//3.3 is here. I’m reading through the patch notes. More to say later, but just to say that this made me laugh:
Because of this entry from 19 months ago. Basically, a year and a half after I figure out that you can’t cast PW:S on someone not in your raid or party, they allow you to do so. And it made me laugh.
//So, I have 5/5 T9 and I have the heroic Breastplate of the Frozen Lake and the heroic Legplates of Failing Light. Breaking my 4pc T9 set bonus to equip both of these pieces kind of makes me sad. I’m a tank healer — I usually heal the MT or OT and beacon the other. Sacred Shield is usually up on both, as I usually heal with another holy paladin. So when we have a situation where I can spare the second or so to refresh Flash of Light on my non-primary target, I do so. Having a Flash of Light hot ticking for over 1000, every second, for 12 seconds, on big-damage fights like Heroic Twins is amazingly effective. This “heal over time” business is actually freaking awesome. And to have the hot going on 2 targets at once? Sweet deal.
But the heroic chest and pants are still better items than their 245 ilvl tier counterparts. And I get up to 710 haste (a bit overkill, but am I really complaining? No.), more intellect (due to the itemization and one extra gem socket on each item, meaning +40 intellect from gems alone)…
So while, logically, I know that the non-set pieces are *better*, I miss my ultra-uber hots.
I decided to try out which benefits me (and the raid) more on Heroic Anub’arak attempts.
For about 7-8 attempts, I wore 3/5 T9 and for the last 7-8 attempts of that night, I wore 4/5 T9.
Altogether, the results are basically the same: people need to stop sniping my goddamn heals. ;)
I think that in certain situations, such as the way we do Twins, it would be more beneficial to the raid if I bomb Holy Light as much as possible and ignore the FoL hot on the second tank, because the Glyph of Holy Light really helps out with healing the entire raid.
But I think that, until our one Anub OT gets to the point of being unhittable, taking the time to hot him up will be more beneficial in keeping him up than helping out on the raid with HL bombs. The guy is taking insane damage because he’s just not geared properly:
[01:01:40.338] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior Dodge
[01:01:40.338] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior 11696
[01:01:40.338] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior 11776
[01:01:40.550] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior Dodge
[01:01:40.550] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior Miss
[01:01:40.550] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior 1962 (B: 4019)
Yeah, 24,000 or so damage in .212 seconds.
Tonight, we start TOC fresh again. And maybe THIS will be the week the warrior gets the bracers off Maexxna and the belt off of Razorscale to help him with his avoidance set. ><
//Seriously, I ran a VOA 25 pug today with, bar none, the worst holy paladin IN THE WORLD. I feel so bad for him that I’m not even going to post his name. It’s just so TRAGIC.
Some of his stats:
1616 bonus healing
15.08% chance to crit (20.08% holy crit)
13819 mana
(All unbuffed.)
His ONLY spec is holy, 51/20/0 and yet he’s wearing TANK SHOULDERS and using the exalted AV trinket (yes, I’m serious) AND … Majestic Dragon Figurine. Seriously.
Surprisingly, his spec isn’t utter crap. There’s just a couple of points I’d re-allocate, but it’s a decent spec.
The glyphs are criminal.
Glyph of Flash of Light… which… unless you’re doing a spellpower/FoL build/gear set, I would never use.
Glyph of Judgement. … right, because it’s so much better for a holy paladin than any other glyph you can take, right? 10% extra damage on your judgements? AWESOME, right?! /facepalm
And then… the pièce de resistance…
Glyph of Crusader Strike.
Oh. And 0 minor glyphs.
When I noticed, after the tanks died on Koralon and he himself died on Emalon, that he had 16k mana, raid-buffed, I whispered him and said “Hey I know you’re probably new to being 80 or being holy. I raid as a holy paladin and one of the best sites I ever stumbled across was http://www.bananashoulders.com/ so you should definitely check that out for gear, gemming and enchanting advice for holy paladins. :)”
He wrote back with “ty for tip”
I can only PRAY he’s currently reading everything Siha has ever, ever written.
I uploaded the logs (because I log damn near everything) and was pleased to see my overall damage on my hunter, but then curiousity got the best of me and I saw that the paladin in question really failed hardcore, and that’s when I started armorying him.
Oh, the pain.
Blizzard, I don’t care what you do to your game. It’s your game, after all. But you certainly have to understand that there are some very good players out there who run into these completely misguided, uneducated and plain dumb individuals… and it makes us want to cry. A lot.
//So I screwed up my Grid for my pally by messing around with it on my shammy. /facepalm. I spent about an hour redoing it, including all my custom buffs and debuffs. I tried to install GridStatusRaidDebuffs or whatever it’s called, but all I got were general LUA errors stemming from it, so I went back to doing things manually. I just hope I didn’t forget anything.
I also changed some Clique configurations. Previously, though I used Clique a lot, I didn’t have a couple spells bound to clicks. Now:
Left-Click: Flash of Light
Right-Click: Holy Light
Middle-Click: Cleanse
Thumb Button: Holy Shock
Shift-LC: Target
Shift-RC: Sacred Shield
Shift-MC: A macro to cast Beacon of Light on my focus target
I don’t make enough use of a focus, so I thought I’d try that last one out and see how it works. Typically, I am assigned one tank and told to keep beacon up on another. So I’m hoping to save time in binding a click to a focus/BOL macro.
And speaking of BOL… I finally have, at least temporarily, given up my Holy Shock Glyph. For the time being. Beacon of Light is just so freaking expensive and I’m wasting tons of mana on it per fight. How much? In just a five minute fight like Twins, I’m casting BOL five times. If I had the glyph, I’d be casting it 4 times.
Time / cast # for me / cast # with glyph
00:00 / 1 / 1
01:00 / 2 / 1
01:30 / 2 / 2
02:00 / 3 / 2
03:00 / 4 / 3
04:00 / 5 / 3
04:30 / 5 / 4
Each time I cast Beacon of Light, I’m spending 1461 mana (1538 minus 5% from Glyph of Seal of Wisdom). So, in a short fight like Heroic Twins, that’s 1461 mana I’m saving.
But I’ll still miss my 5-second Holy Shock. :(
And finally, I switched from crit on my shoulders and helm enchants (35 crit strike rating combined) to mp5 (18 mp5 combined). 18 mp5 isn’t a huge amount, but I have a ton of crit and I do NOT have a ton of mp5, so I’m hoping that’ll help out a bit. (If I ever get a Heroic Solace of the Defeated, I’ll go back to crit. :P)
So we’ll see how I do in Sunday and Monday’s raids, given all these changes. I just hope I can remember my new clique bindings!
//Every so often, I get the urge to go flex my hunter muscles. And it always sort of surprises me when I don’t fail utterly.
I did a GREAT Ony 10 yesterday on the hunter, which started off with a really bad/stupid wipe and we had to replace the OT, but honestly, the second attempt was successful and beautiful.
We had two tanks, two healers and six DPS.
I did 4.6k DPS, we got her down without a deep breath and we got the speed kill. I was third on DPS, and I’m pretty sure that’s only because I did two volleys on the whelps instead of four, like the other hunter.
And you know, I’m not in terrible gear, but it’s really not amazing. Seven of my pieces of gear are ilvl 200 (cloak, staff, ring, ring, trinket, trinket, boots), three are ilvl 219 (chest, gun, bracers), one is ilvl 226 (belt — which I just realized I had more than enough conquest badges for), three are ilvl 232 (helm, shoulders, pants) and two are ilvl 245 (neck, gloves).
Any time I get the chance to go be a hunter for a little while, I’m pretty happy to do so. I know I’m not going to top DPS in general and I know that it’s much easier to find a good DPSer than a good healer, so I do continue to heal, but it’s nice to have a change of pace now and again.
One of the reasons I chose to continue healing on Madrana for Wrath was that I really felt I could make a bigger difference by healing for my guild rather than DPSing for my guild. It’s also frustrating to have to care much about DPS. As a healer, I care about DPS to the point of “did we hit enrage or were the healers totally OOM?”. As a DPSer, I care about it to the point of “ffs, 2.5k DPS isn’t going to do it. What’s your hit rating? WHAT?! Go gem hit, for crying out loud, and do NOT come back without being hit-capped!” or whatever. (Well, 8% hit, but anyways.)
I really wish I could do some fun stuff on the hunter, get back into the swing of it, shake off the dust and get some boots that aren’t BLUE. :)
//I have 5/5 T9 (ilvl 245). I have a couple pieces of 258 gear. My paladin is basically pimped out. I’m doing okay in terms of healing, when I don’t have six people sniping my heals. I’m blowing my cooldowns when I should be. I’m in a guild that clears 25m TOC with ease and has done TOGC 25m Anub’arak attempts. I’m even healing with one of my dearest RL friends.
And yet, I miss the days when I looked forward to a raid. I miss logging on for three hours and having raids that were spending time with friends. I miss the idle Vent chatter, the crazy raid warnings, the feeling of success that came from downing a boss we’d spent FAR too much time on. Like Vashj or Kael. Or even Leotheras or Bloodboil.
I miss the days of attunements, of epic-feeling quests, of non-puggable content.
I miss knowing that some of my guildies put their minds to it and, by golly, got themselves ZA bears.
I miss helping people out with their specs or rotations or gems.
I miss sitting in a passworded channel for over an hour every night after a raid, with one of my officers, talking about the utter fail from some people in the raid and how it was amazing we’d made it as far as we had, as we went over the logs together.
I miss the sense of family, friendship and belonging from my old guild.
I miss Apotheosis.
I’m basically in my current guild (for as long as they’ll have me — I’m still a recruit) because of my RL friend and because I know this guild will kill Arthas. It won’t even be a race — which will happen first, the death of Arthas or the new expansion? And that’s what it was for Illidan for us.
But I logged so many hours with my crew, so many nights of wiping, so many nights of laughing, that I find it’s those days I’m nostalgic for. I can hack it in a tough guild. I can get gear with ease. And ultimately, that’s not what matters most to me.
It’s taken me the better part of four years to figure that one out. I’d suspected it, but I’d never known, for sure, until recently.
I wouldn’t trade our Illidan kill for a server-first Illidan kill. I wouldn’t trade our Vashj kill for amazing gear. I wouldn’t trade my Hand of A’dal title for Astral Walker. I wouldn’t even trade my Hammer of the Astral Plane, which I got from Apotheosis’ first-ever Naxx10 clear, for Val’anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings. I wouldn’t trade Majik or Shadow or Toga or Kam or Kut for any of the people I raid with these days. Except maybe the RL friend, but she’s a resto druid and we ALWAYS needed resto druids in Apotheosis, and the others I mentioned are a mage, warrior, hunter, warlock and rogue/warrior. ;)
Maybe for Cataclysm, eh? I guess we’ll see.
//Swiped from Miss Medicina:
Post this questionnaire, with your answers, on your blog. Pick the healing class you know most about (or is the focus of your blog) for the questionnaire, and then send it over to another healing blogger you know and love who heals with a DIFFERENT class. Include a link to the blogger who sent you the questionnaire, as well as a link to the blogger to whom you are sending it.
What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
Madrana(h), holy paladin.
What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
25-man raids.
What is your favourite healing spell for your class and why?
Honestly, I’m a bit of a sucker for Holy Shock. I’ve always used Holy Shock, even when it sucked. Particularly when volcanos would spawn on my face on the Supremus fight in Black Temple.
What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
I think I use them all a lot. I use Holy Light most, Beacon of Light a lot… I think I use all my healing spells a lot.
What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
My Holy Lights crit for 20k. With Beacon of Light, I can drop those heals on two targets for a kind of ludicrous amount of healing.
What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?
Pick one: group healing or movement. Both suck. Glyph of Holy Light isn’t even a smart heal like Circle of Healing. :P
In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?
Ideally, in a 2-tank fight, I should be assigned to one tank, who I shield and heal and have my Beacon on the other tank.
What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?
I’ve healed with all four classes — my paladin and shaman at 80, my paladin and priest at 70 and I have a 71 druid who is dual-specced tank/resto. But honestly, after months of standing there in front of Gruul and spamming the tanks and not being able to move lest the tanks die, when I got the opportunity to heal on my priest at one point, I LOVED it. I ran merrily around, casting Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending and Renew around the raid. I’ve yet to try disc healing, though. I think I like healing with a priest the best, but I like being on a paladin most. I’ve got the throughput to get through a lot, I can cleanse 3 debuffs and I won’t get one-shotted by an add. Usually. :)
What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
Maybe my shammy. I just can’t stop healing the tanks. ><
What is your worst habit as a healer?
I occasionally have trouble letting other people do their assignments. That’s to say, I’ll occasionally cross-heal. I mean, a lot of people do, but my reasons are generally because I don’t trust so-and-so to keep their target up.
What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
From other paladins: Idiots casting Sacred Shield over mine. From other healers: not respecting assignments. (Yes, I’m a hypocrite.) From tanks: blaming healers for their 2-shot death. From DPS: standing in fire/etc and then blaming healers for their deaths.
Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?
Honestly, when you take a big-picture view, yes. Paladins are solid at tank healing and can usually help two tanks at once, in conjunction with a disc priest’s mitigation, a holy priest’s occasional CoH, a shammy’s earth shield with a druid’s hots… Really, I think all five healing specs work very nicely together.
What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
If my target lived, I win at life. But I also check out WorldOfLogs.com parses.
What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
That we never run out of mana. I’m sorry, I used to chain mana pots in BT and I would still be doing so today if I could. There are just so many times when using Divine Plea is going to result in a tank death that it’s hard to use it on cooldown or at the precise moment when it’s most useful to do so.
What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?
How to juggle Judgements of the Pure, Sacred Shield, Flash of Light’s HoT, Beacon of Light and use them all effectively.
If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?
In a 25m-raid? Huge overhealing, good dispells/cleanses, Holy Light, Beacon of Light and possibly Glyph of Holy Light as my top heals.
Haste or Crit and why?
Haste. I’ve got 35% Holy crit, unbuffed, and am very close to the amount of haste I need for 1s GCDs on my gear. With Judgements of the Pure, Wrath of Air totem and Swift Retribution aura, I need 673 haste to hit that. I’m at about 640 or so, thus my choice of buff food is +40 haste.
What healing class do you feel you understand least?
Resto druids. I have my 71 druid, but I don’t know how to be efficient when playing it. Lifebloom is EXPENSIVE, yo.
What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
Grid, Clique, clcbpt (tracks pally stuff).
Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
All intellect all the time! Pallies get mana, spell crit and spellpower from intellect, as well as regen (through crit and through Divine Plea being based off maximum mana). There’s no reason to stack anything else if there’s an intellect enchant available.
//Heroic Twin Val’kyrs down. Using the DUMBEST STRATEGY I have ever encountered in my ENTIRE LIFE.
The whole basis of the fight is that there are auras that you should switch to based on what’s happening right then in the fight, and the aura portals are in four spots (two for each) of the room.
But does my guild do this?
No.
On the kill, 3 of us got the light aura, 21 of us got the dark aura. (Did I mention we 24-manned it? No? We did.)
Those 3 were two hunters and a warlock in BT Shadow Resist gear, basically collecting white orbs and dodging as many black orbs as they could.
As I understand it, here are four abilities the twins use.
Light Vortex – surge of light, 16k fire damage to anyone not with light aura every second for 5 seconds.
Dark Vortex – surge of dark, 16k shadow damage to anyone not with dark aura every second for 5 seconds.
Twin’s Pact (Light) – light-coloured shield that people with dark aura should have no issues killing, then interrupting the cast (which is a heal)
Twin’s Pact (Dark) – dark-coloured shield that people with light aura should have no issues killing, then interrupting the cast (which is a heal)
So, just by describing that, one would think that half the raid is light, half is dark, everyone switches on vortex, right? WRONG.
We healed through Light Vortex.
2 resto shammies, 2 holy priests, 2 holy paladins, 1 resto druid.
It meant popping two Divine Sacrifices that overlapped (even if they don’t stack) AND all four druids in the raid popping tranquility for their groups.
But, by golly, we healed through it.
And the shammy blew heroism at the right time. And they swapped DPS targets on time. And we won!
But it was pure luck.
The order of those four abilities (which happen once a minute, I believe?) is random. But they won’t repeat until the fifth time an ability comes up. And THAT is also random, I believe. So we only got one Light Vortex. Had we gotten two, we would have been SCREWED. I was ready to Divine Protection/Divine Sacrifice (which would have killed me) if I had to, but we got through without a second Light Vortex.
Some stats:
Effective raid DPS: 121,717
Effective raid DT(taken)PS: 50,469
Effective raid HPS: 50,966
RAW raid HPS: 91,732
And only 44.4% overhealing.
My RL friend, the resto druid? 9133 effective health per second. To my 4064.7.
Whew.
//Just now, while chatting with my buddy X, or Al, or any number of other names he’s got, I realized that the paladin trees are FULL of spells and talents with Divine in the name. I mean, I knew there were a lot, but GOOD GOD.
Non-talents:
Divine Plea, Divine Intervention, Divine Shield, Divine Protection
Holy talents:
Divine Intellect, Divine Favor, Divine Illumination
Prot talents:
Divinity (does that count? I say yes.), Divine Strength, Divine Sacrifice, Divine Guardian
Ret talents:
Divine Purpose, Divine Storm
That’s THIRTEEN spells or talents that are “divine”.
No wonder I don’t feel good about going ret and doing damage. That’s not very “divine”, is it? ;D
//Okay. I’m going to sound obnoxious. I’m going to sound elitist. But you know what? I don’t particularly care.
People need to learn to play their toons before they group with other people.
Let me say that in terms the typical WoW player will understand: l2play!
What brought this on? I’m glad you asked. :P
I’ve been levelling a druid and my brother’s been levelling a hunter. Now, because my brother doesn’t raid four or five nights a week, he’s jumped ahead of me and is waiting for me to hit 71 before he comes back and works through the obscene amount of XP needed to advance. I was something like, 67 when he hit 71. I’m now 70. So I thought I’d go tank or heal Utgarde Keep. It’s an instance I’ve tanked before (albeit as a paladin) and healed before (again, as a paladin) so it’s not like I’m not aware of what’s going on, right? Right. And hey, I have like, 13k health in bear form, so that’s sweet.
So I went to LFG and got in for a last boss kill in Utgarde as the tank. No problem. We cleared from the second boss(es) to Ingvar and all went fine. I popped Survival Instincts and Barkskin appropriately, kept up mangle and demoralizing roar… I felt pretty good about myself.
I went back to LFG and got invited to a pug as a tank.
Of course, it took 20 minutes for even ONE OTHER PERSON to come to the stone, but anyways. There was a 68 disc priest (… who was gemmed for spirit and spellpower, when his dual spec is shadow, who ALSO hadn’t assigned 2 talent points), a 73 hunter, a 71 hunter, a 70 mage and myself.
I should have known that the huntards were going to cause a wipe. I should have known. But because I’m a hunter and not entirely a huntard, I figured it was all good.
Wrong.
Idiots had their pets on AGGRESSIVE and nearly wiped us by pulling right off the bat. We DID wipe on a pack just inside the entrance because, rather than, you know, MISDIRECT ME or FEIGN or ANYTHING, the huntards both managed to grab aggro while I was stunned, then died or feigned, and then the priest ate it.
The priest who, by the way, never assigned those talent points I pointed out hadn’t been spent.
So I was like, okay. That’s their one wipe before I log the hell off. And then one of the huntards was like “wtf tank”
And I’m all “Excuse me?”
“lol jk jk man scool”
><
So we move on and we’re in the room with the proto-drakes… and the goddamn nub 71’s cat goes and grabs two packs while I’m tanking three mobs.
Wipe.
And I was out of there.
So, to the idiot hunters: Pets on passive, growl OFF.
To the idiot priest: l2gem and spec properly, you moron.
I may just quest my way to 80. This is just painful.