Category: ramblings

Raiding on Live, Updates

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, guild, healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, raiding, ramblings

I’ve been in my current guild now for seven weeks. Throughout that entire time, I have basically been the only holy paladin. More to the point, all the holy paladin apps have pretty much made me want to cry.

We’re talking people specced into Retribution for support even though they clearly have all intellect gems, we’re talking people with under 500 haste, we’re talking the Drape of the Violet Tower… There has been all KINDS of failure. It’s so varied, but the end result is the same — sucktastic is a generous word for most of the pally apps.

Coming from a more progressed guild with what is more or less a set roster (you are expected to make every single raid for its full duration unless you give notice and even then, it’s frowned upon to take too many nights off) to a guild who hadn’t gotten Dreamwalker healed on heroic yet, with a very large roster, in comparison, has been an interesting experience.

I knew that I could help them with Dreamwalker. I knew that I could help them repeat heroic Saurfang. I knew that I could help them with Lady Deathwhisper. God knows I’ve wiped enough to Putricide and Sindragosa that I can certainly offer my experience and brain to the raid leaders.

On the first reset, bam, Dreamwalker healed to full. We’ve done her on heroic every week since except for when we got them Portal Jockey, I think. (I say “them” not to set myself apart from the rest of my raid group but rather because I already had it, as well as all the other required achievements for my 25-man drake.) That’s satisfying.

I’ve also been a key part for heroic Saurfang kills, taking on the first two ranged marks, for the most part.

I helped them to retool the Deathwhisper strat to one that worked twice before people seemed to stop caring about adds and Vengeful Shades. (Which is roundabout the time we lost the one decent healing priest we had, who wasn’t all that decent, but hey, Renewed Hope and Mass Dispel are nothing to sneeze at.)

It’s been a really good experience for me, learning how to integrate myself into this team that hasn’t had a single decent holy paladin for months. I cannot imagine how they did half of what they did without a holy paladin, much less two.

It’s been pretty clear to the leadership, I think, that we need a second holy paladin. Certainly my GM has been recruiting like crazy and levelling her pally alt with the intention to switch over if we can’t find someone. I mean hell, I’m good, but I’m not a miracle worker. I can’t imagine really working well on heroic Sindragosa without a second holy paladin.

We’ve done a LOT of heroic Sindragosa attempts to try to get us used to the mechanics, if nothing else. We’ve had a lot of practice on things like Frost Bombs and Ice Tombs and Unchained Magic (I think I may be the person currently in the guild who has spent the most amount of time in her life with her pathetic magic betraying her.). This is good stuff, I’m GLAD we usually take a few whacks at her on heroic to make sure people understand the mechanics. You never know when you’ll get lucky on an attempt, either.

Still, we were definitely lacking a holy paladin and really, a decent discipline priest. We don’t even have a holy priest right now and just pulled a disc priest app in this week (who is doing AWESOMELY and we’ve only raided with him once!).

Last week, we brought in a holy paladin app, who learned of my guild’s need for a holy paladin through this very blog.

I was totally excited… until I realized his internet was lame, meaning that he couldn’t stay connected through Marrowgar. He got disconnected and couldn’t return and we didn’t see him again until the weekend and he explained his internet issues. Thankfully, the internet issues turned out to be something that was more or less temporary and not even his fault. We raided together on Monday for a little bit on heroic Putricide until the battlegroup died on us and it wasn’t enough for me to really make any kind of judgement on how this guy was doing.

I have to say now, after raiding with him for just over three hours on Wednesday night (we called it early after getting Halion down), this guy is the real deal.

We got heroic Lady Deathwhisper down for the first time in a month. The pally app ate one Vengeful Shade at the end of our first (of two) attempts and that’s it. He cleansed at least adequately, used cooldowns appropriately and healed like mad, which is what you need to do on LDW.

And then, after way too long, I got to heal Saurfang with another holy paladin. I asked the healing lead if he would mind if the two pallies took care of the first four marks and so when he gave out assignments, he told the other pally that I’d explain to him what it was we would do. It was spectacular. The first attempt was hilarious, actually. The first mark got killed by a blood beast and then our healing lead rezzed him. Whoops.

Our mulligan out of the way, we got ourselves organized and blasted through Saurfang in just over four minutes, with only five marks, which is a first for us, I believe. I think we usually get six.

It was awesome; the pallies took care of the marks, there was great uptime on beacon and judgements of the pure… We both used BOP on casters pre-first mark, he even found time to hit DS/DS at the Frenzy and also bopped one of his marks again. Win all around.

To Blood Wing, where I may throttle most of my fellow raiders if I get thrown across the room on Council again. Seriously. The guild’s major flaw (every guild has one, IMHO) is that they are very bad at range issues. That means that we get people hurled across the room due to Empowered Shock Vortex, we occasionally get people chaining Ice Tombs on Sindragosa, people dying to Bloodbolt Splash on BQL. You know. That kind of stuff.

Still, craziness ensued and we WON. What happened?

The Keleseth tank died. He didn’t have enough shadow orbs on him and had literally 98 stacks of Shadow Prison on him, plus Keleseth was basically wailing on him… so the Valanar tank picked him up — and was one-shotted by an empowered shadow lance or something. This is bad. That was my tank who picked him up and then died. I hate losing my tanks. So I did what any good paladin did, I swapped to the last tank and healed as best I could. I was low on mana, Divine Plea was always on cooldown… But the pally app, whose tank it was, had no issues and basically was the person responsible (well, along with the tank) for bringing the Council down.

Way impressive.

Off to BQL where the app unfortunately got penned in by some DPS and died to a Bloodbolt Splash (see? That was totally foreshadowing up there!) but got a battle rez and still managed to get his DS/DS and Aura Mastery off for the second fear.

Add to that the fact that he LISTENS with regards to beacon/shield/judgement/aura/blessing assignments… Uses his cooldowns…

<3

As if I didn’t love raiding with this group before, I now get to raid with them plus someone who obviously has a similar mindset to me when it comes to holy paladin healing. It’s pretty glorious and, assuming his internet issues are more or less resolved, it’s going to be a huge benefit to the guild to have him available.

Also, I didn’t mention this last week, but I FINALLY picked up Heroic Marrowgar’s Frigid Eye. Here’s my chardev link which is also linked in the top-right box here on my website and that’s updated as soon as I get a new piece of gear. Check the updated date to see if I’ve gotten any new loot lately. :)

I should get back to beta and try to get through to level 83. Talents are seriously busted this build, though. I can’t learn Art of War in my ret spec no matter what I try. I mean, if I have the talent preview on, I can click three times on it and pick up my other spells, but because it won’t learn Art of War, I cannot get more than 19 talent points in ret that way. I had to go learn Pursuit of Justice and 1/2 Eye for an Eye or something in order for my talents to “stick”. If I had to guess, I’d say things are more broken today than they were yesterday. Alas, such are the highs and the lows of beta. :)

Beta Screenshots

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

Okay folks, I have almost 700 screenshots from beta up at my gallery:

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

They’ve been reorganized:

Madrana – This gallery is my paladin questing or being in instances or screenshotting cast times/mana costs/talent trees and the like.

Kurnmogh – same as for Madrana, just on my hunter.

The other stuff is mostly random and is very little actual content, just a few profession things, a couple random screenshots taken on my shaman.

Planned for today (Wednesday, August 4th):

A look at instances, specifically those “OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL” moments that you will doubtlessly encounter in your journeys through Throne of the Tides, Blackrock Caverns and The Stonecore.

Obviously, this look at the first three dungeons available to us will be from my perspective of a holy paladin, but I hope for the post to be useful to all players. Understanding various mechanics is pretty key.

The one thing everything shares in common is what I consider to be the basic rule of World of Warcraft:

IF THE FLOOR CHANGES COLOUR, GTFO.

Just as a brief example, I was in The Stonecore on Tuesday and noticed something swirling at my feet. I stopped casting and strafed the hell out of there before a puddle of lava appeared.

You can see the gallery shot of that here.

Anyways, that’s what’s coming up.

Also, I know, I know, I’ve been lax at talking about “current content”. I will definitely get a new Holy How-To up in the next week or so, once the beta-mania has calmed down. My goal is to get Madrana to 83 ASAP (I’m already a quarter of the way through 82) so I can play with Healing Hands and report back on that.  Then I’ll feel more able to talk about Wrath content and such.

In the meantime, if you have questions concerning holy paladins or perhaps instance questions, drop a comment and I’ll try to respond to them either in the comment or in my upcoming post. :)

Welcome to everyone from World of Raids, by the way! Hope you’ll stick around. :)

On a rainy Tuesday afternoon…

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, ramblings

Okay, the Q&A is on indefinite hiatus until such time that people start actually using the Internet again. Over two weeks, only 81 keywords brought people here and the vast majority of them are things I’ve already covered (heroic Putricide, Ruby Sanctum, Toravon…).

So on the agenda for today, uploading more beta screenshots, primarily. Maybe another post about beta. And also responding to comments and such.

I leave you with some videos I’ve made over the last few days, all from the beta.

First: the most annoying quest so far in Beta: Save the Wee Animals.

Next: Baron Geddon makes an appearance in Hyjal.

An overview of some paladin heals, in case you missed it:

How to corpse run back to Blackrock Caverns:

Pally Healing in Cataclysm, Firsthand

Kurn / / beta, cataclysm, facepalm, healing, paladins, ramblings

Okay, time for a post that talks not only about stuff I’ve done, but allows me to explain a few things about Cataclysm holy paladin healing in a way that might actually be useful to others entering beta and perhaps even useful in 4.0 itself.

I’ve made reference in a lot of past Holy How-To Guides about “paladin instincts”.

While they are very important to hone and to make use of in Wrath content, you can basically throw the book out the window when it comes to Cataclysm dungeons. Seriously, get used to the idea that we will, in all likelihood, completely change how we heal. Entirely.

I made a huge mistake Friday night/Saturday when I first got into beta. I remembered what Blizzard said about Holy Light being our go-to spell. Combined with the low cost at level 80 (263 mana without the Libram of Renewal, 150 mana with), despite its 3s cast time, I was making use of it often, not even paying attention to various numbers floating over people’s heads.

In my defense, I don’t usually play with scrolling combat text (Blizzard’s or anyone else’s, really) on my paladin. I’ve got Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text that’ll show me mana returns and damage I’ve done (judgement hits/misses, the occasional Holy Wrath or Hammer of Wrath) but that’s it. So I have to chalk it up to sleep deprivation and relying on old paladin habits when I tell you that I was very wrong to continue using Holy Light.

Without Speed of Light active and Judgements of the Pure, it’s foolish to cast Holy Light when you need to heal someone. The heal just isn’t going to land in time and, even if it does, it’s not going to heal for very much. Thus, it requires multiple casts. I have 1026 haste and, especially once you ding (so the haste needed per percent changes drastically), that’s STILL not enough for Holy Light to be a heal you want to use all that regularly, because you just plain do not have the throughput needed.

Of course, it’s exceptionally cheap. Even after swapping the Libram of Renewal out for the Libram of Veracity and now, the Libram of Blinding Light (yes, I really AM using Holy Shock enough that this makes sense! I still do not recommend you pick it up unless you have Emblems of Frost to waste, because who knows what Cataclysm librams will be like?) and gaining a level (which seems to have upgraded my spells in cost and potency?), it’s still cheap. And yet, there is an undeniable truth here:

Using Holy Light is bad.

What’s more, using Flash of Light is bad, since it’s terribly expensive. And so’s using Divine Light. Geez, what are we supposed to USE? If Holy Light is too long a cast and not powerful enough to even rival something like Holy Shock or Flash of Light, but HS has a cooldown and FoL is stupidly expensive, what do we do?

I’ve been using a lot of Divine Light. It’s the one that feels most like current Holy Light does — about the same output, about the same cast time, even about the same mana cost. It’s expensive, so I’m using Divine Plea more than I indicated I was earlier.

I’m not having a LOT of mana problems, but if the group isn’t using CC much (or at all), someone’s going to die because I just can’t keep up with the incoming damage. Taking 20 stacks of Lacerate from certain naga in Throne of the Tides is almost certainly going to mean a death; either the tank will die or, if I can get a BOP off, followed by a Hand of Freedom (to wipe off the BOP — only one Hand can be active on a target, per paladin), a DPS may die.

There’s a lot of incoming damage and I don’t imagine it’ll be THAT much easier on any healer to keep up. For me, that’s both mana-wise and GCD-wise. I’m really looking forward to Healing Hands, although that’s going to be an expensive spell with a cooldown, too. Hopefully, it’ll heal more than Light of Dawn, though. Don’t get me wrong, Light of Dawn is the coolest new spell we have thus far, but it’s healing people for like, 4k.

I’m sorry, have you SEEN the health pools? The sheer amounts of stamina everywhere? Without buffs, I’m at about 35k health in my holy gear. 4k to a maximum of 4 people (since it doesn’t hit you as well) every 30 seconds is less than a drop in the bucket. It’s sort of like a molecule of water in a small lake. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. Let’s say a large pond.

I also have to admit that without my pretty little clcbpt addon (that shows timers for my Beacon, my Judgement, my Sacred Shield and my Flash of Light hot), I’m sucking at keeping my Judgement up. That means I’m sucking at keeping Judgements of the Pure up. In my defense, though, there’s very rarely TIME when I can go “oh look, I have a free global — judge!”. It’s very much “OH GOD TANK IS GOING TO DIE OH THANK YOU SWEET JESUS OH NO WHAT IS THAT IDIOT DPS—” followed by a lot of muscle-memory healing.

Which is another thing that’s screwing me up. Thumb-clicking on the party frame does nothing — it does not cast Holy Shock on someone. :P Granted, when I raided on live tonight (Monday), I kept hitting my ` key to cast Light of Dawn and kept hitting G for Word of Glory, so maybe just practice makes perfect, eh?

Kurn, you’re rambling. How the hell am I supposed to heal in Cataclysm, or at least the beta?

Right. Sorry.

My advice:

– Use Divine Light. Make use of Holy Shock a LOT. Watch for your stacks of Holy Power, make use of Word of Glory.

– Use your Beacon. I still beacon the tank but this really might not be efficient. Maybe I should be beaconing myself. I still worry about leaving the tank alone for more than one GCD without beacon on them, though.

– When Infusion of Light procs, you currently don’t get a Holy Light haste. It does reduce the cast time of Flash of Light by 1.5 seconds, like it does on live.  And you’re almost always critting on Holy Shock. On this Throne of the Tides run that I actually finished, I had a 76% crit chance on Holy Shock, judging from the parse. Anyways, I was constantly using the instant FoL + 3-stack Holy Power Word of Glory. WoG not as often as I should have, but if I was moving, I was using it, usually on the tank, so that I could get more Holy Power charges.

– Glyph for Holy Shock. No, really.

– Use your cooldowns. Seriously. BOP, Hand of Sacrifice, Hand of Salvation. USE THEM. Use Divine Shield, Divine Sacrifice and Divine Protection. Use every spell at your disposal.

That’s basically the advice I have for you guys and what I plan on doing myself; very little Holy Light casting, lots of Divine Light casting, LOTS of Holy Shocking.

Here’s the parse, such as it is. Remember that some spells aren’t found because they don’t exist on live yet and Seals of Insight has the same spell ID as Seal of Light (so I might try glyphing for it and see if that still works!) and obviously, there’s no boss/trash/etc breakdowns because, well, none of this is live, yet. Most of the spells are available at cata.wowhead.com, though.

Also, Protien only took so much damage because of a debuff from the last boss. At the end, he had something like 132 stacks of this crap on him and was healing himself through it while DPSing the last boss. Hilarious.

Anyways, off to go try to get Madrana to level 82. I want 83 badly so I can test Healing Hands.

I’m questing as ret, by the way. I amuse myself with my own lameness at melee DPS.

Kurn's Cataclysmic Adventures 2

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

I spent a lot less time in beta today than I did on Friday night into the wee (and then large) hours of Saturday.

After dealing with that pesky “real-life” thing, I came back to beta and decided to try out that whole “guild” thing. ;)

Apotheosis was born on Lost Isles (US/PVE) this afternoon, with much thanks to four (no longer nine) random people who were kind enough to sign my charter.

I’m not actively recruiting random people, but I did tweet about it. Before I knew it, the awesomesauce Kody from WorldOfRaids (aka, the super awesome person from Curse who extended me a beta invite) was whispering me.

Thus, Kody and I embarked upon a journey, the likes of which have probably never quite been seen before and may never be seen again. At least, I kind of hope this journey won’t be seen again.

Guilds are totally broken in beta. Which is okay. It’s beta. It’s supposed to be broken. I get it.

But, among the issues:

– Guild masters have no permissions, thus their ability to do things (officer chat, invite, etc) is severely limited.

– Promotions (and probably demotions) aren’t saved.

– New ranks don’t work properly.

I’ve got a low-level Worgen as GM of Apotheosis at the moment and this is the result of a bug that meant Kurn couldn’t speak or read guild chat.

The only way to promote Kurn and Madrana was to make each of them GM in turn and then hand it back, since this action, by default, places a GM who gives GM to someone else in the spot right below the GM in the guild ranks.

Kody was extremely patient with me as I hopped over around all three toons and gave him GM and asked him to ginvite me and give me GM back and such.

On the plus side, Apotheosis has Fast Track! I’m not randomly inviting the world at large, but if you read this little old blog and have an Alliance toon on Lost Isles, let me know, either in-game at Kurnmogh or Madrana (or Kurnbank) or via twitter, and I’d be happy to extend you an invite.

Okay, so that was the guild excitement. On to instances…

Continue reading “Kurn's Cataclysmic Adventures 2”

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.