Category: facepalm

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.

Yet another fail "tank".

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

My brother and I queued for the heroic random together, today. I was on my paladin. He was on his hunter. I was healing. He was DPSing.

We get a group, zone into Halls of Stone and I see the tank is a paladin who immediately starts buffing kings. Okay, I buff wisdom and might, even though I have crap might. The tank gives us Sanctuary. I give us kings. It’s all good.

’till the second pull.

The tank takes a crapton of damage.

Like, a CRAPTON.

I’m actually having to use Holy Light.

In general, I’m okay with this. He “only” has 36k health, buffed. That’s fine. He’s using the badge shield. That’s fine. I figure that he’s undergeared and I didn’t feel like taking the deserter debuff. He was prot, at least, using Sanctuary, had Righteous Fury up. It appeared like he was putting in the effort.

My brother says to me, over vent, after a couple more pulls “MAN, this tank sucks! How can he suck so bad?”

“Well, he’s got to be a new tank. Look at his health.”

“He’s got a 5400 gear score.”

“What? Not possible.” I don’t have the GS mod enabled on my paladin (too much lag with it on) so I figured my brother was looking at the DK.

“I’m telling you, 5400 GS.”

“On the TANK? The paladin? The paladin who’s not me?”

“Yes. The tank. The paladin.”

“Not poss…i…ble. Hang on.”

I inspect him.

Sure enough, he’s got good gear. Great gear. But it’s ret gear and arena gear. He has precisely two pieces of gear on him with defense/parry/dodge/block and those are his weapons; the tanking axe out of H HoR and the badge tanking shield.

“Why are you wearing ret gear and arena gear?” I ask in party, as I spam the paladin with Holy Light against one of the big guys.

“Who me?” asks the DK.

“No. The tank.”

“Oh,” says the DK.

“its all i have rite now” says the paladin.

“Then you shouldn’t queue up as a tank,” I reply. Then my brother and I left the group in the middle of the pull.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have done it, but I have HAD it with idiots who don’t even make the slightest effort to be a decent tank. Had it! I am DONE with it. This guy, upon examining his armory, was specced thusly: 0/71/0. I wasn’t even aware that there WERE that many points you could spend in the prot paladin tree. His glyphs were crap. His spec is obviously crap (although he got all the good prot talents, he got nothing from ret to help with avoidance, like Parry, nor did he get Seal of Command to help with threat) and his gear was almost entirely DPS gear.

I shouldn’t have left. He was immune to critical strikes by virtue of resilience alone. And I had figured that would probably be the case. And I still left.

Why did I leave? I could have kept him up. Could have been a quick run.

I left because I don’t want to encourage people who don’t put any effort into their roles. I am exceedingly careful to NOT be a drag on any group I’m in, regardless of the role. Kurn was hit-capped before setting foot into a raid. Madrana upgraded her gear ASAP and was still holding on to some Tier 6/BT/Hyjal stuff until better stuff dropped. Lotana’s hit-capped. Katarah can heal just fine with her 4.8k GS and can even pull average DPS when she needs to as enhancement. Cayllan tanks and heals just fine, though it took a little practice and some extra gear at first (when I could NOT keep aggro from a geared, whirlwinding warrior or divine storming ret pally).

To top all that off, I use consumables to bump up my contribution to the group. Tanking on either Madrana or Cayllan? Yeah, I’ll be using Mighty Fortitude and Guru’s Elixirs, plus appropriate buff food (40 agi for the bear, 40 hit for the paladin whose hit rating is somewhat lacking). DPSing on Kurn? Agi/Guru and Mighty Thoughts Elixirs, plus agi food. DPSing on Lotana? Spellpower and Mighty Thoughts Elixirs, plus spellpower food. Healing on Cayllan? Spirit and spellpower elixirs, plus spellpower food. Healing on Madrana? At least a Guru’s Elixir or my Flask of the North, even for random dungeons.

Basically, I work at making sure I’m doing my best, regardless of the group into which I’m placed.

Other people just don’t do that.

And yet, I’m forced to play with them if I want to jump through the hoops Blizzard has so carefully designed for us. I run my daily on Madrana every day. I’ve missed THREE days, total, since the Dungeon Finder came out and we started getting Emblems of Frost for doing the first random dungeon of the day. That is a LOT of pugging.

I don’t expect people to do as much work on their toons as I do. I don’t expect others to be as considerate of the group as I usually tend to be. But I do expect others to make a half-decent effort. 0/71/0 is not a good tanking spec. Two pieces of gear with defense on it is not good tanking gear. That isn’t even putting in the effort to look up a halfway decent spec, you know?

What I expect of people is this:

– appropriate gear for the instance level. That means a tank who is crit immune via 535+ defense or Survival of the Fittest, NOT via 100% resilience.

– appropriate spec(s) for the role(s) they have selected. That means one that, even if slightly unorthodox, helps you do your job to the best of your ability. And it means that you tank in your tank spec, heal in your heal spec and DPS in your DPS spec. Tanking in a DPS spec, healing in a DPS spec and DPSing in a tank or healing spec will make me want to throttle you.

Even on my priest, who is now 50, I have not signed up as “damage” for any dungeon thus far because I am not shadow! I do not have a dual spec on that toon and am 41 points into disc. Thus, I do not queue as shadow!

Similarly, neither of my druid’s specs are damage specs, thus I never queue up as DPS.

Hell, same for Madrana, she NEVER queues as DPS because she doesn’t have the appropriate spec OR gear.

Is it really too difficult to ask people to put in the base amount of effort? Am I really expecting too much from people who play this game? I’m not asking for tanks with 60k health to heal through my random dungeons every day. I’m asking for a tank who knows the basics of tanking.

It makes me want to get on the druid and tank the living crap out of a bunch of heroics tonight just so that people don’t lose hope in the myth of “good tanks”.

OMG.

Kurn / / facepalm, lfg, ramblings

These days, I’m pugging a lot less, so I have less stories of fail, BUT…

Today. Violet Hold Heroic.

The “tank”:

Hashbrowniee from Ner’zhul.

Put him on ignore. 506 defense. No gems. NO relic (!). Didn’t even have Righteous Fury on until I told him to put it on three times.

Just a pitiful excuse for a player. I told him to respec ret and not inflict himself on others in an important role and he’s like “naw i like the instant queues”.

UGH. He got crit in the face a bunch. Good thing at least *I* knew what I was doing so I could keep his sorry ass alive.

And 25m heroic modes continue!

Kurn / / facepalm, general, healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings, world events

Hope everyone had a good Easter or a good Sunday, whichever applies to you. ;)

For myself, brunch with the family, followed by some horrible 3v3 arenas, followed by a nap, followed by a raid. We had cancelled on Thursday — people were sick, unable to make it, I had something come up… so we cancelled and reconvened tonight.

Heroic Blood Prince Council down.

Heroic Blood Queen Lana’thel down.

Heroic Festergut still wiped the floor with us.

Princes was actually pretty easy. “Don’t move,” is basically the key to the fight, although moving when necessary is also important. ;) Lana’thel was intense. We just clipped enrage, she killed both tanks and then we won. Princes only took two tries and BQL took three.

I don’t understand the issues behind Fester. It’s just all kinds of bad. The malleable goo is beaning people, the tanks are dying, the range are dying and basically, no one is living past two minutes or so. Time to go through the logs and make notes about healers, goo, assignments and the like. Hooray death logs?

And in other news, my brother, on his level 47 (?) paladin is about 8 bunny ears from being the Noble. This involved me running around the damn world with him, while on my mage, to port him from place to place and usually to save his fool ass from mobs trying to rip him apart. Screw Noblegarden; I did it once on Kurn and that was more than enough for me. And my brother is similarly unimpressed with the amount of farming of chocolates he had to do.

Anyways. Logs!

ETA: Oh God, the logs make me want to cry. :( People not casting, ranged not getting any heals, people ignoring Vile Gas entirely… GAH.

Just as an FYI…

Kurn / / blogging, facepalm, ramblings

Yes, I know tomorrow is April Fool’s.

No, I will not be writing any kind of jokey post. And no, I promise, this post is not an April Fool’s post, either.

No, I will not comment on the silly people who believe whatever it is Blizzard will put up this year (although, let me tell you, I totally bought into the BT attunement for a good five minutes, until I finished reading it all, by which point I was doubled over in laughter).

Basically, this post is to let you know that there’s going to be a LOT of misinformation across the board popping up, starting today and probably going through ’till Hawaii goes through the last hour of April 1. Don’t believe anything you read, from people quitting blogging or guilds merging or anything of the sort.

So, if it’s okay with you, I’ll just go sit over here and shake my head at all the gullible people believing stuff over the next day or so and stay out of the fray of insanity. Instead, I’ll just freak out about the fact that we’re going to be doing ICC25 hard modes and wondering what I ever did to Blizzard that deserves me getting to deal with Malleable Goo on Festergut and Vile Gas on Rotface in heroic modes.