Category: facepalm

Kurn's Etiquette for Forming a PUG Raid

Kurn / / dungeons, facepalm, general, raiding, ramblings

I had what was pretty much the oddest experience I’ve ever had when it comes to being invited to pug a raid the other day. This is what has caused me to write this post.

[Complete Stranger]: u do icc 10 this week

Uh. Is that supposed to be a question or a statement? I thought about ignoring him. I thought about taking his head off about randomly whispering someone he doesn’t know that he sees has a high gearscore and a Kingslayer title.

And I decided to be nice.

Me: No interest in doing it. GL to you.

I figured that ought to be enough and continued the two other conversations I was having. Fifteen seconds later:

[Complete Stranger]: what if i pay u very high amount of gold

I sighed and quickly responded.

Me: I said I have no interest in doing so, thank you.

Ten seconds later…

[Complete Stranger]: ur cranky how rude

Okay, NOW you’re starting to get on my nerves, you illiterate, impolite child. You want to get in it with me? FINE.

Me: I said no thank you instead of telling you to take a hike. I think I was quite polite, actually. You’re the rude one, persisting in your request and just randomly asking me if I’ve done an instance. I don’t even know you.

There, that ought to take care of him, I thought. Alas, foolish me.

[Complete Stranger]: Why no interest. dont u need gear

/FACEPALM. Need gear? From regular 10-man? Are you KIDDING ME? I haven’t “needed” gear from regular 10-man ICC since, well, ever. It’s one of the positives of raiding 25-man. Determined to shut the kid up, I responded thusly:

Me: Apart from the fact that I strongly dislike 10-man raid configuration, I do not need gear. [Heroic: The Plagueworks (25 player)] [Heroic: The Crimson Hall (25 player)] [Fall of the Lich King (25 player)]

I was pretty sure I wouldn’t hear from him again, having been properly chastised, so I returned to my other conversations. About 30 seconds later…

[Complete Stranger]: ur not nice

/SIGH. Okay, kid. One last try at being polite before I rip you to pieces.

Me: Beg to differ, but you’re entitled to your opinion. Good luck to you.

[Complete Stranger]: Not very nice sir

I got snippy.

Me: Ma’am, actually.

Immediately thereafter:

[Complete Stranger]: Im sorry now i feel bad!!!!!

This is where my head exploded.

It’s OKAY to harass a GUY to do an instance he has no desire to do, but as soon as I say I’m a woman, NOW he feels bad? NOW he apologizes for being annoying?

ARGH.

Okay. Deep breath, Kurn. This all happened last Friday. It’s days ago.

…

All right, I’m better.

This little episode has illustrated the complete lack of manners people have in this game. Of course, in a game where Trade chat regularly degenerates into ethnic slurs and questioning of people’s sexual orientations, perhaps expecting any kind of manners from the population is a stretch.

But I remember a time in this same game where people weren’t quite this rude. I suspect a lot of it stems from the sense of entitlement Blizzard has bestowed upon the players these days, but I digress.

You’re trying to form a pug raid? Fine. Here’s how to do it.

1) Grab your in-game friends. Make sure you all know how to play your selected roles.

2) Make sure you have at least some of the tanks or healers required before you go seeking them out. There’s nothing worse than seeing “LF5M, 2 tanks, 3 healers!” in Trade. You know what that says to tanks and healers out there? That no one in your little group of friends cares enough about shouldering some of the responsibility in a raid to run on a tank or a healer.

3) Once your raid group has formed and you’re trying to add new people to it, type this in:

/lfr

Skip down to Browse and select the instance and size you want to do. Examine the people in the queue for that particular raid.

Whisper them, one at a time, until you’ve filled your raid with what you need or have gone through the entire list. And by “whisper them” I don’t mean “icc 10” and a ninja-invite.

I mean something like this:

“Hi, would you be interested in tanking/healing/DPSing in [name of instance here]?”

To say “heal icc 10?” is just lazy and not something that’s going to get me to want to heal your sorry butt. You’re dealing with OTHER PEOPLE here. You should really do your best to impress them with your grasp of the language your server speaks.

4) Once you’ve gone through all the people in the queue, go back to set your own group in the queue. Select which instance and size you want to do on the first screen of the raid finder interface. Put a note in the comment section advertising what you’re seeking. For example:

“Need 1 tank, 2 DPS and 1 healer!”

Set your comment. Enter the queue.

5) Ask around in Trade or LookingForGroup — don’t spam. The last thing anyone in Trade wants to see is you spamming the same line of text 10 times.

“LF3M ICC10, need 1 tank, 2 DPS, PST!”

That suffices. Once every couple of minutes at most. You want to be short and direct in your advertisement for your raid.

6) Ask your current raid members if they have any friends who want to come.

7) Check your friends list or guild to see if anyone’s logged on since you last checked.

8) Continue the above tactics (also checking the raid queue frequently) to pull in more people until your raid is full or you decide to cancel your run.

Note that at NO TIME is it considered “okay” to see someone randomly run by you in a major city and act like you are entitled to their time and services.

If you are absolutely desperate for just one more person, it might be considered all right to gently inquire as to the potential availability of a random stranger.

How do you gently inquire? Like so:

“Hi there, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m putting together a raid for [instance, size] and I was wondering if you’d like to join us as a [tank/healer/DPS]. If not, no problem, I just thought I’d ask.”

If they say “sure” or another few words agreeing to the run, please be sure to thank them and then toss the invite.

If they say “no” or anything else stating that they’re not interested, here’s how to respond:

“All right, thanks anyways and have a good day!”

If they do NOT respond, do NOT keep whispering them.

Every person that you antagonize or annoy or piss off is someone that will potentially never run with you, ever. They may put you on ignore. They may remember your name from that day you annoyed the crap out of them. It’s a social game, people. You have to play well with others to do anything in terms of raid content and to succeed at high-levels of PVP. Everywhere you look, there are PEOPLE and, sadly, we can’t ignore them all. (WTB larger ignore list, PST!!!)

TL;DR Version:

– Don’t piss people off
– Don’t randomly demand time or services from someone you don’t know
– Don’t act upset if any random people don’t want to join your run — they owe you nothing

This public service announcement has been brought to you in part by the Kingslayer title, which Kurn has now hidden on her paladin, opting to display Hand of A’dal instead.

Why Ranks Matter

Kurn / / addons, dungeons, facepalm, lfg, ramblings

The bottom line is, ladies and gentlemen, that ranks matter. No, not guild member ranks or PVP title ranks or arena rankings. Not guild progression rankings, not server progression rankings or anything like that.

I’m talking about spell ranks, ability ranks and talent ranks.

While levelling, I can understand that you don’t train every ability to its top level every opportunity you get. I will probably still think you’re a moron for not training, but I can at least understand that stuff happens and you ding unexpectedly or you forget to train.

As soon as you hit 80, though, I expect you to train all of your spells available in your spec. Both your specs, if you have dual spec.

Why?

I’ll try not to rely on my primary argument, which is “BECAUSE IF YOU DON’T, YOU’RE AN IDIOT!” as that is not remotely helpful. It is, however, the ultimate message I would like to impart on people, so if you don’t want to read another 1500 words explaining why you’re an idiot if you don’t, you can stop here. ;)

As soon as you hit 80, you can’t instantly queue for heroics using your crappy greens or outdated blues. I would imagine that most fresh 80s these days, at least those who are alts, buy a couple BOE ilvl 200s or get some crafted gear or, if they’re lucky, have a main who is rich that buys them pretty BOE things from raid instances. Once they’ve done that and manage to trick the system into thinking they’re deserving, they queue up for their random heroics to get badges to try to start collecting tier 9 ilvl 232 gear. (This is why I miss revered rep as the requirement for heroic keys. Oh, Burning Crusade, when a human’s Diplomacy was the most OP racial ever.)

It’s not that it’s a horrible thing to go to heroics quickly, particularly if you know what you’re doing. The thing that you need to be aware of, though, is if you’re a drag on your group.

What do I mean by that?

I mean if you pull 1k DPS at 80, you’re a drag on your group. You obviously haven’t done any research on your class and don’t know your DPS rotation or priority system.

If you’re a tank who can’t hold aggro against people in T9, which is a lot of the people running heroics these days, you’re being a drag on your group. I’m not saying to expect to hold aggro against people in 277 ICC gear, but you know, don’t be that moron whose AOE threat moves doesn’t do anything.

If you’re a healer and you can’t keep the tank AND the DPS AND yourself up through regular damage (not like DPS standing in the fire), you’re a drag on the group.

Part of not being that tool that everyone hates because they are dragging you through the instance, is doing your job, whatever that job is.

That means training all ranks of all your spells. No, really. It does. Doesn’t matter if you’re a prot or ret paladin — if your healer asks you for wisdom, you need to have the max rank available for them, even if it’s not improved.

If you’re a hunter and you’re using Aimed Shot Rank 6 instead of Rank 9, you’re not doing your job because that is a crapton less damage, depending on how often you use Aimed Shot.

Even if you’re not a team player (why are you even playing this game if you have no interest in being a team player?), there are reasons to make sure your spells are up to date. The most compelling for the non-team player is this:

Your damage/healing output suffers when you’re not fully trained. If you’re not a team player, chances are you care about your damage or your healing. If you use mana, did you know that lower spell ranks cost the same as the highest rank? That means that you’re doing less damage or healing for the same cost the regular rank would cost. Wouldn’t you rather spend your 500 mana doing 1000 damage or healing rather than 500 mana on 250 damage or healing? I know that I sure would. You’re basically throwing away mana on something much less useful than it could be. So quit it. Train your spell/ability/talent ranks!

If the idea of letting down the team (group) because you’re not fully trained doesn’t actually bother you, or if you’re not too fussed over your DPS or HPS, then the above arguments just don’t make sense. Fine. I get that. What I don’t get is you inflicting your dumbass self on people who actually care to play their characters properly. Are you really that much of a douchebag?

There are three types of people in the random heroics these days.

a) People who are just there for their two Emblems of Frost, period. These people are generally very well geared and are probably raiding ICC content.

b) People who are farming Emblems of Triumph. These people are generally decently geared but still need a few Emblems in order to get their 4-piece bonus or something along those lines.

c) People who just hit 80 and are starting the grind towards 232 T9. These people are generally horribly geared and don’t know the instances because they didn’t bother running them on regular the first time around. (Halls of Lightning, Halls of Stone, Utgarde Pinnacle, Oculus, Trial of the Champion, Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, Halls of Reflection, just to name a few.)

All of the people above are interested in completing an instance quickly and efficiently (although quickly and efficiently differ based on whether you just want your Emblems of Frost or you’re farming Triumph). No one wants to wipe. No one wants some moron to screw things up and cause a wipe. No one wants to be stuck with these people for any longer than they have to be. The overriding mindset is get in, kill the minimum amount of bosses for the run to work for you, get out.

So imagine if you’re not running the instance with one tank, one healer and three DPS. Imagine instead that you’re running with half a tank or half a healer or the equivalent of 1.5 DPS.

By not training your ranks, you are doing everyone in the group a huge disservice. Does it matter if there’s someone there who can pick up your slack? No, because even if there is, there’s not guarantee that there will always be.

I’ve been thrown into a group where myself (the healer) and the tank were the only ones who should have been in a heroic. The three DPS (and I use that term loosely) were all clearly new to 80, didn’t know their abilities, their capabilities and were still wearing things like heirloom shoulders and chests and weapons.

There is a difference between doing a boss fight as it was intended (most likely in in ilvl 187/200 gear) and doing a boss fight with two well-geared players and three people who didn’t even care enough to finish training before queuing up for heroics. What do I mean by that? I mean that I don’t care if you’re appropriately geared for a heroic (with 187/200 gear) so long as you are doing your best. If I have a hunter in my group with a 3000 gearscore, or whatever is considered laughably low-end at this point, I don’t care as long as they know how to damage the mobs and knows how to control their pet and would actually know where their Freezing Trap and Wyvern Sting buttons are for emergency CC. I don’t care if their Explosive Shot hits for next to nothing as long as they’re trying to do their best.

Part of doing your best is training.

Of course, sometimes, training is not enough.

I run RankWatch on most of my toons. It was a very popular addon a few months ago when it was discovered that your abilities on your action bars did not update in your inactive spec when you trained. I discovered this by doing Instructor Razuvious the very first week of weekly raids on my restoration shaman, who I had levelled as enhancement. I’d been healing on her for 3 months or so, random dungeons, VOAs, the odd Sarth or Onyxia…

I got a whisper from someone running RankWatch, telling me that, among other lesser-used spells, my Chain Heal was three ranks out of date.

Chain Heal 4. Chain Heal 7. For 835 mana each time I cast it, CH4 was healing people for 600-700 (plus spellpower and bonuses) instead of 1055-1205.

For three months.

I felt like an idiot and whispered the person back, thanking them. I took some time to verify my ranks (on all my toons) and then got the addon and started running it myself.

While RankWatch was welcomed in the early days of random dungeons (perhaps because the people running dungeons actually had standards then?) it’s as if I’ve just insulted someone’s mother if RankWatch goes off now.

Part of it might be my settings. I have it set to go off in /say so that if it’s a healer, for example, who triggers it, the tank might realize “hey, the healer needs a second to get their ranks in order”. (This is rarely the case, but I maintain it’s faster and more efficient in a group than the whisper-spam which people, in my experience, take less well than a simple /say announce.)

“Turn that shit off,” people will say, “it’s annoying.”

I generally reply with something along the lines of “What’s really annoying is that you’re using Rank 1 Devastate at level 80.”

“lol,” is the typical response I receive.

Good to know my tank is taking his or her job as seriously as I take mine.

The good news is that I’m seeing less and less dual-spec related mistaken ranks. The bad news is that I’m seeing more and more people who just haven’t bothered to train.

Blizzard is forcing us together because there’s currently no form of cap on the amount of Emblems of Frost we can earn a week, something I’m relieved to know they’re changing in Cataclysm. As long as game mechanics strongly encourage me to group with people I don’t know or care about once a day, I’m going to insist on certain things: a tank in a tank spec with tank gear; a healer in a healing spec with healing gear; DPS in a DPS spec with DPS gear. I’m also going to be that annoying person throwing out RankWatch warnings if you’re using out of date ranks of abilities and if you’re NOT trained and REFUSE to train, I’m going to try to vote kick you and will leave the group if I can’t kick you yet. Even if you’ve already pulled and I’m the healer.

What brought this on? I was running RankWatch silently in an Alterac Valley in the 61-70 bracket this weekend on my level 66 priest. I had to unload the mod because of all the spam I was receiving, notifying me that others had failed to train or failed to use their max-rank abilities. And the Alliance was just confused as to why we were losing. I resisted the urge to call people out for not training, but of course you’re not going to do as much damage as a 64 shaman who is trained, even if you’re 68 if YOU haven’t trained.

Thankfully, I don’t see it all too often in dungeons, but I still see it enough to think it’s important to explain some of the my justified hatred towards people who deliberately don’t use max ranks.

Level 64 and hating it.

Kurn / / facepalm, lfg, priests, ramblings

You know, for as much as I adored raiding in BC, I loathed the dungeons. Hated them. There is not a single instance in Burning Crusade that I genuinely LOVED.

I hated heroics with a passion. If I was asked in guild to heal a heroic, I would laugh, as would most others who knew me.

After healing my way on my disc priest through Ramparts, Blood Furnace, Slave Pens and Underbog, it dawned on me; I have absolutely no desire to level through Auchindoun instances. None. I don’t want to go back and level through Hellfire or Zangarmarsh or Terokkar to get quests. God forbid I even consider Blade’s Edge or Netherstorm!

In the entirety of Burning Crusade, there was one zone I loved and that was Nagrand. I don’t even like all the stupid quests there, but it’s beautiful and peaceful and I know it like the back of my hand.

Combine my distaste for BC content with the UTTER FAILURE that is RAMPANT on this stupid battlegroup and you have a cranky Kurn. Seriously, tanks who don’t know how to hold threat on TWO targets at once, who don’t know what gear to wear (pally “tanks”, specced prot, wearing all holy stuff), tanks who don’t know what abilities to use (Devastate never occurred to one warrior “tank” I had) and tanks who don’t know the first thing about pulling.

There I am, in Slave Pens, about to pull the first boss. Everyone, EVERYONE knows that you wait for him to pat up the ramp and then range pull, right?

Wrong.

The DK “tank” I had pulled him while he was visiting with the mobs at the bottom of the ramp. So we got the whole group.

Only through exquisite, leet healz did we live. I used Pain Suppression, Prayer of Healing, Inner Focus, took a mana potion… and you know who was killing the totems when it was clear NO ONE ELSE WAS? That’s right. I was.

After the fight, I was like “Why on earth would you pull the entire group?”

“mistake,” came the reply from the tank, followed by “gotta go”.

I left the group immediately and said to myself, aloud, “Fuck this.”

So I respecced my priest shadow (no, I haven’t dropped a grand on dual spec yet) and have decided to quest through most of Nagrand until I’m at about level 68, and then SEEYA OUTLANDS, hello Northrend!

The trouble here is I hate being shadow. :P I don’t really know the rotation or whatever, but it feels like I have no abilities! Shadow Word: Pain and Devouring Plague go up, then Mind Blast, then Mind Flay and finish off if need be with Shadow Word: Death? Too easy, too boring, too dull. Shadowfiend at 66 and POM at 70 and that’s about all I’m looking forward to. ETA: Okay, interesting what they’ve done with Vampiric Touch and Vampiric Embrace. SW:P, DP, VT, MB, MF?

I would pay $25 in real money to Blizzard if it meant that I would be able to start a toon at 68.

I would pay another $25 in real money to have an unlimited ignore list. :P

Off to Nesingwary.

Geez.

Kurn / / blogging, facepalm, ramblings

I’m more than a little glad as to how I set up comments, in that the poster has to have an approved comment before comments get posted without being moderated first.

Why?

SO MUCH SPAM. In the last two or three weeks, I’m getting 5+ spam comments a day on a variety of posts. Sure, that’s nothing for most people, probably, but it’s driving me batty. At least it’s all being captured in the moderation queue and much of it is automatically marked spam by some of the options I’ve got here in WordPress, but good grief. All kinds of spam, gold sellers, levelling guides, all that stuff.

Pro tip: Do not tell me that my blog is a thing of beauty when the post you commented on was essentially me bitching about stuff.

Seriously, the latest:

“I usually don’t post in Blogs but your blog forced me to, amazing work.. beautiful …”

Naturally, all these commenters have URLs linked to their names to promote their skeevy websites, which is an additional tip-off. :P

Fellow bloggers, how do you deal with spam?

So burnt!

Kurn / / facepalm, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

Thank God we have tomorrow off, thank God, thank God, thank God.

On the heels of a huge playoff game loss by the Montreal Canadiens, I had a raid tonight. I had a splitting headache.

In 3h37m (37m more than usual) we did:

– heroic Saurfang without the ever-elusive third holy paladin

– heroic BP Council and BQL

– heroic Dreamwalker

– heroic Rotface and Festergut

– regular Putricide

– regular Sindragosa

– regular Lich King

I am so freaking tired, my head is still pounding and I just wanna go to sleep. So I will. But good LORD, what a long night that was. It felt like we’d raided for something like 8 hours, I kid you not.

Burnt, burnt, burnt.

So there's this priest, see…

Kurn / / facepalm, healing, icecrown citadel, priests, raiding, ramblings

There’s a priest applying to my guild at the moment. He’s currently part-time, due to school stuff, but he seems to be knowledgeable and enthusiastic and stuff.

Yes. There is an upcoming “but”.

But… he’s weird. Okay, that doesn’t help describe the situation. He’s full of ideas, he’s really enthusiastic, he’s really gung-ho, he loves to talk about healing. I really should like him a lot.

I don’t. In fact, I’m sort of having to just hold my tongue and not shoot him down at every opportunity.

The issues began about 10 days or so ago when we pulled him in for heroic Festergut attempts. He had been saying, in healer chat, before he got swapped in, that the key is to watch the goo from Putricide’s balcony or whatever. Dude comes in, gets smacked by Goo like, 12 times and also misses getting all his Innoculated stacks.

ALSO, when he came in, he automatically assumed he was going disc, so he’d done his spec change from holy already and we tried the first attempt with two discs, instead of the 2 holies and 1 disc I wanted. Then, I was like “okay, that’s not working” in healer chat, got distracted by a raid leader chat conversation and come back to healer chat to discover that he told the disc priest already in the raid that he could go holy.

I was like, wtf, dude. Let me handle requests. We had actually brought him in to be holy. So I had them both switch back.

I don’t think he’s trying to “take over” or anything, and he seems perfectly pleasant. I think that my concerns stem from the fact that he seems to overthink EVERYTHING. I thought I was bad, but no, no, this guy overthinks absolutely everything in the entire game.

What prompted this post was my irritation regarding his thoughts on our heroic Lady Deathwhisper encounter.

We’ve wiped to her for five hours this week. No joke. The big issue is people getting smacked in the face by Vengeful Shades, meaning they trigger Vengeful Blast which does a huge 20y AOE thing, basically killing people.

The raid leader and the MT commented about this on the forums and the raid leader broke down how many people got hits/misses/absorbed hits from the Shades. As it turns out, even a miss or an absorbed hit will trigged Vengeful Blast.

One healer took 5 total hits over 5 hours of wipes. I took 23. That shammy, who took 3 on Wednesday and 2 on Thursday, and I are the only healers who took LESS on the second night than we did on the first night. (My breakdown was 15-8.) So I wrote to all the other healers, asking them to please be aware, blah, blah, blah.

Priest app writes back with this post that goes on to say that he’s got a new holy spec just for this fight, that’s got Soul Warding and Body & Soul and I’m thinking, what are you DOING, man? I want him to be holy. I don’t want him to bubble spam people. Hell, we had two discs in the raid anyways on Thursday to help shield people to keep them alive through our Vengeful Shade failure. And now this app, who had 8 hits of his OWN, is saying “hey, let me watch for that stuff, I’ll shield them and they’ll get the speed boost” when he can’t even look out for Shades that are hitting him?

How to crush his suggestion without crushing his ego/enthusiasm? Hm.

I think part of what annoys me is he just goes out there and Does Stuff instead of talking it over with his healing lead, who would be me, in this case. No “do you think it would be beneficial”, no “hey, I was thinking”… it’s just “I’ve also devised a specific holy spec meant purely for just this fight.”

I don’t mind thinking outside the box, I really don’t. But the consistent thinking outside the box without even considering what’s INSIDE the box kind of makes me want to throttle the guy.

How does he not even CONSIDER the issue of Weakened Soul? Two discs AND him bubbling the raid? Not gonna work, man. Sigh.

Underwhelming.

Kurn / / cataclysm, facepalm, paladins, ramblings

Stupid paladins. Why did I roll a paladin? Why did rolling a paladin mean that I get lame skills and lamer talents? SIGH.

The Paladin Preview is out. Here’s the MMO-Champion direct link.

Let us examine it, bit by bit, shall we? WE SHALL! I haven’t read anyone else’s thoughts on things, this is just my initial impression. Can’t wait to see what others have to say.

New Spells:

Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure’s ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.

What the hell are they doing? Giving me a freaking damage spell, complete with HOLY TALENTS that increase damage and crit chance? Sounds great for prot. Does not sound great for Holy. Unless you’re PVPing. In which case, hey. Nice. Grats to those of you who give a damn about PVP. But what about the PVE holy paladins? “Ooh, I get to have another damaging spell when I want to quest or farm or something!!!!” …really?

So level 81 – nothing of interest for me happens. Good to know. NEXT.

Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.

Uh. Please, please correct me if I’m wrong, but does this suck or what? How much does this heal for? Lasts six seconds — does it pulse every second? Every two seconds? Every three seconds? With a 15-second cooldown (like the vanilla/BC Holy Shock) will it be used regularly and frequently or will it be relegated to OH CRAP AOE! moments?

I do like that it’s an AOE thing. I do not like that it’s based on our position. I do not like that it’s likened to healing stream totem. My character is not a totem, thank you very much.

It really seems to me like they’ve taken a common suggestion over the years (make Consecration into something that damages enemies/heals friendly units) and just made it a new ability that doesn’t have the issue of causing damage to enemy units. And added a longer cooldown. But really, isn’t this just some healing version of Consecration? Think about it — we’re at the middle of it. It’s something we pop and we can get back to doing our regularly-scheduled healing. It’s short-range, so people need to be near us. Yep, I think that’s about the same as Consecration. Obviously, we’ll see how this works out ($10 says they patch it out in beta!) but I’m not thrilled. It’s weird that I’m not thrilled, because I really would have liked a decent AOE heal. If this ends up being decent, I will happily eat my words.

I’d also like to object to the name. If Blizzard doesn’t think that HAND of Reckoning doesn’t already confuse people when you have spells like Hand of Protection, Hand of Salvation and Hand of Freedom, then I guess I can understand why this thing is called Healing Hands. Why not something like Waves of Light? Or Light Flow? Or Wind of Light? Or, hey, how about Stream of Light? I actually like that.

Anyways. NEXT.

Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

So, hang on a second. We’re going to get a base ability that, depending on our spec, does different things? I actually might be able to get on board with that. Except that I think the holy one is lame. Seriously, we already have this in the game. It’s called Ancestral Awakening and it’s a resto shaman talent. And again, it’s single-target: “heals the most wounded ally in the area”. And what’s the area? Is it something I can target like Blizzard or Volley? Or is it something that just appears and heals anyone within 40y or so?

Blah to new skills.

Changes to stuff:

– Crusader Strike at Level 1. We already have an instant attack. It’s called Judgement. But okay. Another button to push. Hooray.

– Cleanse isn’t actually changing, so I guess I’m glad about that, unlike shammies, who must be pissed to lose things like Cleansing Totem.

– BOM/BOW… Well. They’ve streamlined it. I think that’s a positive. But will either be improved? Will both be improved? Will there be an imp BOM talent? An imp BOW talent? Will these affect which BOM is on someone? Also, possibly more importantly, are we going to be stuck with the fist icon? I like my icon for Blessing of Wisdom. :P

– Holy Shock available to all paladins. Wow. I am… not impressed. Holy Shock has been THE holy ability for years. And now it’s just available for everyone? So rets are going to be able to toss a Holy Shock in arenas while on the run? Prots will be able to cast it on themselves or others? That’s MY SPELL, Blizzard. MINE. What the hell are you doing, giving it away all willy-nilly?

– Possible duration changes on Divine Shield. When my brother asked about paladin changes the other day, he was like “well, what kind of things would they change?” and I said “I don’t know, but they got rid of Tree of Life, so anything’s possible.” And his reply was “Are they going to change bubble?!” and he was all concerned. “They could do anything,” I told him, “maybe even get rid of it.” He was properly horrified at that thought. And properly horrified about this potential change as well.

What horrifies ME more than anything is this: “Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.” I’m sorry, either I’m going to have 80,000 health or I’m going to heal for 3k per big cast. 12 seconds won’t be enough time spent casting to heal myself???

– Ret rotation. Well, whatever.

– Sacred Shield/improving the Holy Paladin toolbox. Okay, I can handle a 30 minute buff on my main healing target. That’s fine. I’m not sure I LIKE the change, but I can certainly live with it. I feel like I spend raids juggling ability cooldowns as it is. Removing one from the rotation is fine. But I don’t trust them to adequately improve our toolbox. The last time they did, we got Beacon of Light. Which is hax on some fights and stupidly useless on others.

– New, bigger, healing spell. Okay, here we go. FoL, HL and then unknown bigger spell. I’m fine with that. Interesting that our current “bomb” spell is the middle one, though. Also, if this is going to be the same as the other classes, they’re changing FoL from being fast and efficient to being fast, but inefficient. Not sure I like that too much.

– Beacon of Light change. “Beacon of Light will be changed to work with Flash of Light. We like the ability, but want paladins to use it intelligently and not be constantly healing for twice as much.” Screw you, Blizzard. You give us Beacon of Light and it sucks. Then you change it to include overhealing and it’s still halfway useless sometimes, but other times, it is the reason for getting the encounter done (hi, heroic Deathbringer Saurfang, how are you doing?). And now you’re going to change it to… well, as I understand it, only work with Flash of Light? SERIOUSLY? Take the ability away. Just get rid of it. I want a 51-point holy talent that is worth a damn and a talent that is an ability that mirrors only the SMALLEST of our heals? That’s not a talent worth a damn.

– Spirit. Blah, blah, I knew this, but it still sucks. Stupid spirit.

– Prot rotations. Sounds neat. The prot pally tanking method is way too good for both single-target threat and AOE threat.

– Holy Shield, no more charges. So what, this will last 8 seconds with no charges? That sounds boring and predictable. Bind Holy Shield to all your abilities and it’ll be cast when it’s off cooldown.

Mastery thoughts:

– Holy. Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more. Oh, gee whiz, CAN I have more overhealing? Please?! :P I understand that they’re changing things so that we can go back to healing reactively instead of mindlessly and this will change some of the overhealing issues (as well as mana becoming an issue again) but I don’t know that we really need super crit on our heals. I imagine we’re still going to overheal a ton.

– Prot. Block Amount: We want to keep the kit of the paladin as a tank who blocks a lot. So by contrast, the warrior tank will sometimes get critical blocks, but the paladin will absorb more damage with normal blocks. Sounds reasonable, although odd. Are they trying to make tanks more niche-specific again? You have the prot pallies who are The Blocking Tanks versus the bears who can’t block or parry at all. Sounds to me like, given the choice to AOE tank things, a prot pally now has even more reason to tank, whereas a bear or DK don’t.

– Ret. Holy Damage: Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased. Uh. Okay?

On the one hand, some nerfage. On the other hand, some lame skills. On a third hand, a couple of perhaps interesting changes.

Lots of things will change, of this I’m certain. I’m being overly critical and cranky, I know. We all need to wait to see what beta brings with it. But those are my initial impressions.

Oof.

Kurn / / facepalm, healing, icecrown citadel

Heroic Sindragosa is ugly.

How ugly?

Check this out.

[00:08:11.512] Other Holy Pally Beacon of Light MT +0 (O: 21191)
[00:08:11.526] Sindragosa Frost Breath MT 48509 (A: 510)
[00:08:11.781] Madrana Flash of Light MT +998
[00:08:12.041] Sindragosa hits MT 19535 (O: 11934)
[00:08:12.680] MT dies

Two hits in .529 seconds killed my main tank. who has somewhere around 63k health when raid buffed.

Ow.

All kinds of other guild crap going on. I move ever closer to gquitting. It would be more of a ragequit, though. And I like to think I’m above that. I’ll get into it or whatever later.

Priest is 59 and a half, healing through Hellfire Ramparts for the second time. Penance is almost within my grasp!

Sad.

Kurn / / facepalm, healing, priests, pvp

I find it extremely sad that a level 56 discipline priest can consistently top healing in Alterac Valley.

Like, seriously sad. I dinged 57 in the middle of the Drek fight as we destroyed Tower Point, so I was 56 for the vast majority of that BG.

Why do people NOT heal in battlegrounds? Every BG I ever find myself doing (and sadly, it’s much more frequent than “never”) I end up near the top of the list, if not at the top. At stupid levels, too. On alts. Not even just on Madrana, but on my PRIEST?

Hell, this is me at 54 topping Alliance healing done.

What is WRONG with people?

Of course, I’ve known for a long, long time that people don’t heal in BGs. But the absurdity of it all came crashing down on me this weekend while levelling through some AVs. I just don’t get it.