The State of the Ori

Long time without a post from me! I guess that if you don’t check in with Bubs and I on twitter, you might have wondered what happened to me and why I stopped contributing. One part was boredom with Wrath raiding and a lack of ideas due to that, but the major part was the fact that I got a job after a long period of unemployment, yay! In August I started working at a preschool, and initially I thought that I’d take a couple of weeks off from WoW to get adjusted, then get back in the game pretty quickly. It turns out that I severely underestimated what my job would entail.

After a day of MANY BABIES (and it’s true, dwarf babies come out fully bearded and demanding beer), I was left feeling kind of like this.

Which meant that NO, I did not want to log onto WoW and hang out in ICC again. I didn’t even want to make the trip all the way from my front door to the bed. I seriously spent at least a month collapsing on my couch to eat dinner then go to sleep for a couple of hours until my boyfriend woke me up and made me go to the actual bed.

But I really missed my friends in Stands in Bad – I honestly enjoy goofing around with them while playing more than anything else about the game. I didn’t bother pre-ordering Cataclysm because I had no idea how I was going to feel about playing, but on the day of the release I went ahead and decided to pull my big girl panties up and get back into the game. I ordered the online download (which was amazingly convenient but now I’m kicking myself because I want the CE and the Underbitewing pet) and started playing the weekend of release.

And you know what? I LOVE IT. I was so burnt out on Wrath, and I’m so happy to say that I’m really loving Cataclysm. The class changes have me excited and enjoying holy paladin healing more than ever. Leveling wasn’t a pain in the ass at all – I got to 83 that first weekend then 85 over the next few weeknights even with my limited play time. The quests were interesting and engaging, and flying in Azeroth is the best (though QQ for the death of ground mounts). Light of Dawn and Holy Radiance get me all a-tingle. I can heal ALL THE THINGS with light that shoots out of my boobs.

Even the bad things aren’t that bad. I have about 3 hours on weeknights to play, and at first when I got to the appropriate gear level I tried to pug heroics. That was a Bad Idea, but realizing that LFD wasn’t going to work out for me made me decide to pester my guild mates for guild groups, which has been a blast. It’s hard not to have fun with people in SiB, especially in a group with Amber when we unintentionally have dying contests (I’m currently the winner). Even instances that have mechanics that I hate are pretty fun when you’re able to joke about your incompetence. Mario hall in Deadmines, I’m looking at YOU.

Every fucking time.

Come play with ussssssss.

It’s that time again! Summer slump, raiding burnout, and a little touch of unfortunate drama have left Brotherhood of Oblivion unable to raid 25 man content for a few weeks now. We have a lot of interested people, but we need a few more to round out our numbers. SO. RECRUITMENT TIEMS.

If you’ve been following this blog and BoO’s antics for a while, you won’t believe what I’m about to say, but we need more healers. Especially raid healers, because Amber and I both are like LOL RAID HEALING NO. Sure, I know I can, but I’d rather lay my hands on a tank. Resto druids and resto shamans would be very very much loved, as we do not have one of either as a main (this makes me a sad Ori). We would pet you and give you cookies. I’d also really love to see us have another holy paladin, in part so I have someone to babble about binding every key to holy light and tapdancing on my keyboard with, and also so that I may occasionally go ret and smack things to help my stress levels. :D So tank healers are also definitely welcome. WE LOVE HEALERS.

We also need plenty of dps. Specifically, ranged dps because right now we have mostly melee. There are no dps shaman mains raiding our 25s currently, so one of either smacking or lightening turret flavor would be much loved. Boomkins would also be wonderful! Frankly, we will welcome any dps players who don’t stand in bad things or think that hugging Sindragosa sounds like a good time. /stares

I think that the only thing we are currently not desperately needing is tanks. If you’re a tank who also has a healing or dpsing offspec that you don’t mind using frequently (or the opposite) feel free to also join us, because chances are that you will get to tank at some point. Curse the irregular tank scaling between 10 and 25 man content.

Currently Brotherhood of Oblivion raids from 7-10 server (CST) on Wednesday and Thursday nights, though dates might possibly be moved if needed to work with summer schedules. As of the last time that we did 25s, we were 8/12 and progressing steadily, and our 10 mans are either working on Sindragosa or have danced on her chain smoking corpse. We’re a pretty casual and relaxed guild, but our goal is to have everyone on board and serious about making progress in our raids with minimal goofing around.

Still, we are the guild who does things like this:

so don’t expect there to be a lack of fun, silly times. I know I can never be entirely serious. Other perks include occasional fun time old school raids (BWL this week!) and a weekly Ulduar 10 hardmode group working towards drakes on Monday nights.

Also, a reminder that we aren’t particularly … PG-13 most of the time.

If you’re interested, you can check out our forums ( http://booguild.net ) or poke me in game on either Orithea or Mortaleia and we’ll talk shop (you can also email me at vivalamuffin at gmail dot com !). We’re always glad to let recruits sit in vent and listen to raid fun times to get a feel for what we’re like before coming over.

Friday Flowchart For Serious!

Since Amber can’t concentrate on making a flowchart, I will!

Hi, my name is Ori and paladin buffing sends me into a HULK SMASH rage. It … flames. FLAMES on the side of my FACE.

I hope that clears things up. I don’t like it when paladin buffs make me mad, but sometimes I have to be rough so that everyone will learn. Come hug me so I can return to rainbows and sparkles Ori.

Also, if you are a paladin and you don’t have Pally Power, I am never speaking to you again. Ever. So there.

Spring fever?

You might have noticed that there hasn’t been much paladin talk in these parts lately.  Unfortunately, a lot of that can be attributed to me being extremely lazy, but another significant factor is the fact that I’m experiencing a little bit of the dreaded Burn Out.  Maybe it’s a seasonal thing – I did quit raiding roughly this time last year, just after Ulduar was released, and it took me months (and finding Amber and BoO, whoo!) to get back into the game.  Brotherhood of Oblivion is doing extremely well in terms of progression – we were stuck at certain points for a little while, but our 25s team has done a great job of tackling new content, and once we’ve downed something we generally don’t have too much trouble with it the next week, which is always WIN.  At the same time, doing well and having more than 25 people ready to go leaves me thinking some nights, “Hrrrm, I can hang out with some friends, it’s not like they need me.”  I’ve complained elsewhere that the attention that I can give to raiding right now is completely shot – I just want to show up and make dirty jokes (and because I’m being encouraged, I’ll share them on the blog sometime :D).

Partially I wonder if all the Cataclysm release info is to blame. I think there’s a general attitude once information from the next expansion starts coming out, that the things in the current incarnation of WoW aren’t really that important any more. I came into raiding at the end of the BC cycle, and it was hard to find guilds that were still interested in raiding and pushing their way through content, because WotLK was just around the corner and none of it would be important any more. “Oh, I’m doing X to prepare for Cataclysm” is something that I see said a lot, and it seems silly for an expansion that doesn’t even have a release date yet. It especially seems weird to get very worked up about information that is likely to change, since the expansion isn’t even in the beta stages at this point.

Then again, knowing that I’m being promised an AoE heal and I’m probably not even going to get it because BLIZZARD HATES US QQQQQ isn’t what’s making me apathetic about raiding. So I’m going to chalk it up to spring fever, mmyep.

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.

A mantra for holy paladins.

Well, a mantra for holy paladins and pretty much every other healer as well.

“I will not check recount.” Repeat it as many times as necessary to let it sink in.

“I will not check recount! I will not check recount!” /shifty eyes /recount show “… FUCK”.

When it comes to healing, being in a constant competition for numbers is sure to get you down, unless you happen to be that person who’s always on top (four for you, Glen Coco). There are just so many factors to healing output to render it much harder to measure than dps numbers. A lot of it has to do simply with class and spec – some have higher thoughput potentials than others, and we all know that disc priest absorbs aren’t often taken into consideration. Another factor is how many healers you have in your group. The more you have, the less healing is needed in general, so those who are faster (due to gear or simple reaction times) are going to have more healing done.

But if you’re competitive like me? Knowing that doesn’t make you feel any better. It makes you want to pout and sulk in the corner because you don’t feel like you’re pulling your full potential. The only solution to keep yourself happy is remember that if you make it through the encounter, that means you’re doing well and pulling your weight. Step away from the healing meters!

(Post inspired by the fact that I have been grumpypants over recount lately, even though I know better! I do wish that there were better ways to evaluate performance.)

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

Bubble hearth, GO!

I joke about bubble hearthing because it’s just one of those things that comes with being a paladin, but it’s not something that I do. I play on a pvp server and I’m hopelessly terrible at pvp, but instead of bubble hearthing when someone gets a jump on me, I just stick it out. I don’t recall ever using it in instances, except maybe when I’m the only one alive and there are a bunch of ugly mobs who want to give me not nice hugs. Even that’s rare because I’m stubborn and it’s easier to just die and run back than it is to make way for the instance again, at least that was the case until the new dungeon teleport system. Bubble hearthing feels really rude in a way that my beloved Divine Intervention doesn’t, even though they pretty much perform the same function in avoiding repairs.

You see, I suffer from healer guilt. I like to make jokes about letting people die to fix their stupid, but in reality I do my best to keep everyone alive because I’d feel bad if I didn’t. I don’t bail on instance groups after wipes – in part because I want to make things work, and because I would feel guilty about letting another healer stumble into a mess that I left behind. So basically, it takes some real abuse for me to throw up my hands and say “screw it”.

For the first time in a long time, I reached my breaking point. It was Drak’tharon Keep; the tank was rushing but it wasn’t anything unmanageable because RAWR PALADIN MANA POOL (/flex). But after we downed King Dred, the druid tank asks us to wait at the bottom of the stairs. His warrior friend (from the same realm and guild) repeats this, and expounds with “DON’T FOLLOW HIM, DO NOT HEAL” in all caps, I guess so we’d know he was serious. I decided to humor them, and when the druid rounds up about 4 groups and goes splat as he’s pulling them down the stairs (well out of my healing range) I laugh a little and get ready for what’s probably going to be a wipe, because it just wasn’t very likely that I’d be able to keep a dps warrior alive with four packs of angry trolls on him. Like I thought, he dies before I can even get a holy light on him, but all the while he’s freaking out in party chat.

After that he proceeded to call me a dumb cunt.

Bubble hearthing? Was totally warranted. It even felt GOOD.