  friends of YOUR Real ID friends.

– a self-privacy setting: allow yourself to be visible to all your friends when online (as it is now) or just visible to those on the same server as the specific character you’re on. (The way the old friends setting used to work.)

The privacy creep is on, people. I’m not trying to be an alarmist, but when people I don’t know can see that I’m a Real ID friend of someone else, that’s not really cool by me. Doesn’t matter if they can’t link me to my toons or servers within the interface itself; I don’t want to share my name with a lot of people.

In all, I think Real ID, as it’s currently implemented, is a FANTASTIC groundwork for inter-server/inter-game communication. Long overdue, if you ask me. This all works okay, but that’s all.

The geeks have neglected to take into account how people will want to use this and how awkward it might be if people choose not to. They haven’t considered how this will force some people to redefine what “friend” means. Worse, they haven’t considered how this will force some people to EXPLAIN what their definition of “friend” is to some people who don’t make the cut.

I’m sure that the flurry of posts and comments about Real ID will subside soon enough and that within a month or so, no one will really care if you friend them that way or not.

But on launch? Boy, does this have the potential to be ugly.

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.

The Second Raid

Kurn / / addons, blogging, facepalm, guild, healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

The second raid was infinitely better than the first. And the first wasn’t bad or anything.

We got Saurfang down after a few attempts. We stomped on heroic Rotface and heroic Festergut, killed regular Putricide (getting most people their Nausea, Heartburn… achievement), then stomped on the Blood Princes and BQL.

Then we looked at heroic Dreamwalker.

My new guild had never killed heroic Dreamwalker before.

We did it on our second try.

And that is a part of why I joined the guild. People were saying to me all night long in whispers how awesome it was that I was there, how much they enjoyed having me there, how I was just what they needed… And I think that’s got to be true. We downed Saurfang for the second time for them, Dreamwalker healed to full for the first… and I played significant roles in those fights.

I totally noobed it up on Festergut, though. Fellow healers, please take this as a warning and DO NOT DO WHAT I DID.

I use Clique and Grid. I have Clique binds for most of my spells. Flash of Light is left-click (shift-left click is to target), Holy Light is right-click, Sacred Shield is shift-right-click, Cleanse is middle-click, Beacon of Light is shift-middle-click, Holy Shock is thumb-click and Lay on Hands (a relatively new bind from about three weeks ago) is shift-thumb-click.

Tonight, before Saurfang, I was looking at my bindings and trying to figure out where I could put Hand of Protection for easier access during Saurfang instead of shift-left-click and then clicking on my Hand of Protection button.

So I figured Ctrl-Thumb-Click.

Who here sees where this is going?

I try out the binding a couple of times. I don’t like it. I DO like the thumb-click part of it, but the Ctrl is just a little far out of the way for me.

So I open up Clique. I decide to edit that bind.

And I promptly bind it to Shift-Thumb-Click.

Uh, Kurn? Didn’t you say that Shift-Thumb-Click was Lay on Hands?

Why yes. Yes I did.

Uh…?

Yeah.

So NORMALLY, when you try to bind something in Clique to an existing combination, it yells at you. But that’s apparently on the main screen only when you’re clicking the combination in your spellbook.

If you edit the bind directly, you can overwrite any prior combination. Without the yelling.

Oh, God, Kurn. What did you do?

Well, Saurfang went great with me BOPping someone on each attempt with ease.

Festergut, well, there we are, one tank with 9 stacks of the debuff, the other with 7 stacks, probably with Fester at under 20% health and I see the active tank (7 stacks) is about to die and so I do what any good paladin would have done; I went for my Lay on Hands bind, which has been, for the last few weeks, Shift-Thumb-Click. Which I UNKNOWINGLY bound to Hand of Protection.

Tank is BOPped, other tank gets aggro and blows up the raid because he hit 10 stacks.

I was completely oblivious as to why the tank got a 10th stack of his debuff. The GM said something in healer chat along the lines of “ha, ha, who bopped the tank?” and the ret pally was like “Not me!” and then I paused, remembering that I HAD messed with my Clique bindings and I HAD tried to cast LOH on the tank and hey, why wasn’t that on cooldown? Why WAS Hand of Protection on cooldown?

I checked my Clique binds and found the problem and switched Shift-Thumb-Click back to Lay on Hands and then let them know what had happened.

Apparently, I made the MT laugh, so, uh, way to go me?

I told him that it could have been worse, I could have DIed him the way I did one of our tanks on Bloodboil back in the day and he replied to say that a DI would have been the only thing that would have been funnier than a BOP.

>< Still annoyed! In my last guild, I was teased for standing in fire for months by my RL friend the resto druid and another RL friend of hers. And now, I’m going to be known as “the pally who bopped the tank”. /facepalm

By the way, I’m still in search of a good Clique-bind for BOP! :P

Anyways, getting Saurfang and Dreamwalker down was awesome. I also managed to snag heroic Unclean Surgical Gloves and heroic Crypt Keeper’s Bracers, which is kind of hilarious, given that it’s my second raid with them. EPGP is an odd beast and I’m going to have to read up on it again, but it’s got this nifty mod that makes things super easy.

In other guild-related things, my new GM and I are hitting it off beautifully. There’s a mutual admiration society going on and we just totally get along. I did not transfer with the intention to make good friends; I just wanted to escape the douchebags, but she’s definitely someone who has the potential to be one of those awesome people I still keep in touch with even if I’m not playing. The weird thing is that she already knows a stupid amount about me — she knows my real first name, she knows about this blog… It’s like, in the span of a couple of days, the woman already knows a ton about me.  I feel a little bit naked, if that makes sense. I mean, I go through a fair amount of effort to construct and maintain my various WoW personas, all of which have the “true” me at the center of them, mind you. But, for example, if I’m on my hunter, chances are, I’m going to be quieter. Just let me be there, in the back, shooting things. It’s what I like to do.

If I’m on my paladin, I’m not so quiet. I’ve spent a LOT of time as some kind of stupid leader in this game, including YEARS of that stuff on the paladin. Kurn-while-on-the-paladin is a lot more outspoken, a lot more critical (HOW CAN YOU NOT HAVE HASTE OMG FAIL) and can get frustrated really easily.

My GM has somehow managed to dissemble these personas, more or less, because I’m basically my actual self in talking to her. That doesn’t happen too often, at least without my expecting it. This just kind of happened.

There’s an opportunity, which will remain more or less cryptic, for a mutual exchange of information, a mutual way to get to know each other better. Part of me wants to participate. Part of me does not. The part of me that wants to is all like “HELL YEAH!!!!” and the part of me that doesn’t isn’t remotely as enthusiastic in trying to talk me out of the idea. It’s more like “Dude, whatever, give it a couple of weeks. You’ve been in the guild for like, 36 hours.”

It would involve stripping off yet another layer of my carefully constructed personas. “Kurn” and “Madrana”, if you will, are very public personas of mine. It’s still me in there, but there are things about me that none of my readers, no matter how dear to me, will ever know. Things that my long-time raiding companions never knew and probably will never know. You know, real life stuff.

All of this feeds into my interest in identity theory, online personas, the use of the Internet for anonymity… And really, you know, that’s it. That’s what’s bugging me about this. If this exchange of information happens, I’ve lost any real sense of anonymity I still have. Okay. Now that I know why it’s something I’m hesitating about, it’s time to figure out if that even matters.

Actually, it’s well past time for sleep. I’ll figure that bit out in the morning or, perhaps more accurately, the afternoon. ;)

Apologies for the sidetrip into the land of sociological musings. I hope the Festergut story made the entry worth reading. ;)

Brief Update

Kurn / / blogging, facepalm, guild, icecrown citadel, lfg, ramblings

1) Paladin is on Skywall, guilded. All mods seem to be working (YAY DXE, YAY DBM, YAY GRID & CLIQUE & DOMINOES!) with very little effort (sigh, CLCBPT, you fail. SexyMap, you too.) and I’ve already made money with my bank alt. ;)

2) I was guilded for maybe 30 minutes when my new GM found the blog. Hi! ;)

She apparently is more like me than I thought since we both have the ability to stalk online. ;D

I felt just a wee bit embarassed about the mush I’ve previously posted, but it’s all good. And it was a harmless reminder that anyone can actually find and read this.

(I’d hope if any of my former guildies find this, they’ll see how much trouble I took to not name names. You won’t find me naming names in my new guild, either.)

3) Reckoning hates me. I queued up for the daily heroic (I think it reset, since I got 2 frosts on my last server and then 2 frosts on the new one) and it gave me… Heroic Halls of Reflection. Thanks, RNG. Love you too.  I arrived after what had been a wipe where both the tank and healer had left. The tank who arrived with me promptly left. Five minutes later, we have a tank. It was not super smooth (DPS need to stop pulling aggro and standing in front of cleaving mobs) but we got through relatively unscathed. I haven’t healed it as a pally in a long time — I miss my chain heals, dammit. ;)

Anyways. I need to grab some food before the raid, which is in, you know, 40m. Which is new. And early. Working on LDW HM apparently, and I’m hoping all my DXE settings really DID carry over so I don’t look like a moron eating ghosts.

Stupid Vengeful Shades. WHY must they be so vengeful?

Oh! And thanks to everyone who listened to me bitch about my last guild and how I was unhappy and for wishing me well on my new server. <3 It’s meant a lot. :)

Wow. Just… wow.

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

I’m exhausted. I spent over two hours writing up all the fail I witnessed from the holy pally app during last night’s ICC 25 raid, which I then sent to the healing lead and the raid leader.

He was in for five fights, all heroic: Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Gunship (I was swapped out for that), Saurfang and Blood Prince Council.

Some choice bits of information I’ll share with you:

1) He never used Sacred Shield. At all. Oh, wait. He spammed it… on Lady Deathwhisper. Like, not on that encounter. On the mob. Which means that he was mind-controlled when “he” used it. NO other use of it at all.

2) He cast Holy Light 158 times total on four logged bosses. In comparison, on those same bosses, I cast it 619 times. He cast Flash of Light 625 times to my 125. He is gemmed straight-up int, specced the way a HL pally would be, glyphed the way a HL pally would be.

3) He consistently ignored healing chat/assignments, would screw up his beacon and judgements.

4) Speaking of judgements, he judged 12 times on those four bosses. Bearing in mind we wiped twice on Saurfang before getting him, that’s 12 judgements in 6 boss encounters…

5) Did I mention that he missed beaconing me on Saurfang? He beaconed my direct-heal target instead and healed the tanks instead of Mark 4 like he was supposed to. Props to my RL friend the resto druid and some quick-thinking priests for keeping my ass up, given that I was Mark 2.

6) Speaking of beacon, he ignored 4 requests to beacon the DK tank on Blood Prince Council, instead deciding to beacon the warrior tank.

7) Speaking of Council, guess who was almost always in range of me during Empowered Shock Vortex AND who got 6-8 Shadow Prison stacks on five occasions during the fight? That’s right, the pally app.

8) Speaking of crowding people, he also crowded two healers and a moonkin on Saurfang and ate extra boiling blood because of it. Thank you, dipshit, for increasing Saurfang’s blood power.

9) Speaking of Saurfang again, he let a tank die through not healing him when he was supposed to be, then let HIMSELF die with the fourth Mark by … not healing himself like he was supposed to be!

10) He wanted to be in for Gunship so he could get Althor’s Abacus, which is a trinket that has 0 int, 0 haste, 0 mp5 and 0 crit. Way to be.

11) He wouldn’t STFU about loot. He actually asked, in raid chat, after a regular Conqueror’s token had been awarded to a priest, if he could have it instead. And when I got the Rot-Resistant Breastplate and Holiday’s Grace, asked me what my gearscore was now. OMG, stfu, you stupid dumbshit app who is giving ALL PALADINS a bad name.

I’ve recommended his app be closed ASAP. I would rather be the only holy paladin than have to deal with this fucktard. If it were just one thing or the other, I could attribute it to nerves or anxiety. But some core issues with how he plays the class, some basic awareness issues and an unhealthy fixation on loot makes him NOT what we’re looking for.

From an actual Paladin app…

Kurn / / facepalm, paladins, ramblings

So we’re looking for another holy paladin, as previously mentioned. We haven’t had ANY apps until this one guy from two days ago, who we will probably trial, because he doesn’t totally suck and he’s already on the server.

Overall, he’s not awful. He has a lot of haste, he’s gemmed all +20 int and 1 Nightmare Tear.

However, he is, no joke, using Bone Sentinel’s Amulet which makes me want to cry. A couple of nitpicky things (spellpower/crit over spellpower/mp5 enchants) and then the other big thing: his meta is Forlorn Skyflare Diamond.

I /facepalmed.

Oh, and his professions aren’t maxed. And by “aren’t maxed”, I mean “Blacksmithing is 132 and he still has Enchanting (at 228) even though he says he wants to drop it for Jewelcrafting.”

(ETA: The necklace doesn’t entirely suck and is likely better-itemized than anything else he could get. I will admit to this. There’s no excuse for the meta and the professions, though.)

And yet, this is not only the BEST holy paladin app we’ve had in months, but the ONLY one.

We’re probably going to trial him just out of need for the second holy paladin and the fact that he’s THERE.

WTB holy pally buddy who doesn’t suck ass. I’m serious. Email me ( kurn [at] apotheosis-now [dot] com) or twitter me @kurnmogh. We’ll chat.

Kurn's Q&A #17

Kurn / / achievements, facepalm, healing, icecrown citadel, q&a, raiding, ramblings, tanks

Man, it’s starting to get bright super-early over here. 5:34am as I start to write this and I can see across the street in the early morning light. I’m clearly up wayyyyyyy too late. :P And I can’t even blame it on raiding!

Ah, well. Time for another bunch of keywords that led people to the site.

1) shadow priest sindragosa heroic 25

I have to come out in favour of this. Vampiric Embrace is very useful on any fight with a persistent aura, such as Sindragosa or Blood Queen.

2) “pit of saron” tips skip riding

Okay. First of all, I hate people skipping the last few trash pulls. If you time it right, you can skip three of the last four groups of trash. This is, in my mind, an exploit. You are not MEANT to skip this trash. This trash is blocking the path you need to take to the final boss of the instance. That means it’s not optional. Man up and interrupt the flame caster guys on the first two pulls.

3) 16 int or 30 spellpower holy paladin

Bracers, right? I prefer 16 intellect because I’m a Holy Light-style paladin. Obviously, if you’re a spellpower-stacking, Flash of Light-style paladin, you want 30 spellpower. And if you’re new to 80 and don’t have 2000 spellpower yet, you want 30 spellpower.

4) bringing in kingslayer to trigger hard modes

Lame. True, you can probably kill Marrowgar and definitely Gunship on heroic modes without too much trouble, but lame, lame, lame. Go kill the Lich King first. Then you can trigger any hardmode you want.

5) can’t keep people alive in trial of the champion

You know what? That’s not horribly uncommon. I had a hell of a time keeping people up on my resto druid when I was a fresh 80. You just need to be aware of the various abilities. Turn around to not face Eadric the Pure so you don’t get stunned. Cleanse various debuffs off your party. If you get Paletress, Tremor Totem, Fear Ward, whatever you got to keep yourself from being feared. Having said that, though, if it’s not an exceptional environmental thing you can’t heal through, check your gear, your spec and glyphs. Maybe you’re just not ready to heal it.

6) does having someone suicide in phase 3 on professor putricide hardmode work?

Interesting idea. I presume you mean someone with Unbound Plague running out and dying to it? Maybe, although I doubt this is what the game designers had in mind when coming up with the fight. It’s very possible to do it using the more traditional method of dealing with Unbound Plague which is to pass it around the raid. (FYI: you still get it with Divine Shield up!)

This sounds a lot like the whole “let the first mark die” on Saurfang thing. Which just makes me roll my eyes.

7) dont wanna go to zangarmarsh

Hahahaha, yeah, me either! You can stay in Hellfire and do all the quests which should ding you 63-64. Once you hit 64, you can hit up Nagrand. You can probably start getting Terokkar quests around 62-63, too. Congratulations! You’ve skipped Zangarmarsh!

8) glory of icecrown raider total hours spent

Wow, that’s a very interesting search. I only have 25-man experience, so let’s see…

Considering all I’m missing is I’ve Been Waiting a Long Time for This achievement on Lich King, I have to say a LOT of my recent raid time has been taken up by driving towards this achievement. I’m taking into consideration how long it took us to down heroic modes like Sindragosa (weeks!) and also Gunship (first attempt). Probably anywhere from 30-40 hours of dedicated wiping just for the heroic modes, with additional wipes and issues on Boned, Full House, I’m on a Boat, Portal Jockey, All You Can Eat… So maybe 40-50 hours of wipes.

Yeah, now I want to quit…

9) what’s the priest bubble shield speed boost

It’s a deep holy talent called Body and Soul.

10) what does eh mean paladin

Well, I’m Canadian, so the first thing I think of is “eh?“… but you’re probably talking about EH — Effective Health for tanks. Your effective health is what your health actually is due to mitigation provided to you by things like armor.

Here’s an effective health calculator from my favourite warrior tank site. Go nuts. :)

What I Look for in a Holy Pally App

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

I’ve been basically begging my guild to recruit a third holy paladin for months. A third holy paladin would have been great when the main holy paladin (who had been there when I arrived) ninja-transferred in the middle of the night after killing LK on 10-man for the first time and getting his Kingslayer title. A third holy paladin would have been awesome even last week, when I, and the current other holy paladin, both had our birthday celebrations. A third holy paladin would be great at any time for heroic Saurfang.

We had two holy paladin apps but one didn’t like the idea of sharing raid time at all, so he came up with some lame excuse and transferred. The other one stuck it out, is a member of the guild in good standing and is someone I know I can rely on to do what he’s told in a healing situation. Unfortunately, he’s also going to be unavailable for close to a month, starting, oh, nowish.

So I’ve spent some time over the last couple of days perusing wowlemmings looking for holy paladins who can meet our raid times, who are fairly geared and, here’s the kicker, know what the hell they’re doing in terms of gearing, enchanting, gemming, speccing and glyphing.

You would think that they would, for the most part, know what they’re doing. Particularly if they’re looking for a progressed guild, right? Well, they don’t. No kidding. They do not. Thus, here is what I look for (and therefore, what I don’t look for) when looking at a holy paladin’s armory. (Please note that this is what I look for when taking my current guild situation into account. That means typical raid makeup, encounters we’re working on and the like. Posting it here is basically showing you what my own rules of thumb/preferences are in general and there are, of course, a variety of circumstances that could change these preferences.)

1) Overall gear. Is the gear strictly out of heroics or from the Emblem of Frost vendor? If so, chances are slim that the rest of the stats will impress me. What I am looking for in particular:

– 2pc T10, even if it’s 251. Ideally, the helm and the shoulders, as these are our strongest pieces at 251/264/277 levels of gear.

– Talisman of Resurgence as one trinket and then a variety of others. Why Talisman? Well, it’s easy to get, stacks our best stat and has an on-use that helps to offset Divine Plea. Of course, FoL pallies would probably prefer two +spellpower trinkets, but for Holy Light pallies, I want to see Talisman. For the other, I would prefer Meteorite Crystal or heroic Solace of the Defeated, but will also be okay with regular Solace, Pandora’s Plea or even DMC: Greatness (Intellect). What would not wow me, but would still be better than a spellpower trinket for a Holy Light paladin, is Tears of the Vanquished.

– Something other than the badge shield. Even the 226 shield from Kel’Thuzad. I do not want to see Zom’s Crackling Bulwark or the Protective Barricade of the Light.

– At least the honored version of the Ashen Verdict ring. Sorry, you cannot step into an 11/12 HM guild if you’re not that familiar with the instance.

2) Gems. I want to see all +20 intellect and a Nightmare Tear or all +23 spellpower. If you’re all +intellect, I also want to see an Insightful Earthsiege Diamond as your meta and if you’re +spellpower, it’s that OR an Ember Skyflare. Pretty much no exceptions. If you have anything else as your meta, I’m moving on to the next paladin on the list.

3) Enchants. Helm is spellpower/mp5 for HL and spellpower/crit for FoL, shoulder is spellpower/mp5 with exalted Hodir or inscription for HL, spellpower/crit for FoL, chest is powerful stats, bracers is +16 intellect (HL) or +30 spellpower (FoL), gloves are +28 spellpower, belt has the extra buckle, legs are spellpower/stamina (if you use the spirit one, I swear to God, you need to be smacked), boots are either Greater Vitality or Tuskarr’s, weapon is either +63 spellpower (FoL but acceptable for HL) or+30 int (HL), shield is +25 int. Period. Again, there is VERY little room for argument.

4) Libram. This probably should be under overall gear, but it’s SO important that I felt it deserved its own little category. If you are a holy paladin and use Holy Light more often than not and you are NOT wearing the Libram of Renewal, you fail. Hardcore. Screw gearscore, this is ten thousand times more important than upping your ridiculously stupid gearscore by 50 points. I don’t even want to know that you exist if you don’t use this libram. If you are a holy paladin and use FoL more often than not and you are NOT wearing one of the Gladiator Librams that increases your FoL spellpower, then you ALSO fail and I definitely don’t want to ever meet you.

5) Haste rating. I’m going to try to be calm here, but I might lose it… If you don’t have 676 haste, GO OUT AND GET MORE FREAKING HASTE. Gah. What is wrong with people in ICC content, who have downed the Lich King who have like, 400 haste? You’re being idiots! EVERY holy paladin needs 676 at minimum and if you don’t have the spell haste buffs in your raid, you need MORE. You also need more if you cast Holy Light more. Do you get me? HASTE IS AWESOME. I have 936 haste and eat 40 haste food, for 976 haste PLUS Wrath of Air PLUS Swift Retribution Aura PLUS Judgements of the Pure. It is GOOD.

Ahem. Yes. Haste needs to be over 600 before I’ll take any holy paladin remotely seriously.

6) Spec. Holy Light paladins should have a prot subspec and FoL paladins should use a ret subspec. I don’t want to see you speccing into ret and Conviction if you’re gemmed all intellect and basically vice-versa. Don’t spec and gear half-assedly. Pick Holy Light or Flash of Light and spec/gear/gem accordingly. I also don’t want to see any crazy, cockamamie 68 points in holy. You go 51 or 52 or 54 points into holy and 5 or 17 or 20 into prot or 2 or 15 or 20 in ret. You definitely want your talents to be something like:

51/5/15 – FoL

51/20/0 – HL

51/0/20 – FoL

54/17/0 – HL

52/17/2 – HL

Check out this previous post of mine to help determine what talents you absolutely need to take and which are situational and debatable.

7) Glyphs. If you’re a Holy Light paladin, it’s Glyph of Seal of Wisdom, Glyph of Holy Light and Glyph of Beacon of Light. If you’re a FoL paladin, Glyph of Seal of Light, Glyph of Flash of Light, Glyph of Holy Light. If you use Beacon a ton, you might want to swap out Glyph of Holy Light. There’s a little wiggle room here, but not too much.

8) Achievements. If you’re a Hand of A’dal, you get extra points in my book. If you did any of the “big” fights before T9 became super easy to get (ie: Sarth 3D, various Ulduar hard modes, Algalon, etc), you get extra points. “Extra points” means I’ll be willing to listen to you defend some of your more bizarre choices in gear/enchants/etc. It is not a carte blanche to be a total moron when it comes to your character’s spec and equipment.

So there you go, what I look for on each paladin’s armory before I go posting the typical “hey, want to raid with us?” post.

As an aside, yes, as of May 14th, I am still pushing to get another holy paladin in. If anyone reading has a geared holy paladin and you’re looking for a new guild, here’s some info on us:

– mature PVE/PST server

– guild has been together for 4+ years, downed Algalon in Ulduar, TOC, TOGC (4/5), ICC25 12/12 and ICC25 HM 11/12

– raids are 8pm-11pm PST on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays

– you *must* run Grid/Clique or Grid/mouseover macros (not my requirement, but I’m okay with it) as well as DXE as a boss mod and AVR for Sindragosa and oRA2 and Omen

– definitely prefer a holy paladin who is HL-specced/geared at the moment, with the possibility of being able to play with FoL spec/gear in the future

Bear in mind that we don’t typically use Vent (or, at least, it’s not required).

We’re 11/12 HM and doing achievements NOW for Glory of the Icecrown Raider, so do not think we are your ticket to a mount. We are currently your ticket to hardmode loot as we push to down LK on heroic.

If you can make close to 100% attendence and feel you’re the type of paladin we’re looking for, email me for more details:

kurn [at] apotheosis-now [dot] com

(Note that that’s my personal address and not affiliated with the guild I’m currently a part of.)

You can also tweet me at kurnmogh on Twitter and we’ll chat. :)