Blizzard FTL

I don't think any class/spec in the history of WoW has ever been nerfed this bad, or at least sunk to the depths that we have in terms of PVE.

PVP wise, I don't care if we are good because my bread and butter is PVE raiding. 

We won't be fixed by Blizzard, maybe a tiny buff but make us actually raid healing viable and fixing our glaring weaknesses? No way.

Blizzard hates holy paladins. I've said it before and people always scoff at it but I don't see how it can't not be true.

I have other alts now that I may level but my holy paladin is my beloved main. I am sure I am not the only one that feels that way, invested the time and thinks the same way I do. It is just plain sad to see how badly my class/spec is being treated.

To all those people at Blizzard responsible for destroying the beloved spec/class of so many people, I hope karma gets you all.

P.S. People that say holy paladins are fine, you really don't know what you are talking about because no healing class should require a "rotation" to heal. We are not fucking DPS. The current healing model for us has nothing to do with "adjusting" but actual problems with mechanics, HPS and abilities.

Stars H LK Kill

Stars 3 Healed HM LK with a Holy paladin, Holy priest and Disc priest. No mana tide totems! Seriously full of respect for this holy paladin in terms of their mana management skills. I've done some HM LK attempts and I hate how low my mana goes.



I have A LOT of real life stuff going on so my posts are going to be ultra sporadic. Just warning you guys.

Please Get Authenticators

We always hear about it but never think it will touch our little world. Well, it does.What am I talking about?

Getting hacked.

It is the single worst thing that can happen to a WoW player 's account because you lose everything that you have invested in your hobby. On top of the time, gold, gear and other materials that is stolen; you lose the feeling of control, trust and good will.

No, I haven't been hacked but some people in my guild have and the ones that hit home were my 2 WoW friends, one I knew irl.

The worst part of it all is that the 2 WoW friends that got hacked, they really had no reason to have gotten hacked. They don't buy gold or surf the internet much. The only thing they didn't have were authenticators.

As targets, they were paydirt in the amount of damage the hacking caused them.

Legendary Drama

Ever since this orange mace came out with Ulduar, it's always been the subject of much debate.

• Who's gonna get it?
• How do we decide who gets it?
  
• Is it worth it?
• Can we make it?
• Why didn't so-and-so get it?
• Do we really have to farm it?

When Ulduar was the biggest, baddest instance out there - there was no question about it, you had to farm the legendary or try to if your progression wasn't up there.

Now that there are two raid instances out above Ulduar's loot level, many people even question the worth of a legendary mace's presence in the raid. There is a tremendous time involved to farm the necessary amount of shards on top of the needing to be in a guild able to kill Yogg Saron to make the mace.

This is even harder when you take into account all the different raids one can complete in the week that all give out item level loot equivalent or higher than that or 25 man Ulduar.

And on top of that, all heroics reward Triumph Emblems, which can buy 245 item level gear. Though some guild's like Larisa's don't mind farming it even now, many guilds have members that are unwilling to farm it or go back to Ulduar.

So with all that in mind, why is it that people still get mad over who gets the shards?

Raid Optimization for Holy Paladins

I always felt that speccing, gearing and gemming a holy paladin is pretty straight forward. We had only a few spells and it is absurdly easy to pick up how to heal on a holy paladin due to our small toolbox of direct healing spells.

The true mastery of the holy paladin I feel comes with learning the tricks of the trade and managing the CDs, ensuring you can pump out the healing numbers as well as keeping on top of mana regen - just like every other class.

I really believe that half of the holy paladin's ability to perform in raids is preparation, even more so than other healing classes. You have to gem right, gear right, talent right and glyph right. This is because of the weird dichotomy of our healing arsenal - a big, inefficient heal or a small, efficient heal - so we must optimize for usage of 1 spell over the other (though not used to all exclusion). The other half of the equation is execution, which takes practice depending on the difficulty of the fight along with experience to get a hang of healing.

So here I am, reading Rhidach's post about this site called Armory Datamining. I like these types of websites because they tend to compile information in WoW in a different way, revealing things that are new or from a different angle.

Anyway, I went to look at the holy paladin data, expecting there not to be much deviation. Lo and behold, I was wrong.

I may be presumptive but I really want anyone reading this that is not preparing properly as a holy paladin to sit up and take notice! There is leeway if you want to do things differently but there is still such a thing as wrong gems/glyphs/talents/etc for holy paladins to do! So here is my little troubleshooting attempt.

BS/JC Gemming

This is something I have never understood. Perhaps I am doing it wrong but...

A lot of Holy paladins are BS/JC understandably for the JC gems + 2 extra BS slots. However, why is it whenever I see BS/JC, they always seem to put the JC gems in random slots?

For me, I like to always put my 3 JC only Dragon's Eye gems (usually Brilliant) in the 3 extraneous BS slots:

1. Belt Buckle
2. Bracer Socket
3. Glove Socket

Why you ask? Well, I like to switch out gear a lot depending on the fight. If I have a set socket that my JC only gem is always in then I know that no matter what gear I switch in and out. It will never interfere with my Dragon's Eye gem! That way I won't be limited in gear combinations just because of either too little or too many JC only gems.

It also makes no sense for the JC only gem to be put into a colored socket because most holy paladins (HL ones, of course) ignore socket color to just do all Brilliant + Nightmare Tear. Even so, FoL paladins can still benefit from this gemming method.

Maybe HL paladins have gotten lazy and just wear one set of gear no matter what. Well, all I have to say to that is...

Don't be lazy!

VDW needs separate gearing/gemming. No, it is not for epeen because the faster VDW gets healed up, the better for the raid! There are also other fights in ICC that I use FoL gear or you may just want to mix up some different types of gear to increase haste or mp5 or what not. Gemming in this fashion makes gearing a lot more flexible!

If you're like me, I have a hard time letting go of gear because I'm always like, well I could use for this and that, etc. I always try to get the most mileage out of my gear.

What do you guys think?

JC in Cataclysm

I am like most other paladins a BS/JC, which I really believe has been the best combination so far. The fact that I actually wear plate is just a perk.

It's funny because in TBC I used to be Mining/JC simply because I wanted to be able to level up JC while leveling. I never min/maxed in TBC. I only finally dropped Mining in WotLK after Ulduar and power leveled BS so I could stack more int after the great nerf of 3.2 for holy pallies.

So I have always been a JC and now more recently a BS, in terms of being a crafter for professions. The funny thing is the only reason why I wanted to be a JC in TBC was because it was the "new" profession of the expansion, just like how belfs were the "new" race of TBC.

Yes, I am a very silly holy pally. Ahh, the days of noob-dom. =P

So talking about trends in TBC, in WotLK, the "new" has become pervasive and completely ubiquitous.

Of course, JC being such a dominant profession is backed up by its very nice benefits.

• Flexibility - You know how engineering usually better for PVPers and maybe some classes in PVE? JC is beneficial to everyone, regardless of their class/role or PVE/PVP because it stacks more of the stats you want
• Customization - Enchanting is a lucrative profession and it's nice to easily enchant anything but the rings only enchant AP, SP or stam, which are nice but not as customizable as the JC only gems with stats that you can stack such as res, spirit, strength, armor pen, etc.
• Money making potential - Even if you don't sell gems or cuts, you still do the JC daily!

JC wasn't always this nice, so I really hope they don't make it the "worst" profession in Cataclysm to make up for its popularity in WotLK. Even so, I still would like to stick with JC at the very least as one of my 2 professions in Cataclysm.

Right now, I'm really happy with what I have heard so far about JC in Cataclysm. No danger signals (yet).

According to MMO Champion:

• New Jewelcrafting dailies will be introduced.
• Many cuts are being added to support the new Mastery stat.
• Some new Cataclysm jewelry recipes have completely random properties, and can sometimes create superior and epic versions.
• Jewelcrafters will have some fun new (and potentially lucrative) vanity items, including fist weapons, rhinestone sunglasses, monocles, and stardust (sprinkle on players for entertainment).

Hahaha, completely makes JC all worth it for me!

Since Blizzard is cracking down on the NDA stuff, I guess we won't be hearing too much about Cataclysm, which means not much about the content is too spoiled. I just hope we can hear enough about the game play and class changes to give constructive feedback to Blizzard. I think everyone is at "wait and see" in regards to the 10 versus 25 man raid changes.

Crossing fingers! Till next time!

Before Cataclysm Comes!

Everyone is talking about Cataclysm but I don't really want to get too much in the know because I still remember questing in Howling Fjord and just enjoying it so much! Everything was so new and it was just like "wooooowwww" to me so I want to be able to experience that again in Cataclysm. I was such a tourist and I unashamedly loved it!

Anyway, people may have started to lose interest in WoW due to the end of the expansion coming up and summertime fever but I have a bunch of things I still want to do before Cataclysm comes out. I have no clue if I will get to everything but I will certainly try.

1. Get over 9000 achievement points - I am around 8400 achievement points atm.
2. Get a Solace trinket to play around with
3. Get a new weapon! And a whole bunch of other gear on my list
4. Complete ToGC 25 - all I have left is Anub'arak
5. Level an alt to 80. Currently, my DK is at 70 and my priest is in her 40s so we'll see which one is going to hit 80 first! =X
6. Get maxed mining on one of my alts.
7. Try to complete the legendary. This is likely going to stay a dream. I actually have a better chance of getting Shadow's Edge than getting the legendary T.T (I already have the 2 quest items)
8. Aim for the Ironbound Protodrake!
9. Maybe the 10 man Frostwyrm? Likely another pipedream as I don't do 10 mans regularly enough =(
10. Hit 100k gold on my paladin for Cataclysm (only 50k right now).
11. Freaking kill Archimonde! (Only TBC raid boss I have NOT killed)
12. Get a bridle for my squire! 
13. See 25 man Algalon and try to kill him! 
14. Get exalted with Consortium and Lower City 
15. Get Loremaster before Azeroth gets destroyed

What is your to-do list?

Interesting Statistics to Me about Me

Matticus recently did a post about his "Surprise Statistics" so it made me take a closer look at my own. So yes, this post is going to be about me. All about me. Me, me, me! =P

I'm not going to post everything but numbers that I've pruned that I thought was interesting. Hopefully I don't get carried away but knowing me, that is likely =P

You have been warned!

By the way, follow my twitter if you want me in small doses =P

Here we go!

Combat
Largest hit received: 31,286

This is such a lie! I think this just means they don't count the overkill portion so if you get one shot by something, it just registers as your hp at the time.

Largest heal cast: 2,459,898

Where the heck is this from??

Total healing done: 4,167,510,604

Holy crap, I've done a lot of healing in my WoW "career" =X especially when compared to my damage done (888,519,041)

Why 25 man raids man may still be better in Cataclysm

 The WoW blogosphere had been pretty quiet as of late I felt but today, wow! A flurry of posts suddenly!

I know, I know, everyone has been buzzing over Blizzard's huge announcement today about 10 and 25 man raids dropping the same loot in Cataclysm.

People have been making the same points, all equally valid, about why 10 man raids will overtake 25 man raids, especially since 10/25 mans will now share the same lockout.

1. Easier organization
2. Intimacy & sense of comaderie
3. Less logistics
4. Less people necessary
5. Casual friendly

It seems the entire blogosphere has collectively agreed that 10 mans will be much more attractive in 25 man raids. Yet I want to throw an idea out there.

I think Blizzard is amp-ing up to make an announcement for Cataclysm that will make 25 man raids more attractive than 10 man raids.

Far fetched? I think not, it really feels to me that Blizzard is setting the stage for something. And what is that something? Here goes...

Gamers Can Save the World & Why I Rant

A 20 min long video talking about the possibility of gaming being directed towards saving the world.

IRL.

Interesting concept, don't you think?

Also in regards to my previous post, I get that people think I am being whiny about the prospective changes when nothing is set in stone yet BUT I do think the points I make are still valid and I hope they (along with other people's feedback) are being considered by Blizzard for Cataclysm.

Holy Paladins Fall By Wayside Again in Cataclysm

Healing Hands, the new aoe healing spell for holy paladins in Cataclysm, sucks in its current rendition. Combine that with the planned nerf to Beacon, holy paladins are going to be underpowered, AGAIN.

Thanks Blizz. I know you hate paladins for real now.

Reasons Why Healing Hands SUCK

1. Short range - described like a healing totem and conjecture has been the range is real short. On top of that, it depends on where the casting paladin is standing so our movement/placement is key. Yet, we are one of the least mobile healing classes! WTH, Blizz?!
   
2. Short duration, long CD - It lasts 6 seconds with 15 second CD. So how effective can paladins really be as raid healers then? Sure we have DSac too but so do ret/prot! Why would raid leaders feel compelled to bring holy paladins to the raid?? HL + glyph is better in this regard since there is no CD associated with it.
   
3. Not spec dependent - Correct me if I am wrong but aren't all the paladin specs receiving this? It should scale best as holy but why are prot/ret allowed to aoe heal too? Ret also has Divine Storm so now they have TWO aoe heals. This seems a bit overpowered for PVP purposes as well.
4. Self only - Healing hands basically makes the casting paladin a "beacon of light" (hehe) so fights that means the raid must all spread out, too bad sucker! Also, unless the entire raid stays in 1 spot, our "aoe" healing spell will never be able to hit the entire raid yet the traditional raid healing classes are getting spells that hit the entire raid!

April Fool's Day

It's April Fool's Day today but it is also 3 years together today too =)

Here is to 2 fools in love <3

Weapon Enchants in Cataclysm

Every single healer I know has the same weapon enchant and for good reason, 63 SP is nothing to scoff at for any healer. However, there is 1 crucial element lacking in this enchant.

NOT ENOUGH SPARKLIES!

Blizzard, give us back our sparkly weapons! Make them glow for real again, so people know that we mean business. We're healers, we should glow because we're full of healing thingies!

Every one raids for epic pixels but I don't understand why in WotLK, Blizzard choose to take away one of the perks to getting epics. The whole magpie effect of the sparkly goodness!

Compare TBC enchants with WotLK enchants, luminosity dropped by a ton! I mean, even +2 beastslaying has a glow for crying out loud! How can that look more uber than +63 SP? Mind boggling!

Ditch the subtle, make it loud and obvious!

Cataclysm, bling bling sparkly weapons. Make it happen!

P.S. Yay for new Header! My gear was really outdated in the old header image =X

PVP Progression

In season 7 when I first started doing arena much more consistently than in the past and even so, on a pretty casual basis, I was only able to reach the 1900s bracket. The Relentless shoulders eluded me despite me wanting the pretty shoulders so I could match!

This season in S8, I am happy to report I have finally been able to get the Wrathful shoulders! My next goal is 2200 rating! The weapon at 2200 is so tasty! I actually use my 1800 weapon to PVE raid so a 2200 weapon would be great!

I originally played Ele/Hpally/warr in S7 and then my boyfriend decided he wanted to be enhance so we went to enh/Hpally/warr in S7. The switch didn't work out as well because he was much squishier as enhance.

The weird thing about my boyfriend is that despite his mage being his main, he actually likes to play melee classes more. So with the enhance shaman set up not working out as well, he decided to level a DK so we could play TSG.

Keep in mind, all these switches were done in S7!! And people say girls can't make up their minds! Well, to be fair, he didn't switch to his DK just yet but his decision to do so was made in S7 but he used the transition period between S7 and S8 to gather the gear to be arena ready.

As for me, transitioning from ele/h. pally/warr to enh/h. pally/warr and finally, TSG, it took me a bit. This is because the pace of the arena matches change drastically.

Suggestions for Cataclysm

Now that the Lich King is out and with guilds actively working on Heroic mode Lich King in 25s, people are starting to look ahead with more urgency towards the impending Cataclysm release. We have already been hearing rumors and tidbits for weeks now. The complete overhaul of stats, talents and class balance changes stand to reinvent WoW for the 3rd time over.

The question is: Will WoW players like it?

Everyone and their mother have their own opinion on what types of changes should be made and what should not change. Here is my take on it, though for holy paladins since that is the particular class I am concerned with =P

Healing Valithria Dreamwalker

When I first heard about this fight before ICC came out, I was super excited. OMG, a fight where you have to heal the boss to full instead?! Cool!!!

I felt like this is something that is really fun and new for healers. Now that VDW is out and available for those that clear Lower Spire, I have to say it is an interesting experience.

I had a lot of fun doing it the first time around but after a while, it actually got a little un-fun (yes, I know that is not a real word).

Why?

I know that there are always healers that care a little too much about where they are on the charts but this is actually the one fight where healers need to care about their numbers. Plus, you have limited resources (aka clouds) that healers can jostle over in order to make their green numbers bigger. This is a completely different mind set than I am used to for healing.

When I raid, I am not concerned about my pretty green numbers to the point where I have all my healing combat text turned off. That is because I have a really good idea of how much my FoL, HS and HL will heal for in general.

I also tend to only worry about CDs in the context of mana management.

That is all completely changed in the VDW fight.

Despite how they tried to disguise it, VDW is still at heart a DPS race. Instead of DPS though, it is HPS we have to worry about and there is no real enrage timer though the raid may get overwhelmed by adds over time.

For healers that are to heal VDW and go in to the portal, their main concern is to grab clouds that will stack the Emerald Vigor buff. The problem is that it is very possible to "steal" clouds from other healers if they happen to be going for the same cloud and they were a little slower.

Even worse is that it could potentially have screwed over their stack timing and thus lowered their HPS. Unless of course you are going to have all the healers get stacks together but you are still jockeying for portal spawns, which are subject to RNG that can be frustrating.

In short, it is hard for team work to take place when everyone is fighting over limited resources.

Even so, I have some tips for healing this fight as a holy paladin that may make HPS output a bit easier. Hope it helps! (I still don't have Portal Jockey! I don't get it, I've been trying to make sure I go into every portal!! WTH!)

Bitten Achievement

So according to Bornakk...

Dammit, why do you change this after I could have gotten the 10 man achievement??!

Damn it.

Going to have to wait till next reset for the 10 man one.

And yes, I know my recent posts are short and sweet but I'll have a long properly spicy one for you soon. I hope =X

Till next time!

Lich King Weapons

Woot! According to MMOChampions, Arthas crit/mp5 mace becoming crit/haste, which is a BIG improvement imo!

What's up with Blizz letting the Koreans have the scoop? I want their forum moderators... =T

I'm assuming this change will happen to all the crit/mp5 maces form 10/25 normal and hard.

I'm guessing they wanted to avoid another Turning Tide debacle, where holy paladins' BIS was the BIS of mages and locks.

Stalking Feeds

Been so obsessed with Armory and WoW-heroes recently =X

Here's a screenshot of mine

It's so addicting with the new activity feed! Satisfying my stalker urges.

You have people you like to keep tabs on?

Commenting Courtesy

Hi all!

Though I am a very inconsistent blogger, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my 5 man healing post was very well received and linked on WoW Insider to boot!

I figured it out when I came on my website one day to see 10 new comments on the post when I'm lucky to get 1 or 2 on a post. One of these comments came from an infamous blogger.

Said blogger's comment consisted of only an url linking to their version of a 5 man healing guide. I can appreciate people having their own guides but why can't it come with a little comment such as "oh, I covered this and that in my guide that you didn't, here is the link" rather than just posting the link.

I found this comment somewhat rude but I thought it would be ruder to just delete the comment without explaining the reason even though I have had my disclaimer on commenting on this site for quite a while now.

As a fairly inconsistent blogger, my blog is fairly susceptible to random comments by bots or random people trying to drive traffic to their site. Even though said blogger might not have been trying to drive the huge spike of WoW Insider readers to their blog, it really was just intolerable to me that they posted only a link of their post without even bothering to state their intentions behind it.

Healing 5 mans as a Holy Paladin

I think that playing a holy paladin for as long as I have, I take for granted how new holy paladins have to deal with 5 man dungeons. If I think back on it, when I was first leveling to 80 and trying to heal dungeons with 16k mana and 1500 SP, it was difficult to say the least.

For a freshly dinged 80 paladin, it's even harder to heal heroics especially since you are more vulnerable to any fail/noob players in the group. Yet, what can you do? With patch 3.3, heroics are a necessity to grind for Emblem of Triumph so you can buy the gear you need to be able to get a start on raiding.

I'm assuming that your glyphs/spec are right for the task at hand. With that in mind, here are some tips for healing 5 man heroics.

Ferraro Revealed!

Many of you probably know of Ferraro, author of blog Paladin Schmaladin. There was a lot of drama surrounding that site as it became known that Ferraro had been posting pics of another person without permission and passing it off as themselves. Then when confronted about it, Ferraro admitted to the farce and then further revealed that she/he was the 7th in a long line of Ferraro's ala the Dread Pirate Roberts in the Princess Bride (book/movie), which is also debated if that is true. This is a rough summary and I'm sure I missed many details of the whole debacle.

The Ferraro facade, TechDarling

So basically, all this drama caused so much controversy but Ferraro continues to blog (after coming back from quitting blogging when the drama broke out) as well as adding more bloggers on board his/her site. I'm sure many paladins have been helped out by his/her website, much as I have been too. Ferraro is a prolific blogger and is intensely interested in the paladin class as proven by the many varied posts on the blog.

As an anonymous blogger myself, I wouldn't want to out any one that chooses to blog anonymously. However, Ferraro has chosen to out him/her self.

I have no clue how long this has been up but I guess since WoW Armory was revamped as there is now an armory link for a holy paladin on the side, which I assume is Ferraro #7 =P

I am not sure why Ferraro has decided to do this now and apparently, without much fanfare or comment from his/her readers. It just makes me curious.

Anatomy of WoW Raiding

So yes, I have been away for a while but I've just been raiding and percolating ideas. On the drama front, my guild has been relatively quiet, something I definitely appreciate! However, that makes for less writing material. As for general holy paladin discussion, I'm not completely confident but I have some ideas forming.

Anyway, this is just a post to share this wonderful pic that made me LOL IRL from cracked.com

Enjoy!

Till next time!