Category: ramblings

Ugh.

Kurn / / facepalm, lfg, ramblings

So my brother gave me his cold when we went up north last weekend. I feel like crap.

I logged in to WoW today and queued up as a healer only (which I only really do when I’m tired/in a rush/etc) and got heroic pit of saron.

With noobs.

I said, specifically, before Ick, to run out for poison nova, run away if you’re being chased, don’t stand in the arcane explosions and not to stand in poison.

Well, the first time someone’s chased, it’s the DK.

BAM, one-shotted.

/facepalm

Then the idiot tank was like “stay close to me, mount up, everyone go at once”. What is wrong with people that they can’t interrupt the 5-pulls on the way up the hill? He had me put on crusader so we’d get up the hill in time.

So we skip two groups of mobs.

And we stop too close to the next group, obviously.

At one point, we have ALL FIVE people in the group with aggro. I hit bubble and divine sacrifice when it became apparent that the warrior tank really didn’t seem to CARE that I was nearly three-shotted. He didn’t care that the mage had aggro. Or the DK. And did the hunter feign? No.

So after that pull, as I’m rezzing the mage, I’m telling him he needs to hold aggro better on those pulls and so he’s like “it was a preemptive pull” and I’m in the midst of arguing that doesn’t matter, he needs to at least TRY to pull aggro off his healer and DPS.

So what does he do? Charges forth to the next group. Whereupon neither he, nor the DK, leave the rings of frost that get cast. SERIOUSLY. It’s the same mechanic as in Zangarmarsh. It’s NOT rocket science, people, especially if it happens to you even ONCE.

So I’m like “seriously, guys, gotta move out of the frost circles.”

“sorry, do you want me to go back and get the mobs we skipped, too?” he asks.

“You know what?” I reply, “I’m gonna take off. It’s clear that you guys don’t even understand the basics of the trash mechanics here.”

“good” says the tank.

“Adios,” say I, and I drop group, putting the hunter, the warrior and the DK all on ignore. (The hunter and warrior were guildies and the DK was clearly an idiot.) It dawned on me that I had just screwed them all over fairly well, putting two of the four challenging packs of trash in that place between them and a new healer. And while I feel bad for the mage (who gave me AB instead of AI, and his Focus Magic), I don’t feel too bad (no table, no offer of water, etc).

Anyways, for whatever reason, I left party and didn’t get the deserter debuff. I’m not sure how that works. But anyways, I queue up again and am hoping for something easy like Violet Hold or even Gundrak. Just something mindless.

And I get Heroic Halls of Reflection.

So I apologized to the group and said I was sorry, but I wasn’t feeling up to that instance, wished them good luck and left.

I’m so tired of doing random dungeons on my pally, but since I rarely do 10s, it’s a significant source of my emblems of frost. I have 159 atm, and 2 pieces of T10 (both upgraded) and am hoping to get the gloves or pants from Toravon, on either difficulty. That’ll save me another ton of emblems and maybe I’ll actually take a break on Madrana for once. I’ve missed precisely one heroic random since 3.3 launched and it is seriously taking its toll on me.

Another night, another raid.

Kurn / / icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

Last night, we did Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Airship, Saurfang, Festergut, Rotface and Professor, in that order. Rotface took us an uncharacteristic 3-4 attempts, too. Professor Putricide? 1 wipe, 1 kill, leaving us 19 attempts for Blood Queen Lana’thel and Sindragosa and the Lich King.

So tonight, it’ll be mostly new content. I suspect Blood Prince Council and maybe (?) a couple of attempts at BQL before heading in to try out Valithria Dreamwalker and see if we can save that dragon’s scaly hide before facing off with Sindragosa. But I could be wrong.

Still, it’s mostly new content night. And I feel like crap. I think I’m coming down with my brother’s cold. So of all the nights to not want to miss, I don’t want to miss tonight. :P I’m hoping some Tylenol will see me through ’till 2am, whereupon I hope to pass out happily.

But first, to the store, so that I can buy a metric assload of orange juice to stave off this cold.

Excellent post.

Kurn / / general, ramblings

Just read an excellent post at WorldOfMatticus. Thespius talks about clueless raiders, the lack of challenges in current heroic content and similar issues. Thespius and I share many views, just based on this post alone, because we both seem to believe that there is A Specific Way to Do Things. That is, the Right Way. The way that isn’t AOEing things down as a first strategy, the way that encourages us to use our abilities to counter boss abilities.

It boils down to strategic use of our abilities.

For example, if I’m on Putricide and I’m targetted by the green ooze and DPS isn’t killing it fast enough, I could bubble.

But I don’t bubble.

Why don’t I bubble?

Because I want to make perfectly sure that, around the 7m45s-8m mark of the fight, my bubble is back up, so I can cast Divine Sacrifice as a raid-wide 20% damage mitigator, without incurring any extra damage to myself. I hit it after the other pally does, so roughly when our second tank takes his third mark. Not only does that keep me alive, which is good, because I’m healing the crap out of the tanks, but it also helps reduce the healing needed across the raid.

This is a strategic use of my abilities.

And Thespius seems to be a fan of that sort of method. I can’t stand brute-forcing encounters (like the way we do twins, or the really dumb way we’ve chosen to try to do heroic Anub’arak on 25), so I really liked the post, which detailed a few of the ways I think easier heroics are bad.

That said, as someone with 4 80s and a 78, I am grateful for the shorter length of regular instances and heroics. But I’m sad that the only way I’m challenged is if someone else screws up or decides to pull an entire room. (Yes, Majik, I’m talking to you. ;))

In particular, the following paragraph resonated strongly with me, so I’ll leave you with this to think on (emphasis mine):

Regardless if you’re a completely new player, or just levelling an alt, I fear that we’re starting to lose the building blocks to being a good raider to the ease of too much convenience.  (Sidenote: Notice I said “too much”.  I’m all for crafting the game so everyone has a shot, but there is a point when it goes too far.  I don’t want to go back to the days of needing to run alts through Karazhan to begin the gearing process for Black Temple.)

Random rolls are random. Right?

Kurn / / lfg, ramblings

So I’ve been running random dungeons with my brother on his hunter, our buddy Majik on his DK and I’ve been healing on my druid. We did a quick VH today, collected our badges and then Maj had to go. So my brother and I queue up for Halls of Stone. Sadly, this was on purpose, because my brother really likes that instance. I thought for sure I’d be the tank (I queue up as tank and healer, always) and was the healer, which was surprising, but not a bad thing.

My brother is a miner. So was the tank. So they decided to roll for the saronite spawns in the rock boss wing and then for the boss himself. I’m C, my brother is J, the tank was B and the shadow priest was S.

I laughed. A lot.

Excited? Moi?

Kurn / / icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

I don’t even know if we’re doing the Dreamwalker fight tonight in our ICC raid, but if we are, HOLY CRAP, am I excited for it! GO GO overhealing!

I’m also going to attempt to get a screenshot of my interface that isn’t hideously insane so that we can talk about its elements in my Holy How-To guides, since I will definitely be talking about addons and screen layouts. It’s not a lesson in how to have a clean layout, that’s for sure. ;)

So much to do!

Kurn / / ramblings

Seriously, this is getting to the point where I’m going to need to choose what I want to do very carefully.

As of right now, this is what I feel obliged to do every raid reset on 4 level 80s.

– Daily random heroic every day

– Weekly raid every week

– Toravon 10/25 every week

In addition to that, I also raid 12 hours a week and have to find SOME time to farm/fish/mine/prospect/etc.

Plus, I’ve been levelling the druid with my brother and our buddy Majik, so I do a daily random or two with them every day. At least I’ll be able to do my daily random on ONE toon with them when we all hit 80 and maybe the weekly raids, too. And I won’t even be forced to just do those on the druid. I’ll be able to pick any of my toons, which is pretty awesome. Of course, I’ll WANT to do it on the druid for badges and gear and stuff. :P

After a couple of weeks, I think I’ll drop doing the daily on the mage and maybe the shammy, just doing the weekly and Toravon on them, while doing dailies on Kurn, Madrana and the druid. I don’t know, though. Emblems of FROST, you know?

This is why Blizzard has the most successful MMORPG. Seriously. It’s not addiction, it’s a sense of obligation. :P

Kurn's Q&A #4

Kurn / / q&a, raiding, ramblings

Whew. I do not recommend leaving the weekly raid until the last possible day for, oh, three of your toons. While I did Madrana’s on Wednesday or something, Kurn, the shammy and the mage were all done in the last 24 hours. Stupid Patchwerk. Well, at least it wasn’t Flame Leviathan, right?

Anyways, on to the search terms that led people here and my responses to them!

1) “rotface mutated infection discipline shields”

Uh, definitely a good call, in my opinion. The mutated infection target gets a debuff that causes damage every second for 12 seconds. Ow. As the person who usually heals the infected people with a beacon on the tank, let me tell you, I APPRECIATE you shielding the infected people. :)

2) “anub togc heroic cleansing totems”

Useless, sorry. The debuffs on your add tank aren’t dispellable by regular abilities or by cleansing totems. Better to use Nature Resistance totem or Aspect of the Wild. Having said that, we got TOGC 25 Anub to 10% tonight. I tell you, I’ll be psyched to bury that bastard for good.

3) “how does a warrior tank heroic hor”

Hello, Mr. or Ms. Prot Warrior. Thanks for stopping by. It’s true, you have a more difficult job in Heroic Halls of Reflection than the other three tanking classes do. You also have Spell Reflection, which can also be glyphed and talented. So I’d recommend at least the glyph, if not the full 2/2 talent points in there.

You also have Vigilance. Use it on your healer.

Probably the best way for you to do HoR is out in the open. You’ll have room to maneuver, you’ll be able to Charge to Phantom Mages, you’ll be able to see what you’re doing so you can effectively use Thunderclap and Shockwave. For you guys, I HIGHLY recommend the following kill order, which I would then communicate to the group before the start of the event:

– Phantom Mage. Kill it. Kill it dead. The flamestrikes, the frostbolts, fireballs and chains of ice all suck a lot for you. So burn it, or keep it CCed via shackle/turn undead/freezing trap.

– Ghostly Priest. They heal. Kill them! Interrupt casts!

– Spectral Footman. You can actually leave these ’till last, but you MUST maintain aggro on these guys. They shield bash.

– Shadowy Mercenary. Their shadowstep sucks and their poisons are evil. Still, if you have Vigilance on your healer, you should be able to taunt back quickly. Be ready! They can also incapacitate a member of your party for a couple of seconds, so be ready to pop a CD if it’s the healer.

– Tortured Rifleman. Really not too bad, if a bit annoying. CC if possible, otherwise, just grab aggro on them now and again.

Cleave, Shockwave, Thunderclap, these will all be KEY for you to successfully do this. You’ll also want to be hyper-aware of what adds are up and where they’re positioned.

4) “devo or retri aura for 5 man heroics”

Depends on who’s in your group and what spec you are. I’m going to guess you’re a prot pally with 3/3 improved devotion aura. Basically, your extra +healing is a waste if your healer is a tree, but since it’s available in every aura (like ret’s Swift Retribution), that doesn’t really help the issue. Honestly, if you have a shammy with Stoneskin totem or a druid who’s buffed you with Mark of the Wild and you feel like you’re having aggro issues, Retribution is the way to go. If you have a crapton of armor anyways, go Retribution aura for extra threat. If you’re not getting hit hard enough to require enough healing for Spiritual Attunement to keep you topped off in terms of mana, go Retribution aura. Otherwise, stick with devo.

5) “dodge chance to tank 10m icc paladin”

Ugh, ugh, ugh. Thanks to Chill of the Throne, you lose 20% dodge. Which sucks. I’d say that, depending on your gear and such, probably 7%ish (after taking the debuff into consideration) would be a minimum. Just my guess, though.

6) “healing forge of souls shammy”

Hey, I actually know how to do this! Okay, so here’s the deal… Tremor totem on the first boss. Pop hero right off the bat on the second boss. Apart from that, it works like most any other instance — keep your tank up, hope there’s not 3 hunters spread out in 3 corners of any room so that chains don’t hit them and make use of Riptide/Healing Wave/Healing Wave if you have to. There’s nothing wrong with using your whole mana bar on one boss fight or half of it on one trash pull. The important thing is keeping people up.

For some reason, I almost always die on the last boss, thanks to idiots not knowing the following:

– stop DPS when mirror is cast on a player, because that damage gets cast on the targetted player!

– don’t stand in purple circles

– don’t stand there letting ghosts whack on you

– don’t stand in front of the boss when the purple beam is active.

If your group is dying due to any of those issues, not your fault, shammy. Not your fault.

7) “strength stamina gem vs agility stamina paladin”

Let’s be clear about this. Strength, without talents or anything, gives a paladin 2 attack power per point of strength. Agility gives paladins armor, dodge and crit. Strength should always win out over pure agility. Apart from anything else, Divine Strength gives you 15% extra strength, so if you have 100 strength, that bumps up to 115 strength via that talent and no kings or anything. Then kings comes into the mix and adds 10%. That’s another 11-12 strength. So instead of 100 strength, you now have 126 strength. That means you went from 200 AP to 252 AP. That’s pretty significant. And a lot better choice than, say, 100 agility.

8) “tank guide don’t let the healer die”

Mr. or Ms. Tank, I love you. Thank you. That said, sometimes your healer will die despite your best efforts. Sometimes it’ll even be their fault. But most of the time, it’s going to be yours.

In order to minimize that, here are some tips:

a) Be familiar with the fight. If there are adds that spawn, know that they will charge the healer as soon as they spawn, due to healing aggro. Be ready to pick them up.

b) Be aware of your current surroundings. Change your camera angle to watch the healer so you can taunt quickly if needed.

c) Don’t let that one mob go wail on the healer. Seriously. You’re tanking. Hold them. Don’t let five go running off as you tank one, don’t let one go running off as you tank five.

d) Interrupt spellcasts. Sometimes your healer can be targetted by spells that will result in them dying. So interrupt when you can. Also know what to interrupt. Interrupting heals takes priority over everything, with mind controls a close second. Offensive spells come last, but should still be interrupted.

Apart from doing what you can to prevent something from beating on your healer, there’s not a lot I can tell you. Some healers are just dumb, though, and will stand in fire/void zones/poisons regardless.

9) “why cant pugs do ony”

I laughed out loud at this one. Thing is, they can, but the organization and execution of most pug raids is, well, lacking. Or laughable, if it exists. Apparently, it’s super-hard to do basic healing/DPS/tanking assignments. :P If you find yourself in a fail Ony pug, try to organize your fellow whatever you are. If you’re a healer, help organize healing. Tank? Figure out who’s got Ony, who’s got whelps, who’s got the add. This kind of help really makes a difference.

10) “blood prince council exploit”

Sorry buddy, but:

a) I don’t know of any Blood Prince Council exploit

b) I don’t believe in exploits. I mean, obviously they exist, but I do whatever I can to not make use of them. CHEATING IS BAD, OKAY?

Besides, Blood Prince Council? NOT a hard fight. Just spread out, keep the orb thing in the air, heal your tanks, kill the active target. Bam.

Okay, that’s it for the Q&A for this week. Coming up later this week, ICC strats! Stay tuned.

Stuff to say!

Kurn / / paladins, ramblings

I have a bunch of stuff to say and it’s going to take me a heck of a long time to say most of it, but I hope to have an epic-length post with regards to paladin stuff by the morning. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I have taught approximately 6 tanks in the last three days how to deal with Pound or Dark Smash. /sigh. What makes me curious is how on earth none of them realize that being stunned or taking insane amounts of damage isn’t a BAD thing. I mean, I asked this tank to run through Anub’arak today after he was stunned after the first pound and he’s like “kk” and he did. I don’t think he understood why, though. How is this game so very difficult for people to understand? :( There are some basic concepts about people’s roles in the game that just don’t seem to be getting through to people.

Sigh.

Anyways, more holy pally-specific stuff to come. And I do think there is a need for some holy pally-specific stuff out there, based on some stuff I’ve seen recently.

Off to go play in TOC/TOGC 25. Hooray?

Maybe ignorance IS bliss / Divine Plea offsets

Kurn / / druids, dungeons, healing, icecrown citadel, lfg, paladins, raiding, ramblings

I admit it. I remain almost entirely ignorant when it comes to the Blood Prince Council fight. And yet…

Basically, I heal the living crap out of my target while having a beacon on another tanking person and stay away from anything I see that is obviously bad.

And I get an achievement for my ignorance and I beat out the other holy pally on the meters, even though he used Judgement of Light, haha!

Speaking of numbers, I really have to remind myself, frequently, that meters suck. It’s kind of hard not to put faith in them, though, when you’re doing well. ;D Honestly, it just means that people weren’t healing my target and sniping my heals. I know that. But it looks so pretty! I mean, look at this from an attempt on Blood Queen Lana’thel!

Truthfully, I have to say that the two-piece Tier 10 bonus for holy paladins has changed my entire playstyle.

It is this:

While your Divine Illumination talent is active, your heals are 35% stronger.

I have a keybound macro to take advantage of that. Shift-S pops Divine Illumination and then Divine Plea. So I’m at 85% of my ability instead of 50%. This almost certainly means a tank will not die when I pop Divine Plea. Not only that, but everything is super cheap to cast! AND I’m regenerating mana?! Hi, two-piece, I love you. Marry me.

I generally pop it when I realize my mana is at about 60-65%, will probably refresh Beacon and Sacred Shield and continue spamming merrily along. Then when Divine Plea is up again, I’m usually down to about 35-40% of my mana. So I pop Divine Plea with the Talisman of Resurgence to offset it. So instead of healing for 12-13k, I’m healing for around 10k. Totally worth it.

Then, next time Divine Plea comes up, I still have Avenging Wrath if I really can’t wait another minute for Divine Illumination to be up again. Instead of 12-13k, I’m healing for about 8k. Less worth it, but it’s better than not having any mana, particularly in a situation where I can’t melee to regen or can’t even spare the globals to judge in the hopes of a Seal of Wisdom proc.

Thinking about it, I should probably pop DivIll/Divine Plea around 70% mana to ensure that I CAN wait a little between DP coming off cooldown and using my trinket and then waiting for Divine Illumination to come back up after DP comes back up after using the trinket with it.

Anyways. Healing meters are bad and I feel like a bad player for not really caring enough to know the details of the Blood Prince Council fight and I should adjust my Divine Plea usage just a wee bit.

Oh, and in brief other news, Maj, my brother and I pretty much ruin Old Kingdom, Drak’Tharon and Violet Hold. No kidding, my brother does leet hunter DPS after a quick respec. And Maj got a couple of upgrades today to render him uncrittable by a boss 3 levels higher than him. And my tree got nothing except experience, which is fine. I’m level 76 now. And totally out of rested! WOE IS ME, people. WOE.

… I need to stop posting stuff at 6-7am.

Awesome.

Kurn / / apotheosis, dungeons, ramblings

So my good ol’ buddy from Eldre’Thalas, Majikmarine (who was my mage officer, the original founding member of Apotheosis, who has always been my partner in raid-leading crime), reactivated his WoW account and transferred his level 73 death knight over to Proudmoore so that he could level up with my brother’s hunter (72) and my druid (75).

He specced some form of tank (haha, I know so little about DKs, I’d have to armory him to look it up) and so we queued up with him as a tank, me as a tree and my brother as leet DPS.

We OWN Ahn’Kahet. It is our itty bitty little bitch.

I showed Maj the pulls for the most efficient clear the first time and when we queued up and got it again, we tore through it.

All the while, we were on Vent.

It was really a lot of fun and I hope to make it a regular, daily happening, for at least the month that Maj’s account is active. The queues are close to instant, the instances take no more than a half hour at the most, Maj is learning to tank on the DK, I’m getting the hang of healing a tank who isn’t quite crit-immune, but is DEFINITELY not uber squishy…  I have people with whom I can bitch about idiot ret pallies and idiot DKs!! Ecstasy! :D