World of Zandalaricraft?

Kurn / / facepalm, lfg, patch 4.2, raiding, ramblings, T12

When 4.2 dropped, a lot of things simultaneously happened for those of us interested in the PVE side of things. Let’s summarize, shall we?

1) Valor Points turned into Justice Points, capping out at 4000, and all the 359 gear that had previously been available through Valor Points is now available for purchase with Justice Points.

2) New gear that was item level 378 appeared on the Valor Point vendor, including the pants, gloves and chest from T12 armor.

3) Our new Valor Point cap became 980, down from the 1250 from Tier 11 content. (Normal T11 content will also only give out Justice Points versus Valor Points.)

4) Raid boss kills got a bump in VP earned. On 25-man, this value got bumped from 90 VP per kill to 140 VP per kill and 10-man kills got a bump from 70 VP per kill to 120 VP per kill.

5) New dailies came out that will, eventually, open up vendors selling 365 gear.

Therefore, what every responsible PVE raider should do each week to min/max everything is:

a) Get 980 Valor Points by way of 7 troll dungeons, each of which give you 140 VP, making it the most efficient way (in theory) of capping. (Each boss you down in Firelands on 25-man and each Occu’thar 25-man kill reduces this number of runs by one, so killing two bosses and Occu’thar on 25-man means only 4 troll dungeons.)

b) Get 980 Valor Points on an alt, to cap out VP so that you can buy your main raiding toon some bracers, which are BOE. And after that, continue to do so in order to exploit the market of people who don’t want to use up their VP for a BOE item but are too lazy to do what you’re doing right now. (Being crazy enough to complete 14 troll dungeons, or close to it!)

c) Molten Front dailies! If you’re not all in 372s or higher, the Molten Front rewards will give you access to 365 level items. This is great for that one slot you never upgraded if you’re a current content raider or FANTASTIC if you’re trying to gear yourself up to get into Firelands raids.

d) Speaking of Firelands, trash runs! Before getting yourself saved to your regular raid group (assuming you do actively raid), it’s suddenly a great idea to farm trash for rep, at least up until 5999/6000 into Honored (which is when trash stops giving you rep for each mob). Getting to Friendly is easy and gives you access to a 378 cloak. Honored is a little longer, but will give you access to a 378 belt.

Who on earth has that kind of time? I don’t. I’m not even in school or working full-time at the moment and I can tell you right now that the above is a significant enough time investment that I can’t do it all.

The dailies don’t take terribly long to do, maybe half an hour if you’re terrible at DPSing the way I am on my baby paladin. The issue is that they’re dailies, so yes, you need to do them every single day to maximize the rate at which you’re getting Marks of the World Tree and get vendors open sooner. That is, of course, assuming you want to bother opening the vendors. Honestly, I don’t need or want anything from them on Madrana (the one on Eldre’Thalas, that is). I went through this post at MMO-Champion to see if I actually needed to do these dailies.

The one upgrade that is actually potentially viable for me is a ring. Spirit Fragment Band, from Varlan Highbough. No haste, no spirit. If I was absolutely desperate to upgrade rings, I guess this could be potentially useful.

So out of all the rewards (barring pets, mounts, recipes), the poorly-itemized-for-healers caster ring is the one ilvl 365 item that could potentially be worth having for me. Is that one ring worth spending 30+ days doing dailies? Abso-freaking-lutely not. So guess what? Madrana isn’t touching dailies in Hyjal and the Molten Front.

However, a lot of what I mentioned are decent (not amazing, but decent) upgrades for the baby paladin. So I’m doing my dailies with her most days (probably 4-5 days out of 7). Since I only raid (at most) two nights a week on the baby paladin, I’m not earning Valor Points through raids as quickly, nor am I as geared as most people in Choice, so I have to rely on my own efforts to bring her up to par. This meant spending 15,000g on my BOE bracers, but you know what? I was okay with that. (I ended up doing the same for my not-so-baby pally, too, actually!) Of course, keeping up with everything on Skywall is more than a little exhausting and my priority absolutely has to lie with Apotheosis.

It’s easier with Apotheosis, though. I’m not fighting for a raid spot, I’m already geared fairly well as compared to my fellow guildies and while I think I’ll sit out of Shannox and Lord Rhyolith next week, I can usually count on getting the maximum amount of Valor Points possible for our group from raiding, which in our case is 560 so far (Occu’thar, Shannox, Beth’tilac, Lord Rhyolith) and a good chance of getting another 140 tonight by killing Alysrazor. While I don’t mind supplementing my Valor Points from raiding with heroics (although I don’t always have the time to do so), I feel that we should be getting Valor Points primarily FROM raiding.

Let’s look at 25-man Tier 11 content for a moment, shall we?

We had 12 normal-mode bosses and one heroic-only boss, plus Argaloth. Bosses killed on 25-man difficulty gave you the same amount of Valor Points whether you killed them normal or heroic. So, if you were clearing all available content on 25-man difficulty, you could conceivably get 90 VP x 14 boss encounters = 1260 Valor Points. Only the cap was 1250.

In 4.1, you could run 7 troll dungeons randomly (Zul’Aman or Zul’Gurub) and get 140 VP for the success of each one. Alternatively, you could run something like 14 random regular heroics and get 70 VP upon successfully completing each other. Or, you could run a mix of the two, like four Zandalari dungeons and six regular heroics and get to the 980 cap you can get from running random heroics.

That still left you 270 Valor Points to earn from raids. That was 3 bosses on 25-man or 4 on 10-man.

As of 4.2, you can now cap Valor Points exclusively from running dungeons, meaning you don’t have to set foot in a raid instance at all. You can earn up to 490 Valor Points from the heroic dungeons that came with Cataclysm’s launch, running 7 of them getting 70 VP per successful run and then run four Zandalaris… or you can just run the Zandalari dungeons 7 times.

Hm. 11 dungeons versus 7 dungeons… Since time is not infinite, I strongly suspect most people will do the math and decide to do the seven Zandalari dungeons, or rather, exclusively run Zandalari dungeons to fill in the gaps from their raids.

Wrath of the Lich King did not do the playerbase a lot of favours, but one thing it did do all right at was having the random dungeon finder help supplement raiding in terms of Emblems. (What we now know as Valor Points.) Don’t get me wrong, I like that you can run all your VP-rewarding instances in one day, if you so desire, but the problem is that, as of 4.2, random heroics stopped being a supplement to VP earned from raids and became the primary method in which everyone can and should earn them for maximum efficiency. In theory. (I have horror stories about my random Zandalari dungeons to share. But that’s a post for another time.)

As a guild master and a raid leader, I am absolutely astounded that you are awarded the same amount of Valor Points for completing Zul’Gurub or Zul’Aman as you are for killing one Firelands boss (or Occu’thar) on 25-man difficulty. You actually get MORE Valor Points for getting through ZG or ZA than you do in killing any raid boss on 10-man difficulty. What the hell? Five-man random heroics reward you with MORE VP over the course of a week than a ten-man guild who CLEARS Firelands and does Occu’thar? Yep, that’s right. You can get 980 VP from the Zandalari dungeons versus 960 VP for clearing all 7 Firelands bosses and Occu’thar on 10-man difficulty.

Let’s see. Taking at least 2 hours of planning and organizing in order to go down Shannox for the first time, not to mention 45 minutes to clear trash to spawn him, plus several wipes… versus waiting in queue for a maximum of about 35-45 minutes (as a DPS, much less if you’re a healer or a tank) and then go kill a few dungeon bosses in a run that’ll take maybe an hour at most, and that’s if you wipe a couple of times or are sadly paired with truly incompetent individuals. With guildmates in a raiding guild, this is made exceptionally easy.

The time and effort invested is nowhere near the same. Absolutely nowhere. Even if you run a 10-man guild (which is usually a bit easier than 25s, logistically speaking), where everyone shows up all of the time and you don’t have a bench and you’re all amazing players, you’ll still wipe while learning the encounters. And yet, the dungeon-running crowd is getting access to many of the same rewards as the raiding crowd at exactly the same potential pace.

I won’t say “that’s not fair”, because we all have the OPTION to go run dungeons. However, something about this just doesn’t sit right for me. I feel as though the raiders should have the ability to get more VP (1250 vs. 980, as in previous Cataclysm patches?) than those who exclusively run dungeons. Or something. Anything!

Why?

It’s hard to run a raiding guild. Like, really hard. Very time intensive. In putting together a lineup for any boss encounter, you have to first ensure you have maximized your raid’s potential by having all the appropriate buffs and debuffs in there. Then you have to take things like performance and gear and possibly loot priority into consideration. Not to mention the whole question of making sure that your group is actually capable of bringing down the boss. That usually means making sure you don’t have four holy paladins in the raid to “raid heal” or six demonology warlocks (barring heroic Maloriak, of course!) as well as researching and communicating strategy. It’s also hard to be a raider (not just a GM/officer of a raiding guild). You’re constantly juggling your stats on your gear, reforging in and out of stats, theorycrafting some, keeping up on changes and always trying to figure out what YOU can do to be better.

We get a lot of in-game benefits for raiding, though, don’t we?

– Boss loot! The best gear in the game is still available by raiding. You can cap out VP all you want, but it’s not going to give you the heroic versions of loot. Not to mention that you cannot get a 4pc set bonus for T12 armor without killing bosses in the Firelands, since the shoulders and helms are only available from the raid instance.

– Living Embers. As of right now, Living Embers only drop off of bosses in Firelands. Whereas Primordial Saronites were available to everyone who had any Emblems of Frost to spare, Living Embers are only for the raiding crowd or those who put them up at the Auction House. In that way, the raiders are getting more for their trouble. But how is this different from regular boss loot that dungeon-runners miss out on? It’s not.

– Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest is another hallmark of raiders. You want the shiny orange staff? Can’t do it unless you raid. But again, this is just like regular boss loot.

Essentially, we have precisely one thing that rewards us more for raiding right now than by doing dungeons to cap out VP and that is boss loot out of Firelands (or slight variations thereon, which include mounts, pets, titles).

We don’t have any other “tangible” in-game rewards than extra loot. Don’t get me wrong, I like that I’m going to get a shield off Beth’tilac rather than through crafting like I did in Tier 11, but seriously? Dungeon-runners can cap out VP with less time and energy than raiders is another indication that Blizzard is catering to the casuals.

There, I said it. It took me nearly 2000 words to get to my point, but I finally got there. Blizzard is continuing to open this game up to some of the least-skilled players that exist in their playerbase. Yes, there are some “casuals” that are great players who don’t raid because they don’t like to raid, preferring to hone their skills in other ways, etc, but the fact remains that the “casual” players out there who are running dungeons to cap out on VP are not the cream of the crop. And forcing mid-level raiders to go to these dungeons WITH these “casuals”, for the exact same rewards, is a recipe for disaster. (See an upcoming post about my nightmarish Zandalari runs.)

Raiding is but one facet of this game, I know, but it’s the most time-consuming facet and the most difficult one to coordinate, at least historically. I know that Rated Battlegrounds and other PVP endeavours are challenging as well, but in the PVE sense, raiding is the end-game. It’s through raids that we killed Arthas and will kill Deathwing. It’s in the presence of 39 others that I first killed Ragnaros and it’ll be in the presence of 24 others when I kill him again. To have 10 or 25 people working in perfect concert together to defeat the raid encounters is difficult! It’s challenging! I adore that particular challenge more than any other in this game and that’s why I consistently throw myself at a boss, three nights a week with Apotheosis and up to two nights a week with Choice.

25-man raiding has dropped off a lot since Cataclysm launched. Gear normalization between 10s and 25s has made a lot of guilds re-think their decisions to have a 25-man roster and we’ve seen many guilds shrink down from 25 to 10. I sense that my beloved large raids are in danger of being phased out. Heck, at this rate, it feels as though 10-man raiding is in danger of being phased out. I still cannot believe that seven random Zandalari dungeons gives MORE Valor Points than clearing Firelands and Occu’thar as a 10-man raiding team.

The message we’re getting from Blizzard is, in my opinion, this:

“Oh, here’s some raid content. It’s bad-ass. But if you want Valor Points for some sweet rewards (and, in many cases, some necessary ones, even for raiders!), you’re best off farming THESE AWESOME TROLL DUNGEONS. And look, if you can’t raid for some reason, regardless of whether your schedule is weird or if you’re just THAT BAD a player, you can gain the exact same rewards from the VP vendor by running THESE AWESOME TROLL DUNGEONS. In fact, THESE AWESOME TROLL DUNGEONS are the best part of the game right now! We’re making EVERYONE run THESE AWESOME TROLL DUNGEONS. Usually with people they don’t know, but it doesn’t matter because THESE AWESOME TROLL DUNGEONS are totally AWESOME and TROLLTASTIC.”

In my opinion, it should be this (well, not really — I’d tone down the troll dungeons some, but the people in charge are obviously still madly in love with them):

“Oh, here’s some raid content. It’s bad-ass. And because we’re not total dicks, you can still get some awesome raid-level gear through Valor Points. You’ll only be able to earn them as quickly as possible if you raid, but if you want to get as close as you can, run THESE AWESOME TROLL DUNGEONS! And if you can’t quite clear your raid instance but still want to cap, you should run THESE AWESOME TROLL DUNGEONS! That way, everyone’s running THESE AWESOME TROLL DUNGEONS and we’re also allowing non-raiders to eventually get to the same point of saturation as the raiders with the Valor Point stuff.”

Of course, none of this really matters in the long run, does it? Nope. I need 8850 Valor Points (if I’m not lucky with Occu’thar drops and if I hadn’t bought the BOE bracers) to gear up my paladin in the way I want her geared. Once I reach that point, I don’t need to cap out on Valor Points. That’s nine weeks of VP capping before it’ll cease to matter for me on a practical level that affects my in-game character.

But the knowledge that dungeon-runners will cap out on VP much more easily than I will for the remainder of this tier of content will last a lot longer than nine weeks. This is, in my opinion, a dangerous precedent that screws with the natural progression of things.

They are taking dungeons, which have typically been a stepping stone on the way to raiding, and making them easier, faster, more efficient ways to earn many of the same rewards. I am firmly of the belief that dungeons should remain a stepping stone. I don’t mind them coming out with new dungeons and I don’t mind those dungeons helping to catch people up to current raiders, but earning 980 VP for doing 7 clears of ZA or ZG when you have to clear Firelands AND Occu’thar on 10-man to get 960 VP is just distasteful to me. It’s a lack of respect for the hard work raiders and raid organizers put into their characters and their raid teams. I sincerely hope we’ll see a change in this for the next tier of raiding.

(This actually started out as a rant about feeling as though I had to cap out VP on three separate characters and then turned into this monster as I was writing it. Sorry for the 3000 word crit and if you got to this part without skipping any of it, I owe you a cookie.)

Edited on July 14th, 2011 to add: There are certain comments that I have not approved and will not approve. You’re welcome to disagree with me and anyone else here, but you need to do so respectfully. Please see my Comment Policy. Thanks!

Healing Webring 2.0

Kurn / / blogging, healing

So apparently Saunder is back and wants to take the community’s pulse on healing, the way Miss Medicina did back in the day. I was delightfully surprised to see that Beruthiel tagged me, so I now have a reason to do it immediately rather than “when I have time”. (Which, let’s face it, is pretty rare.)

1. What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer? Madrana, Holy Paladin

2. What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans) 25-man raids

3. What is your favourite healing spell for your class and why? My favourite healing spell… uh. Hm. I said Holy Shock, previously. I’m not sure if that’s true anymore. I don’t like how it is THE SPELL you now get and all the emphasis on it. It’s like, I really enjoyed it and now they’ve made it our CENTRAL SPELL. So now I don’t like it as much? I still LOVE Lay on Hands, though, even though it can’t crit anymore.

4. What healing spell do you use least for your class and why? Probably a tie between Flash of Light and Light of Dawn. FoL is stupidly expensive and I never liked the idea of redirecting LoD’s heals to the beacon as a tank heal. If you want to heal the damn tank, heal the damn tank with your Holy Power. And they’ve made that not just possible but better with the buff to Word of Glory. That’s not to say I NEVER use LoD, but I don’t use it as a tank heal for the most part.

5. What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why? I think our biggest strength is our cooldowns. While we no longer have Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian, we still have Hand of Sacrifice, Lay on Hands, Aura Mastery, Hand of Protection, Hand of Salvation, Hand of Freedom… We have a huge toolkit.

6. What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why? I feel that they’ve diluted us rather than improved us, to be honest. In trying to allow everyone to “tank heal” and “raid heal”, we don’t really own the tank healing niche any longer, but there’s no way we can “compete” with resto druids or resto shaman or holy priests, if you look at it from a numbers perspective. I loved excelling at tank healing and now I feel clunky especially compared to a disc priest who leaves huge Divine Aegis’ on a tank after every crit.

7. In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you? Tank healing, or single-target healing. I think a good holy paladin can focus on the raid really well and be substantial support healing on a tank, too, but I don’t think most paladins can really do that regularly. I know I can’t.

8. What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why? Hm. If on a single target, I like a disc priest or a resto shaman. I like the disc’s mitigation, but I love the resto shaman’s mastery translating into bigger heals. If in a raid setting, probably druids or holy priests.

9. What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why? I guess another holy paladin? Just because I’m aware of our limitations.

10. What is your worst habit as a healer? I know when I’m not playing to my fullest extent and it happens a lot. I think part of it is that I’m also trying to help lead the raids and watch things, call out for a BR, etc, but MAN, it sucks when I finish a fight (wipe or kill) and go “crap, I totally forgot to use (ability)!!”.

11. What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing? People expecting me to heal them through their mistakes. Like, FFS, people. Get out of the bad crap on the ground. Also, people not using personal defensive CDs.

12. Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing? Nope. I think they really missed the boat on this one this time around. It wasn’t balanced at the class level in Wrath, but if you took a step back, all five healing specs worked really nicely with each other, at least towards the end. Now, though, a single holy paladin can’t really do the same healing as a resto druid, resto shaman or holy priest (which we couldn’t do before), but neither can we really compete with a disc priest on single-target heals OR raid heals. Well, there’s assignments and such to take into consideration and player skill as well, but I don’t raid heal because there are others better suited for it. And I don’t feel we’re particularly strong at tank healing any longer, particularly with the change to Beacon of Light between Wrath and Cataclysm. I think we should all answer this question in Tier 13/Tier 14 and see how things are then.

13. What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer? Did my target live? Good. Then I berate myself while browsing through World of Logs looking at all the crap I didn’t do that I should have.

14. What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class? I’m not sure. If it’s still prevalent out there, the idea that we’re a one-button healer? We haven’t been, not since Vanilla. And it’s pretty hard to change people’s minds on that, I’ve found.

15. What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn? Cooldown usage. It’s one thing to know when to use Aura Mastery (fairly simple), but another thing to know how/when to BOP/HoFreedom your tank to remove stacks of a debuff, another thing to pair Hand of Sacrifice with Divine Protection, yet another thing to think to cast Salv on that arcane mage as soon as mirror images drop and yet another thing to toss Hand of Freedom on someone standing in ice.

16. 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)? Overhealing, leading to low healing output and a decent use of cooldowns — just never quite enough use of them. (Must judge more!)

17. Haste or Crit and why? Haste is my best friend. There’s so much of it needed, though, that after… 1859, I think it is, I don’t really worry too much. 1859 means an extra tick of Holy Radiance. That said, I’ll still seek out more haste gear (but not worry if I can’t get it) so that I can continue to lower my GCD. With so many instant-cast spells (Holy Shock, Word of Glory, Light of Dawn, Beacon of Light, all our cooldowns, etc), it’s important to bring that as close to 1s as possible, IMHO.

18. What healing class do you feel you understand least? Probably druids at this point? I’ve tinkered with my shaman alt (who can do heroics at 85), messed around a bit with my level 80 priest but haven’t touched my level 80 druid. At all.

19. What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing? Grid/Clique. I think if I lost my Grid debuff settings, I would actually cry. Clique bindings are less panic-inducing if I think about losing them, but definitely Grid & Clique are the top addons I use to help me in healing. I use several macros as well, but most of them are just to get me to use various things more frequently.

20. Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why? My stat priority is: Intellect, then spirit/haste (I like to be around 2300 spirit and about 1859 haste), followed by crit and then mastery.

Now, who to tag? Well, first of all, feel free to do it if you want to do it. I’d love to see some more healers out there answering this!

That said, Saunder’s instructions said to pick three healers not of your class, so…

Druid: Jasyla of Cannot Be Tamed
Shaman: Darista of Daritos’ Food for Thought
Priest: Kaleri of Power Word: What?

And, like Beru, I’m going to cheat. I’d love to see Fannon, of Dwarven Battle Medic, fill this out, too!

4.2 & You: Holy OOM, Kurn!

Kurn / / firelands, healing, paladins, raiding

I walked into Firelands on Tuesday, June 28th and proceeded to heal exactly as I usually do in a 25-man raid. In so doing, I discovered three things.

  • I was constantly out of mana.
  • Barring mana issues, I didn’t have much trouble solo-healing a tank on Shannox.
  • No, SERIOUSLY, I was really out of mana.

The thing was, I didn’t feel as though I was lacking mana, I just felt as though I wasn’t as efficient as I could have been. I felt as though I wasn’t using all the tools at my disposal.

Guess what? I wasn’t. Given the increase in the cost of our casted heals, given my overconfidence in not only my own abilities, but the level of content (hey, these are NORMALS!), I was playing poorly.

If you feel that you’re constantly out of mana too, are you sure that you were doing everything you could to maintain/regenerate mana?

Here’s what I am trying to do, and be aware of, to combat being out of mana, in a rough order of importance:

a) Judge more. Smart paladins will judge on cooldown. I got into the bad habit of not judging on cooldown. I was definitely judging more frequently than once a minute, since my Judgements of the Pure uptime was usually very good, but I freely admit that as soon as things get hairy, I stop judging as often as I should. So I walked back in there on Thursday and, while downing Shannox, proceeded to judge approximately four times as much as I did on our best attempt on Tuesday. And that was probably still half of what I COULD have judged. Granted, sometimes you just can’t use that GCD on a judgement, but every time you don’t judge, that’s 3513.1 mana you are losing out on. (Hilariously, when healing on my baby paladin, I judge ALL THE TIME because I know I’m not that well-geared and my mana regen is, how you say, “le crap“!)

b) Use Divine Plea more. On an 8 minute fight, I can reasonably expect to use Divine Plea three times (assuming I use it at the 1m mark or so, then again at 3m, 5m and 7m). I used it, uh, once on Tuesday. I used it twice on Thursday, so that’s an improvement, but not ideal.

c) Use the Jar of Ancient Remedies more. On our second-to-last heroic Maloriak kill, I picked up the Jar of Ancient Memories. So I’ve been playing around with it. While I don’t like not having the 321 intellect that the Darkmoon Card: Tsunami offers, I definitely get more spirit from the Jar versus the Card. My other trinket is too valuable for me to swap out at the moment, being the Vibrant Alchemist Stone. (The haste, the excellent amount of intellect and the 40% more mana from potions are all amazing.) So I ran with Jar + Stone on both Tuesday and Thursday. On Tuesday’s best attempt, I used it once. ONCE. Bad Kurn! No cookie! It has a 2m cooldown, so I really had zero excuses. On Thursday, I did better and used it four times in that 8m17s fight. Since it only gives back 7160 mana per use, it’s really easy to be missing that much (and more!) early in the fight to make sure you’re not losing out on mana back. Cast a Holy Radiance and a Divine Light or two and you’re down a chunk already.

d) Use Mythical Mana Potions or Potions of Concentration more. Well, by “more”, I mean once a fight. With my Vibrant Alchemist Stone equipped, I’m getting ~14k mana back from a Mythical Mana Potion and ~31k mana back from a Potion of Concentration. I took neither on Tuesday and then TRIED to take a Potion of Concentration on Thursday, but then Shannox dropped an Immolation Trap on my face and I had to move, thereby breaking the effect.

e) Use Word of Glory more. I’m a weird holy paladin. I strongly dislike using LoD on the raid to funnel heals to my beacon target. I MUCH prefer using Word of Glory. And it got buffed! And yet, I didn’t use it often enough either on Tuesday or Thursday. That means I’m not taking advantage of having full holy power and I really need to be aware of when I hit 3 HP and then USE it. (Because hey, I wasn’t using LoD either. Because I am apparently bad. /facepalm)

Basically, it’s all about using the tools available to us. That means regenerating mana (judging/Divine Plea/Jar/Potions) and making use of mana-efficient (or mana-free) spells are all important parts of our job, almost as important as healing. If we don’t do those things well enough, we run into trouble while healing and can’t continue healing for as long as we otherwise could.

(I didn’t even MENTION Angry!Man (er, Guardian of Ancient Kings), but don’t forget that he’s free healing, too, just on a longer cooldown.)

How’s YOUR mana pool holding up?

Ow, My Face

Kurn / / facepalm, firelands, raiding, ramblings

Quick post today.

Went to Firelands last night.

Spent a LOT of time on trash. Figured out that you basically have to kill one of each type of mob to spawn Shannox (although it might not be all mobs, we certainly did kill one of each mob before he spawned).

Felt ridiculously unprepared because Shannox and Riplimb are untauntable when we expected them to be tauntable. Stupid PTR!

It was a slow night and a lot of our enthusiasm was sapped by a combination of three things:

1) Changes to the boss meant changes in figuring out WTF to do about Jagged Tear.

2) Shannox’s patrol IS STUPIDLY LONG and takes FOREVER. You do a ready check and everyone’s ready and then like, 3 minutes later, THAT’S when Shannox patrols around.

3) Respawning trash, while understandable, meant that most of our good attempts were before our break and we didn’t even have a chance to really work out what we now believe is a winning strat.

On the bright side, I’m friendly with Avengers of Hyjal and bought the cloak.

On the not-so-bright side, Shannox is alive.

On another bright side, the other major 25-man guild on Eldre’Thalas ALSO failed to kill Shannox and wiped 17 times to our 12.

On the not-so-bright side, I think they also raid Wednesdays, so unless they fail hideously, we’ll probably only get the 2nd 25-man Shannox kill. >< Still, we caught up to them at the end of T11 with both of us at 7/13. Not bad since we raid something like 7 hours a week less than they do. (4 nights, 4 hours vs. our 3 nights, 3 hours.)

At any rate, I have RL stuff to do which will keep me from doing stuff in-game I should do. Tonight I raid with Choice and we’ll see if I get in for the fight or if I’m on standby. While my baby pally’s gear is much improved, it’s still not phenomenal, but Firelands normals are really made for people in 359 gear. Mine’s 356, so maybe with just a couple of JP purchases (?) I could hit that. Or just get some dailies done to get going towards some 365 gear. Rep would be great just to get the 378 cloak!

Okay, that’s my Firelands update. Anyone else have Firelands stories to share?

Ready to Wear: Kurn's Tier 12 Loot List for Holy Paladins

Kurn / / firelands, gear, guide, paladins, patch 4.2, T12

I should have done this probably about two weeks ago, but I can’t stand loot lists. At all. Still, here are the results of my research.

Please bear in mind this is all my own opinion and is skewed as such. This is NOT a definitive best-in-slot guide, it’s merely what I’ll be looking for.

This is the way I will be prioritizing secondary stats:

Spirit > Haste > Crit > Mastery

Why? Well, spirit will take priority in my secondary stats because of the rise in mana costs for Divine Light, Holy Light and Flash of Light, as well as the reduced cooldown on Holy Radiance. We’re going to be spending more mana, so I’m going to want more spirit.

Haste is what permits me to get that cast off just that much sooner. It is a stat that improves throughput by virtue of allowing us to cast more frequently and will also reduce the global cooldown, allowing us to get to casting our next spells and abilities more quickly, if we have enough of it. (We’re not quite there yet through gear and a couple of enchants alone. Maybe at the heroic T12 level or when T13 comes out, but we’re not there yet.)

Crit, despite the fact our crits will hit for double a regular heal instead of 1.5 times a regular heal, still is a bit underwhelming. Crit is also a throughput stat and we still need some of it for maximum uptime on Conviction, but crit is unpredictable at best and another word for overhealing at worst. Granted, it makes mastery look better, since if you crit with a Divine Light, you’ll make a much larger Illuminated Healing shield than you would previously, but it’s still not something I value terribly much.

Mastery, despite its recent buffs, still doesn’t thrill me. Sorry. You can read more about my thoughts here.

Things to keep in mind:

– There is a LOT of gear that is going to be available. I’m going to focus specifically on gear that is item level 378, although will touch on some other item levels.
– If things work the way they did in T11, you will be able to purchase your T12 chest, T12 legs and T12 gloves with Valor Points, as well as get a chance for your legs and gloves to drop from the new Baradin Hold boss, Occu’thar.
– If things work the way they did in T11, we can expect our tier shoulders and helms to be on the last couple of bosses in Firelands.
– The 2-piece T12 bonus is certainly worth it, especially considering our Tier 12 is much better itemized than our Tier 11 was. While the 4-piece hasn’t really been mathed out, let’s assume we’ll want to aim for it. Again, T12 gear is a lot closer to my itemization desires than T11 was, so picking up four pieces will feel a lot better than trying to get 4pc of T11.
– Beth’tilac, Alysrazor, Shannox and Lord Rhyolith are supposed to be done in any order. Once entering Sulfuron Keep, you face Baleroc, Majordomo Staghelm and Ragnaros, in that order. As such, I’ll be referring to drops from the first four bosses as dropping “from (name), one of the first four bosses” or “the fifth/sixth/final boss”.

One of my key research sites, the Best In Slot resource from Vile Pickle, is no longer being maintained and has been replaced by the WoW Best in Slot Resource. However, my holy paladin buddy, Walks, has shared with me and the other raiders of Apotheosis, this fun little site at it.headasplode.net, which allows you to sort by the various stats you’d like to see. I highly recommend it. Thanks, Walks! :)

So, here we go.

Tier 12/ilvl 378 Holy Paladin Loot List

HEAD

Immolation Headguard: Our Tier 12 helm is the best for this slot. Unfortunately, this probably also drops off Ragnaros, the seventh and final boss in Firelands. It’s beautiful, though. Beefy with intellect, spirit and haste, a red socket with a 30 intellect socket bonus… Oh man. I might be drooling.

Casque of Flame: Until you down Ragnaros, you will almost certainly want to grab this helm as an upgrade. The Casque of Flame is quite similar, in fact, to our tier helm. It actually has 19 more Spirit. Unfortunately, it has 211 mastery on it instead of 245 haste. Blah. With reforging to haste from that 211 mastery, you can get 84 haste on it, leaving 127 mastery on it. Still, this is also kind of deep into Firelands, dropping from Baleroc, the fifth boss in the instance. (Now I wish I had the heroic Glaciated Helm to tide me over. Alas!)

NECK

Heartstone of Rhyolith: Dropping off of one of the first four bosses in Firelands, Lord Rhyolith, this is probably your best bet for a 378 neck. You can reforge that mastery to haste and get 53 haste and 80 mastery.

Flowform Choker: Totally sub-par due to the lack of spirit and the presence of mastery. Maybe if you’re desperate? I don’t know. This is almost certainly meant for caster DPS. It drops off Majordomo Staghelm, the sixth boss of Firelands. No, wait, I’m not thinking. This is great DESPITE the lack of spirit because it’s the only one that has a socket and a red one at that. Drop 40 int in there and get a total of 277 intellect. If you’re waiting for an okay upgrade, grab the Heartstone, though, since this does drop from Majordomo Staghelm, the sixth boss of Firelands.

Firemind Pendant: Wow. More spirit/mastery. Roughly equivalent to the raid drop, this will do if you have 1250 Valor Points to drop. In fact, the Heartstone is only “better” in my mind because it has 18 more spirit. It’s a really small difference. Also, there are better things to buy out there with your precious Valor Points if you have access to the raid drop.

SHOULDERS

Immolation Mantle: Our Tier 12 shoulders are our best bet here, but again, they are almost certainly going to drop off Majordomo Staghelm, the sixth boss in Firelands.

Spaulders of Manifold Eyes: Supposedly dropping off Beth’tilac, one of the first four Firelands bosses, these will be a nice upgrade for anyone non-heroic T11 shoulders while they wait for their T12 shoulders. You can reforge that nasty mastery to haste and get 65 haste out of it, leaving 97 mastery on the shoulders.

CLOAK

Flowing Flamewrath Cape: Pretty sad, but this is the only viable option for us. It’s from the Avengers of Hyjal at Friendly reputation.

Who ARE the Avengers of Hyjal? Why they’re the new rep associated with the Firelands raid! This is separate from the new daily quest hub, which will reward Guardians of Hyjal rep. Avengers of Hyjal will work roughly like the Ashen Verdict from Icecrown Citadel in that you’ll only gain rep for it inside the instance. However, a blue post did say that you will NOT be able to grind your way to exalted by killing trash mobs.

CHEST

Immolation Breastplate: This will probably be purchasable for 2200 Valor Points and most likely will not drop from Occu’thar in Baradin Hold. It’s got a spirit/crit mix, but if you’re going for 4pc, you probably want this over the other breastplate we can get this tier. If you’re going for 2pc, this is not one of the pieces you want.

Clutch of the Firemother: Dropping from Alysrazor, one of the first four bosses in Firelands, this is a lovely piece. Its accessibility, since it drops from one of the first four bosses, makes it an easy upgrade, much like how the Breastplate of Avenging Flame from Magmaw was an easy chest upgrade for us in Tier 11. That said, you probably don’t want to wear this when you’re trying for your 4pc set bonus. It’s still a great piece, but you’re better off with your tier chest in the end. (That does not mean you should pass on this beauty!)

WRISTS

Bracer options? Seriously?! Yay! Too bad the itemization is still pretty bad.

Bracers of Imperious Truths: BOE bracers from Valor Points! Hallelujah and screw you, Cho’gall! These will be purchasable with 1250 Valor Points and will be obtainable shortly after the first week of 4.2, if it’s the first thing you’re going to buy with Valor Points. If Cho’gall never showed you love, pick these suckers up. Bear in mind that you should save an alt’s Valor Points for these rather than buy them on your paladin. Save those Valor Points for the BOP items on your paladin and pick these up either through the auction house or using an alt’s Valor Points.

Bracers of the Dread Hunter: Of course, you could also get a slightly worse (due to mastery) drop from Shannox, one of the first four bosses in Firelands.

GLOVES

Well, now, this is certainly interesting…

Holy Flame Gauntlets: That noise you just heard, that sounded like a choir of angels bursting into pitch-perfect, harmonized sound? Yup. That’s because of these gloves. They are fan-freaking-tastic. And yes, they are BOE. That’s because they are crafted and do NOT currently have a heroic version!

Mats are: 10 Hardened Elementium Bar, 40 Volatile Fire, 4 Living Embers, 3 Chaos Orbs and a partridge in a pear tree

The Living Embers are almost certainly a BOE drop from mobs inside Firelands. They may also be purchasable via Valor Points the way Emblems of Frost could buy you Primordial Saronites. But none of that is confirmed. The Chaos Orbs may or may not be BOP come 4.2, although smart money has them still being BOP. That means that these gloves are going to cost a small fortune. We won’t have a good idea of how much the Living Embers and Chaos Orbs will raise the price, but the bars and the fire aren’t cheap, either. At least the Plans: Holy Flame Gauntlets appear to be unbound…

So if you’re not rich, what’s your best option?

Grips of the Raging Giant: These drop from Lord Rhyolith, one of the first four bosses in Firelands. It’s a spirit/crit mix here, which isn’t bad, but they are not as amazing as the Holy Flame Gauntlets. Still, they’re about a hundred times easier to get.

But wait, what about our tier gloves? Won’t those be easy to get?

Immolation Gloves: Almost certain to drop from Occu’thar in Baradin Hold and probably purchasable with 1650 Valor Points, they’re easier to acquire than the Grips listed above… but what’s this? No freaking spirit. None. That’s our belt and our tier gloves with 0 spirit on them so far. So should we really get the tier gloves if we’re going for 4pc?

The possible combinations for maintaining 4pc are as follows. All numbers include reforging crit to haste or spirit, where applicable:

Tier Chest/Holy Flame Gauntlets

Spirit: 473
Crit: 135
Haste: 277

Tier Chest/Grips of the Raging Giant

Spirit: 481
Crit: 241
Haste: 161

Tier Gloves/Clutch of the Firemother

Spirit: 342
Crit: 106
Haste: 436

After looking at everything, I have to recommend you take the Tier 12 Chest and the Grips of the Raging Giant (which WILL have a heroic version) to get as much spirit as possible, with the Holy Flame Gauntlets as a good piece for you if you’re just hitting 85 and want to sort of catch up to current raiders quickly. If you are NOT having trouble with mana, go with the tier gloves and the Clutch of the Firemother.

WAIST

Oh sweet Lord. Our belt choices. Or rather, our singular choice for a belt. Say hello to the ONLY belt we can snag at the 378 level.

Belt of the Seven Seals: No spirit?! Augh! Take that 208 crit and turn it into 83 spirit and 125 crit.

But wait, that’s not all! The belt is only available from the Avengers of Hyjal and only once you hit Honored!

So, wait, let’s look at this. The only 378 belt with intellect in the game:

– lacks spirit
– is only available via raid reputation

Great. So not only is it difficult to get in the sense that you have to be part of a raiding guild or raid group, but it kind of sucks in terms of itemization.

At least there’s no mastery?

LEGS

Oh thank God we can follow up that epic failure with a piece of gear that is awesome.

Immolation Greaves: Intellect? Check. Spirit? Check. Haste? Check. Two sockets? Check. Probably easy to obtain? Check! These are awesome. Probably costing 2200 Valor Points or dropping from Occu’thar in Baradin Hold, they are certainly a very easy item to get in comparison to many others. Truly a huge upgrade for just about anyone not wearing the heroic version of the Legguards of the Emerald Brood and even then, it’s still a good upgrade. These legs are one of the first upgrades anyone should reasonably look at.

Legplates of Absolute Control: Likely dropping off of Shannox, one of the first four bosses in Firelands, I… well. I don’t really know why you’d pick these up unless you got supremely lucky on your first Shannox kill and they would be otherwise disenchanted or something. It’ll take a bit more than two weeks’ worth of Valor Points to get the tier legs or a lucky Baradin Hold drop, so there is a small gap between when these become available through Firelands and when anyone can reasonably attain their Tier 12 legs, but… chances are you want to overlook these, unless you are in 346/359 legs that are NOT the Legguards of the Emerald Brood, or you really prefer crit to haste.

BOOTS

Emberforged Elementium Boots. These amazing boots require 10 Hardened Elementium Bars, 40 Volatile Fire, 4 Living Embers and 3 Chaos Orbs, just like the awesome Holy Flame Gauntlets. These are amazing boots, but again, you’re going to want to be quite wealthy or lucky to get these. Again, they will NOT have a heroic version, so bear that in mind. I’ll also have to recommend these go to a newer 85 holy paladin who is trying to catch up to current raiders.

Treads of the Penitent Man: These are likely what we’ll end up using if we can’t afford the crafted boots and definitely what we’ll need in order to get the heroic versions, someday. They drop from Majordomo Staghelm, the sixth boss in Firelands. (Anyone else muttering to themselves over and over “only the penitent man will pass, only the penitent man will pass, penitent, penintent, penitent…”? No? Just me then? All right.)

RINGS

Quicksilver Signet of the Avengers: This is a ring every raider will eventually be able to acquire, since it’s from the Avengers of Hyjal once you hit exalted. The mastery sucks, but the intellect, spirit, socket and socket bonus are nice. Reforge the mastery to haste and you get 51 haste and 76 mastery.

Soothing Brimstone Circle: Uh, yeah, this is basically the only other ring out there at 378. There’s a caster ring, but there’s neither haste nor spirit on it, so stick with this one. This will cost you 1250 Valor Points.

TRINKETS

Still not much in the way of choices here, ladies and gentlemen.

Fiery Quintessence: Well, the name amuses me because I’ve had my fair share of Aqual Quintessences and still own an Eternal Quintessence. I really like that they’re not redoing Molten Core, but that we still have some references to that time. Anyway, you get this trinket at Revered with the Avengers of Hyjal. I’m not altogether thrilled by this one, but maybe the extra spirit will be useful, given our stupid belt situation. The on-use is also interesting and we may want to have a macro so we can use the trinket to precede Divine Plea’s cast, so we get the extra benefit of ~17k mana for the regen. (Note to self: Don’t forget to do that when you get the trinket!)

Jaws of Defeat: Geez, another on-use. This is a little more interesting, though. “Your next 10 spells cast within 20 sec will reduce the cost of your holy and nature spells by 110, stacking up to 10 times. (2 Min Cooldown)” Not really sure how that’s going to work out, but certainly the 383 Intellect will be very happy making. This drops off of Majordomo Staghelm, the sixth boss in Firelands.

Eye of Blazing Power: Another option is this one, from Alysrazor, one of the first four bosses in Firelands. Unfortunately, it seems to be not an exceedingly awesome choice for a holy paladin UNLESS it procs off all Light of Dawn hits. (Or all Holy Radiance ticks. But I’m not holding my breath.) Comments on Wowhead indicate a 45s internal cooldown (ICD), heals for 16kish, crits for 32kish, procs off HoT ticks, has a 40y range from the target of the original heal and it can heal pets. But if there are no valid targets in range, the ICD goes off, but no heal does.

RELIC

Singed Plume of Aviana: Pretty much the only choice we have here. Spirit and haste, though, so that’s of the happy-making. It’ll cost you 700 Valor Points.

WEAPON

Ko’gun, Hammer of the Firelord: Three guesses as to who drops this baby. ;) That’s right, Ragnaros, the final boss of the Firelands instance. Great itemization for us, too, with spirit and haste.

Eye of Purification: No idea where it drops, but suffice it to say this is AWESOME. A spellpower AXE? Sign me up!!! Pallies and shaman are the only casters/healers who can use axes, so no arguing with the warlocks and mages for swords and priests and druids can keep the maces… this is awesome! Sure, the stats aren’t as good as Rag’s hammer, but COME ON! A caster axe!

Lightforged Elementium Hammer: Yeah, it’s not 378 item level, but if you’re really hard-pressed to get something, there’s this as an option. It’s crafted and does not require any Living Embers.

SHIELD

Ward of the Red Widow: Again, just one real option for us, but at least it’s got good itemization. This drops off Beth’tilac, one of the first four bosses in Firelands. And its existence doesn’t make me so sad that I never got the heroic shield from Atramedes, because it definitely is much better in terms of itemization.

Conclusion

OVERVIEW OF VALOR POINT SPENDING

Okay, so assuming you are terribly unlucky in terms of drops and you’re going for the 4pc T12 bonus (with the chest, not the gloves), this is what you’re looking at:

Firemind Pendant – 1250
Immolation Breastplate – 2200
Bracers of Imperious Truths – 1250
Immolation Greaves – 2200
Soothing Brimstone Circle – 1250
Singed Plume of Aviana – 700

For a total of 8850 Valor Points.

I’d really recommend this order:

1) Immolation Greaves (great piece)
2) Bracers of Imperious Truths (yay bracers! You could also buy these or, better yet, use an alt’s Valor Points for these!)
3) Singed Plume of Aviana (only relic)
4) Soothing Brimstone Circle (one of two rings)
5) Firemind Pendant (if needed)
6) Immolation Breastplate (this can move up if you don’t get the Clutch early on or you get shoulders and want 4pc quickly)

BREAKDOWN BY BOSS

Beth’tilac

Ward of the Red Widow (Shield)

Lord Rhyolith

Heartstone of Rhyolith (Neck)
Grips of the Raging Giant (Gloves)

Alysrazor

Eye of Blazing Power (Trinket)
Clutch of the Firemother (Chest)

Shannox

Bracers of the Dread Hunter (Bracers)

Baleroc

Casque of Flame (Helm)

Majordomo Staghelm

Jaws of Defeat (Trinket)
Flowform Choker (Neck)
Treads of the Penitent Man (Feet)

Ragnaros

Ko’gun, Hammer of the Firelord

AVENGERS OF HYJAL REPUTATION REWARDS

Flowing Flamewrath Cape (Cloak – Friendly)
Belt of the Seven Seals (Belt – Honored)
Fiery Quintessence (Trinket – Revered)
Quicksilver Signet of the Avengers (Ring – Exalted)

CRAFTED ITEMS THAT WILL MAKE ME VERY JEALOUS OF YOU (NO HEROIC VERSIONS!)

Holy Flame Gauntlets (Gloves: 10 Hardened Elementium Bars, 40 Volatile Fire, 4 Living Ember, 3 Chaos Orbs)
Emberforged Elementium Boots (Boots: 10 Hardened Elementium Bars, 40 Volatile Fire, 4 Living Ember, 3 Chaos Orbs)

Total: 20 Hardened Elementium Bars*, 80 Volatile Fire, 8 Living Ember, 6 Chaos Orbs.

* 1 Hardened Elementium Bar = 10 Elementium Bars (20 Elementium Ore) + 4 Volatile Earth
20 Hardened Elementium Bars = 200 Elementium Bars (400 Elementium Ore) + 80 Volatile Earth

SHOO!

All right, I think that covers just about everything, so get ready to enter Ragnaros’ domain and kick some ass. Remember not to stand in the fire; I’m sure there will be plenty of it!

Legendary Fallout

Kurn / / apotheosis, guild, patch 4.2, ramblings

Well, the nightmares I’ve had about a chain reaction of /gquits upon the announcement of who is getting the legendary staff did not actually materialize, which is a bonus.

Having said that, I’m sure some people are unhappy.

Awarding a legendary is, in my opinion, often a lose-lose situation. There are always people who will be disappointed, always people who will feel slighted. I’m still annoyed that I didn’t get Val’anyr in Ulduar. I was very new to the guild, yes, but when I look at who ended up getting the mace, it still makes me want to cry and/or smash things.

The process they went through to determine Val’anyr in that particular guild was, well, shrouded in secrecy and subject to a lot of drama because quite a few people left the guild before the announcement had been made, for some reason. (I was new, I was keeping my mouth shut so I didn’t ask why, but the guild lost at least 2 healers who would have been awarded the mace before the priest who got it.)

Obviously, I felt I deserved the mace, but I knew I hadn’t been there long enough to show them that I was actually more deserving of the mace than the priest who got it. Essentially, that was the difference. The priest who got it had been there for, well, I believe it’s years.

That didn’t sit right with me. I mean, don’t get me wrong — I value loyalty, myself, but when the person you’re giving the legendary to is clearly someone who does NOT understand their class… well, you’re doing yourself and your guild a disservice. The priest in question may have been an officer (strictly in an advisory position, not a role lead) but he didn’t have Spirit of Redemption back when it was GOOD and gave you 5% extra spirit. What priest wouldn’t want 5% extra spirit back in Wrath of the Lich King when it added to your regen AND to your spellpower? I mean, to me, from my perspective, the recipient of Val’anyr was in no way worthy of the mace.

What I did in setting up the legendary distribution for Apotheosis was open a thread for people to express their interest. We had 8 casters who did so. 3 mages, 3 warlocks, 1 shadow priest and 1 elemental shaman.

After several days, I closed the thread, so everyone had plenty of time to throw their name in the hat, so to speak. I was sure to inform all new casters joining the guild (a shadow priest, a moonkin) that they wouldn’t be considered for the legendary at this time as the candidates had already been decided upon. I felt it was important to let them know that before they joined. (The number of people I saw apply to guilds hoping to get Val’anyr crafted/finished was hilarious.)

We were fairly transparent in the way we did things. As I said yesterday, the officers on the selection team ranked all 8 of the casters.

We ended up with a tie. Two of our mages ended up with 25 points apiece, followed by a shadow priest, followed by an elemental shaman.

So while instance servers were borked last night, we had the mages roll off.

Now, being a sociologist, a simple /roll would not, to me, be sufficient in awarding the staff. You can’t just have it be one roll. So the selection team had okayed a series of 5 rolls each. We’d take the high roll for each and throw it out, take the low roll for each and throw it out and then add the three numbers that remained, then divided that number by 3 to get the average (mean) and that would be “the number”. The highest number would win.

Here’s what happened, because this alone is freaking legendary.

Can you believe that? They both rolled a 60, Mabriam rolled a 74, Majik rolled a 73 and they both rolled an 81 at the same time. My stats background wants more rolls between these two guys, to be honest…

I feel as though we handled the tie well and I don’t think either Majik or Mabriam are upset with the results of the roll-off. That was as fair as it could be and it was honestly down to the wire. The difference in their final numbers was 0.67.

Of course, given our expectations of crafting at least one staff, probably two, the reactions of Majik and Mabriam are not the ones to worry about.

It’s everyone else, ranked #3 to #8, plus the guild as a whole.

One of the issues I am anticipating fielding is why one of our top performers is not in the top two. Night in and night out, our shadow priest is pretty much right up there on the meters.

If it were based strictly on damage output, the shadow priest in question would have been the #1 selection for the entire selection team. In fact, if it was based on pure damage, there wouldn’t have been a need for a selection team at all. As it was, the shadow priest was in everyone’s top four, but even if he had been in everyone’s top three, he still wouldn’t have been in the top two, based on the points per ranking.

I can’t tell you why people ranked the candidates the way they were. I’m not those people. Nor am I going to discuss my own choices or my personal reasons for my choices, because I feel there would be a conflict of interest in sharing that. There’s a reason we were neatly sequestered away and discussed the legendary and the candidates privately. In part, it was to prevent hurt feelings among the candidates who were ranked lower and in part, it was to be able to discuss the pros and cons of each candidate honestly and bluntly. But there was no collusion or anything of the sort. We had our discussions, then I had the selection team send me, via PM, their ranked selections. I’d made my list before looking at any of theirs and then posted everyone’s selections to the private section of the forums for the selection team to see that I wasn’t cooking the books or anything. In doing so, I was transparent to the officers and they could hold me accountable by saying “Kurn, that’s not my selection!” if I’d messed with anything. But obviously, I didn’t.

What I will say is that the legendary selection process was based on performance, attendance, participation and attitude. I’ll say it wasn’t an easy decision (although anything was easier than actually coming up with a legendary selection process!) and I struggled with my own choices. As an officer, I routinely ignore friendships and personal relationships with people in the guild when looking at performance and the like in a raid setting. I feel as though I evaluated each candidate appropriately and I feel that I have an explanation for each of my personal rankings that is based on facts, logic and evidence. I would hope that the other officers on the selection team can back up their decisions as well. I believe they can.

It’s not enough to say “hey, casters, you guys are awesome anyway!” in the wake of an announcement like this, though. No matter what, no matter how defensible the decisions are, there will always be hurt feelings because a legendary is viewed as a status symbol, as recognition for going above and beyond.

So it’s only today, more than two years after the announcement came down from my then-guild that a priest would be the first recipient of Val’anyr and that I would be the second, that I really, truly understand that there’s no winning when it comes to handing out a legendary. I feel that we maximized transparency in the process, that we were as open and honest as possible with people at every step of the way and ultimately, I’m satisfied with the decision that was made from an empirical point of view.

As a guild master, I think that I have to look at the process and be satisfied with what we did. As a person, I’m happy that Majik got it, obviously, but I think that I put in checks to prevent my own bias from having too much of an effect, such as having other people making the decision with me. I was one of four voices. And then, most notably, there was the roll-off, which acted as a final check to protect anyone if they came up against Majik at the end. Clearly, the selection team as a whole was comfortable in both of those mages receiving the legendary and the roll just determined the order. The roll was clean, unbiased, and gave Mabriam a chance to get the first one.

We could have just given it to someone without all this hullaballoo. We could have just had the 8 interested people /roll a single roll. We could have just done “eeny-meeny-miney-moe”. But we didn’t. We invested a significant amount of time, effort and discussion into the process and I think that’s the best we could do.

In a way, I’m not thrilled that Majik won out, because no matter how much effort was put into the process, it still LOOKS like we just favoured him over everyone else, when that’s really not the case. But I can’t control what people think. I can’t control what people do. I can only do what I feel is best for the guild at any given time.

Matticus said this, the other night, on Twitter:

And no, I’m not getting myself worked up over a game. No sir. I’m worked up over people and situations, that is all.

How right he is. This isn’t about the game. The crux of this game, for me, is raiding. Raiding is allllll about people and situations.

With any luck, we’ll get through without any overt drama from the legendary announcement, but I’ll tell you right now that just because my nightmare of a chain of /gquits didn’t happen at the time of the announcement doesn’t mean that I’m not still sitting on the edge of my chair thinking that it might.

So much to say, so little time to write it all down.

Kurn / / apotheosis, guild, healing, raiding, ramblings

As I write this, at 8am on Tuesday, June 21st, 2011, I have 18 drafts in my blog draft section.

Seriously.

I always start to write stuff down and then get interrupted or fall asleep (this has happened three times, no joke!) or something.

I’d like to get to those blog posts at some point, but before that, there’s other stuff to discuss, including a 4.2 loot list. (I hate loot lists, but I know they’re very popular.)

I also want to talk about the recent blue post about holy paladin healing.

But right now, I want to talk about something completely unrelated to any of that.

I want to talk about the legendary caster weapon, Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest.

Ultimately, hammering out HOW to select any recipients of the staff was more difficult than actually selecting the person.

And yes, that does mean that we have a very good idea as to the first two recipients, as well as a potential third and fourth. (Guildies, you’ll find out after the raid tonight.)

We did not do the big, long, drawn-out process that I had suggested weeks ago. We used a trimmed-down version of it where four officers were put on the “selection team” and we ranked all 8 candidates from 1-8, where 1 was your first choice and 8 was your last choice.

A first-place candidate got 7 points, a second-place got 6, a third-place got 5, all the way down to 8, which got 0.

So four officers shared their thoughts and ideas in a separate area of the forums, neatly sequestered away, then the other three sent me their ranked list in a private message, which I then ignored until everyone’s PM was in AND I’d made my own selections.

Then I tallied up everyone’s results and posted them to the selection team along with the original selections, so they could see I wasn’t fixing the numbers.

It wasn’t a bad process at all. We looked at candidates based on performance (because a legendary will enhance what’s already there), attendance (gotta BE there in order to build it!), participation (teamwork and such!) and attitude (don’t be a douchecanoe!).

Honestly, it only took a few days of deliberations and such and we’re just about ready to make our announcement as to the top choices.

So that’s a huge responsibility taken care of. I call not it on the next legendary selection team. :P

While that’s been going on, I’ve still been doing a near-weekly podcast! Last week, Majik and I talked to Beruthiel of Falling Leaves and Wings during Episode 23 of Blessing of Frost and this week, we talked to Fog again with regards to the Midsummer Fire Festival.

In terms of raiding, Apotheosis is 6/13 with Heroic Halfus, Chimaeron, Maloriak, Magmaw, Atramedes and Conclave of Wind down and we’re working on H V&T for 7/13 before 4.2 drops, with any luck. So that’s always, well, entertaining? ;) I do love raiding with my guild and I do love doing all this stuff together. I do get tired of the leadershippy stuff on occasion, though. Still, it needs to be done.

Thankfully, Toga is going to be taking over the bank. Fog is stepping down, so I took the bank as an interim holder and now Toga’s going to take that from me, hooray! :)

Speaking of leadership stuff, I was curious as to how people felt we handled things during T11 content, so I decided to use my sociology background and I made up a survey.

The questions asked people to rate the officers in their primary roles on a scale of 1-10, where 1 was really bad and 10 was excellent, and I got a second question about my performance as GM, in particular. I asked people what they felt we’d not handled well and what we HAD handled well, which officer they might want to replace and with whom, how satisfied they are with our progression, if they like how loot/food/flasks/etc is done…

Out of about 33ish active raiders, we had 20 responses, which is great. I need to go through the results, but I’m going to learn a lot. I am kind of thinking about installing SPSS on my desktop and inputting the data so I can run stats equations on it… but that miiiiiight be taking things a bit far. ;)

The survey was anonymous (ostensibly, anyways. I’m fairly sure that if I allowed myself to make the connections, I could link about five respondents to those raiders) and I think that really helped the raiders to know that this was something I was taking seriously, at least. I made it clear on our forums that I would be the only one reading the responses, but that I would summarize the results and make sure the officers saw them. I think they liked the idea of me as a filter — so they could talk to me, without fear of retribution or whatever, through the survey and know that no one else will see what they said, but the overall idea will be conveyed to the other officers.

Overall, the survey seems to have been a success. :) I strongly recommend any guild go through the same thing. Google Docs does a great job for you. Look into it.

Yet other news: EPGP is normalizing values! So if a regular-mode pair of shoulders costs 750 GP in T11, a regular-mode pair of shoulders will cost that much in T12, while the T11 one will drop in price. This almost certainly means we don’t have to change how we do EP or GP! Yaaaaaay!

In still more news: Raiding on the baby pally is fun. I get to just heal. Heal through encounters I know the basics of. It’s lovely not to have to assign or organize people. It’s great to just be told where to stand on Al’Akir and NOT spend 45-60 minutes just planning out that one fight.

On Monday, I got: neck off Halfus, mace and tier shoulders off Cho’gall, legs off Al’Akir (fuck you mastery! Where was “of the Undertow” when I needed it?!) and then picked up a cloak from Valor Points. Still not up to the spirit, intellect and haste my “real” paladin has, but that’s a lot of gear and should help me hit harder. I’m also going to be JP capped so that I can … well, I can’t do a lot, really. My last blues are my helm (Ascendant Council or Nef), my bracers (Cho’gall) and my gloves (Maloriak or, if I’m feeling desperate, tier — but that’s a crapton of mastery!).

So, I’ve been busy.

This Friday is a holiday in Quebec — La Fête de la Saint-Jean Baptiste. While I am a die-hard Canadian and have not a drop of separatist blood in me, it’s always nice to have two long weekends back to back. St-Jean Baptiste has always been a holiday for me, which marked the very last possible day of the school year, back in high school, and while a lot of separatists have sort of adopted it as a “national” holiday, it’s a day where I can usually be proud to be Québécoise without feeling terribly guilty about it. ;) While growing up, my parents would always take me up north to the cottage for the long weekend, both St-Jean and the following week’s Canada Day. So, despite the fact that we will be right ahead of a patch, I’m going up north on Friday with my dad. If it rains, so help me God, Mother Nature is going to get an earful from me. I want to go up north, relax, read a book or two, go swimming in the lake, go canoeing on the lake, get some sun and the like. Maybe play some chess against my dad, play some cards, eat some barbecue… Man. It could be very awesome.

I will, therefore, endeavour to put WoW out of my mind for Friday through to Sunday. With any luck, it will be gloriously sunny and just warm enough to coax me to go swimming to cool off.

If it’s pouring rain, I’m gonna be cranky. :P

But yeah, that’s what I’ve been up to, that’s what I’m going to do this weekend.

This week:

– reaction post to blue post about paladin healing
– T12 loot list
– hopefully downing H V&T for 7/13
– do research on Firelands bosses >.>
– answer comments!

Whew.

On that note, time to grab a few winks. I have got to remember that editing the podcast EARLIER is better than LATER!

Keys: Keepsakes from Another Era

Kurn / / achievements, classic instances, general, patch 4.2, raiding, ramblings

When I started playing World of Warcraft, I had no idea what I was doing. I strongly suspect that a lot of people were, or even are, in the same boat. Over time, I educated myself about the game and what I, personally, needed to do in order to advance myself in the game. As I started playing in Vanilla, that meant getting attuned to Molten Core, Onyxia’s Lair and Blackwing Lair.

Along the way, I picked up a bunch of keys. The quests involved in forging the Scholomance key were great experience and fun, if a bit lengthy and, at the time, pricey. Back in those days, keys actually took up precious bag space and it was not at all uncommon for people to not actually own the key to an instance like Scholomance or the undead entrance for Stratholme. Even more common was the single person in the group (a group you had probably painstakingly assembled over the course of over an hour) who had the key had almost certainly left the key in their bank.

The keyring was excellent. No longer would we forget keys in the bank!

I always liked my keys. I even had the key to Searing Gorge on more than one character! The one key that eluded me was Gnomeregan and I picked that up shortly after 3.0 dropped so that I would get the Keymaster achievement when I got the key to Violet Hold in Wrath. I was so, so sad when they removed a bunch of the keys for Cataclysm, like the Scarlet Key and the Key to the City.

It must seem foolish to speak so fondly of an old, antiquated system, to many readers who are newer to the game or who remember all the keys we needed to do heroics in Burning Crusade. But key quests and attunements were bonding experiences.

I can hear the scoffing from newer players. I suspect the older players either think I’m certifiably insane or they’re nodding their heads in agreement.

One of the all-time longest attunements that people regularly did (no disrespect to AQ gong ringers!) was the Onyxia attunement in the original WoW. I’m not sure how bad it was for the Horde, mind you, but for the Alliance, it consisted of something like 16 quests. And we’re not talking easy quests, either. A lot of them had to do with group content and instances.

In particular, the sticking point for a LOT of people was this one quest called “Jailbreak!”. In it, we are tasked to go to Blackrock Depths and free Marshal Reginald Windsor from the prison there. Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong. Not only did you have to form a group of people willing to help you out with this task, but you had to be at the right part of the quest chain to benefit from the pain that was freeing Marshal Windsor. You also needed to have the prison key from the boss in that section of the instance. (Possibly a rogue would also work, but as I was a hunter at the time, I needed the key.)

Then, you had to be really good or really lucky to free Windsor without pre-clearing all the trash along the route Marshal Windsor wants to take, once he’s freed. And guess what? He wanted to exact revenge on several people in the prison (and free someone else) before he would save his own skin.

Not only that, but he would trudge so slowly through the instance that you just wanted to kick him in the ass to speed things up. At one point in time, although this might have been fixed, later on, if you went too far ahead of Windsor, he’d despawn.

So we had to:

– form a group of like-minded individuals (either willing to do Jailbreak! or on it themselves)
– get to the instance
– know what you needed to do once you were there and likely clear both rings in the prison section — possibly killing the prison boss as well
– then free Windsor and wait for him to catch up to you every few seconds

Finally, at long last, Marshal Windsor would run for the entrance of Blackrock Depths.

But were you done?

Hell no.

THEN, you had to go back to Stormwind and WAIT for Windsor to show up. (Sometime AFTER I’d done the attunement, they brought in “Squire Rowe”, who stands by the gates of Stormwind. You talk to him and that essentially triggers Windsor’s arrival.) Then you walk with him through Stormwind (again, he used to despawn if you went too quickly) where he would confront Lady Katrana Prestor and accuse her of being Onyxia and then Bolvar Fordragon (SOB, I miss that guy!) would open a can of whup ass on the guards — who were all disguised dragonkin in service of Lady Katrana Prestor.

That was a cool part actually, but then we return right to more suck. We then had to go to Upper Blackrock Spire (never you mind that this required a whole other epic quest chain itself AND ten people!) and kill General Drakkisath for the Blood of the Black Dragon Champion. They eventually changed it so it was lootable by anyone with the quest, but for YEARS, it was a green item that only one or two people could loot (more than one could drop). That meant multiple UBRS runs.

Once you got that taken care of, you would receive the Drakefire Amulet — a fire resistance necklace that you needed in your bags in order to enter Onyxia’s Lair.

Epic-sounding, right? No doubt this is why they started out with such things. It quickly loses its appeal, however, when you’re on your third or fourth toon who you decide to attune.

Speaking as someone who was an officer in a Vanilla guild, attuning people was a pain in my ass.

Hell, attuning people to Black Temple in Burning Crusade (even after the attunement was lifted, just so that we could get the Medallion of Karabor for the shadow resistance!) was a pain in the ass.

As much as it was all a pain in the ass, though, it was what you had to do to get into 40-man raid content back then. So people did it. There was a never-ending swarm of people who applied to guilds and needed their attunements done. I can’t tell you how many times I ran Jailbreak or ran people through BRD to get attuned to Molten Core.

But there was something about that shared suffering that bonded people together. No, I’m serious!

To this day, I will always remember getting attuned to Molten Core. I was in BRD for six hours that night. We had a paladin (!) tanking, a paladin (!) healing, another hunter and a mage. It was me and the healing paladin who were there from Fated Heroes. The tank and the other hunter (who was survival! That was SO rare then!) were from another guild and we picked up a mage to help because we were doing what was called an “emp run” — that’s to say we were going to clear the last boss.

That night, I got attuned to the core, got my Shadowforged Key, did an Emp run (which is where the T0 paladin gloves used to drop until they moved them to an easier-to-kill boss), knocked out a ton of quests… it was epic. The only thing we didn’t do was Jailbreak, because no one had gotten to that point in their quests.

And it was FANTASTIC. It was great!

I don’t remember the name of the puggers, but I do remember we were, collectively, awesome.

To this day, I will always remember running with Majik to get his Jailbreak done. We had to do it TWICE. We went in, did it (it took about 45m-1h back then) and then realized that since Majik had died during a pull, he had failed the quest. So we had to reset the instance AND DO IT AGAIN.

To this day, I will always remember getting Toga and a couple of his cousins attuned to Molten Core. We pugged a healer who then joined the guild. (Granted, he guild-hopped on us TWICE in as many expansions, but it was still a great attunement run.)

My own Jailbreak run had my brother on his druid, a dwarf (!) priest from our guild, another hunter from our guild and … someone else. We didn’t know to pre-clear first. We had to blow my brother’s half-hour cooldown Rebirth (battle rez) on the priest at some point and my brother even blew Tranquility at some point. Totally epic!

I will always remember that I essentially soloed a 5-man portion of the Black Temple attunement. I killed a bunch of adds and was well on my way to killing some elite quest mob all by myself, because my guild (love them!) essentially all said they were “too busy” to help me out. So I did this part of Shadowmoon Valley all on my own until some wonderful shaman from another guild whispered me with “invite!” and I invited him and he HEALED ME and we both got credit for that mob.

Going through steps of attunements was a GREAT bonding experience.

Keys were a way that you could show people you cared about your character and its progression — particularly the more difficult keys. Attunements were a way that you could show people you cared about your character AND that you could get through the difficult challenges most of these involved. It also usually proved that you could work as a member of a team and what is raiding if not working together as a team?

So as we anxiously await Firelands and 4.2, let’s take a moment to remember the countless hours spent on getting keys. Let’s take a moment to remember that, once upon a time, we couldn’t just stroll into a raid instance without being attuned, having an amulet, doing a huge number of quests or even paying gold.

Attunements are already a thing of the past, but I’ve held on to my keys all of these years. I’ve been proud of having them, all of them, and so, as I download 4.2, I will take a moment to think about all these entry barriers I successfully navigated and the crazy shenanigans that usually went along with those runs.

Goodbye, my dear keys. I don’t regret a single moment I spent getting any of you.

(Pictured, from left to right, top to bottom:
Prison Cell Key – BRD, Key to Searing Gorge – Quest, Relic Coffer Key – needed for a portion of BRD, Jump-a-Tron 4000 key – Nagrand quest, Boulderfirst Key – Nagrand quest, Coilskar Chest Key – Shadowmoon Valley quest, The Violet Hold Key – Quest, Zuluhed’s Key – Shadowmoon Valley quest, Flamewrought Key – Heroic Honor Hold key, Key of Time – Heroic Caverns of Time key, The Master’s Key – Karazhan key, Reservoir Key – Heroic Coilfang Reservoir key, Auchenai key – Heroic Auchindoun key, Warpforged Key – Heroic Tempest Keep instances key, Gordok Shackle Key – Nagrand quest, Rusty Prison key – fished up in Dalaran.)

Holy Paladin Mastery: Still Underwhelming

Kurn / / paladins, patch 4.2

The News

People have been mentioning a change lately on the PTRs regarding the holy paladin mastery, but it was only today that Blizzard mentioned it in their updated patch notes:

Illuminated Healing (Mastery) has been adjusted slightly so that if a paladin refreshes an existing copy of his or her own Illuminated Healing on a target, the new absorption amount will be added into the old absorption amount and the duration will be reset. The total absorption created can never exceed 1/3 of the casting paladin’s health.

… huh.

That is a lot of information for two sentences.

1) The paladin must refesh their OWN copy of Illuminated Healing on a target. That only makes sense, but they clearly wanted to be sure that two paladins couldn’t stack the same Illuminated Healing shield on someone, either to build it up doubly quick or get double the effect.

2) The shield rolls! That’s to say that if you put up a 2k shield and heal enough for another 2k shield, that becomes a 4k shield (without accounting for damage done to it, of course).

3) The shield rolls up to one-third (33.3333~%) of the casting paladin’s health. Right now, unbuffed, I have 121,761 health. 33.3333~% of that is: 40,586.9594. Let’s just call it 40,587 or about 40k. I’m in all 359s plus 5 372 pieces. The “baby” paladin is at 113,123 health, unbuffed, and is mostly in 346s with some 359s and a couple 353s, so her cap, unbuffed, is 37,707.629 — or about 37-38k.

These are not insignificant potential shields values they’re talking about, here.

4) Mastery rating will not increase the shield’s maximum size; it will simply allow more of our healing done to become a shield.

The Math Section

Now, having said all that, there are still things we need to look at. Bear with me, there is a LOT of math coming up and I am not a math wizard. These numbers could be completely wrong, but I’m reasonably confident they’re okay.

a) A 40k shield will take a LOT of healing to build up. Why? I have 8.92 Mastery on my gear on Madrana. That gives me 12% + 1.38% (13.38%) of each heal turned into a shield. If my average, raid-buffed, non-crit Divine Light hits for ~30k, let’s see how many times I’ll have to hit Divine Light on that one target to get to a 40k shield.

30k x 0.1338 = 4014

40k / 4014 = 9.965

I would have to throw 10 Divine Lights at that one target in order to max out the shield and that’s IF the target wasn’t already taking any damage (and assuming no crits).

While I could certainly scrounge up some mastery gear, most of my gear doesn’t have any mastery on it at all. I have it on my Heroic Burden of Mortality shoulders and my Maldo’s Sword Cane.

If I restored these pieces that I currently have reforged AWAY from Mastery, I would have 14.3% of my heals turned into shields.

30k x 0.143 = 4290

40k / 4004 = 9.324

So I’d still have to cast ten Divine Lights to hit the shield cap, assuming no crits.

b) Not all of our heals generate Illuminated Healing effects. Of particular note, Holy Radiance, Protector of the Innocent, the Guardian of the Ancient Kings and Beacon of Light heals do NOT proc our mastery. That’s an awful lot of healing that doesn’t cause mastery shields.

Right now, without having tested things out, without having looked too closely at Firelands loot, I’m not sure that Illuminated Healing’s change does a lot for us. Certainly it’s not as good as it sounds at first, not when you realize just how much healing you have to do to cap out on the shields. Of course, as we get more gear and we get more stamina, that shield cap will grow.

So what would happen if we walked into 4.2 stacked with mastery on heroic raid gear? Would even that make much of a difference?

Let’s find out!

The first thing I did was go through the Wowhead database to find all heroic-level items that a holy paladin can reasonably equip. That means all plate gear with intellect, although it also includes a cloak and a neck and a ring with no spirit.

Here’s the list:

Neck – Valiona’s Medallion – 143 mastery rating
Shoulders – Burden of Mortality – 171 mastery rating
Cloak – Shadow of Dread – 143 mastery rating
Chest – T10 – Reinforced Sapphirium Breastplate – 217 mastery rating
Gloves – T10 – Reinforced Sapphirium Gloves – 171 mastery rating
Boots – Life Force Chargers – 171 mastery
Ring – Signet of the Fifth Circle – 143 mastery rating
Weapon – Andoros, Fist of the Dragon King – 110 mastery rating

All of that mastery adds up to 1269 mastery rating.

Now, one MASTERY (1.5% absorption) is equal to 179.28 mastery rating (source: Wowpedia). So we can take the following equation:

1269/179.28 = x/1.5%

Thus, 1269 mastery rating is equal to 10.6174% absorption, since 1269/179.28 = 7.0783

7.0783 = x/1.5%

So 7.0783 x 1.5 = 10.6174.

Now, our base mastery is 8, which is 12% absorption.

12% + 10.6% = 22.6%

Let’s go back up to our example of my average heals.

Average Divine Light non-crit: 30k

Absorption = 22.6%

30000 x 0.226 = 6780

40k / 6780 = 5.899

So even with all the best-quality pieces with mastery rating on them, I would STILL have to cast 6 average Divine Lights (not including crits or absorbed damage between the casts) to cap out the possible shield size.

But Kurn, you ask, what if we reforged everything else to mastery? And gemmed for it? And enchanted for it?

Crap. You had to ask that, didn’t you?

<deep sigh> Okay, here we go.

I’ve created a profile at chardev that is in full 372s, all reforged for and gemmed for mastery. I feel vaguely dirty.

We start with a base 8 Mastery, which is 12% absorption.

2136 Mastery rating gives us 11.91 Mastery, which we add to that 8. 8+11.91 = 19.91 Mastery.

19.91 Mastery x 1.5% = 29.865%

30000 x 0.298 = 8940

40000 / 8940 = 4.47 Divine Lights (not including crits or absorbed damage between the casts) to cap out the possible shield size.

Now, this isn’t exactly 100% accurate, because the size of the average Divine Light will change by virtue of the fact that we lose a lot of intellect (and therefore spellpower) by gemming straight-up mastery. In fact, that profile has only 6533 spellpower as compared to my current 7282 spellpower. But hey! Do you know who has 6560 spellpower? The baby pally! That’s a pretty good comparison, right?

My average Divine Light heals for 26k on the baby paladin.

26000 x 0.298 = 7748

40000 / 7748 = 5.1626

So in order to cap out with full 372 gear reforged, gemmed and enchanted for mastery, one would still need to cast 6 average Divine Lights (not including crits or absorbed damage between the casts) to cap out the possible shield size.

BUT WAIT! Due to all the stamina gained by being in 372 gear, the cap rises!

126,857 health x 0.333333 = 42,285.6244

So now let’s say the new cap is 42k instead of 40k.

42000 / 7748 = 5.420

Okay, still 6 average-sized Divine Lights, not including crits or absorbed damage between the casts, are still needed to cap out.

Whew. (Don’t you complain. I warned you it was math-intensive!)

Conclusions

– We will not be able to prepare for Firelands by equipping all mastery gear and gemming and enchanting for mastery in the hopes of being able to get a capped out shield on a target in a couple of casts.

– While mastery will be changed for our shields to roll, this may not be as effective for healing as critical strike rating may become. With the change to crit going from 150% of a regular heal to 200% of a regular heal, which benefits just about all of our heals (ticks of Holy Radiance can crit, all our casted heals can crit, Protector of the Innocent heals can crit). Especially in view of the fact that Holy Light’s transfer through to our Beacon of Light target will be 100%, crit might move up the ranks a bit more than mastery will.

So, there you have it. Mastery is still not going to be particularly good or impressive, although the way it works will certainly improve with the patch. However, given the changes to healing crits, and the fact that crit affects most all of our abilities, mastery may well still be dead last in our stat priority come Firelands and the 4.2 patch.

ETA: My apologies, I got caught up in the math that I forgot to mention the reason WHY I focused on maxing out our shiny new rolling shields.

If we cannot reasonably attain the shield’s cap in a small number of casts, then what use is the stacking and rolling functionality?

Even if we stack a LOT of mastery, even over intellect, we’ll still need at least 6 DL non-crit casts to cap our shield. With almost 8k of absorption per non-crit Divine Light, we could conceivably stack 20k worth of absorption in 2-3 casts, but that can easily be eaten up quickly, in a single blow.

The point is that in order for the shields to really matter, we need to be able to achieve a substantial shield in a short period of time/low amount of casts.

Right now, my shields are about 4k. Even with the change to our critical heals, I cannot hope to get more than 8-10k absorption on my tank between melee swings. While that’s still better than the 4k I’m getting now, it’s not substantially better. The shield still vanishes too quickly for us to really care. And even at high levels of mastery, that doesn’t change.

Thus, I expect high absorption from our mastery in 4.2, but this is not, in my opinion, a huge game-changer.

The Raiding Adventures of the "Baby" Paladin

Kurn / / apotheosis, baby paladin adventures, bastion of twilight, blackwing descent, guild, healing, raiding, ramblings, throne of the four winds

Wednesday night was my first night raiding with Choice of Skywall again. The last time had been in late October, just before I brought Madrana home to Eldre’Thalas.

Well, Madrana II (or Saerani III, as a certain Football would put it), is back on Skywall and raided on Wednesday night.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my guild, Apotheosis. I really, really do. But at the same time, it’s SO NICE to be led by someone instead of leading people! Letting someone else organize the raid roster for the night rather than be the one to do it.

We blew through regular Bastion of Twilight in about an hour. My fellow holy paladin applicant got tons of loot (no Cho’gall bracers dropped… what a surprise…) and I’ll have to wait to be eligible until the next raid I attend, so I’m glad for him and glad for me.

It’s always interesting to acclimate to a new raiding environment. On the one hand, it’s a bit scary and nerve-wracking because you desperately do not want to screw up. And they do things differently than you’re used to, most of the time. I mean, sure, I know to hug people when I get Twilight Meteorite on Valiona and Theralion, but am I normally hugging people in melee anyways? In Apotheosis, yes, in Choice, no.

So Halfus was pretty simple and V&T went okay and Council was fine. Cho’gall was a little rough for me. I glyphed Cleansing for that fight and got 20 dispels, more than anyone — even the priest who was in the raid. /flex. But I was totally oom at the end of the fight. And I’d even taken a Potion of Concentration, too. Eesh.

Then, it was off to Blackwing Descent! And to Magmaw and Omnotron.

Magmaw was… entertaining. They were attempting to practice heroic positioning by virtue of having everyone clump up in melee and have a tank kite. The tank was… a prot warrior. I had never heard of a prot warrior tanking Magmaw parasites before, but by golly, it happened (albeit on normal, so there was no fire to dodge) and though there were some tank issues (mangle deaths — they happen everywhere, it seems!), Magmaw was still a one-shot.

On Omnotron, we had the person about to be fried to a crisp *not* moving in preparation for heroic mode, where they cannot move. A few people got nicked by the Flamethrower, but very nice positioning for the most part.

I was thinking maybe we’d poke around at heroic Chimaeron or something and I wondered if my gear could handle that or not, when all of a sudden we’re told to go to Uldum.

Okay. This was not something I had anticipated. The prospect of doing Throne of the Four Winds twice in a week with two different guilds is not cool. I don’t know WHY I hadn’t recognized this as a very real possibility, but apparently I am dumb. ;) No, seriously, it’s okay. I just dislike that instance intensely. And guess what Apotheosis is working on during Thursday’s raid? That’s right. Heroic Conclave.

So there I am on Conclave and I get to heal with Fugara, the GM. We had an easy job, staying on Anshal’s platform the whole time, so it was pretty chill and relaxed. Conclave was a one-shot. Beauty.

And then… Al’Akir.

Let it be known that I have killed that jackass just twice on Madrana (er, the original one) so it’s not like I’m a pro or anything. And they put me in a different spot than I’m usually in. On the bright side, I didn’t have to do the positions for Al’Akir!!!! Many commiserations to Zarethorn, Choice’s raid leader. He had planned that all out ahead of time.

So we wiped on him twice and called it a night. Having said that, I did NOT get blasted off the platform, I did NOT eat Squall Line and I totally used my CDs appropriately. All this from a brand-new (to me) spot, just one section to the right of the tank. (Normally, I’m at the tank’s spot but have also been two to the right.) I had one moment of panic as I saw the oncoming Squall Line and Wind Burst was casting. The moment of panic was not “how do I navigate this awful combination of elements” but rather “shitshitshitshit where is my bubble OH THANK GOD.”

(Madrana II has a different UI than Madrana I. It’s much less cluttered and yet I STILL had to search for my bubble.)

It was really fun to be back in that raid group. A lot of people have come and gone, but there were some familiar faces: Fugara, Ygg, Aidan, Zare, Acid, Baatezus, Banorind, Beezle, Cyber, Daemyn, Sane, Sham, Thorn. It was great to be back there with a lot of the same people.

A lot of people are worried I’m going to burn myself out with this crazy scheme of mine. I admit, that’s a possibility. But I feel energized by my night with Choice. I feel like going in to Throne tomorrow and handing Heroic Conclave their asses. I feel fired up and ready to kick ass with Apotheosis and then to go kick some more ass with Choice on Monday.

Also, I totally fixed my borked Raeli’s Spell Announcer on Madrana II. It refused to work at all throughout the raid, but I fixed it up afterwards. And then I realized I had enough Valor Points to buy an honest-to-goodness healing ring, so I did that, too.

All in all, a really productive night. A fun night.