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.

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?

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...

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!)

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!

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?
------------------------------------------------------------
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.

Random Update Again

I've been doing lots of arena and raiding. Insanity for 10 man heroic still eludes me for whatever reason. Our guild in 25 man raids is slowly making progress in 25 man heroic Anub'arak. As of last night, our best attempt had him at 22% health and we have been much more consistent about reaching phase 3 so he is close to dying! We also reached Anub'arak with 49 attempts left which will help give us the extra time to learn.

Funny thing is that on our server, no guild has downed him yet. I have never been part of a server first so it would be nice if we did it but there have been other guilds learning him for longer so the odds are in their favor. I would just be happy getting the down, to be honest.

In terms of arena and PVP, I've finally managed to reach the honor cap for once! Well, I have grinded a lot of honor but never have I ever been in the position of having a crap ton of honor I don't need to use right off.

I plan on grinding BG marks so that when I need to use honor to buy S8 off pieces, I will have it. It was quite brutal needing to grind the armor for the offpieces though luckily, vault was nice to me in that area.

I also got my first piece of Relentless gear! And no, not from VoA, which refuses to drop Relentless for me! I'm just disappointed since my shoulders really derail the entire look. I hope I can get the matching shoulders soon!

Anyway, this is just a random update on what I have been up to in the game. I've been keeping up with what is out for 3.3 but I don't have any real ground breaking opinions. I'm pretty happy as my guild is doing well and my 3v3 team is slowly but surely making the climb to 2000 rating. I'm working on being a better player and I am glad I am meeting my in game goals.

I definitely need to be better about screenshots, lol!

Till next time =)

Iamapaladin's Purpose and Gearing Philosophy

I apologize for the very, very long hiatus. BTW, Happy belated Halloween!

When I first started this blog, I sincerely meant to blog in it weekly because I hated not having anything to read from my favorite blogs. Yet as time went by, my posts became more and more sporadic. Sometimes I would post a lot and then I would stop posting at all and repeat this again.

I don't know how many readers I have following me but this isn't fair to you guys. With that said, I am not shutting down my blog but I guess I want to clarify the purpose of this blog's existence.

I didn't really mean for this blog to be a site for holy paladin mechanic discussion but because that is what I play, that is sort of what became this site's content. The problem is that in order for this site to be even useful for holy paladins in that regard, regular and timely updates are necessary.

I don't really feel up to that as I want this blog to reflect my mood and current thoughts. I feel I am the type of writer that needs time to let thoughts ruminate before I let it out. I also tend to take a long time writing posts though sometimes that is not the case.

Mages Love Pallies and How to Die in Onyxia

...Or more specifically, how to make an Arcane Mage love you =)

Due to the buffs to Arcane in 3.2.2, my boyfriend went back Arcane as he had always been in love with that particular tree.

We've managed to rise high enough in the guild standings that we are regular raid members and I have the good fortune to raid consistently with him.

Basically, Sacred Shield + Incanter's Absorption is an absolute wet dream for him. I'm not one of the higher SP paladins in my guild (23-2600 SP depending on trinkets) and as 1 of 3 holy paladins in raid, I can toss SS on my honey guilt free!

So for any paladins that want to get in good with an Arcane mage, this is the way to a DPSer's heart!

Arcane mages, you better be nice to us paladins!

Come on, Phase 3 Anub'arak? Constant ticking damage being absorbed? OMG! My silly mage bf didn't check his SP during that part of the fight but considering that SS should absorb a decent amount, it is nothing to be scoffed at and I'm pretty sure he easily broke 3000 SP because of that phase.

Ridiculously OP.

We also did the revamped Onyxia 25 man raid. 22 slot Bag!

I was a little nervous to be honest as the only experience I had in Onyxia was fooling around in the instance at level 70 with a whole bunch of other 70s. How would the real raid instance be like?

I was quite afraid I would die to the infamous Deep Breath and feel like a noob.

Epeen in WoW

Nothing like a particularly grating incident to fuel the writing juices.

Ever since transferring over to my current server, I haven't regretted it as it is just a much more "happening" server, Horde wise. My old server really had people that were big assholes with the egos to match, though skill levels may actually not compare.

Today, I met my first douchebag.

I do not have screen shots or anything as I was pulled quickly into a Vault run right during the incident.

So there I was, minding my own business in front of the Dalaran Horde bank. How many of you just like to idle in front of banks? =P

A New Home

You guys haven't heard from me in a long time, have you? I really do apologize for that. I guess it feels like a lot happened in game yet not that much at the same time. I suppose I'll talk a bit of what I've been up to though if you do keep tabs on me, I subtly update certain parts of my site to show what I've been doing even if I don't post.

Despite all the frustrations of being in a 10 man guild, I honestly believe that it is the best way to raid. It is just that when you are a 10 man guild pushing for hard modes with no real talent pool to recruit from, the guild dies a slow death.

Anybody can be a raider now and it's great that Blizzard has made it easy for people that are relatively new to join the raiding scene. The problem is that most people simply cannot devote the time and effort to get all the hard modes or achievements they think they can get.

It is human nature to want more for little expenditure but it is also human nature to overestimate your own ability and underestimate your own flaws.

With that said, yes, my little 10 man guild died a sad death as my priest partner finally quit. They had been wanting to quit for quite a while but there simply wasn't a suitable replacement for him. He was that kickass a healer and a good replacement was just no where to be found.

My server also had suffered a rash of guild implosions, all around the same time - leading to the formation of our 10 man guild. The raiding scene still hadn't quite recovered either when our 10 man guild finally fell apart.

As such, I had to make the hard decision to leave the server I called home. I had transferred there from another server as well but I had spent the most time on this server.

That One Person

So despite my last post, I still do not have I Love The Smell of Saronite in the Morning. It was due to one person in our raid.

Two particular ranged DPS we had in our raid kept reacting too slow. One of them has a crappy computer and is laggy. He reacted a bit slow but still managed to perform tolerably.

The other one, I don't know what his excuse was but he was the worse of the 2 by far. He would call out shadow crashes and wind up being the only one eating it. I would be thinking, "dude, why you watching out for other people when you can't even watch out for yourself?"

Every time he got the life leech, he would always cause other people around him to eat more ticks by not reacting fast enough. He would also do stupid stuff like run with the life leech people instead of compensating and running the other way so the life leech person wouldn't have to run back the other way into more people.

PVE Healing = Prot Vs Holy

I've mentioned previously that my little 10 man guild is intent on getting hard modes. One of those next on our list is I Love the Smell of Saronite in the Morning, which is the General hard mode. We also intend on 2 healing it as we really don't have many options though my partner is a kick ass priest.

General Vezax is a mana control fight as there is basically no way for me and my partner to regen mana via normal means such as Illumination, Arcane Torrent, Replenishment, Divine Plea or Shadowfiend. While researching the fight, I learned that you can use a pot so that will be the sole way for us to regen mana and has to be used as a last resort after the Saronite Animus comes out. I also learned that healers can use Spark of Hope to minimize the cost of spells.

Why We Raid & Loot Drama

I've obliquely revealed that I quit my 25 man guild and started a 10 man guild with my boyfriend and other friends.

As a 10 man guild, I think we have been fairly successful. We've only been established 3 weeks and in those 3 weeks, we have cleared Yogg Saron and gotten more hard modes than the ones we got while we were still in the 25 man guild (Heartbreaker).

I am probably one of the most enthusiastic in the guild pushing for hard modes. This is because most of us have 25 man gear and farming 10 mans for loot will rapidly cause disinterest in the game. Every WoW player needs goals and challenges to look forward to or there is no point in being a WoW raider.

Sure, it can be frustrating and demoralizing when you are in for a night of wipes when learning a fight but it makes all the more sweeter when you get that elusive first down. That feeling of everything coming together in a cohesive, well-oiled running machine during raid is so very satisfying and every time it happens, you remember why you raid.

Loot is just your reward, your gravy on top of your mashed potatoes. That said, loot can also cause a lot of drama, especially if you feel loot is being distributed unfairly or unevenly.

So if people raid just to raid, why does loot matter?  

PVE Projections for Holy Paladins in 3.2

Blizzard seems to have made it their policy in WotLK to design fights around stressing healers to the limits of their abilities. As such, mana regeneration is a vital standard to tweak. Mana regen for healers was deemed too high by Blizzard and spirit based regen was famously nerfed.

Now in 3.2, Replenishment will be nerfed. On top of that, holy paladins in specific will be targeted as Illumination and Divine Intellect is nerfed. Holy paladins are therefore facing a 3 pronged attack to their mana regen mechanics.

Currently, holy paladins favor stats like intellect, crit, haste and spell power. Mp5 is a stat that is mostly ignored for reasons I have detailed in previous posts explaining how mana regen works for a holy paladin.

So with the nerfs to Replenishment and our talent buffing our own intellect along with "buffs" to itemization allocation of mp5 on gear, will things change much for holy paladins?

This is my own opinion formed through my experience on the PTR, my current healing experience and my knowledge of my class. So feel free to disagree with me (respectfully if you so please).

Leaving My 25 man Raiding Guild

I was reading random blog entries about guilds such as giving negative or positive feedback and it made me feel quite off put about my guild. I was relatively happy when I first got invited into guild because it was an actual raiding guild rather than the previous dictatorship ruled guild that I had come from. We downed stuff in Naxx, Malygos and Sartharion with relatively few hiccuups (though some such as failed 25 man 3D) along the way. It is when Ulduar came out that our weaknesses as a guild became glaringly apparent.

Now, I understand that everyone plays this game to have fun.

But.

When you are in a guild that raids, it is important to remember that you are part of a team. Being part of a team means you need to carry your weight. Even if you cannot, the point is to try.

Don't wipe the raid. Don't stand in crap. Stand in stuff. Don't pull aggro, do have enough threat. Don't have connection issues. Don't run OOR of healers. Don't stack up, do stack up. Follow instructions and play your role.

Your reward is the loot that the entire raid earned together. Teamwork, it's a beautiful thing - a symphony of harmony at its apex.

Algalon Quest Event

The top Hordeside guild on my server was able to grab the server first for 10 man Algalon, thereby completing the quest. They announced it in trade that they were going to start the event soon and everyone clustered around the sculpture near the Alliance bank (South).

I liked the event but it seemed people felt gypped as we got a scripted speech from Rhonin, de facto leader of Dalaran. I just thought it was cool how night turned into day from the blazing light arising from the sculpture. The speech also reminded me of the Independence Day speech made by the President, "We will not go quietly in to the night!"

I think even after patch 3.2 comes out, I will always want to kill 10 man Algalon. Heroic Algalon is a near impossibility for me right now =T

Anyway, I hope some of you experience this event. Till next time!

Happy 4th of July!

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.

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!