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!

Four Point Oh Noes: The BM Hunter

Updated 10/20/10

 

For now this guide is going to be primarily regurgitation.  I’ll update it with my own information and findings after I get in some testing time tonight (as I had to wait until it hit live because the PTR hated me).

Specs
These specs are tuned for boss damage–at his point we’re still raiding, so soloing builds can wait until Cata proper.  My post on builds, including my spec, is here.

Other options: 31/5/0

Rotation
BM used to have a proper rotation, but now it’s joined the Priority Club.

Start off your shots with Hunter’s Mark and Sepent’s Sting.

Kill Command > Focus Fire (when pet has full Frenzy) > Serpent Sting > Arcane Shot (focus dump) > Steady Shot (to regen focus)

Make sure that Kill Command is available for Beastial Wrath (nothing new here, you should have been doing this all along).  BW is now for Arcane Shot spamming, apparently.

Remember that you never want to sit at 100 focus, because then you’re wasting your focus regen!

Note that BM hutners do not yet have our “signature shot”–Cobra Shot isn’t available until 81, so I’d hold final judgements on this spec until Cata proper.  We can’t fully judge how awesome we’re going to be when missing a key shot.  My understanding is that it will replace Steady Shot.

The Cata thread on EJ posted this, but it made my brain hurt just to look at it.  If you can make sense of it though, kudos to you.

if HM is not on target or running out in less than a set time and there´s no MfD on target and focus/cooldowns/target heath don´t allow for KS or KC
–> cast HM
if KS is off CD and target health is at or below 20%
–> cast KS
if KC is off CD and enough focus
–> cast KC
if SpS is not on target and enough focus
–> cast SpS
if focus over or at 75 (modified by Efficiency)
–> cast AS
none of the above
–> cast CoS

Glyphs
Prime:
Kill Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot
Also an option: Kill Command, Serpent Sting
ETA: My personal testing has revealed that I actually have higher DPS replacing Serpent Sting with Steady Shot, so I have revised the post to reflect this. Serpent Sting topped out at about 4.7 on a dummy, where SS was usually at 4.8/4.9 with spikes of 5k.

Major:
Beastial Wrath
Also an option: Whatever the hell you feel like.  Frostheim lists disengage, but if you’re anything like me and trying to avoid disengaging off cliffs to your death, you might not want to go there.  Since I’m trying to afford re-glyphing eleventy billion alts right now in multiple specs, I’m acutally not rocking any Majors aside this one.

Minor:
Mend Pet, Feign Death, Revive Pet

Notes on Stats
We only need 248 hit.  Pet hit no longer rounds down.
Crit > Haste?  Haste > Crit?  What about Mastery?  I’d love to answer this question for you but I don’t fucking know.  Research to come.  Haste is said to contribute to focus regen, but how much?  EJ is still working on this one.  So far it seems to 1% haste =1% focus regen.  I’m currently experimenting with trying to get more haste to see if this helps my “omg not enough focus” issue, or if I only fuck my rotation up more.  Ha.

From EJ:

… It’s unclear at this time whether agil/crit or agil/haste is preferable for yellow sockets but this is most likely relative to how high your crit and haste are. Keep in mind that although the crit and haste caps are very high, pet melee crit will cap out at a much lower amount, and haste’s value has sweet spots based on how it allows your shots to flow and keeps your focus in balance. Mastery can only be obtained at the moment from reforging. The theorycrafting on it isn’t clear at this time on whether it will outperform haste and crit.

As for old set bonuses, eh.  T9, even the 4 piece, is no longer as appetizing as it was.  I’ve opted to ditch my t9 entirely (keep in mind I killed LK rocking 4 pc T9 still) and wear what was once my survival set.  The higher crit/haste numbers on the higher ilevel gear gives me more room for reforging stuff.

Gems
Nightmare tears are now silly for us as we only benefit from agi.
Red: +20 Agility (Delicate Cardinal Ruby)
Orange: +10 Agility +10 Haste (Deft Ametrine) |  +10 Agility +10 Crit. (Deadly Ametrine)
Blue: +20 Hit Rating (Rigid Majestic Zircon)
Purple: +10 Agility +10 Hit Rating (Glinting Dreadstone)

Pets, Pets, and More Pets!
Hunter pet was normalized with 4.0, so now it’s a matter of personal prefrence/buffs.  While browising the EJ MM 4.0 thread I stumbled across from handy graphics (originally from Petopia?) that I shall now share:

Pew pew moonfire kitty now heals?  What?

Sources:
Warcraft Hunter’s Union (www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2010/10/bm-hunter-patch-4-0-1-talents-rotation-and-glyphs/)
Elitist Jerks (http://elitistjerks.com/f74/t106028-mm_hunter_4_0_1_a/ & http://elitistjerks.com/f74/t97229-cataclysm_hunter_changes/)
MMO Champs: (http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/770793-4.0.1-Hunters)

MOAR MIND SEAR

Brief Tanky Ramblings
Normal ToC decided to like me and cough up my tanking trinket.  Woo!  …now to run it some more for the DPS trinket.  Pffft.  And then some more to get said trinket for ME, because Josh wants said trinket as well on his DK. 

Thankfully I had enough defense to drop my Seal of the Pantheon for it, and keep the dodge trinket.  I’m also now FINALLY over 30k health in 5 man buffs.   Yay!  Hopefully she’ll get some more goodies in the Naxx25 run tomorrow (that I’m leading?  What?  NO!  *hands to Josh*).  Then I can set her back into her primary alt slot and…

…work on my hunter?  Alas, no.  Jamethera is stuck as the bastard red headed stepchild of my alts.  No, friends, I want to work on my shadow priesting some more.

PTR Changes
Stolen from Duct Tape and a Prayer because I can’t access the official crap:

• Glyph of Mind Flay now Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay spell by 10% when your target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain changed to – The periodic damage ticks of your Shadow Word: Pain spell restore 1% of your base mana.
• Glyph of Shadow now increases your spell power by 30% of your spirit for 10 sec. (Up from 10%) (Here’s the current version.)
• Improved Devouring Plague: This spell now deals 10/20/30% of its total periodic effect instantly, up from 5/10/15%.
• Shadowform: This talent also now causes Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain, and Vampiric Touch to benefit from haste. Both the period length and the duration of these spells will be reduced by haste. In addition, the mana cost has been reduced from 32% to 13% of base mana.
• Vampiric Embrace: This ability is now provides a 30-minute buff that cannot be dispelled, instead of a target debuff.

/glee

Lookit!  Lookit!  Buffs!  Tasty things!  Oh my god!  I’m so excited!

…granted I still do less DPS than most of our other shadow priests (HOW?  MUST FIX) but YAY!  Now we get to cross our fingers and hope these changes don’t get nerfed back into the ground by release time.

Also, I find it terribly ironic that spirit is well-nigh useless to me as a disc priest but…it appears that I want some as shadow.  What?  Damn you. blizzard, for complicating my two sets of gear!

Oasic, how do you beat me as shadow deeps?  I MUST KNOW.

…oh they also made it possible for you to bubble nonraid/party members.  Sweet! Thanks Blizz!  Now I can run circles around Dalaran randomly bubbling people!  YAY!*

 

*I may or may not be genuinely excited by this development.

Class/Race Combinations I Want to See

-Draenei druids
…they already have shaman, why not?  It seems to be a natural extension, and they do live next to the night elves after all.

-Night elf shamans
Similar reasoning to draenei druids. 

-Priest EVERYTHING
Would the Light turn away anyone willing to embrace it?  Seems to me the answer would be ‘no’.  And yes, I truly do want a moocow priest, even if those first few levels are so very very painful.  The same logic could be extended to paladins.  To flesh out a silly thing I spouted off in comments on my previous post:

And the Earthmother said lo, the sun is my eye, and as I shine the Light down upon you, so shall you embrace and worship it.  Just remember, my children, that all who walk upon my back are one.  You shall respect them, and have compassion for them, however different from yourself they may be.  Be as tenacious as stone and let nothing sway you from your path.

-Human hunter
…well, why the hell not?  Humans are, if nothing else, adaptable.  There have already been human rangers.

-Draenei warlocks
These weren’t my idea-certainly at first, it seems strange.  But look at night elf demon hunters.  They used the magic and skills of there enemy against them, much as the death knights use their own powers against Arthas.  Perhaps a small sect of draenei decide to embrace demonic powers in order to better fight the dark.  If even Naaru go through a dark phase…

Halp I’ve Been Nerfed? – Last Night’s Ulduar

Ron warned me that he’d run a thing or two since the patch in which we’d been sneakily nerfed, and that he’d definitely had more mana issues.  I walked into Ulduar blind, and…didn’t feel phased.  Did I have issues?  Yes.  Were they terrible?  Not so much.  I’d use my shadow fiend at 75% mana,  pop a mana pot later if I had to, and then if things got drastic later in the fight, I usually had either my shadow fiend back or found a chance to use Hymn of Hope.  Perhaps it is my dusty memories of 15 minute boss fights that enables me to smothly adjust, and plan accordingly.  I know I love having all these tricks up my sleeve.

Group 2’s composition was shuffled more than slightly, due more to availability than anything else.  It was very good to be raiding with Josh again.  As he explained fights on vent, I abused /rw to clarify points, add things he didn’t think of/forgot, or playfully mocked people. 

Healing assignments always feel vaguely silly on 10 mans, but we’ve settled into the same pattern for both raids: holy paladin on the tank, raid healer (druid or holy priest, mostly) on the…well, raid, and the disc priest playing a back-up role in which we bubble every damn thing and use penance to save the day. 

One of the largest problems I had with healing in Ulduar was…range.  I think that for XT, the raid healer and I will have to be more conscious of splitting the room in half, so to speak.  We lost more than one DPS to their being our of range at the wrong moment.  I’m not sure how to explain my death on our successful attempt, except to say that bombs should not blow up next to me when I’m low on health.  :(  Range was also an issue with Ignis for the people taking care of the adds.   Having to move makes me all the more glad for PW:S, renew, and penance.

Rorfax and I also found it helpful, for fights like XT with periods of raid-wide AoE damage (Tantrum), to assign ourselves to groups to heal up so that we weren’t overlapping each other while the other five people died.   Of course then I’d go to toss my PoH and half my group would be out of range, but that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish.

I also tossed bunny ears on Kyr a couple of times just because I could.  This was not at all helpful, except perhaps to (my) morale.  :)

Ignis.  Oh, Ignis.  We downed Lootmobile, Razor, and XT, only to run into the wall that was Ignis.  While this was good progress for group two, here’s what I think of Ignis and his vibrating crotch pot:

I mean seriously, Blizzard.  Vibrating crotch pot.  I was also dismayed to find out that achievements conveniently cover MY ENTIRE GRID SET UP.  Must…turn…that shit…off.   It did do something for the old joke of calling Hot Pocket’s Molten Magma Pockets, though. 

Also, I do not like having two firey tornados chasing me away from my tank.  It makes it very hard to heal said tank.  >:|  We’ll not mention the unpleasant memories of the Great Tornado Gang Bang of Zul’Aman that were dredged up, either.   Grrr, trash wipes.

We ended up 2 bosses “behind” group 1, but my frustration is much lessened.  I figure at some point that perhaps they’ll hit a wall that won’t bother us so much, and beat them to the punch on something.  :)

And of course, this is what we’ll tell Ignis on Monday:

ETA random!

You know I completely forgot what I had the Zoja is a nub tag on here for until just now: I wanted to share fellow guildie sillyness.  Last week in Ulduar, Zoja switch to arms for trash and and then went to tank a boss…and everyone wanted to know why Mortal Strike was up on him.  Hmmmm.  I wonder.  :D  At least I had my mace out this time.

Amber’s Noblegarden Tips

Screw the starter zones.  Go to Terokkar.

Yes.  Terokkar.  Where everyone else was camping a spawn or two, I ran laps around the zone and picked up eggs.  Sometimes I’d go a bit without finding any, other times, I’d hit up four or five in a row.  As a bonus, I’d occasionally spot a horde in their mid 60s or so and would run around them in circles letting them wonder if I was going to gank them or not. 

I didn’t, and was rewarded for my upstanding morality with the pet on my 70-somthing-ith egg, which was all I really wanted from the damn event.  I also got the Spring Flowers, and have every attention of using them to drive Steve nuts, much as we did the Hollow’s End pumpkins.

I never saw anyone camping spawns, and most of the time I was one of only 3-4 Alliance in the zone.  I did spot active competition once, but they were on a flying mount.  Do not scout for eggs on your epic flyers, especially not in Terokkar.  You’ll miss a lot of eggs that way-several of the spawns are nestled inside clusters of trees.   The main problem I had was repeatedly mistaking the glowing seed thingys for eggs at a distance.

That is a VERY rough outline encasing the area in which I found eggs.

Post Patch Day Maddness

First off, for my fellow squishies who are thinking for going shadow for the first time (shut up: I know I am not the only one who leveled a healing spec, damn it), Binary colors posted a lovely, simple “How Not To Suck” guide. 

Does that mean I went shadow for my dual spec?  No.  Lyr has purchased dual specs but as of yet chosen nothing.  I want to go shadow.  Ron, however, went Holy…and I know he doesn’t really want to go Holy (though he’s not as enamoured of the idea of Shadow as I am), so I feel strongly compelled to join him in suffering.  For the good of the guild, of course.  In other words, I’m waffling, as always.

I lost spellpower on Lyr.  This makes me a sad panda.  :(

Ambrosyne is sitting there entirely unspecced until I work out what, exactly, would be A Good Holy Spec.  She won’t have dual-specs for awhile-I r broke.  There is a slight temptation to go prot.

The problem with mass-respecs is that I have a lot of alts.  Like…a lot.  I have no idea what I want to do with some of them.  Since instance servers were down I spent much of my night flopping from one toon to the next.  I respecced Vainglory, my DK on Azgalor, Unholy…same as she was before.  Ambrosine-DK went from Frost pre-patch to Unholy, at least for now.  The chances of me leveling her are relatively slim.

That leaves me with: 55 mage (previously fire), 48 druid (previously kitteh), 70 hunter (BM forevah), and 75 warrior (previously prot).  Might take the mage frost for future leveling, have no idea what to do with the druid, need a good BM spec for the hunter (fuck you, Survival), and might dual spec the warrior prot/fury.   Gaaaah, decisions.

We are not hitting Ulduar tonight.  I advised against canceling our scheduled raid to better give us a shot and adjusting to class changes in a familiar enviornment.  Besides, some of us still need gear.  A more comprehensive report of how disc priests fare post-patch, and how two bubble-happy disc priests can co-exist in a raid shall fall upon your eyes tomorrow.

At least most of my mods were fine-Chatter was initially broken but was updated an hour or so later.  X-perl is functioning but…not entirely, as I can’t right click on any portraits to do anything.

“Amber, how did you leave the group?”
“…I logged.”

Didn’t get to test Grid but by all reports it continues to work.   Steve is bitching and moaning about how this was a terrible patch, but for those of us with longer memories, we know that this actually wasn’t too terrible.  Steve’s a nub.

In Which I Pretend I’m A Poet Again

My high school lit mag days are long over, but a certain birdie poked me for this meme.  Haiku aren’t really my thing, but let’s give it a stab, shall we?  WoW Class Haiku timez!

Beast Master Hunter
faint pawprint in snow
the whisper of drawn bow strings
savage souls entwined

Paladin
Wielder of the light
Sacrifice embraced in plate
Hail the redeemer

Wow that one was terrible.  Uh…

Lyrandre (Or, What A Draenei Disc Priest Is In My Head)
She, serenity
The calm amidst screaming storms
Light in deepest dark

This is already making the rounds-I’ll let you take it up if you like, rather than tagging people.  Though I’d love to see more terribad poetry from my favorite crack elf.

Search Results, How You Amuse Me

When lacking topics, one can always look at search results.  It seems to be one of the bandwagons in this weeks wagon train, so I might as well hop on. 

disc priest meter
The infamous Ron found an add on that supposedly adjusted healing meters to account for a disc priest’s unique talents, but it appeared to be broken.  As I have touched upon before, however: meter’s don’t tell the story.  I dig deeper, looking at what spells you cast and with what frequency, to tell if you suck or not.  :D

stats required for holy paladin pre naxx
You know what’s funny?  I don’t know.   I don’t think I looked at these when I was gearing up Ambrosyne.  I know I didn’t really look at loot lists, though I did look up what rep I would need.  I just ran heroics over and over and picked up what upgrades I found.  At some point I got dragged along to a 25 man Naxx to fill an empty slot in another guild’s run, had 3 epics handed to me, and stopped worrying about it after that.   Yeah I know, I’m a lucky bitch.  In a casual google search I turn up Banana Shoulder’s excellent pre-Naxx gear guide, but that still doesn’t give you target stats.  It would be safe to say, however, that once you acquire most of that gear you’d be ready to start venturing into Naxx. 

 disc priest how to raid heal 80
I’m going to assume that this person meant “How does a disc priest heal in a raid.”  Because if you’re assigned to raid healing on a regular basis then I’m just sad for you, my friend.  My response is: PW:S, Penance, Prayer of Mending, and Flash Heal.  An occasional Prayer of Healing will also be called for.  Other than that, I don’t know, as I haven’t raided with Lyr yet!  Well, aside from that one SSC run we did for lulz when I was 72.  I might point you over here, though.

Sadly I don’t have any more interesting searches than that.  My favorite of all time remains “ooh shiny”.

/facepalm