Category: paladins

Heroic Violet Hold and… tank failure?

Kurn / / paladins, ramblings, tanks

So today, I tanked Heroic Violet Hold on my paladin for the random heroic.

No one died. There was a moment or two of concern when we were dealing with the kiting boss, whose name I can never remember, but by and large, I held aggro. And people lived. My healer was never in danger.

And yet, after Cyanigosa died, one of the members of the group (I can’t even remember the class type) told me that I had the worst threat of any pally in my gear they’d ever seen. Then they left the group before I could even go “I’m holy, 95% of the time”.

So, even though the rest of the group laughed and said I did fine, I’m sitting here wondering what, exactly, I did wrong.

It’s true, my spec isn’t maxed for threat. So I could fix that. I could also tab-target more and stack more Seal of Vengeance on various mobs, but if they’re being AOEd down faster than I can stack the debuff, does that matter?

I’m dropping Consecrate whenever I can. I’m also using Hammer of the Righteous on cooldown. Judging Light. Keeping Holy Shield up for the mitigation and the threat.

On single-targets, I’m pretty much fine. I way out-threat most people on Omen without even trying. I suppose it’s just the groups of mobs. If we were all focused on one target (my target) and assisting me for the others, there wouldn’t be a threat issue. The issue stems from people AOEing or not focusing on my target.

So as a tank, am I to spread my threat around beyond passive abilities like Consecrate, Holy Shield and even Retribution Aura? Or am I to expect that good group members will follow my target?

Or, what if I’m really just that bad? Should I then remove myself from the tanking role in the queue and focus on healing, which is what I do best anyways? I could. But would that serve the larger community, to remove a not-terrible tank from the pool of available tanks that seems to shrink every single day?

The way I see it, hybrids who don’t have at least one of their specs dedicated to tanking or healing are fail. They should have rolled a pure DPS class. Paladins can be melee DPS, tanks or healers. Shammies can be melee DPS, ranged DPS or healers. Priests can be ranged DPS, tank healers or group healers. Druids can be melee DPS, ranged DPS, tanks and healers. Warriors and DKs can be melee DPS or tanks.

All the healers CAN be DPS. All the tanks CAN be DPS. And since DPS is basically the easiest job with the least amount of responsibility and, one can argue, the most fun, a lot of hybrids choose to be DPS.

Which is fine.

What I find NOT fine is that, in this day and age of dual-specs, hybrids STILL aren’t tanking or healing. It’s not *that* hard, it’s just different from what you’re used to doing. And with the new dungeon tool, it’s easy to find a group so you can practice. Just make sure you won’t die in three hits if you’re tanking or run out of mana after one group of trash mobs if you’re a healer, and you’re good to go.

So the way I see it, by entering the queue as both a healer AND a tank, I’m doing my job as a hybrid. I’m not entering it as a DPS, which is the most common kind of player available, but as the two most sought-after roles. So… if people live and I hold aggro pretty much the whole time, even if my threat output isn’t amazing, does that mean that I shouldn’t enter as a tank at all?

That said, I clearly need to analyze my threat output and I guess try to stick to the 96969 rotation better.

Stupid perfectionistic tendencies…

A-tankin' we will go.

Kurn / / paladins, patch 3.3, tanks

So, due to the fact I’m trying to get into a routine of doing my daily random heroics on my pally early in the day (so I’m not tempted to leave it ’till the last minute before 3am server), I’ve already tanked my way through Utgarde Keep today.

Apparently, I’m a decent tank.

The priest who was healing me was like “boring, overgeared tank!”

I’m definitely overgeared for regular heroics and more than adequately geared for things like heroic Halls of Reflection. My tanking gear is about on par with my hunter’s overall gear.

The problem is, I have very little confidence in my tanking abilities. A lot of the time it’s not a huge problem to build threat. Consecrate, Hammer of the Righteous, yadda yadda yadda, dead mobs.

The priest nearly died at one point and so I did Righteous Defense on her AND BOPped her. I think, but I’m not sure, that doing so makes me leet.

While it’s possible for me to chain pull an instance, I don’t always do so, even if my healer and DPS have mana. I want to make sure I’m keeping Sacred Shield up, want to ensure Avenger’s Shield is off cooldown, I want to hit Divine Plea just as I’m running in, if it’s not already active… I’m sure that in time, with practice, these things that I’m double-checking will become second nature to me.

It’s hilarious that with a few button clicks, I can go from being a very good healer to being a decent tank. Switch specs, use ItemRack to select my prot gear, change my bar config with a new Dominoes profile, change my mouse click bindings with a new Clique profile, make sure to turn on Righteous Fury and Seal of Vengeance and I’m basically good to go.

What’s more hilarious is that doing stupid stuff, which is what I ADORE doing in this game, particularly on my hunter, is easily made possible on the pally.

For example, my hunter cannot solo the first two mobs of Heroic Forge of Souls, not even as BM with a bear pet with 23k health (I am NOT joking, Fozzie had 23k health when I tried!).

Madrana, on the other hand, doesn’t even HAVE to chain fear one of the mobs in order to solo them.

Kurn cannot solo the Wrathbone Laborers (big skellies) in Heroic Pit of Saron. Madrana can. She can also solo the gargoyles on the left side and the poison-dropping guys near Ick.

Judge Light, use Seal of Light and occasionally use Lay on Hands or Divine Protection. That they BOTH cause forbearance now is really, really, REALLY annoying. “But… how.. why do I have forbearance?! I didn’t bubble! Oh, dammit, I forgot.”

I’ve re-discovered how important Holy Shield is. Paladins have pretty abysmal block rating in general, probably because we have Holy Shield. And Redoubt. In fact, I was soloing the second mob in HFoS and watching my character sheet. 12% block bumped up to 42% block, bumped up to 72% block, with 20% parry and 30% dodge (with Mongoose proccing and my libram’s proc). That’s like… 122% chance to dodge, parry or block. I can’t remember the order of the hit table, but that’s probably 5% chance to be missed, 30% to dodge, 20% to parry and then 47.4% chance to block, or whatever. Which is hilarious. And Holy Shield causes more threat, too. Pally threat is very interesting. You basically encourage them to hit you and the more they hit you, the more threat you gain. It’s sort of like they get increasingly frustrated that they don’t kill you. Or something. Even more hilarious with ret aura up, I’d imagine, though I generally run with improved devo aura.

Anyways, that’s my dime’s worth about tanking. I think it’s sad that if I queue up as a tank, I don’t get to heal. At all. I’ve done two quick heroics with me healing just because I didn’t want to bother with tanking and was in a rush, but in order to get the healing job, I had to opt out of the tanking role. I guess it makes sense, though — you bring 5-7 healers to content where you have 5 groups. So you need just more than 1 healer per group. You need 2-3 tanks to content where you have 5 groups. So you need just under 1 tank per group.

Am I the only one who thinks it might be very cool to have 5 healers and 5 tanks and 15 DPS? On most every fight? With beacon of light, you could have two paladins accounting for 4 of the tanks, have a disc priest in on the fifth, a resto druid hotting the tanks and the raid and then a resto shammy or holy priest on the raid.

Strange as it may be, I miss the fights like Maulgar. Man, did that pull initially suck, but it was awesome. Mage tank on the mage, MT on Maulgar, no “tank” for the priest, fel hounds on the warlock and hunters on the shammy. I guess that the Four Horsemen is sort of like that, but the fact that they’re in separate corners already takes some of the challenge out.

Okay, enough ranting about WoW. It’s the holiday season and I desperately need to do some shopping.

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

Kurn / / druids, dungeons, guide, healers, healing, hunters, paladins, patch 3.3, priests, ramblings, shamans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Paladins in my PUGs: A Letter from Kurn

Kurn / / dungeons, facepalm, paladins, ramblings

Dear Paladins in my PUGs,

Hi. How are you? Good? Good.

I’ve noticed a very disturbing trend among paladins in my random dungeons on the Bloodlust battlegroup: you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. And because I raid as a paladin, this makes me want to throttle you IRL until you reroll DK or rogue or quit the game entirely.

I don’t care if you’re specced holy, protection or retribution, your job consists, in part, of buffing people. You have Blessing of Kings, Might, Wisdom and possibly Sanctuary.

Nine times out of ten, you need to buff your group members in a random dungeon with Blessing of Kings. No, wait, let me rephrase that: GREATER BLESSING OF KINGS.

What is UP with all you cheap-ass retnubs out there? Seriously. Go buy three stacks of Symbols of Kings (300 symbols) and buff people with a half hour buff. And buff! If you didn’t want to actively buff anyone, you should have been a rogue or a death knight.

If someone says that they have Drums of Forgotten Kings, then buff the people in your group appropriately with wisdom or might. Tip: hunters, prot and ret paladins and enhancement shammies, despite their mana bars, will always want might over wisdom. All other mana classes will want wisdom. All melee classes will want might. It’s not rocket science.

Further, there is a BEAUTIFUL, WONDERFUL, FANTASTIC addon called PallyPower that is amazing for setting up your blessings, so you just set up the buffs and then you can see how much time is left on everyone’s blessing, if people are buffed or not, who’s in range and who isn’t… it’s a great little tool. If you’re going to pug anything, GET THIS ADDON.

Also, I know that most of you couldn’t care less about the spells in the Holy section of your spellbook, but you get Cleanse at level 42. It removes Magic effects, Diseases and Poisons. Bind it to a key. Use it on yourself if no one else. Your healers will appreciate it. Especially if you’re with a shammy, who can’t dispell magic, or a druid, who can’t dispell diseases, or a priest, who can’t dispell poisons. You can. You are totally obliged to make use of this spell.

And finally, you have this whole 12-second-immunity thing called Divine Shield. It’s the bubble. If you think you’re about to die, you may not be wrong. Use your bubble. Don’t be like “wtf y dint i get healz???”. Bubble and STFU and try not pulling aggro. Unless you’re the tank, in which case that’s what Divine Protection is for.

So, to recap:

1) Buy Symbols of Kings. Buff your group with Greater Blessing of Kings unless someone has a drum. Then give out Greater Blessing of Might or Greater Blessing of Wisdom.

2) Use PallyPower to organize your buffs.

3) Learn to Cleanse.

4) Use your bubble when needed.

And quit being such dumbasses in my pugs that you make me want to forget I ever rolled a paladin myself.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Me

LFG, ICC and other assorted acronyms.

Kurn / / dps, druids, dungeons, facepalm, healers, hunters, icecrown citadel, paladins, patch 3.3, raiding, ramblings, tanks

As I write this, I’m waiting for a random Lich King Dungeon for my mage, who is now 75, thank you very kindly, and I’m amazed by how long it takes to form a group.

Compared to, of course, level 80 instances that I DPS on my hunter.

Or any level instance when I queue as a healer or as a tank.

Hell, queueing up as a healer AND a tank means you’re never going to ever, ever wait. It’s hilarious. I’ve done the random heroic every day (from Wednesday on) on my paladin, queued as both a healer and a tank and so far, I have tanked: Nexus, Forge of Souls, Azjol-Nerub and Trial of the Champion. I have healed nothing.

Ooh, VH for my mage!

…Interlude for discussion of VH-related fail…

… the DK tank just wiped us on the first boss. Granted, it was the kite boss. But, the DK tank hasn’t dropped death and decay once and he had no presence up WHATSOEVER, much less FROST presence, until wave 5.

By the end of the second boss, the DK tank seems to have learned to drop D&D, has been in Frost Presence and has hauled ass to portals in a reasonable manner.

And yet, by the end of the instance, it appears that the DK tank did not learn from his mistakes. At all.

Happily, the healer was also from Proudmoore, so we queued up for a random dungeon together, with her in her tank spec (she’s a druid) and got the same ele shammy as in VH, plus a priest and a ret pally. We ran DTK randomly and VH (not randomly). How is it possible to reset a dungeon from within the cross-realm LFG interface? We couldn’t seem to reset DTK.

Anyways, it’s nice — my mage made a friend. And is 3 bars from 76!

Right, so, where was I? Oh, yeah, queueing up as a tank AND a healer.

So those are the two roles for my druid, right? So I’ve taken to doing this before I queue:

– check spec.

– put on opposite-spec gear.

– queue for whatever I want.

– get called in to tank or heal and, once zoned, only have to change EITHER spec OR gear to match the role I’m in.

Basically, I’m sitting there in tank spec with healing gear on, but my queues generally go like this:

Tank, tank, tank, tank, healer, tank, tank, healer, tank, tank, tank, tank… tank.

There ARE no tanks out there for lower level instances and so very few at higher levels.

In other news, thanks to some gratuitous trash-farming, Kurn has the Ashen Band of Vengeance while, due to a guild ICC25 and a pug ICC10, Madrana has the Ashen Band of Wisdom. Kurn has yet to kill a single boss in ICC (though not for lack of trying on Deathwhisper 25), whereas Madrana has killed them all twice already, once on 25 and once on 10.

My thoughts on ICC:

– Trash is icky unless you know what you’re doing.

– The first four bosses are basically a review of Black Temple with a hint of SSC and just a sprinkle of Hyjal.

– Marrowgar might be a little overtuned in 10s, but seemed like a pushover in 25. I worked HARD in that 10-man pug, which was mostly some guild’s run. They’re not amazingly geared, but they’re good enough that they shouldn’t have had to struggle as much as they did. This fight steals from SSC’s Leotheras the Blind (whirlwind), Hyjal’s Archimonde (the fire, although it doesn’t chase you) and BT’s Naj’entus.

– Deathwhisper is a little overtuned in 25m, I think. The big Death and Decays are fine, the deformed fanatics/adherents are fine, the resistance to various forms of damage based on mob type, all fine. The MC + the Curse of Torpor need to go or at least  be nerfed on 25 or else your cleansers/CCers HAVE to be on their game. 10m is a freaking pushover in comparison. This fight steals from the Shade of Akama fight, in that you deal primarily with adds until the boss comes out.

– Gunship Battle is HILARIOUS. I love it. The guild one-shotted it, I believe, and the 10-man only took four attempts or so. Got it by the skin of our teeth, mind you. But we got it anyways. :)

– Deathbringer Saurfang. 3 tries on 25m. 2 tries on 10. And I even got this on 10m:

stormingmess10

That’s I’ve Gone and Made a Mess, which was originally a reference to our good ol’ buddy Moroes in Karazhan, because Saurfang originally Garrotted, the way Moroes did.

– The best item in the ENTIRE GAME, hands-down, drops off 25m Deathwhisper: Zod’s Repeating Longbow. I haven’t seen it, but it’s in the drop table at wowhead and OMG. Reference to Superman II? WIN. “Kneel, son of Jor’El! Kneel before Zod!” God, I love that movie. If Kurn can get this bow, ever, I may never replace it. Okay, so I probably would in Cataclysm, eventually, but it would sit in my bank right next to my Rhok’delar.

Other achievements I’ve recently gotten include the BEST-NAMED ONE EVER.

retreating

That’s “We’re Not Retreating; We’re Advancing in a Different Direction.” I got that with my RL friend, the resto druid and three of “our” guildies, although I was on my hunter which not everyone knows about. I laughed my ass off when I got it.

I’ve also been getting a lot of rep while doing the new dungeons. Madrana got these:

mad15

And Kurn got:

kurnknights

Both Kurn and Madrana have gotten:

lfm

Which brings us back to LFG and the dungeon tool.

There I was. Level 71. Tanking, on my druid, in Azjol-Nerub. (As if I don’t deal with Anub’arak enough as it is!) I’m in with a 74 rogue and a 76 DK, as well as a 73 mage and a 72 priest.

I can’t keep aggro off the 76. And have trouble with the 74 at times. And because I’m always taunting off of them, it’s tough to get aggro back from the healer. So I basically stopped worrying about them and worried about the healer. Because, as we all know, if the tank dies, it’s the healer’s fault, if the healer dies, it’s the tank’s fault and if the DPS dies, it’s their own damn fault, right? :D

So the DK is all like “wow tank how come you cant hold aggro?” And I mention that he’s never on my target, so yeah, he’s going to pull aggro. And then I say:

Me: “I’m trying to taunt off the priest and so my taunts aren’t up for you.”

Him: “thats what im doin waht ddid u think i was doin to boss” (I think this was referencing keeping on my target.)

Me: “Watch your Omen. If you don’t have it, get it. Better, run an instance that’s suitable for your level.”

DK: “funny mate funny”

Me: “True, I can’t keep aggro from a level 76. I’m not supposed to.”

DK: “still ur a tank”

Healer: “a tanks job is to keep aggro off the healer, a dps job is to keep aggro off himself now lets stop arguing”

DK, to me: “u cant ever hold agro off all us so stop telling me what to do”

Me: “You really don’t understand the mechanics of this game…”

DK: “what fuck u talkin about now”

DK: “what u think im doin”

Of course, this was all happening during the trash and boss fight for the second boss in Azjol-Nerub. So as soon as we were done:

votekick

I’m going to write three how-tos, I believe. How to Behave as a Tank/Healer/DPS in random dungeons.

The overriding rule to them all is, of course, don’t be a fucktard dick.

Patch 3.3 Hilarity

Kurn / / general, hunters, icecrown citadel, paladins, ramblings

Good gravy, it’s been a busy 18 hours or so. Apart from some sleep, I’ve managed to:

– update almost all of my addons so I don’t get crazy LUA errors anymore

– do Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection on my hunter (all using the LFG feature which is FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC!!!)

– kill Razuvious (target of the weekly raid quest) on my hunter and my shaman

– tank a random heroic. I was a little surprised when I joined the random heroic queue on my paladin and it’s like “A GROUP HAS FORMED. YOUR ROLE: TANK.” And I was like, eh, why not? Best thing ever is that, halfway through, someone in the group was like “oh thank God we got a good tank!” and I’m like “haha, bad time to tell you I’m holy, 95% of the time?”

So, left to do: FoS, PoS, HoR, weekly raid on the paladin. FoS, PoS, HoR on my shaman.

We’re doing 25-man Icecrown tonight, I believe. They put together some 10-man groups earlier and at least one of them killed all four bosses, so we’ll see how that goes. What’s unfortunate is that it seems that the content is a cakewalk so far. I mean, my previous guild, who, on Monday, killed Heroic Northrend Beasts for the first time (and they’ve been trying since the FIRST WEEK OF SEPTEMBER) walked in there and killed Lord Marrowgar on the second attempt. I’m not thinking my current guild is going to have many problems.

Also, my tank gear apparently doesn’t suck. Granted, I had 5% extra health from Luck of the Draw (? The buff you get when you do pugs.) but party-buffed (kings, fort, and a Guru’s Elixir), I had 45,248 health. Kind of nuts. But I did upgrade from my T7.5 gloves and T8.5 shoulders to T 9.10 (ilvl 232) gloves and shoulders, so I’ve got 2pc-T9 bonus and 2pc T8 bonus and it helps that I picked up some ilvl 245 gear (Arbiter’s Muse and Bracers of the Shieldmaiden) from TOC25 last week. I figured if it was going to get DEed anyways, I may as well pick up some cheap off-spec loot so I don’t look like a moron in heroics.

And apparently, I don’t. :) Just need a new freaking sword or mace or something.

What is equal parts hilarious and sad is that my paladin’s tanking gear is better than my hunter’s gear. Period. /sigh.

Well, at least my hunter is no longer stuck on the steps up to the airship at the end of Halls of Reflection. A GM moved me somewhere because I kept getting DCed. Annoyingly, I could move my pet up the steps through Eyes of the Beast so I saw the dude with the daily, I saw the Captain’s Chest and I saw the port to Dal… but couldn’t interact with any of them. :P

Anyways, very much liking the new content. I’m hoping Icecrown Citadel won’t be a total joke of an instance like TOC.

OH! And I nearly forgot!

My hunter got to exalted with the Kirin Tor.

I have never done a single dungeon run wearing the Kirin Tor tabard.

ALL of that rep — 3000 to friendly, 6000 to honored, 12000 to revered and 21000 to exalted (42000 rep!) — was earned over the last year by virtue of cooking dailies, fishing dailies and dungeon dailies. And that wasn’t even every day. That was just when I felt like it. When I realized I was freaking halfway through revered a couple of months ago, I was like “damn, that’s a lot of rep!” and so I’ve tried to do at least the cooking a little more often than usual. But still, not daily.

I’m just so very amused that I got exalted with Kirin Tor (giving me 10 exalted reps!) without doing anything I wouldn’t have normally done.

Thoughts about healing in TOGC25 & gear stuff.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have no words…

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

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

Some of his stats:

1616 bonus healing

15.08% chance to crit (20.08% holy crit)

13819 mana

(All unbuffed.)

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

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

The glyphs are criminal.

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

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

And then… the pièce de resistance…

Glyph of Crusader Strike.

Oh. And 0 minor glyphs.

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

He wrote back with “ty for tip”

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

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

Oh, the pain.

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

Observed.

Kurn / / paladins, raiding, ulduar

So on Sunday the 22nd, my guild finally got this:

observed

Yep. Defeated Algalon for the first time. AND it comes with a snazzy title!

astralwalker

Woot!

Algalon is not exactly a difficult fight, honest. It’s just making sure the black holes are closed properly, you don’t stand near collapsing stars, you don’t stand near cosmic smash and that you avoid big bang. Oh, yeah, and the tanks are taking obscene amounts of damage, too. He hits hard and *fast*. To the point where me and the other holy pally use 4pc T8 for the Sacred Shield thing — it’ll proc the damage reduction by Sacred Shield every 4 seconds instead of every 6.

That said, my fellow holy paladin died. Twice. Subsequently, this is how I finished the fight:

algalonmana

That’s right. 816 mana. Divine Plea on cooldown. Divine Illumination on cooldown. Divine Favor on cooldown. Wings on cooldown. Mana potion on cooldown. And I couldn’t run to melee Algalon because if I stopped casting for too long, the tank would die, period. I’d rather get yelled out for being completely oom than be yelled at for whacking on the boss to regain mana and not spam healing the tanks. Basically, it’s a damn good thing we got him down when we did, or else it would have been a wipe. (Incidentally, that total mana pool is a less than my usual buffed mana pool, since I’m in 4/5 T8 instead of 4/5 T9. Normally, it reads 38,989 mana. Which is gross, but I love it.)

So after we downed Algalon, it was back to Trial of the Grand Crusader.

Twins were already down, so we were going to attempt Anub’arak.

We really haven’t had a lot of practice on the encounter, for two reasons:

1) Attendence has been crappy. And I really can’t blame people. TOC is a shitty raid instance.

2) Our MT, who is the add tank on heroic Anub, is trying to do the “I’ll tank all four adds by myself and will not be hit and will block every attack for more damage than they can deal to me” strat.

As I understand it, and I am not awesome at math, Nerubian Burrowers (there are four of them each wave) hit for a base of 6.8k damage. If your tank is wearing a block value set and is 102.4% unhittable (yes, that’s unhittable, not uncrittable), the tank takes 0 damage despite the fact the adds are buffing themselves with haste or something and you can AOE down the adds on top of Anub, doing double damage, basically.

Guess who doesn’t have 102.4% unhittable status? That’s right. Our MT.

So he’ll dodge, parry and block a LOT… and then he’ll be unlucky.

Now, see, here, he blocks a couple of time and COMPLETELY blocks all of the damage:

[01:23:29.348] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Miss
[01:23:29.348] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Block (3614)
[01:23:29.348] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Parry
[01:23:29.348] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 10347
[01:23:29.348] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Dodge
[01:23:29.356] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Dodge
[01:23:29.509] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Block (4505)

Of course, that’s 7 hits by 4 adds in the same second. Eek.

And then he gets unlucky. In the same second.

[01:23:29.746] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 12616
[01:23:29.762] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Dodge
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Miss
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 10486
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Dodge
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 2050 (B: 3410)
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 3651 (B: 3410)
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Miss
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Dodge
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 2100 (B: 3410)
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 9392

That’s like, 40k damage. And he doesn’t have much more than 40k health in his block gear.

Surprisingly, this is not what killed us, primarily because us healers are leet.

What killed us on our best attempt was Hand of Protection.

The goal is to basically use as little of the ice as possible on heroic Anub, because the frost orb things do NOT respawn. You get six for the entire encounter. So, when Anub pursues people during the burrows, this is what happens.

Burrow 1, first person chased runs towards a patch of ice we drop at the entrance. It’s far, they stand there and run Anub into the ice.

Burrow 1, second person chased stays with the majority of the raid over by where Anub starts out (which is where we fight him). A paladin (can you see where this is going? haha!) casts Hand of Protection on this second target when Anub is almost on top of them. They wait until the buff is down to about 2 seconds left and then strafe on to the patch of ice they’re standing next to.

Burrow 1, third person chased kites for ~7 seconds.

Burrow 2 works in exactly the same way. And if you have a third burrow, you’re fucked.

So my RL friend, the resto druid and healing lead, assigns us our BOP cooldowns (seriously, I can’t say HOP with a straight face. I’ve tried.).

Since both the other holy paladin and I have 2/2 Guardian’s Favor, this is how it was organized:

I have people on the odd burrows (1/3, if needed) and the other holy paladin has people on the even burrows (2/4, if needed). So the second person on the first and third burrows gets BOPped by me and the second person on the second and fourth burrows gets BOPped by the other paladin.

It was, I believe, our third time getting to the burrow. I’d been BOPping people as assigned.

Burrow 1: I BOP a warlock.

Burrow 2: I’m the person who needs to be BOPped.

The MT/RL says, in raid chat:

“BOP at the last second, Mad.”

And I’m like “boy, I hope the other holy pally read that…”

And then I die to the impales from Anub’arak’s spikes.

The MT/RL says: “or just die.”

So the other pally is like “but I bopped the warlock” and I’m like “no, I did”. My BOP still had 30+ seconds on its cooldown.

It was only after I logged off that I remembered that Hand of Protection CAUSES FORBEARANCE and that there is NO WAY both of our BOPs could have been on cooldown! And since mine *WAS*, he was LYING to me! And made me out to look like a complete, total idiot in the raid!

I was SO angry that I uploaded the logs and checked them… and then I got even angrier. Because I was wrong. And oooooh, I hate being wrong!

[01:43:18.796] Madranah casts Hand of Protection on  Warlock
[01:43:18.903] Other Holy Paladin casts Hand of Protection on Warlock
[01:43:19.016] Warlock gains Hand of Protection from Madranah
[01:43:19.016] Warlock’s Hand of Protection fades
[01:43:19.016] Warlock gains Hand of Protection from Other Holy Paladin
[01:43:29.058] Warlock’s Hand of Protection fades

What the hell is that? That is some really fucking dumb luck right there. That we synched to the point where they BOTH landed on the warlock at EXACTLY the same time is just unfathomable to me. But the logs prove that he didn’t lie. He cast it.

Of course, he shouldn’t have cast it on the warlock. But at least he’s not a lying bastard.

Anyways, that’s basically all the news that’s fit to print.