Category: raiding

Wow. Just… wow.

Kurn / / facepalm, icecrown citadel, paladins, raiding, ramblings

I’m exhausted. I spent over two hours writing up all the fail I witnessed from the holy pally app during last night’s ICC 25 raid, which I then sent to the healing lead and the raid leader.

He was in for five fights, all heroic: Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Gunship (I was swapped out for that), Saurfang and Blood Prince Council.

Some choice bits of information I’ll share with you:

1) He never used Sacred Shield. At all. Oh, wait. He spammed it… on Lady Deathwhisper. Like, not on that encounter. On the mob. Which means that he was mind-controlled when “he” used it. NO other use of it at all.

2) He cast Holy Light 158 times total on four logged bosses. In comparison, on those same bosses, I cast it 619 times. He cast Flash of Light 625 times to my 125. He is gemmed straight-up int, specced the way a HL pally would be, glyphed the way a HL pally would be.

3) He consistently ignored healing chat/assignments, would screw up his beacon and judgements.

4) Speaking of judgements, he judged 12 times on those four bosses. Bearing in mind we wiped twice on Saurfang before getting him, that’s 12 judgements in 6 boss encounters…

5) Did I mention that he missed beaconing me on Saurfang? He beaconed my direct-heal target instead and healed the tanks instead of Mark 4 like he was supposed to. Props to my RL friend the resto druid and some quick-thinking priests for keeping my ass up, given that I was Mark 2.

6) Speaking of beacon, he ignored 4 requests to beacon the DK tank on Blood Prince Council, instead deciding to beacon the warrior tank.

7) Speaking of Council, guess who was almost always in range of me during Empowered Shock Vortex AND who got 6-8 Shadow Prison stacks on five occasions during the fight? That’s right, the pally app.

8) Speaking of crowding people, he also crowded two healers and a moonkin on Saurfang and ate extra boiling blood because of it. Thank you, dipshit, for increasing Saurfang’s blood power.

9) Speaking of Saurfang again, he let a tank die through not healing him when he was supposed to be, then let HIMSELF die with the fourth Mark by … not healing himself like he was supposed to be!

10) He wanted to be in for Gunship so he could get Althor’s Abacus, which is a trinket that has 0 int, 0 haste, 0 mp5 and 0 crit. Way to be.

11) He wouldn’t STFU about loot. He actually asked, in raid chat, after a regular Conqueror’s token had been awarded to a priest, if he could have it instead. And when I got the Rot-Resistant Breastplate and Holiday’s Grace, asked me what my gearscore was now. OMG, stfu, you stupid dumbshit app who is giving ALL PALADINS a bad name.

I’ve recommended his app be closed ASAP. I would rather be the only holy paladin than have to deal with this fucktard. If it were just one thing or the other, I could attribute it to nerves or anxiety. But some core issues with how he plays the class, some basic awareness issues and an unhealthy fixation on loot makes him NOT what we’re looking for.

Kurn's Q&A #18

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

Welcome to Kurn’s Q&A! This week seems to be focused on heroic Putricide and the Unbound Plague. And no wonder people are searching for information on those. The heroic Professor Putricide encounter is one of the more difficult ones I’ve encountered this expansion, primarily because you need to heal a lot of damage, do a lot of damage and avoid a lot of damage. It kind of sucks that way, but I think you really feel good about yourself when you get ‘er done.

1) “unbound plague third phase?”

Oh yes. Indeed. It’ll spawn somewhere in phase 3, probably about 30 seconds in or so. And it’s NASTY, trying to pass that off, while dodging goo, slime puddles and OH, doing damage to the boss or healing the LIVING CRAP OUT OF THE RAID.

2) “parry haste” “heroic saurfang”

Nope! Check out this site for a confirmed list of who has parry haste enabled or disabled.

What you’re probably witnessing and thinking is a parry haste is his Frenzy. He’ll Frenzy at about 25%.

3) “avr in 3.3.5”

Gone! Or, at least, broken. Say bye to pretty pictures on the ground and amazing radiuses like those for Unbound Plague!

4) “can you pass unbound plague while bubbled?”

I know you can GET Unbound Plague while bubbled. So when it comes to passing it, I would presume so.

5) “does divinity work on judge of light”

Not the way you think it does. Check out my experiment here.

6) “how to see unbound plague without avre”

With great difficulty? ;)

No, seriously, there’s an animation for it. It’s a black, swirling cloud that you can see pretty clearly in this TankSpot video.

Note that this probably requires you to turn up your particle density. I play with my particle density all the way down and don’t see this at *all*.

7) “ignoring unbound plague”

You don’t exactly want to ignore it, because it will kill you if you do. After about 10 seconds, pass it off to someone. Do not take it back, due to the fact that you’ll have a debuff on you that will cause more damage if you get the plague again. In a 25-man scenario, though, it’s easy to go through several attempts without ever picking up the plague. There are just a lot of other targets available. It’s probably the one heroic mode that might actually be easier on 25-man than on 10-man, although 10-man still gives you plenty of room to maneuver. Maybe we’ll call it even.

8) “seal of light vs. seal of wisdom and icc 3.3.3”

Seal of Wisdom if you use Holy Light primarily and Seal of Light for Valithria Dreamwalker/if you’re a FoL paladin. Along with their respective glyphs, of course!

9) “tightening waistband vs lonely noble holy”

Given the 10-man regular version of Tightening Waistband, the 10-man heroic version of Tightening Waistband and the Belt of the Lonely Noble, the choice is clear: 10m-heroic TW has more haste. If you’re more of a FoL paladin already at 676 haste, go for the Belt of the Lonely Noble for the extra crit and loss of mp5. Of course, Belt of the Lonely Noble is BOE and is a solid piece anyways.

10) “will bubble remove emerald vigor”

This is actually a wonderful question. Emerald Vigor and Twisted Nightmares are technically *debuffs*. I don’t tend to bubble during the Dreamwalker encounter, though. I think I might have done so once and I’m pretty sure I would have noticed if I lost my stacks. So I’ll say no, it won’t. But take that with a grain of salt.

Oof.

Kurn / / achievements, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

Thank God Tuesday is our day off. I am totally burnt.

We spent half of Thursday and all of Sunday and some of Monday wiping to heroic Putricide, whom we’d gotten down precisely once thus far. He finally went down again tonight, which was nice, but boy, talk about a herculean effort.

We spent some time with heroic Sindragosa, which is nightmarish as always. Finally, we decided to stop wiping and just do it on normal so we could get to the Lich King with plenty of time to do our last achievement for Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25). (Incidentally, I got a GM to confirm that Neck-Deep in Vile (25) is required for this achievement! Good thing we got it done last week.)

That last achievement was Been Waiting a Long Time for This. I don’t even actually know how we did this, but I do know that I was totally out of mana moving into the first transition phase. I learned early on as we were learning (and wiping regularly on) Lich King that meleeing Raging Spirits during transition phases isn’t the safest way to regen my mana, but, by golly, that’s what I did tonight.

The reason I was out of mana was because of what Necrotic Plague does. See that little bit right there? “The Lich King’s power will increase”? Yeah. See, he normally hits my MT for about 25k before absorbs, blocks and the like.

As we went through the achievement, he was hitting him for 43835 towards the end. No freaking wonder I was oom!

Anyways, we let the plague stack to 30, pushed for the transition and went about our merry way killing him, without quite knowing if we’d done it right or if it had bugged out, since you only get the achievement once he dies.

BOOYA, got it. :) It’s my first-ever “Glory of the something” drake and, might I add, it’s freaking cool looking. Makes me wish I were a gatherer on the pally so I could fly around looking awesome.

That said, it’s been a long raiding week. I increasingly want to wring the necks of half my guildies, particularly the dipshit DK who keeps bitching that he’s not getting kings for some reason and actually spammed the raid with like 10 lines of him saying “kings on dks!!!!” while on heroic Putricide… when he’s the only death knight in the freaking raid. The best part? He HAD kings, albeit the 10m version (someone’s addon was screwy, I guess), so it’s not like he didn’t HAVE the buff.

He released after falling off the side tonight on LK and so didn’t get his achievement, drake or any loot.

I laughed out loud when I realized he wouldn’t get it and really enjoy the prospect that Mr. Asshat won’t be flying a drake for at least another week.

Yeah, I’m mean. I know. But it still made me laugh. :D

Holy How-To #6

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

Welcome to my Holy How-To for PVE Paladins. This is the sixth 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, we’re going to talk about haste and why, exactly, it is your number two stat if you’re a Holy Light paladin and why ALL paladins need as close to a 1.0 second global cooldown as possible. I was originally going to talk about healing meters and parses and the like, but once again, I had a couple of conversations (hi Saunder!) that abruptly changed my mind about this Holy How-To’s topic. So today, folks, Haste and Why to Stack It.
Continue reading “Holy How-To #6”

Hilarity on Heroic 25-man Putricide

Kurn / / healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

My guild has been struggling on heroic 25-man Putricide. We’ve downed him once. Ditto on Sindragosa, but last night, we were working strictly on Putricide.

Possibly the most terrifying moment(s) of the night:

3 tanks alive

1 healer alive

Putricide at something like 2%

Guess who the freaking healer is? THAT’S RIGHT. THIS LADY. This happened not just once, but TWICE.

For those who don’t know the encounter, P3 gets a little hectic. You have Unbound Plague running around, plus the slime pools, plus Malleable Goo and ALSO the damage from Mutated Plague is just insane.

How insane?

Here’s my death log.

[00:44:21.128] OT Mutated Plague Madrana 6547
[00:44:21.128] Bear Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 6547
[00:44:21.128] DK Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 6548
[00:44:23.615] OT Mutated Plague Madrana 6547
[00:44:24.037] Bear Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 5987 (O: 561)
[00:44:24.058] Madrana dies

That is over 18,000 damage per tick of Mutated Plague at 3 stacks on 3 tanks.

Sadly, I had to run out of a slime pool, so I had to stop casting and we all died, but prior to then? Holy cow, man. Look at some of these numbers:

[00:44:14.430] Madrana Holy Light  OT +8288 (O: 7280)
[00:44:14.738] Madrana Beacon of Light Madrana +15277 (O: 1069)
[00:44:15.140] OT Mutated Plague Madrana 6547
[00:44:15.140] Bear Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 6548
[00:44:15.140] DK Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 6548
[00:44:15.149] Madrana Glyph of Holy Light DK Tank +1001
[00:44:15.149] Madrana Glyph of Holy Light Bear Tank +1001
[00:44:15.648] Madrana Holy Light OT +*2174* (O: 20821)
[00:44:15.960] Madrana Beacon of Light Madrana +19643 (O: 4502)
[00:44:16.392] Madrana Glyph of Holy Light Bear Tank +2777
[00:44:16.392] Madrana Glyph of Holy Light DK Tank +3749
[00:44:17.241] Madrana Holy Light OT +0 (O: 15820)
[00:44:17.568] Madrana Beacon of Light Madrana +0 (O: 16611)
[00:44:18.011] OT Mutated Plague Madrana 6548
[00:44:18.011] Bear Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 6548
[00:44:18.016] Madrana Glyph of Holy Light Bear Tank +1910
[00:44:18.016] Madrana Glyph of Holy Light DK Tank +2579
[00:44:18.375] DK Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 6547
[00:44:18.756] Madrana Holy Light DK Tank +20024
[00:44:19.254] Madrana Beacon of Light Madrana +15574
[00:44:19.564] Madrana Glyph of Holy Light OT +2418
[00:44:20.324] Madrana Holy Light DK Tank +20851
[00:44:20.826] Madrana Beacon of Light Madrana +4069 (O: 12148)
[00:44:21.128] OT Mutated Plague Madrana 6547
[00:44:21.128] Bear Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 6547
[00:44:21.128] DK Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 6548
[00:44:23.615] OT Mutated Plague Madrana 6547
[00:44:24.037] Bear Tank Mutated Plague Madrana 5987 (O: 561)
[00:44:24.058] Madrana dies

Kind of insane, right? hahaha! And it doesn’t even taken into consideration my LOH!

[00:44:10.747] Madrana Lay on Hands  OT +38852
[00:44:11.610] Madrana Beacon of Light Madrana +7245 (O: 33550)

You may be wondering to yourself what the hell is up with me beaconing myself. Good question!

Last Thursday, while wiping to this fight, the other holy pally (the one who is basically AWOL now for a month) and I decided to swap beacons to ourselves after we respectively hit our DS/DS (divine shield/divine sacrifice). We typically hit DS/DS one right after the other. I go first and I hit it after the third tank hits 2 stacks of Mutated Plague, so all three tanks have 2 stacks. This permits me to use my bubble to move to a better location for the last portion of the fight without worrying too much about the tanks being killed while I’m on the move and unable to cast. And once I find my proper position, I cast Beacon of Light on myself and resume spamming the crap out of the active tank.

Works BEAUTIFULLY. I can *just* outheal the Mutated Plague damage if I don’t have to interrupt my casting and move. Highly recommend this to any holy paladin and I’m seriously considering wondering if we should just have the priests raid healing using bindind heal. ;)

AVR to be Broken

Kurn / / addons, general, raiding

Better get out your pens and paper again, ladies and gentlemen, and start sketching out where those with the raid symbols for Frost Beacon are supposed to stand on heroic Sindragosa. They’re purposely breaking AVR’s functionality.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25002150557&pageNo=1#0

I’m not terribly upset about this. Sure, it was fun while it lasted (and will last until 3.3.5), but it really did feel like cheating. More detailed thoughts on its use in this previous post.

Kurn's Q&A #17

Kurn / / achievements, facepalm, healing, icecrown citadel, q&a, raiding, ramblings, tanks

Man, it’s starting to get bright super-early over here. 5:34am as I start to write this and I can see across the street in the early morning light. I’m clearly up wayyyyyyy too late. :P And I can’t even blame it on raiding!

Ah, well. Time for another bunch of keywords that led people to the site.

1) shadow priest sindragosa heroic 25

I have to come out in favour of this. Vampiric Embrace is very useful on any fight with a persistent aura, such as Sindragosa or Blood Queen.

2) “pit of saron” tips skip riding

Okay. First of all, I hate people skipping the last few trash pulls. If you time it right, you can skip three of the last four groups of trash. This is, in my mind, an exploit. You are not MEANT to skip this trash. This trash is blocking the path you need to take to the final boss of the instance. That means it’s not optional. Man up and interrupt the flame caster guys on the first two pulls.

3) 16 int or 30 spellpower holy paladin

Bracers, right? I prefer 16 intellect because I’m a Holy Light-style paladin. Obviously, if you’re a spellpower-stacking, Flash of Light-style paladin, you want 30 spellpower. And if you’re new to 80 and don’t have 2000 spellpower yet, you want 30 spellpower.

4) bringing in kingslayer to trigger hard modes

Lame. True, you can probably kill Marrowgar and definitely Gunship on heroic modes without too much trouble, but lame, lame, lame. Go kill the Lich King first. Then you can trigger any hardmode you want.

5) can’t keep people alive in trial of the champion

You know what? That’s not horribly uncommon. I had a hell of a time keeping people up on my resto druid when I was a fresh 80. You just need to be aware of the various abilities. Turn around to not face Eadric the Pure so you don’t get stunned. Cleanse various debuffs off your party. If you get Paletress, Tremor Totem, Fear Ward, whatever you got to keep yourself from being feared. Having said that, though, if it’s not an exceptional environmental thing you can’t heal through, check your gear, your spec and glyphs. Maybe you’re just not ready to heal it.

6) does having someone suicide in phase 3 on professor putricide hardmode work?

Interesting idea. I presume you mean someone with Unbound Plague running out and dying to it? Maybe, although I doubt this is what the game designers had in mind when coming up with the fight. It’s very possible to do it using the more traditional method of dealing with Unbound Plague which is to pass it around the raid. (FYI: you still get it with Divine Shield up!)

This sounds a lot like the whole “let the first mark die” on Saurfang thing. Which just makes me roll my eyes.

7) dont wanna go to zangarmarsh

Hahahaha, yeah, me either! You can stay in Hellfire and do all the quests which should ding you 63-64. Once you hit 64, you can hit up Nagrand. You can probably start getting Terokkar quests around 62-63, too. Congratulations! You’ve skipped Zangarmarsh!

8) glory of icecrown raider total hours spent

Wow, that’s a very interesting search. I only have 25-man experience, so let’s see…

Considering all I’m missing is I’ve Been Waiting a Long Time for This achievement on Lich King, I have to say a LOT of my recent raid time has been taken up by driving towards this achievement. I’m taking into consideration how long it took us to down heroic modes like Sindragosa (weeks!) and also Gunship (first attempt). Probably anywhere from 30-40 hours of dedicated wiping just for the heroic modes, with additional wipes and issues on Boned, Full House, I’m on a Boat, Portal Jockey, All You Can Eat… So maybe 40-50 hours of wipes.

Yeah, now I want to quit…

9) what’s the priest bubble shield speed boost

It’s a deep holy talent called Body and Soul.

10) what does eh mean paladin

Well, I’m Canadian, so the first thing I think of is “eh?“… but you’re probably talking about EH — Effective Health for tanks. Your effective health is what your health actually is due to mitigation provided to you by things like armor.

Here’s an effective health calculator from my favourite warrior tank site. Go nuts. :)

What I Look for in a Holy Pally App

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

I’ve been basically begging my guild to recruit a third holy paladin for months. A third holy paladin would have been great when the main holy paladin (who had been there when I arrived) ninja-transferred in the middle of the night after killing LK on 10-man for the first time and getting his Kingslayer title. A third holy paladin would have been awesome even last week, when I, and the current other holy paladin, both had our birthday celebrations. A third holy paladin would be great at any time for heroic Saurfang.

We had two holy paladin apps but one didn’t like the idea of sharing raid time at all, so he came up with some lame excuse and transferred. The other one stuck it out, is a member of the guild in good standing and is someone I know I can rely on to do what he’s told in a healing situation. Unfortunately, he’s also going to be unavailable for close to a month, starting, oh, nowish.

So I’ve spent some time over the last couple of days perusing wowlemmings looking for holy paladins who can meet our raid times, who are fairly geared and, here’s the kicker, know what the hell they’re doing in terms of gearing, enchanting, gemming, speccing and glyphing.

You would think that they would, for the most part, know what they’re doing. Particularly if they’re looking for a progressed guild, right? Well, they don’t. No kidding. They do not. Thus, here is what I look for (and therefore, what I don’t look for) when looking at a holy paladin’s armory. (Please note that this is what I look for when taking my current guild situation into account. That means typical raid makeup, encounters we’re working on and the like. Posting it here is basically showing you what my own rules of thumb/preferences are in general and there are, of course, a variety of circumstances that could change these preferences.)

1) Overall gear. Is the gear strictly out of heroics or from the Emblem of Frost vendor? If so, chances are slim that the rest of the stats will impress me. What I am looking for in particular:

– 2pc T10, even if it’s 251. Ideally, the helm and the shoulders, as these are our strongest pieces at 251/264/277 levels of gear.

– Talisman of Resurgence as one trinket and then a variety of others. Why Talisman? Well, it’s easy to get, stacks our best stat and has an on-use that helps to offset Divine Plea. Of course, FoL pallies would probably prefer two +spellpower trinkets, but for Holy Light pallies, I want to see Talisman. For the other, I would prefer Meteorite Crystal or heroic Solace of the Defeated, but will also be okay with regular Solace, Pandora’s Plea or even DMC: Greatness (Intellect). What would not wow me, but would still be better than a spellpower trinket for a Holy Light paladin, is Tears of the Vanquished.

– Something other than the badge shield. Even the 226 shield from Kel’Thuzad. I do not want to see Zom’s Crackling Bulwark or the Protective Barricade of the Light.

– At least the honored version of the Ashen Verdict ring. Sorry, you cannot step into an 11/12 HM guild if you’re not that familiar with the instance.

2) Gems. I want to see all +20 intellect and a Nightmare Tear or all +23 spellpower. If you’re all +intellect, I also want to see an Insightful Earthsiege Diamond as your meta and if you’re +spellpower, it’s that OR an Ember Skyflare. Pretty much no exceptions. If you have anything else as your meta, I’m moving on to the next paladin on the list.

3) Enchants. Helm is spellpower/mp5 for HL and spellpower/crit for FoL, shoulder is spellpower/mp5 with exalted Hodir or inscription for HL, spellpower/crit for FoL, chest is powerful stats, bracers is +16 intellect (HL) or +30 spellpower (FoL), gloves are +28 spellpower, belt has the extra buckle, legs are spellpower/stamina (if you use the spirit one, I swear to God, you need to be smacked), boots are either Greater Vitality or Tuskarr’s, weapon is either +63 spellpower (FoL but acceptable for HL) or+30 int (HL), shield is +25 int. Period. Again, there is VERY little room for argument.

4) Libram. This probably should be under overall gear, but it’s SO important that I felt it deserved its own little category. If you are a holy paladin and use Holy Light more often than not and you are NOT wearing the Libram of Renewal, you fail. Hardcore. Screw gearscore, this is ten thousand times more important than upping your ridiculously stupid gearscore by 50 points. I don’t even want to know that you exist if you don’t use this libram. If you are a holy paladin and use FoL more often than not and you are NOT wearing one of the Gladiator Librams that increases your FoL spellpower, then you ALSO fail and I definitely don’t want to ever meet you.

5) Haste rating. I’m going to try to be calm here, but I might lose it… If you don’t have 676 haste, GO OUT AND GET MORE FREAKING HASTE. Gah. What is wrong with people in ICC content, who have downed the Lich King who have like, 400 haste? You’re being idiots! EVERY holy paladin needs 676 at minimum and if you don’t have the spell haste buffs in your raid, you need MORE. You also need more if you cast Holy Light more. Do you get me? HASTE IS AWESOME. I have 936 haste and eat 40 haste food, for 976 haste PLUS Wrath of Air PLUS Swift Retribution Aura PLUS Judgements of the Pure. It is GOOD.

Ahem. Yes. Haste needs to be over 600 before I’ll take any holy paladin remotely seriously.

6) Spec. Holy Light paladins should have a prot subspec and FoL paladins should use a ret subspec. I don’t want to see you speccing into ret and Conviction if you’re gemmed all intellect and basically vice-versa. Don’t spec and gear half-assedly. Pick Holy Light or Flash of Light and spec/gear/gem accordingly. I also don’t want to see any crazy, cockamamie 68 points in holy. You go 51 or 52 or 54 points into holy and 5 or 17 or 20 into prot or 2 or 15 or 20 in ret. You definitely want your talents to be something like:

51/5/15 – FoL

51/20/0 – HL

51/0/20 – FoL

54/17/0 – HL

52/17/2 – HL

Check out this previous post of mine to help determine what talents you absolutely need to take and which are situational and debatable.

7) Glyphs. If you’re a Holy Light paladin, it’s Glyph of Seal of Wisdom, Glyph of Holy Light and Glyph of Beacon of Light. If you’re a FoL paladin, Glyph of Seal of Light, Glyph of Flash of Light, Glyph of Holy Light. If you use Beacon a ton, you might want to swap out Glyph of Holy Light. There’s a little wiggle room here, but not too much.

8) Achievements. If you’re a Hand of A’dal, you get extra points in my book. If you did any of the “big” fights before T9 became super easy to get (ie: Sarth 3D, various Ulduar hard modes, Algalon, etc), you get extra points. “Extra points” means I’ll be willing to listen to you defend some of your more bizarre choices in gear/enchants/etc. It is not a carte blanche to be a total moron when it comes to your character’s spec and equipment.

So there you go, what I look for on each paladin’s armory before I go posting the typical “hey, want to raid with us?” post.

As an aside, yes, as of May 14th, I am still pushing to get another holy paladin in. If anyone reading has a geared holy paladin and you’re looking for a new guild, here’s some info on us:

– mature PVE/PST server

– guild has been together for 4+ years, downed Algalon in Ulduar, TOC, TOGC (4/5), ICC25 12/12 and ICC25 HM 11/12

– raids are 8pm-11pm PST on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays

– you *must* run Grid/Clique or Grid/mouseover macros (not my requirement, but I’m okay with it) as well as DXE as a boss mod and AVR for Sindragosa and oRA2 and Omen

– definitely prefer a holy paladin who is HL-specced/geared at the moment, with the possibility of being able to play with FoL spec/gear in the future

Bear in mind that we don’t typically use Vent (or, at least, it’s not required).

We’re 11/12 HM and doing achievements NOW for Glory of the Icecrown Raider, so do not think we are your ticket to a mount. We are currently your ticket to hardmode loot as we push to down LK on heroic.

If you can make close to 100% attendence and feel you’re the type of paladin we’re looking for, email me for more details:

kurn [at] apotheosis-now [dot] com

(Note that that’s my personal address and not affiliated with the guild I’m currently a part of.)

You can also tweet me at kurnmogh on Twitter and we’ll chat. :)

Thoughts on Glory of the whatever Raider

Kurn / / achievements, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

The drakes-as-reward for people doing all kinds of ridiculous achievements always seemed way unimportant to me. In general, I still think they are unimportant. More importantly, in some cases, the hoops through which you had to jump to get them were just INSANE, particularly with 25 people involved.

Take, for example, Glory of the Raider, the original one dealing with Tier 7 instances.

There were a lot of easy achievements as the requirement here, but, among the difficult ones were Sarth 3D, 5-6m Maly and The Safety Dance (no deaths on Heigan in that kind of lag? Please.). And then there was The Immortal. While poor old Apotheosis never even got Thaddius down, much less Sapphiron or KT, I know raids who had one person die unexpectedly on KT every week, people who DCed through Thaddius attempts… These people never got their drakes and I imagine that honestly few people did. The Immortal, and its 10-man cousin, The Undying, were just ridiculous requirements, particularly given the obscene lag Naxxramas suffered in early Wrath. (And no, I never did get my Undying run done.)

So then Ulduar was coming out and the devs recognized that hey, we’re going to outgear all this crap and so they would remove the drake as a reward. Good on them.

And then Ulduar came out and they introduced Glory of the Ulduar Raider.

Honestly, while The Immortal was just dumb in terms of how many things can possibly go wrong, I think that the Ulduar challenges are more difficult. A lot of them aren’t gear-based, but based on co-ordination and a metric assload of cooldowns, which is why these are still attainable. It’s about knowing the fight, knowing what you have to do and sure, your gear now makes it easier, but it’s still HARD.

Some of them are super-easy, like Disarmed, or not too hard with a bit of planning and gear, like Stokin’ the Furnace and Heartbreaker. But Steelbreaker last? Freya with 3 adds? Yogg with only ONE keeper? GEEZ. Having done Steelbreaker last (albeit with my current guild who had practiced it over and over and done it several times before I joined), GOOD GOD, that is hard. I’ve done Freya with 1 add when Ulduar was current content and that was shitty enough for me, thank you very much.

Then, of course, Icecrown Citadel came out and with it, Glory of the Icecrown Raider.

There are 17 achievements in Glory of the Icecrown Raider and four of them include killing all the bosses, save Lich King, on heroic. Which is HARD. Heroic Putricide and Heroic Sindragosa are right up there with Steelbreaker last and what I imagine Freya +3 would be like. There’s just SO much personal responsibility and personal awareness required on everyone’s part in both those fights that if you can get those done, you bloody well deserve a little something to show off.

Of the 17, I have 10 done. The four heroics, Boned (shut up), Nausea…, Once Bitten, Full House, Made a Mess and Orb Whisperer.

This reset, the raid leader and guild officers have decided to work on getting 25 of us our drakes. We are, more or less, the people who have been there since the LK kill who have maintained 75%+ attendence. So we’re going to do a bunch of regular modes slightly differently (Flu Shot Shortage — OMG, Festergut without Malleable Goo again? ECSTASY!!!) and do a couple hard modes this week and save heroic LK attempts for next reset.

This is the closest I’ve ever been to getting a drake this expansion and, like I said, it’s never been important to me, it’s never been a priority. But that the guild is deliberately putting off progress to give us a bit of a break and a bit of a reward makes me feel good. It makes me feel like a real part of the guild, a real part of the team, and it’s based on my dedication, perseverence and attendence, which are all important things to me.

Go go achievement spam. I’m ready to put in the effort to get my Reins of the Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher. And even though it’s less important than killing the bosses on heroic mode, it’ll remain a testament to all the effort I’ve put into the guild and the game over the last several months.

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.