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.

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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.

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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.

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. :)

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone for chiming in on my post yesterday about the various utility spells that paladins can use. It’s always fun to see what other people are thinking!

The reason why I asked people about utility spell use by paladins is because I got into a heated discussion about a retribution paladin who basically didn’t use any of the utility spells barring Hand of Salvation on himself (and only himself) and a very rare Cleanse. To the ret’s credit, he did use Lay on Hands on Dreamwalker more often than not… But really, no BOPping, no HoSac, very little Cleansing (not even on himself with Glittering Sparks), etc. It was bothering me a lot to see a paladin just not using these spells and worse, to have someone else (a non-paladin) defending the lack of spell usage.

Paladins have always, in my mind, been The Utility Class. Who else has all these tricks and tools? No one. No one else has BOP or HoSac or HoSalv. No one else has Lay on Hands. In this day and age of class homogenization, paladins alone have our utility spells.

As such, I find it’s important to use these spells.

It’s expected that a paladin should perform their role, be it healing, tanking or DPSing, but it’s the GREAT paladins that actually use our utility spells regularly and appropriately.

Of course, it’s the utility spells that can fall by the wayside when things get hectic and when people panic. That’s part of why it’s a mark of a good paladin, in my opinion, when one actually uses those spells properly.

Here’s an example.

On Blood Prince Council, prior to the Empowered Shock Vortex, Glittering Sparks gets cast on a bunch of people. Who should be responsible for the retribution paladin’s Glittering Sparks?

In my opinion, a good ret pally will not wait for a mass dispel (or anyone else’s dispel) but will Cleanse him or herself and start Cleansing other melee so they can spread out appropriately.

Another example:

On Festergut, a protection paladin who is not tanking (in fact, has just finished tanking) BOPs him or herself, waits 10 seconds, then casts Hand of Salvation on him or herself to ensure they don’t catch up on threat AND casts Hand of Sacrifice on the other tank when there are three inhales. THAT prot pally is my freaking hero.

Of course, I have been known to have somewhat high standards. I wondered if I was alone in thinking that paladins should be using these spells. So I asked you folks.

My sociology background is beating me over the head for not doing a proper survey to properly analyze the results, but at least I can give you guys a summary. But first, my own observations:

The first thing I noticed is that most people didn’t know how to use Hand of Sacrifice, if they knew what it was, and quite a few seemed to confuse it with Divine Sacrifice. This was actually intended — I did not link Hand of Sacrifice for the tooltip, just to see if people knew what I was talking about. ;)

The second thing I noticed is that everyone basically thinks everyone should know HOW to use the spells even if they shouldn’t prioritize their use. Fair enough.

The third thing I noticed is that everyone pretty much believes Cleanse is a no-brainer and that every spec should use it as appropriate.

As to a real summary of what people thought…

Everyone thought people should use Lay on Hands appropriately. Whether that’s just for Dreamwalker or if it’s any spec popping it up on someone who could use it (preferably a tank or a healer) or just using it on themselves, everyone felt that every spec had at least one situational usage for it. I approve.

Everyone thought people should use Cleanse whenever the situation called for it. Basically, if you have a poison, disease or a magic debuff on yourself and you are a paladin and you don’t Cleanse yourself, it better only be because someone beat you to it.

We enter the realm of controversy and disagreement when it comes to the Hand spells.

Reaction was mixed with regards to Hand of Salvation. Should Holy paladins even bother to have Omen up? Some people thought so, some people didn’t. Those that did felt that Holy pallies were the best people to use HoSalv on people. Those that didn’t felt that prots were the best kinds of pallies to use HoSalv, with most people agreeing that ret should use it on themselves at the very least.

Hand of Protection (BOP) was always mentioned as being a very situational spell, particularly with the Saurfang encounter mentioned. Very few people felt rets should ever really need to use it as compared to holy pallies and prot pallies. People felt that if a retribution pally was using it, it should be on something very situational like Saurfang.

Hand of Sacrifice, as mentioned before, was a little confusing. Some people admitted they never used it at all, some said they didn’t understand the spell and some confused it with Divine Sacrifice. Among those who did seem to know about the spell, most said it was best used situationally, mostly as a save-the-tank type cooldown.

What do I think?

- I think all paladins can find a time to use Lay on Hands in a four-hour block of raiding, unless they super outgear the content.

- I think all paladins should at least Cleanse themselves of debuffs, GCDs permitting, helping out where possible.

- I think all paladins should use Hand of Salvation now and again. Even if you don’t have Omen up, chances are you can see if someone has aggro. A quick Hand of Salvation on that person will help out your tank in re-establishing aggro. (Think of the adds on Lady Deathwhisper.)

- I don’t think rets should use Hand of Sacrifice unless they’re planning to bubble and I think prots and holies should use it sparingly. That said, on certain encounters, it’s really useful. I’ve taken to bubbling and using HoSac on the corporeal realm tank on Halion. My fellow holy pally started using HoSac on the Sindragosa pull, which I think is a great idea,  since that’s generally when most parries happen.

- I think BOP should be used constantly by people, if only on trash and DEFINITELY used by all specs on Saurfang to push back the first Mark or to BOP someone during the Frenzy.

I don’t expect perfect use of all these utilities by every paladin, but I do expect to see an effort from paladins to use all of these abilities appropriately. If someone beat you to a BOP, no big, but if you sat there with Glittering Sparks for 10 seconds and blew up the tank because you couldn’t get away from him, that’s pretty poor play.

Anyways, thanks again to all those who responded! It’s nice to see some new names around, too, so I hope you all stick around. :)

Due to a discussion I am having elsewhere, I would like to know what you all think is appropriate use of a paladin’s utility spells, regardless of spec, over the course of a 4 hour raid night which is in Ruby Sanctum (25m regular) and ICC 25 (mostly heroic, some regular modes).

Please answer the following questions.

1) Should all paladins use Lay on Hands at some point in that 4-hour block?

2) Should all paladins know how to Cleanse? Should every paladin be expected to Cleanse? What encounters should they/shouldn’t they be expected to Cleanse on? What spec do you expect paladins who Cleanse to be?

3) Should all paladins use Hand of Salvation at some point in that 4-hour block? On whom? What spec should these casting paladins be? In what situations should it be cast?

4) Should all paladins use Hand of Sacrifice at some point in that 4-hour raid? On whom? What spec should they be? What situations?

5) Should all paladins use BOP (Hand of Protection) at some point in that raid? On whom? What spec should they be? In what situations would it be useful?

I await your answers and then will tell you on Tuesday why I’m asking. :)

Welcome to my Holy How-To for PVE Paladins. This is the eighth 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.

Holy paladins have, thus far in the expansion, changed considerably. Arguably, the biggest change that we have encountered is the change to Beacon of Light, which now takes overhealing into account when mirroring heals.

This one change has completely modified the way in which holy paladins heal. We’ve had to adapt to this change and it’s been for the better, in my opinion.

What this one change has allowed us to do is to be absolute superstars on two encounters in particular: Deathbringer Saurfang and Valithria Dreamwalker. There are other fights where we can shine, but these two encounters are basically designed for us to be awesome. So, this Holy How-to will focus on exactly how to be awesome on Saurfang and Dreamwalker.
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Believe it or not, a post about fun stuff that’s happened recently on the live servers!

First up, the other night, we were doing Sindragosa and people were crowding me while I was about to be encased in ice. The result?

To their credit, they kept me up when I got out. I definitely bubbled as soon as I could, too, but I honestly laughed my ass off when I saw that. 459 health. Woo.

The other thing I wanted to talk about happened on Wednesday evening.

I was walking home from Real-Life stuff and called up my brother, asking him if he wanted to do the weekly raid quest with our buddy Majik later on. The weekly was Sartharion. He was like “sure, what toon?”

And then it hit me. We could try a 10-man zerg.

Majik could tank it, I reasoned, but wait. My brother wanted to go on his paladin, not his hunter. So my brother could tank it, right?

And Majik only has a tank and a healer, so that left him to be the healer. It was decided I’d bring my hunter.

All without us letting Majik know “hey, you’re solo-healing a Sarth10 3d zerg on your still-relatively-new-to-80 priest”, it was completely decided. ;)

After I got home and Majik logged on and such, we informed him that he would be healing a zerg.

I don’t know what prospect made me laugh harder; my brother’s nub tank solo-tanking or Majik’s nub priest solo-healing it. I laughed a LOT, though.

Did I mention that my brother hadn’t ever actually DONE the Sartharion fight? At all? On any toon whatsoever? No? Well, he hadn’t. And I don’t know when the last time Majik did it, although he did do it a few times back in Apotheosis’ early Wrath days. Pretty sure he never healed it, though. And the last time I DPSed it was certainly months ago.

So after discussing this on Vent, we all logged in and I went about setting up the party. Bear in mind that I had never successfully done a zerg before. I had been in ONE zerg run where I was the freaking healer (on my PALADIN), and it didn’t work out.

So I call for 7m DPS for a Sarth10 3d zerg. I said we’d do five zerg attempts and if that wasn’t enough, whatever, we’d kill the drakes and just do the weekly normally. I added that the drake would be an open roll, but if you were DPS and didn’t do at LEAST 5k DPS on Sarth during the kill, you wouldn’t get a roll.

Everyone who whispered me ASSURED me they could do more than 5k DPS. I was like, okay, great. I didn’t check any gear score crap, I didn’t ask for achievements. I made sure I had drums and fish feasts and stuff for others, flasks for Majik and myself and special food for myself (yum 40 agi!). We all got summoned there, courtesy of Majik and my brother.

Our composition was okay. Two death knights, two moonkins, two marks hunters (myself included), a shadow priest, an elemental shaman, a holy priest (Majik) and a prot pally (my brother). I would have liked a feral druid or fury warrior for the crit, but it seemed to work out okay.

We passed the first test: we didn’t accidentally pull any of the drakes while clearing trash. YAY!

I assigned the other hunter to do the initial misdirect on my brother while I’d save mine for Tenebron.

I dropped a feast. I instructed everyone to eat.

I asked for heroism to be hit at about five seconds in, just to make sure my brother had aggro.

We went for it.

One of the moonkin died to the first flame wall.

My brother died to a Flame Breath, Shadow Breath and melee hit from Tenebron.

A wipe ensued.

Hilarity!

After the first attempt, someone whispers me asking if one of the DKs is a friend of mine. I’m like, no…

“We’re carrying him, you know.”

I look at Recount.

3k DPS. Less total damage done than my brother, the tank.

So I call him out on it. “Any reason you did less damage than the tank? Have you ever been here before?”

“got hit by fire” was his response (or something along those lines), which obviously answered my “have you ever been here before” question.

I dropped a fish and assured the whispering person that if the DK screwed up that badly again, I’d kick him.

The DK hadn’t eaten the fish.

“Eat the fish,” I told him.

Nothing.

“EAT THE FISH.”

10 seconds later, right as I was about to tell him to eat the damn fish or he’d be replaced, he runs over and eats the fish.

Hero’s ready, they tell my brother to mount up and run in. I was like “yeah, sure”.

Bet you $10 you don’t know what I forgot to make sure the other hunter knew.

Give up?

I forgot to make sure the other hunter knew you couldn’t misdirect a target who is mounted.

Try 2 begins with the hunter pulling aggro, since he didn’t see that his MD failed, and Sartharion hitting the ENTIRE RAID with flame breath. Which we mostly survived, except a moonkin.

Hilarity!

Try 3: No mounting! Body & Soul shield instead. :) It was actually going really well until Tenebron hit my brother for 25k, which was a 14k overkill.

Still, that was a cooldown issue. My brother was just reaching for Divine Protection when, WHAMMO. Dead.

Okay. No big. Even the fail DK is doing almost 4k DPS.

Did I mention that we wiped with 24,000 health left on Sarth? No? Well, we did. We could actually DO this!

Try 4: It was going AWESOME until, I kid you not, my brother takes a 30k Shadow Breath followed by a 26k melee hit. Way to not use Guardian Spirit, Majmaj!

Try 5: I announced it was our last attempt at a zerg and if we didn’t get it, we’d just do it normally for the weekly. After all, it was around 8:20 and I had a raid at 9.

It went beautifully. Sure, my brother and Majik both died, but so did Sartharion!

The fail DK did not break 4k DPS, so he didn’t get to roll on the drake. I ended up giving it to the non-fail moonkin (the one who had not died to the flame wall earlier) who actually did the second-most DPS on the kill. I was pretty pleased to see her get the drake. I was even more pleased that the thought of ninjaing the drake didn’t even occur to me until much later. I hate raid leaders who ninja loot.

What really amuses me, though, is that my hunter now has a raid title that my paladin does not. Sure, Madrana’s a Twilight Vanquisher from back before Ulduar opened, but she never did get of the Nightfall. I mean, it’s a 10-man title. Of course Madrana doesn’t have it! It seems fitting that Kurn’s got at least one title that Madrana “should” have gotten and didn’t. :)

Probably the best part is that it’ll be a lasting memory of this one day I decided to haul my brother and our friend, undergeared though they may be for this sort of thing, to Sarth, to do a crazy, crazy zerg. We probably shouldn’t have been able to do it, but we totally did. And I will forever remember that I did it with two people with whom I have a TON of fun while playing this game.

Even if they threaten to bankrupt me weekly and are jackasses. They are now Jackasses of the Nightfall!