The Failadin

As some of my fellow Holy paladins have noticed, I’ve become a bit more intrusive lately. It’s all with good intentions though! In this post, I’ll touch on things I come across often. It’s not like these are things that haven’t been written about before, but all the same, I do see a lot of the same mistakes happening. This post is meant for progressive raiding holy paladins. I don’t expect to put much useful information in here for newly dinged holy paladins.

First off, let me say that I’m aware that I’m not exactly the best Holy paladin there is. I know that there are still a lot of things that need to be fixed concerning my own armory profile. I’m working on it though. However, I do think that I know a fair bit about my class and spec, as I read a lot about it in order to perform the best I can. Granted, it helps having a healer wife who outheals me on almost every occasion. She really pushes me, but I like it 🙂

Holy Light vs. Flash of Light

No, this won’t be a discussion on which is better or anything like that. I used to focus on Flash of Light, but now I’ve turned to Holy Light as my primary heal. Frankly, I don’t care which you choose, really. As long as you call yourself a holy paladin, pick any style you want but for fuck’s sake, stick with it! I’ve seen far too many holy paladins with a Retribution subspec gemming full intellect.

Choose a healing style, either Holy Light of Flash of Light, and stick with it! This means getting the right gear, gems, talents and glyphs to support whatever you choose to focus on.

On the bottom of this post is a link to an awesome blogger with some really good in-depth information on all of these topics. If I’m not clear on something or not in-depth enough, please go there for more information. I’m convinced she can explain better than me.

Talents

So far, I have seen a lot of holy paladins with a Retribution subspec. Any spec along the lines of 51/0/20 or variation thereof would classify as this. This is a talent spec that is great for supporting a FoL focus. It can also be used if you’re a HL paladin who’s just starting out, but this is not the aim of this post. If you’re a raiding HL paladin, you should not run with more than 5 points in the Retribution tree. On the other hand, a raiding FoL paladin should not run with more than 5 points in the Protection tree. Remember what I said about focus? Pick one, stick with it.

Glyphs

As it is with talents, it is with glyphs. There are glyphs that are meant for HL paladins and there are glyphs for FoL paladins. I won’t go in-depth about the different glyphs here, as there is lots of information out there already. I will say, however, that whatever you choose to focus on, there are at least 2 major glyphs you need to have. The last major glyph is pretty much optional in terms of which one you pick.

For Holy Light focus, you will want the Glyph of Holy Light. This seems like a dead giveaway, but alas, I’ve seen a lot of HL paladins without it. In my opinion, that is taking failure to a whole new level. So do the right thing, pick this glyph up.

In contrary to what seems obvious, this glyph is also quite amazing for FoL paladins, as even they will have to cast Holy Light sometimes.

The other glyph you’ll need to properly focus on HL casting is Glyph of Seal of Wisdom. This will reduce the mana cost of all your spells by 5% while Seal of Wisdom is up. Of course, this means that Seal of Wisdom is a mandatory raid buff for you if you have this glyph.

Flash of Light focused paladins should at least pick up Glyph of Flash of Light and Glyph of Seal of Light. The FoL glyph increases the critical strike chance of FoL by 5% (did I mention that crit is good?) and the Seal of Light glyph, in contrary to the Seal of Wisdom glyph, increases the healing done by your spells by 5%. You’ll need every bit you can get as a FoL paladin.

Gems

Okay, this is pretty simple, but try to keep up. If you focus on FoL, gem for spellpower as if your life depends on it. Because it does. You’re going to need every bit of healing power you can get in order to make FoL as powerful as it can get. Spellpower is your most reliable stat for this. You don’t need the extra intellect, there is plenty on gear.

If you focus on HL, gem for intellect as if your life depends on it. Because not only your life, but that of the tanks and thus pretty much everyone else’s life also depends on it. You need the extra mana to keep casting Holy Light. There are just so many advantages to having loads of intellect that I don’t know where to start explaining. I’d suggest reading some more on either Kurn’s blog or a class forum like Elitist Jerks if you want to know more details about it.

Librams

Do you know this nifty little addon called GearScore? You do? Then please, right now, forget about it. Pretend it doesn’t exist. Most holy paladins I’ve seen run with the Libram of Blinding Light, the item level 264 libram from the Emblem of Frost vendor. This may seem like a good libram, but it is really mediocre. I’ve run with this myself for a while, until I was shown the error of my ways 🙂

For Holy Light focus, the best libram is really easy to get. It’s the Libram of Renewal that you can get for only 10 or 15 (my memory from last night and WoW databases seem to disagree) Emblems of Heroism. You can downgrade your Emblems of Triumph to Emblems of Heroism very easily, so this should be no problem to get for anyone. The amount of mana this libram saves you on an average fight is just insane. And Holy Light is by itself such a powerful spell, that you will not need any extra spellpower to boost its strength.

For FoL paladins, please pick up a PvP libram. I know this sounds very contradictory, as you’ll be using a PvP libram for PvE, but it’s really your best option. Any libram, starting from the Furious Gladiator’s Libram of Justice and up, will boost the spellpower of your primary healing spell (Flash of Light, remember?) with a significant amount. This is no laughing matter, really. Did I mention you want as much spellpower as you can get to boost Flash of Light?

Enchants

I’m really trying to keep this one short. The main difference between HL and FoL paladins are the headpiece and shoulder enchants. For Holy Light, pick the enchants with spellpower and Mp5. For Flash of Light, pick the enchants with spellpower and crit rating.

I’d like to conclude this post with something that should be a no-brainer. Whichever spell you choose to focus on, you can and should still cast the other one when appropriate! Just use your brains.

I’d like to thank Kurn for a lot of information she has given on her blog, as a whole lot of other bloggers I can’t all remember off the top of my head. Kurn has awesome Holy How-To’s I recommend reading if you’re not entirily sure about something or want to know more about the why’s and how’s.

Did this help you? Let me know! 🙂

I’ve officially switched guilds now, I’m almost done re-gemming my gear and have a new chardev profile to share.

http://chardev.org/?profile=421166

That’s not even that far from what I have now! Check my armory profile to see where I stand at the moment.

I have some more stuff to say regarding the guild switch, as some unexpected things have come up. I won’t switch back to my previous guild though, that’s a matter of principle.

Also, I got Putricide down for the first time today! Yay!

There’s this guild thing that’s been bugging me for a while now. Anyone who has been reading this blog already knows this. In my last post, I said I was still waiting for my wife’s resto shammy alt to raid with a certain guild, before making my decision.

Well, it’s D-Day. Last night, my wife went to a continued raid. They had already downed the first 6 bosses and had wiped on Blood Princes the night before. To me, this is already very good news. The raids I got in with my current guild were lucky to even get Festergut and Rotface down, if at all. Hardly better (or as good) as a random PUG. Personal frustration and feelings aside, the matter of fact was that they already did better than what I’ve gotten used to. And to me, that’s very good.

After watching how the raid went, I noticed a couple of things which pleasantly surprised me. The most notable one was that they were actually learning. The raid leader was open to suggestions and tried to figure out what went wrong when they wiped. Instead of mindlessly trying to do the same thing over and over, the whole raid worked together like a team. Sure, there were screw-ups. Of course, people made mistakes and things went wrong. But they learned a little bit from that, they progressed. Which is far more than I can say of my current guild. This guild managed to raid the way it was meant to be. Learning more and more about which tactics to use, how to execute them properly and each time getting a little closer to victory.

What I saw last night was a progressing guild. Not the best guild out there, and still pretty casual, but at least with enough determination to put some effort into trying. I’m talking about people who actually know their class, people who actually try to improve. It’s not a perfect world, but still so much better than what I’m going through currently. On Putricide, I saw them getting closer and closer to getting him down. Even a 1% wipe!  This shows to me that they are capable of using their brains as intended. Not just for facerolling.

By the way, talking about Putricide. Does anyone know why and how he heals himself when somebody dies? I saw it happen but it was completely new to me. I don’t recall reading that in tactic guides anywhere either. Some enlightenment on this would be nice.

So, on topic. It’s D-Day. I’ve seen the guild I had my eye on for a while raid. I’ve seen how they work together as a team. It’s a relief, actually. I was kind of worried that they would fail just as bad as my current guild. But luckily, they didn’t. A guild with brains is what I’m looking for, and I think I’ve found it. When I log in again (sometime soon, hopefully) I’ll have a talk with my current guild leader and tell them they  can.. ehrm.. raid without me from now on. I’ll try to put it as gentle as I can, at least. And then, I will make the switch. I’ve already decided this, there’s nothing my current guild can do to stop me. If anyone from G&T is reading this, this means I’m joining you guys, finally! I’m looking forward to it!

Did I mention they only have one Holy Paladin currently? One with brains, even! This will be a joy to heal with, I can hardly wait! Now, all that’s left is executing the plan.

The Plan: Switching guild and gems!

Last night we managed to somehow heal Dreamwalker. Me and my wife’s resto druid healed our asses off and by golly we were good. Just too bad the rest kinda sucked. Our usual raid leader is a Protection paladin. Very nice guy, really. Not too bright, unfortunately. Having to explain what a “boomkin” is multiple times while pugging a few extra people gets on my nerves. The same with explaining that an Elemental Shaman is ranged DPS. Quite frankly, he can’t even play his own offspec right. Gemming full intellect, while only casting FoL really isn’t the smartest thing to do. There was going to be more, but in the middle of typing this, I changed my mind.

I was going to post about my doubts regarding switching to HL spam. The doubt in my mind is gone, I have changed my plans slightly though. I’m not just going to swap my gems and glyphs. I’m going to respec my Retribution offspec to Holy as well and keep a separate FoL gear set handy. My DPS gear sucks anyway. And I love FoL too much to let it go completely. I’ll have to do it in phases, since I’m not exactly the richest person out there and I still want my Epic Flying so I can finally use the drake from OS 25+3.

All the same, I still feel that I have to work too hard to get my job done properly. I know for a fact that it’s not all my fault for having to work hard. To be honest, lots of people I raid with currently could really use a course “How to avoid damage that is totally avoidable if you open your fucking eyes”. Not all of them, but at least half of the different healers I raid with could also use a course on how to play their class. I’m no expert on all healing classes, don’t get me wrong. But I do know when I see people slacking and when they’re actually trying. So no, I’m not talking about the people who are just not geared enough yet. I’m talking about the kind of people who either “overgear” the content (slightly) and slack around as a result of that, or are just slacking around because they expect to be carried through.

So there, you HL advocates win. In order to somehow keep up with the content I *want* to do while also being able to carry healers if they slack or die (what’s the difference, really?) I finally decided to swap the gems in my main gear set, and collect a separate spellpower set for FoL focus. I’ll be a HL pally for a while and see how that goes. If I really don’t like it, I can always swap back. I just feel that I’m currently not capable of really doing a great job. I’m doing a good job, but still. It’s not enough. I know other people have said before that this would be the case. I’m aware of the fact that I really wanted to prove those people wrong. I’m also aware that I’m still not pulling the full potential from a FoL spec as it could be. But I’m already pretty much convinced I could do a better job focusing on HL and gemming for it properly. And replacing my glyphs, of course. Now I only need to gather enough haste to make it work like a charm.

On a side note, I won’t be switching guilds for now. Partially because I feel it’s a bit too soon, partially because the guild I’m aiming for has yet to prove themselves. They seem good enough for what I want, but so seemed my current guild. My wife’s alt resto shammy is now in that guild and waiting to raid with them for the first time. I’ll make my decision based on how that goes. In the meanwhile, I’m refusing to raid with my current guild. I’d rather PUG, thank you. I don’t really expect to raid with my current guild ever again. I also don’t really expect to stay in this guild much longer anyway. Where I’m going is the big question here. Does anyone know any nice, but good guilds on EU-Eonar? My current progress is 7/12. I’d like something close to that.

I’ve played around a bit with chardev.org and came up with the following gear planning, all very reachable for me within a short period of time: http://chardev.org/?profile=419728

Yes, I’m aware of the fact that I picked a PvP neck. On a point-by-point comparison, it’s slightly better than my current neck though, plus the haste on it puts me over teh soft cap: http://www.wowhead.com/compare?items=51333;50211

No, I’m not sure where I’m going with this title. But I don’t care, it sounds kinda cool. There, happy?

Before I start, I’d like to use this opportunity to say that I’m fully aware that some people actually read this blog. I’ll try my best to not include names as much as possible. If somebody does recognize him/her self in one of my posts, please be aware that I’m trying not to attack anyone in particular. I may use certain people as an example, but I’m in no way calling somebody on their mistakes, which may not even be their own fault.

That said, I’ll get to the point of this post now.

Recently, with all the guild and raid drama going on, I’ve been in doubt on a number of things. I’ve already posted on the fact that I’m considering switching guilds. My doubt on this issue grows daily, but I’m waiting to see how things develop with the current guild I’m in. There are a couple of raids planned that I’d really like to go to and a lot depends on how I feel after those raids. I’m kind of expecting lots of failures though. I’ll probably post about it afterwards, so expect something here by the end of the week.

I’ve also started doubting my favorite Flash of Light spec. Well, not spec so much, as I’m 51/20/0 specced, but more my own gear, gems and healing focus. Kurn helped me pick some gear pieces to get, and I’m working on that. I’ve stalled on replacing gems though. I was going to get all my gems replaced by +23 spellpower (or +39 spellpower, as I’m a JC) but now, I’m in doubt. My primary healing focus has always been Flash of Light. During the lower levels, it’s really the only viable healing spell to focus on if you don’t want to run OOM all the time. Starting at level 80, doing heroic 5 mans and some starting raids, Flash of Light still beats the crap out of every encounter. Anyone stating otherwise is lying in my opinion. Sure, Holy Light can be very viable and powerful, but if it’s not needed, why say that Flash of Light “sucks”? I’ve had some discussions on this with a few Holy paladins and most aren’t even considering Flash of Light viable, for anything. Because, Holy Light fixes all, right?

Wrong. Especially in the lower gear levels, where you can still struggle with mana, Holy Light can be unnecessary overkill, depleting your mana way too quickly. You know how it is in heroics nowadays. Overgeared people want to get it over with as soon as possible, because they’re only there for the Frost emblems. This can cause trouble with lower geared people who arent able to keep up the pace. Of course, tanks and healers in particular.

On the other hand, the reason I’m writing this post is precisely because of the difference between a Holy Light focused paladin and a Flash of Light focused paladin. Right now, I’ve focused on Flash of Light and am trying to gear and gem for it. Most Holy paladins in my guild also focus on Flash of Light, but they use a weird combination of a Retribution subspec and full Intellect gems. I’ve also seen some weird Glyph combinations. I’ve raided with most of them and they actually do only cast Flash of Light. I remember some Recount stats scaring the heck out of me after a wipe. I knew that particular Holy paladin gemmed full Intellect and as such, I was assuming he was focusing on casting Holy Light. After some heavy tank damage, tank death and a resulting wipe… Recount showed he didn’t cast Holy Light even once! I’ve asked him about it afterwards and he admitted that he only cast Flash of Light, because of the faster cast time.

Now, these Holy paladins may not really have a clue, but that did scare me. One of them now gems correctly and still focuses on Flash of Light, but he now at least knows where he can get relevant information. He got a clue. The rest though, are a whole different story. I’ll admit that these are casual raiders, but still. They’re pushing for progression, at least they pretend to. They fail numerous times, but as the ICC buff increases and they wipe often enough, they manage to down one more boss once in a while. Not that they’re actually logging anything, or even paying attention to what went wrong. They just try again, exactly the same as they did it the last time. And maybe they’ll have more luck. Which they sometimes do. Very frustrating, actually.

As said, I’m now doubting my focus on Flash of Light. I really feel that I need to carry the other healers through the content I’m doing. I’m not capable to do that as I am now and I don’t want to. Just like I don’t want the other healers to feel like they’re carrying me. I want to carry my own weight, without relying on other healers except for the raid healing. In Light of this (you see what I did there?) I’ve started doubting my current focus before it’s too late. Too late, because I’ve already started swapping out gems for spellpower gems. If I decide to switch, I’ll need to do it before I waste too much gold or time on more spellpower gems.

I already have a good spec to use with a Holy Light focus, and I can swap out the glyphs without a problem. Getting the Libram of Renewal should be no problem either. I’m not too sure about what more I would need to change in order to fully switch to a Holy Light focus, but a quick read through Kurn’s Holy How-To’s should help. I’m far too tired for that right now though, but I’ll get to it when I finally decide whether or not to switch.

I’ve wasted far too many words on this already. But I’ll keep posting updates about it anyway. Right now, it’s time for bed.

Since Sartharion is the weekly raid boss for this week, doing Obsidian Sanctum with all drakes up is pretty popular, at least temporarily. I did the 10 man version somewhere earlier this week, which was a first time for me to be honest. Last night me and a couple of guildies decided we wanted the 25 man achievement as well. We only had to PuG a few people.

And we did it! After wiping a few times because of some slacking DPS, we managed to down Sartharion with 3 drakes up! Not a really impressive achievement, as with the amount of overgeared players there are now, it’s not really a challenge anymore and the whole thing is just zerged. I did manage to get almost all achievements for OS 25 though, except Less is More. We have that one planned for next week. Fun times!

Oh! I almost forgot. I got the mount! Read it and weep! I’d make a screenshot, but as I don’t have Epic Flying yet, I can’t use it right now. Too bad, but I’m in the process of getting me enough gold to buy it. I want to use that drake, damnit! The one from Culling of Stratholme is also just sitting there in my bank.

I feel like such a dweeb sometimes 🙂

Last night we started raiding early. The usual raid leader for the secondary ICC runs was getting fed up with the fact that, usually due to time, we don’t get much further than Saurfang, the one emblem boss and a few fails on one of the other bosses.

This time however, we started at 19:00 (instead of the usual 20:30) and we managed to pull through the first four bosses in a reasonable time. After that, finally, we managed to down Festergut and Rotface! There you have it, I finally got to see those ugly bastards die! You won’t believe how relieved I was that we actually managed to one-shot them. Admittedly, we only just pulled through at the end in the Rotface fight. I was the only healer left alive, one tank and 3 dps managed to down him. Interesting.

We even got a try on Dreamwalker, which was really, really annoying. We went with three healers, my wife’s resto druid on the raid (she’s great, she absolutely is and I’m not just saying that because she’s my wife). Me and another resto druid (who I healed the rest of the encounters with, my wife tanked before this evening) on Dreamwalker. I simply must be honest here. I have no words for those attempts. None at all, except maybe something along the lines of.. What. The. Fuck. We wiped on ~2 million HP left. Twice.

As you probably already know, healing Dreamwalker is all about the healing meters. My wife was healing the raid, so I don’t really have a good grasp on how well she did, but I do trust her and as far as I can tell, she did fine. Maybe she did screw up something (as the raid did wipe) but there’s no way for me to know as there are no logs. What I do know, is that the resto druid only got to about 7.5k HPS after three portal phases. I was on 10k more than that. Allright, so I’m a holy pally. I went all out, as I should. But my wife got to 6.8k without any portals at all. How is this even possible?!

So I took a look at Recount. Maybe not the most accurate way of analyzing something like this, but it’s the only thing I’ve got for now. The resto druid seemed to be using the right spells. I also know that he went through the portal each time as I saw him there, getting his stacks up. He should’ve been on par with me as far as buffs are concerned. What happened? He spammed Nourish like crazy and kept all his HoT’s up as he should’ve done. Yet his performance was awful. The raid leader knew this, but this was the exact reason he wasn’t put on healing the raid. We would’ve wiped even sooner.

I’m fairly certain that my wife would’ve done far better. yet I can’t really put my finger on it. Does anyone know how Dreamwalker should be healed, from a resto druid perspective? Can anyone take a guess on why this particular resto druid’s performance was so bad?

So, after quite some time of AFK, I’m back to do a post. Not much interesting, but still. I really wanted to share some things with… well, whoever reads this. Meh, I just wanted to get some things of my chest I guess.

I’ve switched guilds. Mainly because my old guild was getting too darn quiet (most of the time, there would only be one or two people online, myself included). But also because I was sick and tired of failing PuGs and really wanted to raid more. My wife’s resto druid had switched guilds a few days earlier because of the same reasons and I had a really nice chat with one of their officers. So I decided to just go for it.

Not a really bad decision at first. Lots of nice people, nice atmosphere. And raids! People actually went raiding! And they had enough people! This was a completely new experience to me. Especially when our old guild leader also switched guilds with his priest alt, it became clear that they would have just enough people to have two separate raiding groups (10 man each). I was really excited!

The first few runs were really nice. This guild has lots of Holy paladins, so I was eager to learn from them. And lucky me, most of them already had nice ICC gear, so I got upgrades like crazy. A nice touch, there is no DKP in this guild. It’s basically just /roll for MS, then OS. Unlimited rolls. Which means, free loot!

A few runs later, I’m starting to doubt things. I’ve had some good email conversations with Kurn, a well-known holy paladin blogger, and I feel that I may be gimping myself by staying with my current guild. This seems kind of harsh, but once you figure out that none of the other holy paladins in the entire guild have any clue about their class, and almost none of the people in the guild are in any way serious about raiding.. it’s just all so empty. I mean, they have their raid rules and stuff. They’re not entirely slacking when raiding. They did get 9/12 somehow. But to me, it just seems like a shitload of luck. Half the healers have no clue. Tanks who think their DPS matters. DPS who think they can pull off enough without using any part of their brain, at all. Raid leaders who don’t know shit about other classes/specs than their own. It’s all too much.

Sure, I’m not there yet myself. I can’t exactly say that I’m elite enough to just do whatever. I can’t exactly say I have 6/12 experience even! I haven’t downed Rotface even once! But damn it, I sure as hell know what I’m doing! I know my gear isn’t optimal, I know I’ve made (huge) mistakes in the past regarding gear decisions. I’ve been clueless. But at least I know I’m on my way of doing things like they should. So now, in light of recent events, I’m considering to switch guilds once again. This time, I’m considering a guild I’ve been in before, which consists of good people. Friendly, but knowledgeable about their class and spec. They’re not that far into ICC either (last time checked, it was 8/12) but they’re really short on Holy paladins (they have exactly one in the entire guild). They take raiding seriously enough to actually read up on tactics and try to figure out what when wrong after a wipe. Mind you, this is something my current guild does not do. Even though they claim to do “progression” runs, they don’t actually try to learn anything from past mistakes. At all. Nobody keeps logs, nobody keeps track of what caused a wipe, and the list goes on and on. The raid leader just doesn’t take his job seriously. And yes, it is a job. It is when you claim to want to progress. If you keep wiping on the same thing every damn time and *not* at least put some effort into improving, you fail as a raid leader. If you don’t care about progression, don’t claim you do, it’s not fair towards other players who might have other expectations. Both me and my wife are utterly disappointed because of this.

The last thing I’d like to say about this before I really stop putting more effort into the subject, is about the first “progression” run my wife did with these guys. Some background information: she plays a resto druid, with feral as her offspec. She has gear for both feral dps and feral tanking, but she definitely prefers healing. So much that she hasn’t played her feral spec in months. She joined our current guild because they said they were short on resto druids. Not a problem, you’d think. Then she gets asked to join for a progression run to do some attempts on Sindragosa.. as feral dps. Of course, bummed out, my wife kindly lets the raid leader know that she can’t perform nearly as well doing dps as opposed to healing. It’s not even about gear (well, partially, but her gear is at least good enough for Festergut/Rotface) but about the fact that she hasn’t played as dps in such a long time. Nevertheless, she gets put in the position to dps. Of course, really wanting to progress, she agrees to at least give it a try. After a night full of wiping, all of the confidence my wife had during raiding was shattered to pieces. She’s very sensitive about these things, which is okay, she can handle herself when healing. She can handle criticism when healing just fine. But this was just torture for her. Almost anyone would’ve been better suited to fill her role, but no, she had to do it, because.. well, just because! She hasn’t had the chance to prove herself again, so the reason why she joined the guild just starts to fade away. She doesn’t get a chance to heal any new encounters, as the secondary groups don’t really get any further than Saurfang, or maybe Festergut with a lot of luck. She feels that she’s boosting alts on the secondary runs, and since she’s not getting another shot at progression.. she’s basically screwed.

As am I. One of the rules for progression runs is that you have to have at least some experience on 6/12. Which is fine, since the secondary runs are supposed to be meant to gear up and make sure people get experience on those encounters. But the secondary runs fail even worse than fail PuGs I’ve seen and this is just getting nowhere at all. As I mentioned before, they don’t get to 6/12 so how the hell am I supposed to gain that experience for progression runs? Right, back to PuGs! So, why am I in this guild again? Oh, yes, the people. They seem very nice, of course, but as you get to know them, it gets really frustrating to see how ignorant and utterly uninterested people are when it comes to playing their class. One example: the class leader for holy paladins was severely under haste cap, gemmed full intellect and had the 264 libram. He spammed Flash of Light like crazy, and only sporadically used Holy Light. He really didn’t have any knowledge at all about holy paladins. Nothing. He just knew that stacking intellect was good. That’s it. Well, that and that a higher item level is really all that matters. Because, of course, GearScore is sacred. The guild leader later informed me casually that appointing class leaders really had no basis at all. They just picked random people who were willing to help. /facepalm

Allright! Enough ranting for now! Some last happy thoughts and I’ll finally be done with this wall of text.

I started some alts on a different server recently because some colleagues wanted to play together. So, I took the effort of leveling a DK to the point where he could solo some old-world dungeons for quick gold and started a guild with the company name. Boss happy, colleagues happy. And I’m happy too! I found that I don’t actually dislike playing a DK as I thought I would. I tried a Unholy DK one time, but I didn’t like it. Now, my own DK is Blood, tank specced and I love it! I haven’t really tanked before besides on my still lowbie druid, but I really like the way my Blood DK works. And I started a Rogue. A class I haven’t really played, ever, beyond level 8-ish or so. I decided to go with Subtlety for now, as it’s a rarely used spec nowadays and it really appeals to me. Not that I’m into PvP much, but hell, who cares! For the heck of it! And I started a mage. A frost mage. Can you see a pattern here? The thing is, I like those specs. Not because they’re rare, or because of any other single reason. Just because I like them, really. The spec appeals to me for some reason or the other, that’s why I want to play it. I don’t feel the need to raid on every toon I have, and I don’t intend to. I don’t really need to have highest DPS everywhere, I just want to have fun. That’s why I play!

And now, I kinda ran out of words. My sincere apologies for the wall of text. Maybe I should’ve put a warning at the top, but I figure if you’re halfway through and tired of reading, you either stop or read on anyway. Again, sorry for the long wait. I am by no means gone from the blogging community (for as far as I’m actually a part of it) but I tend to have so much on my mind at once that I find it hard to make time to blog. I really should do this more often, that would result in more posts but more readable walls of text. I think.

Today’s the day the long-awaited paladin changes have been announced by Blizzard. It’s about bloody time! So I decided to post my thoughts on these changes as I think they will eventually play out to be.

New Paladin Spells

Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure’s ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.

For one, I’m not particularly enthusiastic about Blinding Shield, but I do think it will make a good addition for Protection paladins. I don’t think I’ll ever use it when healing though. The cast time would be too long to use as a panic button when I get aggro, and other uses seem pretty limited. I could be wrong though, I’m not the most experienced paladin in Azeroth 🙂

Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.

Now this sounds pretty neat. I am curious about the exact mechanic this spell will bring to the healing game though. It all depends on how much this actually heals and how short the range will be. Potentially, this could be really cool and a very good addition to our healing spells. It also has the potential of failing miserably though, and that is what I’m afraid of. Oh well, the Beta will probably streamline the way this spell works. Hopefully.

Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

Now this spell looks like it can either be very OP or just a big fat fail. I am having serious doubts about the effective healing this guardian will do. Will it take incoming heals into consideration? Will it intelligently switch heal targets? Is it static, or does it move with the paladin? I can imagine something like popping Healing Hands and Guardian of Ancient Kings and running around to heal everybody. That could be very cool, as it would be very different from our current healing style (running around healing isn’t exactly a strong point of holy paladins right now). I do doubt if it will be effective enough though. Time will tell, but I’m moderately excited about these changes 🙂

Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.

Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.

Blessing of Might will provide the benefit of Wisdom as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do Kings on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.

Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.
New Talents and Talent Changes

We want to ease off the defensive capabilities of Retribution and Holy paladins slightly. We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas. One change we’re considering is lowering Divine Shield’s duration by a couple of seconds. Having said that, Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards. Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.

We feel Retribution paladins need one more mechanic which involves some risk of the player pushing the wrong button, making the rotation a bit less forgiving. In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility. Right now the successes of the Retribution paladin in PvP seem to be reduced to either doing decent burst damage, or just being good at staying alive.

We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target. That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don’t feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer.

We want to add to the Holy tree a nice big heal to correspond with Greater Heal. Flash of Light remains a fast heal, but will be more expensive to justify the cast speed. Holy Light will be the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light needs to be changed so that its benefit is letting the paladin heal two targets at once, not letting the paladin get two heals for the mana cost of one. It’s intended to save GCDs and targeting time, not mana.

Holy paladins will use spirit as their mana regeneration stat.

Protection paladins need a different rotation between single-target and multi-target tanking. Likewise, we’re looking to add the necessity to use an additional cooldown in each rotation.

Holy Shield will no longer have charges. It will be designed to improve block chance while active, and will continue to provide a small amount of damage and threat.

The list with changes in abilities isn’t all that exciting, really. Yes, us holy pally’s will get used to using spirit as a stat, since MP5 will simply cease to exist. And it’s okay to have the duration of Divine Shield lowered a bit, though I am curious by how much it will be lowered eventually. Not that big of a deal though.

I kinda like the change to Blessing of Might, though I’m not sure it should still be called Blessing of Might in this case. But that’s just minor detail. One blessing for both melee and casters seems fair. And I do approve of keeping Kings a separate buff. It just feels more balanced that way.

Yay for Crusader Strike to all and boohoo for making Cleanse holy-only. I have mixed feelings about Holy Shock though. I kinda feel like we’re losing something, though it’s not really lost. And I’m not sure if I think it’s completely fair that Retribution and Protection also get Holy Shock. I would rather have seen a change that included a different effect of the spell based on current spec, as with Guardian of Ancient Kings.

I can’t really say anything about the PvP changes for Retribution paladins, since there’s just nothing to say. Yay for the duraction increase of Sacred Shield though! I have one minor wish about this change though. I’d like it to be talented in the Protection tree, instead of just giving any pally a 30 minute SS. Preferably so that both Holy and Retribution can also spec into it, but that way at least it’s a choice.

And what’s with the Greater Heal thing? Is Cataclysm really going to be so brutal that we’re going to need an even bigger heal that our currently biggest heal? Or is it just going to be one of those healing spells that nobody will ever use because it just takes too damn long to cast and your target will be dead by the time it lands? In light of this, I do predict that the healing in Cataclysm will be entirily different from now, otherwise a spell like this would not be viable. Imagine that damage is coming in steadily, without heavy spikes that cause your tank to lose half his health in one shot. Imagine that the rate at which healing can be done, you’re not going to keep the tank up above 90% all the time. Imagine that you will actually have the time to cast such a big heal. Wouldn’t you? If mana is going to be more of an issue than before, it would probably be very efficient to do so. The only thing that is necessary for this spell to be viable, is a different healing environment. And that has already been announced to be the case in Cataclysm. My conclusion: if Cataclysm is really going to change things for us healers, this will be one epic spell to have.

I have mixed feelings about the Beacon of Light change as well, but I’m leaving that aside to see how this will develop during Beta. I don’t think Beacon is viable if it only works on Flash of Light, but it might be fair to increase mana costs for duplicated heals. I think it will be hard to define a working model for this though. We’ll see.

Yay for alternate rotations for Protection paladins! I’m all in for this. I’m planning to respec my Retribution spec to Protection somewhere before Cataclysm and I think this will make it much more interesting to play. I’m not sure on the Holy Shield change though. Really, I just don’t know what to think. I tend to like the idea that it works without charges, but I think it depends mostly on how it will turn out to work in the end. Wait and see!

All in all, I’m not unhappy with the proposed changes. I’m just not thrilled either. We’ll have to wait and see how Beta will affect this. Okay, that’s it. I’m out for now 🙂 Phew!

Yet another post and I still have no idea how to write something useful. At this point, I can still only write about the things that excite me in WoW and about my pally, or rant about something. I’ll try to keep this constructive, but I assure you that I am going to rant a little.

This week I haven’t even played alot, but I did manage to miss the weekly (not a chance of getting a group for ToTC anymore) yet I did get the Noble Gardener achievement. Where did I go wrong? Well, something called real life came up. Then the event started. Then I realised I really wanted a new title. So there it is. Kaboomski the Noble is now a fact. Uh-oh, gave away my character name 😉 please don’t bitch too hard about my crappy gear, pretty please?

Anyway, I did manage to get me a new cloak, even though it’s still kinda crappy. And I got into an ICC reputation run. I’m almost friendly with Ashen Verdict now, only need one more run. Why I’m not doing that instead of blogging? Well, real life came up again and now I’m not allowed to play until I finish some crap. And I really don’t feel like doing it. I know my WoW life depends on it (drama overkill here) but I’m just too tired of the project I’m working on that I can’t put myself into it anymore. I’ll finish it before Wednesday though, I really don’t want to miss out on next week’s raids too.

I would blog more and say more sensible things, but I’m really just not there yet. As with ICC, I’m just not quite ready yet. I don’t have enough raid experience with my pally to give good advice or anything. Or I’m just not self-confident enough.
Well, okay, I’ll try giving some advice. It’s not something that hasn’t been said before, but I’ll give an example of how things went on my last ICC run. This post is going to be longer than I expected it would be. Please don’t blame me, I’m just the author. Oh, right. Sorry 🙂

Me, my guild leader and a few others people went for a nice ICC run. The tank said he could only stay for one run, so we just went with it and did the best we could. Everything was fine and well, the healing was a bit on the low side, but that was to be expected, since I’m not geared for ICC quite yet, and my guild leader barely makes the minimum. We did pull through, so I’m happy with the end result. The next run went a little different though. The whole group fell apart after the tank left, so we had to find new people for a new group. After some trouble finding people (on Monday, what would you expect?) we did manage to get another group.

Next run, my guild leader switched to dps because there was another healer. No big deal, a druid with slightly better gear than me. Should be fine for a rep run. We went in and everything looked just peachy. Until I noticed that I was firing a heal at everyone when they got damage. I got the creepy feeling of being the only healer, so I decided to check the healing meters. I use Recount for that by the way. The druid’s HPS score was only slightly lower than mine (by 200 points maybe) but still I kept having to heal every single raid member taking damage. I kept the tanks up just fine, so it wasn’t a problem, but I was still worried that something was wrong.
So during a quiet moment, I decided to check what healing spells the druid used most. And there you have it, the druid was only using HoT’s to keep people up. He did heal the entire raid though, including tanks, so there was a HoT up on everyone at all times. Which is good, of course. And also one of the reasons the tanks were easy to keep up. Gotta love Beacon, right?
The problem was, the druid wasn’t healing damage spikes, ever. I already knew this particular druid had never done ICC before, but using only HoT’s and ignoring damage spikes is kind of dangerous in raids, especially ICC. One genius remark by my guild leader when he was healing a previous run: “They do hit kinda hard, don’t they?”. Well, yes, that’s why it’s an end game raid. That’s the whole point. You don’t go in there unprepared. You just don’t. I seriously doubt the raid experience that druid has, or at least as a healer. Which put me in the position to actually learn something. Use the appropriate healing spells! Learn what you have in your healing arsenal and use it wisely! Learning to heal in heroics is a good start, but don’t get lazy, learn what to do in more dire situations. One thing to mention is that I managed to adapt my healing style to the situation, I mostly used Flash of Light and Holy Shock (I love my 264 libram!) and kept Beacon up on the main tank. That did the trick 🙂

Allright, that was lesson number one. I even have a second! Read on…

During the last ICC run we did, some nice cloth shoulders dropped off some trash. They were, in my opinion, healing shoulders, but they were ofcourse fine for any cloth wearing class. The loot options were set to Need before Greed. Ouch! So, nearly everyone “needed” it. And who got it? Of course, the only one not actually needing it: the druid. On this particular run, the healer had left prematurely (awesome, downing the last trash mobs with me as the only healer). So the guild leader quickly switched to offhealing (in dps spec though). In my opinion, the only person really needing the cloth was my guild leader, because he was healing and I’m no clothy. A balance druid got it though and quickly left the raid. After that the group fell apart, so we were left with a repair bill and nothing to show for it.

So, the lessons learned:

• Use HoT’s or direct healing spells where appropriate
• During raiding, set loot options to Loot master

That concludes my way too long blog post for now. I’ll be back with more insane advice when I realise I’ve learned another lesson. Or when I feel like it, really.