Weather EDIT: And other crap.

Weather rant inc.

Stupid blizzard (real snow falling, accumulating a lot on the ground) making my holiday plans change and all. I like plans, you sir are the driving force that makes my parents decide they want me to leave town a day early with them and possibly get stuck out of town... SWEET, not like I had work to do today that I'll just skimp out on... and It'll magically get done. No worries.

Other news- The ICC encounters in 25. Now that I've had 3+ weeks in there (and no Saurfang25 kill yet) I can say with all honesty that raid makeup is much more dependent than bringing skilled players... sometimes. Most of the bosses to me seem like idiotchecks and controlled burst dps checks (while they are being tanked and the heals keep everyone up... but still, those are necessary to all fights).

Let's look at Marrowgar, the positining? I could do it blindfolded. Literally. It's called DBM. It screams when you are in coldflame, or impaled, bone storm. The only thing it doesn't tell you is not to be near your tank... But I have devised a plan that will solve this issue for all dps and heals. (non-tanks)
1. Target Marrowgar
2. See which way he is facing
3. Do not stand in front of him
4. ??
5. Profit.

Deathwhisper, DnD fail is fail. 'nuff said. Sheep/cyclone/CC the MC'd buddys of yours. Melee kill their mobs, ranged get theirs. Put enuf deeps on the boss to just whale away. When she comes active, kill her. Oh, and when a boss casts something, and we have 36 melee on the boss, how in hell is it not interrupted? And we have shamans, and mages, and who knows what else that can interrupt.

FC. Ummmmmm so someone started it up early on us last time... and we still beat it... without anyone dying... really. That. Hard. Pretty sure we could 2-3 heal it with good tank heals on the opposite boat.

Saurfang. Yeah, in theory the boss is not that hard. In practice, apparently not everyone kites literally everything in their life with a mentalitiy that you should never stop moving. Frequently it is noted of me that I never stop moving in raids unless I have to stand and deliver (HL bombs, spriesting). As a tank even I jump... a lot. This comes from years of playing many first person shooters where hitting a moving target is just harder (duh?). Also, if something is in your face owning you, wtf are you standing there trying to own it for? Pshh, slap a ho down, and move back killing from your maximum range. I was leveling with a friend once, and she complained to me that I kite literaly EVERYTHING. Well, why not? I mastered the jump shot on my level 29 hunter already. Why you ask? (Don't even dare ask what a jump shot is you terribad hunter) Becuase it is the most effective way to kite and continue deepsing as well.

Anywhoo, I'm not trying to rag on people, just miffed that not everyone thinks like I do... becuase clearly I am awesome.

EDIT: Such planning on my part. What started as a weather rant turned into a spew my thoughts around.

Winter Solstice!

And happy Winter Solstice!!!

I have a few friends who are more than a little bit Athiest and enjoy celebrating the Solstices. I just enjoy celebrations!

I just wish I had more time to get all my Christmas shopping done... As in, I have yet to get any of it done.

ICC, Arthas, and who knows what else!

Lately with time at work being so high and full weekends of work consuming my life, I found that the crawling pace of ICC releases is actually helping me out. With the release of Ulduar, and previous to that with Naxx there was so much pressure to clear because we were able to. This allows you to go as far as your raid is capable of and choosing when to stop. Now that blizzard decided that they would control the flow of raiding by only releasing the easy content one step at a time, the challenge in ICC just isn’t there for me.

I really do enjoy the new scenery and the new fights, yet at the same time I find it difficult to get really enthusiastic about content that everyone *should* be downing.

After re-reading that proclamation I realize that it can come off as very elitist and in the same tones as the “Why is everyone allowed to raid and see the content I deserve to see after all my hard work” but I really don’t mean it in that sense. I love the accessibility that blizzard gave to all players into the endgame. When I first started playing I mentioned casually one time to a person that I really enjoyed Wow. He claimed that after he reached level cap there didn’t seem to be a whole lot to do except raid. At the time he was playing (vanilla) it really did take a long time to gear up to actually contribute, then you are looking at being a dpser in a 40-man? Let’s pretend for a moment they even HAD recount (they didn’t). You have no idea who is doing well, and who is afking for anything they like. The content isn’t challenging except for the fact that the raid coordination and leadership. (Think of the nightmare that was Thaddius for 40 people. Granted it was high enough up in progression that any guild that got there had enough people committed to actually paying attention… but still… It was bad enough when we were pugging it before Uld.)

Back on topic, the accessibility that blizz has tossed out for raiding is awesome. The logic that they design uber-awesome content (like AQ or Sunwell) that not very many people were able to experience is not really logical. It’s like James Cameron being like “Avatar is teh sex, and you can’t watch it unless you are a well known movie critic. I realize I dumped a massive amount of money into this, it’s extremely popular, received amazing reviews, but unfortunately you all have not watched all my other movies leading up to it so you do not deserve to even be in it’s very presence. You are not 1337.”

That just makes no sense. I want Icecrown to be the pinnacle of raiding, I want the Arthas fight to be just phenomenal. Anything else would be a letdown. We all played WC3 (assumption here) and no one got irate when everyone was able to beat the game!! It had amazing story and the story comes to a close here. It is 100% logical for most people to get to the Arthas fight and to see it. The self-nerfing raid instance is what will assist this as well.

Here’s to hoping it cracks up to everything we want it to be!

Tanking fun with Seals!

Over at Ardent Defender today there is a post about tanking, and the use of seals.

RAMBLING NOTES FOR YOU MY DEAR READERS: It’s come to my attention that though I raid holy in our guild 25s as my mainspec, I am also considered our 4th or 5th tank as far as pecking order goes. We have 3 that show up regularly (one being the GM) and they all out gear my tank set, but after that I may be the 4th best geared tank and in one of their absences I end up slapping on the sword and board to help lead the charge against bosses. Aside from this even, for the 10man group I put together a few months ago of good friends (who happen to be good players as well) I found healers who I actually can trust to keep an exceptionally high quality of play behind me, I end up tanking for our group frequently. (this makes our dps very happy as for some reason they claim I am one of the best at keeping them alive, no matter how hard they try to pull off of me =D)

This being said, I keep up to date with tank theory from EJ and Maintankadin enough to carry 3 sets of tank gear with me, many weapons, trinkets, shields, and the like. Because I am not a baddie (and if you are a tank asking yourself “why would he carry so much around?” then I’m just going to tell you now that you are doing it wrong) and want to perform at the highest level.

Back on target to the point: The use of SoCom as a tank. It’s something I never really thought about much, and to be honest on large trash pulls I do end up tanking 6+mobs. It’d be nice to rip out some great numbers to keep my dps all angry at (at the cost of threat from 1% crit). It’s not like I would be dumping utility (DS/DG), survivability, or necessary (PoJ, vindication) talents from my build to get this. I would simply become a more badass AoE tank monster. And it is more fun to play with! Think of HoR smashes that hit 3 targets, each one chaining to 2 other mobs with Seal of cleave. Add in Consecrate, Holy Shield, Ret aura, Thorns, and maybe a Shield Spike and you are looking at some AoE threat that is super high, and very fast. This also counters the one issue I used to randomly have with AoE tanking- Our unholy DK could rip threat off of me if we went at a pack of 6+ mobs at the same time, even if they were undead and I am opening with HW. Consecrate takes a bit to get going, and HS reflective threat really is a lot higher than most think. Building stacks of Vengeance on many little packs (spiders in naxx, lashers in Uld, many of the pulls in ICC) just takes so damn long. I could see this as being really nice in add tanking ToGC adds as well, as it gets constant damage on Anub for “free.”

At the very least, I know the warrior tank I run with who already gives up on trying to tank when I’m just AoE threating is going to hate me more for this. And being as I love him so much, my goal will be to cause him even more anger and rage.

Has anyone put this to good use yet seeing great results?

A little about me

Time for some explaining:

I started playing wow just before 2.4. I have 3 80s(Paladin, Priest, DK), 2 that I play with regularity(Pally/Priest). I progression raid on my paladin as holy/prot on an (overall) fail server in terms of progression, but enjoy my socializing with all the people I have met. The priest gets action in alt-runs and random PuGs. Lately I decided to try out dpsing on the priest as a caster (since it's actually viable now... I've wanted to be shadow for a while, but I refused to play a spec that didn't scale after 3.2k dps with gear)and have been enjoying it, yet my heart will always lie in the arms of my paladin.

I'm not a ridiculous theorycrafter, but I'd like to consider myself a "student of the game." (more on this to come) I pretty much know what I'm doing on my toons and why. Rare is the day I just throw talent points around without some sort of substantial testing and good reason to do so. I'd like to get some guides up on paladins specifically, as I am pretty well versed in Holy and Prot, and will always be shocked to see how few guides are written for the "layman" out there that are done correctly. Every time I have looked at someone's How To: Paladin I always have some sort of critique- They get it about 90% correct and overall I'm happy they made the information available, but it just irks me that they can't be 100%. It's so close!!!

I think from time to time I'll come here to make general posts about current frustrations I come upon and whatnot. But time will tell with those.

Finally, I would like you all to know how awesome I am. Rarely am I around people who I consider to be as awesome as I am (even rarer when they are MORE awesome) and it is just plain old fact!

P.S. If you continue to read on you may learn to appreciate my humor one day.

A new blog

First post ever:

1. Decided today that I like writing.
2. Thinking I might actually take this thing somewhere and try to post a bit on it from time to time.
3. Who knows what could happen!
4. A clarification for what the title here means. (Though I expect most healers already know what sparkle wars are) When two healers of any kind stand in the bank together, inevitably they have to show each other how awesome they are by healing the crap out of the other. Most notably turn up your graphics and actually watch Holy Lights land on someone.

I'm thinking this will be a blog about how I mainly heal on the priest and pally (mostly pally) and basically anything else I decide to write about.