How I Got 19 Emblems of Triumph in One Night

Due to the fact that I’ve been tanking so much lately, I’ve been working on my prot gear. Up ’till now, I’ve been using my Conqueror’s Aegis Breastplate. I’ve managed to upgrade my neck, my bracers and my legs for free out of Trial of the Crusader (25m regular) because ilvl 245 loot no longer costs us DKP and we’ve cleared it so often that most people don’t want any more tank gear. (WTB Satrina’s Impeding Scarab, but that’s a whole other story.)

So tonight, we do heroic Faction Champs and heroic Twins and I manage to win the roll on the Trophy of the Crusade off one of them. I was all excited that I’d finally get to upgrade my chestpiece (which is out of Ulduar… ugh.) to another ilvl 245 piece.

And then I realized I only had 56 Emblems of Triumph vs. the 75 I needed to turn in with my trophy for Turalyon’s Breastplate of Triumph. Since we finished the raid early, I decided I’d go for it. 19 badges isn’t that hard to get, not these days. Each random heroic you do (after the first, which I’d already done) gives you two extra badges. So if the average dungeon had 3 bosses, I’d only need to do 4 or so to ensure I’d get all 19 that I needed.

To try to make sure it was a relatively easy night, I decided not to queue as a tank. I just wanted to heal, get my chestpiece and go to bed.

First up, Utgarde Pinnacle. Great run. Fail of a hunter, though, name of Glyhm. Let us not only be in awe of his fail gear that is poorly gemmed and usually not enchanted, which includes Icy Scale Chestguard (!), nor should we only be in awe of his slightly strange spec and choice of professions (and the fact that one is nowhere near max level), but we should just sort of sit there in disbelief at this little exchange:

huntard1

I probably should have gone to bed after this run, because it was definitely an indication of how things were going to go. No one said anything in party chat after that, that’s how agog we all were.

Anyways, after that… no, wait, I’m sorry. I have to address the huntard.

Aspect of the Viper definitely drops your DPS low. It’s a short-term thing you use for about 20-25 seconds at a time to fill up your mana bar when it’s low. To allow you to regen mana without dropping your DPS would make you OP. Mages have Evocation, which reduces their DPS to 0 while they channel it. Warlocks lifetap, during which they only inflict damage on themselves, not the target. And rogues don’t have mana, so there you go, the 3 mana-using pure DPS classes all have ways of regaining mana that affects their DPS.

Funny how balanced that is, isn’t it? :P

Anyways, despite the fail hunter (who makes me glad I don’t run recount on Madrana, because I think I would have cried if I’d looked at the DPS meters), we finished Utgarde Pinnacle in 22 minutes. Six badges down, 13 to go, right?

On to Forge of Souls! I basically don’t have any issues with this group. It was probably the best group of the night and I’d essentially forgotten about it entirely because nothing bad happened. Another 4 badges down, 9 to go.

And then it was time for Ahn Kahet: The Old Kingdom.

Problem #1: The mage was a cheap bastard. No table, no Arcane Brilliance (just Arcane Intellect). Given that most runs go less than a half hour and are usually quick, I can forgive them this. But it still annoyed me.

Problem #2: The mage either had no idea how to decurse or had no idea where their decurse button was. They claimed to be on someone else’s computer, so maybe the latter is the reason that I NEVER GOT CURSE OF TONGUES REMOVED FROM ME, which led to my death and the death of the warlock shortly after the second boss.

Problem #3: The warlock never bothered to soulstone me (or anyone) or put down a soulwell.

Problem #4: It appeared that the rogue had never before done the instance. Which… is fine. Honestly, I’m okay with that. The problem I have is when people don’t ask. Never been to OK before? Fine. Tell me. Then I can tell you how not to die when the last dude casts insanity, so that you’re not going “omg wtf how come u were all mced?!?!”

Despite a near-wipe on the last guy (who bugged out and reset, so we got a second chance — and the rogue died AGAIN), we got through the instance. We didn’t do the heroic-only boss, so only 4 bosses and 2 extra emblems. Six emblems down, two more to go!

Whew.

So I queue up again, as a healer.

And then I see the Halls of Reflection loading screen. I sigh, wondering if I should just drop group and go to bed, but… I’m just two. freaking. emblems. from my shiny new chest. So I cross my fingers and brace myself for doing the dumbass LoS strat (I find that as the tank, you have much more pull in the decision-making process than as a healer. :P) and probably wiping a few times.

I zone in and I look around for the tank. Warrior has 27k health. Okay, not him. There’s a hunter, so that’s not the tank. A mage, nope, not the tank. The DK has 29k health. And I know I didn’t queue up as a tank. So yeah, the DK is going to try to tank Heroic HoR with 29k health — which includes kings.

We gave it two tries and then basically asked him to leave. Which he did. And he’d been unsure in the beginning anyways. I told him to keep tanking and working on his gear and thanks for trying, hoping against hope that good karma would bring me a good tank.

After a few minutes of waiting for a new tank in the queue, I was like, well, fuck. I can tank it if I need to.

So I take us out of the queue, sign up as tank and healer, then requeue.

30 seconds later, we have a priest healer. Sweet, let’s do eeeeet.

So I tank in the middle, tell them to run to me if they have aggro, if we can get the hunter to freeze something and, if the priest has a second, to shack something, that would be amazing, but not to worry if not.

We coast through the first waves. It was beautiful. I was totally in the tanking zone, I was holding aggro, things were shackled and trapped, it was AWESOME! We kill the first boss and get all the way up to the second to last wave and then it falls apart. We lose the hunter.

That’s okay, one more wave.

We lose the mage.

That’s okay, we have what, two mobs up and the boss is coming, but we can TOTALLY do this. I have 43k health and a ton of cooldowns!

The warrior dies as the Spectral Footman who came into the boss fight with us dies. That leaves the Tortured Rifleman. I get the priest to shackle and we embark upon a long, arduous fight that ends up with her death and my continuing to wear the boss down for another 80 seconds or so. I was judging light, I was using my sacred shield, Divine Plea was active and at about 12k health, I used Lay on Hands. Still going! From 43k all the way down to about 6k, whereupon Ardent Defender finally freaking procs. And then once that was done, I still had a healthstone (leftover from my raid, not from the fail warlock who was in OK with me), so I used that… and then I died.

Way impressive, no? I figured we’d be just fine. But no, the priest drops group. SIGH.

So we go for another healer, and a druid shows up. The druid immediately starts asking why we’re not doing the LOS strat. >< And then, despite not having aggro (hi, I have Grid, don’t you lie to me, you leafy bastard), proceeds not to heal me as much as he probably should have been healing me, doesn’t remove even ONE poison and then I die and we wipe.

We run back. Again. And now the mage has decided she’s had enough. So we get a warlock. Who, of course, doesn’t SS the healer or provide a soulwell.

Once again, the idiot druid fails. I’m sorry, when I’ve taunted off of you and you no longer have aggro on any of the mobs AND I’ve BOPped you just to make absolutely certain half the mobs who are up aren’t going to touch you, you cannot blame your death FROM THE POISONS THE ROGUE STACKED ON YOU, on me. Sorry. Especially when you can cleanse poison off yourself. Seriously.

So the druid does just that, blames me for his death, then says this strat doesn’t work, and leaves the group.

So I left, too. I got up, got ready for bed, then sat back down and queued myself up just as a healer for another random heroic, because really, I was just one emblem short of my damn chest.

And there’s the bloody Halls of Reflection loading screen again. I could have screamed.

The group looks more competant than the others. There’s a DK, a ret pally, a warlock and a warrior tank who has 39k with kings. Cool.

LoS strat? Sigh, yes, LoS strat.

Two wipes, due to the LoS strat, since the tank (and others) kept creeping around the corner out of MY line of sight, but anyways. We finally got Falric down and wiped on the waves after him. I could have left. I had my stupid badge. But the four of them were all from a guild on Caelestrasz and seemed at least somewhat competant, so I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt.

After another wipe on the trash pre-Marwyn, I said that this was my last attempt and that we should make it a good one. The warlock has no shards, so no SS, no HS. /facepalm.

We start in on the trash and even though I have to use Holy Wrath on cooldown to stun things and use Divine Shield/Divine Sacrifice to keep us alive, we made it through to the boss. The warlock even ninja soulstoned me as soon as he had the shards, in the middle of waves. Of course, he then took 4 ticks from every Well of Corruption that spawned on him, but he lived and we lived, and hey, let’s go escape the Lich King!

We wiped on the second-to-last wall because they were killing things randomly and there was still a witch doctor up that the Lich King caught up to and they couldn’t kill before he was on us, because he was a caster. ><

So I advise them to focus the witch doctors and to pop cooldowns on the second wave of the last wall. We escape the third wall easily and are nearly overrun at the last wall, but we all pop cooldowns and escaped. True, we lost the warlock, but he pulled aggro on an abom who cleaved him, so there wasn’t a lot we could do.

Whew.

So all that said and done, I went and got my chestpiece, got +10 stats to it, put in a Solid Dragon’s Eye for 51 stam and a Regal Dreadstone for 10 dodge/15 stam (and to activate my meta). With an elixir of mighty fortitude, a guru’s elixir and a 40 stam food buff and Blessing of Sanctuary, I now hit 40k health, self-buffed.

I was also told, by various groups, that I was an excellent healer (the OK group and the last HoR group, in particular) and that I was a great tank (the HoR group that saw me solo Marwyn for over a minute).  I don’t really believe the great tank business, since I think pally tanks are very overpowered at the moment and it’s all about knowing when to hit your cooldowns, but it’s nice to hear praise about my healing. I take pride in healing and really do consider it my main job in this game. If I wasn’t at least somewhat good at it, I don’t think I’d be doing it at all. Hell, if I weren’t good at healing, I might still be DPSing. Which I’m no longer as good at as I used to be — which is one reason I keep healing.

Anyways, I’m certainly not going to be tanking a lot more than heroics for the foreseeable future, but I think I’m going to keep tanking a bunch of those (at least one a day) to help me get accustomed to it. I still don’t love it or anything, but I do enjoy learning about various aspects of the game and pally tanking is so easy compared to what I imagine warrior or DK tanking is, that I’m just going to enjoy this brief period of time where I’m not loathing tanking.

It’s so hard to imagine that, once upon a time, back in Apotheosis, I OTed Hydross’ adds and Tidewalker’s murlocs… Thank God we got a real OT for those fights after just a week or so of my standing in for them. :P

Kurn's Guide on How to Behave as a Healer in Dungeons

Kurn’s Guide on How to Behave as a Healer in Dungeons

You’ll note that I don’t specify “random” or “heroic” or “raid” dungeons. That’s because I believe that my guide is good for any level healing class in any size of dungeon, be it 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 or 40. It was inspired, of course, by the fact that I’ve done more 5-man regulars and heroics in the last week since 3.3 came out than I have in the previous five months, but there are some good basics here of which all healers should be aware.

Why am I writing this? Because I’ve run tons of dungeons in my WoW career as all three roles (healing, tanking, damage) and every time I’m on one of my toons, there’s always at least one moron who doesn’t know how to appropriately behave in a group. Always. And those are the GOOD groups.

So, from someone who raids primarily as a holy paladin, who runs anything she can with her hunter, who will reluctantly tank as her paladin, who pugs raid content on her resto shammy, who plays a mage in the 70s and has a dual-specced resto/feral (tank) druid in the 70s as well, here’s my guide for healers.

1) Heal. This is a bit of a no-brainer, I know, but a long time ago, on a server far, far away, I used to group with the warlock officer of my guild. Awesome person. Great warlock. She had a priest alt. And she’d levelled the priest shadow. But when she got to 60, she went holy to heal us in 5 and 10 man dungeons. So there we are, in UBRS, doing the Father Flame event and someone dies. “Oops!” says the warlock-priest, “My bad! I forgot to heal! I was DPSing.”

<3 her all day long, but if you’re that kind of a player who primarily plays a DPS class and has a healer alt (or DPS main spec and healing offspec), remember what your role is for the group. If you’re a healer, you heal, even if you’re bored. (I get very bored at times on my paladin and my shammy. So I feel for you. But you still should pay most of your attention to the health of the group instead of what % the boss is at because Murphy’s Law will step in and kill your healing targets while you’re innocently DPSing away.)

2) Heal the pets.
No joke, I’m not kidding, pets are an important part of the group’s DPS and rezzing/resummoning pets can be time consuming for the other players, so make sure that when you’re healing the group, you’re healing the pets, too. 3.3 means pets will be taking a lot less damage now, but it’s still important to keep an eye on them.

3) Prioritize. Basically, prioritizing is the key to healing. Your top priority in a 5-man is the tank — but don’t forget about yourself. If BOTH of you are in mortal danger and you don’t have Beacon of Light up or Binding Heal at your disposal, do what you can — Nature’s Swiftness for both druids and shammies is there for a reason. Remember the age-old saying:

– If the tank dies, it’s the healer’s fault.
– If the healer dies, it’s the tank’s fault.
– If the DPS dies, it’s their own damn fault.

You’re responsible for everyone in a 5-man, but the DPS has to take some responsibility for themselves and the tank has to take some responsibility for you.

4) Know which heals to use. I’m not going to go through the zillions of healing spells available to holy paladins, holy priests, disc priests, resto druids and resto shammies. But suffice it to say, your spec and class abilities give you lots of tools to heal with (yes, even paladins have lots of spells these days!) and you should know not to, for example, use Lesser Healing Wave on three separate people when one Chain Heal will do the job. You should not cast Healing Touch on each group member when one Wild Growth would have sufficed. Don’t drop a 20k crit Holy Light when a 4k Flash of Light would have been fine. Don’t cast Prayer of Mending when your target needs Penance or, gasp, Greater Heal.

But how do you know which to use? Practice. Get used to what your spells are healing for. Turn on combat text and get an idea of the ballpark. Then when you’re healing your group, if you’re using frames that show you the difference between current health and maximum health, you’ll have a much better idea of which heal to use. I strongly recommend Grid and Clique for raid frame addons, by the way.

5) Move out of crap/away from adds. Having said that, if you, as a healer, die because you wouldn’t move out of the fire, poison, void zone or whatever or you die because you let adds beat on you without trying to run to the tank (or bubbling or fading or even shadowmelding), that death is entirely your fault. You’re not a tank. Well, you might be, but not when you’re in healing gear in a healing spec. :P Healing is about being aware of the group and their health — that includes you and your environmental awareness. Don’t be that idiot standing in the fire. (I’ve been there and done that, myself. Not a lot of fun!)

6) Cleanse your group. This might seem like another no-brainer, but you should be dispelling/cleansing everything you can off your group. Your priority is to heal and you might have to heal through a lot of debuffs if they pile up too quickly, but as soon as you can, start getting them off of you, your tank and the group. (Cleansing Totem is probably the best totem in the entire universe.)

7) Buff your group. Prayer of Fortitude, Divine Spirit, Shadow Protection, Gift of the Wild, *Greater* Blessings and group-appropriate totems!

A specific note to shammies: Totems are always a little tricky. If there’s a DK in the group, you shouldn’t need to drop Strength of Earth and can drop Stoneskin instead (or Tremor as needed). If they have a few points into Frost (for Icy Talons), you shouldn’t need to drop Windfury. Otherwise, look at your group composition. If you have yourself and two or more caster DPS, go with Mana Spring and Flametongue, along with Wrath of Air. But if you’re the only mana user, consider Windfury instead (unless already covered by a DK).

Depending on the group, I typically drop Strength of Earth, Mana Spring, Flametongue and Windfury, so that both melee and casters get two of my buffs.

Basically, just be aware of what’s already covered by your group and don’t overlap buffs. :)

8) Use your defensive cooldowns. Priests have Guardian Spirit or Pain Suppression, paladins have Hand of Sacrifice and many have Divine Sacrifice. Use them. They are life-saving abilities. (Tip: Don’t use Hand of Sacrifice without bubbling first and you should still expect to have to heal yourself after Divine Sacrifice if you use it without bubbling.)

9) Inform your group when you need mana. If you actually say in your group chat that you need mana, then when the idiot tank runs in and pulls the boss before you’ve even had a sip of water or nibble of a mana strudel, at least you can be like “OMG WTF I SAID I NEEDED MANA”. Never assume that your tank is remotely considerate of you. And even if you do get a considerate tank, the DPS may not be.

Example: I was tanking Halls of Lightning with a RL friend of mine who was healing me on her priest. We were in the hallway with the statues on our way after the first boss. She hadn’t stopped to drink after the boss or the first wave of mobs in the hall or the second wave (since there was a fear and the hunter got feared further into the hallway for the second group). So, because I know that healer mana is not necessarily infinite, I waited for her to sit and drink as I watched the idiot mage in our group run full speed ahead to trigger the third group.

I almost didn’t taunt off the moron and then said, in party chat, “If we could possibly avoid pulling when the healer’s drinking because she’s out of mana, that would be appreciated.”

So the best way to avoid misunderstandings or bad pulls like that is to announce your status to the party. And I don’t mean by being annoying and typing /oom six times in a row. “My mana has waned!” can only be heard a few times before people start to go insane. :P (Yes, Kylon, if you’re reading, that’s a reference to you and that BRD run from when you apped to Fated Heroes. YERL! <3)

10) Be patient. Easier said than done, I know, healers. But even though you want to use a baseball bat to beat the people you’re grouped with (whether in-guild or a pug — it can happen either way), you need to take a deep breath and realize you’re not going to be stuck healing those morons forever. Dungeons, even the longer 5-mans, take about 30-35 minutes of your time. Raids obviously take longer, but generally have a fixed end time. If you’re sitting there, wiping on Anub’arak on heroic mode for the 38th time that week, take a deep breath, look at the clock and tell yourself you only have another hour or so to go.

11) Resurrect your dead group members after combat has ended and you’ve gotten a bit of mana. Period. No excuse not to. The only time you shouldn’t be expected to rez the dead is when you died. My philosophy is: if your healer has to run, so do you. Of course, if someone has to afk real quick, the benefit of the doubt should be given, but if the dumbass is chatting in group or whatever and isn’t running, tell him or her to start running their ass back to the instance. I have, in the past, back in Shadow Labs, I think, forced the group to wait on a rogue who died and didn’t run back instead of rezzing him. The entire time he was running back, he was arguing with me and I finally managed to get it through his thick skull that his resurrection is entirely based on my kindness and I don’t take kindly to people who don’t even make the effort to run back. (Tip: In a raid situation, rez healers/rezzers first and if you’ve been the recipient of Divine Intervention, ALWAYS rez the pally who cast DI on you first! It’s only polite.)

12) Don’t do too much.
Okay, that’s not a specific thing for when you’re healing in a dungeon. But I had to mention it anyways because healers and tanks can burn out really, really quickly in this game. Why? There’s all kinds of responsibility on their shoulders and people are WAY too quick to judge. Both are thankless roles. In fact, if healers and tanks do their jobs right, no one should notice anything — because people lived and the tanks held aggro. And since healing meters are a terrible way to gauge your performance (unlike DPS meters for the DPS classes), it can often seem like you’re doing your job without feedback or encouragement.

In the past, I have countered this, in general, by not doing 10-man raids. And not doing any 5-mans that frustrate me. Nope, my paladin basically did her 25-man raids and that was it. And then came Emblems of Triumph and I needed a bunch of Emblems to make use of the Trophies of the Crusade for gear. Suddenly, I was doing 10m VOA, 10m Ony and even the occasional 10m TOC/TOGC, in addition to 25m VOA, 25m Ony and the guild runs of 25m TOC/TOGC. Ugh!

Thankfully, Emblems of Frost are only attainable through the 10m and 25m versions of Icecrown Citadel — and the weekly raid quest. And daily random heroics. And there aren’t separate hardmode timers for ICC, so there’s only two raid lockouts for Emblems of Frost to drop. Whew.

So I’m doing four bosses in 25m ICC, four bosses in 10m ICC and the weekly raid quest. The daily random heroics? Well, I keep signing up as a tank *and* a healer, but I have tanked every single random heroic I’ve done thus far: Azjol’Nerub, Old Kingdom, Gundrak, Halls of Lightning, Trial of the Champion, Utgarde Keep, Forge of Souls… I’m losing track of them all, but it means I’m not healing nubs and I’m getting a lot of practice tanking.

So really, that’s not a lot of healing I’m doing on my paladin. Granted, I’m healing daily on my shammy, but she’s not doing any ICC yet and has, like the rest of my toons, stopped running Onyxia and VOA (at least until the new VOA boss comes out). I’m reserving ICC for my hunter and my paladin right now, so that’s not any extra healing.

I know someone who, I kid you not, was healing both Ulduar 10 and 25 on two toons every week, in addition to healing Sarth3D 10-man zerg attempts, plus VOA on both 10/25 on both toons. That was too much healing for her. Even half of that is too much healing for me and too much healing for most sane people. There’s just so much time that you can spend healing up other people in any given raid week, IMHO, and the further you stay back from that limit the more you’ll enjoy the time you ARE healing and the less likely you will be to burn out. Everyone’s limits are different and you should be aware of when things are starting to feel like an obligation instead of a fun part of a game.

Anyways, all of that said, healers, even you part-time healers who are discovering healing through the new 5-mans and random dungeons, thank you for your dedication, for being the ones who choose to clean up after everyone’s mess. There are never enough healers and *good* healers are extremely rare. So I hope that this guide has helped you out a bit and that you know that you’re appreciated in general for the choice you’ve made to heal through portions of this funny little game we play.

Thoughts about healing in TOGC25 & gear stuff.

So, I have 5/5 T9 and I have the heroic Breastplate of the Frozen Lake and the heroic Legplates of Failing Light. Breaking my 4pc T9 set bonus to equip both of these pieces kind of makes me sad. I’m a tank healer — I usually heal the MT or OT and beacon the other. Sacred Shield is usually up on both, as I usually heal with another holy paladin. So when we have a situation where I can spare the second or so to refresh Flash of Light on my non-primary target, I do so. Having a Flash of Light hot ticking for over 1000, every second, for 12 seconds, on big-damage fights like Heroic Twins is amazingly effective. This “heal over time” business is actually freaking awesome. And to have the hot going on 2 targets at once? Sweet deal.

But the heroic chest and pants are still better items than their 245 ilvl tier counterparts. And I get up to 710 haste (a bit overkill, but am I really complaining? No.), more intellect (due to the itemization and one extra gem socket on each item, meaning +40 intellect from gems alone)…

So while, logically, I know that the non-set pieces are *better*, I miss my ultra-uber hots.

I decided to try out which benefits me (and the raid) more on Heroic Anub’arak attempts.

For about 7-8 attempts, I wore 3/5 T9 and for the last 7-8 attempts of that night, I wore 4/5 T9.

Altogether, the results are basically the same: people need to stop sniping my goddamn heals. ;)

I think that in certain situations, such as the way we do Twins, it would be more beneficial to the raid if I bomb Holy Light as much as possible and ignore the FoL hot on the second tank, because the Glyph of Holy Light really helps out with healing the entire raid.

But I think that, until our one Anub OT gets to the point of being unhittable, taking the time to hot him up will be more beneficial in keeping him up than helping out on the raid with HL bombs. The guy is taking insane damage because he’s just not geared properly:

[01:01:40.338] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior Dodge
[01:01:40.338] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior 11696
[01:01:40.338] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior 11776
[01:01:40.550] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior Dodge
[01:01:40.550] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior Miss
[01:01:40.550] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior 1962 (B: 4019)

Yeah, 24,000 or so damage in .212 seconds.

Tonight, we start TOC fresh again. And maybe THIS will be the week the warrior gets the bracers off Maexxna and the belt off of Razorscale to help him with his avoidance set. ><

I have no words…

Seriously, I ran a VOA 25 pug today with, bar none, the worst holy paladin IN THE WORLD. I feel so bad for him that I’m not even going to post his name. It’s just so TRAGIC.

Some of his stats:

1616 bonus healing

15.08% chance to crit (20.08% holy crit)

13819 mana

(All unbuffed.)

His ONLY spec is holy, 51/20/0 and yet he’s wearing TANK SHOULDERS and using the exalted AV trinket (yes, I’m serious) AND … Majestic Dragon Figurine. Seriously.

Surprisingly, his spec isn’t utter crap. There’s just a couple of points I’d re-allocate, but it’s a decent spec.

The glyphs are criminal.

Glyph of Flash of Light… which… unless you’re doing a spellpower/FoL build/gear set, I would never use.

Glyph of Judgement. … right, because it’s so much better for a holy paladin than any other glyph you can take, right? 10% extra damage on your judgements? AWESOME, right?! /facepalm

And then… the pièce de resistance…

Glyph of Crusader Strike.

Oh. And 0 minor glyphs.

When I noticed, after the tanks died on Koralon and he himself died on Emalon, that he had 16k mana, raid-buffed, I whispered him and said “Hey I know you’re probably new to being 80 or being holy. I raid as a holy paladin and one of the best sites I ever stumbled across was http://www.bananashoulders.com/ so you should definitely check that out for gear, gemming and enchanting advice for holy paladins. :)”

He wrote back with “ty for tip”

I can only PRAY he’s currently reading everything Siha has ever, ever written.

I uploaded the logs (because I log damn near everything) and was pleased to see my overall damage on my hunter, but then curiousity got the best of me and I saw that the paladin in question really failed hardcore, and that’s when I started armorying him.

Oh, the pain.

Blizzard, I don’t care what you do to your game. It’s your game, after all. But you certainly have to understand that there are some very good players out there who run into these completely misguided, uneducated and plain dumb individuals… and it makes us want to cry. A lot.

Ugh.

So I screwed up my Grid for my pally by messing around with it on my shammy. /facepalm. I spent about an hour redoing it, including all my custom buffs and debuffs. I tried to install GridStatusRaidDebuffs or whatever it’s called, but all I got were general LUA errors stemming from it, so I went back to doing things manually. I just hope I didn’t forget anything.

I also changed some Clique configurations. Previously, though I used Clique a lot, I didn’t have a couple spells bound to clicks. Now:

Left-Click: Flash of Light

Right-Click: Holy Light

Middle-Click: Cleanse

Thumb Button: Holy Shock

Shift-LC: Target

Shift-RC: Sacred Shield

Shift-MC: A macro to cast Beacon of Light on my focus target

I don’t make enough use of a focus, so I thought I’d try that last one out and see how it works. Typically, I am assigned one tank and told to keep beacon up on another. So I’m hoping to save time in binding a click to a focus/BOL macro.

And speaking of BOL… I finally have, at least temporarily, given up my Holy Shock Glyph. For the time being. Beacon of Light is just so freaking expensive and I’m wasting tons of mana on it per fight. How much? In just a five minute fight like Twins, I’m casting BOL five times. If I had the glyph, I’d be casting it 4 times.

Time / cast # for me / cast # with glyph

00:00 / 1 / 1

01:00 / 2 / 1

01:30 / 2 / 2

02:00 / 3 / 2

03:00 / 4 / 3

04:00 / 5 / 3

04:30 / 5 / 4

Each time I cast Beacon of Light, I’m spending 1461 mana (1538 minus 5% from Glyph of Seal of Wisdom). So, in a short fight like Heroic Twins, that’s 1461 mana I’m saving.

But I’ll still miss my 5-second Holy Shock. :(

And finally, I switched from crit on my shoulders and helm enchants (35 crit strike rating combined) to mp5 (18 mp5 combined). 18 mp5 isn’t a huge amount, but I have a ton of crit and I do NOT have a ton of mp5, so I’m hoping that’ll help out a bit. (If I ever get a Heroic Solace of the Defeated, I’ll go back to crit. :P)

So we’ll see how I do in Sunday and Monday’s raids, given all these changes. I just hope I can remember my new clique bindings!

Wow. Just… wow.

Heroic Twin Val’kyrs down. Using the DUMBEST STRATEGY I have ever encountered in my ENTIRE LIFE.

The whole basis of the fight is that there are auras that you should switch to based on what’s happening right then in the fight, and the aura portals are in four spots (two for each) of the room.

But does my guild do this?

No.

On the kill, 3 of us got the light aura, 21 of us got the dark aura. (Did I mention we 24-manned it? No? We did.)

Those 3 were two hunters and a warlock in BT Shadow Resist gear, basically collecting white orbs and dodging as many black orbs as they could.

As I understand it, here are four abilities the twins use.

Light Vortex – surge of light, 16k fire damage to anyone not with light aura every second for 5 seconds.

Dark Vortex – surge of dark, 16k shadow damage to anyone not with dark aura every second for 5 seconds.

Twin’s Pact (Light) – light-coloured shield that people with dark aura should have no issues killing, then interrupting the cast (which is a heal)

Twin’s Pact (Dark) – dark-coloured shield that people with light aura should have no issues killing, then interrupting the cast (which is a heal)

So, just by describing that, one would think that half the raid is light, half is dark, everyone switches on vortex, right? WRONG.

We healed through Light Vortex.

2 resto shammies, 2 holy priests, 2 holy paladins, 1 resto druid.

It meant popping two Divine Sacrifices that overlapped (even if they don’t stack) AND all four druids in the raid popping tranquility for their groups.

But, by golly, we healed through it.

And the shammy blew heroism at the right time. And they swapped DPS targets on time. And we won!

But it was pure luck.

The order of those four abilities (which happen once a minute, I believe?) is random. But they won’t repeat until the fifth time an ability comes up. And THAT is also random, I believe. So we only got one Light Vortex. Had we gotten two, we would have been SCREWED. I was ready to Divine Protection/Divine Sacrifice (which would have killed me) if I had to, but we got through without a second Light Vortex.

Some stats:

Effective raid DPS: 121,717

Effective raid DT(taken)PS: 50,469

Effective raid HPS: 50,966

RAW raid HPS: 91,732

And only 44.4% overhealing.

My RL friend, the resto druid? 9133 effective health per second. To my 4064.7.

Whew.

Heh.

Good to know that with 36,389 mana (raid buffed), I FINALLY have enough mana to not need saronite vapours on Vezax, normal mode.

And, for the first time ever, a raid group I was part of one-shotted Yogg. With 21 people. 5 healers. Regular mode, of course. But Phase 3 was upon on faster than I thought possible. Portal DPS must be sick.

Eesh.

Got the shammy to 80 at long, long last, so now I have:

Kurnmogh (80 hunter on Proudmoore)

Madrana (80 paladin on Bronzebeard)

Katarrah (80 shaman on Bronzebeard)

Plus I still have my 74 mage on Proudmoore.

In the less-than-24 hours that Katarrah has been 80, she’s healed (!) Vault of Archavon 25 and 10, DPSed Azjol-Nerub and ToC (both heroic)… I’ve gotten a TON of nice gear, stuff I made on Kurn that I sent over with Katarrah when she transferred to BB. I also got a couple nice drops here and there and, overall, am kind of excited I have another 80 on the server.

In other news, server first Northrend Beasts, faction server first (server second) on Lord Jaraxxus and server/faction second on Faction Champions.

Woot.

3.2 – Sob.

I’m probably making too much of it, but I’m still very sad about the nerfs to Divine Intellect and Illumination. Bastards.

Anyways. Got an achievement the other day that, frankly, shocked the living crap out of me. So surprised was I, I forget to screenshot it as it happened.

lightning1

I had no idea what the hell that was.

lightning2

… I’m still dumbfounded that the raid I was in, my guild raid, got that. Week after week, people get ruined by that dumb lightning… and yet, we get THAT achievement? It’s not like it’s difficult to avoid or anything, but it’s kind of surprising. Sort of like The Safety Dance.

Anyways, I’m still unsure how the hell I’m going to be healing in 3.2.

I guess something along these lines:

1) Cast Sacred Shield on the tank I’m healing.

2) Beacon the tank I’m not.

3) FoL the tank every 12ish seconds to keep my hot up (must configure Grid to show hots AND my own one…)

4) … FoL the other tank if they have SS on them?

5) Continue to spam Holy Light and pray to God I don’t run OOM.

Ugh. I guess we’ll see how things go in the Coliseum (anyone else think that should be spelled Colosseum?!) tonight. Assuming the servers and such get all sorted out okay.

Sigh.

2-piece HOLY T9 bonus is extending the duration of our judgements by 10 seconds, to last 30 seconds.

Blizzard hates us.

Not only that, but I’m trying to figure out what to do with regards to the Illumination nerf. 30% of mana back on a crit instead of 60% (and all that is instead of the original 100%!!!).

Do I stack spellpower so my FoL/Sacred Shield hot is huge? Do I keep stacking int so that I can cast close to forever? Do I stack even more crit so that even if I’m only getting 30% of mana back on a crit, at least 50-60% of my heals ARE crits? Do I respec back into ret for the +crit?

I should probably go read up on this stuff at EJ, PlusHeal and other places, but part of the problem is that I’m just so SAD about our bonuses and our nerfs. And I’m sorry, I don’t particularly like the idea of beaconing the tank and healing the raid so that the heal can transfer .5 seconds later, even if it’s now going to count overhealing. I’ll probably still beacon the other tank and spam heal the current tank. The only places in current content where I can see beaconing the tank and raid healing as viable are:

– Freya +any elders (’cause the tank doesn’t take a lot of damage, but good LORD, does the raid)

– Head tank on Mimiron, MAYBE?

– Thorim in the arena, I guess? I still foresee a squished tank.

I’d like to take this opportunity to say that I LOATHE Beacon of Light with all my heart. I use it so sparingly. I use it on a second tank, I use it on my tank on Mimiron’s Plasma Blasts and use Hand of Sacrifice and then heal the crap out of myself, I use it on myself on Kologarn and Iron Council and Hodir… and that may be it.

I want the new expansion to come out and I want a decent 61 point talent, please. Sigh.