Category: raiding

Holy How-To #4 – Frequently Asked Questions

Kurn / / guide, holy how-to (wrath), jewelcrafting, paladins, raiding

Welcome to my Holy How-To for PVE Paladins. This is the fourth 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’ll talk a bit about some of the most frequently asked questions pertaining to healing in current PVE content. This is NOT what I actually wanted to go over for my fourth Holy How-To. I actually have a half-written post sitting in Notepad at the moment about healing meters and why they suck. However, I’ve been looking for a new holy paladin for my guild (to replace the one who ninja-transferred) and I just kind of /facepalm when I see some of their armories. So inside, quick questions and answers for holy PVE paladins!

Continue reading “Holy How-To #4 – Frequently Asked Questions”

Uh…

Kurn / / apotheosis, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

So, uh… didn’t see this coming.

25-man Lich King down. And though I use the pieces in different sets, that’s me in 5/5 Sanctified Lightsworn Garb.

Yeah, I have NO idea how we pulled that one off…

(Edited after just being in shock for 20 minutes.)

It’s kind of terrifying how many bosses I’ve personally downed at the appropriate level. Talk of this and such below.

Continue reading “Uh…”

General updates.

Kurn / / arenas, hunters, parses, raiding, ramblings

1) Emerald Vigor now has a combat log entry!!! Rejoice, readers of parses!

2) As you may be able to tell from my recent achievements, I have started doing arenas with Majik and my brother. I did some 2s with Maj yesterday, will do some 2s with my brother today, then the three of us will do some 3s today. All I have to say is that I hate warlocks more now than I ever did in BC. But Majik’s new unholy spec works very nicely to give us the burst we need and my PVE spec is actually not half bad for arenas. I decided to get on the arena bandwagon with the guys because I did a VOA25 and my Wrathful legs dropped… and I won them. Heh. With some honor and some emblems of triumph, combined with other drops I’d previously gotten, I still have crappy resilience, but it’s better than none at all. I don’t feel like what priests must feel they’re wearing. And we actually won 7 (and lost 7), most of the wins coming after Majik switched specs.

3) Got bitten last night on Blood Queen, which was just WEIRD. It was in the last minute of the fight, though, so I didn’t have to bite anyone. I think someone screwed up significantly for me to get bitten. But hey, it got me my achievement!

4) My brother has applied to a casual raiding guild and he did ICC10 for the first (real) time last night. (He’d previously gone in and attempted Festergut on a pug a couple of times and done a couple rep runs.) I looked at his parse and he didn’t do too badly at all. He’s a good player, don’t get me wrong — this isn’t surprising or anything. But it seems so weird that he’s a HUNTER. My brother has only ever been a resto druid or a rogue in raids. He was very good at what he did. He’s very good at what he’s doing now, too. I’m kind of proud of the kid. I’m less proud of the fact that I explained all the fights to him  in detail, rather than have him go to tankspot.com, mind you. ;)

5) Emerald Vigor! Combat log entry!!! YAY! :D

More later, including the insanity that was Ignis the Furnace Master Must Die! I just wanted to share those bits.

Kurn's Q&A #11

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

As it’s patch day for 3.3.3, I highly anticipate servers dying and being unavailable and such, so I thought I’d sit down and hammer this out. (Speaking of, I’ve been very quiet on the subject of 3.3.3. This is primarily because they aren’t nerfing paladins or hunters. Which is a shocking, but welcome, change. Seems like they ALWAYS nerf one of the two.)

1) divine shield mutated plague / “mutated plague” mechanics / grid mutated plague

Okay, let’s talk about Mutated Plague then, shall we? ;)

Mutated Plague is the debuff that the tanks get in phase 3 of the Professor Putricide encounter. The debuff causes raid damage. The more stacks on a target, the more damage the raid takes. This is why a 2-tank strategy in 10m and 3-tank strategy in 25m is usually recommended. They taunt the boss in turn, rotating who gets stacks to help control the raid damage.

In my 25m raids, the taunt rotation goes thusly:

Tank 1 – 2 stacks of Mutated Plague -> Tank 2 – 2 stacks -> Tank 3 – 2 stacks -> Tank 1 – 1 additional for 3 stacks -> Tank 2 – 1 additional for 3 stacks -> Tank 3 – 1 additional for 3 stacks – > Tank 1 – 1 additional for 4 stacks

And so on. So it’s 2 stacks, then a total of 3, then a total of 4.

Thing is, if the stacks drop, you heal Putricide for a certain number multiplied by the number of stacks on the tank who dropped them. That means that if the stacks drop, for ANY reason, you just healed him for a ton of health. Divine Shield WILL wipe off stacks (Divine Protection will not, Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian will not). And so will death. So to get through Putricide, it’s pretty imperative that no tanks drop their stacks.

Anyone using Grid who wants to know when the taunt is supposed to happen should ABSOLUTELY put it in Grid.

Status, Auras, Add new Debuff, type in Mutated Plague. Then, Frame, Center Icon, add a tick next to Debuff: Mutated Plague.

Voila.

2) icc loot 10 man holy paladin

Honestly, I’m not terribly familiar with ICC 10 loot, but let’s take a look. I’ll just post some pieces from 10m normal. Obviously, if the piece isn’t plate, make sure no one of that armor class needs it more than you. Pass to your shammies, druids and casters and don’t be a dick. :) And, of course, this is all my humble opinion, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt. I’m evaluating all the loot on its own merits (or potential merits, in terms of tier possibilities) and does not take into consideration all the stuff you’re probably wearing. Note that I highly recommend 2pc T10 if only for the set bonus!

From Lord Marrowgar:

Coldwraith Bracers: Nicely itemized for a holy paladin. Haste, intellect, a socket for another +20 int gem. Don’t let the lack of crit scare you off; since the Illumination nerf to 30%, mp5 is a more reliable method of mana regeneration than crit is.

Ancient Skeletal Boots: Ehhhhh. No haste. Despite being a higher ilvl, not a significant upgrade from 245-level Boots of the Courageous. There are better boots in here for you.

Frost Needle: I know, I know. It has hit on it. Don’t steal this from any caster who has a legitimate use for the +hit. This is a nice sword for us, though — haste, intellect, spellpower. I’d value this over another weapon that drops later, actually.

Corrupted Silverplate Leggings: Sweet legs. I’d prefer mp5 to the crit, to be honest, but these are a solid pair of pants. Given that our tier pants kind of blow, IMHO, you should definitely pick these up if you can.

From Lady Deathwhisper:

Boots of the Frozen Seed: Moonkin loot, really. But if your boots suck, go for it. Great stats.

Deathspeaker Disciple’s Belt: Great belt.

Gunship:

Ice-Reinforced Vrykul Helm: Not too bad, compared to our T10 (251) helm. It’s actually better in a couple of aspects. However, if you ever think you’ll be in a 25m for a token or a 10m heroic for a token to upgrade a piece of tier to 264, the clear winner would be our T10 helm. Otherwise, it’s a nice hat!

Bracers of Pale Illumination: The Marrowgar bracers are, IMHO, better than these. Don’t go for the socket bonus for +4 intellect; it’s not worth what you’d lose from 20 intellect to 10 or something. If the socket had been yellow, it would have had a fighting chance. As it is, get the Marrowgar bracers if you can. These are still a good second choice, though.

Deathbringer Saurfang:

Soulcleave Pendant: Beauty. Snag it!

Festergut:

Festergut’s Gaseous Gloves: On the surface, better than the 251 Tier 10 gloves. And better than the 264s. Actually, they’re pretty darn good gloves to have over the tier, all the way up to 277 level. I personally prefer the Gauntlets of Overexposure from the Emblem of Frost vendor for 60 Emblems. Two sockets, like the Festergut gloves, but haste (which neither Festergut’s gloves nor any of our tier pieces have), a goodly amount of crit and intellect. So really, I’d pass on the gloves off Festergut unless you really have no way of ever getting 60 Emblems of Frost and your gloves are crap. Dreamwalker has a nice pair, though.

Signet of Putrefaction: Pretty ring! Very nice if you can’t get Marrowgar’s Frigid Eye, which is BOE. Your other ring, of course, should be your rep ring from the Ashen Verdict.

Rotface:

Shuffling Shoes: Remember that I was talking about better boots for you? These are the ones I was talking about. The leather ones off Deathwhisper have more haste, but these have haste, mp5 and two yellow sockets for an extra bonus of +4mp5 if you’re stacking +20 intellect gems. Earthsoul Boots are still better, but in a 10m setting, these are very nice.

Choker of Filthy Diamonds: Comparable to the Soulcleave Pendant. Based on your current stats, you’ll either want the tiny bit of extra int and the crit from the Pendant or the extra mp5 on the Choker.

Putricide:

Chestplate of Septic Stitches: Ooh, pretty! Too bad all the sockets are red. And there’s no haste. (Yes, hi, I’m a haste whore.) Honestly, I’d save up for the Lightsworn Tunic. But if you’re at 676 haste or more without your chest, then this is a solid upgrade for you out of 10m ICC. Still, there are other options.

Rippling Flesh Kilt: Pretty much awesome for pants. Even if they’re a kilt. Snag ’em if you can’t get the Marrowgar pants.

Princes:

Heartsick Mender’s Cape: A cloak with a socket and haste on it, unlike the Emblem of Frost vendor cloak? Yes, please!

Cerise Coiled Ring: Good alternative to the Signet of Putrefaction, but definitely second-best, IMHO.

Blood Queen:

Chestguard of Siphoned Elements: Amazing itemization for a paladin. This is actually better, IMHO, than T10’s 251 chest, but again, the T10 is upgradeable. This is not.

Tightening Waistband: My goodness, look. It’s plate. Why is all the great gear built for shammies? :P Honestly, though, you want Belt of the Lonely Noble (BOE from ICC 25) or Lich Killer’s Lanyard from the Emblem of Frost vendor. If you have neither, this is a great option out of 10m ICC.

Dreamwalker:

Emerald Saint’s Spaulders: Meh. I much prefer the Lightsworn Spaulders for the haste, but 2 sockets vs. 1 makes the Dreamwalker 10 shoulders very appealing.

Stormbringer Gloves: Another strong option for gloves.

Sindragosa:

Shoulderguards of Crystalline Bone: Better than the Emerald Saint’s Spaulders, to be sure, particularly with the haste.

Lost Pavise of the Blue Flight: No-brainer. Get it! Great itemization. Too bad there’s no socket, but honestly, this is a beauty.

Lich King:

Valius, Gavel of the Lightbringer: Stats are so-so. But hey, it’s from the Lich King, is ilvl 258 (same as Trial of the Grand Crusader) and it’s like, UTHER’S mace from his holy set! Heh. :)

Whew.

3) blessing of protection on sindragosa

Does absolutely nothing, sorry. :(

4) how to make a spell power set for dreamwalker

Without totally regemming everything that you regularly use? Yeah, not the easiest thing in the universe. I bought my tier chest and my tier gloves and gemmed them for spellpower (since I wanted to have my full tier anyways, even if I’m not using it) and I swap out Glyph of Seal of Wisdom for Glyph of Seal of Light. I have a pair of shoulders I use that are gemmed up with spellpower, too. Apart from that, you can always go back a tier and use T9 stuff. Heck, you can get T9 from emblems of triumph, so you can always get the T9 pieces and wear 3 of those (maintaining 2pc T10) if you don’t have old gear, etc.

5) should healers only run back?

Absolutely not. People who can resurrect should rez people if they die after the fight. If your rezzer runs, you run. Period.

6) warrior rage mechanics “shielded”

Check out WoWWiki: “As of Patch 3.1, will still allow warriors and druids to generate rage from damage absorbed.” So it’s fine. :)

7) stop casting divine plea

You can right-click it off, or use a macro like this:

#showtooltip divine plea
/cancelaura divine plea
/cast divine plea

So on your first click, you’ll cast Divine Plea. On your second click, you will cancel it. I do NOT use this macro because if I accidentally click twice (in the clicking-furiously process), I’m screwed.

Alternately, have

/cancelaura divine plea

as a separate button.

8) how do i keep judgements of the pure

Make sure you judge at least once a minute to maintain your Judgements of the Pure buff. Be aware that your judgements can MISS.

9) how to tank as a druid

Use Maul, use Swipe, use Mangle, use Lacerate. Done. ;) Seriously, check out this post at Big Bear Butt.

10) old school flasks elixir master

Yep, elixir masters can proc old-school flasks like Distilled Wisdom. Not that I proc often…. but I HAVE procced it. :)

Kurn's Q&A #10

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

Strangely enough, I get a kick out of random search terms that lead here, so here’s the 10th post where I take a look at who’s been searching for stuff and my attempt to better answer the questions these people probably had.

1) paladin divinity jol

Yeah, basically, it doesn’t work the way you think it works. For whatever reason, it works on the judging paladin (and perhaps anyone else who has Divinity) but not on, say, a hunter. I know, weird, eh? Still, here are the results of the experiment I did.

2) “stained shadowcraft tunic” “enhancement shaman”

No, no, go get the Champion’s Deathdealer Breastplate. I know it’s mail, but even before 40, you’ll be able to equip it. It’ll be leather, effectively, ’till you ding 40 and then it’ll become mail. Same deal for your shoulders, get the Prized Beastmaster’s Mantle. Apart from anything else, intellect is a good stat to have — not only will it extend your mana pool, but also if you’re properly specced in the 50s or thereabouts, you’ll be getting Mental Quickness, adding to your attack power from your intellect.

3) anyway to keep focus frame through valithria

Not that I’ve seen. >< I use a macro to focus her:

/focus Valithria Dreamwalker

4) blood prince council+holy priest+bad

Nah, not bad. What we’ll typically do is 1-2 holy paladins, 1 disc priest, 1 resto druid, 1-2 resto shammies and a holy priest. The holy priest does very well in topping people off, saving people from their own idiocy. We have the shammies helping on tanks if we’ve just got the one holy pally, so the priest gets his Circle of Hax on and his Empowered Renew blasting through the raid. Works pretty well.

Of course, if you’re thinking their numbers suck, look at their assignments. Are they assigned to the raid with 3 resto druids? Then yes, they will appear “bad”. But unless you’re losing a bunch of people due to lack of heals (and not their own stupidity), your holy priest is probably doing fine.

5) can you remove mutated plague with divine protection

Okay, first of all, Divine Protection is the paladin equivalent of Shield Wall. So no, Divine Protection is not going to wipe Mutated Plague off the tank.

Mutated Plague is the debuff that Professor Putricide stacks on the tanks in Phase 3 of his encounter. Typically, on 25-man, we have Tank 1 take 2 stacks, then Tank 2 takes 2, then Tank 3 takes 2, then T1 takes 1, T2 takes 1, T3 takes 1, and so on until the good Professor is dead.

What WOULD drop Mutated Plague off is Divine Shield. But you DO NOT want to do this (and I suspect that’s why you asked if DP would wipe it off) because if MP drops off any target for any reason, it’ll heal the boss for a certain amount per stack that was on the tank. That includes tank death, that includes bubbling.

So please do feel free to use Divine Protection in P3 of Professor Putricide. :)

6) cataclysm “level 85″+”experience needed”

Okay, there’s like no information out for Cataclysm yet. I don’t think the Friends and Family Closed Alpha is even out yet. However, considering the level cap is moving up only five levels, I would have to presume that those are going to be some pretty epic levels and that you’ll have to get an obscene amount of experience to get to 85. That doesn’t mean that SOME crazy space goats won’t ding in like, four days, though, RIGHT OSEPHALA? ;)

7) divine illumination cooldown add on

I cannot pimp this enough: OmniCC is the best cooldown timer ever. It displays cooldowns by minute and then, at 60 seconds it displays by second until it’s up. This is one of the addons I cannot live without.

8) divine intervention macro

From my Holy How-To #3:

Here’s my “hey, I cast Divine Intervention on someone” macro. Note that you must be targetting the person you want to DI.

/cast Divine Intervention

/script SendChatMessage(“DI: The generous pally’s version of Bubble/Hearth.”, “WHISPER”, nil, UnitName(“target”));

/6 Divine Intervention cast on %t.

What that does is cast DI, then sends a whisper to your target saying: DI: The generous pally’s version of Bubble/Hearth. This can obviously be changed, that’s just my sense of humour. ;)

Then it announces to the healing channel (#6) that I cast DI on my target.

9) divine shield mystic buffet

Nope. It goes riiiiiiiight through Divine Shield. :(

10) grid show random dungeon tank

Ah, you’re using Grid and you want it to show you the roles of the people in your party, right? To my knowledge, there’s no way to show that in Grid as of yet. Your standard Blizzard UI party frames will show you the roles, though. Or, you can do what I do and that’s click on every possible person in your party who’s a pally, druid, death knight or warrior and pray that the one with the highest health is your tank…

Bonus question: how to tank as a paladin at lvl 20

20 is when it becomes easy. Make sure you have Righteous Fury on (which I believe still goes away after you die, so don’t forget to put it back on!) and judge your single targets. If you have more than 2-3 mobs, drop Consecration. Congratulations. You are now a leet threat machine!

Of egos, numbers and priorities.

Kurn / / facepalm, healers, healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

This totally ties in to my upcoming Holy How-To #4: Healing Meters, but I didn’t want to complicate what will be an informative post with my own personal stuff.

My question is this: how can a guild that is practically five years old be run by people who rely on healing meters to determine who the “best healer” is?

My RL friend the resto druid is taking a break from the game due to various RL issues that have cropped up. Which sucks. I mean, obviously I support her decision and I think it’s the best decision for her, given her RL circumstances and all. Apart from anything else, not having to raid from 11pm-2am four nights a week will benefit her in that she’ll get a decent amount of sleep.

The trouble here is that she’s the healing lead. And we’re 11/12, working on getting Sindragosa on farm (most emphatically not on farm!) and getting Lich King down on 25-man, so we can unlock hard modes, etc.

When she went away on business for a couple of days, she posted on the forums that I’d do healing assignments while she was away. (She and I had talked about this, so it wasn’t a surprise, it was fine.)

So naturally, while she’s away from the game, I figured that the whole healing lead thing would fall to me. Just about everyone else who has seniority is gone or not raiding anymore; the other holy paladin ninja-transferred, the disc priest who is awesome stopped raiding a couple of months ago… Honestly, there’s two healers who have been in the guild longer than I have been at this point, and one’s attendence sucks and the other is happier to be on standby.

So I’m thinking to myself that I should write to the officers that I get along with and let them know that I’m happy to help out in the short-term while they find a new healing lead until my RL friend comes back to the game. But that it’s strictly for the short-term, I don’t want any kind of promotion, I don’t want the job, etc.

So I do. I talk a bit about how I’m willing to help for the betterment of the raid and because the resto druid is my RL friend and I want to do what I can to lessen her stress/guilt for not raiding, etc. This is all on Thursday night.

Later on Friday, the caster officer PMs me back on the boards and is like “can we talk in-game about something real quick?”

So I log on and we chat and he’s like “I apologize in advance, but do you remember me asking you if [resto druid] was going to log on, Wednesday?”

“Yeah, you asked right before she did log on.”

“Yeah, well the reason I asked was because [MT/de-facto GM] had actually asked me to do healing if she wasn’t around.”

Relief totally flooded my body. Honest to God, I was like “haha, that’s fine!” and I was all relieved and fine. I’ve been in the guild for seven months, which is a drop in the bucket compared to most people, including the caster officer (who used to heal in pre-BC and BC).

But then he said that apparently, some people actually complained that I was doing healing assignments. Complained? What the hell? It’s not like I was doing a bad job or anything. With little to no communication from Mr. MT/officers, I did healing assignments for 10/12, with only 2 wipes. One WAS my bad, but the other was due to disconnections on BQL. I’m sitting there, scratching my head as to why on earth people would complain; I was polite in my requests, I was encouraging of the healers, I allocated resources pretty darn well considering I don’t know the capability of half of these people (there are five healers who have been there less than 5-6 weeks)…

So it blew my mind when the caster officer said why they complained.

“apparently some ppl complained about you doing them because they feel like you’re not the best healer or something”

And it dawns on me. The MT felt that these complaints were justified because I don’t top healing meters.

It’s got absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I can’t manage the healers, nothing to do with the fact that I can’t allocate resources, nothing to do with the fact that I’m polite and courteous. It’s not even that I suck at healing; it’s because I stick to my assignments and do what’s best for the raid, rather than inflate my numbers.

Our last holy paladin, the one who had arrived when the guild was working on Sunwell, was a numbers whore. That’s all he cared about, that and caring about looking as if he was awesome because he knew the details of the game and mechanics — even though he didn’t. (Seriously, he tried to tell me that if MY beacon was up on a tank, that HIS heals would also be mirrored to MY beacon. Which is absolutely false and untrue.)

As a result of his priorities (his numbers instead of the raid), he would often heal off assignment, judge light (instead of wisdom, when there was always a ret pally in the raid, who could more reliably keep a judgement up) and was directly responsible for several wipes in recent memory. Basically, my RL friend was RELIEVED he ninja-transferred so that she didn’t have to deal with his stupid ass for never listening to her. You know how hard it is to type, in healing chat, while running around and healing, the words “[holy pally name] put your beacon on your assigned beacon target and heal your tank please”. She did that frequently and also whispered him a ton to get him to do it.

If I WANTED to, I could give myself the assignments that have me ridiculously high on the meters and I could judge light. But what’s the point in topping meters if people are DYING? What’s the point in wiping the raid all night in order to show off?

I’m sorry, but if we’re on Sindragosa, with a harsh frost aura ticking constantly, there is no WAY I’m going to beat a raid healer AND keep the MT alive. Not a chance. So what’s the more important thing? Healing the MT and keeping him alive so Sindragosa doesn’t turn and one-shot the rest of the raid.

This conversation has been bugging me since Friday and I just realized why. It’s not even that the MT is ignorant enough about healing that he relies on healing meters (haha, does that mean he thinks disc priests are completely worthless?), but it’s that the healers are the ones who complained. My fellow healers, the ones who are supposed to have a deeper understanding of the game and mechanics and healing assignments and the roles of various healers… THEY are the ones who complained to the MT.

So not only is the MT, who is also acting guild leader, ignorant of how healing works in this game, but so are at least some of the healers in the guild.

I could understand it if I weren’t one of the more senior healers in the guild at the moment, if I were this new recruit who, via nepotism, got the healing assignment job just because my RL friend knows me IRL.

I could understand it if I were actually terrible at allocating healer resources.

I could understand it if, instead of going 10/12 the other night, we had gone 6/12 because healing for Putricide had gone to hell or something.

But… I’m not “new”. I’ve been there longer than most anyone else. And I’m not bad at assigning healing. And my assignments proved to be done properly and well as we ruined 10 bosses in 3 hours the other night.

And yet, I don’t top healing, thus I suck?

I am agog at the ignorance that is clearly rampant in my guild. Truly, I am. I don’t understand how any healer who prioritizes the betterment of the raid could give a rat’s ass about the meters.

I’ve been wondering if I’ll leave the guild if my RL friend doesn’t come back soon. If she doesn’t, I think I just plain have to leave. It’s not that I’m hurt by the idea of the complaints, but I’m pissed off that people who should know better just don’t. After this realization that at least SOME of the healers are dumber than I thought they were, I find that I don’t care anymore. This guild is in trouble if it’s recruiting ignorant players and listening to them.

You want to point out where I suck? That’s great. Pull out logs, show me standing in fire or eating Blistering Cold or getting beaned by Malleable Goo. Guess what? I don’t eat BC. I don’t get beaned by MG. Fire and I have an uneasy relationship, this is true, but I have better environmental awareness than most of the healers. Which is SAD.

It’s like, all of a sudden, the small healer community that I THOUGHT was getting better in quality, that I THOUGHT was worth my respect and courtesy, doesn’t matter to me at all, because it’s been infected by Stupid™ and that Stupid™ is also present in the ranks of the officers.

In short, without my RL friend there, it’s clear that there’s nothing left for me. I’m going to kill LK, see how my RL friend is doing and then make my decision as to what to do.

I strongly suspect that I’ll be heading back to good old Eldre’Thalas earlier than expected.

Kurn's Q&A #9

Kurn / / general, q&a, raiding, ramblings

Search term time! Honestly, these amuse me a great deal.

1) holy paladin apotheosis

There are, doubtlessly, many other holy paladins in other guilds named Apotheosis. In fact, my holy paladin isn’t even in Apotheosis at the moment. But it’s still my guild and bunches of my peeps are still there. <3 I find it amusing that someone actually searched for “holy paladin apotheosis”. If they were searching for me, you’d think “kurn” would be easier to remember than “apotheosis”.

2) single abstract noun

Tam of Righteous Orbs and Miss Medicina of Miss Medicina have started up two blogging communities/guildies. Tam’s got Single Abstract Noun on Argent Dawn (EU – Horde) and MM has Single Abstract Noun on Argent Dawn (US – Alliance). I’ve got a toon on the US one (obviously) named Kurnmogh. I haven’t had a chance to hang out much, but hopefully I’ll be able to hang out a bit this week.

3) “blood queen” “defensive stance”

I don’t recommend actually DPSing in Defensive Stance, but right before her fears, this isn’t a horrible idea.  My melee officer (gnome warrior/football extraordinaire) used to swap to Defensive Stance on Archimonde to lessen damage from various things.

4) 3.3 pally prot specs

My spec is weird. It’s primarily for heroic dungeons and I use Seal of Command for the extra AOE threat. I don’t really have mana issues, so I only have 1/2 in Spiritual Attunement and I have run speed to boots, so I skip out on Pursuit of Justice. (Also because I used to tease my gnome warrior that his pally was specced for “running faster” and even though it’s a viable talent now, it still feels wrong!)

Here’s what Rohan at Blessing of Kings suggests. And here’s the appropriate thread at MainTankadin.

5) 4 piece bonus tier 8 or 9 holy paladin

The only tier bonus you should be going for, in terms of PVE, at the moment is the 2pc T10 bonus, which is this.

If you can’t access T10, stick to 4pc T9 or break up your T9 if you find better non-set pieces. That said, I think the 4pc T9 bonus is much stronger than the 4pc T8.

6) darkmoon card greatness druid tank

I think there are probably (probably!) better tanking trinkets out there.  What I’ve got these days are these two: The Black Heart (mmmm, stam and a proccing armor buff? Awesome!) and Glyph of Indomitability because of the extra armor (which means I’m less squishy) and an awesome on-use for those “holy CRAP!” moments. Also of note, Essence of Gossamer, which will, no doubt, be ninjaed from you by a hunter if it drops. Right, Maj? ;D (Did I mention I got the drop the other day? ’cause I did.)

7) dbm divine plea macro

I don’t use this, since I use OmniCC for my ability timers (and clcbpt for my paladin-specific buff timers like Sacred Shield, etc), but I imagine it’s:

/cast Divine Plea
/dbm timer 60 Divine Plea is now available!

Of course, you can add this in:

/cast Divine Illumination
/cast Divine Plea
/dbm timer 60 Divine Plea is now available!

Or even:

/use Talisman of Resurgence
/cast Divine Plea
/dbm timer 60 Divine Plea is now available!

8) does blessing of protection remove buffet on sindragosa

Okay, first of all, much love to an obviously old-school pally who still calls it Blessing of Protection instead of Hand of Protection. Second of all, sadly, no. Mystic Buffet is a non-dispellable magic effect that will only drop off if you’re out of line of sight of Sindragosa. Even Divine Shield doesn’t drop it.

[23:35:23.675] Madrana casts Divine Shield
[23:35:25.826] Madrana afflicted by Mystic Buffet (4) from Sindragosa
[23:35:31.989] Madrana afflicted by Mystic Buffet (5) from Sindragosa
[23:35:35.719] Madrana’s Divine Shield fades

BOP will only stop physical damage, but not damage from any school of magic.

9) does prayer of fortitue stack with runescroll of fortitude

Nope. Runescroll of Fortitude, Drums of Forgotten Kings and Drums of the Wild were all introduced so that 10-man raids wouldn’t be overly gimped by not having a priest, paladin or druid in them. The Runescroll is equivalent to level 80, unimproved Fortitude. Drums of the Wild is equivalent to level 80, untalented Gift of the Wild. And because there are no longer any talents to get Blessing of Kings, the drums are just slightly less effective, granting 8% to all stats instead of 10%.

No joke, with two paladins in the raids of late, my guild has been relying on the kings drums.  I buff kings on warriors, rogues, DKs and wisdom on everyone else. The ret pally does might on everyone except for kings on priests, mages and warlocks. Then I hit the drums so that anyone without 10% kings gets at least 8% kings. So everyone has either good kings and good might or good wisdom or so-so kings and good wisdom/good might.

10) spell effect name for needle encrusted scorpion proc

That would be Fatal Flaws. Looks just like a hunter’s Rapid Killing.

And that’s it for the last week’s worth of searches that led people here.

If you have a question, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email at kurn [at] apotheosis-now [dot] com. :)

Of raiding, healing and gear.

Kurn / / gear, general, healers, healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

So my RL friend, the resto druid who’s the healing lead in the guild, is going out of town for a couple of days. She’s actually leaving her house in 45 minutes to head out, so rather than get 2 hours of sleep after our raid, she skipped tonight’s raid and slept.

She asked me if I could do the healing assignments for tonight and Monday night.

We were on Lich King. Seemed pretty simple — I was going to assign healing for the same fight and adjust as needed, right? Right.

I show up to the raid early, have organized myself with NOTES about LK healing… and then I’m told we’re resetting ICC.

I think my private reaction was “What the hell are they ON?! They can’t reset the instance in the middle of the week!”

Apparently, however, they can. I have no idea how this was accomplished. On Monday, we worked on Arthas. On Wednesday, when we returned, there was no prompt to save us to ICC — and I know I didn’t extend my own ID — and yet, there was no trash. The Lich King was up.

So Wednesday and Thursday, we worked on LK.

Tonight, our RL announces we’re ending the lockout extension and then we all get a fresh ICC.

The ONLY thing I can figure is that because we didn’t kill anything new (ie: Arthas) we didn’t get saved to the new ID, so we were able to drop the extension and zone in to a new ICC instance. Because the people in the raid were the same — it’s not like the RL was like “okay, go in without me” or anything.

So that confused me.

Then he announced that we were going to kill 10 bosses tonight and that we’d do Sindragosa and LK Monday. So focus.

Now, I had previously prepared for LICH KING HEALING. We have new healers in the guild, with whom I’m not familiar, and I’m not even up to date on all the existing fights. (I have zero idea as to what happens on Blood Prince Council, for example. I just heal.)

I did healing through all 10 bosses, though, with just one miscommunication on Dreamwalker (leading to a wipe) and a wipe on Blood Queen due to three disconnects.

Lord, I don’t miss it. But the healers did pretty well, even the new pally app (whose spec when he apped gave me reason to be afraid, but he seems okay on the surface).

So yeah, we blew through 10 bosses with 2 wipes in 3 hours.

And because apparently no other paladins, priests or warlocks at the Member level wanted their Marks of Sanctification… I wound up getting two. At the very least, I can use them for a +spellpower set on Dreamwalker until we get heroic tokens, and it might even get me to use some of my 329 Emblems of Frost. I’m reluctant to say goodbye to some of my 258 TOGC gear, but maybe I’ll have to. We’ll see. I’m currently elbow-deep in stats and Rawr and have a headache. :P

Hilariously enough, our “favourite” rogueadin spent Emblems of Frost to examine how crappy our four-piece bonus is. And, shocker, I don’t disagree with him; it sucks. I do think that the 277 pieces will outstrip some of my gear, though, so I’ll want to ensure I’ve got SOME pieces that will be upgradable. Probably, anyways. Even if it’s just as an intermediary step between clearing regular ICC and then moving forward to get the ACTUAL heroic gear I want.

I’m also working on my fourth Holy How-To post, talking about healing meters and HPS and how much I hate numbers and, more importantly, WHY I hate numbers. That should be up this week sometime. And there are GRAPHICS!!!! I’m excited. Are you excited?! Haha! :)

3 hours, 16 wipes. Ow, my face.

Kurn / / icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

Well, we extended our ICC lockout this week so we could work on the Lich King.

3 hours. 16 wipes. Gloriously, none of them appear to be my fault. :D

Sadly, the fact remains the Shambling Horrors and their enrages suck, Soul Shriek sucks and, oh yeah, standing on the outer edge of the platform AS IT CRUMBLES AWAY sucks.

So I’m going to complain a bit.

Soul Shriek silences people for five seconds.

It is supposed to be cast in a frontal cone, meaning the tanks will be silenced.

Tanks should not be silenced so that they may taunt.

When you have one holy paladin who is LARGELY responsible for healing BOTH tanks (thank you, Beacon), who can rarely spare a moment to refresh her Judgements of the Pure, you need other people in the raid to dispell that silence.

Dispells on the raid tonight, including the Necrotic Plague dispells:

Holy priest (in charge of NP dispells): 111

Myself: 21

Shadow Priest: 9

Rogue (for the enrage on the Shambling Horrors?): 5

Ret Paladin: 1

Nothing from the discipline priest. Just the one from the ret pally. Failure. I honestly cannot stop spamming the instant that comes up on a reliable basis, because, hi, that’s like, 30k damage from the ability, right when they’re silenced. I NEED to be healing that damage.

Seriously. Look at this.

[00:09:16.809] Raging Spirit Soul Shriek  MT 19774  (A: 2207, R: 2976)
[00:09:16.809] MT afflicted by Soul Shriek  from Raging Spirit
[00:09:18.244] Madranah Beacon of Light MT +11420 (O: 3589)
[00:09:19.444] Madranah Beacon of Light MT +0 (O: 22235)
[00:09:20.099] Madrana casts Cleanse on MT

That’s nearly four seconds into the silence. But it was STILL ON THE main tank, so after I healed up the nearly 20k damage he took (through Beacon, while healing the OT as well), I cleansed it.

/facepalm

/headdesk

The disc priest had been asked to help out with it at about attempt #6. The ret pally at about attempt #10.

0 in 10 attempts by the disc priest. 1 in 6 by the ret pally.

And it’s not like they even only get Soul Shriek ONCE. They get it several times a fight!

Plus, we were on Vent again tonight. Totally annoying and absurd. At one point, a mage says:

“Salv on [his name].”

And I’m thinking to myself, “You tool. If you think I have even HALF A SECOND to spare to toss you Hand of Salvation, when I’m keeping up BOTH TANKS here, you are freaking crazy.”

The ret pally apparently cast it on him, but if he had been like “I SAID SALV ON [NAME]”, I would have been like “Sorry, would you like me to let the tanks die while I cast a spell on you that is wholly unneeded if you would, I don’t know, Invis? Or WATCH YOUR THREAT in the first damn place?!”

Seriously. I don’t need to hear these people. Their voices, their ambient background noise, their idiotic requests that they don’t make through the proper channels (raid chat, for instance).

That’s not to say that I wouldn’t ever raid with Vent again, but I think my preference is to not at this point. I’d do it for Apotheosis, because I know and love those people and because it’s like spending three hours with friends when I raided with them. But I don’t need to listen to 20-some mouth-breathers who stroke their epeens while using perjorative terms for various social minorities in Vent and raid and guild chat.

Ugh. I feel like I should shower after that raid night.