The Unspoken Rules of DI

Most raiders know of Divine Intervention, the paladin only spell that kills the user and places a bubble of immunity on the target. The target is immune to all damage but cannot move or cast anything until the buff wears off after 3 min or until they click it off themselves.

I actually leveled all the way to level 70 in TBC and as a fresh 70, I was talking to a fellow holy paladin about DI and how useless a spell it seemed to be. I remarked that what was the point of a spell that killed yourself and thought it was a very quirky spell.

I later discovered I was a noob.

My mistake in my first experience using DI was that I had targeted no one and therefore, I only killed myself with no discernible advantage. The whole point of DI is that it is a wipe saving mechanism. With that said, there is actually a whole art to using the spell.

PTR 3.2 - More adventures on the PTR

So I can see that my adventures on the PTR got quite a lot of attention and thank you all for commenting. =)

Now, it was my objective to really put myself in healing intense situations when I next logged on the PTR. It was then I discovered something about the PTR servers. Pugging is damn hard even with a much larger pool of puggers with higher gear level (via premades like mine). It doesn't stop people from dying to stupid stuff like void zones or flame walls. -.- It was one of the most difficult Sartharion 1D fights I ever had to heal through.

As you can see, I got more used to the changes but the entire raid took a crap ton of damage. I also think some of the healers weren't that good as some of them consistently ate flame walls. It seemed some of the puggers had no clue about the new T9 gear that they could buy so some of them were handicapped in comparison to me. (Note: I didn't bother censoring as I usually do because this is the PTR, not like it is live servers. If you were one of these puggers and want me to censor, I will gladly do so)

I'm just glad that I restructured my gear and I was almost full T9 or I wouldn't have been able to support my healing done. In general, I felt that haste was much more important than crit so I balanced my gear appropriately (I wasn't even close to 676 soft haste cap). In my opinion, paladins will have to settle for lower crit so they have more haste, spell power and mp5 as well as continuing to gem for maximum intellect. Mana regen is even more important than ever as spell power is easily gotten from the new gear.

PTR 3.2 - Initial Impression for Holy Paladins

I've never been on the PTR before but with the severe mana regen nerfs incoming to holy paladins, I knew that I wanted to experience for myself how bad the nerfs really were before passing judgement.

I wasn't able to copy over my main in time but a premade paladin character was successfully copied over. The paladin got a lot of sweet gear for all 3 specs for PVE with full sets of T8.5 and complete Deadly gear for PVP, pretty nice hook ups.

I wasn't completely happy with how the holy set for the premade paladin turned out but I got to see the Mimiron 25 trinket, score! With that said, the enchants for all the gear was pretty funny such as PVP res enchants for shoulders/head for PVE gear and really weird enchants for the tank set.

Screenshot Update

I've realized that many of my recent posts are long wordy blocks of text so I thought I would give my readers a bit of a break and post screenshots instead.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, no? I have to say I just have never been in the habit of taking screenshots though I should as they are the best way to document and relive moments past. Screenshots are the photograph of WoW and we should all be photographers =)

I've said before that my guild hasn't been doing so great in 25 mans due to the summer as we can barely get 2 raid days going let alone the 3 raid days that is our aim. Even so, we made significant progression in 10 man Ulduar. Though it may be because of some nerfs that we made headway, it is still a great feeling to progress.

Like an idiot, I didn't ss our Mimiron down but somehow I remembered to ss the cool gate we saw before we reached General. Oops =X

Paladins in the next patch

I know that there may be a little or a lot in store for us holy paladins in the next patch but we will see then how the upcoming changes to holy will really affect us. I just want to point out one little thing.

A new line of dailies and rewards for players who have earned the title of Crusader will be available with two random seal-awarding dailies.

• New Heirlooms
• New Argent Crusade Banner
• New Argent Crusade Tabard: Ports you directly to the Tournament grounds.
• An Upgraded Squire: As any good squire should, this upgraded squire now has a mount.
• New Mount: A new Argent Crusade paladin-only charger will be available.

Muhahaha, did you see it? I'll show you it again.

New Mount: A new Argent Crusade paladin-only charger will be available.

So do your Argent Tournament dailies and save your Champion Seals! I love being a paladin so much sometimes =D

P.S. I just realized something, paladins really did get the pony they wanted, didn't they? =X

Random Macros

There are many ways to heal, tank or DPS and it's up to the individual gamer to decide what kind of style of play they wish to utilize. One tool that helps players out are macros.

For me, I don't use many macros at all and prefer to manually click things or just press keyboard keys/key binds. The few macros I have are based off of basically 2 macro commands. I shall now teach this to you =)

/cast [insert spell name here]

/castsequence [spell 1, spell 2]

So simple, yeah? So for the /cast command, I use that when I want to combine using a spell/ability with a simple /say or /party or /raid or /rw or one or more of the above to announce its usage. If it is a spell that is cast on someone, I use %t in my announcement message so that whoever I am targetting at the time I use the macro will be announced as the target. Then the macro becomes:

/cast [spell]
/say [spell] used on %t


In addition, if you don't want to pick a completely new icon for the macro for your action bar when you first create the macro, just pick the question mark as the icon. This way it automatically makes the macro pick the normal icon of the spell that you use. If you want to mouseover your macro button and see the tool tip, which will help you see the CD too, insert this snippet above the beginning of the macro in the macro input box, like so:

Raiding Limbo

Just random thoughts I am jotting down so they jump around alot.

My guild is having trouble raiding 2 nights a week, let alone 3 nights a week. That means no progression at all. Maybe it is summer fever? Whatever it is, it is frustrating. My guild is definitely better than our previous guild but not by much, honestly.

Our guild definitely needs serious work on its healing core as I regularly outheal our shamans and resto druids in Ulduar. By alot. I heal to the point where there are some fights I nearly oom and have to pop my trinket, DP, Arcane Torrent, mana pot, everything to get all the mana I need to continue healing.

My guild has officers that are mostly friends and there is a long history behind the guild as it existed in Pre-BC days then broke up and reformed in WotLK. There is some obvious biases at hand here as certain events in game have allowed me to see. I know attitude is a big part of being a raider but I do not think that just because someone is a friend that you should be happy that they take the nearly BIS cloak off Sartharion 2D as the only non-guildie in raid.

In other news, I started leveling my priest alt and she is level 33! I also am going to try to level my DK so I can level up BS and quit mining on my paladin.

I am nervous about what 3.2 holds in store for holy paladins but I think that GC finally realizes that paladins are not requesting a nerf to our mana regen in any way. I think he sees that us paladins are merely pointing out that the mp5 on gear is laughable compared to the mp5 we get from stacking intellect. Hopefully, paladins do not get nerfed TO THE GROUND. *crossing fingers*

P.S. Instead of keeping my ulduar gear lists up to date, I've made an actual gear list as you can see it in the tabs under "Gear List" I know that it lacks any commentary but I hope it is still helpful!

Pally Tanking 101

Hey all, I thought I would take a break from all the Holy paladin centric posts to write a bit about tanking as a paladin. I have had experience tanking as a prot pally early on in the expansion along with in TBC mostly in heroics. I was actually the OT when me, my bf and our irl friends were all wiping in 10 man Naxx trying to get KT down (usually because we would hit enrage timers). Remember those days?

Anyway, I know there is a TON of great prot pally resources out there that any aspiring paladin tank can look up so my goal is NOT to replicate that. I just want this post to kind of be a very simple, easy guide to prot paladin tanking as I am not a great paladin tank by any means.

So here goes!

I. Spec & Glyphs

I have just listed some preliminary specs I made up but feel free to tweak them however you see fit. I will make a comment though as to why there is only one point in Improved Judgements. This is due to the optimal tanking rotation called the 969 rotation and having 2 points in Improved Judgements will throw it off.

MT / 5 man Heroics: this or this
OT: Example here

Anonymity as a WoW Blogger

Everyone seems to be blogging about a certain scandal about a certain paladin blogger. I'll give you a hint - it's not me. I'm going to assume everyone knows what I am talking about as it is the talk of the WoW blogosphere right now. I am not going to pass judgment or talk about the scandal.

Instead, I want to talk about how I present myself on the internet.

As all of my precious readers know, I am basically anonymous on this blog. I really don't think I've slipped up much or dropped many hints at all as to the name of my WoW character, server or guild. I really really strive to be anonymous. This is in direct opposition to all other WoW blogs I have encountered so far.

Why is it important that WoW bloggers identify themselves and present themselves honestly? Is there a stigma to being anonymous?

I find there to be much more benefit being an anonymous blogger compared to being out there in the open. Though there are drawbacks to both methods of course.

I. Advantages of Anonymous Blogging

• No trolls can find you on your server
• You can speak honestly without retribution from people that may follow you on your server and know exactly who or what you are speaking about, thus avoiding e-drama
  
• Your real life information will be harder to discover unless you, yourself, volunteer said information
• You will not be subject to "lol @ your arena" or "lol @ your gear" comments people tend to get when they post on their mains in the WoW forums
  

II. Disadvantages of Anonymous Blogging

• Anonymous or not, there will be trolls or disrespectful fools
  
• People may think you are talking out your ass - "post on your main" syndrome
• You have to be careful and censor yourself or you might drop too many clues
• You can't tell your friends about your blog unless you really trust them
  

I guess this is my choice to make and I hope all of you respect my need for anonymity even if you disagree with the reasons for it. So far, I've been pretty happy about my choice and maybe in the future I may reveal myself but I don't think that is likely.