On tier 12:

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!

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.

Amber’s Opinions on Paladin Tanking

After running a few heroics to get a hang of that whole “hunter focus” thing, I went ahead and threw Ambrosine together for prot and had a go at tanking.

….LOL.

What the fuck is this holy power shit?  It’s “like combo points”?  You realize I don’t play a rogue because I HATE COMBO POINTS, right?  Yes I know I played a cat, but NOTICE THE PAST TENSE. 

Okay, so, um, I’ll throw down a consecrate and–HEY.

HEY GUYS ALLOW ME TO HIT HE THINGS WITH MORE THAN SHINY ON THE FLOOR BEFORE YOU ATTACK, KTHX.

Okay, so…969?  Right?  Wait, 3?  939?  I…amg  /flails at buttans

HAY HUNTERS.  WTF.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN’T GET MISDIRECT TO WORK?  FOR FUCKS SAKE.  WELL LEARN TO ASSIST THE TANK THEN NUBS.

Shiny!

Shiny!

…oh there go mobs again.  Hm.  RF is up, right?  RF is up.

Shiny!

Shiny!

…oh there go…I swear to god, HUNTERS.  I AM LETTING YOU TANK THAT.

Shiny!

Shiny!

…heeeeey, I haven’t gone OOM!  Sweet.

Disc Priests and Paladin Tanks

I play a disc priest.  I also play a paladin tank.  I still sigh inwardly whenever a paladin asks me to please not bubble them.

I can not bubble you, sure.  I have so much SP that my bubbles are officially Srs Bzns.  I’m a raider, though, and bubbling is part of my routine.  The muscle memory is there.  Even if I don’t want to bubble you I probably will sometimes anyway, becuase god damn it, it’s a habit!  Just ask Bingle, our other disc priest.  Whenever we’re both in a raid we’re bubbling each other’s target(s) all the time, even though we don’t mean to, just because it’s how we’re used to doing things.

What’s the paladin tank to do?  Deal with it.

It is easier to change your behavior than to change someone else’s.

Sure you can ask your healer to not bubble you.  They may or may not happily go along with it.  But why don’t you learn to adjust to the situation?  When I’m on my paladin I’m typically taking off 1 or 2 pieces of gear.  I might pull a little more as well.   I’m usually still over defense cap, but I have some more mana to work with. 

Treat it as an exercise.  Alright, I don’t have much mana.  What do I do? 
How can I create the most threat with the least mana usage? 
Can I take off three pieces of gear?  How about wearing a holiday hat*? 
Can I try a different seal?  How about another Judgement?

Maybe it is easier to just ask the disc priest to not bubble you.   “It gives mana when it pops” is all well and good, except for those of us rocking 4k+ SP.  But trying to modify your own behavior is worth looking at, too.

*I’ve done it.  No one said a word.  :(

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.

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.

Tanking Misadventures

If you want to know just how much of a fail tank I really am, you need to see me on Lyestra.  There’s something about flailing around as a warrior that is great for destroying any WoW-related ego I have. 

I am-at least, by how I measure such things-an inexperienced tank.  I leveled my paladin as holy, only picking up tanking after acquiring a fairly decent set of gear when Kara was on farm.  I spent some time tanking a few heroics and Kara before I transferred to Azglor…where Steve was cruel and threw me into SSC OTing. 

I had my prot warrior to 80 in those days, but she never even set foot in a heroic.  Neglected alt was neglected.

When the pre-Wrath patch hit and fubar’d all my tanking gear (that oh so carefully juggled combination of tanky stats and spell power), I went back holy,only picking prot back up well into Wrath. 

I’m not sure that such a sporadic, mostly raid-based career as a perpetual OT was the best way to go.  I like to think that I don’t suck…on my paladin.  My warrior, however, seems to be a constant flail fest of lost aggro.   Maybe this is just because I’ve never geared up as a tank before.  My paladin always started with a collection of hoarded epics.  Lyestra has started from scratch so to speak, and may be suffering for it.

This shaky tanking career is probably why things like this are terrifying:

omg omg omg omg omg omg omg!  Performance anxiety, performance anxiety!  This is only an alt!  What am I doing!

I felt immensely clever for things like dropping consecrate in one alcove and then running to another so that I could easily pick up two of the three spawns right off the bat.  It doesn’t take much to make me happy, though.  >.> 

We cleared all the way through Saurfang…albiet barely.  Saurfang was one of those post-enrage, one paladin left alive, bubbled and flailing wildly type kills.  I’ll take it, though!  Thank you, Pity Buff!

Of course as fail of a tank as I am, I know that certain behavior is uncalled for.  Let’s say, for example, that you are invited to tank for a weekly raid run.  The group consists mostly of a particular guild.  The other tank, who is a member of that guild, tells you to tank the adds.

Do you politely say okay?

Do you politely say okay even while inwardly bitching about how add duty sucks sweaty donkey balls?

Either of those is fine.  The following, however, is not:

And we’re kicking you from the fucking raid!  Good night, Fivestar douchecanoe!  Thanks for calling us all typical fucking children, you typical small dicked twatwaffle!  Enjoy your wasted raid lock-out!  I only regret not turning on trade in time to wield my rapier wit against your fail whining.

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.