Yet another fail "tank".

Kurn / / facepalm, gear, general, lfg, paladins, ramblings, tanks

My brother and I queued for the heroic random together, today. I was on my paladin. He was on his hunter. I was healing. He was DPSing.

We get a group, zone into Halls of Stone and I see the tank is a paladin who immediately starts buffing kings. Okay, I buff wisdom and might, even though I have crap might. The tank gives us Sanctuary. I give us kings. It’s all good.

’till the second pull.

The tank takes a crapton of damage.

Like, a CRAPTON.

I’m actually having to use Holy Light.

In general, I’m okay with this. He “only” has 36k health, buffed. That’s fine. He’s using the badge shield. That’s fine. I figure that he’s undergeared and I didn’t feel like taking the deserter debuff. He was prot, at least, using Sanctuary, had Righteous Fury up. It appeared like he was putting in the effort.

My brother says to me, over vent, after a couple more pulls “MAN, this tank sucks! How can he suck so bad?”

“Well, he’s got to be a new tank. Look at his health.”

“He’s got a 5400 gear score.”

“What? Not possible.” I don’t have the GS mod enabled on my paladin (too much lag with it on) so I figured my brother was looking at the DK.

“I’m telling you, 5400 GS.”

“On the TANK? The paladin? The paladin who’s not me?”

“Yes. The tank. The paladin.”

“Not poss…i…ble. Hang on.”

I inspect him.

Sure enough, he’s got good gear. Great gear. But it’s ret gear and arena gear. He has precisely two pieces of gear on him with defense/parry/dodge/block and those are his weapons; the tanking axe out of H HoR and the badge tanking shield.

“Why are you wearing ret gear and arena gear?” I ask in party, as I spam the paladin with Holy Light against one of the big guys.

“Who me?” asks the DK.

“No. The tank.”

“Oh,” says the DK.

“its all i have rite now” says the paladin.

“Then you shouldn’t queue up as a tank,” I reply. Then my brother and I left the group in the middle of the pull.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have done it, but I have HAD it with idiots who don’t even make the slightest effort to be a decent tank. Had it! I am DONE with it. This guy, upon examining his armory, was specced thusly: 0/71/0. I wasn’t even aware that there WERE that many points you could spend in the prot paladin tree. His glyphs were crap. His spec is obviously crap (although he got all the good prot talents, he got nothing from ret to help with avoidance, like Parry, nor did he get Seal of Command to help with threat) and his gear was almost entirely DPS gear.

I shouldn’t have left. He was immune to critical strikes by virtue of resilience alone. And I had figured that would probably be the case. And I still left.

Why did I leave? I could have kept him up. Could have been a quick run.

I left because I don’t want to encourage people who don’t put any effort into their roles. I am exceedingly careful to NOT be a drag on any group I’m in, regardless of the role. Kurn was hit-capped before setting foot into a raid. Madrana upgraded her gear ASAP and was still holding on to some Tier 6/BT/Hyjal stuff until better stuff dropped. Lotana’s hit-capped. Katarah can heal just fine with her 4.8k GS and can even pull average DPS when she needs to as enhancement. Cayllan tanks and heals just fine, though it took a little practice and some extra gear at first (when I could NOT keep aggro from a geared, whirlwinding warrior or divine storming ret pally).

To top all that off, I use consumables to bump up my contribution to the group. Tanking on either Madrana or Cayllan? Yeah, I’ll be using Mighty Fortitude and Guru’s Elixirs, plus appropriate buff food (40 agi for the bear, 40 hit for the paladin whose hit rating is somewhat lacking). DPSing on Kurn? Agi/Guru and Mighty Thoughts Elixirs, plus agi food. DPSing on Lotana? Spellpower and Mighty Thoughts Elixirs, plus spellpower food. Healing on Cayllan? Spirit and spellpower elixirs, plus spellpower food. Healing on Madrana? At least a Guru’s Elixir or my Flask of the North, even for random dungeons.

Basically, I work at making sure I’m doing my best, regardless of the group into which I’m placed.

Other people just don’t do that.

And yet, I’m forced to play with them if I want to jump through the hoops Blizzard has so carefully designed for us. I run my daily on Madrana every day. I’ve missed THREE days, total, since the Dungeon Finder came out and we started getting Emblems of Frost for doing the first random dungeon of the day. That is a LOT of pugging.

I don’t expect people to do as much work on their toons as I do. I don’t expect others to be as considerate of the group as I usually tend to be. But I do expect others to make a half-decent effort. 0/71/0 is not a good tanking spec. Two pieces of gear with defense on it is not good tanking gear. That isn’t even putting in the effort to look up a halfway decent spec, you know?

What I expect of people is this:

– appropriate gear for the instance level. That means a tank who is crit immune via 535+ defense or Survival of the Fittest, NOT via 100% resilience.

– appropriate spec(s) for the role(s) they have selected. That means one that, even if slightly unorthodox, helps you do your job to the best of your ability. And it means that you tank in your tank spec, heal in your heal spec and DPS in your DPS spec. Tanking in a DPS spec, healing in a DPS spec and DPSing in a tank or healing spec will make me want to throttle you.

Even on my priest, who is now 50, I have not signed up as “damage” for any dungeon thus far because I am not shadow! I do not have a dual spec on that toon and am 41 points into disc. Thus, I do not queue as shadow!

Similarly, neither of my druid’s specs are damage specs, thus I never queue up as DPS.

Hell, same for Madrana, she NEVER queues as DPS because she doesn’t have the appropriate spec OR gear.

Is it really too difficult to ask people to put in the base amount of effort? Am I really expecting too much from people who play this game? I’m not asking for tanks with 60k health to heal through my random dungeons every day. I’m asking for a tank who knows the basics of tanking.

It makes me want to get on the druid and tank the living crap out of a bunch of heroics tonight just so that people don’t lose hope in the myth of “good tanks”.

Sigh.

Kurn / / cataclysm, hunters, ramblings

Things to say about the hunter preview. I won’t get into everything now, but I do have things to say about it. I did want to address the resource change, however, if only briefly.

Honestly, I just want to hold my mana bar and never, ever let it go. I understand why the change, though — hunters are ranged physical damage dealers. Melee stuff doesn’t really affect them. But they have some similar stats/damaging effects to melee. But they’re not casters either, so caster stuff doesn’t really affect them. But they have a depletable resource in mana that means they’re LIKE casters.

Hunters have always been betwixt and between, in my opinion. Even more so now; they have mana but Chimera and Explosive shots are magical damage, not physical. Back when Aimed Shot was, you know, actually *aimed* with a 3-second cast time, and Serpent Sting was something you sneered at, THEN we were a physical damage class. But right now, we’re a screwed-up hybrid class that can’t tank or heal. But we’re still very much like hybrids.

I don’t think that removing the mana bar is the solution to the problem. The problem is that they want a resource that is not infinite and, in today’s raids, hunters just don’t have mana problems. Replenishment, Aspect of the Viper and Viper Sting work better than feigning/drinking ever did. So hunters basically never go out of mana and it ceases to be a valuable resource, because there’s never a shortage of it.

Focus introduces that shortage. Shots look like they take a lot of focus and it emphasizes more Steady Shot (and I guess Cobra Shot?) use while you regen your Focus.

I don’t think this is the way to fix hunters so that they have to worry about a resource. But similarly, I can understand that to nerf the hunters’ mana regen would nerf everyone else’s mana regen. You can’t just remove Replenishment entirely. You can’t make the regen from it too low. Could you remove tools like AotV? Sure… but what hunters even need to use Aspect of the Viper in a raid these days? And that would harm hunters in dungeons and while questing.

I suppose you could make hunters immune to Blessing of Wisdom/Mana Spring and Innervate. And mana potions. But that’s not a good solution, either.

Clearly, I don’t have much of a solution. But I don’t think Focus is the answer. It’s an answer. But I don’t like it.

Yeah, I'm a noob.

Kurn / / general, healing, icecrown citadel, lfg, priests, raiding, ramblings

I’ve been levelling a priest more or less “with” my brother who’s levelling a paladin. I heal him. He tanks. It works nicely, even though he’s about 4-5 levels ahead of me.

Anyways, I’m 49 now. At 48, I was overjoyed to get Prayer of Fortitude, if just for the simplicity of buffing my WHOLE GROUP at once.

I previously levelled my brother’s priest from about level 47 until 70, back in BC. So it’s not like I haven’t done what I’m doing now. I healed Sunken Temple then, I’ve healed it now. I basically know what I’m doing.

However, it turns out that, in some instances, battlegrounds are AMAZING experience. As such, I have reluctantly been queuing for WSG and AB.

Know what I’ve done for the past two days? I’ve buffed each group with Prayer of Fortitude. Individually. Because the last time I got Prayer of Fortitude, that was how it worked.

Never mind that I have a mage, who buffs the whole group at once with Arcane Brilliance. Never mind that I have a druid, who buffs the whole group at once with Gift of the Wild. Apparently, I am incapable of reconciling Prayer of Fortitude with the words “raid-wide buff”.

In other news, heroic Festergut down. 8/12 hard modes. I think I hate that fight a lot, now.

We tried heroic Sindragosa three times tonight, all attempts being epic, total, absolute failures. People didn’t realize that Frost Bombs one-shot you. They forgot about the AOE damage from Backlash. It was just sad, really.

OMG. BRD – Prison just popped for me! I LOVE BRD!

Updates ahoy!

Kurn / / cataclysm, classes, general, healers, healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, priests, raiding, ramblings, shamans

So, a variety of updates tonight/this morning.

1) Saurfang heroic down (one-shotted!), bringing our totals to 7/12 hardmodes down. Remaining are Deathwhisper, Festergut, Putricide, Sindragosa and Lich King.

Pro tip: 3 holy paladins on Marks of the Fallen Champion on heroic Saurfang = win.

2) I still hate heroic Dreamwalker, despite the fact we one-shot the encounter on our second week of attempts on her (we got her on the 4th last reset). I didn’t miss a portal this time (until the last one; I should have gone in, but I stayed out) but I got an orb like, 6 seconds before we dropped out, sadly, so my buff fell off. And then I got an orb ninjaed from me! I TOLD them all to wait for people inside, but noooo. ;)

3) The healing lead-type situation has gotten moderately better. My RL friend the resto druid SHOULD, with any luck at all, be back next week. Her RL issues have lessened (though work picked up, but should be settling down again soon) so I’m totally ready to give her the healers back. In the meantime, I’ve been doing healing since she’s been gone, basically, which is something like a month (full-time) and a few raids before that.

The caster officer/raid leader (shadow priest who goes disc for us on occasion) and I have a good rapport, really, so we’ve talked a LOT about healing and healers. He’s been my main contact with the officers, playing messenger boy between me and the tanks. Until this week.

The guild has a funny structure. Apparently those who are “officers” don’t have access to officer chat. Their “officer” discussions take place in a custom chat channel.

This channel is one that the raid leader asked me to join this week. Hooray. I’ve been in there since Sunday and it’s a little intimidating to be in there with the MT/guild leader who yells at people, the former GM who plays casually these days and others. At least the hunter/physical DPS officer is there. She’s pretty awesome and is basically my only real “friend” in the guild besides my friend the druid.

I have to say that the disconnect between the MT’s MT personality and his officer-chat personality is staggering. He can be yelling at people in raid and then discussing a new restaurant he wants to check out at the same time in the “officer” channel.

Anyways, the situation that had me questioning people’s opinions of me has been pretty much settled. I’m the stand-in healing lead, period. And they (mostly!) listen to me. I can see this being a good thing if my RL friend needs a night off. “Kurn,” she could say (or, you know, use my real name), “can you do healing tonight? I need to get to bed early.” It would be nice to do it occasionally. Just not all the time.

4) The problems I’m encountering now while leading the healers through heroic encounters (FML, I hate these things!) is that the healers have very little sense of cohesion, no team identity. And no wonder. With one exception, I’m the most senior of the current, active healers and I just joined in September.

We’re apping two holy paladins at the moment, two resto druids, three priests (all disc/holy dual specs) and basically two resto shammies. I’m struggling to find room for them all in the raids, particularly as I’m only being given six spots in the vast majority of encounters. Granted, that should be plenty, but I wish I could keep my disc priest AND a holy priest AND two resto shammies AND two holy paladins AND a resto druid all at once. But I can’t. So the shammies get swapped around a lot. The priests have a very minimal rotation, largely because the one who’s primarily holy is just THAT GOOD and I like the disc very much, he’s been with us longest of all the priests. I’m swapping the two holy paladins around whenever I can. I had T in with us for Marrowgar (H), Deathwhisper (R), Airship (H), then brought in L for Saurfang (H) and kept all of us intact through Princes. Then I swapped out T and kept L for BQL. Then brought T back in for Dreamwalker.

Whew. So personnel and cohesion is a bit of a challenge these days. Anyone have any fun team-building exercises that are doable on a forum? I really just want the healers to get to know each other better so we can learn to rely on each other more.

5) As previously mentioned, I’ve been doing arenas with my brother (survival hunter) and our buddy Majik (unholy DK).

a) Teams with names like “u ju we ez bake oven” should be taken to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. I’m not Jewish, none of my family members were directly affected by the Holocaust, but the very fact that people think this is an acceptable arena team name makes me sick to my stomach and makes me wish that I stuck to things like Space Quest. Freaking MMOs. I hate people. And yes, I report each and every offensive arena team name I see. :P

b) Speaking of hating people, I hate warlocks. Fear, fear, fear, fear, curse of tongues, unstable affliction, shadowfury, felhunter and/or succubus, fear, fear, fear, fear, dead. Know what I need resilience to do? Reduce the amount of time I spend running around like a moron being feared.

c) Oh, let us not forget freaking druids. Cyclone, regrowth, cyclone, lifebloom, cyclone, lifebloom, cyclone, rejuvenation, travel form, lifebloom blooms, druid is at full health and full mana again. And then continues to cyclone me. UGH. (R, you have never cycloned me. Thus, you are immune to my hate.)

d) And then there are priests. Euphie, Kaleri, you know I love you, but bloody hell, do I hate priests. If there is a sound out there that I hate more than any in all of World of Warcraft (yes, even over Jaina’s whining tones in Hyjal!), it is the sound of Mana Burn. It strikes fear and dread into my poor heart. Psychic Scream is no fun, either.

e) Surprisingly, we nearly got to 1300 rating pretty easily. We even had 9 wins in a row at one point. But we fell short and have since tanked our 3v3 rating back down to 1226 or so. It seems like every game we win gives us 3-7 points and every game we lose drops us 10-20. Pray tell, how the hell are we supposed to beat a team with a holy paladin, a disc priest and an arms warrior? It would seem logical to take out the warrior, but without pressure on a healer, there’s no way to outdamage two healers healing him. So you go for the squishy? Sure. But then I’m stuck kiting the stupid warrior around while the paladin bubbles, heals to full, judges my team’s DPS to get mana back and keeps the damn priest alive.

What about the resto druid and double rogue team? How to beat THAT?

f) And don’t get me started on how seriously OP an elemental shaman is in an arena. Good GOD, does Lava Burst hurt!!!

6) Class previews? Cataclysm beta has to be incoming. Having said THAT, of course everyone else’s preview is this week and the paladins have to wait ’till next. Of course. I’m expecting changes drastic enough to make me want to switch raiding toons. I will say this, though — I love the idea of “healing wave” and “heal” as the middle spells for shammies and priests. It’s exactly what *I* want for a paladin. So I’m envisioning Flash of Light, Holy Light and Greater Holy Light. Or something like that. They really can’t slap “divine” on too many more spell names or abilities for paladins, can they? Maybe FoL, Divine Light (medium spell) and Holy Light (for the big one)? I guess we’ll see.

The shammy and priest changes seem interesting. Not sure how to feel about Healing Rain, but HEY EUPHIE! Guess what spell you’re going to use on ME all the damn time?! THAT’S RIGHT, LEAP OF FAITH, BABY. AHAHAHA!

I used to tell my raiders, back in the day “Look. I can’t move you out of the fire on Archimonde. I really wish I could. But I can’t. So please move out of the fire. Please.”

But in Cataclysm, you will be able to.

Hilarious!

Power Word: Barrier seems nifty, too.

I’m nervous as hell about the hunter changes, by the way. My inner huntard is cringing, waiting for the nerfbat smackdown. AND, BY GOLLY, I WILL MISS MY MANA BAR.

I should end this post. My ideas are starting to degrade into OMGCAPS-like flickers of thought.

So that’s what’s new with me.

Kurn's Q&A #13

Kurn / / healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, q&a, raiding, ramblings

It’s that time again! Lost and V watched, here are some quick questions I’ve picked up from my search terms in my web stats along with my own answers.

1) is there a way to make a mcro that tells you how much you healed someone for

The short answer is probably. Just get yourself a combat text addon like Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text or use the default scrolling combat text that Bizzard provides.

2) does divine intervention heal professor putricide

I have not tested this, but if it is cast on someone who has Mutated Plague, it will probably remove Mutated Plague. So yes, I imagine it would heal Putricide.

3) does divine sacrifice stack

No. This HAS been tested. The second one will overwrite the first one.

4) does libram of renewal stack with glyph of seal of wisdom

Absolutely. 5% off the cost of your healing spells and 113 mana off Holy Light. This is why it’s still our Best in Slot (BiS) libram. And it’s item level 200.

5) hardmode dreamwalker best way to hit red orbs

Ugh, ugh, ugh. I did this on Monday night for the first time. The orbs take a lot longer to respawn in the portal so I basically said “always move counter-clockwise and WATCH for people around you! Don’t ninja someone’s orb, wait the second or two for them to get it WITH YOU.” And this worked remarkably well.

6) healing toravon resto druid

As a druid, chances are, you are going to be healing the raid. On 10-man, try to keep Rejuvenation up on just about everyone. Use Wild Growth on cooldown. Be prepared to use WG right as a Whiteout is coming. On 25-man, I like to keep the active tank hotted, spreading Rejuv and WG throughout the raid as I’m able to. I like to try to keep a 3-stack of Lifebloom on the tank and let it bloom right after Whiteout. If all else fails, right as a Whiteout happens, hit Barkskin and then Tranquility.

7) how to be a tank

The basics are:
– hold aggro (attention from the angry things trying to kill your party)
– stay alive
– don’t be a dick to your healer. :P

Here’s a more detailed guide.

8) how to unlock hard modes icecrown citadel

Very simple: kill Arthas on regular difficulty. Anyone who has killed Arthas on regular difficulty can then form a raid and can turn on heroic difficulty. (Uh, by “Arthas”, I mean “The Lich King”.)

9) soloing first 2 mobs heroic forge

Easy mode as a paladin. Any tank class should be able to do this, really. It’s a little harder as a DPS, but if you happen to be able to CC an undead, you can do this easily as well. In my prot gear, I’d take them both on, Consecrating, use Seal of Light (and judging Light, too) and keep my defensive CDs up like Holy Shield and Sacred Shield. Easy. They don’t hit that hard in basic tanking gear and if you have things like Shield Wall or Frenzied Regeneration, these CDs should help you live through them.

10) soul shriek silence warriors ?

Yes. It does. Please cleanse or dispel Soul Shriek from your warrior tanks. Your raid members will thank you. ;)

OMG.

Kurn / / facepalm, lfg, ramblings

These days, I’m pugging a lot less, so I have less stories of fail, BUT…

Today. Violet Hold Heroic.

The “tank”:

Hashbrowniee from Ner’zhul.

Put him on ignore. 506 defense. No gems. NO relic (!). Didn’t even have Righteous Fury on until I told him to put it on three times.

Just a pitiful excuse for a player. I told him to respec ret and not inflict himself on others in an important role and he’s like “naw i like the instant queues”.

UGH. He got crit in the face a bunch. Good thing at least *I* knew what I was doing so I could keep his sorry ass alive.

And 25m heroic modes continue!

Kurn / / facepalm, general, healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings, world events

Hope everyone had a good Easter or a good Sunday, whichever applies to you. ;)

For myself, brunch with the family, followed by some horrible 3v3 arenas, followed by a nap, followed by a raid. We had cancelled on Thursday — people were sick, unable to make it, I had something come up… so we cancelled and reconvened tonight.

Heroic Blood Prince Council down.

Heroic Blood Queen Lana’thel down.

Heroic Festergut still wiped the floor with us.

Princes was actually pretty easy. “Don’t move,” is basically the key to the fight, although moving when necessary is also important. ;) Lana’thel was intense. We just clipped enrage, she killed both tanks and then we won. Princes only took two tries and BQL took three.

I don’t understand the issues behind Fester. It’s just all kinds of bad. The malleable goo is beaning people, the tanks are dying, the range are dying and basically, no one is living past two minutes or so. Time to go through the logs and make notes about healers, goo, assignments and the like. Hooray death logs?

And in other news, my brother, on his level 47 (?) paladin is about 8 bunny ears from being the Noble. This involved me running around the damn world with him, while on my mage, to port him from place to place and usually to save his fool ass from mobs trying to rip him apart. Screw Noblegarden; I did it once on Kurn and that was more than enough for me. And my brother is similarly unimpressed with the amount of farming of chocolates he had to do.

Anyways. Logs!

ETA: Oh God, the logs make me want to cry. :( People not casting, ranged not getting any heals, people ignoring Vile Gas entirely… GAH.

Hard modes? More like Not Facerollingly Easy Anymore Modes.

Kurn / / healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

So we went into ICC tonight and attempted five different hard mode fights.

1) Lord Marrowgar. Coldflame lasts longer, bone spikes during bonestorm… I got impaled by a spike during a bonestorm AND Marrowgar came whirling my way and I died. So did another healer. And another healer had already died.

But then Marrowgar died, so all was well!

Heroic modes Attempted/Succeeded: 1/1

2) Gunship Battle. Rockets knock you back 7 yards and hit for more damage. Mages have more health. The Horde ship (or Alliance, if you’re Horde) has more health.

Okay, this was still facerollingly easy.

Heroic modes Attempted/Succeeded: 2/2

3) Deathbringer Saurfang. Has more health, likely to get more Marks of the Fallen Champion. Adds are super fast and annoying and debuff the whole raid to 20% movement speed. Will one-shot anything but a tank.

Ow, my face. We tried three times and got up to 5 Marks of the Fallen Champion and were completely unprepared for the amount of raid damage taken and the amount of blood power he generates.

Then we switched it back to normal and killed his ass.

Heroic modes Attempted/Succeeded: 2/3

4) Rotface. The addition of Vile Gas complicates things, requiring some people to remain at range. The ooze on the ground now slows/roots you. The infection now reduces healing done by 75%, not 50%.

It actually seemed to go by faster than normal mode.

Heroic modes Attempted/Succeeded: 3/4

5) Festergut. Okay, moving all the healers at once to avoid Malleable Goo is dumb and leads to tank death. Speaking of tank death, HOLY TANK DAMAGE, BATMAN.

In 1.5 seconds:

[22:24:49.497] Festergut hits MT 27196  (A: 2353)
[22:24:49.733] Madrana Holy Light MT +0 (O: 15383) (clearly this is lag on my part)
[22:24:50.476] Festergut Gastric Bloat MT 11250 (R: 1523)
[22:24:50.598] Festergut hits MT 27334
[22:24:51.039] Festergut Gaseous Blight MT 1391 (R: 251)
[22:24:51.269] MT dies

So that’s 27k + 11k + 27k  = 65k damage in 1 second. Plus another 1k damage half a second later. Yikes.

He’s still up, so we’ll go back tonight and maybe try again.

Heroic modes Attempted/Succeeded: 3/4.5 ;)

My poll over there on the right (on the main blog page) asks you what you think about heroic modes. Vote (or not) and comment here (or not), but I think it would be neat to get a discussion going about heroic modes/dungeons/raids.

Just as an FYI…

Kurn / / blogging, facepalm, ramblings

Yes, I know tomorrow is April Fool’s.

No, I will not be writing any kind of jokey post. And no, I promise, this post is not an April Fool’s post, either.

No, I will not comment on the silly people who believe whatever it is Blizzard will put up this year (although, let me tell you, I totally bought into the BT attunement for a good five minutes, until I finished reading it all, by which point I was doubled over in laughter).

Basically, this post is to let you know that there’s going to be a LOT of misinformation across the board popping up, starting today and probably going through ’till Hawaii goes through the last hour of April 1. Don’t believe anything you read, from people quitting blogging or guilds merging or anything of the sort.

So, if it’s okay with you, I’ll just go sit over here and shake my head at all the gullible people believing stuff over the next day or so and stay out of the fray of insanity. Instead, I’ll just freak out about the fact that we’re going to be doing ICC25 hard modes and wondering what I ever did to Blizzard that deserves me getting to deal with Malleable Goo on Festergut and Vile Gas on Rotface in heroic modes.

Kurn's Q&A #12

Kurn / / dungeons, healing, paladins, q&a, ramblings, shamans, tanks

I really relish my Tuesdays off. I get to watch Lost and the newly-returned V and get to do WoW stuff that *I* want to do. Which includes writing on the ol’ blog. :)

1) best way to heal heroic falric with a shammy

Well, I don’t know if it’s the best way, but this is how I do it.

The real problem with Falric is the Defiling Horror for two reasons. The first is because it’s a horror effect, so Tremor Totem does nothing. The second is because everyone takes 16k damage. So what I do is endeavour to keep everyone topped up as close to max as possible before he casts the horror.

To recover from it, I cast Riptide on the tank and, using my hasted Healing Waves from Tidal Waves, I heal myself and a caster. Then I’ll Chain Heal off the Riptided tank, which will hopefully hit the tank and 2 melee. Then I’ll RT/HW anyone else who still needs health. Total time, with my crappy haste (400 haste + Wrath of Air) is about 8-9 seconds. I usually have enough time to get everyone to full, or close to it.

Apart from that, try to stay close together and bunched up for Chain Heal to get the maximum use possible from it.

2) choker of filthy diamonds or soulcleave pendant

Choker of Filthy Diamonds has more haste and mp5. Soulcleave Pendant has more crit. I definitely prefer the Choker for a holy paladin or possibly a resto shammy and likely a resto druid, since the nerf to Gift of the Earthmother, leaving the crit to priests. Maybe? I’m not sure how crit is for a holy priest these days, but I know crit is still awesome for a disc priest.

However, the Choker is off Rotface and the Pendant is off Saurfang. Really depends how far you’re getting into 10-man ICC, I think.

3) divine plea timer

Okay, I’m assuming you want a timer to tell you when Divine Plea is back up. For this, and any other cooldowns, I use OmniCC. It was my first-ever addon, as I recall. And it’s the one addon I cannot play without.

If you were looking for a timer to tell you how much of the 15 seconds your Divine Plea is still up for and such, I recommend Power Auras Classic to monitor if the buff is active on you or not.

4) hos divine shield holy macro wow

I haven’t actually tested this out, but this ought to work:

/cast Divine Shield
/cast [@target] Hand of Sacrifice
/raid Hand of Sacrifice is up!
/in 10 /raid Hand of Sacrifice is done!

That’s four lines and should work with two button clicks or presses. I highly recommend that your shield come FIRST in the macro, lest you be ruined in the face by whatever insane damage is hitting your target. Also, your @target could be @focus as well or even this:

[@mouseover,help,nodead]

5) paladin group buffs how to

Oof. Okay. The first thing to know here is what buffs other classes give that are equivalent.

Warriors: Battle Shout is equivalent to unimproved Blessing of Might. Improved Blessing of Might (2/2) requires the warrior to have 5/5 Commanding Presence to be equivalent. That’s in the third tier of the Fury tree. This is not part of a typical warrior build, as I understand it.

Shamans: Mana Spring Totem is equivalent to unimproved Blessing of Wisdom. Improved Blessing of Wisdom (2/2) requires the shaman to have 3/3 Restorative Totems which is the fourth tier of the Restoration tree. However, it leads to Mana Tide Totem which virtually all restoration shammies take.

This is the general order that I, personally, recommend for pally buffs:

Death Knights (DPS): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings
Death Knights (tank): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might
Druids (bear): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might
Druids (kitty): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings
Druids (moonkin): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Druids (trees): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Hunters (survival/marks): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might, Blessing of Wisdom
Hunters (BM): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Mages: Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Paladins (prot): Blessing of Sanctuary, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might, Blessing of Wisdom
Paladins (ret): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Paladins (holy): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Priests: Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Rogues: Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings
Shaman (enhancement): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Shaman (elemental/resto): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Warlocks: Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Warriors: Blessings of Kings, Blessing of Might

Of course, if you have a warrior in the group, it’s likely more beneficial to have them pop Battle Shout and you do kings than it is for no kings and your might, even if it’s improved. Same deal for wisdom and mana spring.

Alternately, you can buff everyone with Drums of Forgotten Kings and then give physical DPS might and healers and casters wisdom.

6) dk tanking halls of reflection

Note: I am not a death knight, nor am I a great tank. However, if you’re going to do the LOS method on Falric and Marwyn, just drop Death and Decay and hide around the corner. For any casters or the riflemen, Death Grip is great. For the chase scene, D&D is still awesome to use and you’ll want to Death Grip or Strangulate the Witch Doctors to bring them close if they’re a little far out. Blow your cooldowns when you can, saving Army of the Nub Dead for the second spawn of adds at the fourth wall on the chase scene.

7) list of cuts a purple gem can be cut to

Here’s a list of epic, level 80 purple gems. And here’s the list of rare-quality ones.

8) melee dps toravon guide

Hit boss. Don’t touch Frozen Orbs unless there are basically no ranged. Collect loot.

9) shammy tanking gear 3.3

Okay. You can equip a shield. This does not make you a tank. There is no mail gear out there at level 80 that has any kind of defense on it and very little leather, due to the druid changes. You would basically have to stack resilience. The major problem with shaman tanking, apart from the fact that you’re squishy as all get-out, is that a key to tanking is avoidance, like dodging, blocking and parrying. Your parry talent, Spirit Weapons, also reduces threat. Bad combo.

I don’t advise shaman tanking unless you’re doing it for fun with friends OR your tank on Lady Malande on the Illidari Council in Black Temple DROPS and your resident enhancement shaman thinks quickly, throws on a shield, pops Shamanistic Rage causing your raid leader to shout out over vent “ALL HEALS TO DUPER, ALL HEALS TO DUPER!”, which never had been heard before and never would be heard again. Ever. ;)

10) soul shriek aggro reset

Nope, there’s no aggro reset associated with Soul Shriek, as far as I can tell. It IS, however, a silence. Make sure someone is assigned to cleanse this magic effect off your tanks!