Category: paladins

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. :)

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

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

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

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

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

Underwhelming.

Kurn / / cataclysm, facepalm, paladins, ramblings

Stupid paladins. Why did I roll a paladin? Why did rolling a paladin mean that I get lame skills and lamer talents? SIGH.

The Paladin Preview is out. Here’s the MMO-Champion direct link.

Let us examine it, bit by bit, shall we? WE SHALL! I haven’t read anyone else’s thoughts on things, this is just my initial impression. Can’t wait to see what others have to say.

New Spells:

Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure’s ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.

What the hell are they doing? Giving me a freaking damage spell, complete with HOLY TALENTS that increase damage and crit chance? Sounds great for prot. Does not sound great for Holy. Unless you’re PVPing. In which case, hey. Nice. Grats to those of you who give a damn about PVP. But what about the PVE holy paladins? “Ooh, I get to have another damaging spell when I want to quest or farm or something!!!!” …really?

So level 81 – nothing of interest for me happens. Good to know. NEXT.

Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.

Uh. Please, please correct me if I’m wrong, but does this suck or what? How much does this heal for? Lasts six seconds — does it pulse every second? Every two seconds? Every three seconds? With a 15-second cooldown (like the vanilla/BC Holy Shock) will it be used regularly and frequently or will it be relegated to OH CRAP AOE! moments?

I do like that it’s an AOE thing. I do not like that it’s based on our position. I do not like that it’s likened to healing stream totem. My character is not a totem, thank you very much.

It really seems to me like they’ve taken a common suggestion over the years (make Consecration into something that damages enemies/heals friendly units) and just made it a new ability that doesn’t have the issue of causing damage to enemy units. And added a longer cooldown. But really, isn’t this just some healing version of Consecration? Think about it — we’re at the middle of it. It’s something we pop and we can get back to doing our regularly-scheduled healing. It’s short-range, so people need to be near us. Yep, I think that’s about the same as Consecration. Obviously, we’ll see how this works out ($10 says they patch it out in beta!) but I’m not thrilled. It’s weird that I’m not thrilled, because I really would have liked a decent AOE heal. If this ends up being decent, I will happily eat my words.

I’d also like to object to the name. If Blizzard doesn’t think that HAND of Reckoning doesn’t already confuse people when you have spells like Hand of Protection, Hand of Salvation and Hand of Freedom, then I guess I can understand why this thing is called Healing Hands. Why not something like Waves of Light? Or Light Flow? Or Wind of Light? Or, hey, how about Stream of Light? I actually like that.

Anyways. NEXT.

Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

So, hang on a second. We’re going to get a base ability that, depending on our spec, does different things? I actually might be able to get on board with that. Except that I think the holy one is lame. Seriously, we already have this in the game. It’s called Ancestral Awakening and it’s a resto shaman talent. And again, it’s single-target: “heals the most wounded ally in the area”. And what’s the area? Is it something I can target like Blizzard or Volley? Or is it something that just appears and heals anyone within 40y or so?

Blah to new skills.

Changes to stuff:

– Crusader Strike at Level 1. We already have an instant attack. It’s called Judgement. But okay. Another button to push. Hooray.

– Cleanse isn’t actually changing, so I guess I’m glad about that, unlike shammies, who must be pissed to lose things like Cleansing Totem.

– BOM/BOW… Well. They’ve streamlined it. I think that’s a positive. But will either be improved? Will both be improved? Will there be an imp BOM talent? An imp BOW talent? Will these affect which BOM is on someone? Also, possibly more importantly, are we going to be stuck with the fist icon? I like my icon for Blessing of Wisdom. :P

– Holy Shock available to all paladins. Wow. I am… not impressed. Holy Shock has been THE holy ability for years. And now it’s just available for everyone? So rets are going to be able to toss a Holy Shock in arenas while on the run? Prots will be able to cast it on themselves or others? That’s MY SPELL, Blizzard. MINE. What the hell are you doing, giving it away all willy-nilly?

– Possible duration changes on Divine Shield. When my brother asked about paladin changes the other day, he was like “well, what kind of things would they change?” and I said “I don’t know, but they got rid of Tree of Life, so anything’s possible.” And his reply was “Are they going to change bubble?!” and he was all concerned. “They could do anything,” I told him, “maybe even get rid of it.” He was properly horrified at that thought. And properly horrified about this potential change as well.

What horrifies ME more than anything is this: “Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.” I’m sorry, either I’m going to have 80,000 health or I’m going to heal for 3k per big cast. 12 seconds won’t be enough time spent casting to heal myself???

– Ret rotation. Well, whatever.

– Sacred Shield/improving the Holy Paladin toolbox. Okay, I can handle a 30 minute buff on my main healing target. That’s fine. I’m not sure I LIKE the change, but I can certainly live with it. I feel like I spend raids juggling ability cooldowns as it is. Removing one from the rotation is fine. But I don’t trust them to adequately improve our toolbox. The last time they did, we got Beacon of Light. Which is hax on some fights and stupidly useless on others.

– New, bigger, healing spell. Okay, here we go. FoL, HL and then unknown bigger spell. I’m fine with that. Interesting that our current “bomb” spell is the middle one, though. Also, if this is going to be the same as the other classes, they’re changing FoL from being fast and efficient to being fast, but inefficient. Not sure I like that too much.

– Beacon of Light change. “Beacon of Light will be changed to work with Flash of Light. We like the ability, but want paladins to use it intelligently and not be constantly healing for twice as much.” Screw you, Blizzard. You give us Beacon of Light and it sucks. Then you change it to include overhealing and it’s still halfway useless sometimes, but other times, it is the reason for getting the encounter done (hi, heroic Deathbringer Saurfang, how are you doing?). And now you’re going to change it to… well, as I understand it, only work with Flash of Light? SERIOUSLY? Take the ability away. Just get rid of it. I want a 51-point holy talent that is worth a damn and a talent that is an ability that mirrors only the SMALLEST of our heals? That’s not a talent worth a damn.

– Spirit. Blah, blah, I knew this, but it still sucks. Stupid spirit.

– Prot rotations. Sounds neat. The prot pally tanking method is way too good for both single-target threat and AOE threat.

– Holy Shield, no more charges. So what, this will last 8 seconds with no charges? That sounds boring and predictable. Bind Holy Shield to all your abilities and it’ll be cast when it’s off cooldown.

Mastery thoughts:

– Holy. Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more. Oh, gee whiz, CAN I have more overhealing? Please?! :P I understand that they’re changing things so that we can go back to healing reactively instead of mindlessly and this will change some of the overhealing issues (as well as mana becoming an issue again) but I don’t know that we really need super crit on our heals. I imagine we’re still going to overheal a ton.

– Prot. Block Amount: We want to keep the kit of the paladin as a tank who blocks a lot. So by contrast, the warrior tank will sometimes get critical blocks, but the paladin will absorb more damage with normal blocks. Sounds reasonable, although odd. Are they trying to make tanks more niche-specific again? You have the prot pallies who are The Blocking Tanks versus the bears who can’t block or parry at all. Sounds to me like, given the choice to AOE tank things, a prot pally now has even more reason to tank, whereas a bear or DK don’t.

– Ret. Holy Damage: Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased. Uh. Okay?

On the one hand, some nerfage. On the other hand, some lame skills. On a third hand, a couple of perhaps interesting changes.

Lots of things will change, of this I’m certain. I’m being overly critical and cranky, I know. We all need to wait to see what beta brings with it. But those are my initial impressions.

Kurn's Q&A #14

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

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

“deathbringer saurfang” +heroic heal assignments

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

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

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

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

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

One-shotted.

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

best 3.3pally holy shield drops from heroics

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

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

More shield choices here at WoWHead.

blessing of protection work on magic buffett

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

curse of tongues putricide

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

getting flasks to proc on creation

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

hand of salvation marrowgar bone spike

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

haste cap holy paladin 3.3.3 patch

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

vile gas on rot

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

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

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

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

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

If you want to talk consumables:

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

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

when to call for cleanse on rotface

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

Stupid Pally Tricks

Kurn / / icecrown citadel, paladins, raiding, ramblings

No, this isn’t a post filled with macros to bubble/hearth. :P

I had an interesting night. We only had the Lich King up in ICC, so we could spend all three hours wiping on him, if need be. This is the story of Attempt Number Six.

[00:29:07.149] Awesome Resto Druid Regrowth  MT +0 (O: 1926)
[00:29:07.305] Resto Shammy Earthliving MT +0 (O: 1223)
[00:29:07.492] The Lich King hits MT 67046 (O: 3669)

Wha? Yes, the tank was one-shotted for 70k damage. He had been at full health. BAM, dead. WTF?

[00:29:08.569] Disc Priest Flash Heal  OT +0 (O: 7110)
[00:29:08.991] Other Holy Pally Holy Light OT +0 (O: 16059)
[00:29:09.458] Awesome Resto Druid Nourish OT +0 (O: 8147)
[00:29:09.458] The Lich King hits OT 66012 (O: 1957)

OT grabs him. BAM, dead.

WTF?

[00:29:10.830] Kitty DPS Druid hits The Lich King 1192
[00:29:11.136] The Lich King hits Kitty DPS Druid 36489 (O: 124121)
[00:29:11.706] Kitty DPS Druid dies

Kitty DPS Druid grabs him, BAM, super dead!

What had happened? Someone inside Frostmourne (I’ve never been) either didn’t heal the friendly NPC and cleanse or interrupt the bad NPC or just didn’t manage to kill the bad NPC. Looking over it, it SEEMS that this was the regular elemental shaman or the mage app. Not sure which.

So the Lich King is merrily one-shotting raid members.

[00:29:46.335] The Lich King hits Enhancement Shammy App 32356  (O: 26396, A: 2955)

He’s at 13%.

I do what any paladin would do.

[00:29:48.249] Madrana gains Divine Shield  from Madrana

I bubbled.

But instead of hearthing, I cast Divine Sacrifice.

[00:29:49.895] Madrana gains Divine Sacrifice from Madrana
[00:29:49.895] Madrana gains Divine Guardian from Madrana

Still, people are being one-shotted.

[00:29:50.583] Veteran Warlock Soul Fire  The Lich King 8941  (R: 879)
[00:29:50.583] Rogue App hits The Lich King 656
[00:29:50.700] The Lich King hits Veteran Warlock 21151 (O: 32799, A: 13487)

Seeya, Veteran Warlock.

Then a rogue grabs aggro.

[00:29:52.317] The Lich King hits Rogue 1 Dodge

And is evasion-tanking.

Then I get a whisper from the ret pally app.

“bubble taunt”

I was already bubbled from casting Divine Shield/Divine Sacrifice. Couldn’t hurt, right? But would he come to attack me if I was bubbled? One way to find out.

[00:29:53.732] Madrana casts Hand of Reckoning on The Lich King
[00:29:53.995] Madrana Hand of Reckoning The Lich King 492
[00:29:53.995] The Lich King afflicted by Hand of Reckoning from Madrana

O. M. F. G. I just taunted the freaking LICH KING. I KNEW there was a reason I kept Hand of Reckoning on my holy bars!!! Hot damn!

[00:29:55.877] The Lich King’s Hand of Reckoning fades
[00:29:55.883] Awesome Hunter’s Divine Guardian fades

Crap. Divine Guardian is wearing off. If anyone steals aggro, they’re gonna die.

[00:29:55.883] Madrana casts Hammer of Wrath on The Lich King
[00:29:56.224] Madrana Hammer of Wrath The Lich King 1098
[00:29:58.086] Madrana casts Holy Shock  on The Lich King

There’s a lot of other stuff going on here, people still healing, still attacking, for another 5 seconds after I taunted him. He was still coming after me. And then…

[00:29:58.308] The Lich King begins to cast Fury of Frostmourne

I won’t ruin the surprise for anyone, but, at 10%, he casts Fury of Frostmourne and that’s a win.

[00:29:58.317] Madrana Holy Shock The Lich King *2427* (R: 180)
[00:30:00.201] Madrana casts Judgement of Wisdom on The Lich King
[00:30:00.207] Madrana’s Divine Shield fades
[00:30:00.737] The Lich King afflicted by Judgement of Wisdom from Madrana
[00:30:00.737] Madrana Judgement The Lich King 1429 (R: 159)
[00:30:01.138] Madrana afflicted by Fury of Frostmourne from The Lich King

Yep. I totally bought the raid the few seconds they needed to bring him down to 10%. Maybe we could have done it without my taunt, without the ret pally’s suggestion, but by golly, we did it and I have taunted the Lich King, something very few people who aren’t tanks will live to do. ;)

No loot for me, but that’s cool. LK down again, on normal. 8 hard modes down. Drama aside, it was a good week.

Yet another fail "tank".

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

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

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

’till the second pull.

The tank takes a crapton of damage.

Like, a CRAPTON.

I’m actually having to use Holy Light.

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

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

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

“He’s got a 5400 gear score.”

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

“I’m telling you, 5400 GS.”

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

“Yes. The tank. The paladin.”

“Not poss…i…ble. Hang on.”

I inspect him.

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

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

“Who me?” asks the DK.

“No. The tank.”

“Oh,” says the DK.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other people just don’t do that.

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

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

What I expect of people is this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Updates ahoy!

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

So, a variety of updates tonight/this morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But in Cataclysm, you will be able to.

Hilarious!

Power Word: Barrier seems nifty, too.

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

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

So that’s what’s new with me.

Kurn's Q&A #13

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

It’s that time again! Lost and V watched, here are some quick questions I’ve picked up from my search terms in my web stats along with my own answers.

1) is there a way to make a mcro that tells you how much you healed someone for

The short answer is probably. Just get yourself a combat text addon like Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text or use the default scrolling combat text that Bizzard provides.

2) does divine intervention heal professor putricide

I have not tested this, but if it is cast on someone who has Mutated Plague, it will probably remove Mutated Plague. So yes, I imagine it would heal Putricide.

3) does divine sacrifice stack

No. This HAS been tested. The second one will overwrite the first one.

4) does libram of renewal stack with glyph of seal of wisdom

Absolutely. 5% off the cost of your healing spells and 113 mana off Holy Light. This is why it’s still our Best in Slot (BiS) libram. And it’s item level 200.

5) hardmode dreamwalker best way to hit red orbs

Ugh, ugh, ugh. I did this on Monday night for the first time. The orbs take a lot longer to respawn in the portal so I basically said “always move counter-clockwise and WATCH for people around you! Don’t ninja someone’s orb, wait the second or two for them to get it WITH YOU.” And this worked remarkably well.

6) healing toravon resto druid

As a druid, chances are, you are going to be healing the raid. On 10-man, try to keep Rejuvenation up on just about everyone. Use Wild Growth on cooldown. Be prepared to use WG right as a Whiteout is coming. On 25-man, I like to keep the active tank hotted, spreading Rejuv and WG throughout the raid as I’m able to. I like to try to keep a 3-stack of Lifebloom on the tank and let it bloom right after Whiteout. If all else fails, right as a Whiteout happens, hit Barkskin and then Tranquility.

7) how to be a tank

The basics are:
– hold aggro (attention from the angry things trying to kill your party)
– stay alive
– don’t be a dick to your healer. :P

Here’s a more detailed guide.

8) how to unlock hard modes icecrown citadel

Very simple: kill Arthas on regular difficulty. Anyone who has killed Arthas on regular difficulty can then form a raid and can turn on heroic difficulty. (Uh, by “Arthas”, I mean “The Lich King”.)

9) soloing first 2 mobs heroic forge

Easy mode as a paladin. Any tank class should be able to do this, really. It’s a little harder as a DPS, but if you happen to be able to CC an undead, you can do this easily as well. In my prot gear, I’d take them both on, Consecrating, use Seal of Light (and judging Light, too) and keep my defensive CDs up like Holy Shield and Sacred Shield. Easy. They don’t hit that hard in basic tanking gear and if you have things like Shield Wall or Frenzied Regeneration, these CDs should help you live through them.

10) soul shriek silence warriors ?

Yes. It does. Please cleanse or dispel Soul Shriek from your warrior tanks. Your raid members will thank you. ;)

Kurn's Q&A #12

Kurn / / dungeons, healing, paladins, q&a, ramblings, shamans, tanks

I really relish my Tuesdays off. I get to watch Lost and the newly-returned V and get to do WoW stuff that *I* want to do. Which includes writing on the ol’ blog. :)

1) best way to heal heroic falric with a shammy

Well, I don’t know if it’s the best way, but this is how I do it.

The real problem with Falric is the Defiling Horror for two reasons. The first is because it’s a horror effect, so Tremor Totem does nothing. The second is because everyone takes 16k damage. So what I do is endeavour to keep everyone topped up as close to max as possible before he casts the horror.

To recover from it, I cast Riptide on the tank and, using my hasted Healing Waves from Tidal Waves, I heal myself and a caster. Then I’ll Chain Heal off the Riptided tank, which will hopefully hit the tank and 2 melee. Then I’ll RT/HW anyone else who still needs health. Total time, with my crappy haste (400 haste + Wrath of Air) is about 8-9 seconds. I usually have enough time to get everyone to full, or close to it.

Apart from that, try to stay close together and bunched up for Chain Heal to get the maximum use possible from it.

2) choker of filthy diamonds or soulcleave pendant

Choker of Filthy Diamonds has more haste and mp5. Soulcleave Pendant has more crit. I definitely prefer the Choker for a holy paladin or possibly a resto shammy and likely a resto druid, since the nerf to Gift of the Earthmother, leaving the crit to priests. Maybe? I’m not sure how crit is for a holy priest these days, but I know crit is still awesome for a disc priest.

However, the Choker is off Rotface and the Pendant is off Saurfang. Really depends how far you’re getting into 10-man ICC, I think.

3) divine plea timer

Okay, I’m assuming you want a timer to tell you when Divine Plea is back up. For this, and any other cooldowns, I use OmniCC. It was my first-ever addon, as I recall. And it’s the one addon I cannot play without.

If you were looking for a timer to tell you how much of the 15 seconds your Divine Plea is still up for and such, I recommend Power Auras Classic to monitor if the buff is active on you or not.

4) hos divine shield holy macro wow

I haven’t actually tested this out, but this ought to work:

/cast Divine Shield
/cast [@target] Hand of Sacrifice
/raid Hand of Sacrifice is up!
/in 10 /raid Hand of Sacrifice is done!

That’s four lines and should work with two button clicks or presses. I highly recommend that your shield come FIRST in the macro, lest you be ruined in the face by whatever insane damage is hitting your target. Also, your @target could be @focus as well or even this:

[@mouseover,help,nodead]

5) paladin group buffs how to

Oof. Okay. The first thing to know here is what buffs other classes give that are equivalent.

Warriors: Battle Shout is equivalent to unimproved Blessing of Might. Improved Blessing of Might (2/2) requires the warrior to have 5/5 Commanding Presence to be equivalent. That’s in the third tier of the Fury tree. This is not part of a typical warrior build, as I understand it.

Shamans: Mana Spring Totem is equivalent to unimproved Blessing of Wisdom. Improved Blessing of Wisdom (2/2) requires the shaman to have 3/3 Restorative Totems which is the fourth tier of the Restoration tree. However, it leads to Mana Tide Totem which virtually all restoration shammies take.

This is the general order that I, personally, recommend for pally buffs:

Death Knights (DPS): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings
Death Knights (tank): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might
Druids (bear): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might
Druids (kitty): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings
Druids (moonkin): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Druids (trees): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Hunters (survival/marks): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might, Blessing of Wisdom
Hunters (BM): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Mages: Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Paladins (prot): Blessing of Sanctuary, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might, Blessing of Wisdom
Paladins (ret): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Paladins (holy): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Priests: Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Rogues: Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings
Shaman (enhancement): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Shaman (elemental/resto): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Warlocks: Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Warriors: Blessings of Kings, Blessing of Might

Of course, if you have a warrior in the group, it’s likely more beneficial to have them pop Battle Shout and you do kings than it is for no kings and your might, even if it’s improved. Same deal for wisdom and mana spring.

Alternately, you can buff everyone with Drums of Forgotten Kings and then give physical DPS might and healers and casters wisdom.

6) dk tanking halls of reflection

Note: I am not a death knight, nor am I a great tank. However, if you’re going to do the LOS method on Falric and Marwyn, just drop Death and Decay and hide around the corner. For any casters or the riflemen, Death Grip is great. For the chase scene, D&D is still awesome to use and you’ll want to Death Grip or Strangulate the Witch Doctors to bring them close if they’re a little far out. Blow your cooldowns when you can, saving Army of the Nub Dead for the second spawn of adds at the fourth wall on the chase scene.

7) list of cuts a purple gem can be cut to

Here’s a list of epic, level 80 purple gems. And here’s the list of rare-quality ones.

8) melee dps toravon guide

Hit boss. Don’t touch Frozen Orbs unless there are basically no ranged. Collect loot.

9) shammy tanking gear 3.3

Okay. You can equip a shield. This does not make you a tank. There is no mail gear out there at level 80 that has any kind of defense on it and very little leather, due to the druid changes. You would basically have to stack resilience. The major problem with shaman tanking, apart from the fact that you’re squishy as all get-out, is that a key to tanking is avoidance, like dodging, blocking and parrying. Your parry talent, Spirit Weapons, also reduces threat. Bad combo.

I don’t advise shaman tanking unless you’re doing it for fun with friends OR your tank on Lady Malande on the Illidari Council in Black Temple DROPS and your resident enhancement shaman thinks quickly, throws on a shield, pops Shamanistic Rage causing your raid leader to shout out over vent “ALL HEALS TO DUPER, ALL HEALS TO DUPER!”, which never had been heard before and never would be heard again. Ever. ;)

10) soul shriek aggro reset

Nope, there’s no aggro reset associated with Soul Shriek, as far as I can tell. It IS, however, a silence. Make sure someone is assigned to cleanse this magic effect off your tanks!