Paladins and buffs and groups, oh my!

Kurn / / classes, general, guide, paladins, priests, raiding

So I realized today that it’s been forever since I updated this blog and didn’t talk about my guild. Back when I started it, I had all KINDS of conversational topics that I wanted to use to inform people about various misconceptions and such.

But I promptly forgot them all.

Until tonight! Tonight, I was reminded about paladins and their blessings and how they work completely differently from any other buff in the game, basically. I don’t generally think about this, because, well, I play a paladin daily. So I know how it works, and take for granted that others do too, because my guild was basically built on holy paladins being the core of the healers. So every learned about pally buffs early on.

But now, you see, I’ve taken my holy priest and gone forth and joined a raiding guild on Proudmoore. Without giving up my guild on Eldre’Thalas. In fact, Apotheosis (my E’T guild), is still my priority, but I thought I could relax and have fun with the priest by raiding content I already know in a guild that’s trying to work its way back to being 3/4 in TK and 5/6 of SSC.

The inspiration for today’s post came when I heard a mage calling for Salv on “Group 1” over Vent.

Continue reading “Paladins and buffs and groups, oh my!”

Ups and downs.

Kurn / / apotheosis, raiding, ramblings

I’ve (re)discovered that the life of a guild leader (be it GM, officer, class lead, what-have-you) is full of ups and downs.

Supremus down last Monday. I didn’t even get into the raid, because I had to go to my brother’s college graduation. So I got home and told the officers I was on standby… and they’re like “uh. Supremus down.”

Which, you know, is great. And I’m proud of them and I’m glad they could do it without me. I was called in after a pally had to go so there we went, clearing to Akama (we accidentally poked our noses into Gorefiend’s room first, oops) and gave it Shade of Akama a few tries before ultimately calling it. Good night, though. Progress!

Tuesday, it was back to Hyjal for some beating up of bosses, only we had a lot of trouble on Anetheron, which left me wanting to throttle most of the DPS, but eventually he went down and we went up and wiped on Kaz’rogal due to a bad initial pull on him. Meh, it was late, we called it.

Thursday… we cancelled. Because we had something like 10 cancellations and some “I may not be able to make it” type signups.

Then this Sunday was my mother’s birthday, so when I got home, they had just killed Azgalor. Again, a first kill without me there! I’m beginning to feel superfluous. ;)

Monday saw two tailors and a blacksmith hit honored with the Ashtongue Deathsworn as we killed Naj’entus and one-shotted Supremus and tried Shade of Akama a couple more times.

Don’t get me started on how we’re failing at “the chess event of Black Temple”. It’s the easy fights we have problems with. Lurker? Bitch and a half to learn. Vashj? Learned it quickly, took a while to execute, but ultimately, we got better just about every time we tried. All of Hyjal? Easy mode, thus far. (I have no illusions about Archimonde…) But BT is proving challenging for us. Naj’entus – people are killing others by not waiting for the heals to finish. Supremus – people are standing in fire. Shade of Akama – things are getting loose and eating mages and healers.

Practice makes perfect, I suppose, but it also makes for one hell of a rollercoaster ride.

In other news, Season 4 comes out today. I don’t much care for my own toons, except that I put up 37 gems last night and have a ton of enchanting mats, so I might make a fair amount of cash over the next day or two.

Wow.

Kurn / / apotheosis, raiding, ramblings

We did it. We actually did it. We downed Vashj and cleared SSC on Monday, June 2nd, 2008.

http://files.filefront.com/apotheosis+vs+vashjavi/;10483306;/fileinfo.html

I HIGHLY recommend you download the full movie to your HD and watch it full-screen.

Notable moments:

4:40ish – Dayden (whose POV this is from) takes a second from tanking a Naga and hammer of wraths the leaked elemental.

East side had the first tainted, but I believe all three others were on the west. Go Toga and Mass and Kam!

7:00 – Phase 3 – enrage in 4 minutes. You’ll note the length of the video is 11:12. Hehe.

The pallies do a good job of keeping Blessing of Freedom up on the tanks, too!

8:50ish – You can start seeing sporebats, oh dear.

9:05ish – Warthon starts getting beat on and eventually goes down. In the span of three seconds: static charge from a nearby raid member, a swing, a shock blast… with very few heals because we were all chasing them around.

He gets a battle rez about 10 seconds after he dies… and the druid who rezzed him had static charge. 3 hits of that, bam, dead Warthon.

10:40ish – 15865 heal from Madrana. That’s me. Lay on Hands. It crit. And, according to the logs, only overhealed for 7%. Ahahaha! This is my favourite moment and makes up for me dying in the green goo shortly thereafter. Like, 12 seconds after. Popped my SS, jumped out of the goo… and died in the goo again.

Vashj down.

Over 70 wipes, over 35 different raiders, way too many hours to count…

But Vashj down. SSC cleared. WOOT.

For anyone curious as to our raid makeup:

Druids: 1 (Resto)

Hunters: 3 (2 BM, 1 MM)

Mages: 2 (2 Arc/Frost)

Paladins: 4 (3 Holy, 1 Prot)

Priests: 4 (1 Imp DS, 1 CoH, 2 Shadow.)

Rogues: 2 (2 Combat/Swords)

Shaman: 5 (! 2 Enh, 1 Ele, 2 Resto)

Warriors: 2 (1 prot, 1 fury)

Warlocks: 2 (2 0/21/40, Destro/Demo)

How we laid it out for Phase 2:

West side: 1 BM Hunter, 1 paladin healing. 1 warlock going over to help with spawns whenever a tainted spawned.

East side: 1 BM Hunter, 1 MM Hunter, 1 paladin healing.

North side: 1 Enh shammy (w/ poison cleansing totem down), 1 priest (Imp DS) healing.

South side: 1 fury warrior, 1 paladin healing.

NW Generator: Resto druid

NE Generator: Resto shammy

SW Generator: Resto shammy

SE Generator: CoH Priest

Center: 2 Tanks (1 warrior, 1 pally), 2 rogues, 1 enh shammy

Striders: 1 ele shammy (kiting), 2 mages, 2 warlocks (one peeling off for west if needed), 2 shadow priests (for blackout, mindflay)

Here’s the anonymous report from WWS:

http://wowwebstats.com/pk445h5rn1uv1?s=7673-8333

JC Vendor on PM, Rage Winterchill, Vashj.

Kurn / / apotheosis, jewelcrafting, raiding, ramblings

So, my 70 priest is on Proudmoore, which is the first of all servers to finish Phase 4 and open up the JC vendor.

First of all, I respect the majority of players on Proudmoore as smart, good players. But dude, what pricks most of them seem to be. Alliance ninjaing nodes of everything from other Alliance, the vile Trade chat… It makes me miss Eldre’Thalas, even with its noobs. But the opening of the JC vendor on Proudmoore was… I can’t even express how loathesome it was. There was the usual flagged, mounted Horde, of course, but it was the behaviour of the Alliance that boggled me. People in General were complaining and they’d get told to shut up, to hit Ctrl-V and click on the quest giver’s bar to turn in the quest, told that it’s not a big deal, that they’re noobs… How is this any way to treat the people of your own faction? World PVP, isn’t that supposed to rally people of the same faction together against the opposing?

Instead, Proudmoore’s Alliance was rude, obnoxious and, frankly, it was embarassing.

I hope other servers will show a little more respect in the insanity that is the inn when their JC vendors open up.

And speaking of the vendor… 15 badges a gem. Seems like the official armory is wrong. And yep, at neutral, each pattern is 50g a pop. That’s 47.50 at friendly, 45 at honored, 42.50 at revered and 40g a pop at exalted.

Which is a lot of money. It’s over 1500g for all the patterns at exalted.

Which is why I’m really glad my guild went to play with Hyjal trash last night. I wasn’t able to be there on time, due to RL stuff, and wasn’t even supposed to be there, but they were short people, so they went to Hyjal instead of TK. Which is fine. ’cause I logged on, got a ninja-invite, a ninja-summon (in between Rage waves) and an hour and a half later, Rage Winterchill is dead and everyone in the raid is friendly, even me.

Woot, woot, 74g spent for all the friendly recipes (5g70s apiece instead of 40g!) and some unexpected progression. It was a good night for the guild. :)

Tonight: Vashj. must. die. We got her to 1% last week. 40,000 health. We put 2 DPS on east and west, 1 DPS on north and south, 5 DPS on the striders and melee on naga/leaked elementals. It worked out really damn well, to be honest.

Things I've learned.

Kurn / / general, ramblings

Things I’ve learned in the past 36 hours:

– when I’m level 69, I am physically incapable of stepping away for longer than a few minutes before dinging 70.
– 900g for a flying mount and the training that goes with it is still substantial, even when you have over 2300g.
– it is likely a poor idea to drop herbalism for engineering unless you have all the mats you’ll need to grind engineering all the way to 350 so you can make your helm.
– Power Word: Shield is only castable on people in your party or raid. How did I get 4 70s without realizing this?
– There’s a Codex: Prayer of Fortitude III out there. Grump.

So yeah, I levelled my priest to 70. Actually, he’s my brother’s priest. He gave him to me at level 46 or something and by 55 or something, I wanted to kill myself if I played it anymore. So, Gneiss (as he was known) sat on the shelf for months. I got a friend into WoW so we levelled together for a bit before she totally, entirely surpassed me. :P And then I got to playing a bit on a RL friend’s server… and this friend suggested I just ninja-transfer the priest (who was on my account anyways) to her server, as Gneiss was 62 and her shammy was 61…

Two months later of off-again, on-again play, she has a 70 shammy and I have a 70 priest. I’m eager to really play him in 70 instances to see about healing that consists of more than “Flash of Light” and “Holy Light”. I actually went to Shadow Labs (first key frag — that questline is AWESOME experience if nothing else) when I was 68. Dinged 69 just before the first boss and had 0 trouble in my leet healing gear. Yeah, that was like, 800 +healing and a pitifully poor mana pool. Then again, my RL friend was on her shadow priest and we had a tank in full T5 tanking, plus a halfway competant mage pugger and a huntard who, despite the huntardation, knew how to trap things. The third boss there is my least favourite in that instance, as my pally, because of all the AOE damage, all the running…

Had 0 issues healing it at 69. None. I tossed up renews, prayer of mending, even used prayer of healing at one point. Didn’t need a mana potion or anything. Quite a nice change from the stress of healing it back in the ol’ days on my pally.

So close!

Kurn / / gear, paladins, ramblings

We brought Vashj down to 3% last night. I’m sure we’ll get her on this coming reset, but it’ll require some changes to our strategy I think. Apparently, my ranged isn’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing, although happy coincidences last night made it work out okay, more or less. Well, obviously, if we got her to 3%. Stupid poison got us, obviously. But it was really just us being silly and not moving her around enough.

In other news, attunement. Obviously, I have the Vials of Eternity quest sitting happily in my log and now that we’ve downed Al’ar (on Sunday), a bunch of my guildies just need to go kill Rage Winterchill to be attuned to BT. Of course, I am not one of them. I need to talk to Seer Olum tonight in SSC, because I was stuck on the Arcatraz portion of that attunement quest forever, because I hate instances, specifically TK instances, with a passion. Well, I finally got it done and then the 5-man quest in SMV that follows it up just sat in my log.

This afternoon, I remembered “oh, right, need to talk to the dude in SSC tonight”, so I looked up the quest and was like… oh, right, this is why I haven’t done it. A 5-man quest. So I asked in guild chat if anyone wanted to do a quick 5-man quest in SMV so I could talk to the dude in SSC tonight.

<crickets chirp>

Which is what I’d expected. :P

So I check out the quest on WoWHead: Akama’s Promise.

People are saying they’ve soloed it. Mostly ranged classes, though. Hm.

I gave it a shot. The summoners were easy — kill them, heal through archers, then jump off that platform. You eventually drop out of combat and can eat/drink… and kill the other one. Rinse and repeat.

Then Deathwail landed. I was a little scared of the fear, but it only caused trouble once. I had him to about 35% when someone randomly whispers me for an invite. OMG, it’s a shammy! A random shammy! So I invite them, they proceed to HEAL ME (hooray!) and then we go to town on Deathwail. BAM, down 30 seconds later.

A productive WoW day even if I do nothing else, and I get to feel good about myself because, shammy or no shammy, Deathwail would have died. I, a holy paladin, essentially soloed a 5-man quest. Or could have soloed. That feels good, to be honest.

Well, that's new.

Kurn / / apotheosis, raiding

For the first time, we went into SSC and killed all five bosses in a single night. Until Tuesday, we always took 2 nights to clear those bosses.

What’s more, we one-shotted everything. Even Karathress, who we only killed for the third time. Even Leotheras, who we’ve been one-shotting for a couple of weeks, but only a handful of people died and we still had two minutes on the enrage timer.

Our plan was Lurker, Tidewalker and Karathress with Leo, if we had enough time. Well, not only did we have enough time, but we then decided to go finish off the place with Hydross.

Thursday night, Vashj. Possibly Sunday night, too. Then Monday in TK for a change of pace.

I’m sure there’s a connection between the Montreal Canadiens kicking ass and Apotheosis raiding well, but I can’t prove it scientifically.

Vashj to 49%!

Kurn / / apotheosis, raiding

Ooooooooh, so close. I can feel it!

We’re really getting the hang of tossing cores around, alternating/splitting DPS on striders and naga and kiting the striders.

Dying isn’t usually our problem; usually one thing goes horribly awry (a netted/frozen strider eats the faces of three raiders, the server lags, someone doesn’t run away from a static charge) and then we’re screwed. But we’re getting there! I’m really excited to have gotten her to Phase 3 (technically, anyways).

We did 10 attempts on Vashj tonight and the 9th one was when the server lagged out horribly. We were all frozen in place and next thing you know, six people are down. More lag… and another 8 people are dead.

It was during this laggy time that one of our raiders said, quite astutely, “Vashj doesn’t lag,” which led to uproarious laughter on my part. One of the last people up was our resident elemental shammy who, due to server lag, appeared to be standing directly in front of Vashj, Vashj looking at her, aiming her bow at her and about ready to kill her. For about thirty seconds. It’s kind of funny, ’cause you KNOW the shammy’s going to die and, in fact, is probably already dead, because, after all, Vashj doesn’t lag, but we all waited with baited breath to see what would happen.

In the span of .8 seconds, once the lag spike ended, our beloved elemental shammy toppled over and Vashj reset and we all burst into laughter.

Sometimes… I really enjoy this game. :)

Badge gear vs. Tier gear

Kurn / / gear, general

So tonight, my guild got Fathom-Lord Karathress down for the second time. And, for the second time, no “of the Champion” tokens dropped. (You’d think out of six tokens dropping, at least one would be “of the Champion”, but no. You’d be wrong.)

I am fast-approaching 100 badges. I’m not a holy paladin who enjoys healing 5-mans or heroics. Karazhan and I have essentially parted ways. I get my badges by raiding, now, which I quite enjoy doing. I picked up 9 badges tonight, then added another two through dailies and I’m up to 69 (quit chuckling!) badges.

So because I’m at the point where, when our badge vendor on Eldre’Thalas eventually opens, I should have enough badges to replace Jade Ring of the Everliving with Anveena’s Touch. A clear upgrade, since it’s almost identical to the Jade Ring, but with actual stats.

I could save my badges for the Gavel of Naaru Blessings if I really wanted, but Vashj going down is just a matter of time, and she has a pretty sweet Lightfathom Scepter. So, assuming I don’t want to save up for the mace… should I drop 100 badges on Greaves of Pacification?

I want my T5 set bonus. Quite badly.

(4) Set: Your critical heals from Flash of Light and Holy Light reduce the cast time of your next Holy Light spell by 0.5 sec for 10 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute.

Seriously? A 1.5 second Holy Light for 10 seconds? Once per minute? That’s just disgustingly great.

However, not getting my pants yet again made me look at the numbers. Obviously, with 4 pieces of Tier 5, the Crystalforge Leggings are superior. But otherwise, properly gemmed and threaded, the badge pants are kind of frickin’ awesome.

Total of 176 healing, 12 mp5, 34 spell crit and 36 int on the T5 pants, compared to 181 healing, 17mp5 and 47 int on the badge pants.

More healing, a substantial amount of mp5 and 11 more int, which is 165 more mana, not to mention more healing due to my talents.

But what about that pesky 34 spell crit? That’s 1.45% at level 70, which would boost me from 20.95% holy crit (unbuffed) to 22.4% holy crit (unbuffed). Which is 28.4% Holy Light crit. Which is frickin’ awesome with that T5 4-piece set bonus.

But on their own? I think they kind of fail to match up with the solid regen off the badge pants.

Coriel, at Blessing of Kings, talks about this briefly, but the article pre-dates 2.4 badge stuff.

Alternatively, I could hold out for the T5 pants and get Libram of Mending for 20 badges to aid with my regen, and still upgrade my ring as soon as the vendor opens, like I planned to.

I’ll keep you folks updated on my decision, but you’re free to leave a comment with any advice. :)

Lady Vashj.

Kurn / / apotheosis, general

My guild, Apotheosis, had its first few attempts on Lady Vashj last Thursday and I am up at this obscene hour (6:17am) trying to take the raiders who signed up and organize them into some sort of awesome killing machine by trying to figure out raid placement about 13.5 hours before the raid even starts.

We got her to 60% on two of our four attempts on Thursday and found that very encouraging. Elementals died quickly, but I’d allocated way too much DPS for them, so we were more than a little screwed on the nagas and no one really paid much attention to the Striders.

Without a warlock with Curse of Exhaustion, I’ve pretty much decided that our best hunter will be the kiter. I’m pretty sure he thinks I’ve been joking when I’ve mentioned this, but oh no, I’m not. Distracting Shot, Arcane Shot, Serpent Sting and misdirects from our other hunter… well, we can definitely cross our fingers, can’t we? Given that we should have 7 tailors able to throw a net, 4-5 pallies to HoJ and a shadow priest mindflaying and (hopefully) blackouting, the hunter should do okay. With actual DPS assigned to the nagas, they shouldn’t be an issue either, and I’m hoping to see the start of Phase 3 during Sunday’s raid.

It’d be nice to have a fully-cleared SSC.