(without Kevin Nealon, Norm MacDonald, Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon, Amy Poehler or Seth Meyers or anyone else who ever hosted SNL’S Weekend Update)
The update is this: I have done nothing on my paladin this weekend. I have been being a GM over on Eldre’Thalas. Trying to organize the ranks all pretty-like, trying to make sure all the toons are at appropriate ranks… It doesn’t help that apparently each character’s authenticator timer only starts when they log in for the first time since 4.0.1, since I wanted to get my guild bank officer (my brother — since I can track him down and beat him if he screws us over) to the proper rank, but his bank toon hadn’t logged in until Friday or so. So I have yet to implement the authenticator requirement for any ranks, which is annoying.
I helped a guildie get Incendius and the BRD key last night before finally doing the Moira Bronzebeard quest/Emperor run in BRD last night with Football. I did it for the achievement (hi, I killed the Emperor at level 58, thanks) and the quests and for nostalgia. I really do love Blackrock Depths. I just know it so damn well. Football and I also did a step in his Tier 0.5 questline, although it appears he’d already done that one before. I loved and hated that questline, culminating in the death of Lord Whatshisnuts (Valthalak).
Today, I did Sunken Temple and got lost. I didn’t remember I had to kill the six guys up top before killing dragons and then undeads and THEN the Shade of Eranikus. Go me. Eventually I got it done, though.
Let’s see, what else? Oh yeah. I’m pleased to announce the return of the Q&A posts, effective this coming Tuesday. You would not BELIEVE the amount of search engine hits I got after 4.0.1 launched…
And in the interest of pimping out some blogs:
Daritos’ Food for Thought – a long-time member of Apotheosis (and Fated Heroes before that!), Dar will be a first-time officer for Cataclysm and will be playing her resto shaman for us.
The Stories of O – Oestrus has been hanging out with the Apotheosis folks for a few weeks now on her holy priest. I was introduced to her blog via Codi’s and it’s been nice getting to know her, whether she decides to stick with us for Cataclysm or not. She’s also just started co-writing over at Divine Aegis again, so be sure to give that blog a peek for various healy-priest needs.
Things I still need to do:
– finish up responding to comments
– get my screenshot project finished
– finish a lawn dart video for my current guild
– write that requiem for Zul’Gurub
– clarify my feelings about hunters and hunter pets
All righty. Off to go do stuff “in real life” for the evening. :)
A lawn dart video? OK, this bears some ‘splainin.
:)
Thank you for the plug by the way – you are featured on our blogroll and we are pluggin’ ya too.
I really enjoyed this post, Kurn. It sounded a lot more whimsical and snarky than the posts I’m used to from you, but yet it’s a fun side of you people may not get to see or see too much of. I literally laughed out loud at a few parts in this, specifically about Football and Whatshisnuts – lol
Oestrus – We recently had a competition in guild that was dubbed the Lawn Dart competition. The goal was to hurl ourselves off a high surface and die as close as possible to a specific point on the ground.
It was pretty freaking hilarious and I frapsed most of it.
You’re quite welcome for the plug — I’m enjoying the posts. :)
I’m glad you liked this post of mine. I do like to interject some personality and humour into the blog, but a lot of that can get lost in all the pally stuff. This blog started off as my rambling thoughts about the game and being a GM and such and, while my holy pally stuff is probably what I’m known for, I think about a lot more than just Holy Light casting and the like. ;)
Lord Whatshisnuts is (c) Tia, circa 2006. She could never remember that his name was Valthalak, so she just dubbed him Lord Whatshisnuts. Ah, memories. :)
Since your doing Q&A’s
I’ve notice a lot of blogs reference back to your 4.0.1 speccing as their cookie cutter of choice and though I agree with most of your decisions on placement of your talents, one leaves me wondering. What’s with the pvp talent Enlightened Judgements? Why are so many people placing such huge importance on judgements? I realize the importance of the 9% haste increase but you have an entire min before it falls off, i doubt if you miss one judgement it would be the end of the world to give up one more GCD in a minutes time. If it is for the self healing then putting another point into Protector of the Innocent would make more sense since it would heal for more. I understand that the range is an issue but look at the amount of mobile healing we have in our arsenal now (shock, WoG, Light of Dawn) which gives us the ability to get close to judge and get back to position. Once we start leveling and can spare points for Improved Judgement, the range issue goes away completely. I would think that the utility of Paragon of Virtue would be better to spend points in. Getting more use out of Avenging Wrath for output, Divine Protection every 40secs for a 20% reduction in damage (ridiculous) and Hand of sacrifice every 1.5mins.
Second Question.
How viable do you feel a macro to Divine Protection /Hand of Sacrifice will be for a exterior tank cooldown? With Protector of the innocent giving us heals during the duration and the fact that Sacrifice should only take us done to 20% health with Divine Protection activated. I haven’t gotten a chance to test it out but to be able to set you tank up as your focus and spend 1 GCD to provide 30% mitigation for your tank might be quite useful.
Risotto – I’ll be sure to address this in my Q&A post tomorrow as well, but wanted to personally respond to you first.
Yes, Enlightened Judgements is, more or less, a PVP talent. The self-healing component and the +hit component are solo/PVP-type talents.
I recommend it right now for the extra range.
At 80, we only have 5 points after the 31 in holy and I cannot recommend Improved Judgement in ret for any of those points yet. Our talent points are precious. We probably could get away with 1/2 Englightened and put the other into Paragon of Virtue for 2/2 there, but I like to be as far back as possible. 10 yards on Judgement + 10 yards from Enlightened means that I can stand far enough away from the melee and the tank to not eat whatever melee damage comes their way (Empowered Shock Vortex) or any adds that might come at them (Blood Beasts).
While we have Holy Shock and Word of Glory (and yes, Light of Dawn, although using that on the run is tricky to position properly), our big hitting heals are still casted. So the less we have to move, the better.
I definitely think that, at 85, once we’ve had a chance to even look at the encounters that await us, we’ll want to make a better informed decision regarding 1 or 2 points in EJ or 1 or 2 points in PoV. For current content, though, I’m a big fan of the 20 yards and even the extra hit we’re afforded.
As to Divine Protection/HoSac, I think that’s at least somewhat viable. It depends on our total health versus the size of hits we can expect. I’d be more comfortable with a Divine Shield/HoSac macro the way I have today (although that’s 2 GCDs – is Divine Protection off the GCD? I’m unsure at the moment.).
What I’d do is bind the macro to a Clique configuration. Something like:
/cancelaura Hand of Sacrifice
/cast Divine Protection
/cast Hand of Sacrifice
I’m not sure, but I THINK that would allow you to hit it a second time to cancel HoSac if you need to. I’m not a macro whiz, though. :)
Yeah Divine Protection is off the GCD which is why i felt it more appropriate than Divine Shield. That and Divine Shield duration is only 8 secs and taking the damage the first 1.5 secs while waiting for the GCD could end poorly while the duration of Divine Protection should give you enough time to get your health up through PotI. Which would give you the last 2 secs to take full damage or cancel it. But if we are taking damage too and you are left with only 20% health well that may be a bad answer too.
I would think you would want something like this
#showtooltip Hand of Sacrifice
/stop casting
/cast Hand of Sacrifice @focus
/cast Divine Protection
/s I hope this doesn’t kill me!
this is under the assumption you would use this for your tank that you had set on focus. Then at anytime you just hit it for your oh shit tank damage moment so you don’t have to target him in case you are healing someone else. This is under the model/theory that damage will be more consistent and less spiky but if it leaves you dead then it isn’t realistic or viable.
But yeah regardless Divine Protection every 40secs off the GCD is just insane, plus all the passive healing and the plate armor. Soon we won’t even have to move out of the void zones.
Of course they put mana return on Judgements with the latest beta patch and pull us right back into feeling like we can’t afford to miss a judgement. Damn you Ghostcrawler! I guess we too get to dps for mana and cast Judgement on cooldown. Not as elegant as the priest archangel but since we have holy power to maintain I guess they didn’t want to burden us with having one more resource to manage.