Raid times.

Latest bug from our GM- He wants us all to do as much as possible in 10mans... which are to be done OUTSIDE of scheduled raid times...

We are 3 nights a week, tuesday thru thursday, 3 and a half hours a night. AND HE'S BEEN HAVING US DO ToC25 INSTEAD OF SPLITTING RAID INTO MULTIPLE 10s.

This slightly annoys me being as I'm juggling 60+ hours at work a week, a girlfriend who I think is feeling neglected sometimes... and friends/family. I love raiding, but I mean it's been quite crazy lately.

Anywhoo, I realize that I just have to sit sometimes in these situations... That because of my schedule and life I won't be able to make every raid AND every 10man... And I know I'll pass on 10s because they want me in 25s... It's just irritating and all.

Truly, I am probably most annoyed at the inefficiencies they are ran at. Among our guild we have a TON of gear, and a lot of geared alts. Almost every raider has one, or sometimes more geared enough alts to keep up in ICC10. Now, what simply baffles me is that in each group it seems like we have a few mains, a few alts, and a random friend of someones or something... This is great and all in gearing purposes... but then people get all hot and angry over the fact that the 10s aren't making progress... I don't get why we don't make one raid a super-duper stacked out the ass raid who is going to lay down the law to ICC and all of arthas' minions. Then the second set would be almost as stellar... followed by groups that will have more and more alts in them. Instead it is just "we'll be running 3 10 mans this week. Here are the days and times. Please reply"

Yet, I digress. I left my guild that I ran for a reason. I want organization and all, but I refuse to be the one to step up and take the reigns. Being as such I really can't criticize too much...

Or can I?

Haste Gearing, and where it should be on your gear.

I am always talking about haste this, haste that. Haste is the new sliced bread... Truly. The one thing I get asked most about haste.... "How do you get so much haste!?!" And it got me thinking, I really never tell them the items that they really ought to not be picking up more Int/spellpower/crit for because of the Haste. (The right amount of Int/spellpower/crit can in my mind outweigh some haste... I'm looking at you...Crappy and what I tried to replace it with...)

So here are a few tips to those of you trying to balance where you can drop off the haste pieces so you can get to be more uberpwning...The bolds will give you a generic balance of where you will be at with these items.
Total(0 haste)

Rings:
You want about 100 haste from your rings. I find it VERY difficult now to pick up a ring that DOESN'T have haste on it. Really, you need 670, and this helps bucketfulls to get.
Total (100 Haste)

Weapon/shield:
Again, 100 haste. Seems logical right? Get in this neighborhood on these 4 slots so far and you are already 1/3 of the way to cap... more or less.
Total (200 Haste)

Neckpiece/Back:
Roughly 50 haste combined is all you can expect out of this I suppose. Everyone wants these drops. Really though, this is something I strongly recommend, but I was wearing a ilevel 200 Cloak and picked up this so it was difficult for me to keep it... I was also sporting the 226 badge neck until I had the fortunate circumstance to get this. So I was forced into wearing more haste on my main set pieces as a result of this.
Total(250 Haste)

Tier eligible Pieces: (Head/shoulder/Chest/Hands/Legs):
300. No lies. The offset pieces that tend to drop for me are filled with nummy intellect, but I can't get the haste on them so I generally stray from our 4pc bonuses... being as we haven't had a good one since T7... it's really nice to be able to snag the two that you want with haste on them, leaving the rest for offsets.
Total(550 Haste)

Offset Pieces: (waist/wrist/booties)
100. Between the 3 of these, In areas >ilevel232 if it has haste, it's got about 50 or so on it. This means you are able to snag two out of three of these in haste and the other can be without. Currently I run a setup where wrist/boots have haste and the waist does not.
Total (650 Haste)

Given that you can snag this or that, you are so damn close to your 677 you will be set!! Good luck getting your drops! As always, if you have questions just toss them my way and I'll do my best to get you a response timely!!

Some notes on my personal gear, and advice I'd give to those not in raids
that are full buffed with everything:

In our 25man we haven't had a ret pally or boomer druid in a long time at raider rank show face frequently... This means I need a lot more haste than usual... I roll with around 800. The way I keep this up is I wear ilevel 245 gear, and I drop
about 1k int. Dropping 1k int from 38k buffed to 36+ isn't going to
destroy your mana pool, but you will land your heals more reliably and in a better rhythm with the 1 second GCD that the haste cap provides... The way I get to that 800 is my shoulders go back to haste, same with my waist. Also, at this point I am wearing haste in every slot on my toon with the exception of my neck and back. I do have decent alternatives for them with haste on them... but they are not that fantastic.

Second note: These numbers are very difficult to hit when you are
just starting out... Take what you can get when you can get it... Just don't
break your old gear just because you think it is better now. I have a LOT
of gear sitting in my bank that gets pulled out when I need it... And I never replace it until I have an item that fills the role it filled COMPLETELY (I.E. New shoulders? Don't have haste on them? Save your haste ones, even if you can wear the ones without... Because let's say your chest drops without haste on it, and it's a greater upgrade over your current one than those shoulders were... you can decide to go back and wear your other ones!! Seems smart to me.)

My guilty pleasure.

Of my many, I must admit... I absolutely love pop-music. There is just so much beauty in a catchy tune that is more or less manufactured in a sound studio with no skill by the "artist" at all.

Really, It's true. When I raid, I bounce around in music styles, depending on what I am looking for. Lately it has been this though- Pull up Grooveshark.com, hit the button for "Most popular" and hit "Play all" so I hear what is most recently the most popular. Anything that can hit a top 40 chart is fair game... Ever. As in, I get all the new Gaga, Jason DeRulo, Britney, and what have you. But it's the Afroman, and Tom Petty that really gets me hot and heavy.

Mid-battle going from Taylor Swift to Kanye always makes me smile.

I can't raid without good tunes playing. It used to be just straight techno/trance, as techno has the same effect as classical does on me, helping me focus with no lyrics in the background at all, but I just can't get enough of some of the music and singing along to "Replay" by Iyaz or "One less lonely girl" by the Biebs, simply stellar and out of this world.

Cringe if you will, hate me for doing it, but I love it. It makes raiding more enjoyable for me. I mean come one, if you are going to listen to music while raiding, it better be enhancing your experience!!

Princes, and how they screamed like little girls in the end.

Well, I must say... I should never have cleared my recount from last night...

1. Our tanks have enough gear and do (overall) a pretty darn good job.
   
2. Our healers (As I realized last night) are really an amazing team. We had our 1 Disc/1 Holy Priest/2 resto Druids/and ME*.
   
3. Our DPS do decently well. But I feel that they are meeting raid reqiurements rather than exceeding them.

This being said-We have some amazing heavy hitters. All our rogues rip and gnaw and claw eachother for being top dogs, while 2 of our DKs hit like mack trucks. Our 3rd DK who raids was what I would have said was underperforming, settling around 5k, and last night was pulling the potential for her gear. I was quite pleased.

I don't expect every single person who is dealing damage to the boss to do 12k dps. (I wish they would though.) I just expect that when you are in 4pc T9 ilevel245 you do >5k. I would garner the expectations (depending on the fight ofc) that they are capable of hitting 7k in really nice conditions.... Enough about this right now though... Because...

LAST NIGHT, the dps cleaned house... AND avoided shit really well. And let me tell you amigo... Princes is make or break with your DPS ultimately. Here is my quick and dirty explanation of what I do in that fight-->

• Tur bacon's one tank who he will be out of range most of the time (on Mr. Fire Prince.)
  
• Tur Heals like a mofo on the Warlock tank (on Mr. Shadow Prince, easily the easiest one to deal with once your warlock goes pro in catching black balls**)
  
• Tur Heals like a mofo on the Paladin who he enjoys healing because pally on pally action is hawt... especially with AD! (Tanking Mr. I-like-to-blow-shit-up-Prince)


• Tur avoids the crazy crap that all three Princes toss out which are...
  
  



• Mr. Fire Prince sends out big ass balls of fire, if they target you, be leet
  and show how well you can kite! This reduces the damage it does when it gets to you, so turn and run like those mages do!!

  
  

  Mr. Shadow Prince makes the big black balls appear. They aren't good for
  you-insofar as your buddy the warlock tank- he needs them for increasing his
  shadow resist so he doesn't take as much damage when Shadow Prince gets all big and angry!
  

  Mr. I-like-to-blow-shit-up-Prince decides every once in a while he'll cast
  this big explosion that if you are within 30 yards, you blow up... and so does
  anyone around you... GAH! So I'd just stay far away from him and we'd be
  gravy.

This is Fire, stay out of it!

So, with all this going on, and we have 2 or 3 ranged making sure the prince's balls don't drop (GET IT? BALLS DROPPING?) it seems like quite a bit, but just take it a step at a time and try to control the fight. It's really not that long of a fight in the end.



Couple things that could totally help people out:



In our healer setup we broke out into 2 groups for "general spatial placement" even though through the fight you will end up running everywhere. It helped to spread us out among the raid so all the tanks were getting enough heals, and I suppose the raid as well.


I let our raid leader know an idea might be for the ranged keeping the balls up to each have their own mark and to mark the one they will be responsible for keeping up. That way we aren't having 2 stay on one and 1 falling. Seemed to help keep things more organized.


Your melee need to focus on staying alive. As much as I toted how awesome our damage was, this fight really doesn't show your brute force. If they aren't diligent with the explosion dodging or swapping targets the fight is incredibly harder.


Your warlock needs to be a skilled professional. If he isn't, then you may be better off having a tank just run around doing that job. We tried this a few times and it isn't horrible... It's just a lot easier with a warlock. Threat is an issue with a non-lock. Warlocks are surprisingly resilient in PvP gear and stam trinks+tank setup to spell damage. Kinda awesome.

*This is my favorite setup for 25man. I don't *mind*
squeezing a resto shammy between us, but losing any of us makes me cringe, and taking more heals leads into the raid dps issue...

** Do not mistake with Blue Balls, could cause serious damage to your health and personal well-being.

Raid Progression

NOTE: Most of the time frames discussed here are my personal thoughts and feelings about how long the time felt and how much I was in a specific instance. I did not go back and look at exactly how long each one was out, and I wanted the post to come from feeling rather than fact to express those feelings about raiding progression. Catch mah drift?



Lately I had been going over a lot of people talking about where they were in wow a year ago and what their characters looked like. It's funny because I don't think about this often and when I do I am always suprised that when it comes down to it... I'm a battle tested veteran.

I think about the encounters I've mastered. The raids I've lead. The people I managed and the guild I used to run. All of this experience I forget about frequently, but when it comes down to it... I can still rattle off boss abilities, class abilities, min/max specs, and the general gist of all of this. And not for just wrath... Even though I only got up to ZA in TBC, I have since experienced/learned about many of the encounters.

I keep looking at it and thinking about why I still play wow over all the other games that have come and gone in my life. I have binged on wow over long periods of time for ridiculously long playtime periods. Yet if I burn out, I generally come back. In fact, most of the time when I burn out I simply roll a new class, or on a new server to see new things (like the time I rolled alliance).
With Arthas not even out yet I think about the time gaps between each of the raids. Naxx was out for soooooooooo long. It was all we had to raid. It got to the point where PUGing it was expected to get and kill KT, even on my fail server (truly fail). Ulduar was not out for long enough, in my opinion as I wanted to attempt hardmodes but we were still working through it. On our server only a handful of guilds actually killed Yogg on 10 or 25. It wasn't hard, it just required people to actually buckle down and stay focused the entire instance. But the actual time that it was out does makes me laugh becuase the content was available for a long time(relatively... I think), and yet those who cleared it in the first few weeks had to have been so bored.

ToC was out for far too long, considering it was only one room(2?) that you fought 5 bosses in. It had to be the ultimate show of laziness imo on Blizzard's behalf. At the time when everyone was grilling Blizz about it and complaining about how much it sucked, my guild leader decided we would be attempting ToGC25 (we had 10man on farm) even though I KNEW 60% or more of the raid did NOT care to be there. Over 60 wipes later we killed beasts. Once. That kind of wipage made my brain hurt. We had no other content to do... We would run Ony and VoA simply because it was free loot... But even that could have been done on our own quite easily. Usually those who needed loot from there would be looking for one or two items specifically. And thats about it.

Now we have ICC being rationed out to us, plus there is a limiting factor/waygate that will hinder many from getting into the depths of the instance early on. I'm unsure about how I feel about all this, yet I'm not sure it's going to work out for the better.

See, I'm a big fan of linear progression. There once was a time when I thought I wanted choice over everything... Well not anymore. As I got older and matured I realized that much of the world is out of my control, I believe in everyone having control over their own actions (for the most part... Sophie's choice being one of the few exceptions) which means I can only choose for myself. What I also found is that sometimes, especially when I'm trying to have fun and enjoy a game... I like choice. I like being able to choose which weapon looks cooler, what instance to run, what role to be in a raid. Yet... there is strange comfort in having those choices made for you. Less thinking and responsibility involved.

All in all, I enjoy this game... Sometimes a bit too much, and I am completely undecided about what kind of raid structure I like best. After all of ICC is out, I am leaning to thinking that we will burn out less and learn the encounters better over time being as we will have had our hands held by Blizz the whole way... This is probably a good thing if you have ever read any of my posts about my guild raids or have raided with the general populace... In the end, hindsight will be 20/20 and I am refusing to pass judgement until I get that vision.

P.S. If you really want my opinion... I think that we'll all burn out of ICC eventually, but the tiered releases and self-nerfing instance will keep it looking fresh for longer. The bleeding-heart, cutting-edge raiders will be distraught as they are being held back... But Blizz is done catering to them methinks...

The Specs of DS/DG

The DS/DG argument: In one location and what makes it good/how to use it. And a smattering on the discussion of the underutilized utility of the holy paladin. (Because I can’t find anywhere else that is user friendly and easy to understand)

NOTE: This was originally a part of my How To: Holy post, but it became a behemoth in and of itself that it required its own post.

Now you have your basic healing down. I would allow you to come heal with me in my raid. You would do your job as needed. You would be better than 80% of the paladins out there. What makes you a top-notch player you ask me? Well the rest is understanding the finer points of your class. I chant my boots with runspeed and forego the 15% in ret for the wondrous magnificent beautiful Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian.

Couple of notes about the differences of specs, the ret spec gives you these benefits:
1. 15% runspeed AND free boots to enchant. Note that the 15% is up from the 8% of the enchant.
2. 8% crit
3. 3% crit to the raid on the boss, if your raid doesn’t have this already.
4. Imp BoM (if you are giving it out)
5. 10% reduction in instant cast spells
Just so you know, I listed them in importance of most valuable to least imo. Disagree if you like but I’ll share my rationale why you don’t need these things after I tell you the advantages to the DS/DG subspec:
1. DS. A still awesome RAID WALL. Truly unique in the game, I have saved entire wipes with this one button and it got nerfd because it is THAT good. It’s safer to use than before with its current form and a little less potent.
2. DG-Means your SS lasts 30 seconds longer which can be converted into saved mana as you cast SS ½ the time you were before (assuming you are not a baddie and you keep it up on the tank at least 80% of the time)
3. 6% personal damage reduction with RF, plus your other heals should absolutely LOVE you. Adds spawning go to healers, with RF up you know WHICH they will go to and if your tank can’t out-threat you with RF up (which is like 1-2k threat… I mean come on… that’s when I’m bombing fully effective HLs!) you need new tanks, not a new spec.
4. 6% healing when touched by your aura, doesn’t stack with tree of life, so I guess if you didn’t have a tree it’d be nice?
5. Divinity, 5% healing increased (nominal amount for us) and 5% healing received (actually can make a difference!).

Now, the runspeed from ret is actually AWESOME. Truly, but I get half that from boots. When it comes down to it though, a raid wall IS better than run speed increase. Prot 1-0 Ret

8% crit? Well being as if you tell me crits help you heal more… I say FALSE. Crit is an unreliable stat for healing. Healing is about “this spell heals X” when it crits it’s a bonus and if the crit is effective healing it saved you your next cast. Win. But Murhpy’s law clearly says if you rely on crit, it will bend you over like a little boy from MJ (Too son?) and your tank will get gibbed when you fail to crit 3-4 times in a row. I know, crits are awesome and 25k+ HLs are cool, but you cannot seriously tell me you rely on it. As for mana regen since blizz nerfd illumination in Naxx mp5 is a better stat pound for pound… and you get about the same mana back from DG and your less applications of SS. No mana regen argument here folks!

3% crit to the boss? Well if your raid doesn’t have this… I can see why you would want it. But this can be brought by many many classes. Which leads me to my next point… Imp BoM, also if you don’t have this or imp bshout then it would probably be really good to pick up, if you do… then it’s pretty much worth nil. In a 10man hmode guild I could totally see a pally specing into these for the raid, because they ARE worth it. In a 25man where these buffs are nearly guaranteed it’s a true waste.

After that the talents you are getting are very slim, the 10% from instants really doesn’t net to much, unless you are chain casting HS… which you should not do! 6% damage reduction and RF can be debatable depending on your players, divinity CAN save a life, but you wouldn’t really feel it… and aura healing is obviously brought by the trees.

When it comes to using DS btw, you really do need to figure think it through beforehand when would be nice to use it. The best situation I believe is when you have your bubble ready, don’t think you will need it during the fight, and the whole raid is about to take massive damage (I.E. Hodir frozen blows, Anub hmode P3 after tank CDs are down to name a few) but it has a short CD of 2 min and your bubble is 5. This being said if the melee or even the tanks are about to be punished and you can heal yourself or call to the other heals to help you out, then you can really help there as well. Just think though- if there is major raid AoE and you are taking that damage, you are also taking the channeled damage and can bring yourself low with DS and then off yourself quite quickly while that pulsing AoE nails you like a 5 copper hooker.

I have no idea how many times I’ve saved a raid with this talent… 15? 20 times? Granted I’ve also wiped us from dying to my own stupidity before as well… Just make sure you don’t kill yourself to much using this CD, or it may just really not be for you.

Hand of Sacrifice is not used enough. It’s another tank CD you can use, just announce it to your other heals, and then make sure you are not in fire to add to that damage as well. With the DG it does pretty well.

Make sure your dpsers love you by giving out buddy bubbles when they pull threat. The shorter CD helps here becuase it really can save their life. And it doesn’t hinder casters at all. Frequently in ICC already my buddy the DK knows I have his back and he doesn't mind pulling aggro... Knowing I'll BoP him pretty swiftly.

Hand of Salvation is also really nice. Make nice with a feral kitty and you just got yourself a keen CD swap. Create a whisper macro to scream at them when you want their innervate and they do the same when they are about to pull. With both on relatively short CDs you can swap them back and forth many times in fights. Also eating innervates allows you to use less FoL and more HL. (A note about this, if you really want to be awesome and get your dps loving you, tell that druid on any fight where you think you won’t need it to feed the arcane mages innervates it really will boost their dps a LOT. Allowing them to 4 stack arcane barrages and be ok with their mana levels makes bosses die a lot faster.) I find I actually eat innervates when we are down on tank heals or when bosses are progression and there is a lot more damage on the raid that will later be avoidable with understanding the fights better.

Conclusion on the Specs debate:
Really if you are looking to HL bomb, I'm not one to see a lot of value in the ret subtree. As much as I like crit for the big bombing numbers, I still sit just below 50% raid buffed, which is generally *enough* for throughput. Then again, if you need throughput, haste is your better friend than crit...

At the end of the day, do what you like, this is just what the theorycrafting pans out as. I will tell you experience weighs in a lot more... (More on this later)

A few notes on utility as a Holy pally:

Seal of wisdom procs. This one here used to be the bread and butter in naxx fights. On most of the bosses you could step up to the bosses unnoticed by him and just swing away feeling all warm and fuzzy with no care or worry about getting eaten. Now blizzard likes to keep us at range for many fights with things like knockdowns, interrupts, and random AoE in close proximity to the bosses. Well, when those are NOT there. Get right up on his ass and laugh as you realize your swing timer will go off between casts and is not reset by casts. Truly an amazing way to get “free” mana. AND remember that 40k mana you have with buffs? Yeah, your SoW procs give you mana based off of that sucker. So that int helped you out AGAIN. Just be careful, there is a reason why ranged stay at RANGE usually…

Be aware and use your CDs. With the short CDs of raid wall and AM, it should be used once, twice every fight. Get used to using your CDs on trash... As a healer I always found it difficult to pop CDs, but doing it more on trash really helps by conditioning you to check when they are on CD and when not, keeping them more on CD. They will be back up for bosses, I promise.

LFG Anger

I have to say, This post by ferarro made me think of just the other day in a heroic Gundrak.



I zone in (as tank ofc, becuase I don't like waiting!) where I start putting on my tank set and buff the whole party. I throw up a readycheck (as party lead) and everyone is ready but the healer. I hate to say it, but I was actually in a threat set and knew without the dps, I could still live and be just fine. So naturally I pull, even though the priest said no to a readycheck and had half mana. (I actually assumed he'd do what I do in that situation, sit and keep drinking, as he just clearly stated to me"NO, I AM NOT READY") Where he starts flipping out in chat calling me a baddie asking if I saw the readycheck I threw up!!



Now we kill the first three bosses with me just silently pulling and self-healing as much as I need becuase he thinks somehow it is a smart move to NOT heal your tank. His friend in the run is pulling a whopping 1.2k dps, and decides to thunderfuck mobs I'm tanking. I would have said something being as I was annoyed with the guy about his leet dps... but one of the other dpsers is pulling under him at 1.1k and I wasn't about to be a super-ass.



So instead I calmly type out that either he thunderfucked while not glyphed (which is bad for raiding anyway) or the Boomkin hit typhoon(who was talented in it), I didn't know who did it, but it wasn't real cool, please refrain from this. The healer takes this as "RAWR YOU ARE INSULTING MY GUILDIE AND YOU MADE ME ANGRY B4" So he claims I don't get any more heals. The DK (who is pulling 4k =D) is like Come on... were so close to the end and won't have to talk to eachother.



Here's where I do something out of my element:

Usually I would succumb to nerdrage and just unleash fury upon this poor soul (no really, I can get brutal) becuase lets face it... Most of the people who get angry right from the get-go will end up much much more angry after talking to me. I'm not the greatest, but I'm pretty good at utilizing logic in making my points, which I have found most wow players understand when I walk them through it, yet can't do on their own... I'm also very hurtful if I want to be... ALL THIS ASIDE, because I actually chose to NOT do this! Is that I deleted the mean comments I already had typed out (no really) and filled it with simply this:



TUR:"Hey man, I didn't mean to offend anyone. I was just trying to be helpful as I know not everything is explained and many tanks would get angry at that sort of action, luckily I'm not one of them =D"



BH(Baddie healer):"Well most healers would be pissed if they said no to a readycheck and their tank rushes in."



TUR:"I'm sorry about that, but really I knew what I was pulling and that I could keep myself, and the whole group up against 3 trash mobs. If I pull on a no to a readycheck, I expect my healer to be afk filming a porno, making coffee, or curing cancer, clearly."



DK:(randomly interjects):"This group isn't that bad and were looking at the last boss, lets just kill him and go our merry way."



TUR:"Shhh, didn't you know that all DKs are bad? Jeez, try showing up on recount sometime, baddie."



*Tur pops DP and barrels into the boss, waiting for a 5stack of SoCorr to pop wings and AP trinket and unload on the wittle bossie. All the while taking nothing for damage."



The boss dies



BH:"Hey man, you really are a good tank, take care!"



Moral of the story for me... I was actually nice when things got heated and the guy didn't end up being unreasonable for once(I mean he acknoweledged how awesome I am... He has to be at least awake to the world then!)!! Hallelujiah!