//I should be writing or levelling the shammy or something remotely productive.
Instead, I specced ret, grabbed my crappy ret gear out of the bank and am currently on the bird to Light’s Hope so I can go in, clear Strat Live and then go through and clear Strat Undead. The first to complete the Strat achievement, the second for a shot at the mount. And all the while, collecting scourgestones and rep for the Argent Dawn.
I like Fridays.
//I logged on after the hockey game ended tonight, just to see what was up with my new guild. I guess I should stop saying “new guild”, considering I’ve been there for over a month now, but anyways.
Earlier in the day, I’d been playing with my prot set because I’m thinking that’ll be my dual spec. I’d even gone so far as to respec prot to get a good idea of all my stats. 24k health unbuffed, 22k armor, 20% dodge, 17% parry and 17% block. With 542 defense. Not too shabby for a holy paladin. I’d blown some Emblems of Valor on some upgrades (boots, necklace) and picked up some offspec gear in Naxx (shield, pants) so I was toying around with it all, and really, I’m kind of impressed.
So I logged on and I was like “haha, I’m still prot, that’s funny” and was just going about my business, pricing gems to cut and all… when a shadow priest in my guild is like “come heal 8 man Naxx?”
I laughed and responded I’d had very little sleep and was tired, but maybe next reset.
Long story short, 15 minutes of begging by a mage, the shadow priest… I ended up running to the Cathedral in SW and respeccing back to holy. Not only was it going to be 8-man Naxx, oh no. It was going to be … Undying.
//Back in the day, when my hunter was my main raiding character, I would always be REALLY picky about other hunters. How they played, how their spec was, etc. And I was pretty noobish myself back then, but I could trap spam (feign + retrap = win!) and I knew not to pull something to my trap with Serpent Sting and I knew how not to make my pet wipe the raid… Hell, my pet would pull Baron Geddon and Shazzrah, purposely!
Having spent the last two years raiding with a holy paladin, I’m still more or less picky about hunters, but I’m even pickier about paladins — holy paladins.
A RL friend asked me to go to H. VH on my hunter tonight, with her on her shadow priest. So I went, and our tank was a RL friend of hers. The other DPS was another shadow priest from my friend’s guild. All that we were missing was a healer.
Enter: The PUG Pally.
As soon as the guy zoned in, I inspected his talents.
51/5/15. Cookie-cutter, right?
WRONG.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sxA0gGzGVzMxotaZVf0x
Go on, click the link. It’ll open in a new window.
Let’s go over the problems with his spec, shall we? First, the holy tree.
Spiritual Focus: Good.
Divine Intellect and Healing Light: Good and Good.
Illumination and Improved Lay on Hands: Good and Good.
Improved Concentration Aura and Improved Blessing of Wisdom: Mehhhhhhh and Good.
Divine Favor, Sanctified Light and Blessed Hands: Good, Good and … wait a second, wtf. Blessed Hands? Really? I have a bad feeling about this.
Holy Power: Good.
Holy Shock: Good… wait, wait. WAIT. No Light’s Grace? NO points in there? NONE? Oh, dear Lord.
Infusion of Light and Holy Guidance: Good and Good. (Really, though? No Light’s Grace??)
Divine Illumination: Good. And yet no Enlightened Judgements? Oh, this just gets better and better.
Judgements of the Pure: Great talent. But how often is this noob going to actually judge when he has to be within 10 yards of the mob?
Beacon of Light: Good.
Next, the prot tree.
Blessing of Kings, Improved Blessing of Kings: Have 0 issues with this, honestly. Perhaps the best part of the whole spec.
And then the ret tree…
Benediction: Good. (Thank God he didn’t pick up Deflection, which I was almost expecting.)
Improved Judgements and Heart of the Crusader: I prefer to stick 2 points into Improved Blessing of Might, but there are arguments for improved judgements. Not having Enlightened Judgements just kind of RUINS any arguments this noob could possibly have made for picking it up, though.
Conviction: Half the reason one goes into ret anyways, good talent.
So some seriously questionable talent point choices by this guy, who was wearing a leather chest with 72 spirit on it enchanted with 8mp5…
Well, the run actually went okay, except for the PUG Pally telling me in /party “hunter move” instead of actually healing me. I’d moved out of the fire before you hit enter, buddy, thanks for the lack of the heal and leaving me down 10k health when everyone else in the party was topped up just fine.
So what WAS this dude doing instead of healing me?
Consecrating. Consecration hit mobs 121 times for damage.
He Holy Shocked mobs twice.
Meleed 9 times.
Judged — and this is what got me — JUDGEMENT OF VENGEANCE twice. I don’t know what’s more insulting, that he only judged twice in the whole instance or that it was Judgement of Vengeance. Hi, yeah, that’s a TANKING *seal*. Why the hell aren’t you judging light? Why the hell aren’t you judging? I mean, you have Judgements of the Pure AND Improved Judgements… oh, that’s right! You don’t have Enlightened Judgements for the 30 yards of extra range! Dumbass.
Oh, and he used Holy Shock to heal twice. TWICE. All instance.
When you have a 2.5 second holy light cast and you’re not judging for your haste buff from Judgements of the Pure, and you have Infusion of Light, why on EARTH are you not holy shocking for all you’re worth in the hopes of proccing an instant Flash of Light or 1.5 second Holy Light?
Did I mention that despite being specced for Improved Concentration Aura, he didn’t use it? He used Devotion Aura. And wasn’t even specced for Improved Devotion Aura. In an instance where there’s a ton of magic damage. /facepalm.
And yet, this dumbass has Heroic: Twilight Duo, Heroic: Fall of Naxxramas and Heroic: The Spellweaver’s Downfall.
I don’t know if I’m more offended by his shitty spec and playstyle or that he’s managed to get so far in progression. But I’m definitely offended on behalf of good players and good pallies everywhere!
//I was online tonight because I couldn’t sleep due to a headache. So I decided to get on WoW and play with my holy pally’s UI.
After futzing with it for a bit, I wanted to try it out in a raid scenario or something and there in Trade, someone was looking for a healer for Normal Vault of Archavon. So I said I’d go.
I get into the group and I look at the classes. There’s a druid… who is in moonkin form. There’s another paladin, who only has 6k mana. There’s a warlock. Three hunters. A rogue. A death knight. And then they bring in another druid, so I figure, hey, it’s a resto druid. Sweet.
Uh, no. The druid is feral and is MTing.
… so I’m the only healer?
Apparently, I am.
Piece of cake, didn’t lose anyone.
Anonymous WWS here, to protect the stupid:
http://wowwebstats.com/23rhuez5aagak
I’m “Gemini”. The moonkin (“Dew”) tossed out a few heals, and didn’t DPS hardly at all, but really, I healed the living crap out of that place.
/flex
//So about three weeks ago, when I joined my new guild, I was put on standby while they worked on Sarth3D. When they got him down, I realized I had the timer free, so I pugged later that week and wound up with the Chestplate of the Great Aspects. But my four-piece set bonus would break if I equipped it, since I had T7(.1) gloves, chest and T7(.25) shoulders and pants.
So it’s been sitting in my bank.
Went to Naxx tonight, despite being exhausted from not sleeping a lot lately, and KT drops not one, but TWO pally/priest/warlock helm tokens. I was the only one who wanted it for main spec. I WIN!
So now I have my sweet T7 4-piece bonus AND the best chest in the game for me. I’m so excited that, despite the exhaustion, I’m playing my shammy on Proudmoore in celebration.
//We have it good, right now. T7’s holy pally bonuses are pretty rockin’. Paraphrasing:
(2) Set: Your Holy Shock has an additional 10% chance to crit.
(4) Set: Your Holy Light cost is reduced by 5%
But the T8 ones blow. A lot.
//Priest healing is hacks. No joke, no lie, Circle of Healing, Renew, Prayer of Mending, all total hacks. I love it.
I completely blew up the healing according to WWS in my first-ever guild raid on my priest on Proudmoore. No joke. #2 on the night, with 15% of the heals. #1, a very geared resto shammy with 24% of heals. #3 was the healing officer, a holy paladin (I swear, she’s pretty much the equivalent of me over in that guild) with 15% of the heals (I beat her by 23k healing). Rounding off the bottom three; a shammy healer, another Circle of Healing priest and a resto druid. I should note all of these people, barring the other CoH priest, have more +healing than I do, and the other priest is around my level.
//So I realized today that it’s been forever since I updated this blog and didn’t talk about my guild. Back when I started it, I had all KINDS of conversational topics that I wanted to use to inform people about various misconceptions and such.
But I promptly forgot them all.
Until tonight! Tonight, I was reminded about paladins and their blessings and how they work completely differently from any other buff in the game, basically. I don’t generally think about this, because, well, I play a paladin daily. So I know how it works, and take for granted that others do too, because my guild was basically built on holy paladins being the core of the healers. So every learned about pally buffs early on.
But now, you see, I’ve taken my holy priest and gone forth and joined a raiding guild on Proudmoore. Without giving up my guild on Eldre’Thalas. In fact, Apotheosis (my E’T guild), is still my priority, but I thought I could relax and have fun with the priest by raiding content I already know in a guild that’s trying to work its way back to being 3/4 in TK and 5/6 of SSC.
The inspiration for today’s post came when I heard a mage calling for Salv on “Group 1” over Vent.
//We brought Vashj down to 3% last night. I’m sure we’ll get her on this coming reset, but it’ll require some changes to our strategy I think. Apparently, my ranged isn’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing, although happy coincidences last night made it work out okay, more or less. Well, obviously, if we got her to 3%. Stupid poison got us, obviously. But it was really just us being silly and not moving her around enough.
In other news, attunement. Obviously, I have the Vials of Eternity quest sitting happily in my log and now that we’ve downed Al’ar (on Sunday), a bunch of my guildies just need to go kill Rage Winterchill to be attuned to BT. Of course, I am not one of them. I need to talk to Seer Olum tonight in SSC, because I was stuck on the Arcatraz portion of that attunement quest forever, because I hate instances, specifically TK instances, with a passion. Well, I finally got it done and then the 5-man quest in SMV that follows it up just sat in my log.
This afternoon, I remembered “oh, right, need to talk to the dude in SSC tonight”, so I looked up the quest and was like… oh, right, this is why I haven’t done it. A 5-man quest. So I asked in guild chat if anyone wanted to do a quick 5-man quest in SMV so I could talk to the dude in SSC tonight.
<crickets chirp>
Which is what I’d expected. :P
So I check out the quest on WoWHead: Akama’s Promise.
People are saying they’ve soloed it. Mostly ranged classes, though. Hm.
I gave it a shot. The summoners were easy — kill them, heal through archers, then jump off that platform. You eventually drop out of combat and can eat/drink… and kill the other one. Rinse and repeat.
Then Deathwail landed. I was a little scared of the fear, but it only caused trouble once. I had him to about 35% when someone randomly whispers me for an invite. OMG, it’s a shammy! A random shammy! So I invite them, they proceed to HEAL ME (hooray!) and then we go to town on Deathwail. BAM, down 30 seconds later.
A productive WoW day even if I do nothing else, and I get to feel good about myself because, shammy or no shammy, Deathwail would have died. I, a holy paladin, essentially soloed a 5-man quest. Or could have soloed. That feels good, to be honest.