I Talk About Holy Paladins

Megacode will be hosting a Holy Paladin roundtable next week with several socially active players. I’ll be joining him as one of four “experts” on the panel. Questions can be sent in to Healingspec@gmail.com.

Maybe you’ve got tough questions. What stat(s) will be prioritized in Mists of Pandaria? Will we be the worst healers in tier 14? Why, oh why, did we lose our auras? Or perhaps you’re just a troll. Why did I ever think Mastery is any good? If Kurn likes jumping through hoops, why doesn’t she love achievements? Will Ophelie ever blog about WoW on her WoW blog again? How much crap does Chase get from commenters at WoW Insider?

Send your questions and we’ll do our very best to provide answers. I’ll verbally italicize as many of mine as possible.

Update:

Well, I placed emphasis on only the important stuff. I had a lot of fun, even if I did have to leave a little early for lunch with my family. Chase couldn’t make it, but we persevered. The show is now published here (direct link).

Get the Maw. Love the Maw. Share the Maw.

This question has popped up a few times on Plus Heal, Twitter, and other places. Players all over, from first timers to multiple ‘Glory of’ achievers, occasionally start second guessing themselves. Their attention is distracted by shiny “Item Level” numbers. They have a question. “Which weapon should I use?”

Maw of the Dragonlord is the answer.

Do not displease the Maw!

4.3 Holy Radiance: Casting a completely different spell

I have a confession: I game on a Macintosh.

I’ve been using Macs at home, almost exclusively, since high school. Even though the mice have always come with one button (they still do, sort of) I have used and preferred multi-button mice for years. But I get a laugh out of people who try to make fun of Macs and their stereotypical 1-button mouse because in most cases I get a rather confused and outraged reaction when I show them what I use:

Razer Naga: 17 buttons of fury!

The worst thing to happen to Holy. Ever.

Since I’ve always felt left out of all the Paladin whining, I thought I’d offer my honest opinion on the 4.1 patch notes. Behold! The WORST THING TO HAPPEN TO HOLY PALADINS.

EVER:

Paladins

• Talent Specializations
  • Holy
    • Aura Mastery: This ability no longer increases the benefit granted by Crusader Aura.

Really, Blizz? Really?!

Realm-only Heroic Queue?

A caller brought this up on Episode 216 of The Instance (54:45): what if you had the option to restrict your random dungeon queue to only players from your server? The current system has lead to a loss of familiarity, if not camaraderie, with the rest of the players on our servers. It is absurdly easy to avoid most interaction with players you’re likely to encounter on a day to day basis.

There are many positive aspects to adding this feature. Meeting new people you’d want to group with again is at the top of the list. Since moving to Backrock my Friends list is basically empty.

There are also some ‘negative’ aspects to this feature, which necessarily follow the loss of anonymity. I was placed into a partially complete Stonecore with four players from the same guild on a different server. Ozruk, of course, was the next target. Following at least half a dozen wipes where the tank proved entirely incapable of avoiding Shatter, the GM shaman resurrected everyone on the other side of the boss. I understand this is one of the more difficult mechanics to deal with, but complaining in chat about Blizzard’s design is poor form for a guild leader. I am willing to cut the tank some slack, too, as it isn’t something I’ve had to learn (yet) and the mechanic is not at all forgiving.

What broke the run for me, however, was the pre-Azil trash packs. One pack was pulled and I nearly died; the tank and myself being the only two with aggro on the mobs. Then, following an interminable wait while I have to assume the tank was discussing boss strategy with his guild, both of the last two packs are pulled simultaneously with Azil. I believe the tank was dead (with heals and Hand of Sacrifice) before any mob was killed. I dropped group, for the first time ever finding myself in a dungeon run with players who seemed to be actively wasting my time.

The (largest) part of me that holds no grudges and wants to move forward quickly forgot their names, their guild, and their server. The rest of me is still offended more than 12 hours later that people would inflict themselves on others in this way. If they were on my server I would have more incentive to shame them. They would have more incentive to improve, or at least find a regular healer. As it stands they can continue to be horrible, anonymous players in a system where I roll the dice every time I click “Find Group”.

Next time? I’m taking notes and aiming for the Bee Pit.

Update Your Armory Links!

Go go go, FFS, and such-forth!

It’s been about a month since old Armory links ceased functioning.  I don’t care what the fine print on WoWArmory.com’s disclaimer says, many goblins should be tossed into the fires of the Molten Core.  Whose goblins?  Yours if you haven’t updated all of your Armory links in your blog links and forum signatures!

It’s pretty simple, too:  http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/blackrock/yoseketh/

Realm names, especially, are much simpler now that all the apostrophes, dashes, and spaces have been removed.  I make no claims on special characters used in names, but it all looks transparent in Firefox.

Shorter Than Expected

Thursday evening, a couple dozen quests into Uldum, I reached 85.  Just a bit over three weeks.  I think the new Cataclysm quest design gives a serious boost, which I really don’t mind.  Because who wants to gather 2 or 3 quests sending you halfway across a zone in two different directions?

Osris?  Buried in sand.  Prince trying to help?  50 yards away, but no biggie, he’ll just wait for someone like you to come along and take care of it.

For the first week or two prime time queues on Blackrock were easily over two hours.  This past week waits were less than 30 minutes and under 900 players long.  Maybe everybody’s offline for the holidays.  Maybe the free realm transfers to several possible targets made the difference.  Either way, I slowed down my own leveling pace this last week.  Even logged in, I was AFK plenty during 84.  I spent two to three hours, about four nights per week.  Roughly 30+ hours which included a lot of time on my professions, reading quest text, and exploring various niche sub-zones.  A zerg could easily be half that but it’s just not my style.

80 to 85 as Holy really takes as long as you want it to take.  Being able to fly, epic or not, will have more impact on the speed of leveling than using a ‘healing’ spec.  Unlike Ret, however, killing mobs in any reasonable amount of time and without stopping to drink after three of them definitely requires the proper spec.  Working thoroughly through the early zones also makes for a safer experience

I’ve run four of the available dungeons and the toughest thing I’ve had to deal with in any of them is the swarms of glass-cannon trash in The Stonecore.  Mobs like Rock Borers, Imps, and Devout Followers.  They’re easy to kill but will chew through you and your party surprisingly quickly if not handled properly.  Borers, in particular, are nasty about patrolling their caverns and catching your group in the flank or rear.  Don’t forget: run to the tank.

Now begins the task of raid gearing, which I’ll post on next.

Three Weeks of Relaxation

That’s been my experience so far.  At this point I am halfway through 84 and nearly finished questing through Deepholm.  Mining is at 525, Engineering at 485, and I’ve still only upgraded my neck.

Relative to Wrath, this feels about right for only half the levels.  Even if Blizzard said they wanted 80-85 to take as long as 70-80 it seems like the changes to zones and questing have had significant impact in speeding things along.  Travel time (with epic flight & Crusader Aura) is never very long and completing goals isn’t very difficult (even on a Holy DPS budget).  This keeps me progressing well even with background activities and playing casually.

On the one hand, I’ve found very few direct upgrades and little need to look for them.  On the other, I’ll hit 85 slightly behind the gear curve.  At least the extra faction reputations and 4k Justice Points should give me a jump start.

I still only have the first two instances, once each, under my belt.  Attempting to enter a Random last week at 84 produced a vague “ineligible” error message.  It turns out I hadn’t scouted any other new dungeon entrances.  While I appreciate the mechanic, it would be really nice if the error message was more specific about the real issue.  This table is very helpful, after the fact.

Reaching 525 Mining happened by accident.  I admit I’ve done a tiny amount of ore farming and been rather aggressive while questing, but it took a lot less time than expected.  I only half-filled my Mammoth Mining Bag twice, maybe three times overall.

Engineering is going up at a decent rate and I really appreciate the 5-point recipes.  I just made two new Toolboxes for both bag and bank slots and it doesn’t look like I’ll run into the Wrath situation of making 5 to 10 extra trinkets and Army Knives just to reach max level.  I hope to craft zee gogglez shortly after reaching 85.

In raiding news, my guild has been in 10mans for a couple weeks.  I know I’m not forgotten as I’m still being spammed with invites.  Plus, I get to hear the dirt on bad PuG healers in the run.  I’m purposely avoiding Vent for now, so I can’t tell if there’s too much fire-standing, but I am looking forward to getting back into it.

One Week In (Updated)

Right now I’m about halfway through 82 and nearly done in Vashj’ir.  I plan to head to Hyjal next, while the quests and kills are still worth something to me, so I can get going on building reputation for the Arcanum.

My pace has been restricted, first, by outside commitments.  Secondly, I’ve been unable to access the game on demand.  In case you haven’t heard, “Blackrock is Full.”  My queue position tonight was the best it’s been all week: 1,743.  Wait times last week were 2.5 hours when I queued around 2,800.  Plus I’ve been bad at pre-logging earlier in the evening.  Free realm transfers from Blackrock to Nazjatar or Garithos end on 12/22, so dropping about 1,000 initial spots in the queue could be a good sign for the future.

I’ve enjoyed questing so much that I haven’t visited a dungeon since my first visit to Blackrock Caverns on the night of release.  The Tier 10 gear has been holding up well enough, with no visible rust or upgrades, but I expect to find some new items as soon as I spend some more time in instances.

I’m using a half-gimped Blazing Light/Denounce build which is working much better for solo questing.  Exorcism spam really puts a dent in your mana without the proper spec!  I’ll need to spend a lot more time dungeon grinding, especially after 83 and Holy Radiance, to get more experience healing.

At this rate, I figure I’ll be 85 after 3 weeks.  This next week should see me to 84 and then I’ll have at least a week to dig up 9+ million xp for 85.

Update: Entering the queue at 303 sure is nice!  It would, however, be a whole lot nicer if it weren’t happening at 1:20AM server time.

Blackrock is Full…

GTFO!

I’ve been through the previous expansions so not much of this was new to me.  I did, however, learn a couple things.  Picking up on Janyaa’s post:

1. Digital download is officially awesome.  I cannot remember where my original Warcraft CDs are located, but since the whole client is digitally downloadable I do not care.  Digital distribution of this expansion was the next logical and welcome step.
2. Aside from the expected slow performance, setup and login went smoothly.  Even the occasional disconnects caused very few problems.
3. My first goal is to level at a comfortable pace.  10 levels in Wrath took only two very casual months as Holy.  I expect 85 won’t take me quite at long.
4. I left off in Vashj’ir where I’ll continue leveling just as soon as I can get back in.
5. I don’t have any particular interest in either of the new races.  I created a new Dwarf Shaman recently, but it will be noteworthy if any of my alts make it to level 20.
6. I prefer questing to level but I’m sure I’ll run dungeons very often because the Dungeon Finder makes it so easy, it’s decent XP, and it will probably be less stressful than dealing with a PvP environment.
7. I’ve replaced no gear yet, but at least two of the blue drops from Blackrock Caverns were stacked with Mastery and could lead to testing a different gear set.
8. After getting to work on Wednesday I made a note to have different plans for the next release.
9. I caved to pressure the week before release and redid my secondary spec as Prot for some dungeon tanking.  I don’t expect to touch it again until 85.  Holy all the way!
10. My favorite part so far is the shiny newness.  The joy of discovery is a wonderful thing.

What else have I learned?

1. “Interact with target” is key-bindable.  If it weren’t for all the lag in loading 100+ characters on/around the flight trainer I would have made it out of Orgimmar at least 30 minutes earlier.
2. I need to leave my extra gear sets in the bank.
3. I need to get better about logging in 2 or 3 hours before playing.

The three hours I did spend playing after launch were still a lot of fun.  I miss questing, exploring, and even mining.  Blackrock Caverns with a 264/277 geared group was certainly on the easy side, but it was a lot of fun going in blind and we had one near-wipe.

So now I have plenty of time to take in the trash barrels, do some dishes, watch some Day[9], catch up on The Walking Dead, and maybe play a little Star Battle.