//Saunder over at Non-Squishy Heals has a great idea that concerns you if you are:
– level 80
– Alliance
– playing on a Bloodlust battlegroup server
If you’re up for it, on Friday, March 5th at 9pm ET (Saturday March 6th at 2am GMT), let’s all go pugging together for a bit! Even if you can’t make that time, head over to the signup post and post your details so we can arrange something at some point. :)
//Last night, we did Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Airship, Saurfang, Festergut, Rotface and Professor, in that order. Rotface took us an uncharacteristic 3-4 attempts, too. Professor Putricide? 1 wipe, 1 kill, leaving us 19 attempts for Blood Queen Lana’thel and Sindragosa and the Lich King.
So tonight, it’ll be mostly new content. I suspect Blood Prince Council and maybe (?) a couple of attempts at BQL before heading in to try out Valithria Dreamwalker and see if we can save that dragon’s scaly hide before facing off with Sindragosa. But I could be wrong.
Still, it’s mostly new content night. And I feel like crap. I think I’m coming down with my brother’s cold. So of all the nights to not want to miss, I don’t want to miss tonight. :P I’m hoping some Tylenol will see me through ’till 2am, whereupon I hope to pass out happily.
But first, to the store, so that I can buy a metric assload of orange juice to stave off this cold.
//Just read an excellent post at WorldOfMatticus. Thespius talks about clueless raiders, the lack of challenges in current heroic content and similar issues. Thespius and I share many views, just based on this post alone, because we both seem to believe that there is A Specific Way to Do Things. That is, the Right Way. The way that isn’t AOEing things down as a first strategy, the way that encourages us to use our abilities to counter boss abilities.
It boils down to strategic use of our abilities.
For example, if I’m on Putricide and I’m targetted by the green ooze and DPS isn’t killing it fast enough, I could bubble.
But I don’t bubble.
Why don’t I bubble?
Because I want to make perfectly sure that, around the 7m45s-8m mark of the fight, my bubble is back up, so I can cast Divine Sacrifice as a raid-wide 20% damage mitigator, without incurring any extra damage to myself. I hit it after the other pally does, so roughly when our second tank takes his third mark. Not only does that keep me alive, which is good, because I’m healing the crap out of the tanks, but it also helps reduce the healing needed across the raid.
This is a strategic use of my abilities.
And Thespius seems to be a fan of that sort of method. I can’t stand brute-forcing encounters (like the way we do twins, or the really dumb way we’ve chosen to try to do heroic Anub’arak on 25), so I really liked the post, which detailed a few of the ways I think easier heroics are bad.
That said, as someone with 4 80s and a 78, I am grateful for the shorter length of regular instances and heroics. But I’m sad that the only way I’m challenged is if someone else screws up or decides to pull an entire room. (Yes, Majik, I’m talking to you. ;))
In particular, the following paragraph resonated strongly with me, so I’ll leave you with this to think on (emphasis mine):
Regardless if you’re a completely new player, or just levelling an alt, I fear that we’re starting to lose the building blocks to being a good raider to the ease of too much convenience. (Sidenote: Notice I said “too much”. I’m all for crafting the game so everyone has a shot, but there is a point when it goes too far. I don’t want to go back to the days of needing to run alts through Karazhan to begin the gearing process for Black Temple.)
//So I’ve been running random dungeons with my brother on his hunter, our buddy Majik on his DK and I’ve been healing on my druid. We did a quick VH today, collected our badges and then Maj had to go. So my brother and I queue up for Halls of Stone. Sadly, this was on purpose, because my brother really likes that instance. I thought for sure I’d be the tank (I queue up as tank and healer, always) and was the healer, which was surprising, but not a bad thing.
My brother is a miner. So was the tank. So they decided to roll for the saronite spawns in the rock boss wing and then for the boss himself. I’m C, my brother is J, the tank was B and the shadow priest was S.
I laughed. A lot.
//I don’t even know if we’re doing the Dreamwalker fight tonight in our ICC raid, but if we are, HOLY CRAP, am I excited for it! GO GO overhealing!
I’m also going to attempt to get a screenshot of my interface that isn’t hideously insane so that we can talk about its elements in my Holy How-To guides, since I will definitely be talking about addons and screen layouts. It’s not a lesson in how to have a clean layout, that’s for sure. ;)
//Seriously, this is getting to the point where I’m going to need to choose what I want to do very carefully.
As of right now, this is what I feel obliged to do every raid reset on 4 level 80s.
– Daily random heroic every day
– Weekly raid every week
– Toravon 10/25 every week
In addition to that, I also raid 12 hours a week and have to find SOME time to farm/fish/mine/prospect/etc.
Plus, I’ve been levelling the druid with my brother and our buddy Majik, so I do a daily random or two with them every day. At least I’ll be able to do my daily random on ONE toon with them when we all hit 80 and maybe the weekly raids, too. And I won’t even be forced to just do those on the druid. I’ll be able to pick any of my toons, which is pretty awesome. Of course, I’ll WANT to do it on the druid for badges and gear and stuff. :P
After a couple of weeks, I think I’ll drop doing the daily on the mage and maybe the shammy, just doing the weekly and Toravon on them, while doing dailies on Kurn, Madrana and the druid. I don’t know, though. Emblems of FROST, you know?
This is why Blizzard has the most successful MMORPG. Seriously. It’s not addiction, it’s a sense of obligation. :P
//(Edited due to having done it on the mage and shammy as well as Kurn, updated with more information.)
Having just done this on Kurn, I got a pretty good look at how to do it.
You’ll need two tanks, just like all the other VOA bosses. We did it with five healers, meaning 18 DPS. On 10-man, we also needed 2 tanks but we successfully 2-healed it with me on my shammy chaining off the active tanks and a resto druid healing the raid, leaving six DPS.
Tanks will get stacks of Frostbite (10 / 25) on them. They should taunt after 3-4 stacks. Our tanks were taunting after 4 stacks. On 10-man, one of the tanks didn’t really know how to taunt properly, so one tank was getting 6 stacks while the dude who couldn’t taunt on time was getting 3 stacks. This was, surprisingly, not too big a deal, but your mileage may vary. Frostbite leaves a dot behind, though, so keep healing the other tank.
Ranged should kill the 3 Frozen Orbs (1 on 10-man) that pop up. They pop up with such annoying frequency that they screwed up my rotation on Toravon a lot. Figure it’s about 30 seconds or so. They have an 8 yard or so AOE attached to them as they float by. This WILL do some AOE frost damage if you’re too close to them. That’s why it should be ranged DPS to take them down. (Arcane mages, Frost Ward proccing Incanter’s Absorption is seriously amazing.) Note that Frost Nova is ineffective and I would assume so would other frost-based slows/stuns/immobilizations such as Freezing Trap, Frost Trap and Chains of Ice. Not sure about Earthbind, Entangling Roots or things like Hammer of Justice.
Every so often (45 seconds, I believe), he’ll cast something called Whiteout that increases the frost damage taken by 25%, which stacks on the whole raid. This also does a lot of AOE frost damage to the raid and eventually, it will be unable to be healed through. All of my raids got 3 stacks for 75% extra frost damage. We had Frost Resistance Aura or Totem up for sure. I don’t know if any paladins used Aura Mastery, but I’ll try it out and save AM for the 3rd cast of Whiteout. (Which makes me think of Liquid Paper.)
He’ll also occasionally cast something called Freezing Ground, but I’m not sure why he’ll cast it. Not having a melee DPS class and not having tanked it yet, I don’t know if it’s dispellable, if it’s significant or just annoying.
So, to recap:
– tanks will need to taunt every 3-4 stacks of Frostbite. These stack up QUICKLY so be ready to taunt. Deadly Boss Mods will count the stacks for you or you can edit your raid frames to show you Frostbite as a debuff and keep track of it yourself.
– ranged will need to kill frozen orbs. Think of it as on Emalon, that if you don’t kill the Overcharged minion, you wipe the raid. Ranged MUST switch over or else they’ll float happily through the raid and kill people with their AOE. Melee, you have it easy. Stay on the boss. The whole time.
– healers will need to heal the whole raid up every 45 seconds or so (from Whiteout) and be sure to keep healing both tanks due to the dot that Frostbite leaves on the tanks.
Easy as pie. Enjoy your T10 and Emblems of Frost! He drops T10 legs and gloves (ilvl 251 on 10, ilvl 264 on 25), plus some PVP gear, plus 2 Emblems of Frost on each difficulty.
Have anything to add? Drop me a comment and I’ll update the post appropriately!
//Whew. I do not recommend leaving the weekly raid until the last possible day for, oh, three of your toons. While I did Madrana’s on Wednesday or something, Kurn, the shammy and the mage were all done in the last 24 hours. Stupid Patchwerk. Well, at least it wasn’t Flame Leviathan, right?
Anyways, on to the search terms that led people here and my responses to them!
1) “rotface mutated infection discipline shields”
Uh, definitely a good call, in my opinion. The mutated infection target gets a debuff that causes damage every second for 12 seconds. Ow. As the person who usually heals the infected people with a beacon on the tank, let me tell you, I APPRECIATE you shielding the infected people. :)
2) “anub togc heroic cleansing totems”
Useless, sorry. The debuffs on your add tank aren’t dispellable by regular abilities or by cleansing totems. Better to use Nature Resistance totem or Aspect of the Wild. Having said that, we got TOGC 25 Anub to 10% tonight. I tell you, I’ll be psyched to bury that bastard for good.
3) “how does a warrior tank heroic hor”
Hello, Mr. or Ms. Prot Warrior. Thanks for stopping by. It’s true, you have a more difficult job in Heroic Halls of Reflection than the other three tanking classes do. You also have Spell Reflection, which can also be glyphed and talented. So I’d recommend at least the glyph, if not the full 2/2 talent points in there.
You also have Vigilance. Use it on your healer.
Probably the best way for you to do HoR is out in the open. You’ll have room to maneuver, you’ll be able to Charge to Phantom Mages, you’ll be able to see what you’re doing so you can effectively use Thunderclap and Shockwave. For you guys, I HIGHLY recommend the following kill order, which I would then communicate to the group before the start of the event:
– Phantom Mage. Kill it. Kill it dead. The flamestrikes, the frostbolts, fireballs and chains of ice all suck a lot for you. So burn it, or keep it CCed via shackle/turn undead/freezing trap.
– Ghostly Priest. They heal. Kill them! Interrupt casts!
– Spectral Footman. You can actually leave these ’till last, but you MUST maintain aggro on these guys. They shield bash.
– Shadowy Mercenary. Their shadowstep sucks and their poisons are evil. Still, if you have Vigilance on your healer, you should be able to taunt back quickly. Be ready! They can also incapacitate a member of your party for a couple of seconds, so be ready to pop a CD if it’s the healer.
– Tortured Rifleman. Really not too bad, if a bit annoying. CC if possible, otherwise, just grab aggro on them now and again.
Cleave, Shockwave, Thunderclap, these will all be KEY for you to successfully do this. You’ll also want to be hyper-aware of what adds are up and where they’re positioned.
4) “devo or retri aura for 5 man heroics”
Depends on who’s in your group and what spec you are. I’m going to guess you’re a prot pally with 3/3 improved devotion aura. Basically, your extra +healing is a waste if your healer is a tree, but since it’s available in every aura (like ret’s Swift Retribution), that doesn’t really help the issue. Honestly, if you have a shammy with Stoneskin totem or a druid who’s buffed you with Mark of the Wild and you feel like you’re having aggro issues, Retribution is the way to go. If you have a crapton of armor anyways, go Retribution aura for extra threat. If you’re not getting hit hard enough to require enough healing for Spiritual Attunement to keep you topped off in terms of mana, go Retribution aura. Otherwise, stick with devo.
5) “dodge chance to tank 10m icc paladin”
Ugh, ugh, ugh. Thanks to Chill of the Throne, you lose 20% dodge. Which sucks. I’d say that, depending on your gear and such, probably 7%ish (after taking the debuff into consideration) would be a minimum. Just my guess, though.
6) “healing forge of souls shammy”
Hey, I actually know how to do this! Okay, so here’s the deal… Tremor totem on the first boss. Pop hero right off the bat on the second boss. Apart from that, it works like most any other instance — keep your tank up, hope there’s not 3 hunters spread out in 3 corners of any room so that chains don’t hit them and make use of Riptide/Healing Wave/Healing Wave if you have to. There’s nothing wrong with using your whole mana bar on one boss fight or half of it on one trash pull. The important thing is keeping people up.
For some reason, I almost always die on the last boss, thanks to idiots not knowing the following:
– stop DPS when mirror is cast on a player, because that damage gets cast on the targetted player!
– don’t stand in purple circles
– don’t stand there letting ghosts whack on you
– don’t stand in front of the boss when the purple beam is active.
If your group is dying due to any of those issues, not your fault, shammy. Not your fault.
7) “strength stamina gem vs agility stamina paladin”
Let’s be clear about this. Strength, without talents or anything, gives a paladin 2 attack power per point of strength. Agility gives paladins armor, dodge and crit. Strength should always win out over pure agility. Apart from anything else, Divine Strength gives you 15% extra strength, so if you have 100 strength, that bumps up to 115 strength via that talent and no kings or anything. Then kings comes into the mix and adds 10%. That’s another 11-12 strength. So instead of 100 strength, you now have 126 strength. That means you went from 200 AP to 252 AP. That’s pretty significant. And a lot better choice than, say, 100 agility.
8) “tank guide don’t let the healer die”
Mr. or Ms. Tank, I love you. Thank you. That said, sometimes your healer will die despite your best efforts. Sometimes it’ll even be their fault. But most of the time, it’s going to be yours.
In order to minimize that, here are some tips:
a) Be familiar with the fight. If there are adds that spawn, know that they will charge the healer as soon as they spawn, due to healing aggro. Be ready to pick them up.
b) Be aware of your current surroundings. Change your camera angle to watch the healer so you can taunt quickly if needed.
c) Don’t let that one mob go wail on the healer. Seriously. You’re tanking. Hold them. Don’t let five go running off as you tank one, don’t let one go running off as you tank five.
d) Interrupt spellcasts. Sometimes your healer can be targetted by spells that will result in them dying. So interrupt when you can. Also know what to interrupt. Interrupting heals takes priority over everything, with mind controls a close second. Offensive spells come last, but should still be interrupted.
Apart from doing what you can to prevent something from beating on your healer, there’s not a lot I can tell you. Some healers are just dumb, though, and will stand in fire/void zones/poisons regardless.
9) “why cant pugs do ony”
I laughed out loud at this one. Thing is, they can, but the organization and execution of most pug raids is, well, lacking. Or laughable, if it exists. Apparently, it’s super-hard to do basic healing/DPS/tanking assignments. :P If you find yourself in a fail Ony pug, try to organize your fellow whatever you are. If you’re a healer, help organize healing. Tank? Figure out who’s got Ony, who’s got whelps, who’s got the add. This kind of help really makes a difference.
10) “blood prince council exploit”
Sorry buddy, but:
a) I don’t know of any Blood Prince Council exploit
b) I don’t believe in exploits. I mean, obviously they exist, but I do whatever I can to not make use of them. CHEATING IS BAD, OKAY?
Besides, Blood Prince Council? NOT a hard fight. Just spread out, keep the orb thing in the air, heal your tanks, kill the active target. Bam.
Okay, that’s it for the Q&A for this week. Coming up later this week, ICC strats! Stay tuned.
//
Welcome to my Holy How-To for PVE Paladins. This is the second of what I hope to be a great many posts aimed at helping holy paladins succeed at PVE content. I will focus primarily on max-level talent specs, glyphs, enchants, gems and the like, but I hope to touch on levelling content and advice as well.
Today’s post or, more accurately, today’s novel, is about what our role is in PVE content as holy paladins and how to fulfill it. That’s to say, it’s about keeping the people around you alive long enough so that your group or raid can survive the incoming damage long enough to down the boss.
“But Kurn,” you say, “I already know how to heal! I use Flash of Light for small heals, Holy Light for big heals and Holy Shock when I move!”
And that’s a start, young padawan. But it’s quite a bit more than just that.
Continue reading “Holy How-To #2 – Spells and Abilities”
//I have a bunch of stuff to say and it’s going to take me a heck of a long time to say most of it, but I hope to have an epic-length post with regards to paladin stuff by the morning. We’ll see.
In the meantime, I have taught approximately 6 tanks in the last three days how to deal with Pound or Dark Smash. /sigh. What makes me curious is how on earth none of them realize that being stunned or taking insane amounts of damage isn’t a BAD thing. I mean, I asked this tank to run through Anub’arak today after he was stunned after the first pound and he’s like “kk” and he did. I don’t think he understood why, though. How is this game so very difficult for people to understand? :( There are some basic concepts about people’s roles in the game that just don’t seem to be getting through to people.
Sigh.
Anyways, more holy pally-specific stuff to come. And I do think there is a need for some holy pally-specific stuff out there, based on some stuff I’ve seen recently.
Off to go play in TOC/TOGC 25. Hooray?