Category: paladins

Tuesday, Tuesday, So Good to Me

Kurn / / blogging, paladins, ramblings

Actually, I’m not sure how Tuesday’s going to treat me this week, but hey, thinking positively is good, right? :)

On the agenda for today:

– Q&A post

– new poll

– maybe finishing up my key run stuff/extra boss stuff in Strat Live and actually uploading said videos, now that I’ve snagged a halfway decent microphone from my father after the tragic death of mine (that had nothing to do with an unfortunate incident with mayonnaise, FYI, unlike my last microphone’s death.)

– definitely being excited about a non-fail holy paladin app, who reads this very blog, with whom I’ve been emailing back and forth for a couple of weeks. Seriously, in the same week, we have:

1) Terribly, hideously bad applicant for a 9/12 HM ICC 25 guild.

2) Stupendously amazing applicant for a 9/12 HM ICC 25 guild.

Crap. The first one is gone from the armory so I can’t even chardev him. Suffice it to say, he had 350 haste, was wearing two pieces of T9, was using Glyph of Flash of Light, wasn’t using a Nightmare Tear (and not getting a socket bonus or anything by using a Dazzling Eye of Zul and a Luminous Ametrine), was using 8 stats instead of 10 to chest, was using 15 haste instead of 23 to cloak, was Honored with the Ashen Verdict, had a cloak with spirit on it from the vendor (I think I would have preferred the Drape of the Violet Tower in this situation…), had Icewalker to boots but no run speed talent, had no Improved Righteous Fury, only had 1/2 Imp Lay on Hands…

Anyways. You get the picture. Someone who was hideously undergeared for things like normal Sindragosa and normal Lich King.

And then you have someone like Applicant #2, who not only obviously reads this blog, but also takes what I say to heart. 994 haste? That is almost three times the haste Applicant #1 had. My GM said, and I kid you not:

“Wait. Hold the phone. Is it Christmas?”

A warrior tank:

“Another holy pally?  And Madrana likes him?  Christmas has indeed come early this year.”

And a rogue in the guild who has a very decent holy paladin alt:

“Excuse me, mister drug-induced hallucination, but I need to sober up now so you can go away, because you’re OBVIOUSLY much too good to be true… right?”

So maybe Tuesday is going to be good to me? :)

Beta Talents, Take 2

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, healing, paladins

There was a new beta build released last night, so you get a new post about it from me today.

Upon selecting the holy tree to place your talents, according to this latest beta build, you get:

– Holy Shock
– Meditation (Allows 50% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting.)
– Healing Bonus (Increases the effectiveness of your healing spells by 10%.)
– Spiritual Focus (Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Flash of Light, Holy Light and Divine Light by 70%.)

The first thing to do when faced with the talents is to read everything in holy and everything in the first two tiers of prot and ret. There’s a lot of reading. Here are some of my thoughts.

Holy Tree

Tier 1

Sanctified Light (2) : Accessible to prot and ret, this talent is attractive for increasing Judgement crit chance, but is also good for us for 12% increased chance to crit on Holy Shock and Word of Glory — which is that Holy Power instant heal I discussed yesterday. More crit is almost certainly a good thing.

Divinity (3): Check it out, two less talent points to gain 1% extra healing (3 points/6% instead of the current 5 points/5%). Nice.

Judgements of the Pure (3): Since this is also accessible to prots and rets, I suppose that I can live with losing my 6% haste. I don’t want a ret pally smashing me in the face 15% faster, do you? I would prefer this to be a deep holy talent back to 15%, of course, but the last beta build had this on Tier 2 and now they’ve made it more accessible to everyone by putting it in Tier 1. So I can say goodbye to my 15%.

Tier 2

Clarity of Purpose (3): After years of seeing “0.5” seconds off various casts, Clarity of Purpose seems awkward. .3 seconds off Holy Light and Divine Light? I’m concerned too, because Light’s Grace is nowhere to be found. Anyways, still a talent that seems like we should be taking it.

Improved Lay on Hands (2): Hasn’t changed, still a great raid-saver.

Healing Light (3): 12% bonus healing to FoL, HL, Divine Light, Word of Glory and Holy Shock. Yes, please. I like that this is actually 22% more effective than our prot and ret cousins, due to the Healing Bonus you get just for being holy.

Tier 3

Now we get into areas that the other pallies can’t touch. This is our domain entirely.

Illumination (3): Non-bloated Illumination stays. Three points that are probably well-worth the mana return. Again, bumping this back to 100% or even 60% would be my personal preference. Alas!

Divine Favor (1): Despite the Divine Illumination icon, this is our old, dear friend. No-brainer here, even if it weren’t linked to other talents down the line.

Infusion of Light (2): A change! Holy Shock crits reduce Holy Light’s cast time by .75/1.5 seconds. So let’s see if I’ve got this straight. 2.5 second base cast time for Holy Light. -.3 seconds = 2.2 seconds. = 1.5 seconds = .7 second cast time on Holy Light after a Holy Shock crit, before Judgements of the Pure and before haste gear/raid buffs?

Anyone else think they screwed up and meant to put Flash of Light in there? That seems way too good, although I’d miss my instant FoL.

Enlightened Judgements (2): No-brainer, let’s get that extra range.

Tier 4

Beacon of Light (1): I’m sure this isn’t the right Beacon of Light spell. It says “each heal” and isn’t limited to certain heals. I expect this to be changed.

Speed of Light (3): Har, har, cute name. :P 30% spell haste for FoL, HL, DL, lower cooldown on Healing Hands and an increase in movement speed when we cast Healing Hands. I don’t see a downside.

Sacred Cleansing (1): Gotta grab this to ensure you can dispel Magic!

Tier 5

Aura Mastery (1): Again, worth getting even if it didn’t lead to anything else.

Denounce (2): PVP talent, it looks like. A free, instant Exorcism anytime you get a Holy crit.

Improved Concentration Aura (3): Same as today. Again, a little boring if not for use in PVP.

Tier 6

Tower of Radiance (3): Aha, another way to generate Holy Power and a reason to cast directly on your beacon target! I don’t know what the percentages are, but I would assume 33/66/100%?

Blessed Life (2): 5/10% chance for attacks to cause half damage. PVP talent in Cataclysm as it is in WotLK.

Tier 7

Light of Dawn (1): 21% of base mana, instant cast, 30 second cooldown, Send a wave of healing energy before you, healing all friendly targets up to 30 yards away for 1.

Well, assuming it’s for more than “1”, yowza. This might actually be a worthy 31-point talent.

I went to my RL friend the resto druid’s today, but she hadn’t patched in a couple of builds, so I didn’t get to mess around with beta. Maybe this weekend, though. In her words, though, just by the description, Light of Dawn is “OMG SO OP AND SO UNFAIR!” hahaha.

Okay, so let’s look at prot and ret and talents that may help us out there.

Protection Tree

Tier 1

Toughness, nah. Seals of the Pure? Meh. Improved Hammer of Justice, ick.

Tier 2

Judgements of the Just, not really for holy.

But wait!

Protector of the Innocent (3): +6% healing to those the Aura covered and -3% damage to you, personally. Maybe not a bad idea. That extra healing probably doesn’t stack with what was Tree of Life aura, although they don’t seem to have a persistent healing increase aura anymore. However, the resto druids don’t look anywhere near finished — Swiftmend is what they get when they spec resto and it’s still a talent in the tree.

Not a bad idea here, though. If there’s no prot pally or ret pally taking this, this isn’t bad.

Guardian’s Favor (2): If I’m speccing for Protector of the Innocent, I am definitely grabbing Guardian’s Favor. I love this ability.

Retribution Tree

Tier 1

Eye for an Eye, not for holy.

Rule of Law (3): Ooooh. Now this is interesting. 5/10/15% increased critical strike chance on Holy Light and Crusader Strike. Huh. Definitely something a holy paladin wants.

Crusade (3): Increases the damage and healing of Crusader Strike, Hammer of the Righteous, Templar’s Verdict and Holy Shock by 10/20/30%. Interesting. Probably want to grab this since it looks like Holy Shock will be a key part of our toolbox.

Tier 2

Improved Judgement, probably not for holy.

Conviction (3): Gives you a 1/2/3% bonus to damage and healing for 30 seconds after causing a critical effect from a weapon swing, spell or ability, stacks up to 3 times. Sooooo… just by critting, you want to give me 9% extra healing? Uh. Okay!

Pursuit of Justice (2): Run speed is always good, but you can just enchant your boots. Dealer’s choice here, really.

So, having looked at all of those talents, here’s what I predict the optimum PVE Holy Paladin build will look like, depending on the % chance to generate Holy Power from Tower of Radiance:

32/0/9 – This drops .2 seconds from your Holy Light and Divine Light instead of .3 seconds and also only goes 2/3 for Tower of Radiance in favor of getting all the healing skills in ret. Conviction is just stupidly good if there’s no internal cooldown on it. Rule of Law will help to make up for the ever-so-slightly longer HL cast time by adding 15% crit to it and since Holy Shock is clearly going to be very important to us, 30% extra healing from it in Crusade is probably going to be very important.

I imagine a prot support tree would be more support/utility-oriented:

31/10/0 – This would pick up two fillers in prot (Seals of the Pure and Improved Hammer of Justice) just to grab Protector of the Innocent for a raid buff and Guardian’s Favor for utility.

Anyways. My thoughts. What are yours? What build would you go with? Would you choose another entirely?

Kurn's Q&A #26

Kurn / / alchemy, gear, general, healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, q&a, raiding, ruby sanctum, weekly raids

Tuesday! A day off from raiding, a day to center myself and get caught up on a bunch of things, including weekly search terms that seem interesting.

1) what is raidwalled

“Raidwalled” is when a paladin with the talent Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian casts Divine Sacrifice, which activates Divine Guardian. This name comes from the warrior cooldown called Shield Wall, although Divine Guardian will not mitigate anywhere near as much damage as Shield Wall. However, it does affect the entire raid, whereas Shield Wall only affects the warrior.

2) bop remove cleave armor debuff ruby sanctum

That’s an awesome question. Next time I do RS, I’ll BOP an inactive tank for a second before freedoming them to see if that works.

3) do elixir mastery proc on potions

It astounds me that, more than three years since alchemy specializations were introduced, people still don’t get it.

No, Elixir Mastery alchemists proc on elixirs and flasks. Potion Mastery alchemists proc on potions. Transmute Mastery alchemists proc on transmutes.

4) drape of the violet tower holy paladin

DON’T DO IT DON’T DO IT DON’T DO IT BY ALL THAT IS HOLY DO NOT DO IT.

Okay, I may have exaggerated. But you have other options.

Fluttering Sapphiron Drape (10m Ony)
Flowing Sapphiron Drape (25m Ony)

And if you got lucky, Ahune dropped Shroud of Winter’s Chill for you and you didn’t get rid of it.

Honestly, I’d rank the cloaks thusly, from best to worst for a holy paladin:

25m Ony then Ahune then 10m Ony then Drape of the Violet Tower.

Seriously.

5) stormbringer gloves

I admit, I had no idea what the hell these were. The 251 Stormbringer Gloves are nice 251-level gloves. I would recommend the badge gloves over them, though, for a holy paladin. The Gauntlets of Overexposure are better — more int, more haste. They’re also available for 60 Emblems of Frost. Ultimately, I like the Unclean Surgical Gloves and the heroic Unclean Surgical Gloves better.

Here’s a comparison.

6) +casting +”beacon of light” +threat

I’m pretty sure that you do get some measure of threat merely by casting Beacon of Light. The Lich King looked at me last night after I cast Beacon of Light on an OT. It’s likely not much, probably the equivalent of a face pull, and would probably need to be done right when the boss becomes active (in the case of the Lich King, for example) in order to cause any significant threat.

Does the mirrored heal from Beacon of Light cause threat? I honestly don’t know. I’ll see if I can figure that one out.

7) any way to parse halion log

I use World of Logs, but the last I saw, it wasn’t able to parse both the shadow realm and the physical realm, since you’re only logging for your active realm.

I love WoL dearly and have no doubt they’re working on this issue.

8) halion beacon of light

What I like to do is beacon the tank here and raid heal, including myself. However, I never, ever hesitate to directly heal the tank, even if beacon is on them. I do this on most single-tank portions of fights. Will the beacon go through the realms? I do not think so.

9) holy paladin multiple beacon

You can have an unlimited number of beacons on a single target. The only limitation is how many holy paladins you have around.

10) is the weekly on the same lockout as the regular raids

Yes. That means if your weekly is Lord Jaraxxus and you go into TOC10 to kill him, you will be saved to TOC10. Same if it’s XT-002 Deconstructor and you go in to Ulduar 25, you are then saved to Ulduar 25.

Teaching a New Paladin

Kurn / / guild, healing, paladins, raiding, ramblings, shamans

One of the things I like most about my blog is that I have the opportunity to inform people of my playstyle and commonly-accepted best practices for the holy paladin. And I don’t have to sit down with them and go “okay, so you need to do X, Y and Z and then don’t forget about A and B and C”. I don’t have to look at their parses, don’t have to talk to them on vent, don’t even have to look at their armories unless I feel like it.

It’s nice. It’s a little distant and I get to remain sane, but I still get to help out people who genuinely seem to want to learn.

Discouraged by all the failadins out there, my current GM (for whom my adoration clearly knows no bounds) has decided to level up a paladin for the express purposes of going holy.  She recognizes we can really use another holy paladin for certain fights (heroic Sindragosa, heroic Lich King, heroic Halion) and has decided to roll a paladin, level it to 80 and heal for the guild on this new paladin. She’s continuing to recruit, mind you (WTB holy paladin! And a disc priest, actually. Email me at kurn [at] apotheosis-now [dot] com for details if you’re interested.), but she’s working at the paladin.

It’s not like she doesn’t know how to heal; she’s a brilliant resto shaman. (Fadorable, I’d love to see you both in a heal-off in equal gear!) I think that she’s actually the best class to make an easy switch to a holy paladin — she’s already used to not being able to cast and run (beyond the one instant — Riptide for her, Holy Shock for us) and the gear is similar in many ways. I think she’ll make an awesome holy paladin if we don’t find a second by the time she’s raid-ready.

However, I find myself TOTALLY thrilled at the prospect of teaching my GM the ins and outs of holy paladining. Like, THRILLED. I don’t know why, but I am eagerly anticipating it. To the point where I’ve informed her I will be her pocket tank for her heroics when she hits 80. Maybe it’s because I know she’s already an awesome healer and I think she’ll pick up on the nuances quickly. Maybe it’s because I know that I can mold her into another me. Maybe it’s because I HAVE missed some of this hands-on stuff. I used to be the poor schmoe who would talk to the raiders about X, Y and Z issues, for the most part.

I think it’ll be fun to run around as a relatively geared tank. A huge bonus of this guild is that you get offspec gear for free, so I’ve been saving my Emblems of Frost and already have my 264 helm and shoulders for prot. Looking at chest and gloves next and then probably Pillars of Might and maybe the crafted boots too. So really, given my leetness as a tank (ahahahaha) and the fact that I’ll be pretty geared, I’m fairly certain I’ll be able to tank and watch for her to keep up Sacred Shield, Beacon, etc, and offer tips and tricks and still not die, even if things go south.

In other news, the character profile linked up in the sidebar has been updated since I got my 277 T10 helm. 990 haste unbuffed? Why yes, thank you, that’ll do nicely. ;)

Initial Thoughts: Cataclysm Holy Paladin Talents

Kurn / / cataclysm, facepalm, paladins

My first thoughts:

– Thank God I don’t have to waste 5 talent points for Spiritual Focus anymore. Yay for only needing 2! Less bloat, hooray!

– Yay Divinity in Holy!

– Judgements of the Pure is going to be available to any paladin and HOLD THE PHONE. HOLD THE PHONE. That reads NINE percent haste. Not 15. NINE. Check that, 9 percent. And so the nerfage begins.

– … Divine Light is the name of our big-ass heal? Seriously? Could you really not think of a better name?

– Beacon is only good for Holy Light and Holy Shock redirects. Okay. So basically, I’m going to use it the same way as I use it now; on a tank who is also being healed by someone else.

– WTF, Inspired Judgement heals my beacon for the amount of damage the judgement caused? Really? Is this a “fun” talent?

– At least Illumination returns to the less-bloaty. I still want that 30% bumped back up to 100%, Blizzard. I have not forgotten the Great Illumination Nerf of Burning Crusade.

– Again, Improved Concentration Aura looks fairly lackluster, assuming they don’t change the pushback mechanics again.

– Aura Mastery stays the same. Still want this back to 10 seconds. :P

– Great. I have to spend a talent point to ensure my Cleanse remains as awesome as it is. Thanks.

– Selfless Healer is… blah? I’m saying this with no experience in terms of healing in Cataclysm, obviously, but why not switch this to 3% crit and it buffs you with 3% haste each time you heal someone else? Or something? THAT would be fun.

– Oh, there’s Divine Illumination, sitting at the bottom of my tree. It’s almost like it’s Burning Crusade again! And… WAIT ONE SECOND HERE. 30% extra crit? What?! WHERE IS MY MANA SAVING TALENT, YOU BASTARDS?!

As if that’s not bad enough, we cannot get Divine Sacrifice in Prot.

I suspect most holy PVE paladins will have something like this.

Or this.

Or maybe even this.

But the ret support tree for us is dead and we can’t even grab Divine Sacrifice in prot.

Totally underwhelmed. I don’t even know if I want to play the paladin in Cataclysm. Then again, I looked at the hunter tree. I don’t know if I want to play a hunter, either.

Kurn's Q&A 25

Kurn / / gear, healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, priests, q&a, raiding, ruby sanctum

It’s Tuesday and that means it’s time for Kurn’s Q&A! I really do enjoy my days off of raiding. It lets me get all kinds of stuff, WoW, not-WoW, RL, etc, done!

1) does sacred shield use gcd

Yes, it does. That’s why it’s very important not to refresh your Judgements of the Pure, your Sacred Shield and your Beacon of Light all at the same time. That’s three GCDs (3-4.5 seconds) of not healing.

2) “drape of the violet tower” vs. “heartsick mender’s cape”

I’ll be talking about the 251 version of the Heartsick Mender’s Cape here, just because it’s more accessible than the 264.

Heartsick Mender’s Cape, on paper, a little worse than the Drape of the Violet Tower. On paper, it loses 8 intellect, 8 stamina, 3 mp5, 8 armor, 12 spellpower and a whopping 52 crit.

The Heartsick Mender’s Cape, however, has 45 haste.

Even though it’s a lower item level and is missing out on 8 int and some crit and spellpower, the 45 haste makes this godly compared to the Drape of the Violet Tower.

The Drape has one other thing going for it — accessibility. 50 Emblems of Frost and it’s yours. Too bad it’s not a great choice. Heartsick Mender’s Cape is a little deeper into ICC10 than many pugs go, unfortunately, but it’s still way better than the Drape.

3) baltharus the warborn armor debuff

Wrong boss. It’s General Zarithrian that has the armor debuff and that, my dear readers, is called Cleave Armor.

4) heroic putricide is fun

I really do enjoy it. Malleable Goo can still kiss my ass, but I really like the plague.

5) holy paladin which gem for lockjaw

Brilliant King’s Amber or Brilliant Dragon’s Eye if you’re a JC. Unless you’re running Flash of Light style, in which case a Runed Cardinal Ruby or Runed Dragon’s Eye.

6) holy vs. disc heroic putricide

I like disc. Not only do you keep the 3% damage reduction buff up by casting shields (Renewed Hope is hax!) but you also have the ability to mitigate a CRAPTON of damage in P3. And believe me, you NEED to mitigate a crapton of damage in P3.

7) lay on hands glitch 13 min cooldown

The only way you have a 13 minute cooldown on Lay on Hands is if you have 1/2 Improved Lay on Hands in the holy tree as well as the minor Glyph of Lay on Hands. It’s not a glitch, you’re missing a talent point in that talent.

8) marking vengeful shades targets

Nope, sorry. They are not targettable. Period.

9) putricide heroic army of the dead

I am normally not a fan of “army of the nub” as I call it, but it’s GREAT on Putricide on the second transition phase to help improve DPS and to help eat up the Ooze Explosions.

10) sanctum guardian xerestrasza despawns?

Yes, she despawns after a soft reset of the instance (30+ minutes with no one in there).

Kurn's Q&A 24

Kurn / / healing, paladins, q&a, raiding, ramblings, real id, ruby sanctum

Oof, all this Real ID crap, plus a nap, means a later-than-usual Q&A post. I’ve decided to rely solely on my search terms for this stuff going forward, by the way. I decided I didn’t need a way for people to anonymously harass me. If you have a question, let me know via email or twitter. :)

1) how many people recemended on ruby sanctum

… 10 or 25? Haha, no, seriously, here’s the breakdown:

10: 2 tanks, 2-3 healers, 5-6 DPS. I strongly recommend three healers unless you SUPER outgear the content.

25: 3 tanks (one can be DPS or heals for Halion himself, but you need three for Baltharus), 6-7 healers, 15-16 DPS.

2) divine sacrifice macro it cutting my fps

No. Your Divine Sacrifice macro is not cutting your FPS. If anything, the spell effects of Divine Sacrifice are cutting your FPS. Turn down your graphic settings, either Particle Density or some of the other effects.

3) does the beacon accept its own heals

I’m confused. If you mean “will heals that land on the beacon directly copy through Beacon of Light, effectively hitting them twice?”, then no. Only Flash of Light, Holy Light, Holy Shock and Lay on Hands heals to OTHER targets will be copied to your beacon target.

If, on the other hand, you mean “can I beacon myself and benefit from heals I cast on other people?” then the answer is yes.

4) halion shadow resistance

You don’t need Shadow Resistance gear, but an aura or Prayer of Shadow Protection is highly recommended.

5) holy light vs flash of light 3.3

I’ve always done my best to acknowledge that there is another interesting way to play a holy paladin, that being the Flash of Light style. However, I don’t like that style. I don’t think I’ve hidden my dislike of it, but I also try not to be all “you’re a moron” if you do like that style. The reason I don’t like it is because it’s less flexible. You are basically forced to keep casting Flash of Light because you don’t have the mana pool to sustain casting Holy Light more regularly than “every once in a while”.

Whereas Holy Light style paladins CAN cast Flash of Light if the occasion calls for it and CAN cast Holy Light ’till the cows come home if we need to.

That’s why I prefer a Holy Light style and always will.

6) meta achievement requires “neck-deep in vile” 3.3.5 25

YES. It does require it on 25-man. Absolutely confirmed. (Click for a larger version of this screenshot of a GM ticket.)

7) ruby sanctum 3 healers

The reason I strongly recommend three healers is because the shadow aura in the twilight realm just flat-out sucks. Get a raid healer and a tank healer in the twilight realm and any decent healer outside and you should be fine.

8) anyway for you to block a real id person from seeing your potential friends

Afraid not.

9) saviana ragefire “no hunter”

… got a rogue with Anesthetic Poison? Otherwise, you’re going to need awesome heals on the group.

10) toravon frost or physical damage

Both. There is a lot of frost damage in terms of Frostbite stacks on the tanks and Whiteout every so often, but his hits are physical.

"It works for me!"

Kurn / / facepalm, healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, raiding, ramblings, ruby sanctum

Codi was talking about how she’s basically been accused of being an elitist in terms of stuff she says on her blog and how, because she’s so advanced, people have used that as a caveat when it comes to taking her advice.

This got me thinking about my own paladinesque standards.

What do I know?

Well, I know what works for me, and what HAS worked for me, in all tiers of content in this expansion, through regular modes and hard modes.

Like Codi, I’ve got a fair bit of gear and a fair bit of progression under my belt.

I’m pretty sure that most of my sort of requirements for a holy paladin are good ones. They’re requirements that would show someone’s done reading and research about the class, that show that people understand the basic tenet of “more mana is always better than more spellpower” and such.

Given the ICC buff, though, a lot of people are getting by with terrible specs and horribly-chosen gear.

But if it works for them and their raid group, does anyone really have the “right” to say that they’re being an idiot?

On Tuesday night, I ran a pug Ruby Sanctum 10 with Maj and my brother. There was a failish paladin in the group.

Here is her armory. Click on it and it’ll open in a new window, then come back here and we’ll go through why I think she’s pretty fail.

http://www.chardev.org/?profile=428926

1) Helm: Right helm. Wrong meta. Wrong gem. IMHO: Insightful and Nightmare Tear. I won’t even talk about the arcanum, since that’s too nitpicky at this point.

2) Neck: Great necklace. Good gem.

3) Shoulders: Right shoulders. Wrong gem.

4) Cloak: Why any holy paladin wastes Emblems of Frost on this piece of crap, I don’t know. Good gem and enchant, at least.

5) Chest: Well, there are better options. But the tier chest isn’t terrible. Again with the hybrid gems, though. WTB 20 ints!

6) Bracers: Great bracers. Would prefer 16 int enchant and a 20 int gem.

7) Gloves: Great gloves. Need 2×20 int gems, though. Fine enchant.

8) Belt: Wrong belt. Should have the Belt of the Lonely Noble or the Lich Killer’s Lanyard, both of which are identical to each other, and both have haste. Also tries to hit the socket bonus here with a Dazzling Eye of Zul. Socket bonuses are evil and are there to confuse you!

9) Pants: Great pants, good enchant, needs more int gems.

10) Boots: No haste on boots. … and a 20 AP/10 crit gem. w. t. f.

11) Ring 1: A caster ring, with hit and no haste… and a Dazzling Forest Emerald. REALLY?

12) Ring 2: Exalted ICC ring, nicely gemmed.

13) Trinket 1: Love that Talisman.

14) Trinket 2: Why, dear God, why the Purified Lunar Dust?

15) Weapon: Lockjaw is a solid weapon in ICC 10. Not enchanted with anything, though…

16) Shield: Great, perfect.

17) Libram: Dear sweet fancy Moses, why a gladiator libram?

18) Talents:

a) 60 in Holy: 2/2 Blessed Hands, 3/3 Imp Concentration Aura, 3/3 Sacred Cleansing. Eesh.

b) 11 in Prot: All solid pickups, including Divine Sacrifice, but no Divine Guardian makes me want to cry.

19) Glyphs: Seal of Light and Holy Shock instead of Seal of Wisdom and Beacon of Light. OH THE HUMANITY.

But how was her performance? The paladin outhealed me on bosses; 3 attempts at Ragefire, 9 on Baltharus, 1 on Zarithrian and 2 on Halion. Granted, my shaman is terribly geared, still sitting in T9. I think anyone with any amount of gear could outheal me at this point.

She had good overall uptime on Beacon of Light (89.7%) and Sacred Shield (81.3%), but dropped to 69.1% uptime on Judgements of the Pure.

Here’s what boggles me, though — she used Divine Plea 15 times and only offset it with the Talisman once and Avenging Wrath once. She didn’t use Divine Illumination AT ALL.

To me, all the things I’ve pointed out as being wrong, the gems, enchants, uptimes, offsets for DP… these are basics. BASICS. These are things that make my head want to explode. Never, not in a million years, would I want this paladin to raid alongside me in ICC. Ever.

And yet, despite the issues I can clearly see in the logs and on her armory, she did an overall good job. I mean, we beat the trash, we beat the minibosses and today, at least 8 of us are going back into RS10 to down Halion. She’s not necessarily one of them, unfortunately, because she hasn’t responded to my calendar invite or in-game mail, but Thursday was successful, in my opinion.

So my question is… do I have a right to question what works for some people? I’m sitting here saying “do X, Y and Z” because those are the “best practices”. Those are the things that I’ve learned work best, mathematically, practically, etc.

But so what if someone isn’t living up to their potential? Should it really make a difference in a pug? Should I care that the pally is specced abysmally? Should I care that she’s having to waste globals to refresh SS and BoL? Not if she’s keeping people up. And that’s what she did, by and large.

Let’s see what happens to her stats if I go fixing her gems, glyphs, stats, etc.

Pre-Kurn edits:

33.15% crit

2980 +healing

203 mp5 while casting

1886 intellect

32404 mana

Post-Kurn edits:

33.73% crit

2873 +healing

174 mp5 while casting

2041 intellect

34729 mana

So she gains half a percent of crit, loses 107 +healing, gains 155 intellect (2325 mana) and loses 29 mp5 while casting. She also gains a proc from her meta that is awesome, the chance to proc 4% of her maximum mana back whenever she judges, a raid-saving CD in Divine Guardian, a longer and stronger Sacred Shield and a longer Beacon of Light.

To me, it’s obvious that my tweaks make her toon that much more efficient, that much stronger.

But it is absolutely necessary for success in her current content, which is ICC 10? She has one, count ’em, one regular 10-man Putricide kill.

Without knowing more about her and her raid group, all I can say is that whatever she’s doing is, more or less, working for her. She’s pushing through content with her guild (2 Fester/Rot kills to date, 1 PP kill, so that’s progression) and she wasn’t the cause of wipes on my pug.

A lot of what I say here comes from my own experience. You know, doing Saurfang 25 normal back pre-ICC buff wasn’t easy. It wasn’t particularly HARD for us, because we were decked out in 245/258 gear and picking up 251/264 upgrades, but it wasn’t easy to heal. Nowadays, there’s a LOT more room for error with a 25% buff. And by “a lot” I mean A LOT. People don’t need to be properly min/maxed for the content anymore, because the buff means that you can get away with damn near anything on regular.

But when I was doing it without the buff, I NEEDED these optimizations to my gear and playstyle. I constantly need that stuff on what my guild currently considers progression. I can’t imagine going a night without my meta gem. On Thursday night, through Baltharus, Ragefire, Zarithrian, Halion, Council, BQL and Dreamwalker, I gained 53400 mana back just from my meta gem. I gained 258k mana back from Seal of Wisdom. This stuff is still absolutely necessary — for me.

But is it so very necessary for other players? Or are all these things just tips to min/max when min/maxing might not even be needed for a player these days?

Don’t get me wrong, I will still bellow from the highest mountaintop that a good holy pally should do X, Y and Z and will continue to try to instill good practices on the malleable minds of not-optimized paladins.

But how necessary is it?

Kurn's Q&A 23

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

Delayed a bit due to fatigue and epic Ruby Sanctum hilarity, here’s my Q&A for the week. I’ll probably wind up doing that form this week sometime or something.

First of all, thanks to all those who “retaliated” against Majik with the following search terms. You totally made my day, hahaha. :)

– why is kurnmogh such an amazing player?
– madrana is the best holy paladin ever
– kurn yeah but can majik heal?
– kurn majik may be able to tank but he still dies without heals
– kurn majik is just a dk they’re all noobs
– sometimes i close my eyes and wonder how i can be awesome like kurnmogh

And, my favourite, and thus, Question #1 this week:

1) kurn who the hell is majik?

My history with Majik dates back YEARS at this point. Honestly, truly, years. Majik was a frost mage who joined our guild back in something like mid-June of 2006.

My first-ever experience with this guy was during the Scourge Invasion of Patch 1.11. He basically said that he could solo all the non-elites guarding one of the Necrotic Shards or whatever.

I was like “yeah, RIGHT.”

He laughed, hit up Ice Barrier, mounted up, GATHERED THEM ALL UP, hit Frost Nova, blinked away and hit Blizzard until they all died.

Solo.

I didn’t do anything. Neither did our regular priest, Crypt (who had been in Majik’s prior guild, where Majik had been the GM) and neither did our warlock, Tia. We just stared at this nutcase in absolute shock and amazement.

A LEGEND WAS BORN. hahaha.

Majik quickly became one of our raid leaders in Zul’Gurub (and later instances as well) and eventually became an officer and he, along with Crypt, Tia, myself and a mage named Tandrace (whom we affectionately called Steve) all ended up doing the Tier 0.5 questline together. And thus started a beautiful friendship.

Highlights include, but are not limited to:

– “That was *spectacular*.” (Heard frequently, usually after a particularly hilarious and/or brutal wipe.)
– “Guys, guys, he’s trying to be sneaky, but I see him and oh God, he’s got a really big sword!” and other assorted quotes from the 11 minute vent lag spike in Dire Maul.
– “Tia, Tia, Tia.” (Chiding our warlock for not soulstoning us, even though she tried and there was no room in her bags and I traded her for her to trade me something and then SOMEONE got us into COMBAT and … yeah. No soulstone.)
– “Not the face, NOT THE FACE!” (Also heard frequently.)
– “I have a plan.” (The plan was for the five of us, with no tank, to jump down on to Venoxis’ platform and “take him from behind with the element of surprise!”. At level 60. We got Venoxis to 98% and considered that a victory.)
– “Hey Maj, pick up engineering.” (He did, spent easily 500g on it, and that was a LOT pre-BC, and got to 300 engineering overnight.)
– “Who’s up for a Venoxis run? C’mon guys, 20 minutes, you get rep, bijous, chance at loot!” (This was frighteningly commonplace, since we only ran ZG officially one day a week. Why did Majik want to do Venoxis? Just one reason: Fang of Venoxis. Along with his Tome of the Ice Lord, the Fang of Venoxis would make him super leet. My hand to God, until he got a better 1H elsewhere, he was using Hypnotic Blade, which drops off Arcanist Doan in Scarlet Monastery. Not even kidding. At all. We actually WENT BACK to SM to pick it up for him.)
– Many hours over Vent spent complaining about the idiocy of any moronic mage taking Arcane Fortitude. (It was Very Bad at the time.)
– Doing a Strat 45 run in 39 minutes with the following group:
* Kurnmogh + Whisper (Whisper, my cat, tanked. I was Marks, FYI.)
* Tandrace, Fire Mage
* Majik, Frost Mage
* Crypt, Holy Priest
* Tia, Destruction Warlock

Yeah. Again. No tank. At all. We actually did the 45 minute run in 39 minutes with no tank. We also did a Dire Maul North Tribute run more than once without a tank (I still feel bad for Tharivol) and did almost everything for our Tier 0.5 quests without a tank, only bringing one in for the special boss in Scholomance and then being in a regular 10-man group for the UBRS boss, nicknamed “Lord Whatshisnuts”. (By Tia.)

And that? THAT is just pre-BC!

In Burning Crusade, we’d disbanded our previous guild, gone our separate ways for the most part, but brought Apotheosis to life on June 1, 2007. Majik was the guy who bought the charter and was a core officer throughout BC, even though the jerk decided to, you know, GO TRAVELLING THROUGH EUROPE at the height of our Karazhan farming, where I was swapping people in and out on every. single. boss. I may not have forgiven him for leaving me with the raid leading duties then. ;)

He was our mage tank on Krosh (and, as freaking usual, I was his healer), he would always put down a Brewfest Pony Keg after Maulgar was down. He did, in fact, Blink into Gruul once while explaining the fight. He once got bounced/feared OUT of Magtheridon’s room during the encounter and basically /danced at us.

He wasn’t there for a Vashj kill of ours, which is probably my biggest regret. Of everyone in the guild who deserved Hand of A’dal, Majik was at the top. But he’d been taking some time off, dealing with school (?) or work (?) and though we TRIED, we couldn’t get Vashj down on this one night that Maj was there. He missed out on the first Kael’thas kill as well, but was the jackass responsible for our setting foot in Hyjal.

Picture it. Sunday, April 27th, 2008. My dad’s birthday had been a couple days earlier and the birthday dinner was that Sunday. I wasn’t there for the officer meeting, I was going to be very late for the raid…

I log on.

I get an invite to the raid group.

They’re in Mount Freaking Hyjal.

22-manning Winterchill waves.

They summon me IN THE MIDDLE OF WAVES and I promptly crash because my computer sucks so bad.

We spend an hour or so working on Rage Winterchill and get him down, Apotheosis-style. With only 24 people.

Thanks to Majik, who decided to go screw around in Hyjal since we were short people, we were able to start working on T6 content while trying to get Vashj and Kael.

Maj was solid in T6 content and we couldn’t have gotten through Hyjal and BT without him.

God, I haven’t even mentioned that he spearheaded the charge against Zul’Aman in our guild. He had an awesome team and they cleared ZA.

These days, Maj is playing a DK and levelling his priest with my brother and me and, as per usual, I’m healing his ass, more often than not. ;)

So… Majik has been a key part of my WoW experience, I don’t just mean “that guy from pre-BC”. I mean someone who has been there with me through Vanilla, BC and now Wrath. I mean someone who has always brought a positive attitude to a raid. I mean someone who has sat there, for hours, helping out mages or other DPS with their spec or gems or enchants. I mean someone who basically weaseled out of being the GM of Apotheosis by virtue of breaking his word to me. (Our GM, Toga, stepped down and Majik and I decided we’d both throw our names in the hat and so I said I’d consider doing it and then Majik was the first to say “GRATS!!!” and I was like “You bastard.”) This guy has one of the best senses of humour ever and I still crack up to the point where I can’t breathe when he gets on a roll. You should have seen him bitching me out IRL, in an Internet cafe here in Montreal, telling me that “Conjured Glacier Water” doesn’t just appear out of thin air. That he has to go to the goddamn Glacier himself, that he has to chip ice into a container and warm THAT and then bring it out when some bitchy “WATER PLZ” person like MY ignorant, needy ass starts griping.

No kidding, I nearly fell out of my chair. In public. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see for the tears rolling down my cheeks. It was hilarious.

We tease each other to death, insult each other constantly, but it’s all an act. We know that we can rely on each other, we trust the other knows their class and the encounter. We know we can defy all odds together. And it’s that kind of exuberance, enthusiasm and optimism that Majik brings to every single raid encounter. He’s the “YEAH LET’S DO THIS EVEN THOUGH WE DON’T HAVE A CHANCE!!!!!” person to my “Are you out of your goddamn mind?” attitude.

I like this game, a lot. I’ve played it for a long time. You know how people say it’s the other people they’ve met that keep them playing? Majik is probably the key person for me. I won’t even TRY to reform Apotheosis without him on board. I wouldn’t even consider it.

So. That’s who Majik is. (And no, we’re not dating or anything and no, there’s no interest. Trust us. I only bring it up because someone in Apotheosis once thought we were married to each other and I thought I’d head THAT off at the past.)

2) bol dont beacon my tank macro

While mechanically, this is pretty easy:

#showtooltip
/cast @target Beacon of Light
/ra Beacon of Light on %t, don’t beacon my tank!

(or something like that – I’m not a macro god!)

I’m curious as to why you’d want a macro like that. Just call out who you’re beaconing or get your healing lead to assign beacons, etc. Also, sometimes two beacons is actually useful. Best example of this is a third tank on, say, Marrowgar. One pally each on two tanks and then both beacons on the third tank. Or both beacons on the mobile tank on Blood Prince Council. Or both beacons on the kite tank on Rotface.

3) can i do dungeons with my friends with real id

No, right now the functionality is restricted to chatting. However, I believe that Blizzard is planning to remove the battlegroup restrictions for Cataclysm, so even if you and your buddy are on two different battlegroups (say, Reckoning and Bloodlust), you should be able to both queue for heroic Oculus or something stupid that no one else wants to do, and be put into a group together. It might even be more intuitive than that. We’ll have to see. :)

4) dealing with infest heroic lich king

Probably the best way (on 25m) is two disc priests. Split up the raid, spam PW:S on your targets. Done. Hopefully. Remember that since it hits SO much harder on heroic that you probably won’t even need to downrank it to ensure Rapture procs.

5) did heroic modes in icc drop only heroic mark

Heroic end-wing bosses in ICC (Saurfang, Putricide, Blood Queen Lana’thel and Sindragosa) all drop ONE heroic token each. And for some reason, it’s almost always Vanquisher. :P Short of heroic Lich King, these four are the only way to get a heroic token. The end-wing bosses will also drop TWO regular marks on heroic.

6) do yellow gems count for spell hit

Yes, Rigid King’s Amber counts for both physical hit and spell hit. Both types of hit (and haste) were combined in Wrath of the Lich King.

7) gearscore is 4626. what should my dps be?

Your gearscore doesn’t matter. IF your gear is properly enchanted and gemmed, IF you’re specced and glyphed properly, IF your chosen pieces of gear are appropriate to your class and spec… IF all of those things are okay, then you should be doing DPS at least equivalent to what your gearscore is. I noticed that when I hit 5k GS on Kurn (properly enchanted/etc/etc/etc) that that was when I could pull 5k DPS under good conditions.

Don’t worry about gearscore. Worry about what’s appropriate for your class and spec. Gearscore can be thrown off by a dozen different factors and, *at its very best* only serves as a marker for potential. That’s it. It’s what you do with gear that’s appropriate that matters.

Read about this “tank” with a very high gearscore, which meant nothing.

8) harvest soul lich king mass dispel

I’m pretty sure you cannot dispel, mass or otherwise, Harvest Soul.

9) terenas menethil clique

I don’t think that’ll work. What I’ve been doing is actually targetting him and hitting my 3 button (Holy Light) and 4 button (Cleanse). You could try making him a focus and clique-casting on your focus frame, though.

Edit — Whoops, my bad. I was primarily thinking about how he doesn’t show up on Grid. I have my Clique set up so that my Grid frames (and my focus frame) are the ONLY active frames, period, that my Clique works with, since I have bound stuff to right-click. If you right-click on your own unit frame to leave a party, or right-click to do any number of things on your target frame, and your Clique is enabled for those frames and you have something bound to right-click, you can’t bring up the context menu.

So having said that, if your Clique is enabled on your target frame, absolutely, go to town.

I forgot until just now that I had my focus frame Clique-enabled. Guess who’s gonna focus Terenas next time she’s inside Frostmourne? That’s right, this lady.

10) world of logs triggered shadow trap?

Well, apart from seeing who took damage from it, you don’t really know who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s no trigger for it listed in the logs that I can see. Sorry! :( Maybe one day, the Shadow Traps will be as vocal about who triggered them as Yogg-Saron’s clouds are now. ;)

Holy How-To #7 – Your Tools and Cooldowns

Kurn / / healers, healing, holy how-to (wrath), paladins, raiding

Welcome to my Holy How-To for PVE Paladins. This is the seventh 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.

Some time ago, I talked a bit about healing instincts and how my paladin healing instincts consistently screwed me over when playing any other healing class. For example, forgetting about Penance on my disc priest. Don’t get me started on Nature’s Swiftness or Tranquility on my druid, much less Nature’s Swiftness and Tidal Force on my shaman. I’m a good enough healer that I can sort of “fake” my way through content with which I’m already familiar if I’m performing the same role, like healing. But I’m not going to think to use Pain Suppression or any of the other tricks of various healing classes the way I do when I’m on my paladin.

Why is this?

Continue reading “Holy How-To #7 – Your Tools and Cooldowns”