Some thoughts on leadership and raiding.

Kurn / / general, raiding, ramblings

I haven’t been a raid leader since February.

I haven’t been a guild leader since March.

I haven’t been a healing lead (or an officer) since September.

Since March or so of 2006, I’ve always been a raid leader. Since May of 2007, I’ve always been a healing lead. I was the GM of Apotheosis from January of 2008 until March of 2009. (Actually, I’m still GM, but the guild is in a social phase at the moment and I basically never log in.)

Since I started trying to raid, which brings us back to 2006, the frustrations have often, on many, many nights, outweighed the rewards. By and large, the problem has always been the same: attendence. Not enough people. Not enough bodies. Not enough DPS. Not enough healers. Not enough tanks.

I’ve always taken my position as a leader, any kind of leader, seriously. I feel that a leader has to be not only good at their own job (healing, tanking, DPSing) but also able to tend to the administrative issues that arise.

Example: You have nine healers online. That’s probably 3 healers more than you need for the content you’re currently doing. How do you decide who sits? Is it fair to the others if you never sit out? Does your raid group need *you* specifically to heal the content you’re doing or do they just need you to do healing assignments? What kind of gear do people need? How strong are the healers available?

When I was healing lead of the guild I was in on Bronzebeard, we had the above-mentioned problem a lot. Most guilds do NOT have too many healers online and not enough DPS online, more often than not. Kind of ridiculous, no? I could chalk it up to the fact that I treated my healers with respect and dignity and joked around with them and gave them healing jobs that they could do, rather than impossible tasks. I liked to instill a sense of success in them, I liked to push them. I did call them out on things when needed, too, of course, which wasn’t fun.

But I offered gold to people to beat a certain shammy on dispells on Yogg-Saron. I offered them gold if a lack of healing was directly responsible for the death of our gnomish raid leader — on Archavon only. I think I balanced it out nicely and I think I earned their respect by virtue of knowing how their classes worked (I did SO much reading for that!!) and being good at my own job. I mean, if I popped Divine Plea on Thorim after the tunnel, the tanks DIED, back when we were getting it on farm. I was the go-to healer for the tanks. If I was dead or if I was oom, well, the tanks would die. And I don’t say that to give myself props or anything, I’m just actually stating the fact. It’s sort of like now, in my current guild, if my RL friend the resto druid dies, we are SCREWED.

Wednesday night, in my current guild, we didn’t have some key players online. The main tank/primary raid leader didn’t show up for some reason. The other holy pally couldn’t make it. I was late due to RL plans with a friend. The list went on. We still had 27 people online and we still cleared through Saurfang and then went and did XT for the weekly, but we called the raid early because we just didn’t have the raid comp/experience for the more challenging content.

Thursday night, most everyone was there. I think we had 28 people online, maybe 29. All of our tanks were there. So we clear over to Festergut.

And here is why I’m thinking about leadership… The MT/RL linked to us the Flu Shot Shortage (25) achievement. But it was abundantly clear that he didn’t know how to do it. Why?

The instructions were that if you got the spore on you, to run to the back wall, wait for it to go off, then rejoin the raid group.

What does this do? It means that no one in the actual raid gets any stacks of Inoculated. Which means that when Pungent Blight goes off… well, let’s look at the combat log for that, shall we?

[23:25:29.906] Festergut Pungent Blight Madrana 27549 (O: 1417, A: 7057)
[23:25:30.390] Madrana dies

So let’s see, that’s 27.5k health I have, with 7k worth of absorbs (I love you, disc priests) and 1.5k of overkill. 36k shadow damage.

It killed 19 people. Instantly. One-shotted.

I don’t have a problem with raid leaders trying out new things. God knows that I’ve killed my entire raid group a ton of times, including our early attempts at Maulgar. But at least I had an IDEA of how to do things and we worked around that idea to customize it for our raid group. Or, in the case of those early Maulgar attempts, we decided to push 25-man raiding back a bit until we had more people who were geared out of Kara.

They quickly refined things last night so that the first three people with the spores would run to the back wall, and that they’d run out for the second (or third) spore as well, so as not to get three stacks of Inoculated. Someone had actually read the strat and communicated it to their role leader, who had then communicated it to the MT/RL.

First set of spores, three people run out. Second set of spores, people are hanging out. Third set of spores, people who had previously had spores run out. Pungent Blight hits. A couple people die. It’s all good.

Fourth set of spores, I get a spore. I hesitate, because they hadn’t mentioned what to do with the second rotation of spores. Don’t we normally get him down before the second Pungent Blight? I don’t have a freaking clue.

So I ran to the back of the room, treating it as though it was like the first rotation. At the very worst, I reasoned, I had moved unnecessarily. I had my mouse hovering over LOH if needed, so my tank would be covered. The spore pops, I get an Inoculated buff, run my ass back to the group.

Second spores pop up. People stand around, which is fine.

Third spore pops and I can’t believe Festergut isn’t dead yet, so I haul my ass back to the back of the room to ENSURE I don’t get a third stack of Inoculated.

The spore pops, I run back in, Pungent Blight hits, most people live through it and Festergut drops shortly thereafter.

No achievement.

Instantly, I panicked that I was the one who had screwed it up. I didn’t have the firmest of the firm grasps on the mechanics of the encounter. But I did make sure I didn’t have 3 stacks at any point in time, so even though I’d been unsure about things, it couldn’t have been me, right?

I checked the logs after the raid. A ret pally had stayed in and gotten 3 stacks at the end. Way to go.

But is it really the ret paladin’s fault? I wondered. There had been no indication from the MT/RL that we were going to do this achievement until about a minute before we pulled Festergut. Nothing on the forums, no mention during previous raids to read up on the achievement.

Isn’t part of being a leader preparing your charges for out-of-the-ordinary things? Back in BC, when we prepared for the Mother Shahraz fight, I completely broke myself trying to make sure everyone had their BT necks and 290 Shadow Resist gear in order to reach the 365 SR (level 70) cap with Prayer of Shadow Protection up. By “I broke myself”, I mean to say that I posted regularly to our forums to ensure that people knew when we were doing Al’ar and Rage Winterchill kills for the quest. I ensured that we always had just enough Hearts of Darkness for the crafting of gear. I bought Primal Shadows from guildies to encourage them to sell them to the guild bank so we could provide some to the guildies who didn’t have time to farm for their resist gear.

As we stood there, in front of Mother, furiously crafting last minute gear, a fail rogue tells me she doesn’t have her BT neck because she hasn’t done the heroics necessary for it. (She was thinking Champion of the Naaru. I know. I don’t even have words.) She then insisted it was fine, just give her an extra Heart of Darkness for the bracers (which we weren’t crafting).

Trouble is, we had no extras. If we went ahead and crafted her guild-sanctioned gear (cloak, boots, belt, legs) then we wouldn’t have enough for her bracers, so it would be a waste of 7 Hearts of Darkness. I ordered her back to Shattrath and out of the raid for the Mother fight. :P

But that… that was being a leader. Following up on people, checking on people, then throwing someone out of the instance because she hadn’t done what she was supposed to do. Preparing the group, to the best of my abilities, though? That was being a leader.

Time and again, since Apotheosis quit raiding, I have been ASTOUNDED at the lack of preparation and leadership through progressive content in Ulduar, TOC, TOGC and ICC. Astounded. Could I do better? HELL YES.  With my eyes closed, in some cases.

But I don’t want to.

I have no desire to drag 24 other people, kicking and screaming, through progression content. Not 24 other people in my Bronzebeard guild and DEFINITELY not 24 other people in my current guild.

For my Apotheosis folks? For them, I would do it. For them, I likely WILL do it in Cataclysm. So long as my support group is there. Who’s that? My BC officers, for the most part. My buddy Majik. Our favourite huntard. Our Football. Our best tank, a pally, who joined us midway through SSC. Each of them were key in our most difficult times of progression.

I don’t have any delusions. Server AND faction transfers have only made it easier for people to jump ship and leave guilds, to the point where it basically doesn’t mean anything anymore to be in a guild. Hopefully, the guild reforms will make it more beneficial for people to stay in-guild in Cataclysm and guild achievements will make people WANT to join guilds.

I don’t envy any guild leaders or raid leaders these days. It has been a crappy expansion in terms of loyalty and attendence. I couldn’t even keep my own guild going at the start of Wrath. But the difference is that I TRIED to do what was right for my people. Too many “leaders” these days just don’t even understand what’s really needed to succeed. And maybe I’m overestimating it, maybe I hold people’s hands for too long and baby them a little too much and maybe that ISN’T necessary. But it’s what works for me and my style of leadership and it worked, mostly, for the people in my guild.

Some days, you couldn’t pay me to lead anything, not for a Battered Hilt or a mountain of gold or even real money.

And then some days, I think back fondly to Apotheosis. I remember the exultation of downing Gruul. I remember the joy at downing Magtheridon. I remember the pure elation from downing Vashj, the cries of happiness at downing Kael as we became Hands of A’dal. I remember the determination and dedication required for downing Archimonde. I remember the enhancement shammy slapping on a shield, popping Shamanistic Rage and TANKING the priest on the Illidari Council after the tank on that mob had gone down. I remember our tanking paladin HEALING and our DPS warrior TANKING on Illidan and how we nailed that fight.

Those are the days I miss. Those are the encounters I remember. Those are the raids I looked forward to and enjoyed being part of. Hand of A’dal means more to me than Twilight Vanquisher, more than Astral Walker. It was a title I got with people I considered my friends.

Genuine compliment or not?

Kurn / / druids, lfg, ramblings, tanks

So tonight, my brother hit 80 on his hunter. We did a random heroic (Old Kingdom — which spawned the previous post to the “tanks” of the Bloodlust Battlegroup) and we did regular TOC and I tanked heroic Utgarde Keep…

And then he needed 7 more badges to get the Mirror of Truth. So we queued up again; me as a tank/healer, him as a DPS, obviously.

We got The Nexus and I breathed a sigh of relief, although I was tanking. I know the instance, I know the boss fights, I know how trash works. I had about 29k health, fully buffed (mark, kings, no fort) and off we went.

I swear to God, I thought the DPS warrior was actively taunting off of me. Until I checked his gearscore. 5300 or thereabouts. Mine, as comparison, is about 2800. Still, I was doing okay on single targets. The issue would arise when the warrior’s whirlwind would simply out-threat my swipe.

So we’ve done the mini boss, the caster boss and Anomolous and we’re at trash towards the rock boss, when the warrior says, apropos of nothing:

“UR A DAMN GOOD TANK 4 GS OF 2.8K”

The holy paladin said:

“lol i agree” “amazing”

I didn’t say anything. Were they being sincere? Or were they being sarcastic dicks? You never know with these people.

So at the end of the run, I say:

“Thanks very much for the group, everyone. Apologies for not holding aggro too well on multiple mobs. :)”

The pally comes back with:

“ur amazing”

And the DK said “psh did great”

The warrior had already left the group by the time the pally had said anything.

So I don’t know. Maybe the warrior was being a sarcastic ass, but it seems like the pally thought I did great for my gear and the DK seemed to not mind too much.

If any of them were at all sincere, I really hope that what they take away from the run is not that I am awesome, but rather, GearScore does not make a player. GearScore shows a player’s potential maximum output and nothing else. Like, nothing I could possibly do could help my Swipe out-threat the warrior. At all. But that’s a gear issue. As it was, I was relatively good with single target threat and I didn’t let things beat on the pally and I was super-quick to growl at things or even use Challenging Roar. I like to think that I pushed at the limits of my gear.

I think it really helped that I’ve tanked the instance on regular and tanked it on both regular and heroic on my pally. Damn me if I didn’t miss Righteous Defense something fierce, though. :P

Attention "tanks" of the Bloodlust Battlegroup

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

To all warriors, death knights and paladins of the Bloodlust battlegroup… please, do not opt to “tank” in a random heroic if you do not have at least 535 defense rating.

To all druids of the Bloodlust battlegroup… please, do not opt to “tank” in a random heroic if you do not have 3/3 Survival of the Fittest.

I know that I’m not a particularly strong healer on my druid. I just dinged 80. I’m not trying to do Halls of Reflection or anything. But I do know that I can bloody well keep up tanks on trash in heroic Old Kingdom. Tanks who ARE immune to critical strikes by mobs.

So if you don’t have 535 defense, or Survival of the Fittest, GET THE HELL OUT OF MY RANDOM GROUPS, dumbasses.

Kurn's Q&A #6

Kurn / / q&a, raiding, ramblings

Woo, I’m a veritable posting machine today, aren’t I? Here we go, with another Q&A post based on search results that led people to my site. I take ten of them that I KNOW my site doesn’t adequately answer (or that I find really serious enough to answer) and post the search terms and my responses here.

I am absolutely not going to delve into Toravon stuff, because I’ve already answered a lot of that.

1) death knight tank stack all strength gems

Uh. No. Please don’t do this. Please stack stamina (traditionally) or things like parry and dodge if your avoidance is particularly low, or defense, if you’re not at 540 yet. Strength gems, particularly the +20 epic strength gems, are DPS only. Got it? Good.

2) grid dreamwalker

I know, right?! Seriously, make a focus macro and put it on a really easy to mash keybind and hit it whenever you zone out of the portals. I spent Dreamwalker healing my focus frame, meaning I could still target other mobs and judge them as well as spam cast Holy Light at the dragon.

3) lvl 74 druid tank gear 3.3

I’m probably not the best person to ask for this, but honestly, I felt that the BOA leather stuff worked really nicely for me as I tanked through the lower 70s. That’s the Stained Shadowcraft Spaulders and Stained Shadowcraft Tunic. Good stam, good agility (which are really your primary stats for health, dodge and armor). For everything else, I went for anything that had dodge on it, followed by stamina and agility. No joke, I tanked with Writhing Longstaff (with 35 agi on it) forever. ETA: Read the comment below by “gnome of zurich”, who really has a great breakdown of what bears should go for!

4) rhok delar bow without black dragon sinew pre tbc

Not sure what you’re trying to say here, but regardless, you cannot make Rhok’delar without the Mature Black Dragon Sinew. You can’t. That’s the string of your bow. But never fear, if you’re on the quest after getting the Ancient Petrified Leaf you can farm Burning Steppes black dragons for the sinew.

5) slime spray tremor totem

No reason to drop Tremor Totem at all on Rotface. There’s no fear or charm attached to his Slime Spray.

6) valithria dreamwalker gaining buff

I’ll presume you mean you gaining Emerald Vigor. I basically suck at getting and keeping the buff, but here’s what you should theoretically do. Zone in to the portal as soon as you can. Hit jump to fly directly up. You should have some green orb thingies right above you. Hang out in them for a bit, they’ll eventually burst as you move across them. Keep moving into the orbs and watch your timer for the end of the portals. Do your very best to hit an orb with like, 2-3 seconds left. That should afford you enough time to keep the debuff (it’s a debuff, not a buff, go figure) stacking between portal phases.

Pain in my ass. :P

7) valithria dreamwalker vigilance

Okay, I don’t have proof for this, but I would imagine this would be silly. First, she’s not generating any threat. Secondly, she’s not taking any damage. The suppressors channel to make her take less healing, but I’m pretty sure she’s not being damaged at all.

Buffs that DO work and are useful include, but are not limited to: Guardian Spirit, Sacred Shield, Power Word: Shield (for disc priest buffing purposes)

Good thinking outside the box, though. I’d recommend dropping Vigilance on any healer who stays outside of the portals.

8) glyph of holy wrath citadel

I don’t think that Glyph of Holy Wrath is ever better than any other major glyph you can use, as a paladin. Certainly not for a holy paladin. But ultimately, there are WAY too many boss fights that don’t have any undead adds to justify that glyph for a DPS rotation or as part of a tanking rotation, IMHO.

9) name of gem purple +ap/mp5 cut

You’re looking for an Infused Dreadstone or Twilight Opal. Having said that, if you’re a hunter or an enhancement shaman with mana issues… there may be bigger issues than you looking for mp5 on your gear.

10) sindragosa los in corner

I haven’t done Sindragosa yet, but this sounds suspiciously like a sort of an exploit. Exploiting is bad. Don’t do it.

I got lots of Rotface search terms too, but I’ve already addressed most of those. I should really get going on that ICC raid guide, one of these days.

A post regarding weekly raids…

Kurn / / facepalm, raiding, ramblings, weekly raids

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a simple request for you. If you plan to attend a weekly raid, please be familiar with the fight in question AND the required fights beforehand.

For example, if your weekly raid was Lord Jaraxxus in Trial of the Crusader, as it has been for those of us on Proudmoore, I would expect people to be familiar with the Jaraxxus fight as well as the Northrend Beasts fight.

That includes, but is not limited to:

– knowing what to do when a Snobold lands on you (run to the melee)

– knowing not to stand in fire

– knowing to run to the flame tank when afflicted with Paralytic Poison and vice-versa

– knowing to run away from Icehowl when he charges

– knowing to heal Incinerate Flesh

– knowing to run away from Legion Flame

– knowing to DPS adds and then return to the boss

I witnessed failure on every one of those points in my 10m TOC PUG today while on my hunter. Three wipes later (two on Northrend Beasts!) we did manage to kill Jaraxxus, but good gravy, the content, particularly on 10-man, is NOT that difficult. It’s not like it’s Faction Champs or something, where everything seems random.

“But Kurn,” you say, “I don’t know where to get familiar with the fights! I don’t raid, so I don’t even know what fights come before the weekly raids!”

Well, the best place to start, hands down, is WoWWiki. Look up Lord Jaraxxus, for example, and you get this page. The first sentence tells you that Jaraxxus is the second encounter in Trial of the Crusader, which will let you go browse through the instance bosses to find out who the first boss is, which, as I already said, was Northrend Beasts (or, as they call it, Beasts of Northrend).

Once you know what fights you’re looking at doing for the weekly, read through the fight description at WoWWiki and then, I cannot stress this enough, check out the relevent movies at Project Marmot at TankSpot.com. These movies are amazingly detailed and well done to show you various important parts of the fights, and usually have a very helpful narration to go along with them.

I think, at most, you’ll only have to check out two separate fights for any weekly quest. Yep, I’m right, check out the page at WoWWiki. There are 12 different possibilities for the weekly raid quest.

Four of them are in Naxxramas, the four first bosses of any given wing. That’s Anub’Rekhan, Instructor Razuvious, Noth the Plaguebringer and Patchwerk. So that’s just one boss fight to do.

Two of them are standalone fights, Malygos and Sartharion, located in the Eye of Eternity and the Obsidian Sanctum, respectively. That’s just one boss fight to read up on.

Four of them are in Ulduar. One is the first boss, Flame Leviathan. After that, you have a choice of Razorscale, Ignis or XT-002. So at a maximum, you’re looking at two fights.

One of the quests is Lord Jaraxxus, the second boss in Trial of the Champion, as I’ve already mentioned.

And the last one is the first boss of Icecrown Citadel, Lord Marrowgar. I would imagine this would be the most challenging of the weekly quests, just due to the fact that Emblem of Triumph gear does not make the encounter laughably easy.

I really do like the weekly raid quests and I hope to see less fail in various groups in the future. :P

The Light and How to Swing It — Kurn's Issues, Part 2

Kurn / / facepalm, healing, paladins, ramblings

Welcome to Part 2 of my issues with the current holy edition of The Light and How to Swing It, a column written by Chase Christian at WoW.com. This post will focus primarily on the three articles written thus far by Mr. Christian as well as expound on the reasons why I believe his lack of experience as a holy paladin will be detrimental to the holy paladin community as a whole. If you’d like to read the post I wrote detailing his lack of experience and the apparent false justification Mr. Adam Holisky offered to me regarding Mr. Christian’s appointment to the column, you can do so here.

Continue reading “The Light and How to Swing It — Kurn's Issues, Part 2”

The Light and How to Swing It — Kurn's Issues, Part 1

Kurn / / facepalm, healing, paladins, ramblings

Okay. I am not *generally* a bitch. But, sometimes, when properly motivated, I can be very, very good at being a bitch.

In this post, I will discuss the fact that Mr. Chase Christian, better known as the  rogue columnist at WoW.com, got the position of the Holy Paladin columnist as well. Further, I will explain how I feel that the justification used to placate me when I was intially outraged appears to be false.

Continue reading “The Light and How to Swing It — Kurn's Issues, Part 1”

I had it coming.

Kurn / / dungeons, gear, ramblings

It’s been a weird few days of heroics and randoms and such, but after a couple randoms/regular dungeons today, I hit 80 on my druid and my brother hit 78.

After I hit 80, I trained (GOOD GOD, 19g a spell?!) and organized some of my gear, bought some new relics to replace the pieces of crap I had. The 2 Emblems of Triumph per daily random is really very nice. I had 50 badges to spend and spent 40 of them on my new relics.

So then, I thought I should probably run something, get some quick badges to help get my gear up to par. Naturally, I would be laughed out of the instance if I tried to tank with my awesome 23k health or whatever, so I figured I’d heal. After all, as long as I was in tree form and no one died, they wouldn’t really think to inspect me, right? Right.

But which instance? I looked at the ones that were already unlocked for me and when I saw Halls of Lightning, I elected to not choose a random instance.

So I picked The Nexus. I needed a new mace anyways, plus it’s five badges, so hey, what could go wrong?

14 minutes after zoning in, I’d lost just one person (a DPS warrior who was standing next to the first mini-boss on a whirlwind) and we were on Keri.

And she dropped it. That’s right. On my very first trip to The Nexus, she dropped the War Mace of Unrequited Love. This is unheard of. Madrana ran The Nexus about 9 times before it dropped — easily. Katarah ran it a bunch, too. So for it to drop for me on the very first run?

I totally had it coming. Keristrasza OWED me that much.

Now, if only all of my druid’s drops would be that easy…

Thinking about spellpower.

Kurn / / healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, raiding, ramblings

I am pretty much a die-hard Holy Light spammer. As such, I stack intellect. I’m happy with my 42k mana pool in raids.

But it means virtually nothing  on the Dreamwalker fight.

So, I’m thinking of pulling out some old gear (and getting the 251 versions of my pants and gloves, which I don’t have yet) and gemming/enchanting entirely for spellpower.

Raid-buffed, I would go from 2883 spellpower to 3205, assuming chardev.org is right. That’s a difference of 322 spellpower. I’d also drop 8000 mana… but regen is not an issue on that fight. And since the “debuff”, Emerald Vigor, means 10% more healing for each stack on you, wouldn’t that mean that every point of spellpower makes a HUGE difference? I’d keep eating haste food, lest I drop below the 1s GCD with JotP up, but I’d flask for spellpower, gem and enchant for spellpower, even using the Ember Skyflare meta for 25 spellpower and 2% intellect, instead of old faithful, the Insightful Earthsiege Diamod (21 int, 600 mana back proc).

Really, it would only require spending badges I should probably spend anyways (to get 4 of my 5 T10 pieces, if only so I can upgrade them to the 264/277 versions later) and some cash to get a bunch of Cardinal Rubies.

I’d need 10 Rubies, 3 Dragon’s Eyes, 1 new meta gem, 1 new helm enchant (+crit instead of +mp5), 1 new shoulder enchant (+crit instead of +mp5), 1 30 spellpower enchant to wrists, 1 28 spellpower enchant to gloves, 1 new spellthread for my pants… ooh, and maybe Purified Lunar Dust, too, which would bump me to 3358 spellpower. Of course, I don’t have the badges for new pants AND new gloves AND a crappy trinket I will never use except on Dreamwalker.

Hm. Maybe I’ll go do a VOA 10 on Madrana and pray T10 holy pants drop, eh? ;D

I’m not sure I’m going to do this, but at least I know I CAN do it and at least I know what it would take in order to do it.

Anyone have thoughts?

Kurn's Tale of the Level 75 Fail Paladin

Kurn / / facepalm, lfg, paladins, ramblings

As you may or may not be aware, I’ve been levelling my druid with my brother (and his hunter) and my buddy Majik (and his DK). I’m a bear/tree depending on my spec, but because Majik’s been tanking damn near everything, I’m usually healing (and using my innervate on my brother, haha!).

Last week, before I got seriously sick with the plague, Majik and I ran a Drak’Tharon Keep.

In the group: the two of us plus a mage, a shadow priest and a retribution paladin.

I don’t normally do this, because it’s just plain mean, but the fail is on-going even a week later, so I’m going to name the paladin who is the failest pally in all the world.

His name is Furtor. I’ll link his armory in a sec. But first, I took some screenshots of Furtor’s gear and such.

He was, at the time, level 75.

Way to not place your talents, buddy. That he has 59 points in ret is probably the least bad thing about him. How is that possible? Check out some of his gear.

“Wait, Kurn!” you say. “Those aren’t terrible bracers. Those are actually okay.”

Yes. You’re right. Too bad he REPLACED THEM with the Darkweb Bindings he won on the run.

And, for the grand finale…

Just inspecting him made me want to cry. And then I armoried him. 1 each in Mining and JC. 2 major glyphs that suck and 0 minor glyphs. The dude was pulling 700 DPS at most at any point in time, compared to the mage and the shadow priest, who were around his level, pulling 1200-1400 DPS. Not that numbers are everything, but in this case? They were a GREAT indication of the level of nubness going on with Furtor. He is, in all respects, an amazing example of how NOT to be a paladin… particularly because his armory now shows him in much the same gear but he’s exchanged his crappy 2H of Intellect for a 1H melee sword and a spellpower shield.

Anyways, I hope to have another Holy How-To post coming up this weekend or Monday and I definitely have another tale of what I consider to be paladin failure, which I’ll share Saturday or Sunday.