Karagain

Saturday was probably the best Karazhan run our guild has had in months. Attunmen, Moroes, Maiden, Romule and Julienne, and Curator. An hour and a half. No priest. Pet tanks. Yeah, that's right.

Attunment was pretty standard. Moroes, semi-standard. No priests means no shackle, but three hunters and three paladins means plenty of cc for the adds. No problems here. Maiden? We didn't need Sorli to one-man her, because she went down smooth. No mace, though. Should we call it a night? We don't have any priests...

No way. We're doing far too well. How do we get to Opera, though? Well, we have two tanks, one arms pvp warrior, and three pets. Who needs shackle? Everything worked out. Pets died, but did their part of being aggro cushons for the ice tombed tanks. We get to the opera event. It's Romulo and Julienne. We have two mages and a warrior for interrupts. That should be enough. Julienne goes down, Romulo goes down, they revive, we tank them in their respective corners. 20% on both, bring them to the middle together. Romulo's down, Julienne...healed. Ruh roh. Okay, back to the corners. Romulo goes down to 20%, then Julienne, back to the center. Romulo goes down and Julienne...freaking heals again! Okay, back to the corners. Romulo gets to 20% for the third time, then Julienne. Bring it back to the middle. Okay. Let's kill Julienne first. She goes down, Romulo falls seconds later. That's how you do opera.

But we're not done yet. It's still early and we're all pumped from such a good run. Let's take Curator. We plow through the trash and get to curator. No problems with it, we down him in one shot again. Celebration ensues. We hope Monday we can finish the raid with just as much success.

Not quite so. Half the people don't show up for the raid, so we end up pugging two more healers and a dps (dps was drunk, one healer was high, the other had the "I'm better than you and can yell at you because I've done this more than you even though this is your raid" mindset. I freaking hate that guy. It started out rough, and then we wipe on Shade about four times before downing him. Dumb mistakes. We skip illhoof due to lack of lock. Chess is...well, chess. The healing shield drops, and I'm the only one who needs it. Prince was a wipe and a kill. Tier 4 helm drops. I roll a 10. That pretty much set me off for the rest of the night. I was in a terrible mood after that, and I feel terrible about it because one of our tanks got it, so it wasn't a complete loss. Anyway, onto netherspite. First try is always a wipe when people who need to be in beams have never done it before. Second try is a wipe because somebody didn't run far enough away while the dragon was in banish state. I called it then. I wasn't in the mood to wipe twice more before calling it.

All in all, I'm pleased with the results of the raid, despite the less-than-desirable second half and pugs. Hopefully downing prince has gotten the guild out of our slump. We'll see on Wednsday. Continue reading 'Karagain'

Resolutions

It's January 30th, and I've finally made a New Years resolution. Three, actually.

My first is to make Talkins a shockadin. When I first heard of this build, I've been thinking about making the switch, and the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. I recently obtained the Banish More Demons daily quests, so I finally had a reason to hit things again on Twalkins. Being holy spec, the best way to do this is to play him as a shockadin. I was amazed at how much damage I was actually dealing in nearly all healing gear and no points in ret. On top of being able to solo effectively again, I will be able to pvp on Twalkins (Yeah, I can pvp now as a holy spec, but in my opinion, pvp is for hitting enemies. I don't want to only heal in pvp), and I can still offheal if my guild needs me for a run. As of now I am the only viable main healer (along with a resto druid or two) for Kara, so this change will happen once our other paladin healer and two holy priests ding Kara-ready. I may start healing pvp a bit, just to get a taste of it as well as some honor.

My second resolution is to make Twalvanis (My dr00d) able to tank Kara. He's pretty much there, he just needs more agility and less defense rating (428 out of the needed 415 - some gem replacements will fix that). He's already able to kitty into Kara very well, and he can probably offtank it as well. Our guild currently has three Paladin tanks (one of which will very soon be a warrior tank) and a Druid who can tank, but doesn't like to.

As for my third resolution, it's sort of been a resolution since I hit 70, but it was put on the backburner for a long time. That is getting my epic training. 11000 gold and a long quest chain to give it to both of my toons, though I'm only really worried about getting it for Twalvanis right now. He's my grinder/farmer.

On a slightly unrelated note, Bellwether of 4 Haelz is working on a list of every single druid skill, their advantages, and disadvantages. I think this is a great idea, so don't be surprised if you see something like it in the near future about paladins from me. Continue reading 'Resolutions'

BA Shared Topic: Enjoying Your Class

Siha of bananashoulders.com posted the first Blog Azeroth shared blog topic. Her question:

"What do you enjoy about the class you play the most?"

I have two answers, one for each main I have.

What do I like about Paladins? The first thing that comes to mind is "FoL spamming" because I'm a holy paladin. Whereas I do enjoy the incredible power of FoL spam, there's so much more to the paladin that I enjoy. They have the highest armor in the class, so even the healers are not squishy, granted the paladin doesn't downgrade armor. This, however, is another reason I like paladins. They can use any armor in the game that's not class-specific, so if those awesomely sexy Dragon-Quake Shoulderguards happens to drop and there are no shamans in the group, they're yours! As well, I love the hybrid factor they have. You can be healing today and tanking tomorrow, and even dpsing the next day (even though so many say that they can't. They can.) The buffs they give are some of the best, they have a great variety of buffs to benefit every class, every raid, just about every situation. They have 12 seconds of immunity, and can give others 10 seconds of physical immunity. The seal/judgment skills are not only extremely useful for a variety of situations, but they're also a great idea and can be a lot of fun. A slightly different look at the hybrid part of paladins is the shockadin spec. A shockadin truly deserves the title of the paladin: A holy warrior, able to smite enemies and heal allies.

And what about druids? Well, the hybrid part plays just as big a role here. On top of this, their feral spec is, in my opinion, the single greatest tree in the game. With some help from the restoration tree, you have a high-dps class and a great tanking class with one spec and two sets of armor. Druids also get to shapeshift. While this has its downs (there's no changing the appearance of your forms, so your level 10 bear and your SSC-tanking bear look exactly the same), it also has its ups, such as armor ambiguity. Great for pvp, as your opponents can't study your armor and know that you're in, say full vengeful. With every spec, you have something new to shapeshift into, be it moonkins or trees. Stealing Phealia's reason, druid healers are truly unique in the way they heal. I've never been one, but I'm always a fan of individuality, so it's definately a reason I like them. Lastly, instant shift into flight form. 'Nuff said. Continue reading 'BA Shared Topic: Enjoying Your Class'

The Hills Have Eyes

I was playing on my Troll Hunter the other day and I hit my map to see where I was going. It took me a few minutes to finally see it, but all of a sudden I saw the silhouette of a man's profile. Do you see it?

If you see ratchet, the bit of land just east of it and the shoreline leading north is the man's nose. The If you see the mountain range just south of my character cursor, directly west of that is the mouth (The man seems to be puckering up or something). The bottle necked area in southern barrens is the neck, and the somewhat wavy top where cartographer cuts off from Ashenvale is the hair.

Have you ever noticed anything like this in WoW?

Continue reading 'The Hills Have Eyes'

Blog Azeroth

In case you haven't heard already, there's a new place to be if you're a WoW Blogger, Blog Azeroth. It's a place for WoW Bloggers to go to talk to each other, introduce their sites, get information, help, suggestions, all sorts of fun stuff for a blogger to spend some time on. Even if you're not a blogger, but enjoy reading WoW blogs, it's worth looking at. Definately worth at least checking out, even if you don't think you'll be signing up. Continue reading 'Blog Azeroth'

Finally!

My druid got The Earthwarden today. Also, Pattern: Nethercleft Leg Armor. I am very happy. Continue reading 'Finally!'

Follow Up 2:Shockadins

Told you I'm forgetful, didn't I?

Here are some suggested builds for the three types of paladin healers.

Raid Healer

These are pretty much the talents you're really going to want to get as a raid healer. In the holy tree, most of it is self-explainatory. Intellect, more heals, higher crit, etc etc etc. Improved Lay on Hands is good in the last moments of a boss battle and you have no mana and no way of getting more. It will heal your MT for the total of your life (anywhere between, say, 5000 and 8000 for Karazhan) with a chance to crit, and it gives a major armor buff of 30% for 2 minutes. Unyielding faith isn't particularly necessary, but is the best option to progress further into the tree. It could save the team when your other healers are running around in circles.

In the protection tree, you have improved devotion aura for your tanks (even if you have a paladin tank, they usually don't get this in favor of better talents), Guardian's favor for a reduced cooldown on an aggro drop, and Blessing of Kings. Toughness is a filler. Many healing specs I see opt for redoubt over Improved Devotion, which I never really understood. Maybe all of the other holy paladins I've played with were really pvp specced and I never knew.

With your remaining eight talent points, you can pretty much do whatever you want with them.If you look at my current spec (subject to change), I chose Improved Blessing of Wisdom, Pure of Heart, and Blessed Life. I'm...not sure why. Improved BoW is nice - I believe it gives about 8 extra mp5 - but the others are far less useful. Few enemies curse the healer and I can dispel diseases. Blessed Life isn't even worth having. I'm considering switching over my three Blessed Life points and two of my Pure of Heart points over to Improved Blessing of Might. Since we have two Paladin tanks and a Retadin, I'll be able to bless everybody with my improved blessings while they salv/king/etc.

PvP Healer

A pvp healer has all of the same healing abilities of a raid healer with the exception of improved LOH since that's not usable in arena. Where to spend those extra points is what you want to consider now. Unyielding faith is a must for just about any pvper, Pure of heart is a filler that can help against warlocks.

In the protection tree, redoubt is generally taken over Improved Devotion since you're going to want Concentration Aura up most of the time anyway. It's not to say that redoubt will be very useful since you can't block while casting, but if your team is at full health and you have a warrior coming at you, it's better than five wasted points. Toughness is the next choice as, since you're in a pvp setting, you are going to be taking damage. The more armor you have, the less damage you take (Also note that, even though it's generally accepted to downgrade from plate in a raid setting, you DO NOT want to do this in pvp). Guardian's favor would be nice for the increased Blessing of Freedom time, but lack of points makes it hard to take. Blessing of Kings is generally the preffered buff in pvp and Righteous Fury gives you 6% less damage taken from all sources. Shield Spec is a filler, though one that may help on occasion (I'm not sure whether or not it would be more adventageous to take 1 point in Anticipation instead). Improved Concentration Aura is a must with its ability to reduce silence/interrupts by 30%. Stoicism is another good talent for pvp, but a lack of talent points makes it tough to get.

Shockadin Build

This is Popov's build. Under the holy tree, he has just enough points to get him down to Holy Guidance. Only one semi-filler I can see is Light's Grace, which can't even really be called such, since it will greatly increase your ability to heal. The lack of Blessed Life is something I would consider, as I personally feel that any pvp paladin that can get their hands on this should. I would probably switch the 3 points from Light's Grace over to Blessed Life.

Under retribution, there's really not much choice here, I don't think. As a shocky, you're going to be judging and sealing as often as possible, so benediction is the choice here. You're going to want to keep wisdom up on yourself anyway, as your focus is magical damage, and you'll likely need the extra mana regen. Improved Crusader and Judgments is a no-brainer, it gives you a lot of extra damage. The parry would be nice, though you really don't have room to get it. Vindication is incredible. It lowers your enemy's...everything. Any pvp paladin speccing into ret wants this. Pursuit of Justice is nice, as the speed increase helps you stay with your opponent since staying in melee range is important, and the lowered chance to get hit with spells is always a plus. Spells always hurt. A lot. Your seal of choice is Seal of Righteousness, so SoComm isn't needed, and your white damage won't be very high, so Conviction isn't worth it. Eye for an Eye forces a spellcaster to take heavy damage damage when they crit you. And the best part is, you can heal through it. Crusade gives you 2% more damage. You don't want a third point in it, because that last talent point needs to go into Sanctity Aura, increasing your effective damage by 10%. Continue reading 'Follow Up 2:Shockadins'