Category: ramblings

Healing as a (low-level) Holy Paladin in Forever (Beta)

Kurn / / healing, raiding, ramblings, wow forever

Thanks to Blizz giving everyone 16 legacy point to play with, I took the 5/5 talent thingy (called Talented), which means that I start getting talent points at level 5, but do not gain extra talent points. As a result of this, I got Holy Shock at level 25.

And then I went healing Stocks. I did record it, but it was just so underwhelming and it’s not a new instance, so I won’t be putting it up on YouTube. The funniest thing about it is that my muscle memory is still there to hit Holy Shock every six seconds or thereabouts and so I was constantly being reminded by my character “I can’t cast that yet”, since the cooldown is ten seconds. Rude. That’s going to take some getting used to.

Anyway, I was looking at some comments on my YouTube channel and there was this one comment that was… well, mean. To be frank, I’ve been online for most of my 40+ years, so I’m used to the odd mean comment or three. The interesting thing about the comment is that it would have been worth discussing if I thought the commenter was actually writing earnestly about what they noticed about my gameplay and healing in Deadmines.

Among other things, the commenter said I was bad, which, okay, whatever. But they did mention that “nobody plays like that anymore”, referring to my constant healing and overhealing.

And this is where a more nuanced view of things, including a nuanced discussion, could be interesting. But the place for that is not in YouTube comments. The place for that is on my blog!

So let’s talk about it a bit.

Specific criticisms:

  • too much overhealing
  • literally zero damage
  • nobody plays like that anymore
  • why spam healing spells when they’re at full health?

Let us take these criticisms one at a time, even though a couple of them could be consolidated.

  1. Too Much Overhealing. Hi. I’m a holy paladin. That’s kind of what we do. Or at least what we have traditionally done. Why? Because we can. Flash of Light is cheap! It’s a cheap, cheap spell! At level 20, it costs 35 mana for Rank 1 Flash of Light. 35 mana! You can almost always cast Flash of Light. Rank 2 is only 50 mana. The highest rank of FoL costs 140 mana, from what I can tell, and you get that at level 58. (Theoretically. We don’t know anything for sure yet, this is still beta.) And we can afford to “waste mana” (or at least we have been able to do so) because of it. Granted, the nerf to illumination (50% of mana back on crits) may affect this a bit, but that’s what you traditionally did as a holy paladin back in the old days. And you didn’t need to step off or otherwise interrupt your cast because it cost so little and because the cast time (1.5 seconds) was so short. It was easier to just let the heals go and it wasn’t terribly inefficient either, especially if you were casting on the tank.
  2. Literally Zero Damage. Well, I’d argue the claim, but let’s assume Commenter is actually correct. Then, so long as I’m not dropping Holy Light max rank bombs on my tank, if I’m hitting the tank with Flashes of Light and I’m not out of mana, then… I’m winning? Because my tank should be taking some amount of damage, no?
  3. Nobody Plays Like That Anymore. No, they don’t. But shouldn’t they? This isn’t Classic, but it’s not retail, either. It’s a third, weird thing that is somewhere in between the two. For me, part of Beta is to get used to the functionality. I find that generally, I’m healing more like I did in Classic than I have in retail in years. And I’m pretty sure that’s a decent way to go. In a group situation, I’m likely the only one who’s going to heal anyone. If I don’t keep the tank topped off and then a mage pulls aggro, then I heal the crap out of the mage but the tank taunts and then takes a ton of damage, do we have a dead tank or a nearly dead tank? Probably! Holy Light takes 2.5 seconds to cast! With Infusion of Light, when you crit with Holy Shock or Flash of Light, you can get that down to 1.5 seconds, but that’s only with a crit from IoL or FoL, and since there’s the illumination nerf, I don’t think stacking crit is going to really be the way to go. So by the time we switch our attention to the tank, the tank could be dead halfway through our 2.5s HL cast. (Barring forcing a Divine Favor/Holy Shock to hasted Holy Light combo, but with the GCD, that’s still 2.5 seconds until your Holy Light cast has finished and you’ve only slightly healed the tank.) I find it fascinating that people are just saying things without any experience or facts to back them up. I was there when they changed things in Cataclysm to force us not to keep everyone topped off. It was a difficult change, especially coming out of Wrath when you had tanks taking 40k damage hits in raids. Chimaeron panicked me and my healers in Blackwing Descent. PANICKED us. One of the healers on the first night of attempts was like “all I use is Flash Heal and I am sad” and another was like “I need a pancake”. But lo and behold, we got used to people not being topped off all of the time. And in Mists, they added the 8s cooldown to cleanse/etc. (Well, the 5.0 patch, I guess.) But now we get to go back to a time where maybe it’s not worth it to step out of your heal, and where you might still need to be discerning about what and when you dispell, but we have a lot to learn going forward.
  4. Why Spam Healing Spells At Full Health. Again, if it’s Flash of Light, it’s currently costing me 50 mana a pop. And the tank will eventually take the damage that the next incoming heal will heal. I do need to be mindful of the 5-second rule for the first time in my life, but I have 0 spirit on anything I wear, so I don’t have a lot of mana regen anyways. So it’s still worth it for the time being. Will it continue to be? We’ll see. I don’t know what my mana pool will be like at 60. I don’t know how challenging Scholomance or Strat Undead will be or if I’ll be panicking in UBRS or laughing my way through BRD. No one knows anything yet. Including me.

So if I don’t know anything yet, why this post?

Because I’m bringing context to my actions. I’m talking about what we used to do 20+ years ago. I’m talking about why we used to do those things 20+ years ago. Priests with their Greater Heal spells? They would step off their casts all the time, but they usually had one winding up in case their tank took a huge hit. Druids would HoT up the tanks and the OTs. And paladins would generally FoL spam and then when enrages hit or what-have-you, would bomb a couple of Holy Lights, hopefully in conjunction with Divine Favor, and then maybe whack on the boss a bit to get some mana back with Seal of Wisdom.

Without more information about Forever, all I have to fall back on is my past experience. But because I knew what I was doing then and, more importantly, why I was doing what I was doing back then, I can adapt to the moment. If I end up with 12235972 spirit on my gear, I won’t be finishing my casts nearly as often to better take advantage of the 5-second rule. But that also depends on which classes I’m healing with, if I’m doing dungeons, etc, etc, etc.

Everything depends on other things. And I kind of love that about WoW and, specifically, how we don’t know most of the things about WoW Forever yet.

Forever is not Classic

Kurn / / ramblings, wow forever

Ladies and gentlemen, theys and gays, Forever is not Classic.

On one hand, of course it’s not Classic. Classic still exists. Forever is a whole other game mode.

But on the other hand, Forever sure looks a lot like Classic, it feels a lot like Classic. And it should, because it’s based on Classic. Many of the abilities, mobs, NPCs, quests, zones, are very much the same or at least very similar.

Make no mistake, though. It is not Classic. It is not the same game that came out in 2004, 22 years ago. Do you realize that World of Warcraft, were it a person, could legally drink in the United States as of last year? (Their minimum age for alcohol is 21.)

The thing about a game that came out 22 years ago, the thing about a game that was then re-released in 2019, is that it’s basically a solved game. Everyone knows all the optimal things to do, or, at the very least, it can be found fairly easily. Quick, how much defense do you need to be uncrittable at level 60 by a raid boss?

440 defense. Check out this cool site and all the math:

WoW Classic Defense Calculator for Tanks

But that’s exactly what I’m saying. The fact that this exists, along with other sites, shows how much time we’ve had to absorb the math behind the game, the concepts put into play by the designers, and it shows that the generally-available knowledge by the population who wants to know something is incredibly high.

Meanwhile, what are some mobs in Blackmaw Hold? How about Alcaz Prison?

Right now, we don’t know those things because they’re locked behind the level 30 cap on WoW Forever’s Beta. We don’t know what mobs look like, much less what they drop. And they’re going to maintain a type of secrecy, too — things that have not dropped yet should not be able to be data-mined.

And I, for one, welcome it. I haven’t done a ton of reading about WoW Forever in terms of what drops from where or which boss or anything like that. I’m curious, of course, but I want to find out for myself, largely. I remember what it was like to know absolutely nothing about WoW! And learning stuff was half the fun. “Who are these Silverwing Sentinels?” I remember asking myself.

“What is a weapons master?”

“Ooh, there’s a NEUTRAL auction house in Gadgetzan? How on earth do I get there???”

The hours I spent at thottbot, trying to piece everything together. Glorious.

So for the forseeable future, remember that no one has it figured out and that includes me! We’re all going to be testing and testing and testing some more to see what happens in X, Y and Z scenarios!

In my latest video, about the legacy system, I say something about how the points that get earned by one character get given to all the other characters. But as I sat down to record that, I wasn’t sure. So I logged on and double-checked. Here’s the video, by the way.

But like, no one knows anything. We certainly don’t know anything beyond level 30. We absolutely don’t know what items and itemization and such will be like at 60. We don’t even know all the legacy skills/talents/perks yet just for these trees. Are more trees coming? WHO KNOWS?

And that, folks, is part of why I’m psyched for WoW Forever. It feels similar to the game I fell for in 2005. It looks similar (but better!). And I think it’s going to capture people’s imaginations the way World of Warcraft once did.

You know, in the old days, there was always talk of new, upcoming games that would be the WoW-killer: Warhammer Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, Wildstar (! hahaha)…

What if WoW Forever is the World of Warcraft killer? What if it proves so much more popular than retail that most people play Forever?

It makes sense to me that the only game that can truly kill WoW is WoW itself.

Anyway, that was just a tangent. No one knows anything yet and part of the fun is going to be figuring stuff out. Enjoy it. Stop trying to solve the game before it’s even out.

Thoughts on Community Building

Kurn / / guild, paladins, ramblings, wow forever

I have been a member of various online communities since I was but a wee lass. Like we’re talking 8-9 years old. I used to call up local Montreal-area bulletin board systems (BBSes) using my 1200 baud modem on my Atari 520 ST (but was souped up to 1040 bytes of RAM!). There is where I learned that when you’re online, your ideas (and how you express them) matter more than anything else about you.

In the intervening years, I have joined numerous online communities on the Internet. I even created several of them. That’s sort of been my jam. As a woman who is generally interested in things dudes are interested in, I have often had to make a place for myself in the online world. And World of Warcraft was no exception.

So as we’re now firmly into the Beta for WoW Forever, I find myself thinking about community, particularly when thinking about a certain toxic streamer who has necessitated someone creating an addon to mute/block/ignore anyone from that person’s affiliated guild. And the WoW Forever team wants to lean in to the community aspect, too, hence the campfires and stuff.

As such, I thought that I would talk a bit about the Dos and Don’ts of building a community in WoW. I was pretty successful in building a vibrant one back at the end of Wrath and throughout Cataclysm. While that’s a long time ago, the basics of community building never change. So without further ado, here we go.

Things to Do to Build a Successful WoW Guild Community

1) You need a place to gather. Not in-game. We’re talking a place where you and your guildies can communicate outside of the game, where you can write policies and where those can live. Historically, this has been a web forum of some sort, but Discord is a lot easier for some and is free, etc. If you use Discord, make sure you have some forum channels. This will allow you to easily post policies/rules/etc that should be read by everyone. The place in which you gather will also allow you to have persistent discussions about the guild, its purpose, what to do when members misbehave, etc. It should also allow you to accept applications to your guild. Yes. Applications. I am being absolutely serious.

2) Have people apply to the guild. Again, I’m being totally serious. It doesn’t need to be a very long application, and it doesn’t need to be super complicated. It just needs to require some effort from the candidate so that they understand you’re serious about whatever it is you do in the game. Whether it’s mythics or raiding or RBGs or arenas or even questing and chasing achievements, an application is a way to keep out people who aren’t serious about what you’re serious about, and it’s a way to get to know the applicant as well. Plus, it allows the applicant to understand what your whole guild is about.

3) Have a Guild Discord. This is especially important now with the guild chat link to Discord servers. This is a no-brainer. And in that Discord server, even if you already use it for forum channels, make sure you have some channels that are meant for organized group activities and make sure you have some channels for just chill hang time.

Don’t do These Things if You Want to Build a Successful WoW Guild Community

1) Don’t spam people in-game with invitations or text asking if they want to join. Just don’t. Random people do not want to join your guild. People who join your guild in this fashion have what we call “loose ties” to your guild. There’s nothing keeping them there. They’re just as likely to /gquit tomorrow as they are to stick around for three months. You have no idea if these people have similar goals to you, no idea if they’re jerks (to put it mildly) or genuinely lovely human beings, no idea if their idea of “common sense” is the same as yours. (Spoiler: their idea of common sense is almost certainly not the same as yours.) If you advertise in Trade chat or General chat (and, again, I discourage that), point them to your Discord application or website application, not to a “click this and instantly become a member” type thing.

2) Don’t leave your guild unattended without a word. If you’re the guildmaster (GM), it’s not recommended to just go away for like a week or three at a time without telling your guildies. They will leave. They might even try to gain control of the guild from you since you may be seen as “abandoning” the guild. Let them know when you’ll be away and if you’ll be completely cut off from the guild or not. (With Discord chat enabled, it’s unlikely you’ll ever be completely cut off, so bear that in mind.)

3) Don’t make just anyone an officer. First, figure out what you want your officers to do. They should have some kind of job in the guild. Guild banker, log analyst, RBG organizer, raid leader, etc, etc. If they don’t have a job, you probably shouldn’t have them be an officer. Note that sometimes these jobs are less visible than others. If they are providing you value as an officer, that’s fine. Just make sure they’re doing something. Heck, you can make an officer be “That Poor Schmuck Who Has All The Crappy Jobs In Raids”. (Hiiiiiii Toga! Hiiiiiiii Majik! Hiiiiiiiiiii Daey!) So long as they’re going to do a thing for you that you find helpful, that’s fine. But they also have to be consistent. You don’t want to promote someone who, a month later, suddenly can’t do any of your guild activity with you because their university term started. Sometimes this can’t be helped and work schedules change, and such, but most things are foreseeable. You should ask “hey, is there anything you can think of that would prevent you from being a consistent presence in the guild for the next 3-6 months?” and that sort of thing.

I have a lot more advice. Like, a lot more. But I think that’ll do for now. What dos and don’ts do you have when it comes to recruiting and creating a guild? Let me know in the comments below.

Also, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel. I went looking for Ruins of Lordaeron and then found it and healed it!

 

And I also explored Riverglades. I was severely below level and it was hilarious.

Kurn’s Sunday (Monday) Brain Dump 21

Kurn / / blogging, classic, general, ramblings, wow forever

Well, there’s one word on my mind today and that word is FOREVER.

First, there’s the video I recorded. (Let’s ignore the fact that I had a pounding sinus headache and recorded it at like 4:30am on Saturday night.) It’s about 30 minutes long and talks about what we see on the WoW Forever site and a few things I heard in the talks about it and such.

If you watch the video, you’ll know I purchased the Epic Edition, primarily for Beta access. But also because elves. (You’ll also know I spent the gold for the tokens, and Blizzard still hasn’t gotten one penny from my wallet or credit card since they ate much of the contents of my guild bank.)

So I’m excited for Thursday and to see what Beta holds for us. I won’t do All The Things because look, I’ve already done the various starting zones a dozen times on actual realms, and I’m sure I’ll be doing them again at least a few times for Forever, so I may just do a few things here and there and look at talents and the like. What do you want to see from Beta?

I’m looking forward to seeing the full talent trees for paladins and giving my two cents on what a holy paladin should do. Probably also for MM hunters, although I’ve never theorycrafted for my hunter the way I have for my paladin.

I’m also really looking forward to the new graphics. I’m probably going to stick with Classic character models and animations, but I can’t wait to be on my hunter out in Riverglades and other new zones, exploring things.

So far, the plan is: one night elf hunter, one human paladin, one dwarven shaman, and then either a Skyborne mage or druid. I’m not sure I want a druid, though — a lot of the joy I get from my druid on retail is flight form and farming.

Professions: Hunter gets skinning/LW, pally gets herbalism/alchemy, shaman may depend on if dual gathering is “supported” in the sense that nodes for both mining and herbalism are visible at once. If not, shammy gets mining and … engineering??? I have no idea, frankly. It’s kind of wild to think about old-school WoW, without jewelcrafting or inscription. (I’m not complaining.)

The racials are wild. They’ve been amped UP, dudes.

All Racial Abilities in World of Warcraft Forever

Look at the gnomes, for crying out loud:

EUREKA! Reduced cost at 10% increased damage or healing on next 3 spells or abilities

AND

Expansive Mind: Maximum Mana, Rage, or Energy increased by 5%

Almost enough to want to roll a gnome. Almost.

And Undead get basically a free Lifestealing enchant, built-in!

Touch of the Grave: Sometimes drain health with your attacks

Speaking of Undead, I think it’s wild that we’re getting Undead Paladins in both Forever and Retail. UNDEAD PALADINS. WHAT. They look super cool, I’m not gonna lie, but what the heck. I have mixed feelings.

Now, my biggest thing here is… I hate people. 😂 So how is this open-world hanging out going to affect me? I can be nice enough in-game, but most of the time I just want to chill by myself or play with my brother (or other friends). We’ll see how that goes. I guess having a campsite thingy to chat and chill and get buffs will be helpful. And I do like providing buffs for others, sooooo I guess I’ll be doing that a fair bit?

Also, no servers? Should be … interesting.

I’ve been thinking a lot over the last couple of days, about everything to do with Forever. And my original experiences with WoW. It still astonishes me that so much of my life has been shaped by what server I chose to play on when I first loaded up World of Warcraft in October of 2005.

I literally looked at the list of servers.

I found one that was PVE (that was never going to be in question) and one that was also based in Eastern Time. I could have picked Dalaran or Khadgar or Stormrage. But I saw the name Eldre’Thalas and thought “hey, it has an apostrophe! That’s pretty darn cool.”

So I selected it and began my time playing.

Within hours, I was on the phone with my brother telling him he HAD to buy this game.

When he installed it, he asked me what server I was on, so he created Thefog on Eldre’Thalas, a night elf druid. (Hilariously, throughout all of BlizzCon, they kept talking about Fog and The Fog and I’m like “what about my brother???? Ohhhhhhhhhh. The WEATHER.”)

My brother has always been the extroverted one. I’m the introvert. I like to sit and read a book or play a video game versus going out to hang with people. So I wasn’t particularly surprised when he made sort of friends with people. This eventually led to him getting invited to a guild called Fated Heroes. And then I eventually joined, too. (And then Fog abandoned us for Tempest because they were raiding MC and then, possibly out of pure spite, I worked my ass off to get Fated Heroes ready for raiding. And Fog eventually came back to us anyway.)

So how was that life-changing? Well, without Eldre’Thalas, we wouldn’t have joined Fated Heroes. And without Fated Heroes, I wouldn’t still be good friends with people like Majik and Toga and Kam and Tia and Dar. Like I have met (most of) these people! I was a bridesmaid at Majik’s wedding, where I met legit half my old guild in person, including Maj’s brothers and Dar! Then, a few years later, Majik, his wife, and I went to Toga and Kam’s wedding together, and Dar was there too! These people are still in my life, at least to an extent. All because I chose a realm name with an apostrophe in it. It truly breaks my brain a little bit.

Anyway, with all that said, there’s a lot to look forward to learning about WoW Forever, and I’m planning to help people better understand what’s new in that version of this game we all play.

What are you curious about in Forever? Let me know, I’ll try to find out the answer for you!

Kurn’s Sunday (Monday) Brain Dump 20

Kurn / / dungeons, facepalm, ramblings

Just one topic today.

I’m done with Timewalking. I’m DONE. I was excited for Wrath Timewalking! I was pysched! And then… I hated basically every single person I grouped with. Suicidal tanks. Inconsiderate warlocks. GO GO GO people.

People who, by my guess, weren’t even alive when Wrath came out the first time.

I’ve come to accept that running these dungeons now, some 15+ years on, is not a good idea for me. The rewards are nice! But not enough to deal with actual assholes. People who don’t know mechanics. People who know about mechanics and don’t care! People who leave others behind, time and again.

I legitimately like a lot of the Wrath dungeons. And this run… soured me. I’m too old for this shit. Too old to play with kids who weren’t out of diapers when I was running Heroic Nexus for my epic mace (pre-raid BiS!). Too old to constantly be chasing the idiot tank. This game moves ever-further from what I want out of the game. This was an event I really thought could be different, would be different. And yet. That’s it. I’m done.

It really didn’t help that I spent a chunk of the weekend watching mostly Liquid and a bit of Echo and their race to world first. Seeing talented players executing difficult strategies, then being faced with these bozos.

One could be forgiven for thinking it’s an entirely different game.

Yet, I continue, as I make money, play Hardcore Classic with my brother, and do stuff I find enjoyable. But this ain’t it. Not anymore.

Kurn’s Sunday (Monday) Brain Dump 19

Kurn / / blogging, patches, professions, ramblings

Don’t have much time to write today, it’s been a long one for me. Eesh.

Topic 1: Hardcore.

I wanted to share that I died on hardcore at 36.

Here’s the short:

And here’s the whole thing:

Basically, I was dumb.

I will probably reroll again. But not right now. Why?

Topic 2: Patch 12.1.0

Because it’s time to make money again! Season 2 starts tomorrow and I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to pull in somewhere around 40-50k tomorrow alone.

I’m also aiming to get characters actually levelled up in this patch. I’ve got Kurn, Madrana, my mage and my druid all at 90. Next up is my shaman, then my grandbaby paladin, I think. Maybe. I dunno.

And it’s gonna be about time to really start outfitting everyone with decent profession gear, too.

Topic 3: BlizzCon

Is it really less than a month ’till BlizzCon? Huh, September 12-13. I guess so. Looking forward to learning more about Classic Plus and such things. Is digital attendance free? I can’t seem to figure that out.

What are you up to this week?

Kurn’s Sunday (Monday) Brain Dump 18

Kurn / / blogging, classic, ramblings

Well, I got to playing a bit of Hardcore this week. I managed to escape two moments where I was surely going to die within about five minutes of one another.

And I made a short of the big moment where I was about to eat it.

And then, last night, I did more stuff, including dinging 36.

I’m mostly doing the hardcore stuff because I’m bored on retail. I know the patch comes out like tomorrow, so that’s good, but I do enjoy the immersion of hardcore. And the challenge of it. I just hadn’t touched it in something like ohhhhhhhhhhh two years! hahaha! So I’ll probably do more of that while I attempt to make all the monies in retail.

Have you tried hardcore? What’s your highest level and what class was it? 36 pally is definitely mine. My brother got a mage to 51 and died and was very, very sad (and mad) about it.

If you haven’t tried hardcore, is there any particular reason why not? I’d be interested to know.

Kurn’s Sunday (Monday) Brain Dump 17

Kurn / / blogging, dungeons, healing, ramblings

Not too much to talk about this week. Spent all of Monday out with my littlest nephew and am absolutely wiped out.

But, over the weekend, I did do 5 BC Timewalking dungeons on Madrana, so you might enjoy looking at that! I had one tank I thought of as “good”, one was “okay” and the others were, IMHO, bad.

What BC dungeons do you like?

Kurn’s Sunday Brain Dump 16

Kurn / / blogging, classic instances, dungeons, healing, ramblings

Not too much to say, just posted a couple of videos this week, both showing me healing Classic Timewalking Dungeons.

And then I ran the remaining four dungeons yesterday, and I also discuss tanks in general, dungeons in general, and of course probably use the phrase “back in my day” a dozen times or so…

That’s it for this week. What are you up to? Did you do any Classic timewalking? What do you think about running a dungeon solely to complete it, versus running it because you enjoy it or running it to get a specific piece of gear? I’d be interested to know.

Kurn’s Sunday (Monday) Brain Dump 15

Kurn / / blogging, guild, ramblings

Hiiiiiiii. Been busy this week.

Topic 1:

I started a rogue. Warning, the first “episode” has zero audio from me. You probably want to start with Episode 2.

Topic 2:

I keep meaning to download my achievements but I am so enamoured with pickpocketing that I haven’t bothered… It’s a lot of fun, I don’t know why all rogues don’t spend all their time pickpocketing, honestly.

Topic 3:

Relatedly, I’ve been trying to farm up a Disgusting Oozeling. No luck yet, but I’m in a level range (28) where oozes drop the Oozing Bag, which is where the Disgusting Oozeling drops from. Have you ever gotten one to drop?

Bonus Topic:

The Guild is doing a reunion movie! They launched their Kickstarter on Monday the 20th and reached their first goal of 1.5 million USD in under three and a half hours. Stretch goals now! If you’ve never watched The Guild, go watch it now!

And if you have watched it, go fund their Kickstarter now!

Were you a fan of The Guild?