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.

The Dilemma of Holy Paladins

So some of you may be wondering what crawled into my pants and died from my previous post.

Well, basically Ghostcrawler got this bright idea that paladins should want mp5 and actively try to stack it as their mana regen. In short, he wants to mess around with the foundations of what makes a holy paladin tick JUST so we won't bitch and complain about the poorly itemized gear (mp5 heavy) in Ulduar (the T8 bonus is still shat, no matter what, compared to T7).

Why am I so mad that Ghostcrawler is mucking around with paladins? There are a couple reasons.

One has to do with the spells that paladins must use to heal and that we are the ONLY healer class STUCK as single target healers. Another reason is to do with the large contrast between our 2 main spells in terms of effectiveness (HPS) and efficiency (mana cost). Another important reason is how our mana regen works despite the claims of Ghostcrawler to the contrary. Lastly, mp5 is an archaic stat that has lousy lousy scaling but is being foisted on us. I will elaborate further on each of these points and then you'll know why I think Ghostcrawler is a f*cking ignoramus.

WARNING LONG WORDY POST AHEAD!

I. How Paladins Heal

Paladins only have ONE way of healing, single target direct heals. We have no AOE heals, no HOTs or smart heals. Anytime we land a heal is usually a result of a conscious decision on our parts to target and cast a spell.

We have 3 spells in our arsenal, which are Flash of Light (FoL), Holy Shock (HS) and Holy Light (HL). HS is on a 6 second CD (or 5 if you glyph for it) and is instant cast but is very mana inefficient as well as unreliable since it is on a CD. That leaves FoL and HL.

Upcoming Changes to Holy Paladins?

This comment by Alcara from Sisters of Elune (US) summarizes exactly how I feel about the potential changes to Illumination as proposed by Ghostcrawler.

Maybe some of you other healing classes out there don't sympathize, well screw you! You are the f**king ponies. Rest of you commiserate with my QQ as this quaint little tale aptly illustrates... T.T

Long ago, in the magic land of ponies, there was a donkey named Ruprict.
Ruprict was kind of strange, because he was a donkey and he lived in a land full of ponies. The ponies could all do great things: some of them could run very fast; some could jump great distances; some could even fly!


Ruprict couldn't do any of those things, and sometimes the ponies made fun of him. But the one thing Ruprict could do better than any of the ponies; he could run for a long, long time. This made all of the fast, jumping, flying ponies jealous, because although they were all very special in their own way, the[y] didn't like how a donkey could do something better than them.


So, even though Ruprict sometimes wished that he could run slightly faster, or jump a little higher, or even just glide a little bit, he was still happy, because he was special.


Then a mean crab came along and pinched Ruprict really hard, just above his hoof! Oh, how it hurt! (the crab was later trampled to death by the ponies, but that's a different story)


From then on, Ruprict couldn't run very far anymore. In fact, he could only run as far as the fast, jumping, flying ponies! Then the ponies became especially mean, because now they could do everything as well as poor Ruprict, and many other special things as well!


Unfortunately, there is no happy ending to this story. Poor Ruprict no longer had a place in the magic land of ponies, and left. (Ultimately, all of the ponies choked on their own vomit and died; but that, too, is a different story)
THE END

WTF Blizzard! Sure, make paladins more fun to play but why does that mean you have to freaking break us in half to get there?

Patch 3.1.2: Equipment Manager

We just got a new patch and the equipment manager that we were supposed to get in patch 3.1 is finally here. I tested it out on my alt and it seems straightforward to use.

To enable it, you go to your interface options and underneath the controls, you check off the very last box that says "Use Equipment Manager." With that option checked on, in your character sheet will be a new icon in the upper right hand corner. For those that use outfitter, this icon will be underneath the outfitter icon so you must disable it to access the in-game equipment manager.

When you click on said icon, you will see empty boxes. Each box basically represents a potential item set you can save as an outfit. Just equip what you would like to save as an outfit and click save. You will then be able to name the outfit and choose an icon for this outfit. The first few icons that appear will be those in your outfit for easier identification.

As a basic equipment manager, the Blizzard in-game option is quick and easy but I find the fact that you must access it from the character info sheet to be annoying. With that said, I dislike Outfitter's automatic equipping of certain item sets though that can be disabled. However, Outfitter allows you to have all your outfits on a bar that you can click without accessing the character sheet. In my eyes, this makes Outfitter a better option as it offers slightly more versatility.

Then again, it's up to you guys to decide.

Can't Login

Login servers are down =( I was stuck at authenticating for 30 minutes... I wouldn't mind so much if I didn't have to worry about raid in like 15 minutes when invites go out. I really hope this gets fixed soon!

New Best in Slot Option

So I recently received a troll comment about the layout of my site. Funnily enough, I had already planned a best in slot post to be maintained as new gear came out if that is what he had wanted.

In the future, if you want to use my site as a guide for a holy paladin and you want to be rude about it, I would like it very much if you just refrain from commenting because this site is done on my free time and I write how I want to write.

Of course, making it easy for my readers is a concern of mine but I am not interested in pandering to trolls. All I hear is "wah, wah, wah - I'm reading this site but it's not adhering to my exact specifications and it's their fault because the world must cater to my every whim! WAHHHH~" STFU

*shakes head in disbelief*

BTW, for all of you non-crying readers, I have made a BIS gear guide and located in one of the tabs below the banner. Enjoy!

PS I have also posted more on my character's actual stats as listed in Armory along with my current gear under the My Character tab under the banner.

Screenshot Update

I haven't had the desire to post recently since a lot of real life issues came up along with in game. Our guild has been trying to get our 3rd raid night going but so far the 3rd night has been used to farm 25 man Naxx on mostly guild runs with a few puggers.

As a guild, I feel our progression has been good but outside of our 2 raid nights on Tuesday and Thursday, most people will not sign on so we have basically no 10 man runs going on and if there are, we can only do them for 1 day if we even have the right people on. As a casual guild, we are really well off but with Ulduar out, those that are poor raiders really look all the more poorer in the new content.

Anyway enough of that, I'm going to make this a pretty fluffy post today since I don't have the concentration to do the intellect for paladin post I had been planning. So screenshots galore coming right up!

On my server Horde side, there is only 1 guild that has cleared Yogg Saron I believe (with a 2nd guild working on it) and I had the pleasure of seeing the hilariously freaky looking T8 rogue helm. This screenshot fails to capture the kookiness of the new T8 helm.

Legendary Fragment & Drama

Sorry for the lengthy vacation. I really haven't felt like posting to be honest. This is a really wordy post so... =T

So yesterday my guild downed 25 man Emalon, Flame Leviathan, Ignis, Razorscale, XT-002 and Iron Council. We took a bit of time to get Iron Council or we'd have gotten down Kologarn as well so I think we performed relatively well.

Just that off of Ignis, our first shard of the legendary mace dropped. I had no clue how it would be decided but it potentially was a hot button issue due to the healer make up of the guild.

As a guild, we recently lost 1 of our 2 holy priests and they were the more senior of the 2 to another guild though she raided with us still on her resto shaman. Then the day before the raid, she also left that shaman too. She was definitely one of the top healers in the guild but as she had been hospitalized for approximately a month, she was basically far behind in the line for consideration to receive the legendary. However, she rendered all this moot since she is not in guild anymore. I just hope she is happy where she is now.