Category: ramblings

Kurn's Cataclysmic Adventures 1

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

So. Beta.

Over the last several hours, I did not complete a single instance. I did advance significantly in terms of quests and subzones in Vashj’ir, mind you, and I also dinged Kurn 81. It took me less time to ding Kurn 81 than it did for me to get a third of the way to 81 on Madrana.

I also spent a crapton of time uploading and organizing 200+ screenshots from Beta, which are available here:

http://kurn.apotheosis-now.com/cataclysm/

And I even made a couple little videos, which I’ve uploaded to YouTube. Spoilers below!

Continue reading “Kurn's Cataclysmic Adventures 1”

Tuesday, Tuesday, So Good to Me

Kurn / / blogging, paladins, ramblings

Actually, I’m not sure how Tuesday’s going to treat me this week, but hey, thinking positively is good, right? :)

On the agenda for today:

– Q&A post

– new poll

– maybe finishing up my key run stuff/extra boss stuff in Strat Live and actually uploading said videos, now that I’ve snagged a halfway decent microphone from my father after the tragic death of mine (that had nothing to do with an unfortunate incident with mayonnaise, FYI, unlike my last microphone’s death.)

– definitely being excited about a non-fail holy paladin app, who reads this very blog, with whom I’ve been emailing back and forth for a couple of weeks. Seriously, in the same week, we have:

1) Terribly, hideously bad applicant for a 9/12 HM ICC 25 guild.

2) Stupendously amazing applicant for a 9/12 HM ICC 25 guild.

Crap. The first one is gone from the armory so I can’t even chardev him. Suffice it to say, he had 350 haste, was wearing two pieces of T9, was using Glyph of Flash of Light, wasn’t using a Nightmare Tear (and not getting a socket bonus or anything by using a Dazzling Eye of Zul and a Luminous Ametrine), was using 8 stats instead of 10 to chest, was using 15 haste instead of 23 to cloak, was Honored with the Ashen Verdict, had a cloak with spirit on it from the vendor (I think I would have preferred the Drape of the Violet Tower in this situation…), had Icewalker to boots but no run speed talent, had no Improved Righteous Fury, only had 1/2 Imp Lay on Hands…

Anyways. You get the picture. Someone who was hideously undergeared for things like normal Sindragosa and normal Lich King.

And then you have someone like Applicant #2, who not only obviously reads this blog, but also takes what I say to heart. 994 haste? That is almost three times the haste Applicant #1 had. My GM said, and I kid you not:

“Wait. Hold the phone. Is it Christmas?”

A warrior tank:

“Another holy pally?  And Madrana likes him?  Christmas has indeed come early this year.”

And a rogue in the guild who has a very decent holy paladin alt:

“Excuse me, mister drug-induced hallucination, but I need to sober up now so you can go away, because you’re OBVIOUSLY much too good to be true… right?”

So maybe Tuesday is going to be good to me? :)

Wrath of the Lich King Blues

Kurn / / apotheosis, cataclysm, facepalm, raiding, ramblings

It’s no real secret to those that know me that I don’t particularly want to be a guild master again. Don’t get me wrong; I will move heaven and earth in order to play with my beloved Apotheosis folks again. I will be a GM again, a raid leader again, a healing lead again, whatever is required of me. I’ll heal or I’ll DPS and yes, I’m even considering tanking if I have to. I am dedicated to the idea of many of my long-term in-game friends playing together again in Cataclysm.

It doesn’t mean that I like the extra work or that I like being the one everyone comes crying to when they don’t get a raid spot, when they get outbid on loot, when we don’t kill a boss, when we do kill a boss but it’s not the one that’ll drop loot for someone. It’s a crappy job and, unfortunately, someone’s got to do it. Somehow, that ends up being me within Apotheosis because I’m the only one stupid enough to volunteer. ;)

What particularly drives me nuts is trying to recruit.

I am not as dedicated at recruiting as my current GM is. She’s a champ.

Recruiting sucks. It’s the single biggest timesink related to running a guild. Not only do you have to figure out what your needs are, which is bad enough, but you then have to go hunt down people who might fill those needs.

Even if you do find someone who can make your raid times, is the appropriate role or class, is the appropriate level, is wearing the “right” gear, is willing to transfer to your server and faction, what if they’re a complete jackass?

Then you go back out there and try to find a person who fits all of the above-mentioned criteria and pray they’re not only not a jackass but that they can actually play.

There is not an unlimited pool of talent out there all begging to be part of your guild.

For the majority of this expansion, it has been a seller’s market; that’s to say that people who want to join a guild have all the power. Guilds have very little to offer their members these days. Titles, mounts, achievements, many of these in-game incentives are being offered by and acquired through pugs. The guild, in Wrath of the Lich King, has become superfluous. My hunter is in a RL-friends guild. There are four people active in it besides myself. I have 3/5 T10, a 264 helm, Leggings of Northern Lights, Zod’s and I’m about 30 Emblems of Frost away from getting myself 4pc T10. I’m also Revered with the Ashen Verdict.

I have done this without a guild, per se, and without going further than 4/12 in ICC 25. Pugs and GDKP runs and daily random dungeons have allowed my hunter to get pretty decked out even though I barely get to play my hunter.

I also fear that Wrath of the Lich King has brought with it some horrible changes in the player population of WoW. This is going to make me sound elitist and all I can say to defend myself from such accusations is that I just want people to know and understand the basics of their class and role.

When you are level 80 and you select “tank” as a role for a heroic dungeon, the expectation is two-fold:

1) You can hold aggro against similarly-geared players.

2) You won’t get smashed in the face by a mob or a boss that will lead to your instant, or near-instant, death.

When you are level 80 and you select “healer” as a role for a heroic dungeon, the expectation is also two-fold:

1) You will be able to heal an appropriately-geared tank through the instance.

2) You will be able to keep the majority of the group alive even in somewhat trying circumstances, within reason, given a tank that will keep things off of you. (Unexpected patrol, someone pulled another group, etc.)

When you are level 80 and you select “damage” as your role for a heroic dungeon, there are also two expectations:

1) Do your fair share of the damage. This means doing more damage than an adequately-geared tank.

2) Don’t make your healer’s job harder than it already is. This means not standing in void zones or not pulling additional mobs.

That’s all I really expect from people. That means that tanks wear tanking gear and are not able to be crit by heroic mobs and bosses. That means that the healers have the foggiest clue as to what their healing spells do. That means that DPS should know how to string their abilities together to greater effect (like putting up Serpent Sting and THEN using Chimera Shot, for example).

I don’t think this is too much to ask. I don’t think that it’s too hard to learn some of the basics after playing this game for 80 levels. There are just too many resources out there.

I honestly don’t care if my tank has 25k health in a random, as long as they’re not crittable. I can lower my DPS to match the threat output, or I can feign or go invisible on my mage.

I honestly don’t care if my healer has to drink after every pull or two, so long as they keep us up over the course of the instance.

I don’t care if the DPS is low, as long as we have people doing their best to get the mobs down.

Why am I talking about people I run into in random groups if I’m talking about guild stuff?

My fear is that Wrath of the Lich King has dumbed down the entire player population significantly.

I’m terrified to start recruiting for Cataclysm, when I eventually start doing so, and discover that hey, everyone applying to Apotheosis is terrible. I don’t really care about achievements and I definitely don’t care about gear score; I care about how you play and why you make the choices you make.

There was someone who applied to my current guild the other day. Nice guy, disc priest. I asked him, out of curiosity, why he didn’t snag Desperate Prayer with his 14 talents allocated to his holy tree.

He said he’d try it out.

And promptly removed all his points from Inspiration to fill out Spell Warding and Desperate Prayer.

It’s like… why? Why would you do that?

He also rescinded his application, deeming us to be a little too hardcore for him, before anyone even mentioned the respec.

We’re not that hardcore.

Everyone’s got a right to play the game in the way that suits them best, but if this guy, who is probably the best disc priest app I’ve seen in a while, can make the choice to drop out of Inspiration and think that’s okay, then we have a problem with the playerbase.

The players, by and large, are not educated.

The players, due to the fact that it’s a seller’s market, don’t want to learn.

The players, due to the ease with which you can gear yourself, figure they can get into a decent raiding guild based on gear alone and then get more shinies and achievements and titles.

This is the playerbase from which I will be recruiting?

I am praying that Cataclysm dungeons and content will be difficult. I want crowd-control abilities to come back. I don’t want my hunter to get swapped out for a mage, mind you, but I want crowd-control to be required for most dungeons.

I want epics to feel epic again.

I want raid content to be designed to be cleared by guilds, not pugs.

I don’t want content to be facerollingly easy.

I want people to learn how to play again.

If this doesn’t happen, I’m genuinely afraid for the quality of applicants to any given guild, including my own.

Cataclysm Information and More Thinking

Kurn / / cataclysm, healing, ramblings

I’m not typically an alarmist. I’m not typically someone who looks at something and goes “OMG I HATE THIS CHANGE”. I don’t love change in general, mind you, but typically, I don’t overreact. I take a LOT of changes very much in stride. (Obviously, I think the “new” Judgements of the Pure that was in the talent tree was craptastic, but I don’t feel like I was overreacting. I do cling to my precious haste. I will admit that right away.)

One of the big adjustments I have to make in this game, on a personal level, is accepting the fact that this is not MY game and that I am subject to the whims and desires of the developers. This is probably why I really like doing Stupid Crap(tm) on my hunter, to push those boundaries. Anyways.

Here’s what we know about holy paladins in Cataclysm:

Not a whole lot. This post is not, by the way, going to be a comprehensive “ALL PALLY CHANGES HERE!!!” post or anything, so don’t get cranky if I leave stuff out, please. There’s just way too much stuff that’s up in the air.

We do know that we’re getting a new spell, Healing Hands, which is an instant-cast spell that heals all friendly targets within 10 yards for 10 seconds.

There’s also that Guardian of Ancient Kings thing we’re supposed to get at 85:

Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

We also know that the beta talent trees are very, very much a work in progress for paladins in particular. “I’m going to regret saying this, but the paladin trees are the most changed in the game. There are only a few of the current beta talents that survived the, um, cleansing.”

So we’ll take a step back and not think about that particular tragedy.

We know they’re tossing Judgement of Wisdom and rolling Judgement of Justice in with Judgement of Light.

I hear rumours about Divine Intervention getting removed, but as I’m not in beta, I know very little. I also know that they haven’t heard from me yet about various changes. I am an extremely vocal person (hi, you do read this blog regularly enough to know that, right? ;)) and I will fight to keep certain things in the game like DI, because it’s a staple paladin ability. Even if it was mostly useless in this expansion, it’s a great spell.

We also now know about a secondary resource system called Holy Power. That means that, like Death Knights, who have runic power and runes, paladins will have mana and Holy Power.

“All of the paladin specializations will make use of a new resource called Holy Power. Holy Power accumulates from using Crusader Strike, Holy Shock, and some other talents. Holy Power can be consumed to augment a variety of abilities, including:

* An instant mana-free heal: Word of Glory
* A buff to increase holy damage done: Inquisition
* A massive physical melee attack for Retribution paladins: Templar’s Verdict
* Holy Shield’s duration is now extended by Holy Power
* Divine Storm’s damage is now increased by Holy Power”

So, this means that Holy Power will allow us to use a new mana-free heal called Word of Glory and we get Holy Power by using Holy Shock and potentially some other abilities.

“We also introduced several new heals for Holy Paladins including Healing Hands (an AoE heal-over-time that is applied to all players standing near the paladin), Light of Dawn (a cone heal with a 30-yard range), as well as a new heal called Divine Light, which is similar to a priest’s Greater Heal, and the new instant heal mentioned above, Word of Glory.”

So Healing Hands, Word of Glory, Divine Light (the uber Holy Light) and Light of Dawn.

(Wait, isn’t Light of Dawn your title when you defeat LK on heroic? Oh, right, that’s the Light of Dawn. My bad.)

That’s in addition to changes to Sacred Shield (supposed to last 30m?) and Beacon of Light (only mirrors Holy Shocks and Holy Lights), plus Flash of Light and Holy Light, plus judging.

Suffice it to say that the game will be changing in ways we probably can’t even anticipate at this point. The Vanilla to Burning Crusade change wasn’t too bad; deeper talent trees, some shuffles, some changes, but it was basically the same game for a lot of people, which got refined over time. BC to Wrath changed a lot of things radically, but having 3.0 drop in the middle of October gave us a month to play around with things before Wrath came out. It’s changed a lot since it’s dropped, too.

With the changes to talents alone, never mind new spells, gear changes, all that jazz, the game is going to change faster than it ever has before. In what I presume will be the 4.0 patch, everyone will not only get a free respec (or two, with dual spec) but your basic understanding of the class will change. All the stuff I’ve talked about in my Holy How-Tos will probably be rendered useless. We are going to have to relearn our classes, relearn what races can even be what classes (gnome priests? human hunters? dwarven shaman?) and relearn the geography of the Old World.

Cataclysm will really be the biggest game-changer of them all.

So all I can really say here is speculation, until I get my hands on beta. All I can really say here is that, from my nearly five years of playing this game, maybe this is a good idea, maybe that’s a bad idea. I like to think that I have a solid understanding of how the devs want us to play the game and I like to think I have enough experience to give out a first impression that might be accurate.

Having said that, here are my thoughts on some of the new things we learned from the Twitter Dev Event and some of the stuff we knew about heals beforehand.

Holy Power: Well. Okay? A secondary resource is going to be interesting. I’m assuming, from the Twitter Dev Event that you will be able to stack to 3 Holy Power. Ghostcrawler has said this will be a second bar and it was implied it would be below the mana bar. That’s cool. I’m going to be more interested in knowing what is going to rely on Holy Power and how we can generate it besides Crusader Strike and Holy Shock.

Word of Glory: It sounds cool. Instant heals are a good thing regardless of the class that you play. Instant heals are ones that mean you can use them while moving. Paladins and shaman feel chained to the ground in many circumstances, so another instant heal sounds good. Maybe I won’t have to blow my Divine Favor at a pull to ensure I get a crit Holy Shock that procs the instant Flash of Light. I like the idea that we might be able to “save up” our holy power and let this Word of Glory loose when adequately charged. This is all based on the assumption that Word of Glory gets stronger based on our Holy Power we have stored.

Light of Dawn: This could be interesting. Another freaking “light” in the name, though… Still, not the worst-named spell ever. I would love to see a screenshot of someone with “the Light of Dawn” title displayed casting Light of Dawn. Things I want to know about this spell include duration, cast time (I imagine it’s a channel, probably 6 seconds) and cooldown (I imagine a 3-5 minute cooldown). Oh, and mana cost. I imagine this is going to cost a chunk.

Divine Light: The Uber Holy Light. This will be the heal to cast when your tank is going to die in 3+ seconds. I’m looking forward to it, to be honest. I expect it to be a reasonable cost, a long-ass cast and it better be a deeper-sounding Holy Light cast. ;)

Flash of Light: I’m so sad that this is going to get expensive. This will be the “oh shit, tank needs SOME form of healing ASAP!” spell. Crit Holy Shock + FoL + Word of Glory combo?

Healing Hands: “an AoE heal-over-time that is applied to all players standing near the paladin”. So that’s interesting. It’s a button to hit when lots of people are around us and it stays on them for the ten seconds even if we move or they move?

Without a lot of context, particularly without a talent tree that is even mostly in place, we don’t have a lot to say. What we can say is that, from our experience in this game, various things sound neat or lacklustre. We can say that, in the game environment as we know it, certain things might work nicely or not so nicely. I mean, who wouldn’t want Healing Hands on Twin Valks in TOC/TOGC? Who wouldn’t want Light of Dawn on Infest on LK?

To me, the core of understanding new talents and abilities is taking past experiences and thinking about how those apply to the old content you’ve done. That way, when you recognize familiar elements in a new fight, you can think about using the new abilities in a way that would have been able to help you in the old fight.

For example, the priests are getting Leap of Faith (also known as Life Grip) which will pull a person to you.

In current content, where would you use this?

Off the top of my head, I can think of three times to use this in a raid situation:

1) Pulling someone with a spore from melee into a ranged group on Festergut (assuming you have a priest at range).

2) Yanking someone to the center area on Blood Queen Lana’thel when they have Pact of the Darkfallen and aren’t moving.

3) Hauling someone’s lagging ass out of Defile on Lich King.

I’m going to be giving a lot of thought to how to play a paladin in Cataclysm with Cataclysm trees and mechanics, as the information comes out, and will definitely be sharing my thoughts here as both the information and my thoughts become available. ;)

Like I said, I’m not in the beta yet, so I can’t tell how different it’s going to be, but it WILL be different. How it’s going to be different will be the make-it-or-break-it for me. I have six level 80s. I may not play the paladin in Cataclysm. I may not even play the hunter. We’ll have to see how it goes.

Updates and Plans

Kurn / / blogging, cataclysm, gear, healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another Tuesday here at Kurn’s Corner!

On the schedule for today:

– Q&A post (as per usual)

– More opinions on new holy paladin Cataclysm information (Holy Power, some new cone heal called Light of the Divine or Divinity of the Light or something appropriately paladinesque, the actual name of which escapes me at the moment)

– Responding to comments!

– Possibly going through some parses.

– More running through old-world Azeroth for a future blog post, which, due to technical difficulties this last weekend, may not be up until next week, sadly.

So those are my plans.

My updates are considerably more exciting, at least to me.

Bloodsurge, Kel’Thuzad’s Blade of Agony is mine! Finally, I have a main hand without hit again! I’d been using Rigormortis because it was still an improvement over Misery’s End. More intellect, more spellpower, a wee bit more haste (like, 1). It was nice to have, particularly as the hunter officer in my last guild refused to let me take it for main-spec, since it had hit on it, so even though I was like “but it’s for main-spec!” she was like “you’re paying off-spec for it”.

But finally, a weapon with no hit, that has the exact same stats as Royal Scepter of Terenas II. Hilariously enough, both of those items dropped. Since we do EPGP, I rolled Need on both within the mod to assure myself I’d probably get one of them. The loot master was smart because he recognized that if he awarded the sword first, I’d get it (there was virtually no competition for it) and then the mace would be up for grabs and I could not win it because my EPGP priority wouldn’t be high enough after winning the sword. So the sword went to me (and yes, I DO feel like a bad-ass for being able to heal with a SWORD!!) and the mace went to the elemental shaman.

I also picked up the heroic Frostbinder’s Shredded Cape, which I gemmed and enchanted on the spot, meaning that the stupid Flowing Sapphiron Drape is going to go sit in my bank until it rots away into nothingness.

As such, my chardev profile has been updated:

http://www.chardev.org/?profile=426504

Raid buffed, without the sword, I had 45,424 mana. Granted, the sword is only another 4 intellect, so that’s 60ish mana (not including talents) but good gravy. Forty-five thousand?! That is totally sweet.

I generally don’t get excited about gear. There are exceptions — I love a new weapon, and I love when I replace an OLD piece of gear. I’ve had the Onyxia cloak since early October. Nine months. Very happy to have replaced it. :)

In raid news, there continues to be problems with heroic Sindragosa, but we’re making some progress, at least. I’m not terribly worried, as long as we can get some people (casters!) to freaking stop casting with Unchained Magic.

A Brief Look at Healers and Tanks as Guild Resources

Kurn / / achievements, gear, guild, healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

(followed by a brief personal story)

Once upon a time, back before we had discovered Northrend, before we had stepped through The Dark Portal, I was in a guild that was heavy on DPS, short on healers and even shorter on tanks.

The guildies and I always tried to run dungeons together and it wasn’t easy because we didn’t have a tank or we didn’t have a healer. Frequently, we didn’t have both. This is, in part, what led me to create my paladin. I knew I wouldn’t get her up to 60 in time to help with our immediate tank/healer shortages, but I knew that a paladin could supposedly be a damage-dealer, a healer or a tank and was really interested in seeing how both being a tank and a healer worked. After all, I already had my DPS class in Kurn.

When a level 55 prot warrior applied to our guild, we snatched him up, despite the fact he was all of 13. He was the first “real” tank we had, although the guild master was busy levelling his own prot warrior. Sure, we had a warrior who had tank gear, but he was fury and never respecced. Not that we really understood what that meant, but anyways.

Everyone constantly fought over the warrior. Just like everyone fought over a priest who apped a couple of months later. We were slowly getting more healers and tanks who were being constantly bombarded to go do runs. Honestly, it’s a wonder we didn’t wear them out.

But that’s what they were there for, right? The warrior and the priest were guild resources. They were part of the guild, they had chosen their specs and their roles. So we should feel free to at least ask if they want to do X, Y and Z runs, right?

I’ve been a healer, either as an alt or as a primary raiding character, for almost four years. In those four years, I have spent a lot of time trying to balance my desire to heal (or not) versus the requests from the people with whom I play.

What I have learned, as a healer:

1) I am my own person and I am not merely a community resource who is obliged to go on thirty runs a day with various guild members.

2) The guild has a need for me in its primary focus (be it instancing, raiding, what-have-you) so that should be my first priority when doing things “for the guild”. This is all that I feel I am morally and ethically obliged to do. If I have joined a guild which is focused on 10-man raiding, then I should save my timers for the guild, raid 10s with them as I can (which should be most of the time) and not feel obliged to do a half-pug 25-man with them. Similarly, if I have joined a guild focused on 25-man raiding, I should not feel obliged to run 10-man raids at all.

3) I should feel free to take a day off, with notice, if I’m feeling burnt out. One day off does wonders for recharging your batteries.

4) Similarly, I should do something that isn’t typically expected of me every so often. If I’m in a 25-man guild, by golly, I should do a 10-man once in a while, if the opportunity crops up and it’s something I might be interested in doing. One day of doing something different with guildies does a lot for getting to know them and letting them get to know you.

I’ve actually been meaning to post about this subject for a while, now. In my previous guild, the one with my RL friend the resto druid, I was basically expected to do 10s. I hate 10s. LORD, do I hate 10s. But back when ICC launched, I was expected to do them. So I did. I got my extra Emblems of Frost, I got some achievements (Storming the Citadel, Boned, I’m on a Boat, I’ve Gone and Made a Mess) and I got abuse from the MT in 10s the same way I got abuse from him in the 25s. So I basically stopped going after about three weeks, maybe four. Healing with my RL friend in a smaller setting just wasn’t enough to offset the dickishness of the MT.

I got myself a Rotface and Festergut kill on 10 one week when the hunter officer was hard up for a healer. She’s an excellent player and a really nice person, so I helped out. But that was it. Here I am, with Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25) and only 6/12 in ICC 10.

So last week, when my new GM asked me if I’d do her a favour and I discovered that the favour had to do with helping out with an ICC 10 “power group”, I was a little hesitant. On the one hand, OH GOOD LORD, not 10s!!! But on the other hand, a “power group” with good players, most of whom I actively like, none of whom I actively dislike (I honestly don’t hate anyone in the guild)… Four hours. Just four hours to help these people get their 10-man achievements for their 10-man drakes.

I agreed to do it.

What was nice about the GM is that she initially wanted to help me get my 10-man achievements as well. I was like “no, no, absolutely not, ignore what I have or what I don’t have. I have the 25-man drake, I don’t need a 10-man.” I really was there just to help out these folks.

So what did we get done?

Heroic Marrowgar, Full House, I’m on a Boat (I actually, amusingly, already had this), heroic Saurfang, heroic Dreamwalker (on the successful attempt, I dropped my stacks not once, but TWICE!), heroic Sindragosa (oh God, I hate that fight!) and heroic Blood Prince Council.

Perhaps not quite as productive as it was expected to be, but heroic Sindragosa alone is a pretty nice accomplishment.

Marrowgar dropped Corrupted Silverplate Leggings. No one wanted them so I snagged them. I already had Lightning-Infused Leggings, which are virtually identical. But I’ve swapped to the CSL because of two reasons.

1) I like wearing plate. I like mail too, but plate is my preference, given equivalent stats. Another 1000 armor is good! I have a 60.77% physical damage reduction versus 59.72% in the mail legs. Maybe that percent damage reduction only comes in handy on some fights like Saurfang or Blood Prince Council and maybe it’s negligible, but it makes me feel good to know that I’m wearing pants that were actually designed for me to wear.

2) And they MATCH! They actually match my armor! Yes, I am occasionally girly about my toons.

So, what is the point of this post?

Well, I have avoided 10s for a long time, in general. But when my GM approached me to see if I’d be willing to fill in for a healer, I decided to do something unusual for me and help out. Most of the “helping” I do in-game is along the lines of answering questions, like that Mor’Ladim is in Raven Hill or that, yes, you still need to hit Unfriendly with the Timbermaw before you can run through their tunnel without aggroing. I didn’t feel a lot of pressure to agree to do so and I figured it would be a good way to get to know some of the guildies better and it would help them all towards getting their drakes.

Did I have a good time? It was okay. I didn’t particularly enjoy having my pathetic magic betray me on what is technically an off-night, but we got the dragon down in the end. What makes it worth it is that, on Tuesday, when most of these people get their drakes, after finishing off a couple more achievements, I’ll know that I’ll have been a part of that.

As someone who is vigilant in making sure I don’t overextend myself, I feel like I did a good job of balancing my guild obligations (25-man raiding), my personal desires to play (not a whole lot this weekend) and being an accessible guild resource. As a bonus, I don’t feel frustrated or burnt out.

End result: it was a good experience, but I don’t know that I’ll do it again and, what’s more, I’m not going to be expected to do so. Win-win situation for me for sure.

Teaching a New Paladin

Kurn / / guild, healing, paladins, raiding, ramblings, shamans

One of the things I like most about my blog is that I have the opportunity to inform people of my playstyle and commonly-accepted best practices for the holy paladin. And I don’t have to sit down with them and go “okay, so you need to do X, Y and Z and then don’t forget about A and B and C”. I don’t have to look at their parses, don’t have to talk to them on vent, don’t even have to look at their armories unless I feel like it.

It’s nice. It’s a little distant and I get to remain sane, but I still get to help out people who genuinely seem to want to learn.

Discouraged by all the failadins out there, my current GM (for whom my adoration clearly knows no bounds) has decided to level up a paladin for the express purposes of going holy.  She recognizes we can really use another holy paladin for certain fights (heroic Sindragosa, heroic Lich King, heroic Halion) and has decided to roll a paladin, level it to 80 and heal for the guild on this new paladin. She’s continuing to recruit, mind you (WTB holy paladin! And a disc priest, actually. Email me at kurn [at] apotheosis-now [dot] com for details if you’re interested.), but she’s working at the paladin.

It’s not like she doesn’t know how to heal; she’s a brilliant resto shaman. (Fadorable, I’d love to see you both in a heal-off in equal gear!) I think that she’s actually the best class to make an easy switch to a holy paladin — she’s already used to not being able to cast and run (beyond the one instant — Riptide for her, Holy Shock for us) and the gear is similar in many ways. I think she’ll make an awesome holy paladin if we don’t find a second by the time she’s raid-ready.

However, I find myself TOTALLY thrilled at the prospect of teaching my GM the ins and outs of holy paladining. Like, THRILLED. I don’t know why, but I am eagerly anticipating it. To the point where I’ve informed her I will be her pocket tank for her heroics when she hits 80. Maybe it’s because I know she’s already an awesome healer and I think she’ll pick up on the nuances quickly. Maybe it’s because I know that I can mold her into another me. Maybe it’s because I HAVE missed some of this hands-on stuff. I used to be the poor schmoe who would talk to the raiders about X, Y and Z issues, for the most part.

I think it’ll be fun to run around as a relatively geared tank. A huge bonus of this guild is that you get offspec gear for free, so I’ve been saving my Emblems of Frost and already have my 264 helm and shoulders for prot. Looking at chest and gloves next and then probably Pillars of Might and maybe the crafted boots too. So really, given my leetness as a tank (ahahahaha) and the fact that I’ll be pretty geared, I’m fairly certain I’ll be able to tank and watch for her to keep up Sacred Shield, Beacon, etc, and offer tips and tricks and still not die, even if things go south.

In other news, the character profile linked up in the sidebar has been updated since I got my 277 T10 helm. 990 haste unbuffed? Why yes, thank you, that’ll do nicely. ;)

Difficult raid.

Kurn / / achievements, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

Last night was a difficult raid. One of our raid leaders couldn’t make it, another couple of officers couldn’t, which somehow left me as not only the sole holy paladin, but the only paladin, period. With the bug about Drums of Forgotten Kings (you can’t gain this buff if you have any existing paladin buff!), we ended up going with Battle Shout and Mana Spring totem, as well as kings.

As the lone paladin, I was also the only one judging and I had to decide if light or wisdom was going to be more beneficial to the group. We tried Dreamwalker (so my judging is very temporary anyways, literally judging to get my buff up and that’s it) and Sindragosa and heroic Putricide (and regular Putricide) and regular Lich King. I elected to judge light in all of those situations, for better or for worse.

Anyways, we had a rough raid but I helped the guild get Portal Jockey (25), which I got two months previously, to the day. We tried a bit of All You Can Eat (25), which is pretty much my most unfavourite achievement ever and I think people got the timing of it down for the tanks to be able to switch okay, but we had people iceblocking others and such.

Then we tried Heroic Putricide. Honestly, not as good as last Thursday, but not bad. Everyone’s getting a lot better with the plague, but people weren’t running away from the gas cloud, people weren’t stacking up for oozes. So we killed him normal mode and then moved up to Lich King.

I don’t know if it was just that it was the end of the raid or what, but we didn’t get him down. Raging Spirits killed three people in the first transition on the first attempt (including me!), Infest got others… We lost our priest on that first attempt and he didn’t come back, so we tried five-healing with me, two resto shammies and two resto druids. Infest is painful in general. :(

So it was a rough night but the thing about it is that I still enjoyed myself and we still accomplished something and practiced for other stuff. No LK down? Meh, we got Portal Jockey instead. No heroic Putricide down? Meh, we got some good practice with the Unbound Plague. No All You Can Eat? Meh, we practiced that and made some progress.

Not sure what I’ll be able to get done around Ye Olde Corner today, since I have some RL stuff to attend to, but we’ll see. Should get a Q&A up later tonight, at any rate. :)

Guilds and Relationships

Kurn / / general, guild, ramblings

By special request, here is a post about guilds and the relationships within them. Thank you, Majik, for the prompt!

A guild is a weird thing. It’s a tag, a chat channel, a list of ranks, a collection of junk (and money) in a bank.

It’s also a collection of people.

There are all kinds of people in a guild. You have your GM (or GMs), your officer(s), your raiders, your friends, your alts and pretty much everything in between.

Even weirder, guilds are different things to different people.

To some, it’s a tight-knit group of people who’ve known each other for half a decade who are single-mindedly going about their declared purpose and vision. To some, it’s a loose collection of people, filled with strangers you’ll never really get to know or talk to before they just stop logging on or decide to leave. To still others, a guild is an online place for real life friends to meet up and chat. To others, it’s a home for bank alts and a repository for all the junk this game requires us to use.

As if those descriptions didn’t make guilds sound weird to begin with, there are hundreds of variations between those types (and other types I didn’t even dare to mention!) that make guilds unique. There’s the business-like guild, where you all log on almost in unison, do your raid/PVP/RP, then log off again, only showing up again some 20ish hours later to repeat the process. There’s the social guild, where everyone knows everyone else and people call out toon names in guild chat akin to people shouting “NORM!” on Cheers.

Today, I thought I’d talk a little bit about some of the relationships within a relatively typical raiding guild. We’re talking about one that isn’t 100% business but isn’t 100% social, has a mix of people who know each other from RL or for many years and new people as well.

So here are some relationships that I’ll examine.

1) The Romantic Relationship

Just about every typical raiding guild has a couple in it. You might not know about it, you might not be privy to that information, but there’s almost always a couple. The couple may pre-date the game or may have been formed once the two participants met in-game, in that very guild.

In general, this is cool. Who am I to judge if someone finds their soulmate through this game? There are stranger ways to meet someone.

It becomes uncool as soon as it starts affecting the guild. This usually happens when one of the participants is a guild leader (officer or GM) and the other is, shall we say, not a very talented player. (For some reason, this is typically a male guild leader and a female player, giving women everywhere in WoW a bad name. :P)

In the hopes of impressing his or her newfound love, the guild leader campaigns extensively to allow the player into raids, using a subpar spec and gear, or might just award them loot or such in a less fair and transparent guild.

Actual example of this:

Guild Master L fell for a new priest we’d recruited, O. O was, back in those days, a shadow priest. You know, back when ALL the priest tier gear was +healing and there was absolutely no second kind of tier? (As an aside, I did some Naxx 60 when I was 70 with my RL friend the resto druid and a friend of hers, who was a shadow priest. The friend rolled on some Tier 3 token and then was like “Uh. Where’s the shadow set?” when he got to the tier vendor. Not joking!)

Considering our old guild had a severe shortage of these elusive things called “healers”, we tried to get O to swap to healing. She refused for a while and then, when she finally caved, she INSISTED to Guild Leader L that she be his healer. Period.

Never you mind that THE BEST PRIEST of that era was in our guild (we miss you, BW!) and the healing lead at the time. Never you mind that this awesome priest had Benediction and some Tier 1. Never you mind that O had mostly the Devout set and was still trying to figure out what the hell Greater Heal did. She wanted to heal L.

When she was not only not allowed to heal L and only L (she was given a group to heal, if I recall correctly) and, worse, was not in his GROUP and, even worse, the resident (female!) warlock WAS in L’s group (hi, imp buff? How are you?), she threw a fit.

She eventually gquit.

L talked her into coming back. Whereupon she promptly threw another fit. And gquit. Again.

The officers as a whole decided we were better off without her.

Which led to L making me the GM and gquitting himself and starting up a new guild with O where they could be their lovey-dovey kissyface selves.

Of course, if you have a couple that doesn’t expect special favours or extra loot or anything of the sort, that’s a lot more workable for the raid and may actually not cause any drama whatsoever. The L/O scenario isn’t even a worst-case situation. L could have easily gkicked everyone, retained control over the guild and reinvited her.

2) The Relative/Pre-Existing Real-Life Friendship

Similar perils exist in this relationship as in the romantic relationship. Relatives and RL friends obviously prefer to play together, most of the time and may make demands upon guild leader friends/relatives.

Actual example of this:

Picture it. Early summer of 2007. When Apotheosis was clearing Karazhan regularly with one group, we started looking at rosters for two groups. Being the kind and benevolent raid leader at the time (God, I miss having Toga be GM) I did what I could to balance the groups to respect pre-existing friendships or relative relations.

My brother and I were at our parents’ cottage one weekend when I’d finally set the rosters.

“What the fuck?!” he exclaimed, “Why the fuck am I stuck in YOUR group and I’m not in Majik’s group with Pal?!”

I sighed. “Because, dear brother, you and Palantir are the only two in the guild who can currently summon Nightbane.”

“So?!”

“So you can’t lock yourselves to the same instance.”

“Oh.”

“Look,” I said, “each group needs 1 MT, 1 OT who can DPS, 3 healers and five DPS. There’s the list of 24ish people. Do what you can to make sure people raid with their relatives or BF/GF or their friends.”

“FINE,” he said, grabbing the papers from me.

Over an hour later he came back to me, threw the papers at me and said “I give up, you win.” The groups he’d come up with were exactly the same ones I’d come up with.

Of course, our preference wasn’t necessarily to raid together. But we put the good of the guild and the happiness of our guildies ahead of our own desires.

In fact, my brother and I don’t always get along when we play together.

Actual example of this:

One night, back in 2006, my brother came over for pizza and WoW together, since we were raiding Molten Core that night. At one point, we were yelling at each other in officer chat, in /raid, over vent AND IRL, all while sitting in the same room. I can only assume it had something to do with people not looting their Ancient Core Hounds, or not stacking up for Lava Surgers, but I could be mistaken.

3) The In-Game Friends

This category of relationships consists of those people who have played with each other in-game enough during some of the formative moments in their WoW lives. I’m talking about those people you met in Zul’Farrak, after you spent forty-five minutes looking for a group and you had two people to replace in that time. Those people who stood at your side at the temple steps or helped you summon Gahz’rilla, chances are, those people became your WoW friends for quite some time. (My ZF buddy, who remained on my friends list for years, was Mikezanze, a great paladin who eventually healed in Apotheosis during BC.) Generally, they’re people you might not be guilded with or see all that often, but you try to run with them if you can.

4) Those Friends With Whom You Run

These are the people in your raid group, generally (or PVP group, arena team, what-have-you) whom you see often in-game and have developed a genuine friendship. You may know their real names, they may know yours, and you feel relatively secure in the knowledge that they’re not going to show up at your front door with an actual axe with which they would smash your face in.

These are the people you chat with on Vent or in-game well after the raid or whatever has ended. These are the people you do stupid things with at 2am. These are the people who make you laugh so hard you feel like you’ve done fifty situps.

Ideally, these are the people for whom we’re all searching, if indeed someone is searching for people as a reason to be in a guild and to play this game.

In my case, these are the people like Majik, Tia, Crypt and Tan and many others from Apotheosis, with a sprinkling from my Bronzebeard guild and maybe even some from my Skywall guild will join these ranks.

These are the people with whom I want to play the game. I don’t want to play in Cataclysm without Majik and Daey, Toga and Shadow, Euphie and Osephala, Fadorable and Kaleri, just to name a few. (NO, Sham, I did not forget you. ;))

There are other relationships to explore; the relationship between a guild master and his or her officers; the relationship between guild officers and their raiders; the relationship between a guild master and his or her raiders.

But those examinations will have to wait until another time. I started writing before I’d really found a point to my post and I found it when I hit point 4. I love this game, yes, but it’s the people who make it worth my time and make the experience something memorable and special.

Feel free to regale me with your tales about the relationships in your guild.

(Oh, and because I was lacking a conclusion for a while, here’s Majik’s suggestion for a conclusion: “conclude that majik is just the greatest thing since sliced bread.”)

(ETA: “Wait. Can you make it conjured sliced bread? Pleeeeeeeease”)

Raiding and progression.

Kurn / / achievements, general, guild, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

It’s kind of a weird situation I’m in, I keep realizing. My guild is working on heroic modes, right? They were 7/12 when I joined and then we got Dreamwalker that week. (All they were missing was a kick-ass holy paladin, obviously!) Then we did some work on Lady Deathwhisper the second week. Didn’t get her down, but worked on refining the strategy.

The third week, last week, we went out and downed Lady Deathwhisper. And Halion (on regular), too. Then we worked on some heroic Sindragosa. I swear to God, it’s my least-favourite fight in the instance, but I know it pretty damn well at this point. ;)

So this week, we got LDW down again and one-shotted heroic Saurfang for the first time. (The first four marks were all on healers, if you can imagine.) We also got Princes down that night and then went on to Halion.

Last night, though, we were short a healer. We’re seriously in need of a priest and another pally would be great. But one of our priests had his wisdom teeth out or something, so he wasn’t going to be on.

We did BQL, Festergut and Rotface all on heroic with five healers.

And then decided to play with heroic Putricide, which the guild’s never seen before.

I actually really love the heroic Putricide encounter. Malleable Goo sucks ass, don’t get me wrong, but I LOVE the heroic Putricide encounter because I happen to be GOOD at dealing with the stupid Unbound Plague.

In the first night of attempts, and not even a full night, mind you, but we’re talking less than two hours, my new guild almost pushed phase 3.

Of course, it’s going to be HILARIOUS to see their reaction to the insane, incomprehensible amounts of raid damage once we hit ~2 stacks on each tank in P3, ahahahaha. I’m really looking forward to the reactions on Vent or in raid chat, because it’s going to be freaking hilarious. The one warning I gave the healers was something along the lines of “if we make it to P3, don’t worry about me. I’m going to Beacon myself and heal the active tank. Just worry about yourselves and the raid.”

We didn’t make it to P3, but I feel as though in less than two hours of work on him, we did as well adjusting to the mechanics as my previous guild did in about six or seven hours.

I really feel good about the raid group. We did a lot of plague swapping without calling it out and had a few (of our 9? 10?) attempts where the plague swapping was, honestly, PERFECT. We were killing Putricide in my last guild (with AVRE still in use!) and not getting plague swaps that clean.

Speaking of, HudMap on this encounter is freaking phenomenal. I kept messing with my settings and accidentally turned the entire thing OFF at one point, but it does a great job of showing you who has the plague and how long they’ve had it for, which is the difficult part of the encounter. According to the Curse page, it’ll show you who you can’t give it to, too (or rather, shouldn’t, due to Plague Sickness), but I didn’t even see that. I didn’t really need it, given my experience with the encounter, but it might be handy in general.

Anyways. I feel like heroic Putricide is within our grasp. We called the raid a little early last night and left him up for Monday, along with Dreamwalker, Sindragosa and LK. If I were running the raid, I’d spend 2.5 hours on Putricide, then roll through heroic Dreamwalker, regular Sindragosa and LK. Even if we don’t get Putricide on heroic this week, I have a good feeling about next reset.

I think the coolest thing about this is that even though I’m not the one getting achievements like Heroic: Storming the Citadel or Heroic: The Plagueworks… it still feels like progression to me. Even though it’s not new to me, even though I’ve wiped for countless hours on all of these encounters before and then stood in screenshots over their bodies. This is awesome forward momentum. This is progression for the guild. I WANT to get these people their heroic kills, I WANT to get these people their drakes. I want to wipe on heroic LK with these people. I want to wipe on heroic Halion with these people.

I think the end of Wrath of the Lich King will be a great time for me and it is SO NICE to feel that way and look forward to raids instead of dreading them.