Yay Progression

So, I wish we had screenshots…but we finally downed Lady D, and one shotted the gunship too. Yaaaaaaay. Saurfang enraged on us, but it was 1am for most of us, we were tired, and we knew it was our only shot of the night going in. So performance wasnt the best. We’r going back to get him tonight.

On another note, as I said I wish I had screenshots…but we solo tanked and 2 healed Lady D. Yah, our uber Pali tank solo tanked all the trash while my warrior (the OT who SUCKS at add control) went arms and just bladestormed the shit outta the caster adds, and our raid healing holy priest went shadow and pulled out a solid 8k dps burning down the mana shield. Most trash pulls died with a solid 20-25 seconds left b4 the next wave, so we had some serious dps pouring into her shield, with 7 total dpsers. When we got to phase 2, our dk and myself just sacrficed ourselves to try taungting her, and got creamed. Our tnak was able to generate enough threat, even after 8-9 stacks of the debuff, that she died, with only the melee dps dieing. It was fantastic.

The problem of raiding in a casual guild.

Our guild has totally hit a wall, and it’s a large reason as to why it has been something like 10 days since my last post. This wall is sucking my will to even log in anymore. Well, this combined with the fact that my social life has taken a sudden, unexpected positive swing, combined with online classes and working 2 jobs leave me less free time than I used to.

We can’t kill Deathwhisper in 10man. It’s driving me nuts because the reason is incredibly obvious to me and two of our other officers (who happen to be the other two “Raid leaders”) Our GM remains slightly oblivious. Our dps stink. Not all of them for sure. Our boomkin puts out a consistent 4000+ dps, our rogue even more and our GM when on his mage, puts out around the same. The problem is those 3 arn’t enough to carry the weaker dps in our guild. Of the 3 warlocks who periodically get raid spots, only one can pull more than 2k on a regular basis, and she only pulls about 2.5-3k on an average night. Due to various reasons we have jsut recently lost our only druid tank and her boyfriend who was our regular raid healer or DK dps. We hope tohave them back once our bear is no longer homeless….We also lost our main shaman healer to grad school. She doesn’t think she’ll ever be back (she also happens to be my sister). We’ve also lost our 2nd rogue and our other pali tank/healer. They’ve just gone AWOL and havn’t been seen in a week each.

New Armory Look

Ok, I admit it, that last post I did was pretty trashy. I had no plan going in, I didn’t think about the main points I wanted to hit. I just kinda dove in and went for it. Kinda like Patton during the siege of Fort Driant. Yah, I’m a history nerd, leave me alone.

So have you guys checked out the new Armory? Do it. I’ll wait.

Isn’t that cool? Finally you get a 3D image of what your (or someone else’s) toon looks like in all their shiny gear. I like it. GG Blizzard.

Healing: 5 v. 10/25

Ok, so as most people know, 5mans are alot different that 10 or 25man raids. For a few reasons. Bad guys hit lighter, its easier to outgear a 5man, theres only one tank/healer, etc. For our discussion purposes, those are the 3 important  keys to focus on. First, bad guys hit for less, and when you combine that with #2, man their damage (not including the new 5mans. those guys still hit kinda hard) looks meager. 3rd, you’re the only healer. If a dps dies, it’s not because your raid-heal partner failed, it’s cause you failed (or you let them die on purpose because they were stupid, which I do often.) So, lets start with the simple facts of a 5man that everyone has probably experienced all ready. The tank needs to live. You need to live long enough to make sure the tank survives the encounter. The dps *should* live long enough to survive the encoutner as well. If you and a dps or two die during the fight, but the bad guys all die, mission accomplished. It may have been pretty sloppy, your group may not be happy, but you guys got the job done (Obviously this is a gross over-simplification).

Healdin 101; Utility cont.

Today we finish our discussion of the various utility spells available to the paladin class. Yesterday I went over the auras, judgements and blessings briefly. Today we take a look at the wide varity of seals and the touchy-feely “Hand” spells.

Healadin 101: Utility

So, the original conception of the paladin in Vanilla WoW was a utility class. We couldn’t tank, we could barely dps, we were mediocre healers. What were we good for? Utility. We could buff the shit out of any class, with BoK being almost required for any paladin. We had our auras, our touchy-feely hands, our judgements. We were a support class in it’s truest form, while the warriors did the tanking and the priests did the healing. We ran around with giant +str +int +heal 2hnad maces, whacking things in the head while throwing out an occasional heal or three.

There are 4 types of spells available to us, which I consider to be utility spells. These are; Auras, Judgements, Hands and Blessings. Now, some could say there is a 5th category (seals) which I will discuss in this post, simply because I don’t know where else to talk about them, however I don’t consider them as true utility spells because they do not affect the group at all.

Whew…

Ok, so I’m finally home after my long holiday traveling. It was a good 2 weeks. Spent time with some family, saw some old friends who I haven’t seen in almost a year, ate some really good food, drank a lot of beer. Good times.

Last night I popped on my Pali for a bit, and got in HoR heroic. I still hate this place, but I must say it’s a lot easier to heal than tank. So, we had a few hiccups, but eventually got through it, even using the new exploit to make LK a cake walk. The best part? Marwyn dropped the Ephemeral Snowflake. Now, I grabbed it only because I was the only healer and it’s always nice to have an extra trinket to play around with on a situational basis. This thing has made itself a permanent part of my gear set. The equip proc works on everything. You have glyph of Holy Light? The Proc counts your initial heal, PLUS gives you mana back for all the splash heals. Do you judge light a lot? You get 11 mana every time your JoL heals someone. Do you take advantage of the Flash/SS combo HoT? The proc will count each tick.

Honestly, it seems like something they are going to nerf soon, because that is way too sweet. Too good to be true. Anyways, it’s definitely a must get for all healers, regardless of class.

Happy Holidays!

Probably won’t post much untill after the New Year.

But I do have a few ideas for upcoming posts: the utility spells and when to use them for healadin 101, tips for raid healing vs 5man healing, how to raid heal as a paladin, more LFG stories.

So, my brain is cooking some good stuff, you’ll just have to wait to taste it. Again, Happy Holidays, see you in 2010!

Healadin 101; The spells

So, last class we covered the very basics of healing. Today we will cover the basic spells in a healadins reprtoire. (Note. the links in this post are all intended to go to Wowhead. However, blogs do tend to be a target of phishers, so as always, check the destination before you click a link.)

First off, you’ve got the big guy. Holy Light. This is the heavy hitter that kind of defines a holy paladin. This thing hits like a truck. The tooltip says rank 13 hits for 4k-5k. But throw in your bonus SP, your looking at a heal that hits for 10-15k in all reality. My non crits hit for an average of 12-13k and my crits have hit for as high as 18k. You can heal a dpser from “omghelp” to full in a isngle hit. However, this thing chews up alot of mana and has a pretty long cast time if you don’t have a good amount of haste. That’s why HL-healadins prefer stacking Int (I’ve covered the concept of HL vs Flash builds before, but I’ll cover it again a bit more in depth later in my healadin 101 series). Without a very large mana pool, Holy Light is not the kind of spell you want to be spamming. Even with a large pool, HL isn’t designed to be spammed. It’s purpose is to drop a lot of points into a green bar in a short time (compared to other classes).

LFMultitudes