Account-wide Achievements and Questions of Identity

Kurn / / achievements, baby paladin adventures, general, professions, ramblings

There’s been talk recently about having account-wide achievements in Mists of Pandaria and it leaves me (and I suspect many others) unsure as to how to feel about this.

I am not the only person who raids with a different character now than she did in Vanilla or Burning Crusade or Wrath or even earlier this expansion. Kurnmogh, my hunter, hasn’t seriously raided current content on a regular basis since Vanilla. I managed to get in for the Tidewalker kill in SSC on the hunter, as well as the Gorefiend kill in Black Temple, but, by and large, since Burning Crusade, I’ve been healing in 25-man raids, while farming and doing silly things on my hunter.

That means that while I still have a huge attachment to Kurn (obviously), all my raiding achievements (and titles) are on Madrana.

It took me a bit of time to accept this, especially the title part of it. I was not so pleased to miss out on getting Hand of A’dal on Kurn, while I was thrilled to get it at all.

As the years went by, the achievements, titles and mounts started piling up on Madrana. Hand of A’dal. Twilight Vanquisher. Astral Walker. Kingslayer. Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25). Defender of a Shattered World. Glory of the Firelands Raider. Destroyer’s End. All of them gotten while the content was current, except for Astral Walker, gotten during Tier 9 content.

In the meantime, Kurn got all the holiday titles and even managed to get the Baron’s mount. Kurn managed to snag of the Nightfall in T10 gear and also got Kingslayer, and Defender of a Shattered World but most of those came when it wasn’t current or was heavily nerfed (30% buff in ICC, zerging Sarth 3D 10-man for fun, post-nerf T11 content).

And then there’s the OTHER holy paladin. I am the same player playing that holy paladin, Madrana of Skywall, as I am playing Madrana of Eldre’Thalas. Madrana of Eldre’Thalas WAS Madrana of Skywall for about six months at the end of Wrath. But the current Madrana of Skywall is a new toon, the baby pally, I call her. She hasn’t earned anything.

I lie, she’s got “the Patient”, “Kingslayer” and “Destroyer’s End” (and the Kingslayer was because I helped out a group of guildies get the Been Waiting a Long Time achievement on LK, then got the kill and the title).

But just because I haven’t earned anything of note, really, on the baby pally, does that mean I’m not capable of having done so? No, because I clearly did all that on the OTHER Madrana.

It makes my head hurt.

So I’m going to say that no, I don’t think achievements should be account-wide. For me, my achievements show a very clear snapshot of what I was doing at a certain time in my WoW career. It reads like a resumé. I am so very proud of so many of my achievements and titles and mounts that I got on Madrana. While it would be nice to have them accessible to me on the baby pally, or ride my Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher or Corrupted Egg of Millagazor on Kurn, it seems inauthentic.

Terribly strange, isn’t it? I mean, they’re MY achievements, MY titles, MY mounts, but I feel if I didn’t earn them with a specific character, that character shouldn’t get to benefit from them. (Conversely, this does not mean I don’t think arcanums should continue to be account-bound, but that’s more because I’m lazy and hate rep grinds, not because of anything larger.)

I guess it comes down to what do those achievements, titles and mounts mean to me? I find the idea of being able to wear the “Hand of A’dal” title on Kurn to be, well, devaluing the work and time I put in on the Lady Vashj and Kael’thas fights on Madrana. I know, it’s weird.

But let’s take account-wide achievements a step further to maybe illustrate my point.

The baby pally has 525 cooking, as do Kurn and Madrana of Eldre’Thalas. Both Kurn and Madrana of ET have the Chef’s Hat. Having not spent two years in Wrath of the Lich King content, the baby paladin never got 100 Dalaran Cooking Awards and never was able to buy the Chef’s Hat. (WTB one of these for each profession, by the way.) This means that the baby pally’s hearth is currently in Dalaran so she can do cooking dailies efficiently (and also take the CoT port from Dal to get down to Dragon Soul quickly) and I’m at a woeful 52 tokens. (No, she doesn’t have high enough fishing either to do the Dalaran Fishing Dailies in the hopes of a Waterlogged Recipe, either.)

Should I need to grind that up to 100 to get the hat? I have it on two characters, already, shouldn’t I just be able to send that along? In a world where my level 5 bank alt could potentially wear the Hand of A’dal title, why on earth shouldn’t all my characters have access to at least one of the two Chef’s Hats I have?

For that matter, why should I have to level up cooking to 525 on THREE characters? Surely just one character knowing cooking ought to suffice. Same with first aid and, of course, fishing!

But if we go that route, what about “real” professions, like Leatherworking, Inscription and Alchemy? No kidding, I have four characters at 525 Alchemy, three at 525 Inscription, three at 525 Herbalism, two at 525 Mining and basically one of everything at max level save Engineering and Blacksmithing. Shouldn’t that stuff carry over as well? I mean, I’m the one who did all that work, right? I’m the one who sat there and milled ’till my fingers were raw (okay, not quite that bad, but still). I’m the one who did all of that on all kinds of different characters, on a variety of servers.

So if we open the door to account-wide achievements, titles, mounts and pets… where does it stop? Where should it stop? Where do you draw the line between “quality of life improvement” and “completely freaking ridiculous”? Is there even a line TO draw between those two points? I would argue that the Chef’s Hat, for instance, would be a quality of life improvement, but my level 5 bank alt being a Hand of A’dal would be completely freaking ridiculous. But someone else might think that the Chef’s Hat is ridiculous and the level 5 bank alt with that title would be AMAZING.

I strongly suspect that questions like these are the primary reason we haven’t seen much account-wide stuff to date and why they’ll probably “test out” account-wide pets and the like first. The slippery slope is just too slippery. What is completely acceptable to one person is a step too far for another. Taken to the extreme, you could make an argument for throwing out the levelling process because “hey, I got to level 85/90/100 on one character! Make all my toons that level!”

I do agree I’m probably a little strange with my identity issues (“But KURN never killed Vashj and Kael!!!”) but I think my own situation, particularly with the baby pally thrown in the mix, illustrates an interesting conundrum with regards to the value of these rewards and the reasons people attach meaning to them. I think all of these are important questions and situations that need to be looked at before they throw the doors open to account-wide achievements.

(Blatant guild plug: Remember, Apotheosis of Eldre’Thalas is 2/8 HM with Heroic Yor’sahj to 22% and is recruiting!!!)

Recruitment Blues

Kurn / / apotheosis, ramblings

I don’t tend to like to use blog entries here solely to pimp out my guild. I feel as though I owe my readers more than “NEED APPS!!!” in terms of content.

So I’ll sum up the last couple of months in terms of Apotheosis’ raider numbers for you.

We have lost: a resto druid, a resto shaman, a hunter, two warlocks, a mage. We are on the verge of losing a shadow priest and another person (who hasn’t said it publicly yet). That’s 8 people.

We have gained: a hunter.

That’s not entirely accurate, we have another hunter in his trial, so it’s more like we’ve gained two hunters.

We’ve also gained and lost a resto shaman who stepped down during his trial, same deal with a ret paladin. We had to end a mage’s trial as well.

That’s a net loss of 6 players since Dragon Soul came out. And the kicker is that it’s not because they wanted to raid elsewhere or anything. These people just stopped playing or just stopped raiding. So I hold no ill will towards them.

But it means the roster is tight right now.

And it means that I’m turning to you fine folks.

Apotheosis is an Alliance guild that raids 25-man content. We’re 2/8 HM in Dragon Soul, with a server-first Heroic Hagara kill and server-first Fangs of the Father. We raid 3 days a week, Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, from 9pm ET until 12am (invites at 8:45pm). We can be fun, we can be serious. We tend to have a good time and work through content together.

We are seeking: 2 warlocks, 1 retribution paladin, 1 resto shaman, 1 enhancement shaman and up to 2 unspecified RANGED DPS (including a mage, warlocks beyond what we’re seeking, even another hunter or shadow priest)

Currently working on Heroic Yor’sahj, hoping to get a significant amount of work done this week, if not downing him.

This is the slimmest the roster has been in the 13 months since we started raiding. Back at the start of Cataclysm, we had 39 people who had expressed interest in raiding. This got pared down, but by and large, we sat between 30 and 35 officers/raiders/initiates throughout this whole year.

And now we’re sitting at 28, including the shadow priest and other person who are both leaving in the next couple of weeks.

So this is… not so good.

Crazily, recruitment needs are changing just as fast as I can post them elsewhere. I had just gotten done with updating everything when tonight, my ret pally in his trial says he has to withdraw from his trial. So back out there I need to go and be like “oops, just kidding, still need a ret pally!”.

It’s exhausting and tiring and this is one major reason why I think 25-mans are endangered — the crazy amount of shuffling people and rosters and paperwork is insane. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather be too busy organizing 36 people or something than doing the kind of busywork I am right now while trying to manage 28 people, but dang, this is not a size of the roster I am comfortable with.

So please, if you’re any of those classes, or heck, if you’re an amazing player with great gear and experience anyhow, please take a bit of time to check out Apotheosis. I’d really appreciate it. :)

Late Night Math: Pets, Beacon and Heroic Yor'sahj

Kurn / / dragon soul, healing, hunters, paladins, raiding, T13

Apotheosis (A-25m-2/8HM, seeking casters and a resto shaman! </shamelessplug>) got Heroic Hagara down as a server-first and our next target is Heroic Yor’sahj the Unsleeping.

Assuming holy paladins are in the mix, a popular healing strategy is to beacon the tanks and heal the pets in the raid, because heals from Beacon of Light do not stack Deep Corruption and pets don’t receive stacks of Deep Corruption.

The question came up, the other day, about whether or not a hunter should use a Tenacity pet, who has the Blood of the Rhino talent. Would the lower DPS be worth 40% extra healing to a pet and then, ostensibly, 20% extra healing to the tank through Beacon of Light?

This was a popular strategy back on Valithria Dreamwalker. You would park a turtle or some other Tenacity pet with the same +healing talent basically on top of Dreamwalker or right next to her and you’d heal the pet for extra healing done. Unfortunately, this stopped being viable eventually when they fixed Blood of the Rhino to only affect the pet and no copied heals from that (ie: Beacon of Light).

But that was back in 3.3. Did 4.3 mean this was somehow working again?

I bothered Daey to get on his holy paladin, Saerani, while I was on Kurn and we experimented with him beaconing me and healing my pet. The first pet he healed was my cat, Whisper, who has no +healing talents at all, being a Ferocity pet.

So you can see here that Daey hits Whisper for 55355 (crit). This bounces to me for 27677, which is just half of that heal. (Yeah, I miss 100% Beacon transfers, too!) The same with the 27672 hit, that gets me for half — 13836. That is totally expected. This is the control for the experiment. Now let’s look at Daey healing my bear, Fozzie.

First, note that the non-crit heal hits for 40,102. Based on the heals Whisper got, it’s clear that Fozzie has the Blood of the Rhino talent if it hit him for a 40k non-crit.

But then you see that the heal to me was only 14322.

MATH TIME.

14322 x2 = 28644 x 1.4 = 40,101.6 = 40,102.

So the original heal size, without the Blood of the Rhino bonus was 28644. With the 40% extra healing, we get 40,101.6 (rounded up to 40,102). If this +healing did transfer through Beacon of Light, we wouldn’t see me being healed for half of the original heal’s size. We would see it be half of the final heal’s size. The final heal was 40,102, so we would be looking for 20,051 as the heal that I got. But alas, I was only healed for 14,322.

Let’s see how this holds up with the next heal.

Fozzie is healed for 71865. I get healed for 25666.

25666 x2 = 51,332 x 1.4 = 71,864.8 = 71,865

Yup, same deal.

So it’s quite clear — Blood of the Rhino does not transfer any extra +healing from the pet to the Beacon of Light target. As such, on the Heroic Yor’sahj the Unsleeping encounter, I do encourage you to beacon the tanks and heal the pets, but don’t gimp your hunters’ DPS by forcing them to bring a Tenacity pet to the raid. Their regular pet will do exactly the same thing a Tenacity pet will.

Change is Scary

Kurn / / apotheosis, healers, raiding, ramblings

When I first started raiding, all those years ago, I was a hunter. I quickly became a sort of assistant raid leader to our guild master at the time, back in Fated Heroes. I have fond memories of telling people to /assist me as I burned down the adds on Venoxis, one at a time and getting through three of the four sheep (haha, 4 mages in a 20m! It was glorious!) and then not being able to find the fourth sheep to break…

Believe it or not, my BROTHER was one of our first healing leads, on his druid Fog. This eventually became the one and only Cryptkikr, an extraordinary holy priest. We spent a good deal of time in Molten Core and Crypt was our healing lead throughout it. I picked up bits and pieces of it since I was required to heal through at least some of the fights on many of our raid nights. The idea of a healer custom channel was, to me, GENIUS. So that’s where I learned about assignments and while cross-healing if your target is stable is fine, respecting your assignments is still the important part. To this day, one of my favourite times was healing through Thekal in the original ZG. I’d killed Thekal a handful of times as Kurn, but the raid needed a healer, so I went in on Madrana and HOLY CRAP, what a freaking rush. In truth, that may have been when I first really felt like I was making a difference in a raid as a healer.

In early Burning Crusade, I wasn’t with Fated Heroes and Apotheosis had yet to be born, so my experience with healing in a raid situation at that point was Karazhan and dual-healing Kara with another holy paladin. I had responsibility for one tank and group, the other paladin (the raid leader) would handle the other tank and the other group. We ostensibly had a priest who was supposed to be healing with us, but she was shadow most of the time (MANA BATTERIES YAY) or, oddly, AFK. (2-healing Moroes with two paladins and careful use of Turn Undead was fantastic, by the way.)

When Apotheosis first formed, Cryptkikr was our natural choice as healing lead. And since I was the most geared of pretty much anyone (with my one piece of T4, the gloves, and several off-set pieces), I decided I wouldn’t DPS. I decided to heal.

So Crypt gave out assignments and such, although I filled in now and again, especially when we were on separate Karazhan teams, but he was key for Maulgar and Gruul and Magtheridon assignments. Meanwhile, since I’d always been the research-type person, I handled strats and general raid leading duties, with Majik also being fairly vocal, and then after raids, Daey and I would sit there and go through logs for an hour after every single raid.

It was as we were getting through SSC that we felt a need for more DPS, so Crypt went shadow. We needed bodies and had pulled in several people from my first guild in BC, including a couple of healers. So Crypt went shadow and I took on the healing assignments. Crypt eventually stopped playing due to RL issues and, well, I kept doing healing.

I loved my healers. I really did. There was Furormalic, Massimo, Kazir, Noon, Opus, Ribs, Space, Q, Lokdog, Legs and, of course, Euphie. We had a great time together in Burning Crusade and I loved being in charge of the healers, even when I wanted to kill them on Bloodboil for cross-healing when they shouldn’t have done so. :)

I maintained both raid leading and healer leading through the start of Wrath, but things went poorly in terms of attendance and so we couldn’t progress, then couldn’t recruit and we stopped raiding. I went to Bronzebeard, to a guild called Resurgence, after we’d stopped officially raiding in Apotheosis. Within two months or so, guess what? That’s right, promoted to healing lead.

I left them after being there for about six months. They were having trouble forming raids, the raid leader having gquit (apparently because of me and my arguments with him — to which I say, dude, if you’re going to call for a second set of cooldowns on 4m Ignis, you’d better make damn sure we HAVE 2 sets of cooldowns to use, jackass), so I went to Proudmoore and raided with my Real-Life Friend the Resto Druid. I was there from mid-September until late May/early June and somewhere in February/March… I was asked to take over healing for my RL Friend the Resto Druid who was going through some personal stuff and couldn’t raid for a good month or so.

I left that guild shortly after my RLFtRD returned and moved on to Choice where I was happy as a clam. I didn’t have any responsibilities except to heal. It was great. Of course, I helped out with some strats and such, because I had already gone 11/12 HM on Proudmoore and the guild was 7/11 HM when I joined, so I happily gave them any input I could — which I’m sure annoyed some of the officers, but the whole walking-the-fine-line between helpful and annoying as shit is a story for another time.

4.0 dropped. I headed back to Eldre’Thalas, to resume being a raid leader for the first time since early Wrath, and to be a healing lead again, for the first time in months.

When we started raiding on January 4th, 2011, our healing roster looked like this:

3 Holy Paladins: Myself, Walks and Apple.
4 Healing Priests: Kaleri, Oestrus, Numinal and Legs.
2 Resto Druids: Hestiah and Kaleina.
1 Resto Shaman: Dar.

(Yes, we overrecruited.)

Apple and Legs pulled themselves from the starting roster due to lack of time to get their ducks in a row to be “raid ready” by the extended deadline I’d given them. We removed Kaleina from our starting roster on January 25th due to a variety of things, including sporadic attendance. So our 10 healers dropped to 7 healers — good thing we overrecruited.

Having said that, we now have 8 healers on the roster, one in his trial, and though there’s only three of us left from a year ago (me, Walks and Kaleri), we’ve gained Sara, Kit, Featherwind and, of course, Jasyla. Plus Baylie, our new resto shammy who’s in his trial with us.

I love my healers. Sara and Kal share a brain sometimes (and, for whatever reason, poop comments/jokes are quite popular with them). Walks wanted to be a raid healing paladin in Cataclysm and so he has become phenomenal at it (unlike my sorry self), while sneaking in the most terribly awful puns you could ever imagine. Kit and her Spirit Link Totem have SAVED THE DAY on more than one occasion. Feather is always up for a challenge and is another one of us strange people with two max-level healing toons of the same class and spec. Baylie is still making his mark, but I’m looking forward to seeing more from him. And Jasyla, well, Jasyla is awesomeness in druidic form.

Healer chat has been filled with pudding and wine discussions, poop jokes, a ton of laughter and massive amounts of RSA announces.

Through the last year, it hasn’t always been easy for me to raid lead while being the healing lead as well. On countless occasions, I’ll have forgotten cooldown rotations and be in mid-fight and go “uh… crap… okay, so I’ll get AM first, Walks gets AM second, Kal third with PWB” and so on. Sometimes, I’ve actually forgotten to give out healing assignments at all. >.>

I came into the expansion thinking “I AM GOING TO DO HEALING REVIEWS EVERY MONTH OR TWO”. And I’ve done them twice, total, in the last year. (And will be doing them again this week.)

Overall, I feel that the healers have really deserved better from me in the last year. I’ve always thought “hey, I can do (some healer-related thing) tomorrow or next week,” but tomorrow or next week never seemed to come.

When my grandmother broke her hip in late December (she’s in a rehabilitation center now to build up her muscles and such, so she’s doing quite well — thank you for all your concern, tweets, emails and positive thoughts!!), I suddenly had 2-4 fewer hours in any given day, due to going to the hospital to see her, staying anywhere between 1-3 hours and then coming back home. This utter lack of time, plus the start of my winter semester, plus the fact that one of my officers with whom I’ve played WoW with for six years, on and off, is stepping down as an officer and a raider… this meant something had to give if I wanted to continue to play WoW with any kind of seriousness.

So I approached some people in the guild about becoming officers. One was Serrath, whose name you’ve certainly seen in the comments on this very blog, who I asked to take over Loot Master duties. The other was Jasyla, because it’s clear to me that it’s time for me to hand over the healing lead reins to ensure that the healers get the attention they deserve.

I’ll remain a healer — despite the fact we’ve had trouble recruiting hunters, I know that no one wants me to inflict my poor DPS skills on the raid on Kurn — but will hand off the healing lead hat to Jasyla and I’ll concern myself primarily with raid stuff.

In a way, it’s going back to my roots. This is where I started, after all, right? Barking out commands and orders in Zul’Gurub on Venoxis? It’s something I’ve done for the last year, so it’s not new to me, either.

But at the same time… my healers are my peeps. Don’t get me wrong, I really like my guildies overall, but over the years, dating back to BC at least, it was always the healing team that made things awesome for me. Cryptkikr, Euphie, Furormalic, even Noonshade and Opus back in the day (despite the nastiness that happened in the start of Wrath, I still think fondly of the BC days with them), all of which gave way to the people in Resurgence, like Kaleri (and Kaleina, who was healing on her priest as Carmentes back then) and, shockingly, Euphie (again!) and Fadorable. That gave way to my RL Friend the Resto Druid and a couple of the other healers over on Proudmoore. And eventually, my move to Choice gave me the opportunity to get to know Fugara (the GM) and meet Walks and heal alongside some very talented healers in Wrath. Even today in Choice, I love chatting with Fug and Azrulian and Lovin, while getting to focus on JUST healing the fights, which is still glorious.

So I am very reluctant to place them in someone else’s hands, but at least I know they’ll be well-cared for. Apart from anything else, I know Jasyla knows how to read the logs, so I know she’s not going to bench people for low healing output. ;)

This change has been in the making for about a month and that’s still not enough time for me to accept that for the first time in years, as long as I’ve been an officer-type person in the guild, I am NOT going to be doing healing assignments on a regular basis. I know it’ll be a benefit to the raid group as a whole to have someone else dedicated to that and no longer will I have to sit down and do assignments AFTER I’ve explained to everyone where to stand, etc, etc. No longer will I forget cooldowns or forget assignments altogether. It’s a good thing. It’s a good change.

Change is scary, though, and I really have to wonder how it’s going to feel to me, personally, next week when Jasyla does the healing assignments solo. (This week is a transition week for both Toga and Serrath as loot masters and me and Jasyla as healing leads.)

At least I’m still going to heal on my paladin and will still be in healer chat and will still get to hang out in the best Apotheosis raid channel. And I know my healers will get the attention they really deserve. <3

Something New

Kurn / / apotheosis, raiding, ramblings, T13

It’s rare, in this game, that I get to achieve something new that I have never before experienced. Getting a new boss down is “new”, but I’ve killed dozens of raid bosses for the first time.

Until Thursday, January 19th, I had never, ever had a server-first kill.

I’ve had a couple of server-first achievements, but I had never had a server-first kill.

I knew we had a good chance of downing Heroic Hagara on 25-man on Thursday. We’d gotten her to 7%ish (9% when the wipe was called) on Tuesday. It was really just a matter of time and I knew that we didn’t have Echelon (a 10-man Horde guild that has been at the top of Eldre’Thalas progression for years) to compete with any longer, as they packed it in after getting Heroic Morchok down. Similarly, Epic Again, another long-time ET guild that led progression, transferred to Stormrage, so we wouldn’t have them as a measuring stick on Eldre’Thalas any longer. I knew the other guilds on the server who had downed Heroic Morchok were 10-man guilds and I knew that 10-man guilds typically go for Zon’ozz or Yor’sahj first, while 25-man guilds have had more success with Hagara second. So I knew we had a good chance.

Knowing we had a good chance at a genuine server-first boss kill is different than actually achieving it.

I may not like what’s coming up for the game. I may not like what the current state of the game is. But on Thursday night, I finally got a server-first boss kill. Not an Alliance-first. Not a 25-man first. Not an achievement first. A real, honest-to-God, genuine, true server-first kill of a raid boss.

If nothing else, I’m glad to have gotten it before packing it in, whenever that might be, and I’m especially pleased and proud to have done it before any damn nerfs.

Thank you, Apotheosis, for kicking some ass tonight. I am extremely proud and humbled by your perseverence, tenacity, skill and your senses of humour.

A Sigh of Resignation

Kurn / / apotheosis, dragon soul, facepalm, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings, T11, T12, T13

When the expansion was announced at BlizzCon, I wasn’t thrilled. My reaction was something along the lines of: Mists of Pandaria? We’re going to have PANDAS running around? SERIOUSLY?

I decided I could probably deal with that, despite not being thrilled with pandas, to the point where I now no longer say “sad panda”, but rather “sad moose”. However, that, combined with the changing talent trees and abilities and such left me doubtful that I would really enjoy very much at all in Mists of Pandaria.

Still, I said, I would wait to see if things were as bad as I thought they would be, by checking out the Beta. I signed up for the annual pass so I’d get guaranteed Mists of Pandaria Beta access and a free digital copy of Diablo III. People who have noted my overall unhappiness with the announced details of the expansion have asked me if I plan to continue playing.

To them, I have said “right now, the plan is to keep playing and keep raiding, unless something significant changes or Beta is terrible.”

So I have basically told people that my viewpoint was that everything would continue barring huge changes/proof that said changes are terrible in Beta.

And then, on Wednesday evening, Blizzard announced incoming nerfs to Dragon Soul, both normal and heroic.

I sighed. And then I resigned myself to the fact that, unless the Mists of Pandaria Beta absolutely blows my mind in terms of PVE play (especially raiding), this is my last expansion of World of Warcraft where I will be anything more than a casual player.

Let me be very clear — I am dedicated to my guild and our raid group. I will continue to raid, continue to lead the guild, up to when Mists of Pandaria is released. But after that? I’m really not so sure what’s going to happen. Until release, I’ll stick around and continue to be a source of holy paladin knowledge, will still do a podcast with Majik, will still lead Apotheosis and will still raid with Choice on my off-nights. Beyond that, well, I’m not thinking I want to be a part of the upcoming expansion, which is a shift from just twelve hours ago. Earlier today, my thinking was optimistic: “Hey, unless things in Beta really suck, I’ll probably keep playing.” Now, it’s more pessimistic: “Hey, unless things in Beta are really AWESOME, I’m probably going to quit.”

The reason is the ongoing nerfing of current content.

For those of you who are brave, the complete rant is below, but that’s the short answer.

Continue reading “A Sigh of Resignation”

Co-operation vs. Competition

Kurn / / facepalm, healers, healing, ramblings

Anyone who’s healed with me, particularly with me as their healing lead, knows that I do not put a huge emphasis on numbers while healing. I don’t care who’s topping the healing meters, I don’t care who’s at the bottom. I take those numbers in stride and I don’t sweat it, so long as people are not dying due to lack of healing.

This is because I care more about defeating the encounter as a team than topping the meters. I don’t even have Recount or Skada up most of the time because I don’t want to focus on numbers. If I have it up, it is almost certainly as a quick diagnostic tool for after the pull, so I can see if people were respecting their assignments.

Please bear in mind that I’m not saying it’s not important to do your best on an encounter, but it’s not doing your best, for example, to allow Gushing Wound to stay on the tank during Alysrazor, just so you’ll have more healing to do. That’s padding the numbers and artificially inflating them at the risk of killing your tank.

At this point in the expansion, after having raided for several months with my own healing team in Apotheosis (up to a year in some cases), I just flat-out don’t care which of us tops the meters or which of us (that would be me) is occasionally outhealed by our DK tank. (Actually, that was all of us on Baleroc, sometimes…!)

My healing roster in Apotheosis currently consists of: 2 holy paladins, 2 resto druids, 1 disc priest, 1 holy priest and 2 resto shaman (one is in his trial). But I don’t look at them and say “oh, holy priest, huge buffs, God, I hate Sara for having a more powerful healing cooldown!!” Nor do I look over at Walks and curse at him for grasping holy paladin raid healing better than myself. Nor do I gripe about Kal and her amazing bubbles on the tanks when my “bubbles” are pathetic and miniscule, even with a hefty amount of mastery. (Okay, I gripe a little, but screw mastery anyway.)

I don’t get upset when Kit saves the day with a well-timed Spirit Link Totem. I don’t get angry when Jasyla or Featherwind manage to squeeze in another Tranquility for an extra few hundred thousand healing. I don’t begrudge any of my healers their successes, because when they succeed, my whole team succeeds.

On December 6th, the Holy Paladin 4pc set bonus was nerfed in a hotfix. No longer would our 4pc set increase healing done by Holy Radiance by 20%, it would now only increase it by 5%.

In the PTR notes for 4.3.2, the change is mentioned because the tooltip will now read 5% instead of the incorrect-since-December-6th 20%.

I noticed a few tweets and such about the nerf, from people who had not read the hotfixes (or perhaps they had and it just didn’t register as anything interesting at the time), basically cheering that holy paladins were being nerfed and they thought that holy paladins were being nerfed from the level they’re at now.

My question here is why?

Why on earth would you be glad to see your teammates be nerfed?

When resto druids got a 20% nerf to WG’s healing and a glyph change that is ridiculous, I didn’t cheer, I didn’t express my sheer joy. I was upset on their behalf. When holy priests complained of not having a really viable raid cooldown during 4.0-4.2, I was right there with them, saying yes, it would make so much sense for holy priests to have a real raid cooldown that matters! When they got their Divine Hymn buffs, I was thrilled!

When resto shaman got Spirit Link Totem, I was really pleased for them, same with when resto druids got the reduced CD on Tranquility. And in the early days of T11, I got spoiled rotten by having not one, but two Power Word: Barriers at my disposal, thanks to Kal and Num.

My question here is… why does the success of my class make people feel so angry that they then feel HAPPY when my class gets nerfed?

This isn’t a new thing, not at all, but I feel as though the inter-class arguments have gotten worse in recent times. I feel as though many players just no longer care about the team aspect of the game and are only out to make sure that they’re topping the meters.

Can you top meters while being a good team player? Sure. Does that happen often? No. Generally, in my six years of playing, if a healer was concerned about topping the healing meters, that healer would not follow their assignment and their assigned people would die. That’s why I don’t care about the meters. If I top them, great. If I don’t, well, did my target or targets live? If so, good. If not, then we have a problem.

I feel strongly that the WoW community has become too fractured and divisive. Tanks argue that other tanks are OP, pure DPS argue about hybrids being too competitive and healers… healers lose sight of the fact that we’re all on the same team and that, ultimately, we all want the raid to live and bosses to die.

I heal as a holy paladin because I like the class, overall. I can’t imagine relying on hots, I am bad with the large priest toolkit and the idea of chain heal is still pretty foreign to me, despite the fact I’ve done some ICC 10/25 on my shaman (and several dungeon runs/heroic dungeons since).

I won’t reroll a healing class because a certain class is OP and I won’t shelve my paladin if we’re completely ineffective. I play the class because I enjoy my capabilities within that class. (Although I miss Divine Intervention. A lot.)

So it boggles my mind when I see other healers, good healers, rejoice at a nerf to a class they feel is overpowered. It makes me disappointed in them and the community at large. It makes me wonder what happened to team spirit and being happy and pleased about the successes of your team members. When did it all become about the self?

I feel, more and more, as though my team-first attitude is endangered. I feel as though 25-mans are endangered. I feel as though the game, somewhere, changed forever and the community it’s built up since that change is filled with “gogogo” people who are obsessed with their own personal performance.

Again, I will reiterate that there is nothing wrong with maximizing your own performance, so long as the team comes first. But I have to question if other people even understand what a team is anymore. Sadly, I think a lot of people view their fellow healers as competition and not as teammates.

I celebrate the successes of my team. You, almost certainly, cannot solo-heal raids. You do it with a partner or two or five or six. I ask that you show them some respect, no matter how badly you may be outhealed or no matter how badly you outheal them. For better or for worse, they are your teammates, even in LFR, and if you don’t show respect to your fellow healers, those poor people in the trenches with you as you struggle to keep that death knight or warrior alive, then how on earth can you be a team player?

We’re all on the same team, with the same goal. Let’s remember that the next time a series of nerfs or buffs come down, shall we?

Updates

Kurn / / apotheosis, dragon soul, healers, raiding, ramblings

Hey folks! I hope the holidays are treating everyone well and that people are enjoying whatever it is they’re doing at the moment, whether that’s in-game or out. :)

As for myself, as some of you on Twitter or in my guilds may be aware, my 93 year-old grandmother fell last week and broke her hip. She’s been in the hospital since then and has come through her surgery quite well. That said, she’s still quite elderly and she has a lot of work ahead of her in terms of recovery and rehabilitation. Thank you to everyone who’s tweeted me with their support. Your positive thoughts, good vibes and prayers are greatly appreciated and I ask that you continue to keep her in your thoughts and prayers. <3

So that’s primarily why I’ve been quiet of late, although there’s also the whole “holiday” thing. It hasn’t been the best holiday for me and the family, but we’ve managed to find pockets of joy here and there.

I have a LOT to say about Dragon Soul, paladins, raiding, LFR, elitism, VPs and the like… but I’m not sure when I’ll have the opportunity to write about it all.

In short:

– Apotheosis is 8/8 and we’ll be pushing H Morchok on the 3rd of January (and we’re recruiting, apply now!)
– I’ve done LFR a few times and have had mixed experiences with it, but overall, it seems to be an easy way to get at least 250 VP, if not 500.
– If a holy paladin gets the green buff on Ultraxion, HOLY CRAP, it is AWESOME, haha! (I normally get blue with Apotheosis, but got given green in Choice last week and I blew up the meters, which was hilarious.)
– I also want to do an in-depth examination of Holy Radiance at some point, but basically, it can be very, very useful. It still doesn’t mean that we are “raid healers” though. We can help on the raid significantly, but we’re still very well used as tank healers. If you have 3 resto druids, 1 holy paladin, 1 disc priest and 1 holy priest, you and the disc are likely best served on the tanks with the others on the raid. Do not forget that while Holy Radiance is all shiny, your group comp might be best served with you on the tank. And that is okay. It really depends on your assignment and your group.
– Ultraxion healing: I recommend resto druids/holy priests on red, resto shaman/holy paladins on green, disc priests/holy paladins on blue. Basically, your strongest raid healers on red, then people who will mostly proc green’s buff on green (Sanc, Wild Growth, Healing Rain don’t proc it, so Chain Heal and Holy Radiance go go go) and tank healers on blue. Seems to work nicely.

Anyhow, that’s all from me for now. Short post and it’s still about 500 words. I am incapable of writing less, it would seem!

Best wishes to you all and have a happy (and safe) new year. :)

Of LFR and Shields and Offhands

Kurn / / apotheosis, dragon soul, gear, T13

So, lots of news to do with us and our gear of late! I apologize for not being on the cutting edge of news, but hey, research papers and final exams and lack of sleep all take their tolls. ;)

Anyhow, let’s talk a bit about this little tidbit that affects Looking For Raid gear ONLY: “Some items were recently reclassified.” That means that several items were tagged so that only those classes can use them.

  • Timepiece of the Bronze Flight – Paladin, Shaman
  • Ledger of Revolting Rituals – Druid, Priest

What’s this? Paladins can no longer roll need on the Ledger? But isn’t the Ledger BETTER than the shield?

It was.

They have hotfixed the Timepiece of the Bronze Flight to add a red socket with a 10 int socket bonus. It is now 20 intellect stronger than the Ledger. (Unfortunately, no tooltips seem to have picked up on this fix.)

Without the hotfix to the shield, the reclassification of the Ledger to Druid and Priest ONLY would have been ridiculous — but again, those tags are only for Looking For Raid. If you’re raiding normal Dragon Soul (or heroic Dragon Soul, for that matter) then those classifications don’t exist.

However, given the change to the shield, there’s absolutely no point in us snagging the Ledger at all unless we’ve been SERIOUSLY screwed over by drops of the shield.

I have to say I’m kind of glad about this change. The last time I seriously used an offhand instead of a shield was probably in vanilla WoW when I was using Arlokk’s Hoodoo Stick, which was awesome if only because it looked like I was dual-wielding, hee! (And now I’m sad I won’t pick up the Ledger because now I can’t transmogrify the Ledger INTO Arlokk’s Hoodoo Stick!) But yes, as I was saying, I’m glad about the change overall. Paladins and shaman are supposed to use shields. Period. I’m not sure why that is, but seeing a paladin or a shaman using an offhand when a shield is more appropriate for them makes me sad.

I mean, no one BUT a holy paladin or a resto/ele shaman is going to want to pick up a shield with spellpower intellect on it. But potentially more than just a druid or a priest would want an intellect off-hand, particularly if it doesn’t have spirit on it. Intellect shields are made for us and the intellect-loving shaman. That’s clearly Blizzard’s vision for us and, despite my bitching (which I do a lot) I find myself reluctant to stray from that particular vision. A lot of the time, Blizzard’s vision will be in opposition with what is seen as being “optimal”. In the case of the Ledger vs. Timepiece, I was willing to just keep using my heroic Beth’tilac shield until everyone in my raid who wanted the Ledger had gotten it, and then I would have expressed interest in the Ledger. (And then would have transmogrified it.)

I want to play my class optimally (or as close as I can while still enjoying what I’m doing) but when “the vision” of the class is in opposition to “optimal play”, it discourages me overall.

So good for Blizzard for fixing the Timepiece. I’m really glad I get to rock a shield again this tier. That’s just how it should be.

(Now, having said that, anyone have any recommendations for a shield to transmogify to that matches Lightforge?)

There was also a hotfix to the Heart of Unliving: It got 323 intellect to go with the stacking 88 spirit bonus.

And there was a hotfix to our 4pc bonus — now increases healing done by Holy Radiance by 5%, down from 20%. So… yeah, that’s a nerf.

As such, I updated my Gear List post with a few strikeouts and new notes.

In other news, Apotheosis is seeking a HUNTER and a RESTORATION SHAMAN! We’re 7/8 with a 7.8% wipe on Madness and, well, we’re generally awesome, so apply now. :)

Of Dragon Soul and Podcasts

Kurn / / 4.3, apotheosis, dragon soul, podcast, raiding, ramblings

I have holy paladin stuff in my head, but I don’t have a lot of time today, so that’ll have to wait until tomorrow or something, but as a player and specifically as a raider in World of Warcraft, I have a couple of things to say about Dragon Soul.

Apotheosis walked into Dragon Soul on Tuesday and 1-shot Morchok, 1-shot Yor’sahj and 2-shot Hagara. We had a bit of trouble with the bouncing ball on Zon’ozz, but we still cleared half of the raid instance in a single night. And here’s a hot tip: I honestly was the least-prepared for Hagara that I had been on a boss since Omnotron and hadn’t put any Hagara strats up prior to the raid.

Choice walked into Dragon Soul on Wednesday and 1-shot Morchok, 2-shot Yor’sahj and had a great attempt on Hagara. Zon’ozz also caused a bit of trouble, but nothing too bad.

With absolutely no disrespect to either my guild or the team of people I raid with in Choice on the baby pally, that’s crazy. This is the last raid before Mists of Pandaria. We’re not even in Alpha on Mists, apparently. From the point in time when Beta opens for a WoW expansion, there’s typically about 6 months until release. If I’m remembering correctly, there’s 1-2 months of Alpha before Beta.

So if we’re pre-Alpha, there’s no less than about 7 months, possibly 8, before the release of Mists of Pandaria.

What does any of that have to do with the fact that my guild is 4/8 in Dragon Soul?

It means that, unless Ultraxion, Blackhorn and the Deathwing encounters are SUPREMELY difficult (which they don’t really appear to be, from most accounts), we’ll clear the instance shortly, in the first 1-2 weeks of its release.

And then it’s on to heroic modes.

For something like 7-8 months.

Are you kidding me?

As long-time readers know, I was NOT a fan of the Firelands nerfs. At all. But, as I grew to accept the changes to the instance, I recognized that maybe this was a test for the Looking for Raid difficulty level. I thought “Hey, maybe normals in Dragon Soul will be the same as normals originally were in Firelands and the nerfed variety will be the baseline for LFR!”

With 4/8 under my belt and 3/8 on another pretty identical toon, I have to say that I believe I was wrong. Nerfed normal Firelands is the baseline for normal Dragon Soul and LFR is, from what I’ve heard, even easier.

So this is going to have to last us through until Mists of Pandaria?

I’m sure heroics will be different, but it’s looking as though we’re in for a repeat of Icecrown Citadel — almost a year of being in the same instance, barring a Ruby Sanctum-like instance and even then, that barely counts as a raid instance, because everyone kept spending most of their time on ICC.

I don’t like where this is going. I’m not sure where it’s going, to be honest, but if it’s heading in the direction I think it is (beating our heads against the same heroic bosses for 6+ months, losing people to boredom, etc) then I’m not looking forward to this. And if this is where they’re taking raiding in Mists of Pandaria…

Well, I guess we’ll see.

In happier news, I’m going to be on the Twisted Nether Blogcast this Saturday! There will be a livestream of the podcast and such and all the fun starts at 11pm ET (8pm PT) on Saturday, December 3rd! Tune in and give it a listen!

And of course, there’s still Blessing of Frost for your (usually!) weekly fix of me and Majik yelling at each other and trying to start trends on Twitter, like #sadmoose, #sadmooseftw and, sadly, #kurngoingret. In particularly, Episode 42 is a great one to listen to. So much laughter! It was our anniversary episode (1 year of doing a podcast!) and we had a great time.

Anyhow. More holy paladin thoughts soon, but I hope to see some friendly faces in the Twisted Nether chat on Saturday night!