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.

Pugging 10 man Sarth 3D (Zerg)

This is a very old unpublished post (at least 2 months old) that I dug up. I just thought that I should finally publish it since I did make the effort to write it.

I still don't have the 25 man Sarth 3D achievement as of this writing. I still want it. I remember back then, our guild went through a lot of pain trying to get it but certain key figures really held us back. So painful.

Any horror stories?
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Ever since MMO-Champion linked the Russians zerging 10 man Sartharion 3D, puggers went wild with excitement as the zerg method trivialized a raid instance that had up till then been regarded as highly tuned.

With that said, even though the strategy has become much simpler, it does not mean that 10 man 3D zerg is easily puggable.

How to be a Tank Loved by Healers

Many of us interact with tanks on a daily basis in WoW. Either they are tanking for you in raids or heroics. They are either pugged or guildies or friends. Yet all of them need the back up of very special people in order for them to bask in the glory of being a tank - healers.

As healers, tanks can abuse us until we call it quits but if you want to be a tank loved by healers, there are some very simple guidelines to follow.

1. Don't be squishy - Are you at the defense cap? That's a start. Get some dodge, parry or whatever the hell mitigation stat you need so you don't blow up when you get hit. Oom healer = stressed healer = pissed off healer.
2. Give us some leeway - You can have all the mitigation in the world but it won't matter to us if your HP is 20k. We need some breathing room in case you take a big hit and we're not busy praying our heal lands in time before you take another big hit and hit the floor.
3. Do your job - You can have the best HP and mitigation but that doesn't mean anything if you can't hold threat. If healers get heal aggro doing their jobs and die, it's your fault and good luck finding healers willing to heal you. If you're not going to do your job right, then healers don't need to do their jobs for you.
4. Don't make us carry you - Many times, bosses have predictable abilities that do a lot of damage. If it involves causing the tank a crap ton of damage, don't just expect us to heal through it, blow some tanking CDs to help us a bit because most likely the entire party or raid will be taking damage too that we need to heal up.
5. Position yourself right - Don't LoS us! Don't OOR us! Don't tank with your back facing the mob! Don't stand in crap! Etc, etc.
6. Give us our due - Sure, you are a good tank but remember tanks have a symbiotic relationship with healers, so don't forget to give us a nod or some type of acknowledgment. Our job is thankless enough already.
7. Suck up to us - If you really want brownie points, flattery works best. Bribing too =) This way you get your own pocket healer whenever you need one. Hey, works out to the benefit of both parties, right?

Anyway, a lot of this is common knowledge but I'll be damned if I don't come across tanks (especially pugged ones) that flout these guidelines regularly.

Share some of your tanking horror or glory stories in the comments! Till next time!

How Not to Pug

So even though I raid with my guild for 25 mans, when it comes to 10 mans, we have a lot of choices. We can run with guild or set up our own groups. As for me, though I really want the title, "The Undying," and I have been invited to guild runs to attempt this - I still have to pug. Why?

Well, basically to make a long story short, all of our WoW friends got separated into different guilds. There are 6 of us and if you do the math, 6 people a 10 man does not make =X

Therefore, we must pug.