Category: ramblings

Something A Little Different

Kurn / / apotheosis, raiding, ramblings

While on beta, chatting with Matticus about paladin healing, he accused me of being depressing on my blog sometimes. ;) While this is absolutely true, since I’m usually spurred to write in my blog because of something that makes me facepalm or want to cry, I thought I’d try something a little different today.

Over the last several months, I’ve heard from a lot of people about a variety of topics (and I have more to say about the hunter stuff, including responses to people, but that’s another blog entry) but one comment that always surprises me is the one that has to do with my being a progression raider and still being “nice” enough to talk to those who aren’t big-name bloggers or raiding what I’m raiding.

On Sunday night, I had the opportunity to invite a player to Apotheosis, my Burning Crusade-era guild that I’m reforming for Cataclysm. Apple has the intention of healing as a holy paladin in the next expansion and she’d like to do it with Apotheosis. So I promoted her to the internal rank of Member. The ranks will be redone and most everyone will be demoted to Initiate to begin with, but I know that Apple will work hard to get this toon to 80 and I know she’s been reading my blog voraciously to learn what to do now and how to do it differently later on when Cataclysm is released. To me, it was a no-brainer to promote her to Member in anticipation of her working to earn her raid spot.

It was a huge deal to her.

I read the blog entry I linked above and my smile nearly broke my face.

I think a lot of people who don’t raid the highest levels of progression are really intimidated by those of us who do. There are those who are jealous, those who are intimidated, those who are bitter, those who don’t care and those who are sort of awestruck and probably more types of people as well.

But I think there are people who are intimidated by higher-end raiders and the proof is in Apple’s blog post or Will’s tweets to me telling me that I’m down-to-earth and how he’s surprised.

So I’ll tell you a secret. I’m down-to-earth about my progression (although admittedly unforgiving on basics of raiding/classes/etc) because it wasn’t long ago that I was that casual raider who didn’t know WTF she was doing.

I started playing this game in October of 2005. That’s like, five years ago.

I stumbled into a social levelling guild, courtesy of my brother.

My brother promptly LEFT the guild to go do this mysterious thing called “raiding” with another guild. He described the Rag fight to me and I discovered Ragnaros had OVER A MILLION HEALTH. And instantly, I knew that I wanted to do these encounters.

So I set out to get my guild to raid. The desire was there, but there was no organization, no one tried to do anything and so the 60s who hit 60 in the guild just up and left, looking for a guild that raided.

The guild I was in was called Fated Heroes. We eventually gathered enough in-house people and recruits to do ZG, AQ20 and set foot in Molten Core. We ran our first ZG on April 1st, 2006 and spent three hours trying to kill Venoxis, which we finally did do.

By the time we stopped raiding in November of 2006, we had cleared ZG, including Jin’do, several times. We’d gotten to 3/6 AQ20. We’d spawned Majordomo twice, although never attempted him. We’d gotten Onyxia into phase 3, but had never downed her with just us (although many of us got her down together when another guild on the server was putting together a pug).

Throughout this time, we farmed the 5-mans and Blackrock Spire. We did the 0.5 quest chains. We worked hard to get our upgrades, we worked hard to bring in recruits who would help out and we were the ones standing there, slack-jawed in Ironforge when the main tank of Eternal Force, Thack, walked around with his fancy Scarab Lord title on his Black Qiraji mount. I was all proud of having my Zandalar shoulders because it required getting to Revered with the Zandalar Tribe… and there’s Thack, the main tank of EF, in his 9/9 Tier 3, just standing there in Ironforge.

Was it intimidating? Yes. To see people walking around in Judgement Armor or sporting Thunderfury or Quel’Serrar was intimidating. It was infuriating. It seemed to us that the only way to get into a raiding guild was to have raid gear, which meant having to raid, but how do you raid if you’re not in a raiding guild?

So a few of us pulled together and basically dragged Fated Heroes through ZG, some of AQ and 8/10 Molten Core.

By golly, we wanted to raid, so we were GOING to raid.

The guild imploded for a variety of reasons, but we sort of reconvened in May of 2007 and reformed as Apotheosis on June 1, 2007 with the shared goal of clearing BC content.

This is where we learned how to play. We learned about hit rating, crit immunity, how to avoid crushing blows, when crowd control was necessary (oh God, Tempest Keep trash when you’re undergeared is terrible) and when it wasn’t (CAN DAYDEN TANK IT?!).

We learned about cleaves and how standing in front of a boss who cleaves is bad. We learned about how standing in fire can be detrimental to your health and your raid leader’s blood pressure. We learned how to execute things together as a team.

And still, we were behind in progression. Of course we were. Everyone had a huge head start on us. We only killed Maulgar on September 2nd, 2007 and Gruul on September 11th, 2007. When Burning Crusade ended, Apotheosis was the only guild that had cleared Black Temple (all of three times, thank you very much) without downing anything in Sunwell. We finished 9th on the server, 6th on Alliance.

We were still looking up at other raiders, like those in Epic Again and Tempest, two guilds that had continued into BC from Vanilla. We were lucky to have even one, MAYBE two pieces of our Tier 6 sets and looked at those who had all four pieces from Sunwell for the set bonuses and the other non-set pieces that blew the Hyjal/BT pieces out of the water. We’d made a lot of progress, but the truth of the matter is, some of us felt like we were still those Fated Heroes; sitting in our Zandalar set while looking at Thack in 9/9 T3.

We made some costly mistakes at the start of Wrath and so on March 1, 2009, we stopped 25-man raiding. I’ve been bouncing around other servers since. I’ve gotten a couple of server firsts since I last raided with Apotheosis. I’ve gotten my Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher for Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25). I’ve been killed by the Lich King on heroic. I’ve been the last healer standing on heroic Putricide and seen him die.

I’ve been around the block this expansion — I’ve done a lot, seen a lot, written a crapton about my experiences.

When I went 11/12 in ICC 25 hard modes, I looked over at Eldre’Thalas’ progression. There was Epic Again… at 9/12. And it dawned on me that even if there’s no one left in Epic Again who was there in pre-BC, that guild is still one of the guilds we all looked up to and envied. They had gotten into Naxx, pre-BC, and done well! They’d cleared all but Kil’jaeden in BC. But there they were, two progression bosses behind me.

Do you know how that felt?

Wrong. It felt wrong.

It felt wrong that I, a Fated Hero at heart, was ahead of Epic Again in progression.

It felt wrong that I, a Fated Hero at heart, was ahead of Epic Again in progression on another server with another group of people.

In that moment, I wanted to be on Eldre’Thalas, surrounded by my Apotheosis crew, the core of whom are Fated Heroes, too.

The Fated Heroes among us are scrappy. We’re hungry for progression. We want to see content. We want to progress along with the other big guilds on the server. It’s a feeling of inadequacy we’re trying to alleviate and we’ve had that feeling for over four years in many cases.

It was that attitude that kept us holding on through Burning Crusade, even when things looked bleak. We pushed, dammit. We wanted it. We got it. We killed Illidan! The freaking Fated Heroes killed ILLIDAN. We were Hands of A’dal. Killing the bosses 6 months or a year after others didn’t matter too much. Just doing it at all, and together, meant something to us. It’s not about epeen or reputation or status, not really. It’s knowing that we had seen what the big guilds had seen and we proved that we could hold our own against the same measuring stick. In my heart, I’m still a Fated Hero. I’m not “nice”, I’m not “down-to-earth”. This is just who I am and who I’ve always been in this game. Progression is progression, whether you’re competing for server firsts or you’re just determined to get your crew through that encounter. You do it for the challenge, not necessarily the loot or the bragging rights. You do it so you can say you did it with your friends, your companions, your brothers and sisters in arms. Despite my personal success this expansion, I’ve experienced a huge loss — I couldn’t progress with my guild, I couldn’t lead us to this point. I made mistakes that cost us. So even though I have my drake and various titles from “Twilight Vanquisher” (when it was still current content) “Astral Walker” (when it wasn’t really current), I’m still one of those people who envies the gear someone might have. I admit, that happens less often these days, but I’m still someone who wants to do this kind of progression with my old crew, on my old server.

I’ve learned an incredible amount of stuff about this game, about raiding, about people over the last five years and I think that maybe I’m ready to help lead Apotheosis to success in Cataclysm. I think that maybe this is our expansion to finish in the top five of the server. I think that I’ve learned from my mistakes and failures. I think that I’ve learned from my successes. I think that I’m ready to listen to my officers and what they’ve learned in the last year and a half since we all raided together. Three of my six 80s are back at home on Eldre’Thalas and are ready for the next step.

Whatever happens as Cataclysm launches, I know that I will face it with the same attitude I’ve had since the very first time I heard about Ragnaros; if you want it, get your stuff together and do it yourself. No one’s going to hand it to you. You have to work for it. You may succeed. You may fail. But you took your future in your own hands and did what you thought was best.

It’s what we underdogs do. And sometimes, the result can be very surprising. :)

Grim Batol (Beta Build 12857)

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, dungeons, healing, paladins, parses, ramblings

Okay, after some serious technical issues tonight, I believe I’ve finally managed to produce an actual video. It’s not perfect, it’s ugly in some spots… But here ya go.

I don’t know if it was my group or if the instance was really just that different from, say, Blackrock Caverns, Throne of the Tides or Stonecore… but Grim Batol was easy to heal.

It could also have been my gear. I swapped out some ICC pieces for some greens, reforged a lot of spirit and some crit both to Mastery to give me a significant amount of mastery (400-some instead of like, 40-some) and so my heals were creating shields that were 11% of the heal, not 8%.

There are these drakes you’re supposed to mount up on that will allow you to supposedly blow up groups of trash, but they’re bugged, apparently, so we did things the old-fashioned way — with crowd control. We used a lot of hex and banish (haha, many elementals were immune to the shammy’s Bind Elemental, but not the warlock’s Banish) and a lot of Freezing Traps.

My tank was a level 85 death knight who had over 100k health once buffed.

Two of the DPS were also 85 and were around 70kish health. The other DPS was 84 and was around 60k health. I think I had the least at around 50-55k.

If this Grim Batol run is an example of what healing is supposed to be like in Cataclysm, then *maybe* things aren’t quite so bleak. I still don’t feel too much like a paladin, mind you, but let me tell you about the instance run.

Over the course of the run, there was 10,149,585 damage done. There was 10,098,252 healing done. We had one wipe on a bad pull, but that was it. 26.7% overhealing done.

There are four bosses. The first and last are not in the video, unfortunately.

The first is General Umbriss. He’s a dragon who is hilariously bugged. His Bleeding Wound is not ticking for 5-6k extra damage. Oh, no.

[23:05:44.390] General Umbriss casts Bleeding Wound on Shiramune
[23:05:44.390] General Umbriss Bleeding Wound Shiramune 11408 (O: -1)
[23:05:44.390] Shiramune afflicted by Bleeding Wound from General Umbriss
[23:05:46.430] General Umbriss Bleeding Wound Shiramune 13299 (O: -1)
[23:05:48.402] General Umbriss Bleeding Wound Shiramune 13299 (O: -1)
[23:05:50.412] General Umbriss Bleeding Wound Shiramune 11831 (O: -1, A: 1468)
[23:05:52.407] General Umbriss Bleeding Wound Shiramune 13299 (O: -1)
[23:05:54.394] General Umbriss Bleeding Wound Shiramune 9210 (O: -1, A: 765)
[23:05:56.414] General Umbriss Bleeding Wound Shiramune Absorb (9974)
[23:05:57.662] Shiramune’s Bleeding Wound fades

It only faded because I threw Hand of Protection on my tank once I saw how low he was getting. We knew it was bugged going in and the plan was to sort of kite/ping-pong him around a bit. So when I noticed the tank actually running away and getting really low on health, I tossed him a BOP, then waited a second, then a Hand of Freedom to wipe off the BOP. I cannot emphasize how important that combination has been in various instances and raids since Trial of the Crusader. Stupid Gormok was actually good for something!

And no, I’m not sure what the hell that absorb is. That’s way too much absorption for my piddling little mastery and it doesn’t show that I used Lay on Hands or anything (although I know I used it now and again).

Anyways, the tank grabbed the boss shortly after I healed him to full (hello, Divine Light, how ARE you?) and got the bleed again:

[23:06:21.759] General Umbriss casts Bleeding Wound on Shiramune
[23:06:21.764] General Umbriss Bleeding Wound Shiramune 9916 (O: -1)
[23:06:21.764] Shiramune afflicted by Bleeding Wound from General Umbriss
[23:06:23.772] General Umbriss Bleeding Wound Shiramune 26153 (O: -1)
[23:06:25.696] General Umbriss Bleeding Wound Shiramune 25161 (O: -1, A: 991)
[23:06:27.742] General Umbriss Bleeding Wound Shiramune 26152 (O: -1)
[23:06:29.721] General Umbriss Bleeding Wound Shiramune 19614 (O: -1)
[23:06:31.715] Shiramune’s Bleeding Wound fades

Let me just say that that tank’s Death Strike was healing him for upwards of 17k.

After the boss, which should be a lot easier when the bleed is fixed, you move through the instance a bit and get some trash packs with two casters and a Gronn. The casters, Twilight Beguilers, cast Chained Mind, which stuns you for five seconds. 1.5 second cast. I’m not sure if it’s interruptable, but make sure you CC one of these guys, because the tank AND the healer getting stunned is bad.

The Enslaved Gronn Brute does hit hard. I forgot to mention this in the video, but he can cast Crunch Armor on his target. It’s very possible to deal with one Beguiler and the Gronn at once, then deal with the CCed mob.

Forgemaster Throngus is the second boss, who is fairly well detailed in the video.

You can see that he starts out hitting hard, but relatively slowly:

[23:11:31.754] Forgemaster Throngus hits Shiramune  14776 (O: -1, A: 1408)
[23:11:35.160] Forgemaster Throngus hits Shiramune 2261 (O: -1, A: 12101)
[23:11:37.021] Forgemaster Throngus hits Shiramune 12388 (O: -1)

Then he gains his sword thing (Dual Blades) and starts to hit more frequently, although it seems it’s for a little less, particularly from the off-hand. (4-5k hits, as opposed to 10-12k hits.)

[23:11:45.186] Forgemaster Throngus hits Shiramune  Absorb (11344)
[23:11:46.084] Forgemaster Throngus hits Shiramune 2117 (O: -1, A: 2204)
[23:11:46.196] Forgemaster Throngus hits Shiramune Dodge
[23:11:46.196] Forgemaster Throngus hits Shiramune 7743 (O: -1, A: 2204)
[23:11:47.130] Forgemaster Throngus hits Shiramune 10726 (O: -1)
[23:11:48.225] Forgemaster Throngus hits Shiramune 4206 (O: -1, A: 741)
[23:11:49.306] Forgemaster Throngus hits Shiramune 11928 (O: -1)
[23:11:49.417] Forgemaster Throngus hits Shiramune 12730 (O: -1)
[23:11:49.417] Forgemaster Throngus hits Shiramune 10612 (O: -1)

Key points here: That is not a Consecration! Don’t stand in it! It’s a visual cue to get you to move out of the Cave In. ;)

The third boss is Drahga Shadowburner, a caster, who summons elementals and a dragon. The dragon will eventually run away and you can finish off Shadowburner at that point. Really, not a challenging fight. It reminds me a little of the Rend fight in UBRS, but that was a lot more difficult than this seemed to be.

The last boss is Erudax. He looks like General Vezax and there are some Forgotten One type mobs in the trash in his room.

Near as I can understand it, you want to be spread out for this boss to avoid sharing the Binding Shadows, but you need to group up for Shadow Gale. Other than that, not a tough encounter, although I did see an add. Whether the add was part of the fight or we didn’t clear all of the trash, I’m not sure.

Anyways, I hope that look at Grim Batol is useful! Here’s the parse, which doesn’t break things up all nicely yet, but at least you can take a look at things.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/ypf184h036rec74m/

Typical Tuesday… Truths?

Kurn / / apotheosis, beta, cataclysm, ramblings

(Yeah, I’m a fan of alliteration. So sue me!)

All kinds of news and updates to report today!

1) Operation: Gnomeregan is live! And so is the Horde equivalent. I’m not sure what level is required for it, but I presume it’s 80. Start off by going to see High Tinker Mekkatorque in Ironforge to get the first quest to kick them all off. Note that you can motivate all five citizens one after the other and then ride them all down to Steelgrill’s Depot at once.

I don’t like gnomes, but I have to admit that I got chills as I helped Mekkatorque move to retake Gnomeregan.

Apparently, these quests also count for Loremaster, if you’re into that.

I do not believe you get any rep for it with the gnomes, although I could be mistaken.

Go forth and help Mekkatorque take back Gnomeregan!

(As an aside, “They may take our lives, but they’ll never take… our INNOVATION!”, may be one of the best damn lines in this game.)

2) Healing in Cataclysm MAY not suck as much as we think it will. Maybe. I’ll have more details on this later, but I healed an amazingly EASY Grim Batol run on the weekend. Like, really easy. One wipe. One bugged boss (which wasn’t even the cause of the wipe). Bunch of bugged dragons, causing us to do a stupid amount of trash. But it was pretty easy.

Possibly the strangest thing about this run is that I used Holy Light the most. I made a concerted effort to use it a lot. Anyways, you’ll see what I mean. I took some video and while the quality does suck, you should be able to see some of the incoming damage and the reactions I’m having.

3) MMOwned estimates November 18th as the release. I’m not going to link to the site, because it encourages exploits, hacks and bots and I’m pretty firmly against all of those. That does not, however, mean that I won’t consider the news coming from there regarding a release date.

November 18th makes sense to me, especially with the start of the pre-Cataclysm events that launched today. I fully expect 3.9 to drop in the first or second week of October, followed by a mid-November release of Cataclysm. I’m wondering if they’re going to nerf bosses at 3.9 the way they did when 3.0 dropped. After all, we weren’t tuned to be 70 with the abilities we had (pallies didn’t even get Divine Plea until 71), so it made sense that they nerfed things a bit, although the 30% nerf was really ridiculous back then. But I wonder if we won’t see something like that when 3.9 drops. If we do, maybe they’ll even remove some of the abilities off LK or Sindragosa that make them so very challenging (the way Illidan had Shear removed).

If I were designing things, I wouldn’t remove anything, exactly, but I’d make it so only 4 people got Unchained Magic on Sindragosa instead of 6 (on 25-man). I would imagine a nerf to LK’s health would be enough for most to get him down, but otherwise, I’d change it to 2 Valks instead of 3 and make the Vile Spirits or Raging Spirits a little less punishing.

For Putricide, it would be all about removing that third goo on heroic… ;)

I do strongly suspect that raid content is going to be changed in some fashion when 3.9 drops, though. With the changes and the inability to get all of our talents and skills at 80, something has to change. I mean, based on the wowhead talent calculator, we’ll have 36 points to spend at 80 after 3.9 drops. That means 31 points in our main tree, plus 5 points in other trees. For a holy paladin, that would mean Crusade and Improved Judgement, but no Eternal Glory or Rule of Law. Something like this:

31/0/5

Without Inquisition (81), ret pallies are screwed. Without Holy Radiance (83), holy paladins are screwed. It’d be nice to have Guardian of Ancient Kings, too, but that’s only at level 85. We are not going to be properly tuned for this content, so I fully expect a similar nerfage to Wrath mobs and bosses the way we saw with BC mobs and bosses when 3.0 dropped.

4) In a sign that perhaps the world (of warcraft) is facing a cataclysmic ending, Chase Christian at wow.com sent me a crapton of traffic, linking to me twice from his latest article which was posted Sunday. Many of you may recall my initial annoyance with regards to Mr. Christian and WoW.com. Most of that has long-since faded away and I’m glad that my blog could be a resource that he found useful for holy paladins. That’s all I ever wanted to provide to the community so I’m glad that we’re both doing what we can to inform the paladin community of the upcoming changes in Cataclysm.

5) Apotheosis v2.0 preparations are coming along. I’ve got a new forum up and running, 24 past, present and future Apotheosians signed up, I’m filling out the officer roles and basically just trying to do what needs to be done. We’re not recruiting yet, exactly, but will likely have to recruit from the start (possibly even pre-Cataclysm release) to ensure we hit the ground running.

And I have a new front page for the guild website which will make updates super easy. It’s still very much under construction, mind you.

Already, I’ve had more “paperwork” to do for Apotheosis in the last couple of weeks than I’ve had to do in the last… six or eight months? Last time I did any kind of paperwork like this was when I was reviewing the healers in my last guild.

My plans are to remain with my paladin in my current guild and continue raiding with them until they stop 25-man raiding or Cataclysm comes out, whichever comes first.

I’ll probably be leaving my druid (or my mage) on my other main server (with my RL friend the resto druid) and move all five other 80s back to Eldre’Thalas in one fell swoop. Then my brother’s going to transfer his paladin, his hunter and possibly his 40-something shaman back to ET.

WTB mass-transfer discount, PST.

Anyways, that’s what’s new with me and what’s going on around here. Off to finish going through some parses before I get to work on that post about healing. And I should probably get some time in on the beta tonight to get to 85. It’s so frustrating right now, because nothing’s itemized and you don’t get XP from dungeons right now when you’re past level 83, so levelling = ret questing in crap gear, hahaha. Good times.

Being a Woman who Raids

Kurn / / blogging, general, raiding, ramblings

A lot of people have been blogging lately about sort of feminist topics. In particular, Ophelie’s post caught my attention. Not only did she link me (thanks!) but she linked me under “hardcore”. Oddly, “hardcore” is not how I would personally define myself, but that’s a blog entry for another day. (And I don’t take offense, I just find it a curious label. It should be noted that she’s actually changed that heading to read “PvE Progression Focused Female Players” now, though.) Also, I really liked Codi’s recent post about social privilege and WoW and Blizzard being a business.

So in the midst of all these posts (there are so many that I couldn’t possibly link all the ones I’ve read recently), I realized I had a lot of things to say. I don’t really talk much here about being a woman in this game or the strange reactions I get when it’s discovered that I AM, in fact, female, or how I deal with people’s reactions. I also haven’t spoken much about the lack of other capable women at high-end levels. This seems like a perfect time to address some issues and throw my own views out there.

Continue reading “Being a Woman who Raids”

Being a Woman who Raids (preamble)

Kurn / / blogging, raiding, ramblings

I don’t have the time to talk about this right now, but I wanted to let you all know it’s eventually coming. I’ve got lots of thoughts jotted down in my draft and I’ll be posting that eventually.

What about, exactly?

Well, I have things to say about being a woman who raids, about how I’ve seen the decline of women around me as I’ve moved to more progressed guilds, about the lack of women as tanks and other stuff, including questioning why the Leggings of Concentrated Darkness look like this on a female toon and like actual slacks on a male toon. (Couldn’t find a screenshot of the men wearing them. Gee. I wonder why not?)

But, like I said, not right now. If you have any questions for me about being a female raider, leave them in the comments and I’ll be happy to address them in my upcoming post.

Worst. RNG. Ever.

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

So, on heroic, Professor Putricide casts Unbound Plague twice in a row, a minute or so apart, whenever he casts it. So you have to play hot potato with the plague for two minutes without getting people with Plague Sickness to grab it.

Tonight:

[19:44:21.389] Professor Putricide casts Unbound Plague

This is the second plague of a set.

[19:44:21.399] Moonkin’s Unbound Plague fades

This is the first plague the moonkin has passed to a warlock.

[19:44:21.399] Moonkin afflicted by Plague Sickness from Moonkin

This is the moonkin getting Plague Sickness at the same instant he has passed the plague off.

You may notice that this is 0.01 seconds after Professor Putricide has cast the second Unbound Plague.

[19:44:21.413] Moonkin afflicted by Unbound Plague from Professor Putricide

This is the moonkin getting the NEW plague almost immediately after passing the old one off to the warlock. He does NOT have Plague Sickness at the second that Putricide casts Unbound Plague. .01 seconds before he gets Plague Sickness, Putricide cast the new plague. The rule has always seemed to be that if you have Plague Sickness, you cannot get a new plague.

How’s that for some crappy luck? Gah.

Hunter Stuff

Kurn / / general, hunters, ramblings

When I first started playing this game, I started off with a male night elf hunter named Kurnmogh. Kurn was my raiding toon throughout Vanilla. Kurn is the toon who did the Tier .5 questline. Kurn is the toon who got attuned to places and cared about rep. Kurn was the toon I was on when learning to raid lead. Kurn was basically awesome, considering the utter lack of content my old guild cleared. To this day, my Rhok’delar quest is one of my cherished memories.

Throughout the years, I have done more and more stuff on my paladin. Three months into Burning Crusade, I was raiding on the paladin, never to look back at the hunter. Sure, I got to get in on our Tidewalker kill on Kurn, sure, I got to get in on our Gorefiend kill on Kurn, but Madrana has been my raiding toon since April of 2007.

And even then, I insisted all those who knew me previously as Kurn continue to call me Kurn.

This blog is called Kurn’s Corner because, well, I like the alliteration, but also because when I play WoW, I really still feel like Kurn is my main. I do all the stupid shit on Kurn. I did all the holiday stuff on Kurn, I’m still working on a screenshot project on Kurn, I did a Sarth 10 3d zerg on Kurn just last week.

Sometimes, it really saddens me to see just how much I ignore poor ol’ Kurn. Haven’t done much more than the weekly and maybe a daily random or two on the hunter for a month, and not even the weekly all that often. I just don’t have the time to raid 12 hours a week on the pally, go through parses, write blogs, do RL stuff AND do anything significant with my hunter.

But I managed to get my four-piece T10 on Kurn today. I have the 251 helm, chest and shoulders and the 264 gloves, plus the Leggings of Northern Lights and, of course, Zod’s Repeating Longbow.

I’m not quite “done” for the expansion on Kurn, exactly — I still have a couple of projects in mind — but I felt such a sense of completion when I picked up my helm today after my daily! Sure, my shaman, priest, druid and mage are all thoroughly neglected, sitting in various pieces of T9, if they’re lucky, but it was important for me to get Kurn a nice gearset of T10. It’s not a matter of ego, it’s not even really a matter of pride. It’s a matter of my remembering my roots, remembering that there was a time when I topped damage in Molten Core, remembering that there was a time when I was the go-to kiter for Hakkar adds, remembering that there was a time when people wouldn’t run with a hunter in my old guild, unless it was me.

Kurn may not be my main raiding character in Wrath. Kurn may not have been my main raiding character in Burning Crusade. Kurn may not even be my main raiding character in Cataclysm. But Kurn is still an important part of my in-game identity and that old hunter deserved the effort I went through to get some semblance of decent gear.

I feel satisfied by the effort I’ve put into the hunter this expansion. I might be a little disappointed that I may never kill the Lich King as a hunter, although I admit that the responsibility of tranq shotting the horrors is more than a little overwhelming. I haven’t been responsible for tranq shotting anything significant since Magmadar.

But as we come to the end of Wrath of the Lich King, I feel like Kurn’s done a lot. I’ve done parts of all the major instances on the hunter — cleared Naxx, done chunks of Ulduar, done the Lower Spire a ton of times, done Ony, VOA over and over again and played in Ruby Sanctum one night.

It’s been a good expansion for Kurn and I like that I have 4pc T10 to show for it.

Paladin Utility Spells Continued

Kurn / / paladins, raiding, ramblings

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone for chiming in on my post yesterday about the various utility spells that paladins can use. It’s always fun to see what other people are thinking!

The reason why I asked people about utility spell use by paladins is because I got into a heated discussion about a retribution paladin who basically didn’t use any of the utility spells barring Hand of Salvation on himself (and only himself) and a very rare Cleanse. To the ret’s credit, he did use Lay on Hands on Dreamwalker more often than not… But really, no BOPping, no HoSac, very little Cleansing (not even on himself with Glittering Sparks), etc. It was bothering me a lot to see a paladin just not using these spells and worse, to have someone else (a non-paladin) defending the lack of spell usage.

Paladins have always, in my mind, been The Utility Class. Who else has all these tricks and tools? No one. No one else has BOP or HoSac or HoSalv. No one else has Lay on Hands. In this day and age of class homogenization, paladins alone have our utility spells.

As such, I find it’s important to use these spells.

It’s expected that a paladin should perform their role, be it healing, tanking or DPSing, but it’s the GREAT paladins that actually use our utility spells regularly and appropriately.

Of course, it’s the utility spells that can fall by the wayside when things get hectic and when people panic. That’s part of why it’s a mark of a good paladin, in my opinion, when one actually uses those spells properly.

Here’s an example.

On Blood Prince Council, prior to the Empowered Shock Vortex, Glittering Sparks gets cast on a bunch of people. Who should be responsible for the retribution paladin’s Glittering Sparks?

In my opinion, a good ret pally will not wait for a mass dispel (or anyone else’s dispel) but will Cleanse him or herself and start Cleansing other melee so they can spread out appropriately.

Another example:

On Festergut, a protection paladin who is not tanking (in fact, has just finished tanking) BOPs him or herself, waits 10 seconds, then casts Hand of Salvation on him or herself to ensure they don’t catch up on threat AND casts Hand of Sacrifice on the other tank when there are three inhales. THAT prot pally is my freaking hero.

Of course, I have been known to have somewhat high standards. I wondered if I was alone in thinking that paladins should be using these spells. So I asked you folks.

My sociology background is beating me over the head for not doing a proper survey to properly analyze the results, but at least I can give you guys a summary. But first, my own observations:

The first thing I noticed is that most people didn’t know how to use Hand of Sacrifice, if they knew what it was, and quite a few seemed to confuse it with Divine Sacrifice. This was actually intended — I did not link Hand of Sacrifice for the tooltip, just to see if people knew what I was talking about. ;)

The second thing I noticed is that everyone basically thinks everyone should know HOW to use the spells even if they shouldn’t prioritize their use. Fair enough.

The third thing I noticed is that everyone pretty much believes Cleanse is a no-brainer and that every spec should use it as appropriate.

As to a real summary of what people thought…

Everyone thought people should use Lay on Hands appropriately. Whether that’s just for Dreamwalker or if it’s any spec popping it up on someone who could use it (preferably a tank or a healer) or just using it on themselves, everyone felt that every spec had at least one situational usage for it. I approve.

Everyone thought people should use Cleanse whenever the situation called for it. Basically, if you have a poison, disease or a magic debuff on yourself and you are a paladin and you don’t Cleanse yourself, it better only be because someone beat you to it.

We enter the realm of controversy and disagreement when it comes to the Hand spells.

Reaction was mixed with regards to Hand of Salvation. Should Holy paladins even bother to have Omen up? Some people thought so, some people didn’t. Those that did felt that Holy pallies were the best people to use HoSalv on people. Those that didn’t felt that prots were the best kinds of pallies to use HoSalv, with most people agreeing that ret should use it on themselves at the very least.

Hand of Protection (BOP) was always mentioned as being a very situational spell, particularly with the Saurfang encounter mentioned. Very few people felt rets should ever really need to use it as compared to holy pallies and prot pallies. People felt that if a retribution pally was using it, it should be on something very situational like Saurfang.

Hand of Sacrifice, as mentioned before, was a little confusing. Some people admitted they never used it at all, some said they didn’t understand the spell and some confused it with Divine Sacrifice. Among those who did seem to know about the spell, most said it was best used situationally, mostly as a save-the-tank type cooldown.

What do I think?

– I think all paladins can find a time to use Lay on Hands in a four-hour block of raiding, unless they super outgear the content.

– I think all paladins should at least Cleanse themselves of debuffs, GCDs permitting, helping out where possible.

– I think all paladins should use Hand of Salvation now and again. Even if you don’t have Omen up, chances are you can see if someone has aggro. A quick Hand of Salvation on that person will help out your tank in re-establishing aggro. (Think of the adds on Lady Deathwhisper.)

– I don’t think rets should use Hand of Sacrifice unless they’re planning to bubble and I think prots and holies should use it sparingly. That said, on certain encounters, it’s really useful. I’ve taken to bubbling and using HoSac on the corporeal realm tank on Halion. My fellow holy pally started using HoSac on the Sindragosa pull, which I think is a great idea,  since that’s generally when most parries happen.

– I think BOP should be used constantly by people, if only on trash and DEFINITELY used by all specs on Saurfang to push back the first Mark or to BOP someone during the Frenzy.

I don’t expect perfect use of all these utilities by every paladin, but I do expect to see an effort from paladins to use all of these abilities appropriately. If someone beat you to a BOP, no big, but if you sat there with Glittering Sparks for 10 seconds and blew up the tank because you couldn’t get away from him, that’s pretty poor play.

Anyways, thanks again to all those who responded! It’s nice to see some new names around, too, so I hope you all stick around. :)

Cataclysm Beta Build 12759, Holy Pally Style!

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, paladins, ramblings

Hoo boy, this build, which changes up ret a bunch, throws a kink into my pretty little holy spec! Who would have thought it?

Talents/Spells:

– Conviction is gone, so no more bonus 3/6/9% damage/healing when you get a crit

– Improved Judgements is now in Tier 1 of ret and THAT is the one that gives you 15/30 extra yards on your judgement range

– Eternal Glory gives you a 20%/40% chance to not consume Holy Power when you use Word of Glory

– Enlightened Judgements heals YOU for some miniscule amount (1k/2k) whenever you judge

– Clarity of Purpose is now .5 seconds of Holy Light and Divine Light cast times (well, .2, .4 and then .5 instead of .1/.2/.3)

– Light of Dawn now gains extra healing by consuming Holy Power, although it’s still usable without any HP stacks

– Blessed Life might now be worth something since it gives you a 50%/100% chance to generate holy power when you’re attacked (2s internal cooldown)

– Divine Favor, as I mentioned, gives you 20% extra spell haste/spell crit for 20 seconds on a 3m cooldown. I’m okay with this.

– Divine Light is a 3 second cast instead of 2.5 seconds. Holy Light remains at 3 seconds.

– Healing Hands got a bump. Instead of about 750 or so on someone, my Healing Hands is healing others for 1054 a tick and healing me for 1117 a tick.

What this means is that we don’t want Enlightened Judgements anymore, we MIGHT want Blessed Life and forget about speccing into prot for support, basically ever, because ret is just way, way, way too good right now for us.

There’s no updated talent calculator right now, but basically, my current spec on beta is exactly as it was last build, with a couple of exceptions:

1) I dropped Enlightened Judgements.

2) I dropped in one point in Last Word in order to get 30 points in Holy, so I could get Light of Dawn. (Last Word: Gives your Word of Glory a 30% increased critical chance when used on targets with 35% or less health.)

3) I picked up 2/2 Improved Judgements in ret (for my 30y range on judgements)

4) I kept Crusade (3/3) to get to ret’s second tier and to give my Holy Shock 30% extra healing

5) I picked up 2/2 Eternal Glory so that I would have that 40% chance to not consume my Holy Power when using Word of Glory

6) I grabbed 1/3 Rule of Law to up my crit chance of Holy Shock and Word of Glory by 5%. I should be able to fill this out at the level cap.

In retrospect, I probably should have grabbed Blessed Life 1/2 at least. Not that it’s terribly difficult to generate Holy Power, but now that Light of Dawn consumes it, that’s a bit of a difference. Also, I want to see if it’s AOE as well or if it’s actually someone coming up to you and smacking you that will proc Blessed Life.

Plate Specialization

So I trained Plate Spec. I am now wearing Silver Spur Boots (1791 armor, 196 stamina, 131 intellect, 94 spirit, 77 haste) instead of Earthsoul Boots and my 264 Emblem of Frost gloves instead of my heroic Unclean Surgical Gloves. Instead of 43.5k mana (with kings) I now have 44.9k or something close to that due to the plate specialization. Strangely, I don’t lose too much in terms of anything else (haste percentage, etc), so hey, why not.

Mastery

I wish the shield would last a little longer, but most of them are small enough that they’ll be gone in a hit anyways. But it’s neat, because you can see EXACTLY how big your shield is by hovering over the buff. Also, with only 41 extra mastery (from my cloak), my shields are 11.9% of the heal cast instead of 8%. (I expect this to drop as I gain levels from 83 to 85, when they open up the level cap again.) The shields are overwritten each time you cast a new one, by the way, even if the new one is less powerful, I think. They do not stack.

Instances

You now need to find the instance entrances in order to do them. Blackrock Caverns is easy and, for me, The Stonecore was easy since it’s right there in Deepholm, which I’ve already been to, but Madrana hasn’t touched Vashj’ir, so I think I’ll leave Throne of the Tides alone for the time being until they let me level beyond 83.

Guild Stuff

Internal Guild Errors if I try screwing with the ranks. Strange GMOTD spam continues. My guild should definitely be Level 2 by now, but we’re stuck at Level 1, and that’s if it even recognizes that we’re Level 1.

Bug Report is Bugged

The Bug Report tool now pops up when you hit the newly-returned button on the minimap, but you can’t really do anything with it.

Training

I was able to train from my class trainer on my shaman (shammy trainers now in the Dwarven District in Stormwind!)  without dropping a profession, YAY!

Other notes

Nourish still isn’t refreshing Lifebloom as per Empowered Touch, Shammies now have a water totem that acts like Concentration Aura. And taking the Stormwind portal from Deepholm will cause you to fall through the world beneath Stormwind Lake. FYI.

Oh What a Weekend!

Kurn / / blogging, ramblings

(To anyone who can tell me where that blog title is from, I will give you 100g if we’re ever on the same server.)

All right, folks. I am taking the weekend off, basically. I’m heading up to my parents’ country house with my parents, my brother and my grandmother and will endeavour to go canoeing, do some walking, do some reading in the sun (!) and do things like play silly card games or board games with my family.

I will be bringing my laptop up with me, but I will only have dialup access, which means:

– I will not be able to go through parses because the load time is insane.

– Email replies will not be as instantaneous as normal. ;)

– I will probably not blog.

– I will not be on twitter much, if at all.

– I will not be in-game pretty much at all, not on live or on beta.

I know. You’ll all miss me terribly between now and Sunday evening. I encourage you to go out and get some sun before summer’s over! Or, you know, if you’re in the southern hemisphere, feel free to keep surfing the Internet. I know that 3 degrees Celsius is chilly for you people. ;)

Have a great weekend, folks. Kurn’s Corner will resume content posting on Mondayish. :)