In ur bubblez, reducin ur dmgz by 100%

Hi guys! I’m hijacking this blog! So we’ll start by BoP’ing the hunter Amber so she’ll not be able to shoot me before the 10 seconds are up.

Alright, ten seconds, go.

Today I’d like to talk about healer utility! I’ll break it down by class, and in the case of priest, spec.

Paladin

Fantastic cooldowns here. Hand of Protection, colloquially known as BoP (for its old name, Blessing of Protection), is 10 seconds of hax on any raid member. They’re completely immune to physical attacks, so if the target is limited to physical attacks, they pick a new target. In some cases, they’ll pick a new target anyway. Current Cata encounters where this is extremely powerful are Chimaeron’s phase 2 and Atramedes’s air phase, where it will force a target change. Because of the hefty 5 minute cooldown, you can only use it once or twice per fight, but man will it break certain mechanics. The biggest drawback of BoP is that it prevents the target from using physical attacks as well, but if you have an overeager mage or warlock you can BoP them with impunity as it won’t hurt their dps. For our trolladins, BoP the rogue or fury warrior as soon as they use their cooldowns and you’re sure to make friends with them– You were just trying to keep them from pulling aggro!

Which brings us to Hand of Salvation, or HoSalv. For many of you right now tank threat isn’t an issue, but in those cases where it could, this 2 minute cooldown comes in handy. It’s approximately a 20% threat drop, but it’s slow-going over 10 seconds– You’ll want to use it preemptively. HoSalv is best used on classes that lack a natural threat drop, such as warriors, DKs, and boomkins, with the “second tier” being classes that lack a large threat wipe, like feral druids, shamans, priests, and perhaps even a retadin that got carried away with wings. It’s also probably best used at least a minute into the fight, since very early on it will clear maybe one attack’s worth of threat– Unless you know ahead of time that a dps likes to blow all his cooldowns off the bat, and you think you can save him from his own stupidity.

Another way to save a dps from their own stupidity is Hand of Sacrifice, or HoSac. Don’t let the nickname scare you. HoSac will redirect 30% of the damage that target takes to you, up to a maximum of your full health bar, for 12 seconds. This not only helps in briefly “tankifying” a dps when things go horribly, horribly wrong, but more importantly it’s a bizarre mitigation cooldown to use on a tank! With Paragon of Virtue, it’s down to a 90 second cooldown, and with Protector of the Innocent all of your heals will be healing you too. In many cases this is actually one of the best ways to keep PotI from going to waste. HoSac is an almost deceptively strong cooldown and will save your group member’s lives more times than I care to keep track of.

Also on the list of things I can’t keep track of, auras! Pony aura is not for raid. Unless you have someone else bringing the right elemental resistances, you’ll probably want to run with resistance aura, which will be about a 24.92% reduction in damage of that type (10.75% over the buff-caused resistance of MotW/BoK). Using Aura Mastery in anticipation of damage will further boost that to 39.90%– Wow! Devotion Aura is a good second choice, providing 4,076 armor (Roughly a 10% boost for a tank). Concentration aura is the archtypical holy aura, but in many fights it doesn’t get put to good use, and in those that it does, resistance plays a bigger role. It plays a bigger role in PvP, though. And ret aura… Well, you’re nice against rogues? It’s not you, it’s me. I have too high standards for my auras.

Oh, let’s not forget that utility is sometimes focused on yourself. Divine Protection has been revamped to reduce damage taken by 20%, and can be reduced down to a 40 second cooldown. It’s a fantastic ability on heavy AoE fights, and you can glyph it to be 40% magic. Really, seriously, oh my god this is something you want to use. It’s win. I can’t express enough how amazing it is for seeming so weak.

And finally, Rebuke. Thank you, Blizzard, for Rebuke. Ever been on a priest or druid and begged the dps to interrupt something? Maybe those nerubians back in heroic old kingdom, that could one-shot an undergeared tank with their shadow blast? Now you can stop yelling at them and go face-punching yourself! Paladins still lack an offensive dispel, so in many cases this is our best bet. And from a PvP perspective, my god, it’s like a game of chicken amongst healers. In the average BG, one rebuke and they’re terrified of you.

Shaman— Wait, what’s a shaman?

Totems, totems, totems! Unfortunately, outside of totems you don’t have much utility at all, and you’re limited to four totems at a time, and a 30 yard range for most of them. At 18 totems available to a resto shaman (and soon to be 19), I won’t talk about them all, just the ones I really think fit the “utility” definition.

Contrary to what I just said, the first example is a non-totem example: Purge. Offensive dispels are fantastic and can effectively neuter some enemies. Always be on the look out for dispellable magic effects, and once you get to know them you can decide if they’re worth dispelling or not. Probably the best trash example are the Twilight Shifters before Cho’gall, who will tear people a new one unless your purge their shift. Maloriak is probably the best boss example, thanks to his Remedy. You can also frequently prevent the need to purge at all by using Wind Shear, which is arguably the best PvE interrupt available.

Tremor Totem, an earth totem, though a long fall from what it once was, is a fantastic anti-fear. Most importantly, rumor has it that it can break Cho’gall’s worship, though if you’re worshipping you can’t drop it [Citation needed]. It’s six seconds on a one minute cooldown, so it’ll be frequently up when you need it.

Grounding Totem, an air totem, is a pretty amazing thing when it works. I have heard that it will block Blackout in Valiona and Theralion, cutting down dramatically on raid damage. It also works against Arcanotron’s Arcane Annihilator (No word on if it will fail Achieve-o-tron), and presumably any other single target spell cast by raid bosses. Please note that Grounding Totem is specifically party-wide and requires the target to be “nearby” (Personal experiences say <15 yards, but shaman is not my kind of class– No offense to your spiritwalkers out there).

As discussed with paladin, resistance totem is a pretty sweet deal, but you should be glyphed into healing stream totem, which you should be using anyway. Please note that the difference between this is that it does not protect against shadow damage, but it DOES protect against nature (electrical– Hi Neffy). As usual for totems, the range is 30 yards and it does not move with you, so be mindful of positioning.

Earthbind totem is a rare jewel, and really shines on Magmaw and Maloriak. If there’s kiting to be done, you can always help with an earthbind totem. Remember that its range is a meager 10 yards!

I’m hesitant to include regen as utility, but Mana Tide is a special case. It’s a fantastic thing to offer other healers, as well as keep your own mana up. While it doesn’t affect short term spirit boosts like trinkets, there is a rumor that Tsunami’s spirit-boosting stacks are affected. I don’t know if this is a bug or even true, but if intentional it makes the trinket look even more appealing to shamans. Don’t forget to reuse your healing stream totem once mana tide’s done!

Spirit Link Totem, an air totem coming in 4.1, is a rather unique take on mitigation. For 6 seconds it reduces damage taken by everyone within 10 yards by 10%, which, so far, sounds like a gimp discobubble. But here’s where it gets interesting: Each second, everyone’s health is redistributed so that everyone is at the same percentage. Note that the redistribution won’t create or destroy health– It adds up all the current health pools compared to all the max health pools and figures the goal percentage. This is especially potent since very rarely will AoE outright kill someone– Frequently, it’s when one person is low and they get hit by something. I could see it being put to especially good use on Chimaeron’s feuding. It’ll be on a 3 minute cooldown, further mimicking Barrier.

Oh and, I guess you guys have something called Heroism or Bloodlust? I dunno, it’s like that mage ability Time Warp, but you can’t settle on a name for it. The timing for Hero/BL is usually best discussed amongst your group, but a well-timed one can save a wipe. If you think you’ve got a good eye for it, consider using it early– I’d rather use hero at the wrong time than to wipe and not use it at all!

Druid

Can come back when it has utility. I kid! Druid’s utility is a little trickier though. Soothe can be used to dispel enrage effects, and if any druids could use Soothe on the shamans for the way I treated their signature cooldown above? Much appreciate it. Enrage effects aren’t all that common, but when they show up, they can be pretty make or break. Double damage and 50% faster attack? Haha, no can do!

Roots are also in the same category of enemy denial. When it Soultree form, your roots become instant cast, so if you have a spare GCD on a fight that involves kiting, you can throw a root out.

If there’s two druids glyphed for innervate, they can innervate each other and get more back than if they did it to themselves.

Like paladin’s Divine Protection, druids have Barkskin, which has an added benefit of preventing cast bar pushback. Much like DP, use this. The only time you shouldn’t use this is when you literally will take 0 damage, or if you know there will be a time before it’s up again with heavy damage. Don’t go more than a minute without barkskinning.

Editing in battle res here. As it stands now the ability can be used once per encounter (three times in 25 man), regardless of how many druids, warlocks, or soon death knights you have. It’s funny to me that I forgot this ability, because no druid is ever allowed to forget it. If anyone dies for any reason a minimum of 20% of the group is obligated to call for a battle res,  regardless of if it’s been used or if it’s on cooldown. Unfortunately there really isn’t much to say about it– If someone dies, you res them. If you reasonably expect them to quickly die again, as in a bad pug, you can reserve your right to pass over them and save their durability and your cooldown. Do be mindful, though, that if you bres in what’s soon to be bad, you might inadvertently kill them again.

Priests – All

Leap of Fuck Priests is a new ability at 85, and one many priests have had great fun with. But did you know that it can be used for purposes other than annoying raid members and killing them? If you have a head start on movement, it can be used to help a straggler, or someone that was a bit behind through no fault of their own. For example, on Cho’gall, LoF is up for virtually every add’s death, and a timely grip on the tank will get him back to Cho’gall in no time. It’s also useful when you can see horribly bad things on the horizon, but worry that they can’t or won’t get out in time, such as Atramedes’s air phase, phase 2 of Chimaeron (You can add seconds to their life!), and pillars of parasitic flame on Magmaw. Seriously, the number of good uses for this ability are so plentiful that it shouldn’t be off cooldown when you want to fuck around with it. Also, you can have a group of 38 priests and 2 death knights set up a line (The roads in Durotar and Elwynn Forest are fantastic for this), lining up 19 priests in each direction and chain-gripping the death knights together in an attempt at finding Higgs-Boson (Amber edit: Fuck you, James.  Fuck.  You.)

Divine Hymn is another one I’m hesitant to include, because it’s first and foremost a throughput ability. However, it also increases healing taken by 10% for 8 seconds, so you can theoretically use it to buff up someone else’s heals. Of course, that’s a bit of a stretch because most priests I’ve talked to tend to hit it the moment they feel panicky without regard of what else is going on. Similarly, Hymn of Hope boosts max mana by 15%, briefly buffing percentage returns such as innervate, shadowfiend, and divine plea.

In Cata, magic debuffs are the majority by far, and magic is the realm of priests (Bwah?). Dispel removes two afflictions (or buffs from enemies) per use, and mass dispel is a large area dispel. A rule of thumb is that if you’ll get three or more people, go ahead and do mass. It becomes technically more cost efficient at 4 people, but considering you’ll pay for delaying it, three will usually save you mana in the long run.

Mostly on trash, psychic scream provides the closest you’ll get to an interrupt. If you’re running a lot of 5 mans, consider glyphing it, because it makes fantastic panic CC.

Priests – Disc

Congratulations, your bubbles are worth a damn! And there’s one bubble in particular that everyone loves, and that’s barrier. This is a 30% damage reduction (soon to be 25%) for 10 seconds on a 2 (soon 3) minute cooldown. You can also glyph it to increase healing done by 10% for the duration.

Pain Suppression is a single target mitigation, and a fairly strong one at that. Try to use it at least twice per boss, you’ll find plenty of opportunities. Plenty. There is a lot of pain from bosses that can be suppressed. Be mindful that it also reduces their threat by 5%, which can cause wacky hijinx I mean, occasional trouble with threat.

Now, a rare case for you is power infusion. This is a fantastic self-buff for throughput, what with the haste and mana cost reduction and all. However, if you find yourself running oom, it won’t do you much good to spam smite faster. In this case and probably this case alone, consider casting it on another healer or (In phase 2 Chimaeron) a caster dps.

Priest – Holy

Body and Soul, or as I like to call it, speed bubbles. This is basically a half-sprint every time you bubble or life grip, which mostly serves to make bubble into a movement spell. Its uses are countless and in my opinion, is what keeps Holy from being a total waste of a tree (I kid! <3). Be careful when paired with a disc priest, as they might get angry at you for causing the shared weakened soul debuff.

Guardian Angel has two major uses. The first is a healing boost, which is a roundabout imitation of mitigation. Like with most mitigation abilities, it’s a good thing to use on the tank early and often, or when expecting large damage. However, if the target of GA would die, GA ends and heals them up to 50% health. While I wouldn’t normally advise letting a teammate die, I can think of a number of cases where a person was low on health, so I popped GA and stopped trying to heal them for a second to focus elsewhere. Every healer knows the frustration of a target dying with a tenth of a second left on their heal, and GA is a bit of life insurance in that regard. If you know for certain you won’t be able to bring them up to survivable amounts in time, it’s a great way to buy a couple seconds.

Overall, I’m sure many of you have a few questions right now, like “Did he just list off a bunch of cooldowns?” “Why did he miss this?” “Wait, we’re talking about healers on what’s theoretically a healer blog?” “Where’s the flowchart?” “Who the fuck is this person?” “How does a wall of text crit for that much?”

To answer them in order, mostly, yes! However, a lot of people I’ve met will say they always forget about their cooldowns, and a quick look through WoL will seem them using something like HoSac or Barrier once a raid night. It’s nice to be reminded that these things exist, to bring them to the front of your mind when you can potentially use them. If I missed any, especially in druid, I apologize, feel free to comment and I’ll edit in a correction. And yes, yes we are. Check the link for your fucking flowchart. I’m James, or as many of you first saw me, Temnyi. In a horrible lapse of judgement Amber has given me access to this blog. And by my count the wall of text crit for 2,935 damage, mostly by having that many words. I apologize if you were one-shot, but I advise you to level up, as that damage stops being lethal in vanilla content.

Also, I’m pretty sure my ten seconds are up. Thankfully, I can still divine shield, and my tier bonus reduces the casting time of my hearthstone. See you next time!

OM NOM NOM Stormwind

The author of the…very interesting The Gray Place sent this along as a guest post.  <3!

As evidenced by Deathwing sitting atop the majestic towers of
Stormwind (in ur base killin ur dewds…), the Cataclysm is
approaching. This lets me segue into a bit of…*Chris Metzen
voice* “with the Cataclysm, it brings new content, new
races, and new opportunities for players and new guilds, yadda,
yadda.” Neat and tidy writing-type-stuff.

But if 15+ years of online gaming has taught me anything, it’s that
nothing in MMOs is neat and tidy. Lets look around at the current
landscape a bit…

You’ve got your tweaker Wrath burnouts who raided TotC10, TotGC10,
TotC25, TotGC25 every single week, you’ve got your emo-wine cooler
drinking-guild hoppers who have \gquit macroed to every keybind,
you’ve got your disgruntled former GMs and officers who have decided
to enter the witness protection program and become random Huntard #6
in some obscure 25 man team. These players are all looking for a new
home and a fresh start come Cataclysm.

I myself fell into such a situation when my guild of 2+ years
collapsed and I found myself at a crossroads. I came from a guild
that I once co-GMed and where I had built of a solid reputation of a
firm but fair raid leader. My players trusted me and I was used to
being one of the senior officers. Then one day, as all such things
come to pass, our guild was done and over.

It was all gone. My automatic raid spot, my reputation, my social
network, my copious strategies via our forums, everything. I imagine
many folks might be in this situation now that Wrath has entered it’s
last gasps. You might be one of them; Standing atop the lonely hill
of memories, shoulders slumped, with your hands in your pockets, going
“well now what?”.

Now my friend. You start over. Here’s a few things you can do to
help yourself in your new guild…

1. One of the biggest mistakes I think you can make when you join a
new guild is to hold it against them that they aren’t your old guild.
That ship has sailed. It may have been great and you might miss it,
but it is OVER. Don’t make a fresh start on a bunch of emo memories,
you’ll just continue to make yourself miserable.

2. Don’t act like a wussy because they don’t kiss your ass or don’t
remember your birthday. I know in your old guild you were “The
Wo/Man”, but here in your new guild your just the “new app”.

When I joined my new guild the VERY first thing said to me in gchat
was a Rogue who told me “Welcome. Please don’t suck.” Now some folks
might get upset by this or think it rude, but instead give them some
of their own shit right back. I happily responded “Hi! I don’t suck,
but I don’t heal Rogues either.”

3. They do not know you as a person or a player. You may have been
known as the tank who single-handedly could tank every boss plus all
their adds in your old guild, but here in your new guild your just
tank #4. It’s your job to show them your skills and determination.

They are not required to give you an automatic raid slot. You have to
promote yourself. Slip a PM to the guild master, let then know that
you’d like a raid position if there’s one open, what raid encounters
you’ve done, old WoL reports, and what you’re doing to work on your
gear. Offer to run five mans, old raids, anything in gchat. Show
them you know what you’re doing. Get to know the officers, raid
leaders, class leads. You don’t need to be a suck up but let them
know that when they need a tank/healer/dps you’re the person to come
too.

4. Be honest in what you want. You may think you want a more
“serious” guild this time around, but can you commit to the tight raid
schedule and the constant performance review? I see this happen a
lot. People always want more than they’re able to give. If your
happy with a beer and pretzels guild then join a beer and pretzels
guild. If you like to role-play then join a RP guild and get your
slurp on in Goldshire. Don’t put yourself in a position your going to
fail at. It’s intellectually dishonest.

5. Just because your new doesn’t mean you need to be meek. I’m not a
hugely talkative guy most days, but you have to make an effort to be
an actual member in your new guild. You don’t need to “entertain”
guild chat with your synopsis on Buffy: The Vampire Slayer season 14,
but just don’t sit there afraid to say anything. I always see people
complain “nobody talks to me in my new guild”, but sometimes
you have to make the first step (HORROR: I sound like mother!). If
you’ve got a question ask it, see if anyone wants to hit a five man,
add a comment to the ongoing “who is hotter…” discussion, hell even
a simple TWSS goes a long way in breaking the ice. You don’t need to
be mister/misses popularity but 90% of the time your guildies will be
more comfortable around you and you around them, if you’ve at least
made the smallest human contact with each other.

Your old guild is dead and gone. Deal with it.

You—-> yourself—-> as a person, will largely be responsible
for how happy you are in your new guild. Don’t set yourself up to
fail. Give it an honest shake (TWSS), if it doesn’t work out then
bail and keep looking till you find something that does work. Life is
too short to be unhappy playing a video game.

Ori’s Helpful and Insightful Paladin Class Change Commentary

“Helpful and insightful”, I’m already cracking myself up.

New Paladin Spells

Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure’s ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.

Yay, more things that will allow me to put out some dps while healing.  As long as it has some sort of SHINY spell effect, I’m happy.

Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.

Oh, another Hand spell.  Further proof that Blizzard expects paladins (holy ones especially) to touch people inappropriately.  /gropes  I like the idea of paladins finally having an AoE option, but how likely is it that we’ll be able to get people to stand within a decent range to make it useful? I’m not holding my breath.

You know damn well that DPS’s love for standing in things will not apply to standing in things they are supposed to.  Meet the holy paldadin’s version of the lolwell.  -Amber

Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

SUMMON FAIL ANGEL.  I like this spell, it sounds fun and useful.  I’m picturing the guardian looking like a Valkyr and swooping along the field of battle.  Gimmicky spell effects will always win me over.

Or is it a WIN angel because we don’t have to die for it?!

Next you will find a list of some of the paladin spell and ability changes, followed by our intentions for improving each talent tree for the release of Cataclysm. There will be further changes, but those revealed below should offer some insight into our goals.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

• Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.
  Finally making paladin leveling less “autoattack, afk”.   Paladin leveling, not painful?  What?  BUT THAT IS ICONIC, BLIZZARD.
• Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.
  Am I the only one who doesn’t care about the dispel changes? I will dispel things when I can, and if I can’t OH WELL.  Nope, I’m in the same club.  Paladins should care even less, you damn one button spammers.
• Blessing of Might will provide the benefit of Wisdom as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do Kings on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.
  PRAISE THE LIGHT.  Fewer opportunities for people to BUG me about blessings and for me to get REALLY PISSED OFF and want to slap them.  It neatly solves the “hybrid problem” of needing to track long and short buffs for different specs of the same class.
• Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.
  Eh, whatever. I’m not thrilled about taking away a uniquely holy spell but chances are that the other trees won’t use it much outside of leveling.  NOOOO, MY SHOCK.  Wait, I’m prot now.  Carry on.

New Talents and Talent Changes

• We want to ease off the defensive capabilities of Retribution and Holy paladins slightly. We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas. One change we’re considering is lowering Divine Shield’s duration by a couple of seconds. Having said that, Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards. Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.

Do not care about PvP. However, NOOO, they be messin with mah bubble!
FUCK.  ARENAS.

• We feel Retribution paladins need one more mechanic which involves some risk of the player pushing the wrong button, making the rotation a bit less forgiving. In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility. Right now the successes of the Retribution paladin in PvP seem to be reduced to either doing decent burst damage, or just being good at staying alive.

But if the rotation is less forgiving, I won’t be able to flail my way to 7k dps in my offspec! Also, more not caring about PvP blah blah blah.

• We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target. That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don’t feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer.

I approve of this. I use SS on the tank that I’m primarily healing, so not having to refresh it every minute is nice. Also, I’d like to see us break out of the only good for one thing box.

• We want to add to the Holy tree a nice big heal to correspond with Greater Heal. Flash of Light remains the expensive, fast heal and Holy Light is the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light will be changed to work with Flash of Light. We like the ability, but want paladins to use it intelligently and not be constantly healing for twice as much.

I … am not sure how I feel about this. First, isn’t holy light pretty much the biggest heal there is already? Putting a bigger one in is interesting. Secondly, I like my beaconhax just the way it is, and it’s part of what makes us such good tank healers, because we can keep multiple ones up. Making beacon ONLY work with FoL is going to encourage the incredibly boring FoL spam that I am so glad to have gotten away from at this point.
They seem to be really stuck on the “three heals” thing they’re setting up across the board.  We’ll see how it pans out.  You can probably repeat my priest comment here, though: oh look, now we can ignore TWO heals while we spam just one.

• Holy paladins will use spirit as their mana regeneration stat.

This is going to feel SO WEIRD, but it’s just like every other healer now. It makes things less complicated.
Hey look, the spirit on my t2 won’t be useless!

• Protection paladins need a different rotation between single-target and multi-target tanking. Likewise, we’re looking to add the necessity to use an additional cooldown in each rotation.
  Bwuh?
• Holy Shield will no longer have charges. It will be designed to improve block chance while active, and will continue to provide a small amount of damage and threat.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Holy

• Healing
• Meditation
• Critical Healing Effect

Meditation: This is the spirit-to-mana conversion that the priest, druid, and shaman healers also share.
If I can’t stack spirit and have the biggest penis mana pool of all the healers any more, I will be le sad.

Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more.
NO WAI. THIS IS A BIG CHANGE. 

Overall, I think I am slightly underwhelmed (and is it possible to be just whelmed?) because there’s not really anything earth shattering going on here, and the one big change seems negative (beacon only working with FoL, which is how I interpreted that change). I’m anxious to see what actually goes live.

April Fools!

I hate this holiday, because there are a lot of unfunny “jokes” made about serious things. HOWEVER, Blizzard always does it right – they embrace lighthearted fun with their April 1st jokes, and that’s something that I can always get behind. For those of you who can’t access the armory from work today, here’s what you have to look forward to when you get home!

As someone who fell in love with the tuskarr the first time I saw them in the Howling Fjord, I’m thrilled with this! WTB some sort of title for the people who are exalted with the Kalu’ak and want to show their Wilford Brimley Tribe pride. :D

Amber Edit: You can see some more stuff here and here!

Flowchart Friday: Basic Raiding Strats

Brought to you by doing some Ulduar hardmodes, noting that the dps have approximately a billionty things that they have to do in every fight, while I go “HAHA, WHATEVER” and stand in the corner healing.

Friday Flowchart: Upgrading your holy paladin’s gear.

/shakes a fist at Bracers of Pale Illumination, which are in no way better than my 245 bracers

Where are my sparklies?

Lately I feel like I do a lot of complaining about holy paladins, which is just silly because I was the one who decided to change my main from my disc priest to the holy paladin in the first place! And while I LOVE healing as a paladin (crazy, I know. I just love pushing two buttons), that doesn’t excuse that there are sometimes serious issues with it.

Yeah, I’m talking about the lack of awesome spell effects.

Look at discipline priests – Amber gets to throw out OMG PEW PEW LAZER BEAMS, and when she bubbles someone and there’s a crit, BAM, rainbows in your face! What’s not to like about rainbow soap bubbles? Even holy priests have PoM bouncing around, and probably other cool looking things that I don’t know about, because I’ve never been a Fail Angel. Trees get little green leaves and swirls on their targets, which is pretty sweet and very fitting for the class. Shamans have some sort of water falling on your head spell that makes me go “crap, what am I standing in, MOVE” whenever it’s cast on me, because I’ve been taught that if you see something besides plain ground, you need to haul ass. Not to mention that chain heal looks pretty snazzy when it’s moving around.

What do paladins have? Itty beams of light and glitter, and the exact same beams and glitter for both FoL and HL. This is insufficient for my needs, Blizzard. I require big explosions of light – when I cast Holy Light on a tank I want to see Light dripping from his every pore. Beacon of Light? HA, those silly Elder’s moonstones that everyone’s playing with right now are brighter than my bacon. There could be no confusion amongst multiple paladins in a raid when it comes to who’s Beaconing whom if there were actually a huge pillar of light over the Beacon, rather than an animation that makes the target dispense some light beams from her armpit. Sacred Shield is even disappointing because it doesn’t look like ANYTHING most of the time.

Pally wings are pretty much the only amazing spell effect that I have at my disposal, but WAIT! I have to save those for important moments involving Divine Plea and massive amounts of damage, so they don’t even get blown on many fights unless I do it at the end, because I’m always worried that I might need them later. Their awesome is not enough to make up for the fact that the majority of my healing looks boring, like this:

Amber Edits to Add:

Here, I fixed it for you.

Crit or haste?

In the first few months of WotLK raiding, when I went holy for the first time, you would have had to pry crit from my cold dead hands. I went the way of the holy/ret build back then, because holy/prot hadn’t yet seen the changes of 3.1 that made it the viable (and my preferred) spec that it is now. I think I went insane over the fact that Soul of the Dead NEVER dropped for us from Sapphiron, week after week, and I’m pretty sure that when it finally did and I snatched it up, I let out my biggest happy squeal of all time. Torch of Holy Fire? Screw that, I’m snatching The Turning Tide away from our warlocks.

These days, I’m tooting a very different horn. I love haste and I can’t get enough of it, so much that I’m sitting well above the recommended 675 soft cap for haste rating from gear. Because we don’t always run with a boomkin in 10s and very rarely have a ret paladin, I don’t get the buffs from those classes in regards to haste, so I try to keep as much as possible on my gear, and I eat haste buff food.

Why the change? Well for one thing, crit just isn’t as good as it used to be. Critical strikes don’t return as much mana as they used to, so that benefit has gone a little out of the window, not to mention that improved gear from Naxx to Ice Cream Social and epic gems mean that mana pools are higher than ever. I can’t remember the last time that I felt truly strained for mana or felt that I would run dry with no chance to recover, even when chain casting Holy Light on fights like Marrowgar or Festergut or … everything else in ICC. Crit is nice for having those BIG NUMBERS heals, but in many cases the crits are just overheals for a class that has high overhealing anyway (not that there’s a problem with this – as long as you have mana and things don’t die, who cares about overheal?). Just sticking with the critical strike rating that’s on spell plate and other pieces, and the amount that you’ll naturally get from nom nom noming intellect gems should be sufficient – I just don’t see the benefit in gemming for crit rating when you can easily get to 30% or more holy crit from gear.

Haste on the other hand, while it has diminishing returns, is something that you can’t really go wrong with having a little more of. The more haste, the more spells you can cast. If you’re starting harder content, it can be a real life saver in terms of how much throughput you can manage. While you have a chance of getting critical strike heals that will top someone off, with haste there is a guarantee that you’ll be able to quickly put out a second heal. For me it’s a more reliable tool for OHCRAP moments, and probably the only thing that facilitates surviving fears in 5 mans (but that’s a whole ‘nother rant). I feel more secure with having plenty of haste and knowing that my heals have a higher probability of landing in time – our limitation is really speed rather than throughput or longevity. Also, this is what casting looks like when you’re hopped up on haste:

For srs.

Of course, the exception to all of this is the FoL build, in which case you don’t want haste OR crit, you want MOAR SPELLPOWER. That’s a completely foreign territory for me, but maybe someday I’ll give it a try for fun and ~SCIENCE~.

Holy Paladining the Lower Spire

Disclaimer: this is just how I do it, and I’m usually the only holy paladin in the group. If you have more than one, Beacon assignments and whatnot will probably be a bit different.

Lord Marrowgar

This is the OHMYGOD SO MUCH DAMAGE, WHYYY fight, and one where we holy paladins really shine. The damage comes fast and heavy, so you have to be on the ball about topping it off. What happens if you take a break to rest your poor Holy Light finger for a few GCDs (or worse, if you’re repeatedly boner spiked)? DEATH, that’s what.

Yeah, you did that. Anyway, you will probably be assigned to the MT for this fight, and you will want to put your sweet, delicious Bacon Beacon on the OT, who will be taking quite a lot of damage as well. Especially when he stands in the Coldflame. Stick yourself in with the caster dps group, who will probably all be standing within Marrowgar’s hitbox, because that makes things easier for everyone, especially when it comes to Bone Spikes, because if you have to count on dps to come find you in order to break you out, you’re probably gonna die.

Possibly the hardest part of this fight is the cat herding fest that is Bone Storm, because everyone is going to scatter, and they’re not all going to go in the same direction. Ideally you should stick on top of your tanks so that you can quickly get back to healing them ASAP when this part is over, but if you’re like me you probably just run to a corner while going OMG QUIT FOLLOWING MEEEE. We keep raid markers on the tanks so that we can quickly find them and stack back up. If you run a 51/20/0 build, Bone Storm might be a good time to pop your bubble and Divine Sacrifice, if you happen to notice a lot of people waltzing through Coldflame or trying to give Marrowgar hugs. Just … don’t sacrifice yourself without bubbling, unless you’re prepared to stand still and heal all that incoming damage to yourself, which will be hard. Bone Storm is also the best time to pop your Divine Plea, but because chain casting Holy Light is very draining, you’re probably going to have to just use it when you can.

Assuming that everything goes well, Marrowgar will keel over, you will cry because spell plate is a myth, and then move on! \o/

Lady Deathwhisper

During Phase 1, I find it more useful to have your Beaconhax on your assigned tank so that you can help out the raid healers, because this is a fight where people will inevitably stand in things and take stray damage. Do remember to keep a close eye on your tank’s health though, because he will sometimes be hit mercilessly by empowered mobs, and you’ll need to give him extra attention. For the 25man version, you will want to stand roughly in the middle, so that you can help out the other tank healers when their targets are taking extra buttloads of damage. Curse of Torpor will be a big pain in your side for this fight, because it will lock you out of one of your spells (probably FoL or HL, depending on what you were casting when it hit you) for 15 seconds. It’s annoying, but shouldn’t be too hard on you.

In Phase 2, you’ll only need to focus on one tank at a time, but they will be trading off. I like to put Beacon on whichever tank currently has aggro, but if I’m having mana issues (LOL DOES NOT COMPUTE), I’ll just keep it on the MT. It’s nice to help out your raid healers with the Frostbolt damage when you can, and if it looks like everyone’s getting low, there’s always the bubblesac option.

Gunship Battle

This is the easiest Lower Spire fight, which means that BoO will always wipe on it once. Chances are that your raid leader will want you to stand on the ledge between the canons, toss Beacon on the tank who’s going over to the enemy ship (… we call them the Away Team), and keep the home and away tanks both healed. If you whine about being bored and getting cheated out of using your rocket pack, which I may or may not do, you might get to be the Away Team healer, YAY. In which case your major obstacle will be hearing when to go over and back on top of one of your guildies playing “I’m On A Boat” over vent. /facepalm

The Away Team tank will take a lot of damage when he goes over, so be sure that you keep an eye on him. Otherwise, this fight is mostly about keeping your eyes on Grid/Vudho/what have you and peppering around FoL where needed. If you get a lot of aggro from the Axethrowers, BUBBLE then yell at your tanks.

Deathbringer Saurfang

Another fight where everyone will be pleased to have your Beaconhax. Once again, you will probably be on the tanks. I heal the first tank to take Saurfang and put Beacon on the second. This means that when Tank 1 has him, I need to focus primarily on healing him, and when Tank 2 has him, I can help out the raid healers by keeping people with Boiling Blood topped off and healing anyone who gets hit by the blood beasts’ melee. As usual, if you don’t have mana issues and would like to, you can simply switch Beacon from tank to tank.

When Saurfang hits 100 Blood Power, that’s when you go FUUUU and things ramp up. You need to put your Beacon on the person who gets Mark of the Falling Champion, and then you need to heal the tank with the aggro for all you’re worth, to keep the Marked person up. If Blood Power management is Not So Good, you get to play YAY SOPHIE’S CHOICE and decide whether to stick with the original Marked player, or switch Beacon to the new one. If it’s a healer or a tank who gets the Mark, they also get the Beacon. If it’s between two dps players, I’d recommend keeping up a player who kites the blood beasts. If none of those are factors, just slap it on the person you like the most. That’s right, everyone be sure to lavish love on your paladin healers – it may save your life! I take bribes in the form of unicorns, rainbows, and hugs.

If you have a group that can successfully manage Blood Power and you don’t break out in a cold sweat from healing stress, then YAY TIEM FOR PLAGUEWORKS. Just uhm, maybe don’t forget to bubble if you’re the first one to zone into the next wing, because the mist wants to give you not so nice cuddlings.