Category: general

Holy How-to #5 – To Beacon or not to Beacon

Kurn / / cataclysm, general, guide, healing, holy how-to (wrath), icecrown citadel, paladins, parses, raiding, ramblings

Welcome to my Holy How-To for PVE Paladins. This is the fifth of what I hope to be a great many posts aimed at helping holy paladins succeed at PVE content. I will focus primarily on max-level talent specs, glyphs, enchants, gems and the like, including tools, tips and tricks that I use, but I hope to touch on levelling content and advice as well.

Today, I’ll discuss our 51-point talent, Beacon of Light. Sadly, the spell is also referred to as “bacon”, usually prompting people to discuss the deliciousness of said food item. Anyways. Beacon is a simple spell that is either completely overpowered or entirely useless. It depends on how you use it and the configuration of the encounters in which you use it. Oddly, even over 18 months since its introduction, this spell still causes confusion among raid leaders, healing leads, other healers and even holy paladins themselves. So I thought I’d try to shed some light (ha, ha!) on this subject.

Continue reading “Holy How-to #5 – To Beacon or not to Beacon”

Kurn's Q&A #14

Kurn / / general, icecrown citadel, paladins, q&a, raiding, ramblings

Gotta love Tuesdays. I spent some time doing 3v3 arenas tonight and we got our little team up to 1400. Which is where we’re stopping as we go nuts trying to get honor. This means I’m going to have to actually battleground. :(

“deathbringer saurfang” +heroic heal assignments

On our 25-man Deathbringer Saurfang heroic kill, here’s what we had:

3x Holy Paladin
1x Disc Priest
1x Holy Priest
1x Resto Druid
1x Ret Pally (judging light)
1x Shadow Priest (vampiric embrace)

Paladins were on the tanks and then given the following assignments:

Mark of the Fallen Champion 1: Holy Pally 1’s Beacon
Mark of the Fallen Champion 2: Holy Pally 2’s Beacon
Mark of the Fallen Champion 3: Holy Pally 3’s Beacon
Mark of the Fallen Champion 4: Holy Pally 1 (direct heals)
Mark of the Fallen Champion 5: Holy Pally 2 (direct heals)
Mark of the Fallen Champion 6: Holy Pally 3 (direct heals)

Naturally, the tank would require more healing as we shifted the pallies from the tanks to their marks. The disc priest was key for this and our normally Rejuvenation-happy resto druid was happily using Regrowth and Nourish on tanks while maintaining hots on the raid along with the holy priest’s renews and some shields from the disc.

One-shotted.

It should be noted that we also cast Hand of Protection on the first three casters to get Boiling Blood to delay the first mark’s cast — and if it was on us, we bubbled ourselves.

best 3.3pally holy shield drops from heroics

Sadly, there is no good healing shield from heroics. The best healing shield you can get outside of raid content is from REGULAR Pit of Saron, off Tyrannus. It’s called the Protector of Frigid Souls and is ilvl 219. That puts it on par with the Pulsing Spellshield from 10-man XT-002 Deconstructor in Ulduar, except I rate the PS higher, due to the haste.

The next step up is the Voice of Reason from Naxx 25, off Kel’Thuzad. For anything else, you’re looking at Trial of the Crusader and ICC. Or, if you have 1800+ team and personal ratings, you can get an arena shield.

More shield choices here at WoWHead.

blessing of protection work on magic buffett

Nope. That’s physical damage only. Magic Buffet is a magical effect that increases magical damage taken. Also not removable with Divine Shield.

curse of tongues putricide

Good question! I’m really not sure. Anyone have an idea?

getting flasks to proc on creation

There’s no rhyme or reason for it. It happens sometimes. It doesn’t happen most of the time. You need to be an Elixir Master alchemist for it to even have a chance, though.

hand of salvation marrowgar bone spike

Hm. Not really going to have much of an effect. Hand of Sacrifice, on the other hand (ha, ha, see what I did there?) would likely transfer 30% of that person’s incoming damage to you. ;)

haste cap holy paladin 3.3.3 patch

676 for Flash of Light paladins with Swift Retribution/Imp Moonkin auras and Wrath of Air totem. And the sky’s the limit for Holy Light bombers!

vile gas on rot

It sucks, doesn’t it? Same general rule as on Fester, 8 people out at range to prevent Vile Gas from being dropped on melee.

what buffs should i have up on my holy pally / what buffs does a druid give a paladin

A holy paladin is at their maximum healing potential with the following buffs (and their greater/raid-wide versions):

Blessing of Kings
Improved Blessing of Wisdom/Improved Mana Spring Totem
Arcane Intellect
Mark of the Wild
Moonkin Aura/Elemental Oath (5% spell crit)
Improved Moonkin Aura/Swift Retribution (3% spell/melee haste)
Wrath of Air Totem (5% spell haste)
Demonic Pact/Totem of Wrath/Flametongue Totem (additional spellpower)
Improved Devotion Aura/Tree of Life (increased healing done)

So druids, depending on which spec, can help out pallies a lot — Mark of the Wild from any of them, plus Moonkin/Imp Moonkin Aura or Tree of Life. Good stuff.

If you want to talk consumables:

Holy Light paladin: Flask of Distilled Wisdom (65 intellect) or Guru’s Elixir (20 to all stats) AND Elixir of Mighty Thoughts (45 intellect) & Imperial Manta Steak or Very Burnt Worg (40 haste).

Flash of Light paladin with proper raid buffs and 676 haste: Flask of the Frost Wyrm & any food that gives 46 spellpower.

when to call for cleanse on rotface

We generally cleanse (on heroic mode) at about 3 seconds. The person gets the infection. They get a disc shield. They run towards the OT. As they are running, they get cleansed. We do NOT tend to cleanse on normal.

Thoughts about Tree of Life.

Kurn / / cataclysm, druids, general, ramblings

Disclaimer: Though I have a level 80 druid who is specced as both bear and tree, this is my most recent level 80. I have done exceedingly little raid content with the tree. I do heal a lot of heroics with it and I do tank a lot of heroics on the druid, but this is all in the last few months. Having said that, I remember when Tree of Life was introduced and I remember druids in caster form healing in their Cenarion gear (T1) in MC. (My brother’s shoulders always looked like they could use a good trimming.)

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way… Honestly, people, make up your minds. Druids hated tree form when it first came out. My brother reluctantly specced into it at level 60 (he was one of our guild’s best healers) and we promptly called him a Tree of Lawl.

He hated it. Not only could he not see his actual character any longer, nor could he see his armor, he had this stupid slow mechanic attached to being in tree form. But the Tree of Life buff was just THAT GOOD back then. Plus there were things like reduced healing cost on your HoTs when you were in tree form. Something like that. Right?

My good RL friend the resto druid (with whom I am currently guilded) has told me, on several occasions, that she HATES Tree form. Loathes it. In fact, now that all ToL does is add the 6% healing buff, she will rarely be in tree form if we run heroics. Hell, when she was decked out in Sunwell gear, she never switched to tree form for heroics in BC, even though the mana cost was so much greater in caster form. I haven’t actually asked her opinion of the potential upcoming change, but I can only presume she will be thrilled.

For me, I’m not a huge fan of it. ToL is fine as it is, though — now that druids can decurse in tree form and don’t have that stupid slow on them. Did you know that once upon a time in Apotheosis, a resto druid was locked out of Netherspite’s room because he hadn’t managed to run all the way into the room yet before someone aggroed? Yeah. /facepalm.

It’s not that I mind being in a form and I do think that forms are a key part of the druid class. It’s that tree form visually sucks. Until recently, I think all the forms sucked. Every single freaking druid looked identical in all their forms until they updated the bear and cat models. You ever notice that, at a quick glance, a resto druid in tree is almost identical to a balance druid’s treants? The treants are smaller and there are more of them, of course, but still!

If I took the time and energy to pick a face/skin colour/etc for my druid, I should not look like another spec’s cooldown.

Seriously:

Treant

Tree of Life

Okay, my bad. The treants have green leaves.

That is still not cool with me.

When I was levelling Kurn, my brother was levelling his druid. It was the COOLEST THING EVER that he could be a bear or a cat! It was awesome! I was in awe of moonkins, who had to SPEC into their form. I was even amazed by aquatic form! When druids got flight forms, I was in awe. I even thought that tree of life at least had cool benefits.

But in WotLK, they’ve changed ToL. The talent itself, not the form, has all that mana saving stuff baked into it. Hell, with a paladin with improved devotion aura around, you don’t actually HAVE to shift into tree form.

This is why I think they feel that Tree of Life form is expendable. There ARE a lot of people out there who hate that they can’t see their toons or their armor that they’ve worked hard for and I’m sure that they look at the WotLK version of ToL and go “well, really, what good is this?”. And it’s not that good, unless you’re in an arena and have improved ToL to help out your armor.

Bear and cat forms are already very nichey. You HAVE to be in bear to get all the modifiers and abilities to tank properly. You HAVE to be in cat to get all the modifiers and abilities to melee DPS properly.

Moonkin… it’s like they don’t want to screw with the moonkins because they have such a cult following. People love moonkins for the dance alone. And possibly because moonkins are SO ludicrous looking. My resto druid friend? LOVES moonkin form and because of that, balance is her offspec.

Besides, all those forms have been in the game since the beginning (or close to it).

Tree form has not.

I think that resto druids should be able to shift into something — it’s what druids do, after all — but it has to be meaningful. Tree of Life, as it is, is not meaningful. It’s fancy artwork. And not even that fancy. It’s just artwork.

What really irks me about all of this discussion, though, is the idea that resto druids are “giving up utility” by being in Tree form.

Sorry, they’re DOING THEIR JOBS. Sure, as a holy paladin, in holy gear, in about 50% Ulduar gear and 50% Naxx gear, I could pull 2k DPS on the burn phase to launch us into XT hard mode.

But I am under no delusion that, in normal circumstances, I am supposed to DPS. What other utility could the druids bring? Moonfire or Wrath spam? Really? What else are they going to do if not cast balance spells, being all decked out in spellpower (sorry, intellect) gear?

So it seems to me that there are three issues at hand:

1) Tree of Life form, as it stands, is useless. The devs also believe that druids should not be locked out of utility the way they are by being restricted to that form.

2) Some people hate Tree of Life form, dating back to its introduction.

3) Some people feel that the shapeshifting act is a core part of being a druid and for restoration to NOT have one is a giant step backwards in the life of a resto druid.

I’ll wait to see what beta brings on this “cooldown” form. For all we know, mana cost could be reduced by 75% on all spells for one minute. For all we know, it could contain a group innervate. For all we know, it could boost the strength of tranquility by 500%. We DON’T know what the plans are.

But I do know that I hate looking like a treant and that ToL is basically useless in PVE at this point in time. So I’ll wait to see what the deal is before I start freaking out.

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”.

Yeah, I'm a noob.

Kurn / / general, healing, icecrown citadel, lfg, priests, raiding, ramblings

I’ve been levelling a priest more or less “with” my brother who’s levelling a paladin. I heal him. He tanks. It works nicely, even though he’s about 4-5 levels ahead of me.

Anyways, I’m 49 now. At 48, I was overjoyed to get Prayer of Fortitude, if just for the simplicity of buffing my WHOLE GROUP at once.

I previously levelled my brother’s priest from about level 47 until 70, back in BC. So it’s not like I haven’t done what I’m doing now. I healed Sunken Temple then, I’ve healed it now. I basically know what I’m doing.

However, it turns out that, in some instances, battlegrounds are AMAZING experience. As such, I have reluctantly been queuing for WSG and AB.

Know what I’ve done for the past two days? I’ve buffed each group with Prayer of Fortitude. Individually. Because the last time I got Prayer of Fortitude, that was how it worked.

Never mind that I have a mage, who buffs the whole group at once with Arcane Brilliance. Never mind that I have a druid, who buffs the whole group at once with Gift of the Wild. Apparently, I am incapable of reconciling Prayer of Fortitude with the words “raid-wide buff”.

In other news, heroic Festergut down. 8/12 hard modes. I think I hate that fight a lot, now.

We tried heroic Sindragosa three times tonight, all attempts being epic, total, absolute failures. People didn’t realize that Frost Bombs one-shot you. They forgot about the AOE damage from Backlash. It was just sad, really.

OMG. BRD – Prison just popped for me! I LOVE BRD!

Updates ahoy!

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

So, a variety of updates tonight/this morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But in Cataclysm, you will be able to.

Hilarious!

Power Word: Barrier seems nifty, too.

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

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

So that’s what’s new with me.

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.

Kurn's Q&A #11

Kurn / / druids, general, icecrown citadel, paladins, q&a, raiding

As it’s patch day for 3.3.3, I highly anticipate servers dying and being unavailable and such, so I thought I’d sit down and hammer this out. (Speaking of, I’ve been very quiet on the subject of 3.3.3. This is primarily because they aren’t nerfing paladins or hunters. Which is a shocking, but welcome, change. Seems like they ALWAYS nerf one of the two.)

1) divine shield mutated plague / “mutated plague” mechanics / grid mutated plague

Okay, let’s talk about Mutated Plague then, shall we? ;)

Mutated Plague is the debuff that the tanks get in phase 3 of the Professor Putricide encounter. The debuff causes raid damage. The more stacks on a target, the more damage the raid takes. This is why a 2-tank strategy in 10m and 3-tank strategy in 25m is usually recommended. They taunt the boss in turn, rotating who gets stacks to help control the raid damage.

In my 25m raids, the taunt rotation goes thusly:

Tank 1 – 2 stacks of Mutated Plague -> Tank 2 – 2 stacks -> Tank 3 – 2 stacks -> Tank 1 – 1 additional for 3 stacks -> Tank 2 – 1 additional for 3 stacks -> Tank 3 – 1 additional for 3 stacks – > Tank 1 – 1 additional for 4 stacks

And so on. So it’s 2 stacks, then a total of 3, then a total of 4.

Thing is, if the stacks drop, you heal Putricide for a certain number multiplied by the number of stacks on the tank who dropped them. That means that if the stacks drop, for ANY reason, you just healed him for a ton of health. Divine Shield WILL wipe off stacks (Divine Protection will not, Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian will not). And so will death. So to get through Putricide, it’s pretty imperative that no tanks drop their stacks.

Anyone using Grid who wants to know when the taunt is supposed to happen should ABSOLUTELY put it in Grid.

Status, Auras, Add new Debuff, type in Mutated Plague. Then, Frame, Center Icon, add a tick next to Debuff: Mutated Plague.

Voila.

2) icc loot 10 man holy paladin

Honestly, I’m not terribly familiar with ICC 10 loot, but let’s take a look. I’ll just post some pieces from 10m normal. Obviously, if the piece isn’t plate, make sure no one of that armor class needs it more than you. Pass to your shammies, druids and casters and don’t be a dick. :) And, of course, this is all my humble opinion, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt. I’m evaluating all the loot on its own merits (or potential merits, in terms of tier possibilities) and does not take into consideration all the stuff you’re probably wearing. Note that I highly recommend 2pc T10 if only for the set bonus!

From Lord Marrowgar:

Coldwraith Bracers: Nicely itemized for a holy paladin. Haste, intellect, a socket for another +20 int gem. Don’t let the lack of crit scare you off; since the Illumination nerf to 30%, mp5 is a more reliable method of mana regeneration than crit is.

Ancient Skeletal Boots: Ehhhhh. No haste. Despite being a higher ilvl, not a significant upgrade from 245-level Boots of the Courageous. There are better boots in here for you.

Frost Needle: I know, I know. It has hit on it. Don’t steal this from any caster who has a legitimate use for the +hit. This is a nice sword for us, though — haste, intellect, spellpower. I’d value this over another weapon that drops later, actually.

Corrupted Silverplate Leggings: Sweet legs. I’d prefer mp5 to the crit, to be honest, but these are a solid pair of pants. Given that our tier pants kind of blow, IMHO, you should definitely pick these up if you can.

From Lady Deathwhisper:

Boots of the Frozen Seed: Moonkin loot, really. But if your boots suck, go for it. Great stats.

Deathspeaker Disciple’s Belt: Great belt.

Gunship:

Ice-Reinforced Vrykul Helm: Not too bad, compared to our T10 (251) helm. It’s actually better in a couple of aspects. However, if you ever think you’ll be in a 25m for a token or a 10m heroic for a token to upgrade a piece of tier to 264, the clear winner would be our T10 helm. Otherwise, it’s a nice hat!

Bracers of Pale Illumination: The Marrowgar bracers are, IMHO, better than these. Don’t go for the socket bonus for +4 intellect; it’s not worth what you’d lose from 20 intellect to 10 or something. If the socket had been yellow, it would have had a fighting chance. As it is, get the Marrowgar bracers if you can. These are still a good second choice, though.

Deathbringer Saurfang:

Soulcleave Pendant: Beauty. Snag it!

Festergut:

Festergut’s Gaseous Gloves: On the surface, better than the 251 Tier 10 gloves. And better than the 264s. Actually, they’re pretty darn good gloves to have over the tier, all the way up to 277 level. I personally prefer the Gauntlets of Overexposure from the Emblem of Frost vendor for 60 Emblems. Two sockets, like the Festergut gloves, but haste (which neither Festergut’s gloves nor any of our tier pieces have), a goodly amount of crit and intellect. So really, I’d pass on the gloves off Festergut unless you really have no way of ever getting 60 Emblems of Frost and your gloves are crap. Dreamwalker has a nice pair, though.

Signet of Putrefaction: Pretty ring! Very nice if you can’t get Marrowgar’s Frigid Eye, which is BOE. Your other ring, of course, should be your rep ring from the Ashen Verdict.

Rotface:

Shuffling Shoes: Remember that I was talking about better boots for you? These are the ones I was talking about. The leather ones off Deathwhisper have more haste, but these have haste, mp5 and two yellow sockets for an extra bonus of +4mp5 if you’re stacking +20 intellect gems. Earthsoul Boots are still better, but in a 10m setting, these are very nice.

Choker of Filthy Diamonds: Comparable to the Soulcleave Pendant. Based on your current stats, you’ll either want the tiny bit of extra int and the crit from the Pendant or the extra mp5 on the Choker.

Putricide:

Chestplate of Septic Stitches: Ooh, pretty! Too bad all the sockets are red. And there’s no haste. (Yes, hi, I’m a haste whore.) Honestly, I’d save up for the Lightsworn Tunic. But if you’re at 676 haste or more without your chest, then this is a solid upgrade for you out of 10m ICC. Still, there are other options.

Rippling Flesh Kilt: Pretty much awesome for pants. Even if they’re a kilt. Snag ’em if you can’t get the Marrowgar pants.

Princes:

Heartsick Mender’s Cape: A cloak with a socket and haste on it, unlike the Emblem of Frost vendor cloak? Yes, please!

Cerise Coiled Ring: Good alternative to the Signet of Putrefaction, but definitely second-best, IMHO.

Blood Queen:

Chestguard of Siphoned Elements: Amazing itemization for a paladin. This is actually better, IMHO, than T10’s 251 chest, but again, the T10 is upgradeable. This is not.

Tightening Waistband: My goodness, look. It’s plate. Why is all the great gear built for shammies? :P Honestly, though, you want Belt of the Lonely Noble (BOE from ICC 25) or Lich Killer’s Lanyard from the Emblem of Frost vendor. If you have neither, this is a great option out of 10m ICC.

Dreamwalker:

Emerald Saint’s Spaulders: Meh. I much prefer the Lightsworn Spaulders for the haste, but 2 sockets vs. 1 makes the Dreamwalker 10 shoulders very appealing.

Stormbringer Gloves: Another strong option for gloves.

Sindragosa:

Shoulderguards of Crystalline Bone: Better than the Emerald Saint’s Spaulders, to be sure, particularly with the haste.

Lost Pavise of the Blue Flight: No-brainer. Get it! Great itemization. Too bad there’s no socket, but honestly, this is a beauty.

Lich King:

Valius, Gavel of the Lightbringer: Stats are so-so. But hey, it’s from the Lich King, is ilvl 258 (same as Trial of the Grand Crusader) and it’s like, UTHER’S mace from his holy set! Heh. :)

Whew.

3) blessing of protection on sindragosa

Does absolutely nothing, sorry. :(

4) how to make a spell power set for dreamwalker

Without totally regemming everything that you regularly use? Yeah, not the easiest thing in the universe. I bought my tier chest and my tier gloves and gemmed them for spellpower (since I wanted to have my full tier anyways, even if I’m not using it) and I swap out Glyph of Seal of Wisdom for Glyph of Seal of Light. I have a pair of shoulders I use that are gemmed up with spellpower, too. Apart from that, you can always go back a tier and use T9 stuff. Heck, you can get T9 from emblems of triumph, so you can always get the T9 pieces and wear 3 of those (maintaining 2pc T10) if you don’t have old gear, etc.

5) should healers only run back?

Absolutely not. People who can resurrect should rez people if they die after the fight. If your rezzer runs, you run. Period.

6) warrior rage mechanics “shielded”

Check out WoWWiki: “As of Patch 3.1, will still allow warriors and druids to generate rage from damage absorbed.” So it’s fine. :)

7) stop casting divine plea

You can right-click it off, or use a macro like this:

#showtooltip divine plea
/cancelaura divine plea
/cast divine plea

So on your first click, you’ll cast Divine Plea. On your second click, you will cancel it. I do NOT use this macro because if I accidentally click twice (in the clicking-furiously process), I’m screwed.

Alternately, have

/cancelaura divine plea

as a separate button.

8) how do i keep judgements of the pure

Make sure you judge at least once a minute to maintain your Judgements of the Pure buff. Be aware that your judgements can MISS.

9) how to tank as a druid

Use Maul, use Swipe, use Mangle, use Lacerate. Done. ;) Seriously, check out this post at Big Bear Butt.

10) old school flasks elixir master

Yep, elixir masters can proc old-school flasks like Distilled Wisdom. Not that I proc often…. but I HAVE procced it. :)

Kurn's Dungeon Basics

Kurn / / dungeons, general, guide, lfg, ramblings

I’m levelling a priest. (I know, shoot me.) I’m levelling with my brother, who’s levelling a paladin. I’m disc, he’s prot. We’re primarily doing it through the random dungeon finder.

As such, I feel compelled to write up a quick guide to some very basic concepts of running dungeons, particularly at low levels.

1) Understanding Threat.

Threat, also known as aggro, is a good thing to have if you’re the tank and a bad thing to have if you’re anyone else.

What IS threat? What IS aggro?

It’s the attention you get from enemy mobs that makes them want to rip your face off and then stomp on it for good measure. As such, it’s highly recommended that the person in a 5-man group that tries to gain threat from enemy mobs be the “tank”.

A “tank” is named such because they are supposed to be large, intimidating and heavily-armored. Like, you know, a tank. In the World of Warcraft, you have four classes who can perform this role. They are: warriors, druids, paladins and death knights. For the purposes of this guide, I won’t discuss the death knights. I assume (perhaps mistakenly!) that if people can get to level 55 in this game, they have a basic idea of the tank/healer/DPS/aggro dynamic.

Warriors typically drop their talent points into their protection tree if they’re planning to tank and will probably wear a shield. You’ll want to see a druid shift to bear form to tank. A paladin will also be putting points into their protection tree if they want to tank, also putting on a shield.

Your tank is basically a distraction. They’re the ones who are supposed to use their various abilities to make themselves appear to be the largest threat those mobs are facing at any given moment. They wear heavy armor and have abilities that are very dangerous-seeming, plus have special talents and abilities to prevent all that insane damage from splatting them into next Tuesday. In reality, it’s the DPS (damage dealers) who are the largest threat, because they’re the ones dealing all the damage. Meanwhile, the healer is healing the tank so the tank can continue to generate threat. In an ideal situation, only the tank is taking damage so that the healer can heal through the encounter with ease, while the DPS attack the mob or mobs and deal a lot of damage.

So, are we clear on this? Tank grabs mob’s attention -> DPS deals damage on mob while mob is focusing on tank -> Healer heals tank and DPS/themselves if needed.

The trouble with this situation is that, for the game to be a challenge, threat is EASY to produce through damage and a little more difficult to produce for a tank. The tanks need to smack the mobs around a little bit in order to generate enough aggro from them to ensure that the damage dealers can do their jobs and go to town.

Here’s the catch: If the tank runs around near the mobs but DOES NOT hit them, this is called a “facepull”. That means that the tank has gained the attention of the mobs by physically approaching them, but the tank has not used any abilities to generate threat.

If a facepull occurs, ANYTHING the party does to EITHER the tank OR the mobs will result in that individual “pulling aggro”, which means becoming the most hated person by those mobs.

“Anything?”

Anything. So long as it’s to the tank or to one of the mobs. Or to each other, if you’re already in combat by virtue of being close enough to the action.

So if I’m the healer of the group and the tank runs up to a mob and just STANDS there, getting beat on, if I heal him, I start looking threatening and the mob will go “HOLY CRAP, look at THAT person!!!” and come charging at me, with the intention of ripping my face off and stomping on it.

Similarly, if I’m a DPS and I start hitting the mob before the tank has had adequate time to generate aggro on it, the mob will go “Who the hell just hit me in the face?!” and then, you guessed it, it will then come charging at me, with the intention of repaying the favour.

Thus, to prevent your face getting smashed in, wait for the tank to establish aggro. This should only take a few seconds, but may take longer if more than one mob has been pulled.

“So what do I do if I pull aggro, even though I’m sure I won’t because I’m reading this awesome guide by you, Kurn!”

Glad you asked! Rather than run away from the mob and trying to hide in a bush, somewhere, you should run TOWARDS the tank. Yes, even if it means running through the mob who is trying to give you a mouthful of Chiclets. This means that the tank will be in range of the mob to hit them and pull them OFF of you. (Hunters, feign death. Rogues, vanish. Night elves can also Shadowmeld temporarily and priests can Fade, but don’t expect miracles.)

Some tanks are better at holding aggro on groups of mobs than others. In particular, paladins dropping Consecrate are amazing at it, although druids can abuse Swipe and that’s also pretty good. Death Knights are moderately better than warriors, but are still unable to generate the same kind of constant area-of-effect (AOE) aggro that paladins and druids do very easily. Warriors, well, they have a few tricks up their sleeves and a good warrior won’t have a problem with holding aggro on several mobs, but do be sure to give them a few seconds before you start in on things.

Related to this concept is the gauntlet mechanic.

There aren’t too many gauntlets in the game and I think the first one we really encounter in dungeons is in Shattered Halls, a level 70 instance in Hellfire Peninsula, but there are a couple of spots in level 80 dungeons/heroics where this mechanic comes into play.

What is a gauntlet?

A gauntlet is a section of an instance where mobs never stop spawning, so the way to get through it is to have the tank barrel down the hall or whatever it is, run all the way to the end, hold aggro on all of them and then AOE everything down.

Notable gauntlets in WOTLK dungeons:

– the trash for Skadi in Utgarde Pinnacle
– the trash towards the Scourgelord in Pit of Saron (the tunnel)

I don’t think this is technically a gauntlet, but you can treat the trash between the first and second bosses in Halls of Lightning (Slags) as such.

The trouble with a gauntlet is that the tank is running through, so they are NOT building threat. That means that a healer should NOT cast a heal, DPS should NOT damage mobs and NO ONE should be ahead of the tank. (Pre-shielding a tank with Power Word: Shield or Sacred Shield or Earth Shield is fine, though. But no hots!)

Ideally, the tank will have either Retribution Aura (from any paladin in the group) or Thorns (from any druid in the group) on them to better build aggro as they’re being beaten on, but those aren’t always available, so, in general, you’re looking at a whole hallway of facepulling. When the tank gets into position, they’ll start generating aggro and then the healer can start healing and the DPS can start damage. It is IMPERATIVE that, unless the tank is literally about to die, a healer not heal the tank. Let them get low. Under 50% is when I begin to worry. The panic sets in at about 30%. But do your best to not cast before they get to that point, or else six mobs are going to peel off the tank and splat you into the wall.

I should also note that if you want to be conservative (and there’s nothing wrong with that), you can agree to stop about midway through the gauntlet, AOE things down there and then move to the end and AOE things down there as well. This is a particularly good plan if the healer is new to the role, the tank is new to the role, if they’re unsure about the instance or if either is undergeared for the content.

Cooldowns like Pain Suppression, Guardian Spirit, Hand of Sacrifice and Lay on Hands are things that healers can cast on the tank as well, right at the end, to help stabilize the tank before they start healing. Tanks can also use their own cooldowns, like Divine Protection, Shield Wall, Last Stand, Enraged Regeneration, Barkskin, Survival Instincts, Frenzied Regeneration, Icebound Fortitude, Anti-magic Shell, Anti-magic Zone and the like.

2) Casters and How to Move Them.

Ever been standing there, halfway down a hallway in Scarlet Monastery or something and had a caster just shooting at you the whole time? But if the group gets too close to that caster, they might pull another group or another patrol? Of course you have. Everyone has.

Ever wonder what to do about it? Wonder no longer.

Long story short: Line of Sight (LOS) around a nearby obstacle or pull as far back as you can so they come to you at least a little bit.

These are the basics that people in my recent low-level pugs have emphatically not mastered. I don’t think most of them are even aware of these concepts. Thus, a post.

(As an aside, I was on my priest and shielded a bear who insisted on collecting the entire room Interrogator Vishas is in and was chided by a rogue or a shaman for doing so because it would prevent rage generation. Hah, WoWWiki says that: “As of Patch 3.1, [Power Word: Shield] will still allow warriors and druids to generate rage from damage absorbed.” Yay me for not being fail! And yes, I will be careful not to shield my brother too much when he gets Spiritual Attunement.)

Whew. Okay, Holy How-To #4 coming this week, I swear. Stupid healing meters…

Ruffled feathers, perhaps?

Kurn / / general, paladins, ramblings

So, I got email notification earlier last night that I had a new comment on the blog, on the post that details my primary issues with WoW.com, Mr. Chase Christan and Mr. Adam Holisky, particularly with respect to the holy paladin position there.

I then got another email notification about another comment, on the same post. Curious, considering the post was written nearly a month ago.

Both comments were, shall we say, not particularly flattering. ;)

It would appear that I ruffled some feathers, somewhere and our rogueadin’s fans have decided to come by and speak their piece.

The comments are automatically moderated; all comments are by default, even by a registered user, until I approve the author at least once. I haven’t made them viewable yet. And I’m not going to display those comments in that set of comments, for two reasons:

1) Approving the comments will allow the two posters the freedom to post anything anywhere on my blog.

2) My rebuttal of those comments will be right here. In this post. And I’d like anyone who ends up reading those comments to read this post. I think that’s only fair, considering it’s my website and, therefore, my rules.

What I’ll do is post the text of the comments here (and even the screenshots to show that I’m not hiding anything) and address them. Point by point.

Continue reading “Ruffled feathers, perhaps?”