Hope everyone had a good Easter or a good Sunday, whichever applies to you. ;)
For myself, brunch with the family, followed by some horrible 3v3 arenas, followed by a nap, followed by a raid. We had cancelled on Thursday — people were sick, unable to make it, I had something come up… so we cancelled and reconvened tonight.
Heroic Blood Prince Council down.
Heroic Blood Queen Lana’thel down.
Heroic Festergut still wiped the floor with us.
Princes was actually pretty easy. “Don’t move,” is basically the key to the fight, although moving when necessary is also important. ;) Lana’thel was intense. We just clipped enrage, she killed both tanks and then we won. Princes only took two tries and BQL took three.
I don’t understand the issues behind Fester. It’s just all kinds of bad. The malleable goo is beaning people, the tanks are dying, the range are dying and basically, no one is living past two minutes or so. Time to go through the logs and make notes about healers, goo, assignments and the like. Hooray death logs?
And in other news, my brother, on his level 47 (?) paladin is about 8 bunny ears from being the Noble. This involved me running around the damn world with him, while on my mage, to port him from place to place and usually to save his fool ass from mobs trying to rip him apart. Screw Noblegarden; I did it once on Kurn and that was more than enough for me. And my brother is similarly unimpressed with the amount of farming of chocolates he had to do.
Anyways. Logs!
ETA: Oh God, the logs make me want to cry. :( People not casting, ranged not getting any heals, people ignoring Vile Gas entirely… GAH.
So we went into ICC tonight and attempted five different hard mode fights.
1) Lord Marrowgar. Coldflame lasts longer, bone spikes during bonestorm… I got impaled by a spike during a bonestorm AND Marrowgar came whirling my way and I died. So did another healer. And another healer had already died.
But then Marrowgar died, so all was well!
Heroic modes Attempted/Succeeded: 1/1
2) Gunship Battle. Rockets knock you back 7 yards and hit for more damage. Mages have more health. The Horde ship (or Alliance, if you’re Horde) has more health.
Okay, this was still facerollingly easy.
Heroic modes Attempted/Succeeded: 2/2
3) Deathbringer Saurfang. Has more health, likely to get more Marks of the Fallen Champion. Adds are super fast and annoying and debuff the whole raid to 20% movement speed. Will one-shot anything but a tank.
Ow, my face. We tried three times and got up to 5 Marks of the Fallen Champion and were completely unprepared for the amount of raid damage taken and the amount of blood power he generates.
Then we switched it back to normal and killed his ass.
Heroic modes Attempted/Succeeded: 2/3
4) Rotface. The addition of Vile Gas complicates things, requiring some people to remain at range. The ooze on the ground now slows/roots you. The infection now reduces healing done by 75%, not 50%.
It actually seemed to go by faster than normal mode.
Heroic modes Attempted/Succeeded: 3/4
5) Festergut. Okay, moving all the healers at once to avoid Malleable Goo is dumb and leads to tank death. Speaking of tank death, HOLY TANK DAMAGE, BATMAN.
In 1.5 seconds:
[22:24:49.497] Festergut hits MT 27196 (A: 2353)
[22:24:49.733] Madrana Holy Light MT +0 (O: 15383) (clearly this is lag on my part)
[22:24:50.476] Festergut Gastric Bloat MT 11250 (R: 1523)
[22:24:50.598] Festergut hits MT 27334
[22:24:51.039] Festergut Gaseous Blight MT 1391 (R: 251)
[22:24:51.269] MT dies
So that’s 27k + 11k + 27k = 65k damage in 1 second. Plus another 1k damage half a second later. Yikes.
He’s still up, so we’ll go back tonight and maybe try again.
Heroic modes Attempted/Succeeded: 3/4.5 ;)
My poll over there on the right (on the main blog page) asks you what you think about heroic modes. Vote (or not) and comment here (or not), but I think it would be neat to get a discussion going about heroic modes/dungeons/raids.
No, I will not be writing any kind of jokey post. And no, I promise, this post is not an April Fool’s post, either.
No, I will not comment on the silly people who believe whatever it is Blizzard will put up this year (although, let me tell you, I totally bought into the BT attunement for a good five minutes, until I finished reading it all, by which point I was doubled over in laughter).
Basically, this post is to let you know that there’s going to be a LOT of misinformation across the board popping up, starting today and probably going through ’till Hawaii goes through the last hour of April 1. Don’t believe anything you read, from people quitting blogging or guilds merging or anything of the sort.
So, if it’s okay with you, I’ll just go sit over here and shake my head at all the gullible people believing stuff over the next day or so and stay out of the fray of insanity. Instead, I’ll just freak out about the fact that we’re going to be doing ICC25 hard modes and wondering what I ever did to Blizzard that deserves me getting to deal with Malleable Goo on Festergut and Vile Gas on Rotface in heroic modes.
I really relish my Tuesdays off. I get to watch Lost and the newly-returned V and get to do WoW stuff that *I* want to do. Which includes writing on the ol’ blog. :)
1) best way to heal heroic falric with a shammy
Well, I don’t know if it’s the best way, but this is how I do it.
The real problem with Falric is the Defiling Horror for two reasons. The first is because it’s a horror effect, so Tremor Totem does nothing. The second is because everyone takes 16k damage. So what I do is endeavour to keep everyone topped up as close to max as possible before he casts the horror.
To recover from it, I cast Riptide on the tank and, using my hasted Healing Waves from Tidal Waves, I heal myself and a caster. Then I’ll Chain Heal off the Riptided tank, which will hopefully hit the tank and 2 melee. Then I’ll RT/HW anyone else who still needs health. Total time, with my crappy haste (400 haste + Wrath of Air) is about 8-9 seconds. I usually have enough time to get everyone to full, or close to it.
Apart from that, try to stay close together and bunched up for Chain Heal to get the maximum use possible from it.
2) choker of filthy diamonds or soulcleave pendant
Choker of Filthy Diamonds has more haste and mp5. Soulcleave Pendant has more crit. I definitely prefer the Choker for a holy paladin or possibly a resto shammy and likely a resto druid, since the nerf to Gift of the Earthmother, leaving the crit to priests. Maybe? I’m not sure how crit is for a holy priest these days, but I know crit is still awesome for a disc priest.
However, the Choker is off Rotface and the Pendant is off Saurfang. Really depends how far you’re getting into 10-man ICC, I think.
3) divine plea timer
Okay, I’m assuming you want a timer to tell you when Divine Plea is back up. For this, and any other cooldowns, I use OmniCC. It was my first-ever addon, as I recall. And it’s the one addon I cannot play without.
If you were looking for a timer to tell you how much of the 15 seconds your Divine Plea is still up for and such, I recommend Power Auras Classic to monitor if the buff is active on you or not.
4) hos divine shield holy macro wow
I haven’t actually tested this out, but this ought to work:
/cast Divine Shield
/cast [@target] Hand of Sacrifice
/raid Hand of Sacrifice is up!
/in 10 /raid Hand of Sacrifice is done!
That’s four lines and should work with two button clicks or presses. I highly recommend that your shield come FIRST in the macro, lest you be ruined in the face by whatever insane damage is hitting your target. Also, your @target could be @focus as well or even this:
[@mouseover,help,nodead]
5) paladin group buffs how to
Oof. Okay. The first thing to know here is what buffs other classes give that are equivalent.
Warriors: Battle Shout is equivalent to unimproved Blessing of Might. Improved Blessing of Might (2/2) requires the warrior to have 5/5 Commanding Presence to be equivalent. That’s in the third tier of the Fury tree. This is not part of a typical warrior build, as I understand it.
Shamans: Mana Spring Totem is equivalent to unimproved Blessing of Wisdom. Improved Blessing of Wisdom (2/2) requires the shaman to have 3/3 Restorative Totems which is the fourth tier of the Restoration tree. However, it leads to Mana Tide Totem which virtually all restoration shammies take.
This is the general order that I, personally, recommend for pally buffs:
Death Knights (DPS): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings
Death Knights (tank): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might
Druids (bear): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might
Druids (kitty): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings
Druids (moonkin): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Druids (trees): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Hunters (survival/marks): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might, Blessing of Wisdom
Hunters (BM): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Mages: Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Paladins (prot): Blessing of Sanctuary, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might, Blessing of Wisdom
Paladins (ret): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Paladins (holy): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Priests: Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Rogues: Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings
Shaman (enhancement): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Shaman (elemental/resto): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Warlocks: Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Warriors: Blessings of Kings, Blessing of Might
Of course, if you have a warrior in the group, it’s likely more beneficial to have them pop Battle Shout and you do kings than it is for no kings and your might, even if it’s improved. Same deal for wisdom and mana spring.
Alternately, you can buff everyone with Drums of Forgotten Kings and then give physical DPS might and healers and casters wisdom.
6) dk tanking halls of reflection
Note: I am not a death knight, nor am I a great tank. However, if you’re going to do the LOS method on Falric and Marwyn, just drop Death and Decay and hide around the corner. For any casters or the riflemen, Death Grip is great. For the chase scene, D&D is still awesome to use and you’ll want to Death Grip or Strangulate the Witch Doctors to bring them close if they’re a little far out. Blow your cooldowns when you can, saving Army of the Nub Dead for the second spawn of adds at the fourth wall on the chase scene.
Hit boss. Don’t touch Frozen Orbs unless there are basically no ranged. Collect loot.
9) shammy tanking gear 3.3
Okay. You can equip a shield. This does not make you a tank. There is no mail gear out there at level 80 that has any kind of defense on it and very little leather, due to the druid changes. You would basically have to stack resilience. The major problem with shaman tanking, apart from the fact that you’re squishy as all get-out, is that a key to tanking is avoidance, like dodging, blocking and parrying. Your parry talent, Spirit Weapons, also reduces threat. Bad combo.
I don’t advise shaman tanking unless you’re doing it for fun with friends OR your tank on Lady Malande on the Illidari Council in Black Temple DROPS and your resident enhancement shaman thinks quickly, throws on a shield, pops Shamanistic Rage causing your raid leader to shout out over vent “ALL HEALS TO DUPER, ALL HEALS TO DUPER!”, which never had been heard before and never would be heard again. Ever. ;)
10) soul shriek aggro reset
Nope, there’s no aggro reset associated with Soul Shriek, as far as I can tell. It IS, however, a silence. Make sure someone is assigned to cleanse this magic effect off your tanks!
So, given that, you know, everything in ICC was dead, we headed to Trial of the Grand Crusader 25 tonight. We had yet to down Anub’arak on heroic 25m and so we decided to go in there tonight. With 2 new healer apps and two of the other healers had never been to TOC/TOGC with us before.
Tonight involved a LOT of typing to healers. Yikes.
Northrend Beasts – ugly. At least two people died to TRAMPLE. Seriously. New people, two apps (not the healers) so I don’t know if they were expecting a speed buff or something.
Lord Jaraxxus – peachy keen, healers did great, no one got silenced by the kiss, no one blew up the raid because incinerate flesh hadn’t been healed. And, ta-DAH! Solace of the Defeated! Kind of insane that I got it, really. I guess most other healing classes have latched on to spellpower ones out of ICC or from the badge vendor. Geez. I still have my Pandora’s Plea, though. I wiped to Mimiron for WAY too long to just throw that crap away, not to mention the something like 9 or 10 or 15 weeks or HOWEVER long it was that it took me to get the drop.
Faction Champs – OUCH, they still burst people down FAST. But we won.
Twin Val’kyrs – got them down in 3 phases. Dark Vortex and both shields. No Light Vortex stupidity for us, YAY!
And so we faced Anub’arak with 50 attempts left.
13 attempts later, we called the raid and we are going back to our long kiting method.
Still, I got to try out a new holy pally app, a new holy priest app and got to get our regular holy priest to go disc and try that out for a bit. I think he secretly likes being disc but he likes his numbers a lot as holy. But he’s always eager to go disc. I really do like that particular healer a lot. He’s very solid.
—
In other news, I got a comment today from Chase Christian asking if I wore a 4pc T10 gear set to my LK kill.
The answer is no, I wore 2pc T10 (helm and shoulders), Holiday’s Grace, the 245 healer/caster cloak off Onyxia (for real), Rot-Resistant Breastplate, Crypt Keeper’s Bracers, Unclean Surgical Gloves, Lich Killer’s Lanyard, Legplates of Failing Light, Earthsoul Boots, Ashen Band of Endless Wisdom, Marrowgar’s Frigid Eye, Pandora’s Plea, Talisman of Resurgence, Misery’s End, Bulwark of Smouldering Steel and the Libram of Renewal.
I have my tier chest, gloves and now legs so that I can have a bit of wiggle room when it comes to upgrading my gear to 277 level. Right now, I use my T10 chest and gloves as part of my spellpower set, which I only really use for Dreamwalker healing at this point. But I do have the 264s of all those pieces and am ready to upgrade them at any time. ;)
—
Tomorrow, though, IS a day off. I’m really looking forward to it, too. Whew.
1) Emerald Vigor now has a combat log entry!!! Rejoice, readers of parses!
2) As you may be able to tell from my recent achievements, I have started doing arenas with Majik and my brother. I did some 2s with Maj yesterday, will do some 2s with my brother today, then the three of us will do some 3s today. All I have to say is that I hate warlocks more now than I ever did in BC. But Majik’s new unholy spec works very nicely to give us the burst we need and my PVE spec is actually not half bad for arenas. I decided to get on the arena bandwagon with the guys because I did a VOA25 and my Wrathful legs dropped… and I won them. Heh. With some honor and some emblems of triumph, combined with other drops I’d previously gotten, I still have crappy resilience, but it’s better than none at all. I don’t feel like what priests must feel they’re wearing. And we actually won 7 (and lost 7), most of the wins coming after Majik switched specs.
3) Got bitten last night on Blood Queen, which was just WEIRD. It was in the last minute of the fight, though, so I didn’t have to bite anyone. I think someone screwed up significantly for me to get bitten. But hey, it got me my achievement!
4) My brother has applied to a casual raiding guild and he did ICC10 for the first (real) time last night. (He’d previously gone in and attempted Festergut on a pug a couple of times and done a couple rep runs.) I looked at his parse and he didn’t do too badly at all. He’s a good player, don’t get me wrong — this isn’t surprising or anything. But it seems so weird that he’s a HUNTER. My brother has only ever been a resto druid or a rogue in raids. He was very good at what he did. He’s very good at what he’s doing now, too. I’m kind of proud of the kid. I’m less proud of the fact that I explained all the fights to him in detail, rather than have him go to tankspot.com, mind you. ;)
5) Emerald Vigor! Combat log entry!!! YAY! :D
More later, including the insanity that was Ignis the Furnace Master Must Die! I just wanted to share those bits.
The time between about 5am and 7:30am on a Saturday morning is NOT the time for you to attempt to do any kind of random runs whatsoever.
4 (!) attempts at lowbie runs as a healer, 1 attempt at a random heroic as a DPS.
Results, 0 dungeons completed.
1) An SM Armory run where the tank was AFK to begin with for 8 minutes, then ran in, pulled the whole hallway, did NOT hit Consecration, got stunned and as I hit Dispel Magic for the stun, promptly let my face get eaten. Then the died, because I was dead. And they left group. So I did, too.
2) An SM Armory run, in progress, where I zone in and promptly see “healz hurry!” and see that a warrior, who is out of range on my Grid, is at half health. I run into the courtyard and aggro three mobs, because they hadn’t cleared the courtyard, nor informed me of such. Had I not been disc, I would have died instantly. Instead, I drag them to the group on the other side of the courtyard and down two hallways. The warrior promptly laughs at me and says “ur a girl thot ud b smarter then pullin stuff”.
… I respond with “I’m sorry, would you like me to leave?”
“jokin”
Uhuh. I believe you.
Two pulls later, the warlock soulstones the tank. Trying to be somewhat helpful, I mention that if they’re going to SS anyone, they ought to SS the healer.
“but hes runnin in and almost dyin”
“Actually, he’s not, because I’m healing him. And I’m getting aggro from mobs, because he’s not hitting them all and I wear cloth, so it really should be a healer who gets a soulstone.” Note that I’m not ACTUALLY asking for a soulstone. I’m just trying to point out the flaw in the logic.
“lol i where cloth too!!”
I just sigh to myself and we keep going. We get to a hallway and the tank just groups up the melee and starts hitting them, etc. Does he even TOUCH the caster? No. So I sigh again and shield the tank, and then myself, and the caster starts throwing fireballs at me.
“Aggro,” I say.
The tank does nothing.
“I have aggro from that caster,” I say.
Nothing.
“THE CASTER IS HITTING ME,” I say.
Then the tank laughs at me and goes to get it. “lol y did u pull it???” he says.
“I didn’t pull it, you didn’t hit it. Can you please be sure to hit all the mobs in the area?”
“lol i did” comes the reply. “lol ud think the healer wuld b smarter then a grade 3er.”
I’m about to go “PARDON?” when he does this:
“<— thats me!”
… my tank was in Grade 3?
So I let them pull the entire hallway down from us and then I left. Because I’m not going to be insulted by an idiot in Grade 3, who needs to l2tank anyways. My parting words were:
“Yep. I’m smarter than someone in Grade 3. I’m smart enough to leave.”
3) A Razorfen Downs group, my first time in the instance ever, where the tank and a warlock were both ghosts and trying to FIND the instance, for about 7 minutes. The rogue then PUTS ME ON FOLLOW and afks. Seriously. He just stands there, following me. And none of us can kick him because the 15 minutes aren’t up. The tank leaves, I leave. Very weird.
4) Back to SM Armory. At least I’ve hit 35 by virtue of the last several attempted runs. “big pullz btw” says the paladin tank and charges down the hall. It was an exact duplicate of the first attempt at a random run I’d had, except this time, I didn’t touch the tank and let him die. Then the mage tries to “tank” and frost novas everything and blinks away and is like “priest run!!!”
Heroic Halls of Reflection. I dread that loading screen as much as I do the Oculus, I swear. We do the first waves just fine. Second set of waves was okay. We’re on the second boss. And then I have aggro. WTF? Oh. THE TANK IS DEAD. Why is the tank dead? BECAUSE HE STOOD IN THE WELL OF CORRUPTION and had something like 8 stacks of it on him. Way to be, Mr. Tank. Way to be.
We wipe. I leave the group.
/FACEPALM.
I hereby propose “WoW Role School”. This should be an in-game set of instances designed to help teach tanks, healers and DPS how to play their roles. I’m not talking about micromanaging which spells and abilities are used (except things like Frost Presence, Righteous Fury, Defensive Stance, Bear form) but showing people what their role truly is in a group setting.
You get, say, five of them as you level up through to 60 or so. Here’s an example of what a protection paladin would go through.
1) Level 15 (when you can queue for the LFG tool): Depending on your class/spec, you are shown how to heal, DPS or tank by virtue of a 15 minute mock dungeon run with tips. The instance would start up and you’d be given a quest. For example:
“You appear to be putting your talent points into the Protection tree, young paladin. Would you like to learn how to hold the attention of hostile creatures while your group kills them and you are healed?
– Yes, I would like to learn to tank
– No, I would prefer to learn to heal
– No, I would prefer to learn to do damage”
And then the quest would be accepted. “Hold the attention of 5 separate creatures from your fellow party members.” And they would be NPCs, NOT the morons you get in LFG, so you’d get the group focus firing, etc. Would teach about Righteous Defense.
2) Level 25 – same deal, now teaches the use of Righteous Fury, Hand of Reckoning and Consecration, for example
3) Level 35 – more elaborate pulls, LOS, casters, runners
4) Level 45 – BoSanc, some other class skills, etc
5) Level 55 – Mock up of Strat UD, need to clear down to and kill Anub’Rekhan.
And then, if you queued up for another role, you’d have to do it over again from that role’s perspective, for whatever level range you’re at.
For any veteran player, this would be easy. You could EASILY do these mock-up runs in the span of 10 minutes at most. But the people who aren’t familiar with the game/class/etc, would be required to learn some of the very basics of their class/role.
So why am I bitching about this? Haven’t there always been fail people in groups? Yes. There have been. But the level of ineptitude I have seen recently, this morning even, demonstrates two things to me.
a) It is SUPER easy for people to find groups via the dungeon finder, meaning more people are using it and more people are doing level-appropriate dungeons as they level toons.
b) More than ever before, Blizzard is forcing us to play with others in a group situation where we must rely on these total strangers (usually from other servers within our battlegroups) to perform their roles adequately.
I’m not asking for people to be the best tanks, healers or DPS in the entire world, really. I’m asking for tanks to make sure they hit the mobs so that healers don’t get aggro when casting a shield. I’m asking for healers who know enough to WAIT to cast that shield/heal when the tank is doing anything like a gauntlet or just a big group. I’m asking for DPS who don’t put the healer ON FOLLOW and then AFK!
Is it our choice to use, or not use, the Dungeon Finder tool? Yes. But I believe that since Blizzard has encouraged us to use it in a multitude of ways, from Emblems of Frost and extra Emblems of Triumph to extra experience and Satchels of Helpful Goods, then they’ve got a responsibility to ensure that the tool is populated by people who won’t make you want to throw your computer out the window and cancel your damn subscription.
Strangely enough, I get a kick out of random search terms that lead here, so here’s the 10th post where I take a look at who’s been searching for stuff and my attempt to better answer the questions these people probably had.
1) paladin divinity jol
Yeah, basically, it doesn’t work the way you think it works. For whatever reason, it works on the judging paladin (and perhaps anyone else who has Divinity) but not on, say, a hunter. I know, weird, eh? Still, here are the results of the experiment I did.
No, no, go get the Champion’s Deathdealer Breastplate. I know it’s mail, but even before 40, you’ll be able to equip it. It’ll be leather, effectively, ’till you ding 40 and then it’ll become mail. Same deal for your shoulders, get the Prized Beastmaster’s Mantle. Apart from anything else, intellect is a good stat to have — not only will it extend your mana pool, but also if you’re properly specced in the 50s or thereabouts, you’ll be getting Mental Quickness, adding to your attack power from your intellect.
3) anyway to keep focus frame through valithria
Not that I’ve seen. >< I use a macro to focus her:
/focus Valithria Dreamwalker
4) blood prince council+holy priest+bad
Nah, not bad. What we’ll typically do is 1-2 holy paladins, 1 disc priest, 1 resto druid, 1-2 resto shammies and a holy priest. The holy priest does very well in topping people off, saving people from their own idiocy. We have the shammies helping on tanks if we’ve just got the one holy pally, so the priest gets his Circle of Hax on and his Empowered Renew blasting through the raid. Works pretty well.
Of course, if you’re thinking their numbers suck, look at their assignments. Are they assigned to the raid with 3 resto druids? Then yes, they will appear “bad”. But unless you’re losing a bunch of people due to lack of heals (and not their own stupidity), your holy priest is probably doing fine.
5) can you remove mutated plague with divine protection
Okay, first of all, Divine Protection is the paladin equivalent of Shield Wall. So no, Divine Protection is not going to wipe Mutated Plague off the tank.
Mutated Plague is the debuff that Professor Putricide stacks on the tanks in Phase 3 of his encounter. Typically, on 25-man, we have Tank 1 take 2 stacks, then Tank 2 takes 2, then Tank 3 takes 2, then T1 takes 1, T2 takes 1, T3 takes 1, and so on until the good Professor is dead.
What WOULD drop Mutated Plague off is Divine Shield. But you DO NOT want to do this (and I suspect that’s why you asked if DP would wipe it off) because if MP drops off any target for any reason, it’ll heal the boss for a certain amount per stack that was on the tank. That includes tank death, that includes bubbling.
So please do feel free to use Divine Protection in P3 of Professor Putricide. :)
6) cataclysm “level 85″+”experience needed”
Okay, there’s like no information out for Cataclysm yet. I don’t think the Friends and Family Closed Alpha is even out yet. However, considering the level cap is moving up only five levels, I would have to presume that those are going to be some pretty epic levels and that you’ll have to get an obscene amount of experience to get to 85. That doesn’t mean that SOME crazy space goats won’t ding in like, four days, though, RIGHT OSEPHALA? ;)
7) divine illumination cooldown add on
I cannot pimp this enough: OmniCC is the best cooldown timer ever. It displays cooldowns by minute and then, at 60 seconds it displays by second until it’s up. This is one of the addons I cannot live without.
Here’s my “hey, I cast Divine Intervention on someone” macro. Note that you must be targetting the person you want to DI.
/cast Divine Intervention
/script SendChatMessage(“DI: The generous pally’s version of Bubble/Hearth.”, “WHISPER”, nil, UnitName(“target”));
/6 Divine Intervention cast on %t.
What that does is cast DI, then sends a whisper to your target saying: DI: The generous pally’s version of Bubble/Hearth. This can obviously be changed, that’s just my sense of humour. ;)
Then it announces to the healing channel (#6) that I cast DI on my target.
9) divine shield mystic buffet
Nope. It goes riiiiiiiight through Divine Shield. :(
10) grid show random dungeon tank
Ah, you’re using Grid and you want it to show you the roles of the people in your party, right? To my knowledge, there’s no way to show that in Grid as of yet. Your standard Blizzard UI party frames will show you the roles, though. Or, you can do what I do and that’s click on every possible person in your party who’s a pally, druid, death knight or warrior and pray that the one with the highest health is your tank…
Bonus question: how to tank as a paladin at lvl 20
20 is when it becomes easy. Make sure you have Righteous Fury on (which I believe still goes away after you die, so don’t forget to put it back on!) and judge your single targets. If you have more than 2-3 mobs, drop Consecration. Congratulations. You are now a leet threat machine!
I’m levelling a priest. (I know, shoot me.) I’m levelling with my brother, who’s levelling a paladin. I’m disc, he’s prot. We’re primarily doing it through the random dungeon finder.
As such, I feel compelled to write up a quick guide to some very basic concepts of running dungeons, particularly at low levels.
1) Understanding Threat.
Threat, also known as aggro, is a good thing to have if you’re the tank and a bad thing to have if you’re anyone else.
What IS threat? What IS aggro?
It’s the attention you get from enemy mobs that makes them want to rip your face off and then stomp on it for good measure. As such, it’s highly recommended that the person in a 5-man group that tries to gain threat from enemy mobs be the “tank”.
A “tank” is named such because they are supposed to be large, intimidating and heavily-armored. Like, you know, a tank. In the World of Warcraft, you have four classes who can perform this role. They are: warriors, druids, paladins and death knights. For the purposes of this guide, I won’t discuss the death knights. I assume (perhaps mistakenly!) that if people can get to level 55 in this game, they have a basic idea of the tank/healer/DPS/aggro dynamic.
Warriors typically drop their talent points into their protection tree if they’re planning to tank and will probably wear a shield. You’ll want to see a druid shift to bear form to tank. A paladin will also be putting points into their protection tree if they want to tank, also putting on a shield.
Your tank is basically a distraction. They’re the ones who are supposed to use their various abilities to make themselves appear to be the largest threat those mobs are facing at any given moment. They wear heavy armor and have abilities that are very dangerous-seeming, plus have special talents and abilities to prevent all that insane damage from splatting them into next Tuesday. In reality, it’s the DPS (damage dealers) who are the largest threat, because they’re the ones dealing all the damage. Meanwhile, the healer is healing the tank so the tank can continue to generate threat. In an ideal situation, only the tank is taking damage so that the healer can heal through the encounter with ease, while the DPS attack the mob or mobs and deal a lot of damage.
So, are we clear on this? Tank grabs mob’s attention -> DPS deals damage on mob while mob is focusing on tank -> Healer heals tank and DPS/themselves if needed.
The trouble with this situation is that, for the game to be a challenge, threat is EASY to produce through damage and a little more difficult to produce for a tank. The tanks need to smack the mobs around a little bit in order to generate enough aggro from them to ensure that the damage dealers can do their jobs and go to town.
Here’s the catch: If the tank runs around near the mobs but DOES NOT hit them, this is called a “facepull”. That means that the tank has gained the attention of the mobs by physically approaching them, but the tank has not used any abilities to generate threat.
If a facepull occurs, ANYTHING the party does to EITHER the tank OR the mobs will result in that individual “pulling aggro”, which means becoming the most hated person by those mobs.
“Anything?”
Anything. So long as it’s to the tank or to one of the mobs. Or to each other, if you’re already in combat by virtue of being close enough to the action.
So if I’m the healer of the group and the tank runs up to a mob and just STANDS there, getting beat on, if I heal him, I start looking threatening and the mob will go “HOLY CRAP, look at THAT person!!!” and come charging at me, with the intention of ripping my face off and stomping on it.
Similarly, if I’m a DPS and I start hitting the mob before the tank has had adequate time to generate aggro on it, the mob will go “Who the hell just hit me in the face?!” and then, you guessed it, it will then come charging at me, with the intention of repaying the favour.
Thus, to prevent your face getting smashed in, wait for the tank to establish aggro. This should only take a few seconds, but may take longer if more than one mob has been pulled.
“So what do I do if I pull aggro, even though I’m sure I won’t because I’m reading this awesome guide by you, Kurn!”
Glad you asked! Rather than run away from the mob and trying to hide in a bush, somewhere, you should run TOWARDS the tank. Yes, even if it means running through the mob who is trying to give you a mouthful of Chiclets. This means that the tank will be in range of the mob to hit them and pull them OFF of you. (Hunters, feign death. Rogues, vanish. Night elves can also Shadowmeld temporarily and priests can Fade, but don’t expect miracles.)
Some tanks are better at holding aggro on groups of mobs than others. In particular, paladins dropping Consecrate are amazing at it, although druids can abuse Swipe and that’s also pretty good. Death Knights are moderately better than warriors, but are still unable to generate the same kind of constant area-of-effect (AOE) aggro that paladins and druids do very easily. Warriors, well, they have a few tricks up their sleeves and a good warrior won’t have a problem with holding aggro on several mobs, but do be sure to give them a few seconds before you start in on things.
Related to this concept is the gauntlet mechanic.
There aren’t too many gauntlets in the game and I think the first one we really encounter in dungeons is in Shattered Halls, a level 70 instance in Hellfire Peninsula, but there are a couple of spots in level 80 dungeons/heroics where this mechanic comes into play.
What is a gauntlet?
A gauntlet is a section of an instance where mobs never stop spawning, so the way to get through it is to have the tank barrel down the hall or whatever it is, run all the way to the end, hold aggro on all of them and then AOE everything down.
Notable gauntlets in WOTLK dungeons:
– the trash for Skadi in Utgarde Pinnacle
– the trash towards the Scourgelord in Pit of Saron (the tunnel)
I don’t think this is technically a gauntlet, but you can treat the trash between the first and second bosses in Halls of Lightning (Slags) as such.
The trouble with a gauntlet is that the tank is running through, so they are NOT building threat. That means that a healer should NOT cast a heal, DPS should NOT damage mobs and NO ONE should be ahead of the tank. (Pre-shielding a tank with Power Word: Shield or Sacred Shield or Earth Shield is fine, though. But no hots!)
Ideally, the tank will have either Retribution Aura (from any paladin in the group) or Thorns (from any druid in the group) on them to better build aggro as they’re being beaten on, but those aren’t always available, so, in general, you’re looking at a whole hallway of facepulling. When the tank gets into position, they’ll start generating aggro and then the healer can start healing and the DPS can start damage. It is IMPERATIVE that, unless the tank is literally about to die, a healer not heal the tank. Let them get low. Under 50% is when I begin to worry. The panic sets in at about 30%. But do your best to not cast before they get to that point, or else six mobs are going to peel off the tank and splat you into the wall.
I should also note that if you want to be conservative (and there’s nothing wrong with that), you can agree to stop about midway through the gauntlet, AOE things down there and then move to the end and AOE things down there as well. This is a particularly good plan if the healer is new to the role, the tank is new to the role, if they’re unsure about the instance or if either is undergeared for the content.
Cooldowns like Pain Suppression, Guardian Spirit, Hand of Sacrifice and Lay on Hands are things that healers can cast on the tank as well, right at the end, to help stabilize the tank before they start healing. Tanks can also use their own cooldowns, like Divine Protection, Shield Wall, Last Stand, Enraged Regeneration, Barkskin, Survival Instincts, Frenzied Regeneration, Icebound Fortitude, Anti-magic Shell, Anti-magic Zone and the like.
2) Casters and How to Move Them.
Ever been standing there, halfway down a hallway in Scarlet Monastery or something and had a caster just shooting at you the whole time? But if the group gets too close to that caster, they might pull another group or another patrol? Of course you have. Everyone has.
Ever wonder what to do about it? Wonder no longer.
Long story short: Line of Sight (LOS) around a nearby obstacle or pull as far back as you can so they come to you at least a little bit.
These are the basics that people in my recent low-level pugs have emphatically not mastered. I don’t think most of them are even aware of these concepts. Thus, a post.
(As an aside, I was on my priest and shielded a bear who insisted on collecting the entire room Interrogator Vishas is in and was chided by a rogue or a shaman for doing so because it would prevent rage generation. Hah, WoWWiki says that: “As of Patch 3.1, [Power Word: Shield] will still allow warriors and druids to generate rage from damage absorbed.” Yay me for not being fail! And yes, I will be careful not to shield my brother too much when he gets Spiritual Attunement.)
Whew. Okay, Holy How-To #4 coming this week, I swear. Stupid healing meters…
