Category: healing

Healing Classes and History

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

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

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

Continue reading “Healing Classes and History”

Kurn's Q&A #19

Kurn / / alchemy, dungeons, healing, icecrown citadel, lfg, paladins, q&a, raiding

Welcome, welcome, one and all, to Kurn’s Q&A! This is the time of the week when I look at my website stats from the previous week and see how I can better help those search for information by expounding on 10 search terms that led people to my site. I love Tuesdays.

1) “katrana prestor”

Ahhhhh, Lady Katrana Prestor, also known as Lady Onyxia! Katrana Prestor used to be an NPC in Stormwind Keep. There was Bolvar Fordragon, Anduin Wrynn and Katrana Prestor in the throne room in the keep.

At level 50, you could start an immense quest chain that begins in Burning Steppes called Dragonkin Menace. It would take you through Burning Steppes, over through Blackrock Depths, to Lakeshire, to Stormwind, back to Morgan’s Vigil, all over the damn place. Eventually, you would rescue Marshall Reginald Windsor, whom everyone from pre-BC probably loathes as much as I do, and meet up with him at the Stormwind gates.

There would be this truly awesome event that would take place — you’d escort Windsor up to the keep and accuse Lady Katrana Prestor of being Onyxia in disguise and she’d transform RIGHT FREAKING THERE and get the guards in the keep to turn into their draconic forms. Bolvar would LAY THE SMACK DOWN, but not before Windsor is mortally wounded. (I used to /cheer.)

Here’s the script.

Onyxia would vanish, presumably to go to her lair, and you would be tasked with restoring a medallion. You’d have to go to freaking Winterspring, to the top of a damn mountain, to talk to a blue dragon (Haleh, who appears in high/blood elf from) who’ll tell you to go to Upper Blackrock Spire and kill General Drakkisath and get the Blood of the Black Dragon Champion. (This eventually became party loot, but for a LONG time, there were only 1-3 of these that dropped at a time.)

Then you go back to Haleh and she would give you your Drakefire Amulet, which you had to have with you to enter Onyxia’s Lair.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of Lady Katrana Prestor as she was in the game before they removed the Onyxia attunement questline. More info here on Lady Katrana Prestor from WoWWiki.

Edit: Best video EVER. The Craft of War: Blind.

2) does divine shield drop lady deathwhispers

Drop Lady Deathwhisper’s what?

Curse of Torpor: Probably
Frostbolt: Yeah.
Mind Control: Well, you can’t pop it if you’re MCed, I don’t think, but if she makes the mistake of popping it for you, you will probably get released from the mind control.

3) dxe bossmods malleable goo putricide hard

Yeah, my DXE only shows me the location of one, not all three, Malleable Goos. Sorry. :(

4) elixir master not proccing 2010

I’m an elixir master. It procs. My proc rate usually sucks, but it procs enough to let me know I haven’t lost the ability to proc entirely.

5) fastest way to get emblem of triumph one night

Queue up as a healer or a tank and do dungeons all night long. Or, do Naxxramas.

6) hard mode professor putricide 25m strat

Funny you should mention that. I just wrote up a post detailing how my guild does heroic Putricide on 25m.

7) holidays grace for dps or healer

I understand your confusion in this day and age of spellpower instead of damage/healing and healing. Holiday’s Grace has mp5 which means it’s for healers. DPS have enough tricks up their sleeves to regen mana, whereas healers have a couple things, typically with long cooldowns, such as Mana Tide Totem, Shadowfiend and Innervate. mp5 is the only thing that will aid in mana regen for healers, so you’ll find it on lots of healer gear.

Rule of thumb: +hit = DPS caster, +mp5 = healer

That doesn’t mean all healers want a lot of mp5 or all casters want a lot of hit, mind you.

8) how to respond when someone asks for raid achievements

If you have them, link them. If not, you may be out of luck if you’re not really geared. You can always say “this is my alt, I know the fight from my main” if that’s the case, or just tell them you know the fight and just haven’t done it on that toon, even if you’ve never done it. The key here, of course, is doing research so you’re not That Tool that everyone else is carrying.

9) why cant i que for icc

First of all, it’s “queue”. Second of all, ICC is not a dungeon. You cannot queue for a raid group. You can sit in the raid browser for it, but I’m assuming that this is what you cannot do.

If you cannot select ICC as a raid to sit in the raid browser for, this means that Blizzard’s estimation of your gear is such that you won’t be able to adequately perform with that gear in ICC. Go get some gear.

10) on a holy palatin, what foods, enhants, and gems to improve mana regeration

… please, please don’t have been a native English speaker.

The more mana you have, the more mana you’ll regenerate. Divine Plea is based on our maximum mana, as are Replenishment and Mana Tide Totem. For mana regen food, you can either go with 40 crit strike food or 20 mp5 food. For everything else, it’s intellect. Make sure you’re also using the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond.

Holy How-To #6

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

Welcome to my Holy How-To for PVE Paladins. This is the sixth 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, we’re going to talk about haste and why, exactly, it is your number two stat if you’re a Holy Light paladin and why ALL paladins need as close to a 1.0 second global cooldown as possible. I was originally going to talk about healing meters and parses and the like, but once again, I had a couple of conversations (hi Saunder!) that abruptly changed my mind about this Holy How-To’s topic. So today, folks, Haste and Why to Stack It.
Continue reading “Holy How-To #6”

Hilarity on Heroic 25-man Putricide

Kurn / / healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

My guild has been struggling on heroic 25-man Putricide. We’ve downed him once. Ditto on Sindragosa, but last night, we were working strictly on Putricide.

Possibly the most terrifying moment(s) of the night:

3 tanks alive

1 healer alive

Putricide at something like 2%

Guess who the freaking healer is? THAT’S RIGHT. THIS LADY. This happened not just once, but TWICE.

For those who don’t know the encounter, P3 gets a little hectic. You have Unbound Plague running around, plus the slime pools, plus Malleable Goo and ALSO the damage from Mutated Plague is just insane.

How insane?

Here’s my death log.

[00:44:21.128] OT Mutated Plague Madrana 6547
[00:44:21.128] Bear Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 6547
[00:44:21.128] DK Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 6548
[00:44:23.615] OT Mutated Plague Madrana 6547
[00:44:24.037] Bear Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 5987 (O: 561)
[00:44:24.058] Madrana dies

That is over 18,000 damage per tick of Mutated Plague at 3 stacks on 3 tanks.

Sadly, I had to run out of a slime pool, so I had to stop casting and we all died, but prior to then? Holy cow, man. Look at some of these numbers:

[00:44:14.430] Madrana Holy Light  OT +8288 (O: 7280)
[00:44:14.738] Madrana Beacon of Light Madrana +15277 (O: 1069)
[00:44:15.140] OT Mutated Plague Madrana 6547
[00:44:15.140] Bear Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 6548
[00:44:15.140] DK Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 6548
[00:44:15.149] Madrana Glyph of Holy Light DK Tank +1001
[00:44:15.149] Madrana Glyph of Holy Light Bear Tank +1001
[00:44:15.648] Madrana Holy Light OT +*2174* (O: 20821)
[00:44:15.960] Madrana Beacon of Light Madrana +19643 (O: 4502)
[00:44:16.392] Madrana Glyph of Holy Light Bear Tank +2777
[00:44:16.392] Madrana Glyph of Holy Light DK Tank +3749
[00:44:17.241] Madrana Holy Light OT +0 (O: 15820)
[00:44:17.568] Madrana Beacon of Light Madrana +0 (O: 16611)
[00:44:18.011] OT Mutated Plague Madrana 6548
[00:44:18.011] Bear Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 6548
[00:44:18.016] Madrana Glyph of Holy Light Bear Tank +1910
[00:44:18.016] Madrana Glyph of Holy Light DK Tank +2579
[00:44:18.375] DK Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 6547
[00:44:18.756] Madrana Holy Light DK Tank +20024
[00:44:19.254] Madrana Beacon of Light Madrana +15574
[00:44:19.564] Madrana Glyph of Holy Light OT +2418
[00:44:20.324] Madrana Holy Light DK Tank +20851
[00:44:20.826] Madrana Beacon of Light Madrana +4069 (O: 12148)
[00:44:21.128] OT Mutated Plague Madrana 6547
[00:44:21.128] Bear Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 6547
[00:44:21.128] DK Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 6548
[00:44:23.615] OT Mutated Plague Madrana 6547
[00:44:24.037] Bear Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 5987 (O: 561)
[00:44:24.058] Madrana dies

Kind of insane, right? hahaha! And it doesn’t even taken into consideration my LOH!

[00:44:10.747] Madrana Lay on Hands  OT +38852
[00:44:11.610] Madrana Beacon of Light Madrana +7245 (O: 33550)

You may be wondering to yourself what the hell is up with me beaconing myself. Good question!

Last Thursday, while wiping to this fight, the other holy pally (the one who is basically AWOL now for a month) and I decided to swap beacons to ourselves after we respectively hit our DS/DS (divine shield/divine sacrifice). We typically hit DS/DS one right after the other. I go first and I hit it after the third tank hits 2 stacks of Mutated Plague, so all three tanks have 2 stacks. This permits me to use my bubble to move to a better location for the last portion of the fight without worrying too much about the tanks being killed while I’m on the move and unable to cast. And once I find my proper position, I cast Beacon of Light on myself and resume spamming the crap out of the active tank.

Works BEAUTIFULLY. I can *just* outheal the Mutated Plague damage if I don’t have to interrupt my casting and move. Highly recommend this to any holy paladin and I’m seriously considering wondering if we should just have the priests raid healing using bindind heal. ;)

Kurn's Q&A #17

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

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

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

1) shadow priest sindragosa heroic 25

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

2) “pit of saron” tips skip riding

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

3) 16 int or 30 spellpower holy paladin

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

4) bringing in kingslayer to trigger hard modes

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

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

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

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

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

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

7) dont wanna go to zangarmarsh

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

8) glory of icecrown raider total hours spent

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

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

Yeah, now I want to quit…

9) what’s the priest bubble shield speed boost

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

10) what does eh mean paladin

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

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

What I Look for in a Holy Pally App

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

51/5/15 – FoL

51/20/0 – HL

51/0/20 – FoL

54/17/0 – HL

52/17/2 – HL

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

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

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

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

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

– mature PVE/PST server

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

kurn [at] apotheosis-now [dot] com

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

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

Kurn's Q&A #16

Kurn / / coliseum, gear, general, healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, q&a, raiding, tanks

Ah, Tuesdays. Relaxing day with no raid. It feels sooooo good to chill.

And I kind of deserve the day off, even if it’s nothing special and we always have Tuesdays off. We downed heroic 25-man Sindragosa on Monday, bringing us to 11/12 HM in ICC 25. Gah. I’m so worn out. Of course, our second holy paladin is apparently going to be MIA for a MONTH starting after Thursday, so I am not going to get a lot of recovery time. I told the raid leader that we needed not just one more paladin, but two, because I NEED a night off sometimes without the potential guilt that a raid can’t happen. Neither of us were there last Thursday, since we, strangely enough, both had our birthday on Friday, so in three hours they only got heroic Rotface, heroic Festergut and a few attempts at heroic Putricide before downing him on regular.

Anyways, guilt and obligation are not a factor tonight, so I ordered pizza and will be watching some TV shortly. While I wait, it’s time for Search Terms I Wish To Expound On!

1) unbound plague melee

Probably the most important thing you need to do if you, as melee, get Unbound Plague is to run the hell out of melee until you and people in melee no longer have it. The worst case scenario is that everyone, including your tank, keeps passing Unbound Plague around, increasing your debuff stacks and then you all die.

Check with your raid leader, but that thing spreads FAST, so my advice is to get out ASAP.

2) “divine sacrifice” putricide hm

Dear sweet God, if you have it as a holy or ret pally, bubble and hit Divine Sacrifice in P3. Right about when the third stack of Mutated Plague starts hitting the tanks is a REAL good time for the whole raid to take 20% less damage, assuming you have Divine Guardian, or a good time for your group to take 30% less damage. (Do not hit Divine Shield and Divine Sacrifice if you are a protection paladin who has stacks of Mutated Plague, because you will heal Putricide.)

3) 2 beacons on 1 tank

Yep, no problems here. They do stack. Bear in mind that there is lag between the casted heal on a person and the person with beacon, so watch your tank anyways.

4) anti magic zone viable for sindragosa hardmode?

This is a great question. I don’t actually know. I will state, with confidence, that nothing but LOS is wiping off stacks of Mystic Buffet. But AMZ may be useful for P3 on heroic Sindragosa, perhaps allowing people to drop Instability stacks in the raid for a short time.

5) can fury of frostmourne be bubbled through?

Excellent question. I’ll try that this reset. I think one of our shammies Reincarnated on Monday’s LK kill after FoF, so…

6) do you have to interupt npc in frost tomb lich king

I love that I’m answering this without actually ever getting sucked into Frostmourne.

– If you’re a DPS, you need to kill the bad NPC and that includes interrupting his cast.
– If you’re a healer, you need to heal the good NPC and that includes dispelling the magic effect on him.
– If you’re a healer who cannot dispel magic, you must heal your good NPC and then interrupt the bad NPC’s cast. Shammies would, in this case, use Wind Shear. Druids will need to bear form and bash.

So unless you’re a priest or a paladin, you need to interrupt the bad NPC’s cast. If you’re a priest or a paladin, you just need to dispel magic or cleanse the debuff on your good NPC.

7) haste pally 3.3.3 holy

If you’re someone stacking spellpower and mostly casting Flash of Light, get to 676 haste and then stop worrying about it, given Wrath of Air Totem, Improved Moonkin Aura/Swift Retribution Aura and Judgements of the Pure.

If you’re a holy paladin who stacks intellect and mostly casts Holy Light, don’t stop stacking haste! Ever! :) Stat priority goes:

Intellect > Haste > MP5 > Crit > Spellpower

8) nagrand level range

I believe 64 is when you can start picking up quests in Nagrand and you can easily spend four levels there if you do ALL of the quests, including some group quests like Durn the Hungerer, the forge camps, etc. And Corki. But I prefer leaving him to die. I hate that bastard.

9) prot pally why not divinity

This is an interesting question. After all, Divinity improves the healing you take by up to 5%, right?

The issue here is one of what is a better allocation of those five talents.

A semi-typical spec for a raiding prot paladin would look something like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sZVhxA0uMusIufdxfbzbc

With a spec that’s 0/53/18, could you take five points out of ret and sneak them into Divinity? Sure. But you’d be losing out on more damage done out of something like Crusade and Seal of Command or utility out of Pursuit of Justice. It’s not really worth it when you have Improved Devotion Aura which you should usually have on if only for the armor bonus, which also adds 6% extra healing. If you are suffering so much that you feel you really need the 5% extra healing from Divinity, your healers are slacking.

As a tank, you have two main jobs.

a) Hold threat. You hold threat by doing damage and using high-threat abilities.
b) Stay alive. You stay alive by virtue of the gear you’re wearing and various cooldowns like Divine Protection, Ardent Defender and other forms of avoidance (dodge/parry) and mitigation (block).

Your first responsibility is to pull everything on to you and hold them there. Your survivability, while most certainly something that should concern you, is not your most pressing concern. If you’re specced and geared properly for the content you’re attempting, your healer(s) should be able to keep you up. Blow cooldowns if you have to, but you should not need the extra 5% healing. Consider those to be points incenting holy paladins to start dropping points in Protection.

10) toc toc different lockouts?

Yep. There are FOUR lockouts for Trial of the Crusader.

a) Trial of the Crusader, 10 man (regular)
b) Trial of the Grand Crusader, 10 man (heroic)
c) Trial of the Crusader, 25 man (regular)
d) Trial of the Grand Crusader, 25 man (heroic)

Thankfully, Blizzard recognized that that is WAY too much time spent on the same bosses in what is the same blasted instance and changed hard modes for ICC back to being something you can trigger or select within the same instance of the raid.

Kurn's Q&A #15

Kurn / / cataclysm, gear, general, healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, priests, q&a, raiding

So I sat down to do this on Tuesday and realized I had a lot of other stuff to attend to, not the least of which was the Montreal Canadiens/Pittsburgh Penguins hockey game. GO HABS GO.

Ahem.

Anyways, here are 10 keywords that sent people to my site over the last few weeks that weren’t terribly well addressed in my blog. (You wouldn’t believe how many people google things like Toravon, still!)

1) shared lockouts kurn wow

Hah, cool, someone out there wants to know what I think of the shared lockouts in Cataclysm. I already addressed this, but as a recap:

– I LOVE the fact that 10s and 25s will be on the same lockout. LOVE it. No more overextending myself or feeling guilty for NOT overextending myself!
– I am apprehensive about the gear being the same regardless of raid size.
– I am downright terrified that any other incentive to run 25s will just not be enough and that people will flock to 10s just because they are less of a logistical nightmare.
– I will probably quit playing, period, if I can’t run 25s.

2) leet holy paladin healing techniques

Okay, that one made me laugh. First, I recommend my Holy How-To posts. Second, I recommend just overall awareness of your class abilities and researching fights to figure out in which fights they might be useful and, more importantly, at which points WITHIN the fights those abilities might be useful. Third, make sure you keep your buffs/debuffs up. A good holy paladin puts Sacred Shield on their tank and keeps the hot running. A GREAT holy paladin makes sure everything is always refreshed, including their judgement debuff if there’s no one else sharing that judgement, which means judging every 20 seconds. Of course, doing it when you can spare the GCD is the key, or else your targets are going to go splat.

3) best way to down dreamwalker

Well, technically, you don’t want to kill her. You want to heal her. ;) The key to the fight is not dropping your stacks of Emerald Vigor or, on heroic, Twisted Nightmares. Keep taking each portal, stack those stacks up and spam the living crap out of the boss.

4) “vengeful shade” addon

Don’t know of one. If you do, please, for the love of all that’s holy, tell me. Stupid Vengeful Shades. Why do they have to be so damn vengeful?!

5) /cancelaura power word shield threat tanks

This one confuses me. If you’re doing /cancelaura, it means you have the aura on you. So if you’re doing “/cancelaura power word: shield”, you’re getting rid of your shield.

There is only one time where I can foresee this being something you would ever WANT to do and that’s if you’re a protection paladin with points in Spiritual Attunement and your healer is a disc priest and you’re not getting mana back from being healed through damage being taken.

None of that has to do with threat, exactly, except that if you’re a prot pally, your threat depends on your mana in that it’s costly to keep throwing down Consecration.

If you have a disc priest shielding you in a dungeon (which is the only place it should matter — you should be taking enough damage to get mana back from shields in raid content) then just ask them not to shield you unless it’s an emergency, because you get mana back from being healed, not shielded.

All other tanks have no excuse to ever not want Power Word: Shield on them. It doesn’t affect rage mechanics, people. It used to. But not for a long time, now. Patch 3.0.2, to be precise.

6) 2 druids 3 mark of fallen champion

Ouch. I mean really, OUCH. I guess I would have to recommend bringing three healers for this, leaving one healer (a druid) on the raid until the last instant before the third mark comes out. Better still, bring a paladin and 2 other healers and that way, one of the druids can be on the raid full time.

7) best food for discipline priest

Since Borrowed Time and a moonkin aura/swift ret aura plus a Wrath of Air totem make the haste “cap” for disc priests really easy to hit, so they get a 1s GCD, the best food is either +46 spellpower (available in a Fish Feast or a variety of other foods) or +40 crit. +40 crit is over a full percent of crit, so it shouldn’t be looked down upon, particularly if you’re actually healing single targets as part of a tank healing team, because you DO want to proc Divine Aegis as often as you can. If, on the other hand, your primary responsibility in the raid is to cast Power Word: Shield, you’ll want +46 spellpower, since every bit of spellpower strengthens your shields, due to Borrowed Time.

8) best in slot pants for holy pally

I totally don’t even want to TALK about our stupid pants.

Actually, I take that back. I do want to talk about them. At great length. While ranting.

Our options for pants are HORRIBLE. Our T10 251/264 pants are awful. Even the 277s are pretty crappy. Seriously, here’s the comparison:

http://www.wowhead.com/compare?items=50866;51168;51271

Holy Light spamming paladins (which is the vast majority of us) should be looking for the following stats, in order:

Intellect, Haste, MP5, Crit, Spellpower

There is 0, check that, 0 haste on any of those pants. There is a mediocre amount of MP5 on any of them but the 277s. There is a huge amount of crit on these pants that I desperately wish could be converted to haste. And a truly ridiculous amount of spellpower! What gives?! This is our TIER?!

Assume we do not have access to any 277 legs.

http://www.wowhead.com/items=4?filter=qu=4;sl=7;ty=3:4;minle=251;cr=23:103:21;crs=1:1:3;crv=0:0:0

There are precisely 8 options item level 251 or over that we can consider. There’s 10, but you can’t be Horde AND Alliance, so you lose out on the mail and plate legs out of TOGC due to being on one faction or another.

Right now, I’ve got ilvl 258 Legplates of Failing Light. 116 intellect, 92 haste, 3 sockets. Pretty hot, right? Right. So hot that only two other items even come close to them.

The crafted Lightning-Infused Leggings offer 123 intellect (+7 from the Failing Light pants), 100 haste (+8 haste) and three sockets as well. The trouble is, you need to find a leatherworker who’s revered with the Ashen Verdict for these mail pants and then the mats include 8 Primordial Saronite. If you have nothing left to spend emblems of frost on, this is really easy to get, particularly if you’re raiding, but if you’re saving your emblems, the saronite alone can cost upwards of 1000g each.

Is 7 intellect and 8 haste really worth 8k+ gold?

Ehhhhhhhhhhhh.

The plate version? Even worse. The Puresteel Legplates also cost 8 saronite and aren’t even a haste upgrade from the Legplates of Failing Light as both items have 92 haste. 8k+ gold for 7 intellect, basically? No thanks!

The other real option is the heroic Corrupted Silverplate Leggings. 123 intellect (+7), 99 haste (+7) and three sockets. It’s an upgrade and it’s one that doesn’t cost eight thousand plus gold. The trouble here is that it requires killing heroic Marrowgar. On 10-man. Which means I’m never going to get these.

There’s another option, also a 10-man heroic drop, this time off Putricide. The Rippling Flesh Kilt gives the same amount of intellect (123) and 96 haste. Basically, if you’re running 10-man heroic ICC, the Marrowgar pants are easier to get by virtue of being an easier fight, but if you get Putricide down, go for these pants if you haven’t gotten the Corrupted Silverplate Leggings on heroic.

If you don’t have ilvl 258 pants like I do, the 251 versions of the Corrupted Silverplate Leggings and Rippling Flesh Kilt are nice enough, but if you’re really looking seriously at those, consider getting the mail legs crafted. They’re just a better upgrade overall.

I’m eventually going to have to bite the bullet and get either my ilvl 277 pants or the heroic Leggings of Dying Candles, both of which will actually only be a net gain of +3 intellect for me and hope that all my other 277 gear’s haste will compensate for the worst tier pants I’ve seen since T4. I value the Leggings of Dying Candles over the tier due to the extra socket and the increased MP5 versus the tier, by the way.

Whew.

9) boa libram for holy light

There is no Bind on Account (heirloom) libram, period. The best libram for Holy Light using paladins is the ilvl 200 Libram of Renewal, available for 15 emblems of heroism.

10) chestplate of septic stitches how should i gem

Honestly? It’s not a great breastplate. Let’s look at it.

There’s no haste. Three sockets is great for 3x+20 intellect, but… eh. The Lightsworn Tunic or, better yet, the Chestguard of Siphoned Elements off of Blood Queen Lana’thel in ICC 10 is a much better choice.

That said, if you’re asking how to gem it, you probably already have it. The answer is almost always “all intellect”, unless you’re a paladin who stacks spellpower and casts mostly Flash of Light. If that’s the case, that is a GREAT chest for a FoL spammer. Gem it with all +23 spellpower if you’re a FoL machine or if it’s for your Dreamwalker set. :)

Heroic Putricide

Kurn / / addons, cataclysm, healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

We did our first heroic Putricide pulls last week, I think it was. And we got him down tonight. I think we spent 22ish attempts on him this week, maybe 25 or 26 total.

Honestly? Not a big deal.

Granted, our kill was messy. I was absolutely the LAST healer standing and that is ONLY because I actually used a healthstone. And I should have used Lay on Hands but, as it turns out, I didn’t need to.

WHEW.

I thought heroic Sindragosa had a lot of stuff to be aware of — positioning, instability stacks, who has unchained magic, the Icy Grip cooldown…

It feels like heroic Sindragosa pales in comparison to heroic Putricide. What’s really dumb is that there are not a lot of changes on heroic Putricide, except for the addition of Unbound Plague and some changes for the transitions.

I guess that, ultimately, we knew the Putricide fight on normal well enough (and we should know it that well!) to really be aware of the regular mechanics and deal with them being thrown at us differently and adjust to a new mechanic.

We don’t have that kind of familiarity with Sindragosa. We’d only done 3, maybe 4 kills of her before we killed the Lich King and started in on the heroics.

Having said that, I don’t know if I would have been able to do heroic Putricide without AVRE for the Unbound Plague graphics. It shows who has the plague, what the range is on the plague before it passes to you and shows a cooldown ticking down for how long you’ve had the plague for. And if YOU have the plague, anyone without the debuff from the plague gets a little white circle on them, so you know you can pass to them.

Due to this graphic enhancement, I pulled off the most awesome move EVER on an unsuccessful attempt.

The hunter officer had Unbound Plague. She was actually moving towards me to pass it to me. And then she got Volatile Ooze Adhesive on her. Not only did this mean she couldn’t move, but it meant that ALL THE MELEE were charging over to her to prevent her death from the ooze.

But then, I realized, all the melee would get Unbound Plague.

I took five steps forward, grabbed the plague and backed up so that no melee would get the plague from me.

The hunter didn’t die, no one in melee got the plague and I passed it off to my RL friend the resto druid before I hit 10 seconds.

So, 10/12 HM ICC25 and I pulled off possibly the sweetest move I’ve pulled … basically in this whole expansion. I cannot think of a finer moment and it’s too bad that it didn’t lead to a boss kill.

And the Cataclysm alpha is out, to boot. We live in interesting times.