Category: paladins

Ugh.

Kurn / / general, healers, healing, paladins, ramblings

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

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

Left-Click: Flash of Light

Right-Click: Holy Light

Middle-Click: Cleanse

Thumb Button: Holy Shock

Shift-LC: Target

Shift-RC: Sacred Shield

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

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

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

Time / cast # for me / cast # with glyph

00:00 / 1 / 1

01:00 / 2 / 1

01:30 / 2 / 2

02:00 / 3 / 2

03:00 / 4 / 3

04:00 / 5 / 3

04:30 / 5 / 4

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

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

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

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

Healing meme!

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

Swiped from Miss Medicina:

Post this questionnaire, with your answers, on your blog. Pick the healing class you know most about (or is the focus of your blog) for the questionnaire, and then send it over to another healing blogger you know and love who heals with a DIFFERENT class. Include a link to the blogger who sent you the questionnaire, as well as a link to the blogger to whom you are sending it.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

Madrana(h), holy paladin.

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

25-man raids.

What is your favourite healing spell for your class and why?

Honestly, I’m a bit of a sucker for Holy Shock. I’ve always used Holy Shock, even when it sucked. Particularly when volcanos would spawn on my face on the Supremus fight in Black Temple.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

I think I use them all a lot. I use Holy Light most, Beacon of Light a lot… I think I use all my healing spells a lot.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

My Holy Lights crit for 20k. With Beacon of Light, I can drop those heals on two targets for a kind of ludicrous amount of healing.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?

Pick one: group healing or movement. Both suck. Glyph of Holy Light isn’t even a smart heal like Circle of Healing. :P

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?

Ideally, in a 2-tank fight, I should be assigned to one tank, who I shield and heal and have my Beacon on the other tank.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

I’ve healed with all four classes — my paladin and shaman at 80, my paladin and priest at 70 and I have a 71 druid who is dual-specced tank/resto. But honestly, after months of standing there in front of Gruul and spamming the tanks and not being able to move lest the tanks die, when I got the opportunity to heal on my priest at one point, I LOVED it. I ran merrily around, casting Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending and Renew around the raid. I’ve yet to try disc healing, though. I think I like healing with a priest the best, but I like being on a paladin most. I’ve got the throughput to get through a lot, I can cleanse 3 debuffs and I won’t get one-shotted by an add. Usually. :)

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

Maybe my shammy. I just can’t stop healing the tanks. ><

What is your worst habit as a healer?

I occasionally have trouble letting other people do their assignments. That’s to say, I’ll occasionally cross-heal. I mean, a lot of people do, but my reasons are generally because I don’t trust so-and-so to keep their target up.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?

From other paladins: Idiots casting Sacred Shield over mine. From other healers: not respecting assignments. (Yes, I’m a hypocrite.) From tanks: blaming healers for their 2-shot death. From DPS: standing in fire/etc and then blaming healers for their deaths.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?

Honestly, when you take a big-picture view, yes. Paladins are solid at tank healing and can usually help two tanks at once, in conjunction with a disc priest’s mitigation, a holy priest’s occasional CoH, a shammy’s earth shield with a druid’s hots… Really, I think all five healing specs work very nicely together.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

If my target lived, I win at life. But I also check out WorldOfLogs.com parses.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

That we never run out of mana. I’m sorry, I used to chain mana pots in BT and I would still be doing so today if I could. There are just so many times when using Divine Plea is going to result in a tank death that it’s hard to use it on cooldown or at the precise moment when it’s most useful to do so.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

How to juggle Judgements of the Pure, Sacred Shield, Flash of Light’s HoT, Beacon of Light and use them all effectively.

If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?

In a 25m-raid? Huge overhealing, good dispells/cleanses, Holy Light, Beacon of Light and possibly Glyph of Holy Light as my top heals.

Haste or Crit and why?

Haste. I’ve got 35% Holy crit, unbuffed, and am very close to the amount of haste I need for 1s GCDs on my gear. With Judgements of the Pure, Wrath of Air totem and Swift Retribution aura, I need 673 haste to hit that. I’m at about 640 or so, thus my choice of buff food is +40 haste.

What healing class do you feel you understand least?

Resto druids. I have my 71 druid, but I don’t know how to be efficient when playing it. Lifebloom is EXPENSIVE, yo.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?

Grid, Clique, clcbpt (tracks pally stuff).

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

All intellect all the time! Pallies get mana, spell crit and spellpower from intellect, as well as regen (through crit and through Divine Plea being based off maximum mana). There’s no reason to stack anything else if there’s an intellect enchant available.

Holy Divinity, Batman!

Kurn / / paladins, ramblings

Just now, while chatting with my buddy X, or Al, or any number of other names he’s got, I realized that the paladin trees are FULL of spells and talents with Divine in the name. I mean, I knew there were a lot, but GOOD GOD.

Non-talents:

Divine Plea, Divine Intervention, Divine Shield, Divine Protection

Holy talents:

Divine Intellect, Divine Favor, Divine Illumination

Prot talents:

Divinity (does that count? I say yes.), Divine Strength, Divine Sacrifice, Divine Guardian

Ret talents:

Divine Purpose, Divine Storm

That’s THIRTEEN spells or talents that are “divine”.

No wonder I don’t feel good about going ret and doing damage. That’s not very “divine”, is it? ;D

… wow?

Kurn / / gear, general, hunters, paladins, ramblings, ulduar

Holy crap, holy paladin tier bonuses that DON’T SUCK?!

  • 2 piece bonus – While your Divine Illumination talent is active, your healing spells are increased by 35%.

Oh my God. That is… fucking amazing. I’ve always viewed set bonuses that include talents as being something to encourage the class/spec to actually use that ability. I OFTEN forget to use Divine Illumination. Like, frequently. In reality, I should be using it on cooldown. Now this 2-piece T10 bonus is going to not only force me to remember to use Divine Illumination more often, BUT will greatly offset the fact that healing is halved when Divine Plea is up. This is a brilliant move. To date, we’ve had to use Avenging Wrath (which interferes with bubbling) to help mitigate that loss, or pop +spellpower trinkets and basically pray that we don’t have to cancel DP.

Especially considering the bonus WAS reducing Divine Favor’s CD by 60 seconds, this is a major improvement. I approve.

In fact, I consider this bonus to be just as strong as the 4-piece T9 bonus, albeit in a different way. T9’s 4-piece will encourage people to use Flash of Light and Sacred Shield more to get that FoL hot ticking away at double its regular strength. I mean, I can’t wait to get my 4-piece bonus, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be working hard to get the T10 2-piece ASAP, so I have a choice in fights. Do I aim for more healing via SS/FoL or do I aim for less panic about the tank dying? It’ll depend on the fight.

  • 4 piece bonus – Your Holy Shock spell causes the next Holy Light you cast within 10 sec to have 0.3 sec reduced cast time.

More encouragement to use Holy Shock? Another oh-shit use for it? Hm. My Holy Lights, raid buffed, are already coming in at about 1.2 seconds. I have 673 haste and then usually swift retribution aura and wrath of air and, of course, judgements of the pure. This bonus is probably not as amazing as the 2pc, but nothing to sneeze at, either. It’s not like you don’t WANT your tier, and this bonus will serve as halfway decent incentive to upgrade from T9’s 2-piece bonus, which is utter crap, unless you’re the only paladin in a 10-man raiding guild.

I’m really happy with the bonuses, for once. Can’t wait to see what the models will look like, although I’m going to predict something purple. I could really go for yellow, but I’m guessing pink/purple instead. After all, I got my wish for good set bonuses. Can’t have everything! ;)

In other news, about to go do Ulduar 10 with my hunter!!! I can’t remember the last time I was *excited* to do Ulduar…

Heh.

Kurn / / healing, paladins, raiding, ulduar

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

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

3.2 – Sob.

Kurn / / coliseum, facepalm, healing, paladins, raiding, ramblings

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

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

lightning1

I had no idea what the hell that was.

lightning2

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

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

I guess something along these lines:

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

2) Beacon the tank I’m not.

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

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

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

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

Sigh.

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

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

Blizzard hates us.

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

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

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

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

– Head tank on Mimiron, MAYBE?

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

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

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

Improved Judgements… Why?

Kurn / / classes, facepalm, paladins, raiding, ramblings

When speaking of PVE content, one of the typical holy paladin specs is 51/5/15. Another is 51/0/20. And another is 53/0/18.

All three of these specs bring you deep into the Retribution tree to pick up Conviction (15 points) and then perhaps Sanctity of Battle (3 points).

What cheeses me off is the idiot holy paladins who pick 2/2 Improved Judgements over 2/2 Improved Blessing of Might as they spec down into the Ret tree.

Why? Honestly, why on earth would you ever pick something that lowers your Judgement cooldown?

There’s one reason I could possibly see for PVE content: do more DPS.

What the hell? You’re a holy paladin. You heal people. Your DPS is poor at best. Judgements of the Pure lasts a minute, not 8 seconds. Your global cooldowns should not be used in order to judge more often than is necessary to either:

a) Keep your judgement up (which is ~20 seconds)

b) Keep Judgements of the Pure up (which is 1 minute)

I’m lucky in that I’m rarely a paladin who must judge. We have a prot paladin and a ret paladin, both of whom are regular raiders, and I’m not always the only holy paladin in a raid, so JoL and JoW are both generally up and I don’t absolutely need to judge, most of the time, unless I want to keep Judgements of the Pure up.

You may not be as fortunate as I am, but there’s still very little excuse to lower that Judgement cooldown for any PVE reason whatsoever.

But, you may argue, what if we always have a ret paladin with improved might?

So what if you do? What if he or she is out of town for a week? Do you think your melee or raid leaders will be okay with crappy might? Is your raid really going to rely on Battle Shout? Hah!

So Improved Might wins over Improved Judgements and don’t get me started on Heart of the Crusader. That’s win, too, even if you have an elemental shaman. They can die, you know, and there goes 3% crit, unless you keep up Heart of the Crusader when you judge.  Or maybe they’re out of range, like on Thorim. I judge Light in the tunnel on every mob for the additional healing (which won’t interfere with anyone else’s judgements, as I’m the only paladin in there) and for the crit buff, and I’m especially careful to do it when we don’t have an elemental shaman in the tunnel with us. It helps us get through the tunnel faster and who knows when that ten seconds we shaved off will be the time we need to get to Thorim before Sif leaves?

So, TL;DR version:

– Improved Judgements for PVE holy paladins = bad

– Improved Might for PVE holy paladins = good if you’re going for Conviction or anything else deep into the ret tree

– Heart of the Crusader for PVE holy paladins = good, just like Improved Might

… sigh.

Kurn / / facepalm, paladins, raiding, ramblings, ulduar

So I went through my parses from last night’s raid and was just randomly looking at something and then got it in my head to examine the pallies in more depth than I have in a while. The holy paladins, that is.

Why do I do this to myself? Why do I look and see what they’re doing wrong? Because I’m a moron, that’s why.

Anonymous report link:

http://wowwebstats.com/tpqaqvbd2ukbc?ab=54153

See that? I’m Virgo. (Which is funny, ’cause I’m really a Taurus and Taurus is our prot pally, but anyways.) The other two listed there are the other holy paladins.

Granted, Leo was only there for Mimiron and Vezax, I believe, whereas Gemini was there for the whole raid, but do you see what I see? Like, do you see the abysmal uptime for them both for Judgements of the Pure?

I … … don’t have words. 15% haste is… what, a BAD thing? Are they ALLERGIC to haste? Granted I don’t keep it up all the time on Vezax when mana is a sacred, treasured resource and judging costs 197 mana, but I still use it SOMETIMES. And it’s still useful on, you know, THORIM and FREYA and MIMIRON and ARCHAVON and EMALON.

Honestly.

The other really, really, REALLY sad thing? No one freaking uses Sacred Shield.

Sadly, the “this person cast Sacred Shield” stats aren’t available in WWS, but my World Of Logs parse says:

Virgo (me) – 235 casts

Taurus (prot pally) – 191 casts

Leo (holy) – 12 casts

Gemini (holy) – 25 casts

Aries (ret) – 22 casts

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!

So… yeah. I don’t know why I look at the parses. I really don’t. I’m not perfect, 235 casts on 4 hours is kind of poor, but HOLY CRAP, man. 12?! 25?! 25 casts over FOUR HOURS?! I hate people.

A-posting we will go…

Kurn / / facepalm, general, hunters, paladins, raiding, ramblings, ulduar, world events

Haven’t written much here about raiding of late. Or much of anything barring the 3.2 holy paladin changes that will KILL ME. But this isn’t a post about 3.2. It’s a post about recent achievements, recent happenings and the fact that I miss being remotely knowledgeable about hunters.

The big thing… Yogg died on June 18th.

heroic-secrets

Continue reading “A-posting we will go…”