Ladies and gentlemen, Cataclysm Build 12857 shall hereafter be known to me as the “Trifecta of Doom” build.

Paladin Summaries

To begin, let us look at the paladin tree summaries, which let you know what abilities you get just for spending your first points in that tree. (Click for a larger version.)

Notice anything weird? Wrong? Strange?

How about the fact that the Holy tree only has 3 abilities listed, followed by their mastery, whereas prot and ret both have four?

Take a closer look at the Holy summary.

Holy Shock, fine. Walk in the Light (still at 10%, mind you), fine. Meditation (50% of regen while casting), fine. Mastery seems fine.

What’s missing?

I was about halfway through a Blackrock Caverns run last night when I realized what the problem was.

Spiritual Focus is missing.

Are you kidding me? There I am, in Blackrock Caverns, and someone, while running back to the group, accidentally pulled a pack of mobs and trained them right to us. We got a couple of them CCed, the tank grabbed the rest but there was a caster who wasn’t CCed who kept shooting me with Arcane Missiles. And my casts were being pushed back, even with Concentration Aura on.

I have faint hopes that this might be retooled or something, but for right now, it’s just gone. It seems as though Blizzard has completely gutted holy paladins.

The Trifecta of Doom Build’s Major Changes

I call this build the Trifecta of Doom Build because three major tenets of our class have been changed or removed, along with a couple of minor things.

1) Illumination has indeed been removed from the Holy tree. It’s just flat-out gone. Vanished. Poof. After four years of consistently nerfing a core talent in the Holy tree, Blizzard has finally gotten rid of it. I honestly have a visceral reaction to this change. They should have tossed it out four years ago. It would have been more along the lines of having a good friend die suddenly in an accident, rather than seeing that friend die a slow, painful death. Sure, it would have hurt like hell to begin with, but with it having only been part of Vanilla WoW, rather than Vanilla, Burning Crusade AND Wrath, it would have hurt less overall.

2) Divine Plea now only returns 10% of your mana over 15 seconds (down from 25%) and the cooldown has been raised from 1 minute to 2 minutes. Healing reduction remains at 50% while Divine Plea is active. Considering what an important role Divine Plea has played in holy paladin healing for almost two years, this definitely comes as a blow.

3) Spiritual Focus‘ disappearance was a wholly unexpected change. One of the few benefits to being a healer who mostly casts spells with a cast time is that, with Spiritual Focus (70% pushback resist) and even the base Concentration Aura (35% pushback resist), we were not able to be interrupted by damage. Sure, we were very susceptible to interrupt effects. There’s nothing quite as panic inducing as watching EVERY ABILITY YOU HAVE go on cooldown at the same time! But at least we didn’t get interrupted by damage.

Did you know that priests no longer have a pushback resist talent? And neither do druids. Shaman do, in their resto baseline skills, as do elemental shaman, and mages still have Burning Soul. But warlocks, priests, druids and paladins don’t have pushback talents or skills.

That’s 9 specs without access to pushback resistance (outside of Concentration Aura) versus 5 who do. Who here thinks that they’re phasing out pushback resistance entirely?

<raises hand>

The minor things I mentioned are the removal or change of most talents that actually improve our healing, as I mentioned the other day. We have precisely one talent in our first two tiers that actually improves healing, which is Divinity. We have Last Word, which increases the critical strike chance of Word of Glory, if used on someone under 35% health, yes, but this is not a flat increase. This is a random proc under certain conditions. We have cast-time reductions on Holy Light and Divine Light with Clarity of Purpose, true, but again, this isn’t an increase in healing, it’s just a haste increase on two spells.

Other Changes

Holy Power generation has been fixed, finally. I now can generate Holy Power through the following methods:

a) Using Holy Shock grants 1 charge of Holy Power.

b) 3/3 Tower of Radiance means that directly healing your Beacon of Light target with Holy Shock, Flash of Light, Holy Light or Divine will grant you 1 charge of Holy Power. (Yes, using Holy Shock on your Beacon target still grants you 2 charges.) This eliminates the Word of Glory bug and removes the Holy Power generation from using Light of Dawn and Holy Radiance.

c) Using Crusader Strike , which is a baseline paladin ability in Cataclysm, will grant you 1 charge of Holy Power.

You also no longer get the red W buff that was a placeholder for Holy Power in your buff area. Holy Power charges are only visible on your character portrait. It does not seem as though there is a time limit on Holy Power charges any longer. When we had the little buff icons, Holy Power was lasting 30 seconds. If there’s no longer a duration, this is good and means we can store Holy Power charges, then drink, then move on to the next pull with a full Holy Power bar.

If there is a duration, it is certainly much longer than 30 seconds as I’ve been sitting here with 3 charges on me for about five minutes, now.

In the cosmetic area…

- Hammer of Wrath has had its graphic changed to the old 2H Weapon Specialization graphic from the ret tree:

- Cleanse‘s graphic has gone back to the old Purify graphic. I suppose this makes sense because Cleanse removes magic, poison and disease, whereas Purify only does poison and disease, and prots and rets won’t be able to remove magic.

- Clarity of Purpose‘s graphic is now the old Blessing of Wisdom graphic. This makes me happy. Blessing of Might now provides attack power and mp5, so to see the Blessing of Wisdom icon still somewhere in the game makes me smile.

Daybreak is a new talent that is actually surprisingly useful. The Glyph of Holy Shock now increases Holy Shock’s critical strike chance by 5% instead of reducing its cooldown by 1s, so resetting the cooldown on Holy Shock isn’t bad, especially if you proc Infusion of Light to get a super-fast Holy Light. (Too bad Holy Light still doesn’t heal for much of anything.) You can hit Holy Shock, then if it crits, you can hit Holy Light for a sub-one-second (and very cheap) cast and hope for a Daybreak proc, then go back to Holy Shock. Daybreak, by the way, has got a pretty “power aura” notification, as seen below. (And that was a Holy Light cast, by the way. 6782 at level 83. Sigh.)

Speaking of Infusion of Light, it almost works properly, now. Instead of giving you an instant Flash of Light (as the live version does), it now actually reduces the cast time of your Holy Light by 1.5 seconds as advertised. Trouble is, it’s still currently consumed by your next Flash of Light, even though it does nothing for the cast time. Ah, beta.

Talents

Okay, since we’re moving into talent discussion, let’s take a look at what I think the best talent spec for a holy paladin is at the moment.

31/0/10

Let’s walk through it together.

Holy

Tier 1

Arbiter of the Light: 0/2. This is largely because it no longer adds critical strike chance to Holy Light.

Divinity: 3/3. No-brainer.

Judgements of the Pure: 3/3. Also a no-brainer.

Tier 2:

Clarity of Purpose: 3/3. 0.5 seconds off healing spells is a good thing.

Last Word: 2/2. In previous builds, I’ve scoffed at this talent. There seemed better places to spend one’s points. Not only do we no longer have better places to spend our points, but this is actually really useful in those “holy crap” situations. There are two particularly foul attacks by Evolved Twilight Zealots in Blackrock Caverns:

1) Gravity Strike: Inflicts damage equal to 70% of an enemy’s current health and briefly reduces its Attack Power.

2) Grievous Whirl: A vicious attack that causes the target to bleed profusely until fully healed.  Deals 750 damage every 2 seconds until healed.

The combination of those two? VERY BAD. So Last Word, while originally not as great as some of the other talents we could have picked up, does have its uses.

Blazing Light: 0/2. All damage. Damage of Holy Shock and Exorcism. Unless you want to be a Shockadin (which won’t ever be viable as a raiding spec, but definitely seems like a decent soloing idea), stay away from this.

Tier 3

Denounce: 0/2. If this worked the way Telluric Currents does for resto shammies, I’d be much more inclined to pick this up. As it is, it’s a free, instant Exorcism after every Holy Shock. Shockadin territory.

Divine Favor: 1/1. Different icon than the live version, different ability altogether, but 20% spell haste and 20% spell crit for 20 seconds on a 3m cooldown? Definitely worth the investment.

Infusion of Light: 2/2. Even if this didn’t lead into Speed of Light, this is still a good talent. Snag it.

Daybreak: 2/2. As I explained above, very nice to have.

Tier 4

Enlightened Judgements: 0/2. PVP talent. I mistakenly took this when I was respeccing because I’m apparently hard-wired to click on that icon. So when I ran Blackrock Caverns last night, every time I judged, I healed myself for 4.2k-5.5k. This heal can crit, too, and I saw crits of 6-7k.

Beacon of Light: 1/1. 50% of healing done is still better than 0% of healing done.

Speed of Light: 3/3. Excellent talent to reduce the cooldown on Holy Radiance and to help with positioning.

Sacred Cleansing: 1/1. I still can’t believe we have to waste a point just so that our Cleanse remains exactly the same as in Vanilla, BC and WotLK, but it’s well-worth the point anyways.

Tier 5

Conviction: 3/3. Bonuses to healing are good.

Aura Mastery: 1/1. Same as the live version, definitely worth the point.

Improved Concentration Aura: 2/2. With Spiritual Focus missing, presumed dead, this is a must-have. 50% chance to resist pushback for you and your group.

Tier 6

Tower of Radiance: 3/3. No-brainer. Any way to gain Holy Power is good. 267 charges gained over the course of my run last night.

Blessed Life: 0/2. I specced 1/2 for this last night to test it out. From what I can tell, this does require direct damage done from a mob in order to proc. I do not think AOE effects count, as I stood in Quakes and Blast Waves and such to no effect. It only granted me 61 charges over the run.

Tier 7

Light of Dawn: 1/1. Still has a crappy animation, but you should definitely take it.

Protection

Take no talents here.

Retribution

Tier 1

Eye for an Eye: 0/2. Worthless to us as healers.

Crusade: 3/3. Holy Shock’s healing increased by 30% is all we care about.

Improved Judgement: 2/2. It’s not quite as far as in Wrath (30yd as opposed to 40), but it’s well-worth taking anyways.

Tier 2

Eternal Glory: 2/2. What a freaking lifesaver this thing is. I gained 176 charges of Holy Power over the course of the run because of this talent.

Rule of Law: 3/3. Well, I can only get 1/3 at the moment, since I’m only 83, but we’ll want to fill this up to increase crit chance on Word of Glory and Holy Shock.

And that’s about it for talents. About the only wiggle room I see is dropping Conc Aura for Blessed Life or Enlightened Judgements, but if Spiritual Focus is really dead, I can’t advise that for any reason in PVE healing.

Blackrock Caverns

So I did a Blackrock Caverns run last night with a fairly decently geared tank from my live realm. As a healer/tank combo, we still waited about 15 minutes for a queue, probably due to the late hour.

After some initial lag issues relating to using addons, I turned them all off and just healed the way I always have in Beta — terrified because I can’t properly see things on my laughable version of raid frames.

It went reasonably well. The first boss wasn’t a problem. Even the second boss wasn’t too bad. The third boss was okay. That’s as far as I’d previously gotten, so everything beyond that was new to me. There’s a Core Hound fight, it’s AWESOME. haha. It was actually the one fight that I felt was tuned well for our group. It was annoying to be feared and have fire show up, etc, but I finished the fight with just about no mana and everyone alive. The damage wasn’t horrible, but it was challenging, particularly with a movement aspect.

The last boss is ridiculous. As near as I can figure, you have the boss and he has two adds. The adds are elementals. The adds do not go after whoever has the highest aggro on them, but rather, WHOEVER HIT THEM LAST.

Sounds like a fun mechanic, right?

Wrong.

These little bastards, if you’re close enough to them, inflict a debuff on you.

Would you like to know what this non-dispellable debuff looks like?

It’s called Crepuscular Veil. And it reduces healing done on its target by 99% for four seconds. It only gets cast when they’re in range, mind you, so you basically have to kite them. They are immune to stuns, but Entangling Roots work just fine. It wouldn’t have been quite so bad if we had had a shaman for Bind Elemental or a warlock for Banish, but we didn’t. Our group was, I kid you not, four paladins and a feral druid.

Repentence doesn’t work on elementals. And they’re immune to stuns, so Hammer of Justice is worthless.

It’s clear that what you’re supposed to do is CC one of them and kite the other while you bring down the boss. A hunter would have been great. Anything with a pet would have been great, too — just stick the pet on one for a good 15 seconds or so, then pull the add off the pet, heal the pet, put the pet back on the add.

We couldn’t get it done with our group composition, although we got the feral druid to go resto and basically cast roots and then he and I were going to ping-pong the remaining add. It actually didn’t go that badly, but we’d tried 3-4 times or so and X (not xmolder, but the tank from my live guild) had to go, so we called it.

During one of the attempts, I noticed the druid dropped this green thing on the ground. “OH MY GOD,” I said out loud, to myself, “EFFLORESCENCE!!!!” So I went and stood in it! (Click for the larger version.)

Apart from that healing debuff, the Grievous Whirl and the Gravity Strike, things weren’t too bad. It was important that our tank be aware of his debuffs (charging into the alloys with 48 stacks of a “take more fire damage” debuff is bad!) and that the DPS watch the floor and not stand in front of mobs who cleave. But it wasn’t terrible.

What is surprising is the healing breakdown. (Yes, I logged the run. I love World of Logs.)

Here’s my healing by spell:

1) Holy Shock: 1,603,147 healing, 20.4%, 165 hits, 63 crits, 228 total. 21.7% overheal.

2) Beacon of Light: 1,186,292 healing, 15.1%, 357 hits/total. 29.2% overheal.

3) Word of Glory: 1,158,982 healing, 14.8%, 75 hits, 105 crits, 180 total. 10.3% overheal.

4) Flash of Light: 1,143,394 healing, 14.6%, 106 hits, 36 crits, 142 total. 14.7% overheal.

5) Divine Light: 1,124, 898 healing, 14.3%, 69 hits, 24 crits, 93 total. 9.2% overheal.

6) Holy Radiance: 561,679 healing, 7.2 %, 525 hits, 177 crits, 702 total. 36.1% overheal.

7) Holy Light: 494,658 healing, 6.3%, 66 hits, 16 crits, 82 total. 17.4% overheal.

8) Light of Dawn: 331,583 healing, 4.2%, 96 hits, 26 crits, 122 total. 37.5% overheal.

9) Lay on Hands: 144,643 healing, 1.8%, 4 hits, 1 crit, 5 total. 24.8% overheal.

10) Enlightened Judgements: 93,592 healing, 1.2%, 38 hits, 8 crits, 46 total. 58.4% overheal.

First of all, that’s probably the most I have EVER used Holy Shock in my life. Daybreak procced 93 times, which is nice, but it’ll also proc even if Holy Shock isn’t on cooldown, oddly, so that might or might not have had anything to do with it.

Second of all, look at the next few spells I used. Look at the percentages. 15%, 14%, 14%, 14%. With Holy Shock at 20% and my next four spells at 14-15%, that’s a pretty even distribution, particularly considering where holy paladins are at right now. I also could have used Light of Dawn and Holy Radiance a LOT more frequently.

And if I had used Holy Light every time Infusion of Light procced (63 times), then I probably would have had more Holy Lights used. It’s so difficult to think that the sound effect for IoL means I should cast HL instead of FoL. It’s a very different mindset, especially considering I’m still healing on live and can’t get used to the new way without screwing myself over on live.

What This Means

It seems to me that this is what they probably want — healers of all kinds to use different spells as appropriate instead of relying on one or two spells. But part of why I used such a variety of spells is because I wasn’t sure what to use next.

They say that Holy Light is our go-to spell. Well, it doesn’t heal for much. It’s okay that Holy Light heals for next to nothing IF you basically pair it with an Infusion of Light proc. If you don’t, it’s next to worthless. Like I’ve said before, I have 50k health in my HOLY GEAR. My tank last night had 75k health in a regular dungeon, not, you know, ICC. Do you know what a 6-7k heal does to a tank who has lost 70% of his existing health due to Gravity Strike? It as though you didn’t actually cast a damn thing. And it took you about 2.2 seconds to do it, with over 1000 haste, at level 83. If it took you .7 seconds to do it, which it does, after an Infusion of Light proc, that’s fine.

In my experience, Holy Shock is our go-to heal. I’m pretty sure I don’t like that. I’m also pretty sure that this is how Blizzard can justify the loss of Spiritual Focus. “But you’re NOT always casting spells with a cast time! Holy Shock! Word of Glory! Light of Dawn! Holy Radiance!”

And maybe they’re right. Maybe paladins are supposed to be the new mobile healing class. Except that Light of Dawn and Holy Radiance are on 30 seconds cooldowns, Holy Shock is on a 6 second cooldown and Word of Glory is dependent on a whole other resource that is, as I’m sure Walks will mention, strongly linked to none other than Holy Shock. And Holy Light, a spell with a stupidly long cast time, is supposed to be our go-to spell.

I just don’t understand what they’re doing. Usually, I can see the method to the madness, even if I loathe the method with all my being. But I just can’t see what they’re trying to do here. It feels as though Blizzard is all over the place with holy paladins right now. “No, don’t cast!” “But a casted spell is your go-to spell!” And then they throw things like Gravity Strike at us. The content is telling us to do one thing (Divine Light and Flash of Light fairly frequently) but our talents are telling us to do another (Cast Holy Shock ALL OF THE TIME!).

I’ve been thinking a lot since my run last night, while writing up this post and doing regular, everyday stuff. I don’t see what direction they want us to go in. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s too early in the beta to see that.

What I can see, though, is the death of the spec I have loved playing since July of 2006. That’s when I started really trying to level my paladin as holy and I’ve basically been holy ever since. I keep trying to make sure my emotions don’t overly inform my posts, but I can’t help but be disappointed. There is very little that is at all familiar about holy paladins right now. Illumination gone. Divine Favor changed. Divine Illumination gone. Divine Plea changed. Spiritual Focus gone. Sacred Shield gone. Flash of Light’s HoT gone.

The only thing I remotely recognize about paladins in Cataclysm is Holy Shock. Everything else is completely different or gone. The talent trees are dumbed down and you can now almost happen upon the optimal spec by chance, just by allocating 5 points per tier. And yet, the content is challenging to people in ICC gear?

I know. Tuning of the encounters, of the abilities, of the talents, of the glyphs, of everything. I know.

But I do think that this Trifecta of Doom build has turned a corner for holy paladins and I’m not quite sure we can ever go back.

I promise I’m not slacking on getting you all the new news from beta that I possibly can. It’s just that the servers have been down for 22 hours now.

Boy, I’m glad I went to bed last night…

Some things to note:

- Level cap to 85 (oh boy, more levelling, which means more screenshots)

- All instances (not heroics or raids, presumably) are going to be open

- Uldum and Twilight Highlands will be open

- Addons should be enabled

So… I’m going to be spending a fair amount of time on the beta trying to get to max level. I’ll do what I can to get into groups to see how healing is, but as it stands, I’m a little afraid.

At least I’ll hopefully have Grid and Clique? :) Cross your fingers that these aren’t broken. :P

In the future, I will have a write up of Blackrock Caverns (I need to finish that one, first), Stonecore (would like to do it a couple more times, I’ve only succeeded in it once) and the other instances, like the Throne of the Tides one I did.

In the meantime, I’ve gotten off my ass and spent this time working on the Apotheosis guild forums. Crazy that I don’t even have an 80 on the server my former guild was on and yet I’m doing guild paperwork…

The beta realms are going down for “maintenance” shortly, which usually means a new build is incoming. MMO-Champion details a LOT of stuff that’s being added in.

Let us talk about our latest changes as far as they affect holy paladin PVE healing, shall we?

- Divine Plea now lets you gain 10% (down from 25%) of your total mana over 15 sec. Cooldown changed to 2 min, up from 1 min.

And holy paladins the world over screamed “nooooooooo!” This change reinforces two new ideas about paladin healing:

1) Intellect (which grants us mana, as you know, but will also be the new “spellpower” stat) will not be a regeneration stat for us. Intellect and haste and probably crit will be throughput stats for us, leaving Spirit as the regen stat. We will no longer want to stack intellect for mana regeneration purposes. We may want to stack it for throughput, but it’s too early in the game to tell yet.

2) Mana will almost certainly be a huge issue at all levels of progression. They’re changing how innervate works so that a feral druid’s innervate restores less mana than a moonkin’s or a resto druid’s — it’s now going to be based on the casting druid’s mana pool. The change to Divine Plea is almost certainly part of that same thinking. We appear to be going back to the days where we will be reactive healers instead of proactive healers.

- Lay on Hands cooldown reduced from 20 min to 10 min.

If this means my Glyph makes this five minutes, that’s cool. ;) No, seriously, this seems to be a positive thing, assuming they don’t revert it back to using all of our mana again, the way it did in Vanilla and Burning Crusade. I wouldn’t expect any glyphs to do anything significant to the cooldown, though.

- Tower of Radiance now procs from Holy Shock, Flash of Light, Holy Light or Divine Light.

Hello, nerfbat. Nice to see you again. Previously, Tower of Radiance procced from any direct heal to your tank — and that included Light of Dawn and Holy Radiance (formerly Healing Hands). That led to a ridiculous amount of Holy Power available to a holy paladin. I understand this change and, while it’s sad to see it implemented, it was just a matter of time.

- Blessed Life now has a chance to proc whenever you take direct damage. (Old – “All attacks against you”)

I’m going to have to wait to actually get on Beta once the realms come back up, but that’s interesting. It was not proccing from standing in fire in previous builds, though. This change will probably mean that AOE damage or other damage-over-time effects will not proc charges of Holy Power. This probably means that the very short time where Blessed Life was maybe going to be a PVE talent has come and gone and almost certainly means that it returns to the PVP talent category.

- Illumination is gone.

I had to read that one about six times before I actually believed what I was reading.

Illumination has had a long life. It was in the game from the beginning. Back in Vanilla WoW, this was amazing. You would get 100% of your mana back for every spell that crit. Holy Light crits? Here, have free mana. It was beautiful.

In Burning Crusade, they dropped the mana return to 50% and then raised it to 60%, which is the change that went live.

In Wrath of the Lich King, they dropped the mana return to 30% from 60%. Crit declined in desirability to the point where mp5 was usually a wiser choice for Holy Light spamming holy paladins, up to a certain point.

And now… it’s gone.

You know what, Blizzard? I would have been a LOT happier to see you pull the plug on it FOUR YEARS AGO than watch it die this horribly long, lingering death. Illumination has been a defining part of the holy paladin playstyle for the entire length of this game. Had they ripped it out four years ago, it wouldn’t have been as ingrained in paladin culture as it currently is.

It’s a sad day, really.

- Healing Light renamed to Blazing Light – Increases the damage of your Holy Shock and Exorcism by 10/20%. (No longer affects Word of Glory’s healing)

They must have figured “hey! While we’re at it, let’s just throw out the majority of the tree!” Not only did this change from Wrath to Beta, in that it used to increase healing by Holy Light, Flash of Light and Holy Shock and then just affected damage/healing of Holy Shock and the healing of Word of Glory, but now it doesn’t increase healing at all!

- Arbiter of the Light no longer affects Holy Light.

That’s a Tier 1 talent that affected the critical effect of your Judgements, Templar’s Verdict and Holy Light. Now it’s just a DPS talent.

- Conviction is back as a Holy Tier 5 talent – Gives you a 1/2/3% bonus to damage and healing for 15 sec after causing a critical effect from a weapon swing, spell, or ability. This effect stacks up to 3 times.

This is probably what is replacing Illumination. I did like that bonus of up to 9% healing, but it feels lacklustre, given that it’s based on crits, which are pretty much random. At least it’s a reason to keep crit on our gear?

- Daybreak (Tier 3) *New* – Your Flash of Light, Holy Light and Divine Light have a 15/30% chance of resetting the cooldown on your Holy Shock.

This does not make any sense to me whatsoever. Holy Shock is, at base, a six second cooldown. There’s a Glyph (that may no longer exist at release, who knows? It’s currently still in the game and active.) that reduces this to a five second cooldown. With Word of Glory, you don’t really need your Holy Shock to be off cooldown. But will we, based on future content? It may well be the case.

Even if we don’t want it, we’ll probably need to take it anyways, though.

I’m looking at the previous build’s tree, keeping all the changes in mind, and I’m stuck needing one more point in tier 3 before moving down, and then I get stuck again on Tier 5 until I put in another point somewhere. So I could fill out Daybreak and the new Conviction to get all the way down to Tier 6… and then I run out of places that I want to put my points with only 28 spent in the tree altogether.

Honestly, I don’t want to take Denounce, Arbiter of the Light, Blazing Light, Enlightened Judgements, Improved Concentration Aura (although this is likely what I will end up taking, barring other changes) or Blessed Life. But I’m going to have to in order to get down to Light of Dawn.

Am I alone in wanting to heal and, you know, not DPS while healing? Am I the only one who doesn’t think a holy talent like the new Denounce is fun?

- Denounce revamped – Reduces the mana cost of Exorcism by 25/50%. In addition, you have a 50/100% chance when casting Holy Shock to make your next Exorcism spell instant and cost no mana.

I don’t want to do damage if I’m on my paladin. If I wanted to do damage, I would play my hunter or my mage. You know. Pure DPS classes.

It seems to me that the holy got nerfed out of the holy tree in this build, assuming MMO-Champion’s information is accurate (which, let’s face it, it probably is). Doesn’t it seem wrong that out of the first six talents in the holy tree, only three of them have anything to do with healing, and only one of those three has anything to do with the total amount of healing from any spell?

I know they have to give prot and ret something to make spending points in holy at least attractive, the way they gave us some ret talents that are at least useful for us, but the ret talents that affect healing all still do damage! Except for Eternal Glory, which has a chance to not consume your Holy Power, which ret and prot pallies can then use… to do damage!

So where are OUR healing talents? There’s basically nothing left in the tree that increases our healing, apart from Divinity and the holy-baseline “Walk in the Light”, which grants us a whopping 10% extra potency on our healing spells.

I’m not asking for us to go back to the days where priests, for example, had 18 million talent points all improving different types of heals. But certainly improving the strength of our heals needs to happen. Otherwise, what’s the point of being holy?

I titled this post “Don’t Panic. Yet”. I sound like I’m panicking. I’m not, I assure you. Beta is still buggy. We don’t even have a release date. There is a lot of time yet for holy paladins to be refined. For all I know, they’ve bumped up Walk in the Light to 30% potency and changed all the mana cost values. Who knows?

What we know so far is this:

- They seem to be pushing Holy Shock beyond anything else.

- They don’t want us to regen mana from Divine Plea.

- They don’t want us to regen mana from crits.

- They may want us to do damage in encounters, similarly to Priests and Smile, Druids and Wrath and Shaman and Lightning Bolt.

Everything else is up in the air. I’ll have more details once the servers come back up.

Don’t panic yet and feel free to leave your feedback here. I’ll be posting about this build on the official forums and would love to bring your feedback to Blizzard.

Welcome to my Holy How-To for PVE Paladins. This is the ninth of what I hope to be a great many posts aimed at helping holy paladins succeed at PVE content. I will focus primarily on max-level talent specs, glyphs, enchants, gems and the like, including tools, tips and tricks that I use, but I hope to touch on levelling content and advice as well.

Today’s post will focus primarily on the use of Righteous Fury. True, Righteous Fury is most often left to the domain of the protection paladin, who needs the extra holy threat on their abilities to gain and then maintain aggro.

“But Kurn,” you might say, “I thought this was a HOLY how-to?”

Indeed it is. We’re going to look at the use of Improved Righteous Fury while healing as a holy paladin through T10 (ICC/Ruby Sanctum) content.

Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, so obviously, my brain wasn’t working when I wrote my Being a Woman who Raids post, because I forgot about some truly excellent bloggers who are women who are fairly progressed. So, ladies, let’s all work together and try to come up with a fairly definitive list of progressed female raiders who blog, shall we? Please leave a comment with your blog URL if you’d like to be listed (or someone else’s blog URL if you know they’re a progressed female raider) assuming you meet the requirements below. If the blog does not have the woman’s most-progressed raiding character’s armory profile listed on it, please include the armory link as well. (You can email me the armory link if you prefer: kurn [at] apotheosis-now [dot] com.)

I’ve populated the list with a few names and blogs already, but haven’t been able to verify progression in some other cases.

Requirements (may be subject to change, but we’ll start out with this):

1) The blogger must be at least 9/12 ICC HM (that’s 10 or 25, although if you’re doing 10, you shouldn’t be decked out in all 277 gear). This can mean that the blogger has reached that stage with her current guild or a previous guild. Please let me know what the progression is in the comment itself. (Note that I’ll take your 25m progression over 10m if you’re wearing lots of 277 gear.)

2) The blogger must be a woman. This means that the blogger should say somewhere (either a blog post or in the About section) that they are a woman. Gender of the character does not matter. ;) (I will also include self-identified MTF transgender individuals as female bloggers, should any exist, mostly because I’m inclusive in general, but also because my previous post was spawned in part by my annoyance with the male-dominated heteronormative narrative that exists in WoW.)

3) The blog should primarily be about WoW stuff. If your blog is mostly you talking about what movie you saw before you went off and spent a couple of hours in ICC, you won’t get listed. I’d really like for this to be a solid list of women who are progressed in this game and who really talk about the game on their blogs.

A proper submission:

Kurn of Kurn’s Corner (http://kurn.apotheosis-now.com), is 11/12 ICC 25 HM and here is her armory: (link)

Please note that this is not any kind of effort to be elitist or to snub women who may be less-progressed! This is really a sort of experiment to see how many women out there are progression raiders who blog about WoW to help me see if my initial theory was right or wrong. (I believed that the reason there weren’t, from what I could tell, a lot of progression-minded female raiders who blogged was because there weren’t that many progression-minded female raiders at all.)

Also, the 9/12 HM requirement is arbitrary, I know. I put it there because I feel that most raiding guilds can eventually get Lady Deathwhisper down on heroic (typically the 9th boss on heroic you’ll do) but that, for whatever reason, a raiding guild may struggle once they start banging their heads against the walls that Putricide and Sindragosa represent, even to the point of giving up and no longer raiding.

I have a feeling that this post may be updated fairly regularly. ;)

25-man Progressed Female Raiders who Blog

(Please note that progression listed below is for Icecrown Citadel 25-man hard modes.)

12/12:

Avalonna at Tales of a Priest (co-blogger)

Dawn at Disco Priest

Vixsyn of Life in Group 5

11/12:

Aislinana of Empowered Fire

Angela at Restoration Druid

Bellwether from 4 Haelz

Beruthiel at Falling Leaves and Wings

Cassandri (and Lathere) at HoTs & DoTs

ecclesiasticaldiscipline at ecclesiastical discipline

Foofy of Foofy’s CupCake Factory

Keeva from Tree Bark Jacket

Kurn at Kurn’s Corner (tip: you are here!)

10/12:

Codi at Moar HPS!

Elsen at The View Through the Branches

9/12:

Anafielle over at Righteous Defense (co-blogger)

Jasyla from Cannot be Tamed

Napps of Mama GM

Ophelie of Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon

10-man Progressed Female Raiders who Blog

(Please note that progression listed below is for Icecrown Citadel 10-man hard modes.)

11/12:

Jen of Stories of WoW

Kae at Dreambound

Laranya from Root & Branch

Larísa at The Pink Pigtail Inn

Leafie at Leaf-head

Vidyala from Pugging Pally

10/12:

Ailinea of Playing with Fire

9/12:

Arioch of Clearcasting

A lot of people have been blogging lately about sort of feminist topics. In particular, Ophelie’s post caught my attention. Not only did she link me (thanks!) but she linked me under “hardcore”. Oddly, “hardcore” is not how I would personally define myself, but that’s a blog entry for another day. (And I don’t take offense, I just find it a curious label. It should be noted that she’s actually changed that heading to read “PvE Progression Focused Female Players” now, though.) Also, I really liked Codi’s recent post about social privilege and WoW and Blizzard being a business.

So in the midst of all these posts (there are so many that I couldn’t possibly link all the ones I’ve read recently), I realized I had a lot of things to say. I don’t really talk much here about being a woman in this game or the strange reactions I get when it’s discovered that I AM, in fact, female, or how I deal with people’s reactions. I also haven’t spoken much about the lack of other capable women at high-end levels. This seems like a perfect time to address some issues and throw my own views out there.

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t have the time to talk about this right now, but I wanted to let you all know it’s eventually coming. I’ve got lots of thoughts jotted down in my draft and I’ll be posting that eventually.

What about, exactly?

Well, I have things to say about being a woman who raids, about how I’ve seen the decline of women around me as I’ve moved to more progressed guilds, about the lack of women as tanks and other stuff, including questioning why the Leggings of Concentrated Darkness look like this on a female toon and like actual slacks on a male toon. (Couldn’t find a screenshot of the men wearing them. Gee. I wonder why not?)

But, like I said, not right now. If you have any questions for me about being a female raider, leave them in the comments and I’ll be happy to address them in my upcoming post.

I know I usually post a lot on Tuesdays, but it’s a busy week and I have a lot to do! Dinner plans tonight, an appointment and raid tomorrow, afternoon/dinner plans on Thursday (thereby missing the raid), seeing my best friend and her little girl on Saturday, possibly going away for a couple of days…

In short, go watch my YouTube videos if you’re bored. ;)

Hope to post a fair bit this week despite the craziness going on, but if not, there are thousands upon thousands of words on this very blog for you to read through and a couple hours worth of videos on YouTube. Go forth and read/watch. :)

So, on heroic, Professor Putricide casts Unbound Plague twice in a row, a minute or so apart, whenever he casts it. So you have to play hot potato with the plague for two minutes without getting people with Plague Sickness to grab it.

Tonight:

[19:44:21.389] Professor Putricide casts Unbound Plague

This is the second plague of a set.

[19:44:21.399] Moonkin’s Unbound Plague fades

This is the first plague the moonkin has passed to a warlock.

[19:44:21.399] Moonkin afflicted by Plague Sickness from Moonkin

This is the moonkin getting Plague Sickness at the same instant he has passed the plague off.

You may notice that this is 0.01 seconds after Professor Putricide has cast the second Unbound Plague.

[19:44:21.413] Moonkin afflicted by Unbound Plague from Professor Putricide

This is the moonkin getting the NEW plague almost immediately after passing the old one off to the warlock. He does NOT have Plague Sickness at the second that Putricide casts Unbound Plague. .01 seconds before he gets Plague Sickness, Putricide cast the new plague. The rule has always seemed to be that if you have Plague Sickness, you cannot get a new plague.

How’s that for some crappy luck? Gah.

Edit: Just because I talk about 25-man progression guilds in this post doesn’t mean that at least some of what I’m talking about isn’t applicable to other guild environments. It’s just that 25-man progression guilds was what I felt I was qualified to talk about. If you follow this advice, regardless of the type of guild to which you want to apply, they will probably be very happy to see the effort you’ve put into your character.

Okay. It’s a little late in the expansion to talk about this, but I probably should have discussed it before.

Applying to a 25-man Progression Raiding Guild: Do You Have What it Takes?

First of all, I want to say that you should not be afraid to throw in an application to a guild you think would be a good fit for you just because of this post. This post is here to help you apply to a guild where you will not be a drag on your raid group if you get in. Also, it may help prevent your being laughed at, by virtue of helping you figure out how progressed you should be when applying to another guild.

Harsh? Yes. But honestly, sometimes, applicants who are that clueless do prompt much laughter.

While I’m not an officer in my current guild, we all get to see and comment on applications and I’ve been on the officer side enough to know what I personally look for in various applicants. Since I’ve gone through the application process a few times this expansion, I think I’m in a pretty good spot to give advice with regards to applying to a guild. So here’s a checklist to help you see if the guild you’re applying to is really within your reach and if you’re really ready to apply.

1) Are you at the same (or similar) level of progression? What this means is, if a guild is at 9/12 ICC 25 hard modes, are you at that level or ahead of them or no less than, say, 6-7/12 ICC 25 hard modes? In other words, are you no more than a couple of bosses behind and can you still be useful on what they’re working on?

If yes, continue to 2.

If no, please continue reading.

These are things you should consider, based on the above example:

- How far behind them are you exactly? You don’t want to be so far back that they are going to literally drag you through all the encounters they’ve already got on farm only to have you screw up on the encounters they have left.

- Have you done any hard modes, barring heroic Gunship? If not, you probably want to set your sights lower than our fictional guild in the example.

- Are you aware of the differences in mechanics from normal to heroic? (ie: Malleable Goo on heroic Festergut, Vengeful Shades on Lady Deathwhisper.)

What you can do to help your lack of progression not be a liability:

Study! Memorize the strats and videos at TankSpot.com. Do not say “yeah, I know the fights even if I’ve never done them”. Say something like this, instead, “While I’ve not yet done the heroic modes of some particular fights, I am well-acquainted with the strategies and videos at tankspot.com and know what each fight requires of me in my role. If the guild’s strategy requires something different of me, I will happily do what I am assigned to do.” Of course, if you have no idea what the strats are, do not say that you do. It is very easy for raiders to see which app lied about knowing the fights and it will likely end up in your application getting denied. Progression raiding guilds basically do not care that you forked over real money to transfer or faction change. If you applied under false pretenses, there will be no sympathy.

At this point in the expansion, many guilds are recruiting people who are not up to their level of progression because a lot of their members are burning out or bored or not enjoying the game right now. That means that even if the progression gap seems insurmountable, it is not going to rule you out entirely for the vast majority of guilds. Having said that, I would strongly recommend against applying to a guild that is farming heroic Lich King while working on heroic Halion when you haven’t cleared regular ICC yet.

2) Is your gear up to par? What this means is that your gear should be properly enchanted, gemmed and itemized for your particular class and spec. That means all epic-level gems and not the cheap enchants, unless the cheap enchants are best for your spec. (ie: holy paladins taking the cheap 16 intellect to bracers is GOOD, rather than taking 30 spellpower to bracers.)

Are you absolutely, 100% positive that you have done absolutely everything you can possibly do to improve your gear on your own?

If yes, are you SURE? You’ve checked with Elitist Jerks and various class-specific blogs?

If yes, continue to 3.

If no, please continue reading.

What I hate to see when looking at a new application is “I didn’t get the drops I needed”. The guild you’re applying to will not care about your bad luck or the horribly unfair loot system your previous guild used or anything of the sort. If you’re a holy paladin (for example) with under 500 haste, they’re going to throw out your application ASAP.

What you need to do is make sure that if you don’t have the specific piece you need, that you have the stats that are close to what the piece you need give you. Simple. Don’t blame bad luck if you can’t get a pair of pants that drop when the crafted pants, for example, can be had with a little time, effort and gold. If you think it’s “too much” to spend 8 Primordial Saronites on pants that are very well itemized for your class and spec, then chances are that your prospective guild won’t think that you’re worth “too much” effort on their part.

What you can do to keep your gear from being a liability:

Explain your gear choices in the application. Describe exactly what drops you’re looking for and why those pieces are better for you than others. Explain why you currently have X and Y equipped. Do your research; does your class and spec want its T10 two-piece bonus? Four-piece bonus? You can get your 2/4 pieces all on your own through dailies, VOA and pugs. Make sure you have those pieces, even at the 251 level, before applying.

Do not talk about your gear score. No one cares and you’re just going to make everyone think you subscribe to the notion that gear score means something. (It does not.)

3) Are your talent points distributed properly in your main spec and do you have the proper glyphs? Nothing drives me crazier than seeing someone who doesn’t know how to spec. With a poorly-chosen spec, right off the bat, you will announce to your prospective guild that you have no idea what you’re doing and that you have not done the proper research on your class and spec. Seeing a holy paladin gemmed full intellect but specced 18 points into Retribution makes me want to cry. Make absolutely certain you have a good raiding spec before you apply. Make sure you understand WHY you have that spec. The same can be said for glyphs. Make sure you know what glyphs are best for you to use and get them.

If yes, continue to 4.

If no, please continue reading.

Okay, so you’re not sure that your spec (or glyph choice) is valid or proper or any number of things. Go to Elitist Jerks. Go to Forums. Select your class. Let us pick, for example, Priests. You will see two threads: WotLK Healing Compendium v3.3.5 and  Shadowpriest Theorycraft 3.3 Edition.

The first post in these threads will be chock-full of useful information. That’s the case with most of the class/spec threads. That includes gem and enchant tips as well as spec and glyph advice. Use these specs. Understand WHY you are using these specs and glyphs. Read the tooltips on your talents. Play extensively with a talent calculator.

What you can do to keep your spec or glyph choice from being a liability:

Respec and reglyph. If you’re a disc priest without everything in the lower half of your tree and without Glyph of Power Word: Shield, you’re doing it wrong. If you’re a resto druid without 3/3 Celestial Focus in balance without the haste to compensate, you’re doing it wrong. These builds have been theorycrafted for you — someone out there is flat-out saying “Hey. This is the best spec for this class under the vast majority of raiding conditions.” Why not take advantage of them doing the number crunching for you?

But I’m a pretty snowflake and am unique in my style!

No. You are not a snowflake. You are not unique. As soon as you apply to a progression raiding guild, you become theirs. Your spec and style become theirs. You should always endeavour to do anything you can do for the betterment of your raid group. If that means that you are told to stop direct healing tanks as a disc priest and learn to bubble spam the raid, you do it. If that means that you are told to switch from Survival to Marksmanship to eke out just a little more DPS, as the raid has enough Replenishment providers, that means that you read up on Marks and do it.

If you are unwilling to change your spec to what other people of your class and spec have determined is the best for you under the majority of all raiding circumstances, then you probably do not belong in a progression raiding guild. Sorry.

4) Do they need you? Do you fulfill the raid requirements? Related to the above, many guilds will advertise open spots for a variety of classes and specs and then say that any outstanding applicant will be considered. Do not be fooled. This is almost certainly not going to be you if your progression, gear and spec are not amazing or if you cannot make the majority of their raids. Be aware of their requirements: do they require 75% attendence? 100%? No attendence requirement?

If yes, continue to 5.

If no, please continue reading.

The question you should ask yourself is how you can be of use to the guild if they’re not actively looking for your class and spec of toon or if you cannot meet all the raid requirements they ask.

For example, if they are not looking for a shadow priest but they are looking for a moonkin, a shadow priest does bring Misery to the raid, which does the same thing as Improved Faerie Fire. Similarly, a Marksmanship Hunter brings Trueshot Aura which can also be provided by an Enhancement Shaman’s Unleashed Rage or a Blood Death Knight’s Abomination’s Might. Be aware of what buffs they might be looking for that are similar to your own. Be aware of what buffs you bring. If you don’t bring anything to the table that they don’t already have, you might be better off if you keep looking for a new guild.

If you can’t make all the raids required of you, one way you can be extra useful is if you’re more advanced than the rest of the guild in terms of progression or gear. If that’s the case, you can let them know that you’ll be happy to share strategies with them or help troubleshoot the raid group using World of Logs (or whatever parser they use). That way, you can at least be useful to the group while not actually being there 100% of the time.

If you’re not awesomely geared and experienced and you can’t make every raid or they’re not looking for your class, then you might be better off looking elsewhere.

Of course, if you’re a tank and they’re looking for a tank, or a healer and they’re looking for a healer, your chances are better at getting in even if they’re not looking for your particular class, unless they already have two or more of that class in that role. (Or, for example, if they’re looking for a raid healer and you’re a paladin.)

5) Are your goals and ideals compatible with those of your prospective guild? One of the easier things to overlook is whether or not you’re going to be compatible. Do you want to get your drake for Glory of the Icecrown Raider or do you just want Arthas dead on heroic? Do you care about heroic Halion? How about Algalon or heroic Anub’arak? How does your guild feel about these goals?

If yes, please go to Conclusion.

If not, please continue reading.

Basically, even if a guild is otherwise perfect for you on all other counts, you will probably be miserable if your goals and ideals aren’t compatible.

When I joined my previous guild, the one with my RL friend the Resto Druid in it, I knew what I was getting into. I was joining a guild where the leadership was apathetic in terms of morale, where the leadership was insulting and abusive and where I would be held to a very high standard of play with a steep learning curve and a very different raiding schedule.

I knew this. This is basically the opposite of everything I had ever experienced. But I had my RL friend with me as my healing lead and so I figured I could do this. And I did, for nine months. Ultimately, towards the end, I was so frustrated and aggravated and angry with the guild that I had no choice but to leave.

I joined my current guild which is, in a word, awesome. My GM kicks ass. People joke around without being offensive. People tease others because they love them. And yet we can pull it together and get stuff done. My goal was to end Wrath of the Lich King with a guild that is respectful of its members while raiding 25-man ICC/Ruby Sanctum. I don’t actually much care what we do within those instances — I care more about being part of a team. Their goal is primarily to get their 25-man drakes, which means cleaning out all the wings of ICC on heroic and doing a few achievements.

I am content with this because the environment is kind of awesome and I will raid until the release of Cataclysm to help them achieve their goals.

There’s no way around it, though — if you and your guild are not on the same page, don’t apply. Run away. Go elsewhere.

Conclusion

Applying to a 25-man progression raiding guild is like applying for a job. No, really. It is. Make sure your toon is in tip-top shape. Log out wearing your proper gear in your proper spec. You only get one chance to make a first impression, so make the most of it. Do not say in your application “I plan to upgrade this enchant tomorrow.” Enchant it now, or tomorrow, and then apply.

Fill out the application forms precisely. Spend time on it. If your application form is more than five questions and you don’t spend a good 20-30 minutes on it, spend some more time on it. Check for grammar mistakes, check for spelling errors. Make sure you’re answering the questions they’re asking and do not give more information than they asked. (Feel free to be detailed in what they ARE asking, however.)

Is this post elitist? Is it snobbish? Does it discriminate? Probably. However, to do heroic 25-man ICC encounters, even with the 30% buff, you have to do things in a way that emphasizes coordination and throughput (either damage, healing or threat) and that starts with relying on your raiders to bring their best to every single raid. If you don’t have the experience, the gear, the desire and the availability, it becomes difficult to justify your presence in the raid.

What brought about this post? An applicant to my current guild who claimed to be  11/12 ICC (is actually 10/12 ICC 10 and 5/12 ICC 25), who was apping as a resto druid or as a moonkin. He was claiming that all he had to do in terms of gear was regem to swap to or from moonkin and use basically all the same gear he does as resto. Including his restoration tier 10. (Right, because you cast Wild Growth all the time as a moonkin and have no use for extra damage…) His claim was that he did “amazing” DPS, but had no logs or parses to back him up.

Upon reading his application, the question I asked myself was, “How on earth does this guy think he even has a shot at getting into a 9/12 HM ICC 25 guild?”

So these were my thoughts about how you can go about figuring out what sorts of guilds are realistically available to you and how you can improve your chances for applying to a guild that has caught your eye. Hope it’s somewhat useful. :)