The V-Team

I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them SCAM I am!

2010-05-11T06:47:00.000-07:00

Can we get a little more creative, or at least ditch the broken English? Like many of you, I receive daily SPAM about how my WoW account has been hacked and to "Click here" to confirm it is mine. Here is one of the most common,

(I am cutting and pasting) (also I move my mouth away from the microphone to breath) (I love to state the obvious)
Greetings

An investigation of your World of Warcraft account has found strong evidence that the account in question is being sold or traded. As you may not be aware of, this conflicts with Blizzard's EULA under section 4 Paragraph B which can be found here:
WoW -> Legal -> End User License Agreement
and Section 8 of the Terms of Use found here:
WoW -> Legal -> Terms of Use (they couldn't even put in the link, they just tell you where to click)

The investigation will be continued by Blizzard administration to determine the action to be taken against your account. If your account is found violating the EULA and Terms of Use, your account can, and will be suspended/closed/or terminated.

In order to keep this from occurring, you should immediately verify that you are the original owner of the account.

To verify your identity please visit the following webpage:
Insert some variation of a Blizzard site
Worldorwarcraft
Worldofwarrcraft
Baittle.net
and so on

These text only e-mails are so annoying and i wish i knew enough about computer sabotage to blow these bastards up.
This is my absolute favorite, and visually it looks great, until you read it.

What?!?! for you to lose the World of Warcraft account in order to recover OUR losses? I am sorry, can you promise me something more rare (rarer?) than a celestial steed. I would click your link if you promised me, a flying moonkin mount or an exclusive vanity pet, say a mini Donkey Kong for the Alliance and Mini Bowser for the Horde!

Here, this is how you do it,
Go find someone who is fluent in Americanized English > pay them to draft a scam e-mail for you > SPAM SPAM SPAM > PROFIT!

Seriously:
Just be careful, don't open anything in these e-mails the chances you are getting a legitimate e-mail from blizzard are slim, in the 4+ years I have been playing the only e-mail I have ever received from them is the one telling me they have taken money from my bank account for my monthly subscription fee.
Get an authenticator!

Peace
Vail

Mages PA-LEASE! (if ya got it flaunt it)

2010-04-28T06:56:00.000-07:00

Real quick on class etiquette, and I pick on mages because it is fresh in my mind. I know most people PuG the weekly raid, groups form about every 8 minutes on my server. I also know that for most people these are facerolls, I have healed some of them using only my HoT (yes pallys have a HoT!), but that doesn’t mean we can forget the basics. I always toss out my buffs and discuss aura selections because that is my class’s ability, the druids usually toss out a paw, the shammy’s pop heroism and a cook will throw down a fish etc, etc … Now you charge in and demolish Patchwork, DE your loot annnd …

A. Hearth?
B. Walk out?
C. Log off?
D. The Mage tries to runs out and dies in slime!
E. The Mage throws up a PORTAL TO DAL!!!!

I don’t get mad if you don’t put out your table, or if the lock doesn’t summon me some candy, odds are we won’t need either of those in this run. But come on, you’re a MAGE, it’s the only useful port (thing) you have these days, we know you want to go back to Dalaran, so why not cast the group portal so we can all come with you? Oh noes that regent cost you a silver?

Ok I’m done being petty, please use your classes ability when you have the chance.

Thanks
Vail

HoL WTH

2010-04-27T06:27:00.000-07:00

Scott Johnson made me go check out pugchecker and I realized something. I have stopped doing my random daily. I don’t really need the frost badges any more so why run them?

Recently I started a Horde Shammy, and because I am lazy (because I can); I am looking to get all the heirloom equipment for him. That means back into LFD to get more emblems. After getting HoL 2 times in a row, and visiting the site above, I realized why I stopped running these. I hate HoL, according to Pug Checker (which pulls from the armory) I have run it 29 times now. I had never run this instance due to a need for gear, so the only time I go there is because it was the old daily random or because now the LFD sent me there.

I get this instance by far the most of any, why Bliz why ?!?! you are killing LFD for me. The next closest are UK and VH, both of which I ran a bunch of when I first hit 80 because UK was the “easiest” and VH was right there in Dal so no need to travel anywhere (both pre 3.3). Along those lines I never once ran Occ before the LFD tool, since the release of 3.3 I have been thrown there 17 times?!

FoS,PoS, and HoR I ran a bunch on my own for gear, I almost never get those instances in LFD and they are supposedly the hardest ones. So what happened to gear determining where you go? I know it depends on the others in your group, and putting higher geared with the undergeared.

Here is what I think, the three instances I have run the most since LFD came into existence are HoL, Occ, and DTK (boss kills for DTK are not accurate right now but I know I have been there a ton). The reason Bliz loves to send me here? They give more emblems? Only DPS and Tanks queue for these? Bliz hates me? Oh, I know, Bliz said we will give all holy pallys the longest instance to run back in, and then give them a noob DK tank what isn't defence capped just so they can have a challenge! That’s all I got…

If any of my 8 readers have any thoughts or random musings for me, I am listening!

Vail

I have fallen to the Dark Side

2010-04-26T12:34:00.000-07:00

So I was bored the other night and my buddy and I rolled hordies. I am taking on Shammy heals and he is going to go Bear tank, both Cows of course. Now I have a couple (many) thoughts on, well lots of things, so please excuse me as I ramble.

Maybe I am biased, from playing alliance for the past couple years, but I love to hear the Horde bitch and moan about the Alliance winning WG,… again! Especially when I was in that last battle whooping up on them!

Maybe I am biased, but Horde trade chat seems dumber, yes, dumber.

Maybe I am biased, but I think I am biased.

I am looking forward to checking out the world from the Hordes point of view before Cata destroys everything. I have never taken a Horde toon past level 20.

I did find a nice guild that reminds me a lot of my alliance guild, they are very helpful and willing to help run the lowbees thru old instances and help with group quest. So from this I am making the assumption that both sides have the same allure for great players coupled with lots of the stupid.

I need some GOLD!
When you start alts on the same server and the same faction as your main, you are blessed with gold, your guilds help (if you have one), trade goods, and equipment. Now Bliz has made it so you can send the BoA twink gear to any horde or alliance on your account, which is great for faster leveling and more survivability. But when your ONE bag fills up in the middle of a quest run and you are forced to delete much needed grays to keep that green, you get frustrated. Then I was faced with the dilemma of spending cash that I would use to get my next spells to get some 8 slot bags for 4 silver each. Ugh, half my cash for more bag space? WTH.

I could have went and begged for some gold, I could go visit the Chinese and buy some gold, or I could faction transfer another alt loaded with goodies, but then I remembered that I had something besides gear that was BoA. Wintergrasp Commendations! And what can we buy with Honor? That’s right! Epic Gems!

So I trade in some of my WG marks and gather up 5 of these to send to my baby Shammy. Then I wander Orgrimmar looking for the PVP jeweler vendor and purchase a Cardinal Ruby. Now to sell this baby and get some real bag space, … aaa crap, I need at least 75 silver to list this thing on the AH, so after 5 min of /trade WTS Cardinal Ruby for 100 gold (well under the AH asking price) I get my cash and some more spacious bags!

More on my horde adventures are to come.

Next post: HoL WTH!

Vail

Late to the party on a lot of things (I Dig a....)

2010-04-23T11:45:00.000-07:00

The Pony, who cares. If you want one, go spend your cash on it. Having it does nothing to directly impact non RP game play. When and if the day comes where Bliz is selling armor, trinkets, or other stat/ability altering things, then i will start bitching about it. It’s your money, it’s your in game experience, do what you will.

Pally Cataclysm changes, well I don’t agree with some of the proposed changes, Bliz is in the early stages, these new abilities will change a lot before release. Just as LoH went from being not self castable to causing forbearance in 3.3 (I think) a lot of these proposals will change as we provide constructive feed back to the designers.

I will say that Beacon (bacon) causing your copied heal to cost you additional mana is probably not going to work as they described. Some of my heals I will want to copy, some I won’t, having to remove and reapply beacon during a fight as a mana conserving technique does not scream !FUN! to me. So Bliz if you’re listening, don’t make me spend a GCD or even an extra click on managing this ability, it would be a giant pain in my ass. That’s right; I’ll spend my 15 bucks somewhere else, like on booze and smokes. Then I suppose I will have to take legal action against you for causing my downward spiral into a drug educed coma that will result in me being an even larger burden on society. I know you don’t want to be responsible for that or deal with my lawyers, so go figure out something a little more clever, or face the wrath of my ambulance chasing law firm!!!

(Sorry if any of my 7 readers are ambulance chasing lawyers)

Thanks
Vail !

I r a S.M.A.R.T. Holy Pally

2010-04-06T06:31:00.000-07:00

I have run into a lot of new Holy Pallys as of late. They always seem to have lots of questions about who to heal, when to heal, how much and why they keep going OOM. I know what you’re thinking, “you’re a Pally you only have one spell just spam it on the tank already”

For the new Holy Pallys and in some cases other classes of healers, here is an overview on S.M.A.R.T. healing. It’s not hard, we just need to plan a little and think a little and it will become second nature in no time.

SMART Healing: What does this mean? It means find your space bar and learn to love it. It means get some situational awareness and boss knowledge stoked up. It means don’t think you can SPAM Holy Light for 8 minutes and not go OOM.

Break it down now!

Situational awareness

Mana managing

Ability using
pRoactive
Tank Healer

Situational awareness:
Know thy enemy, when you are progressing and leaning new fights you will have a learning curve for healing. For example the first time I fought Marrowgar, I was outside his hit box dodging his ice waves stopping to heal and hanging onto my pants when bone storm hit. I was using pots and saying little prayers to the pixel gods that my heal would land before the tank got squished. Fast forward to today. I stand behind the boss and melee back my mana in-between tank heals. When bone storm hits I pop devine plea and run to the corner of the room and wait for the tanks to pick him back up. I can spam HL the entire fight and still finish with full mana.

Mana managing:
Cool Downs are your friend, you have a lot of ways to regain your mana, Judgments, Melee+Seal of Wisdom, and Devine Plea are a few, you also have ways to save your mana, Sacred Shield, Beacon of light, Devine Illumination. Use them all even if you are not in dire need yet, be proactive in managing your mana just like you are with your heals. For example, when most boss fights start off you have a chance to use your DI cool down, most raid fights equal to your skill level will last long enough for you to use DI again right at the end when you are racing to down that boss before he eats your tasty bacon (tanks). Judge often for the chance to regain your 4% mana and go in and melee when you know the boss is not AoEing or posing a threat to your health, you can get a whack or two in in-between each HL cast and regen that mana.

I REALLY love lamp!

Ability using:
Sometimes the best time to use a cool down is when you don’t NEED to use it. When that bone storm goes off I use DP (Marrowgar), even if I have 85% mana left, that way if shit hits the fan and a healer goes down, I am ready to start picking up raid members who need heals. Use your abilities, and use them often, work Judgment into your rotation, plan your SS and BoL refreshes. If you know when damage will be soft you will know when you can safely refresh these buffs. Don’t forget about your hands, they are very powerful and often overlooked; yes I am talking about hand of freedom, protection etc. And for the lights sake, cleanse already, you can remove everything except for a curse with one spell, use it and save the mana from having to heal that person back up.

pRoactive:
PreHeal, always have a heal in cast, if it is about to go off and your target (or beacon) does not need a heal, jump, /cancel, move, do whatever you like to do to cancel the cast. With HL taking so long to cast, especially when you are not geared in T10, you cannot afford to be a reactive healer. You must be a proactive healer, get that heal all warmed up, and if you don’t need it don’t cast it (Conserve Mana!). Have a heal already in cast when you see that boss casting his AoE spell. For example when you are in VoA and see a whiteout coming, get that Holy Light nuke warmed up to go off just after the AoE to take the tanks right back up to full. It will take a couple tries to get the timing down; once you do you will love laughing in the face of random boss001’s face!

Tank Healer:
Thanks to the Tanks! If you are new to a fight, stick to your assignment, if you are to keep Tank X and Y up, make sure they stay up before you venture off into healing the raid or even DPSing. Get a feeling for the damage coming in; learn when the fights change and when you can lay off the throttle a little bit. You are not always going to be a tank healer, the simple fact is that your beacon will almost always be on a tank or someone who is taking massive damage. You have the largest nuke heal in the game and have the ability to take most people from red to green in less than 1.5 seconds unfortunately you can only heal (significantly) two people at once with that big nuke.

Be SMART and you will be rewarded with boss kills and shineys (I cannot guarantee the droppage of the purples, sorry)

Vail

I have done what I said I would not do

2010-04-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

I have decided to become a hypocrite. So I have done what I said I would not do.
I have hired a new staff writer. Please welcome Gahzoo to the V-Team writing staff.

I was told that a monkey can write better than I can. So here is his first post.

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======================================================== gfdjkjlwqioeqiwecnz,mxcmnals !@#32 dfsjakhakoiqwerio <{}{_)(LJ___) ackkkkeknn

Happy Birthday
Gahzoo!

PUG Raiding and the ICC

2010-03-26T12:25:00.000-07:00

I am a casual player, that wants to some day (with my 30% Bliz heal nerf/buff @ level 85) kill the Lich King! I would love to be able to do it before Bliz nerfs it to the ground, but being a casual I have some obstacles other than Sindragosa and the great Professor in my way. I need to find 9 or 24 other people who want what I want and have advanced thru the dungeon as I have, on my own.

Factors helping or limiting progress (and if you’re a casual your probably in the same boat).

I love my guild; we are all RL friends who have absorbed some players whom I have also become RL friends with. I have been recruited by late night casual raiding guilds, but could not leave the group I am with because,

A. I like hanging and doing casual BS with them and
B. They all know where I live IRL and
C. a couple of them are more than capable of kicking my ass

So that means I have to PUG this content if I want to see it. I play late at night so I need to find a raid that is starting at 11pm server time. I need a little luck in that said raid, is another guilds run that just needs to pug a healer or that all 9 people in the pug know the content and are geared and able to do it (lol).

That leads me to the question that most casuals who want to raid will ask.

How do I find a good raid (and continue to find) for ICC content?

Here are some pointers and observations

Raid Check the raid

I am sure you have seen something like this in Trade chat,

(2 trade) (noob001) LFM for ToC25 Gear checking and must link achievement

Patience is your friend right now. When you see someone recruiting for ICC 10 or 25, before you ask for the invite, raid check them! What is raid check? It is the reverse of what noob001 is doing above. Check with the leader and see if this is a guild run, check and see what the loot rules are, ask how far they expect to get tonight AND when they plan to continue the raid. These things should give you an idea of the skill level of the raid. There is nothing worse than getting into an ICC 10 killing Marrowgar and then proceeding to wipe 5 times on cake walk Deathwhisper and being saved for a week. Poke and prod the RL, if you are worth your salt in heals they will not mind your asking before accepting.

On the other hand, if you have never seen this content and are new to this raid, you are kind of at the mercy of the PuG. When you whisper a RL that you want to go, make sure you tell them that you have not been in the raid yet, but that you have read the fights and watch some videos on them (you should go to Tankspot or MMO and read up on the fights). You may get lucky and have a guild run that will help you and “carry” you thru, you may get unlucky and have a lot of new people to the raid and wipe on trash for a while. Be prepared and open minded for either. You will need to progress thru the content and just as the progression raiding guilds did a couple months ago, you still need to learn.

Make sure you did the basics:

Have you done the following?

1. Have all your flasks and mana pots
2. Have all the regents you need for your class specific buffs
3. Have you repaired?
4. Did you enchant and Gem those new gloves you just bought?
5. If you’re a cook bring some FISH!
6. Get on VENT even if you have run this a million times its still helps

Keep an open mind:

Different groups have different strategies for killing bosses, let the raid leader lead and pay attention, you may learn something new!

Some Observations:

Timing is everything: Every Tuesday starts a new rat race; everyone rushes to get VoA, ICC and the Weekly raids done. You can almost always find a raid on Tuesdays; you will typically find more fail raids on Tuesdays as well because everyone is rushing to get things done and not paying attention or trying to do something that is above their skill level. Not paying attention to who is in your raid can doom you from the start. ICC needs a balanced group of melee and ranged DPS, if you are in a raid with all DK’s, Pallys, and rogues, you may want to rethink getting saved with that group.

BAD IDEA

The day that I have the best track record of getting into a raid that kills at least the first 4 bosses in ICC is Thursdays. I have had 100% success rate and most of them continue on Sundays which is also convenient. Usually the raid is the 2nd or 3rd raiding team from a well established guild, which has the added bonus of getting on a schedule with them and adding them to your list. Currently I have a list of 4 guilds that run a late night ICC on Thursdays, I get into one of them every time and having experienced raiding with them I know what to expect and they know what I am capable of.

Saturdays and Sundays you will find a lot of continuations of raids, usually it’s guilds that have made it to their progression point. Keep in mind that if you join one of these, you will be saved and miss out on the “easy” candy from the first couple bosses and you will most likely be learning a new fight with the rest of a guild (and there is nothing wrong with that).

Mondays is desperation night, just take what you can get and roll with it. It’s going to reset in a couple hours anyways so give it a shot and see how far you get. Don’t worry as much about raid make up or gear, it will be hard enough to scrape up two tanks and a couple healers that are not already saved.

If you are serious about raiding as a PUG (is that an oxymoron or something like that?), you need to keep notes on who was good to group with, who failed and who was great! A couple months of doing this will get you a nice reputation on your server and will get you added to lots of friend’s lists for future raid invites!

Vail

Welcome to the new Wintergrasp! (3.3.3)

2010-03-24T07:11:00.000-07:00

Last night I ventured into WG for my usual once a week, get the honor>buy epic gems> sell them on the AH> profit, run! A couple of observations, first off, what a match! Usually the Alliance on my server defend with ease, we take all the workshops and then taunt the hordies by letting their four lonely siege engines get just in range of a wall and then zerg destroy them.

This time they put up one hell of a fight, they broke thru 3 different outer walls (they didn’t make it into the inner courtyard thou), and held us off on the last tower for a couple minutes. When the dust settled, I had accumulated 202 HK’s and 12,000+ honor (not including the quest turn-ins)! I may re-enter BG’s and run WG more than once a week if just to get the Honor for the mounts and of course to sell some more epic gems (which currently go for over 200G per gem).

I think the changes Bliz has made to BG’s and Honor is a move in the right direction to encourage more people to PvP. However, I can see how it will anger some of the experienced PvPers who have had their exp from BG’s halved and on top of that, they have to deal with un geared noob PvPers who have no clue how to do it right.

Either way I had a blast, and after that fun, I had to run a 10 or 25 man VoA. An old healing partner of mine asked me to join his group for 10 man and two heal it. Two healing is boarder line the norm for VoA 10 now, this time would be unique for me thou, Dual Holy Pallys FTW! Actually we had a total of 6 Pallys in the group, two tanks two ret and two heals.

Pallys CAN raid heal! Seriously we can, just nowhere near as effective as any other class. In the VoA 10 above all we did was beacon opposite tanks and bomb the raid after each whiteout. We were in and out with 4 dead bosses in less than 20 min.

State of the blog: I have been slammed at work as of late and haven’t had much time to play let alone write. As we say, we are casuals and if you can find us, maybe we can help! Things are starting to slow back down so you will be seeing more from us soon.

Vail

Random, Random, Random ... Random's

2010-02-23T13:05:00.000-08:00

Random thoughts for random dungeons,

After running random’s for 3 months now, and the ridiculous number of times we have run them before LFD, I ask you this…

What would make Random Heroics more interesting?
Here are some of my thoughts…

Mirror Mode: Like Mario cart, I want to run them in the mirrored direction. Not backwards, but when you would take a right normally, take a left.

Random Boss placement: Much like tripping a trap at the entrance to ICC, after killing a mob you have a chance for one of the zones bosses to randomly spawn from a trash mobs corps. Surprise !!!

3 player achievement mode: In the spirit of running our favorite raids minus one or two members for a special achievement. Run all the heroics with only 3 party members in an allotted time frame.

Quick Kill: Allow you to take on all of the instances bosses at once, no trash killing, no need to run thru the whole instance. Zone in, each boss engages 30 seconds after the last no matter if it is dead or not. Kill them all collect emblems and move on. I think that having 3 bosses on your party at once would give even the best geared groups a challenge.

Jetpacks: yes, jetpacks, in any instance, enough said.

Heroic Boss Mode: Before each boss fight you will be give the option to face a harder version of that boss. Tripling its hit points and doubling its damage output, forcing you to pay attention to the mechanics of the fights again. They can award cool new pets or heirloom gear for taking down these bosses.

Giving players a choice to run in “challenge mode” or not would allow the new 80’s to experience the content at the speed it was intended but give geared players new challenges!

I know this is all wishful thinking, with new content as a priority, and Cataclysm coming out sometime this year, the heroic dungeons of Northrend have their days numbered. No major updates will be done; we have what we have to tide us over until our next challenge comes (what’s in 3.3.4? Ruby Sanctum in 3.3.5?).

Do you have any thoughts on how Bliz could make heroics harder/funner (it’s a word damn it) if design was under your command? Yes, it will never happen, but we all like to dream right?

Dear V-Team: Can you help me push my car? (How do you Teach/Learn in WoW)

2010-02-19T13:23:00.000-08:00

First a couple of letters:

To all new Holy Pallys, and all new players period,

I am guessing if you are here, you are looking for help and advice on how to properly gear or play your character. When I say proper I mean in a way that will squeeze the most out of your gear/gems, DPS, HPS etc... I recognize that there are multiple ways to get to that conclusion and multiple different play styles.

I applaud you on looking outside the game for help with making your in game experience less frustrating. Running out of mana on boss fights? Have sub 1K DPS? Healing assignments always dying on you? All of these things can bring frustration and doubt into your mind, before you create another atl, or go blow up 12 year olds in counterstrike, keep searching and reading articles from the amazing community of players that WoW has to offer. Check my blog roll for amazing pally/healing blogs and keep up the quest for knowledge (after you read my ranting below)! Also check here for a listing of many great blogs.

Dear Blizzard,

Please stop giving OP gear to people who are not ready to use it. You wouldn’t give a 12 year old a Porch with a machine gun mounted to the roof and ask him to go heard some cattle would ya? Maybe you would, is that why you are giving out this candy? To watch and laugh at the carnage left in the aftermath, then swoop down and kick my dead corpse in the nuts?

I know, we want everyone to be able to kill the Lich King, I get it. I just wish that we had a safety switch or captcha or something that would prevent people from getting T9ed out and a couple pieces of T10 that are not gemmed or enchanted correctly (if at all). Maybe a quiz about your class before you can purchase an upgrade or something?

Love,
Vailladin

I know it’s a game; you can do whatever you want with your toon. Until you start to affect other players game play and enjoyment, that’s where I have a problem, if you can’t do the content because you haven’t taken the time to get your toon up to par, than please don’t subject me and 23 others to… you. Devil’s advocate says yes, I don’t have to group with you, I can leave the group and go do something that doesn’t put me in that situation, but that is negatively affecting my enjoyment of the game as well.

Having said that, here is letter #2

Dear Holy Pally from my VoA 10 last night,

You obviously took the time to read up on or figure out how to JC because you had 3 Dragon Eyes socketed. Why those gems were SP gems, I will not understand. Especially after I noted your 20K mana pool with you 5K GearScore and asked “Are you Flash of Light spec”? and you replied “Nope, Holy Light, holy crap you have a lot of stacked int and mana”!

You’re right I do, and you, you only have two int gems (non epic) socketed, a bunch of SP, some random MP5 and crit gems and … what’s this? A hit gem?!?! Your healing you don’t need hit rating. How are you going to spam HL with that mana pool? You’re not, so you are going to spam Flash of Light, but your haste is at 350. Not to sound elitist, but while you are casting your slow, week Flash of lights, I will cast my Holy Light, faster and for way more healing (and yes over heal) than you.

You took the time to pick out the correct professions for a pally and leveled them to max. Maybe you did that without reading a single guide, maybe you figured it all out on your own, or asked a lot of people/friends in game. Whatever you did to get that right, go do the same thing for your gems and enchants.

Love,
Vailladin

This pally was very receptive to my advice; he had good gear, and just didn’t understand how to use it. I hope his enjoyment of the game goes up after he gets some more knowledge on pally healing.

I don’t bitch that often, I just get frustrated by the most casual of casuals. I consider myself a casual player. I play a couple hours during the week, and try to get a raid in on the weekend. Maybe 10 hours total, all late at night after the family is asleep. I do take the time to read about the game and class I love so that I can be more informed and play better. My goal is in increase my level of enjoyment and in turn that will increase the level of enjoyment that people playing with me have. Let’s face it, the more you die, the less you accomplish, the less enjoyment you get in a time frame. If I spent my 10 hours a week wiping on Lord Marrowgar, I would have to take a look at myself, what I am contributing and the fight and do some research on why we are failing. I could go on but Thespius has it covered here.

Ill leave you with this question

If you couldn’t figure out how to get your car into drive, would you get out and push it to where you wanted to go? Or would you go find out what you were doing wrong. Would you even look around to see if other people were pushing their cars? On the other hand, if you saw someone pushing a car down the street, would you stop and find out what was wrong and offer to help?

Thanks for hearing me out.

Vailladin

BBB: Am I Stuck on Pally Healing?

2010-02-16T08:10:00.000-08:00

BBB asked the question Are you stuck on a particular class?

After that he rambled on about the olden days of EQ, the differences between it and WoW, and what brought him to WoW over EQ II. I was just thinking about my EQ days and how I made a ton of in game money (Platinum) because my class (enchanter) had one spell that everyone needed and wanted. It was called Crack or C2 then C3 then C4 (Clarity). It was the spell that regened your mana faster. In EQ you couldn’t eat and get mana back in less than 20 seconds. It took a couple min of just sitting down to get it back. PITA!

I would spam “C3ing for donations” in a central hub and make tons of Platinum/hour as the spell (at the time) did not have a level limit, leveling twinks would pay to get it every hour. I was wondering why WoW did not have any spells or classes that had one unique thing that they could just do, that people would pay for. Yeah mages can port, and people pay for that, but it’s not the cash cow that being a crack dealer was. You can get almost any other buff you would want from scrolls or drums or something along those lines, so I guess technically you can make money from the spells, but again not even close.

Enough reminiscing there are lots of reasons why selling spells worked in EQ and would never work in WoW, to answer Bears question I had to dig back to my EQ days as an enchanter, hence the random memory sharing above.

Enchanters were the crowd control class of EQ, you HAD to have one in your group if you were going to do anything. Yep, imagine that an entire class that only did crowd control and almost every fight needed crowd control. They didn’t blow things up, they couldn’t heal, they just kept extra mobs busy so the rest of the group could do what they needed to do. Much like healing in WoW it was a thankless job and the only time someone notices/said something to you was if you messed up.

In addition to my enchanter I always liked wizards (my one and only atl in EQ was a Wiz) because they could port wherever they wanted to, I liked the freedom to roam quickly (no mounts you had to run everywhere) and the ability to blow things up! When I started with WoW I was looking for a class that was most like my enchanter, imagine my glee when (yes I said glee) I saw that the caster “crowd controlling, polymorphing, nuking mage” could PORT as well! I thought it would be a natural fit.

After starting a mage on multiple servers, I ended up with the alliance mage I have now. Then I discovered that the NEED for crowd control wasn’t there, I felt useless as a mage (too bad that was 80 levels later). I went pew pew and “holy crap ice block” and that was it. I couldn’t save a group from death by holding back 3 mobs indefinitely, I could freeze them but that only lasted a couple seconds and would not be off cool down before the mobs came and killed me. I could poly them but that would always get broken by some misplaced DPS. I could invis and run away, but that only saved me. I remember in UP you use to “sheep pull” the packs of trash so that the caster would be out of the game for a little bit and the tank would grab the agro on the rest right quick, but you didn’t have to have a mage to run that instance. There was no need for me other than to nuke things and burn faces off, and that is not how I enjoyed my play time.

Enter Vailladin:
I had rolled a pally at some point early in my WoW career, and hated it, I think I made it to a whopping level 6 and went back to leveling the mage. After hitting 80 and doing some end game on my mage, and getting frustrated with my lack of “need”, I tried the pally again. The thought was to play with my RL friend on his warrior and we would have a pre made group with him tanking and me healing. After 80 levels and many days at end game I finally realize why I love playing my holy paladin so much. I am back in the driver’s seat with my hero complex and saving the group from certain doom. I once again have the ability, albeit in a different manner to save the group from death and pull them thru the direst of fights. I have buffs that everyone wants/needs; too bad I can’t get people to pay for them. I get the same rush as I did in EQ when someone pulls more than we should be able to handle and we come out on top! I love the pressure and “holy shit did we really just pull that off” factor of playing this class.

Am I partial to pally healing? Sure I am, I love it, and can’t get enough, I have a baby druid, priest and shammy waiting to get some levels, if I could ever stop playing my healadin I could better experiences these other healing classes and let you know!

I hope in Cataclysm Bliz brings back the need to CC in group instances (you don’t even really need to do it in HoR anymore). I enjoy the content a lot more when I am thinking about what I am doing, keeping my eyes open, and being challenged by mobs.

Are you ready to Rumble?! (PvP and the Lunar Festival)

2010-02-15T09:36:00.000-08:00

This time of year breads PvP, the holiday achievements are helping to drive people into a rage against the opposing faction. Why? You need to go into the Arathi Basin BG for a Love Fool Achievement, and you now need to say “hi” to 3 elders in the opposite factions cities for the Elder Achievements. In most cases to get the title achievement you need to be level 80, here are some tips and advice on how to accomplish the PvP part of these holidays.

We will start in Arathi Basin:
It’s a simple game and one that has brought me back to loving PvP. Basically you and your force need to control 5 different resource producing areas like the blacksmith, and the farm. If you control that area you gain resources as the fight goes on. The first faction to get to 1600 resources wins! If you are a holy paladin, don’t worry about not having any PvP gear. Go in and follow the raid group from spot to spot and keep them alive, Beacon/Sacred Shield yourself and heal your ass off! If someone keys in on you as the healer and comes at you, use your defensive spells, hand of freedom, bubble, stun and LoH. Remember that if you use LoH on yourself it will cause forbearance and you will not be able to bubble for 2 min, but if you have beaconed yourself, you can LoH anyone within range and that heal will be put through to you with no forbearance penalty.

For the love fool achievement, you need to /pity the love fool in the blacksmith, it doesn’t matter if you control it or not. The blacksmith is in the middle of the zone, run right in there and have your love fool on a hot key, drop it and /pity. If the area is filled with bad guys you can always bubble and then /pity to make sure you get the achievement. If you liked this battle ground (my favorite) check out the rest of the BG's in game. This is an older guide to BG's but for the original 3 it is great

Now it’s time to honor your elders!
This is very LoTR like, with all the wandering around for days and sneaking into enemy lands. The big part of gaining the title “Elder” is talking to all of the elders throughout all of the lands of Azeroth. This includes some that are in instances, some that are in Northrend, and even more daunting, 3 that are in the opposing faction’s city. You are going to see the opposing factions attacking your citys a lot.
Some tips to getting to the 3 elders in enemy territory:

You can visit all 3 of the needed elders by using your classes defensive abilities. Some it will be easy for, like rogues who can vanish thru most of the zone. Others you will need to do some planning for before trying to solo. I have yet to do it but my plan on my pally is, find out on the map where the elder is that I need to reach. Throw up Sacrid Shield and Crusader Aura and drive as far in as I can. Most of the guards can’t catch you, so as long as you do not get knocked off your mount you should be fine, they drop agro and return to their post relatively fast. In the event that you do get dismounted or you are engaged by a player, you will have to use your fight or flight instincts! Depending on what spec you plan to do it in you will have to plan accordingly, if you are ret and have repentance, you can repent the player then bubble and keep running, this obviously won’t work if there are multiple players there but you get the idea. I plan to do as holy, if I get dismounted I will bubble and run, if im not to the Elder by then I will fight, and if the hordies is worth his weight I will die. I can run back rez and bubble and run some more, these elders are not that far into the zones so you should be able to reach on the second bubble. Then you can hearth or run or die, whatever you want, bubble hearth ftw!

The easier and better way to do this is as part of a group or a raid. Just yesterday alone I saw 4 raids forming to do For The Alliance with a side of hitting the elders up. I also defended my beloved Dwarven King from the likes of the horde two times in the two hours I was on. To help you defend your cities, join the world defense channel, to do so type /join worlddefense. You will now be notified every time one of your cities or PvP objectives are attacked. Stand ready at the Dalaran portals to jump down into the fray at any time! There are a lot of cool achievements for PvP and you can even get a Black War Bear mount for killing all 4 of the opposing faction’s leaders. These raids are a ton of fun and I highly recommend any one in the 70-80 range to jump in on one and enjoy the ride.

A note on defending, if you are not in a group or a raid, and are defending your city, it will be hard to heal your comrades, ask/shout to see if you can get an invite to the group/raid (if their is one) or if you are dual speced, enter the battle in your ret or prot spec.

Here is a great guide to hit up all of the elders. The only note I have is to hold off on doing the elders in the Northrend dungeons. The reason is that you now have 3 weeks to do this holiday this year, and you will probably hit them all when you are doing your daily for the frost emblems. If not you can always queue for them from Dalaran later on.

This means nothing, I just love Bacon!

Please feel free to add any tips for new PvPers, other than to jump in the pool and see if you can swim!

New to Level 80? Trade Skills and the Holy Paladin (Part 6)

2010-02-11T10:12:00.000-08:00

Trade Skills and Leveling:

If you are already 80 and just finding out about trade skills. I am sorry you are finding out now, the best advice is to pick them up and level them as you level your character. What is the best trade skill to pick up? There is no wrong answer here, take up whatever interest you or is cool to you. Yes, there are certain skills that will benefit certain classes more than others, and if you want more details on those just do a quick Google search and you will have an idea of what’s best for you. You can only have two main skills at a time, but you can level and maintain all of the secondary skills at the same time. The secondary skills are First Aid, Cooking, and Fishing.

Some professions will need you to do some farming for mats. What this means is you need to go kill lots and lots of creature X (aka farming) that drops the material Y (aka mat) you need to create an item and level your skill up. Most of the time you can get everything you need to level your skill as you level your character. If you are already 80, you will most likely hit the AH for the materials needed to level the first 200 levels and move very fast (current max level is 450). You will sometimes hit a wall when your skill gets into the 300 range. This is the Burning Crusade era of materials; they are rarely farmed and sold and sometimes hard to come by. So if you want to level up and not pay a ton you should go get the materials yourself. On that note if you want to make some gold you can sell your extra mats or even farm them to sell to other players for a profit.

There are two kinds of professions, crafting and gathering. Usually you need a gathering skill to gather the materials you will need to craft something. For example if you want to be a leatherworker, you should probably be a skinner so you can get the mats you need to craft the gear. If you decide to take two crafting professions, plan on having a friend/guild mate that can help you gather materials or have a stock pile of gold so you can purchase the materials you need. Some people have made second characters specifically to gather supplies for their main characters crafting.

For Holy Pallys the best main skills right now (this is debatable) are Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing, mainly because of the bonuses they offer. Jewelcrafting allows you to create jewelcrafter only gems that give you amazing stats like +34 to Int, they can only be used by the creator and you can only have 3 equipped at one time. Blacksmiths at level 400 gain the ability to add sockets to wrists and gloves, giving you an increased stat boost from the gems you put in.

The math: In the holy light paladin build it is simple

3 Jewelcrafter only gems = +34int/gem * 3 = 102int – 60int (what you would normally get from +20 epics) = a gain of 42 int

2 Blacksmiths Sockets = +40int if you socket epic gems

You gain 82 int from these two professions which will equate to about 1230 mana. Your MP5 and crit are also affected by your int so those stats will get a buff as well. In addition to that, jewelcrafting and blacksmithing can be very profitable professions; you can help fund lots of endeavors thru these two skills.

weezing the ju-uice!

Leveling both of these professions is not cheap nor is it fast. Make it a goal to work on professions every now and then when you need a change of pace or have some down time. There are a lot of guides out on how to level them up effectively for the least amount of gold as possible. If your goal is to raid as a Holy Paladin, you will want these professions. You want to squeeze every bit of juice out of your gear!

Pity the Fool, my love of Mr. T will never end

2010-02-08T13:53:00.000-08:00

Fool for Love, I have the fool part down! I read up on this, I was ready to go, I logged in on Sunday and … wait, what? They changed it? So I have now spent today reading up and getting info from different places and have come up with some numbers. First, what has changed?

Last year you needed to flirt with a guard while doused in perfume or cologne to get a box with something you needed. Very much like trick or treating in the Halloween event, you could only do this once an hour. Don’t spend your hard earned tokens on more than one perfume that the vendors sell. As far as I can tell the only thing you would use it for is Flirt With Disaster and for the combat buff it gives. This year you get the Love Tokens from doing daily quests or you can purchase for Lovely Charm Bracelets.

Where do you get Lovely Charm Bracelets? You get them by combining quantity 10 Lovely Charms.

Where do I get Lovely Charms? You get them by killing mobs that are your characters level. So for you 80’s go kill stuff in Icecrown and run your daily’s. Also BBB and Jaedia have suggested doing this quest (if you have it) Battle Before the Citadel, from the Argent Tournament grounds.

By the Numbers:

You will need about 100 Love Tokens (depending on your luck)

You will need 12 Lovely Charm Bracelets. These will be made from 120 Lovely Charms

You will need a grand total of 220 Lovely Charms or 22 Lovely Charm Bracelets

You will need to do the daily’s for 3 days

You can farm more lovely charms to get more bracelets if you like. You can turn in extra bracelets for Love Tokens. You could finish this in one day if you wanted, but I would rather take my time with daily’s then spend hours farming. To finish in one day you would need 740 Lovely Charms or 74 Lovely Charm Bracelets.

Here is the break down of mats needed to finish in 3 days…

10 Lovely Charms = 1 Lovely Charm Bracelet = 1 Love Token.

If you do all of the daily’s, once a day for 3 days you will have 90 Love Tokens. One of the daily’s require you to turn in a Lovely Charm Bracelet to each of your factions leaders (4), you get the quest for each leader in their home city. completing each quest will award you 5 Love Tokens. One of your achievements will require you to acquire 12 Lovely Charm Bracelets. You will use 4 of these each day to turn into your factions leaders as stated above. You will then need to turn in 10 additional bracelets to get the last 10 Love Tokens for a total of 22 Lovely Charm Bracelets needed.

You can save some Tokens by trading with other players for the chocolate and the candy hearts that you need for the Sweet Tooth (10 Tokens) achievement and the Be Mine! (2-6 Tokens) achievement. You can save another 10 tokens by using someone else’s picnic basket for the Lonely? achievement. That will get you down to only needing about 74 Tokens so you can shave off some daily’s and or some Lovely Charm farming.

The only thing that you cannot buy with Tokens (for the Meta Achievement) is the Bouquet of Ebon or Red roses for the Achievement My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose. They drop from the Maiden of Grief in Halls of Stone, Prince Keleseth in Utgarde Keep, or Prince Taldaram in The Old Kingdom and you can do it in regular mode.

Walk away Walk away, I will follow… (HoR Nerf?)

2010-02-03T06:26:00.000-08:00

There have been a lot of little fixes in the latest patch. Most of them have been to make heroic dungeons much easier and faster. I am a little disappointed in some of the changes, for example I do not see the need to nerf Anomalus, even for geared players that fight is a fun PITA! I do agree with the Svala Sorrowgrave nerf, we would make a game to see if we could kill her in the air before the sword came down.

I guess they are just nurfing the mechanics of the fights more than the fights themselves, the bosses still have the same HP and mana pools, they just made them less annoying to the over geared player. I wish they would make these instances a little harder, but if they did it would put them out of the reach of leveling and fresh level 80 players. I guess we have to be happy with ICC and the new 5 mans as our hard content. Even HoR seems to have gotten easier, last night we had a drunk pally tanking, he did not stand out in the open to get agro and did not put a consecrate down for the mobs to hit before they got to the squishies, agro was all over the place. Despite having to 4 man the first boss we made if thru the 10 waves. As we are getting ready to run with the Lich King, I ask the pally if he wants to get in front or do it from behind (standard or ledge strat). After a min of off color jokes, he decides he wants to do it from behind. Well, what happened next was NOT in the patch notes (that I could find) and had us all laughing and saying WTF at the same time. As the King approached and turned to walk away from us on our “safe” little ledge, purple lightning began forking out at us. All I saw was red, red health bars on my healbot, and soon a group of five on the ground convulsing like Vigo the Carpathian had just reached out from his painting and showed us how he IS better than Tony Danza.

After the WTF factor wore off, we realize that Blz had extended the range of the Lich Kings white cloud and now purple forked lightning if you are behind him. It is not insta-death but you would need a core of 10 healers’ chain healing to even be standing after the first fight.

NOTE TO SELF: Don’t walk behind the man any more, he does not like you following him.

Should Bliz have told us about this change? Were we exploiting a hole in the programming? They tell us about everything else they are changing, why not this (did i miss it?)? Have you noticed anything else “weird” in the world since the patch?

PS if you want to have some fun, tell your group to walk behind him and enjoy the ensuing slaughter and pretty purple lights.

What can i say i like to win, and i like to win free stuff!

2010-02-02T14:31:00.000-08:00

You will probably see a couple of these post today ...

Zath’s Monster World of Warcraft Competition!

Zath is having a contest to promote his return to WoW! (and his blog of course)

He has some cool prizes and you really dont have to do anything to get them ...

WoW Prizes
1 x World of Warcraft Mouse
1 x World of Warcraft Keyboard
1 x SteelSeries QcK WoW: Lich King Limited Edition Mouse Mat
1 x SteelSeries 5C WoW: Frost Wyrm Limited Edition Mouse Mat
1 x WoW Comic (Hard-Cover)
1 x WoW: Arthas: Rise of the Lich King Book
1 x BradyGames WoW Guide
1 x BradyGames WoW: Burning Crusade Guide
5 x Starbucks WoW Raiding Kit (consisting of USB Cup Warmer, a Starbucks VIA WoW Mug and obviously some of their new VIA instant coffee to keep you raiding well into the night!)

How to Enter

To be in with a chance of winning one of these prizes, all you need to do enter this competition is do one or more of the following (obviously the more of these you do, the more entries and chances to win you’ll have):

Be a fan of Zath on Facebook (1 entry)
Follow Zath on Twitter (1 entry)
Leave a comment below saying you’d like to enter (1 entry)
If you have a blog/website, then write about this competition on it mentioning that Zath is running this World of Warcraft competition and provide a link back to this page for your readers. If you then leave the URL of the page in your comment, it will make it easier for me to find it, thanks! (2 entries)

So go check out Zaths cool world of gadgets …. I guess this is kind of counterproductive, the more people I send to sign up the smaller my chance is to win….

Could it be true?

2010-01-29T15:52:00.000-08:00

In Gevlon’s latest post Win-Win-Win, he reviews a week’s worth of posts he made on the LFD system, how you can have a positive and negative effect on it, how you COULD spend your time in it, and possibilities for helping new players in the future.

I have a couple thoughts and observations on the LFD system for the new players. I even had a very in-depth post lined up on it, and then I disproved most of my theory, so here are the abbreviated parts that I think are still true. (some are very obvious)

A sure fire way to get into a random in less than five minutes!

1. Queue as a Tank. Course this really only works if you are in-fact a tank. You could abuse the system as Gevlon suggests, but it seems like more work than it’s worth.
2. Queue as a healer. It takes about a minute longer to get into a random as a healer then as a tank. But right now it is still fast.
3. Get in a group with a tank or a healer from your guild or server and enter the LFD system as a group for the rest of your DPS spots. During peak hours you can almost always find a group for running multiple randoms on your server.
4. If you are DPS and can swing it, queue up later at night or very early in the morning, after 11pm or before 9am server time.

The last thing I do before I log every night, usually around 12:30am server time, is log on my mage and run a quick daily (sometimes 2 or 3). I always get in a group in less than five minutes. Obviously this is not ideal for everyone, especially if that pure DPS class is your main, or you cannot log-in at these times. Queuing up late at night as any class will get you in faster than normal as there are less people to pull from.

Another suggestion in Gevlon’s post is that you put on blues or lower level gear to get into groups with better geared players. I had read in a blues post that they count the gear in your bank into the dungeon determination, so doing this probably won’t help you. However if you are a new 80 it might help you to keep your gear score at or around 2800 and stock pile your emblems of triumph. This, in theory, should do a couple things for you…

1. It should put you into groups with higher geared tanks and healers (I am assuming you are DPS).
2. It could help to get you into a group faster because you should be one of few with that low of a gear score in the system. There are probably more people with GS of 4300+ LFG than 2800-3000. I have no proof of this; I assume that most players as they get 30-50 emblems run right to the T9 vendor to get “uber” gear on as fast as possible. Save up your emblems and buy all your T9 at once!

How can you resist that tasty T9?!?!

3. You should get faster runs because you will be with higher geared players in less difficult Heroics. With a GS of 3000 you should never end up in a HoR or any of the other harder heroics. My mage has a GS of 4000 and 70% of the time I get DTK or Nexus as my random. I have never drawn ToC, HoR, PoS, FoS, or HoL. I did get Occ once, but everyone in the group was in 5K plus gear scores. I would make the assumption that the system would take total gear score average of the group when determining where you will go. On the other hand if you are a high GS player it might be to your benefit to group with a lower geared guild mate or friend so that you draw easier/quicker instances to run (in theory, speed will still be determined by skill and knowledge).

This is all something to experiment with, I understand that there are pluses and minuses to every point above that could make your run faster or slower and even make your queue longer. In short, keep your gear score low and get a high level tank as your best friend and you will be in full T9 in no time!

Don’t underestimate yourself! Don’t let them push you around! (And gosh darn it people like me)

2010-01-27T10:51:00.000-08:00

Late last night, my warrior tank guild mate and I needed to knock out a daily. We were looking for a nice easy run. Being that we are both pretty well geared out (5K GS) we could force (faceroll) our way thru any heroic that Bliz could throw at us. You thought queuing in LFD as a tank was fast, it’s even faster when it’s a tank and healer (only by nano seconds). We draw heroic CoS (Culling of Stratholme), ugh, this instance went from being one of the fastest to being one of the longest in the game. They need to give Arthas a jet pack or a hover board or something. At least give us some free booze to help pass the time, anyways, the group make up is my tank friend (warrior), a freshly minted hunter, a freshly minted mage, a mid ranged DK, and me (pally healer).

The hunter pipes right up and says “nice health” to the tank, “nice mana” to me and then “sorry I am so squishy”. I told him not to worry; he can target and kill whatever he wants as long as the tank has run in (I know, i am teaching bad habits). There was no way my tank buddy would run out of rage or have agro stolen in this group. I wanted him to know it was ok to practice and push himself to rock some DPS. We are waiting for Arthas to drag his ars over to us when the DK informs us that he cannot stay the group is too weak, and he has to go.

The DK's new pet in Cataclysm, the Graboid (wait what?)

Umm what? We could two man this, it would take about 5 days, but we could effectively do this alone, all the DK needed to do was come along for the ride. So we re-queue and get, another DK, this one was a little better in the gear department but at this point we all know gear means nothing.

Now I am sure you can all guess what happened next. The warrior tank was number two on the DPS chart, and the worst geared player on the run (GS 2800), the hunter, was pulling over 2K DPS. The mage and the DK were hovering around 1.2K DPS. For the frost mage (GS 3000), 1.2K DPS is not bad being his first toon and not fully understanding his rotation. That kind of DPS in heroics this time last year was top notch! The DK who had some T9 I could not excuse as easily; he obviously has had some time in heroics and has done nothing to learn about or improve his rotations.

After talking briefly with the hunter, he tells me how he has been getting kicked from groups for his low gear score and at times what is viewed as subpar DPS. I don’t care what anyone says 2K in a heroic is never “subpar”. His thoughts when he sees over geared 80’s is that he is going to get booted, or they are going to drop group, I am sure this is part of the reason for his ass kissing at the start of the run. I told him that he did great, 2K+ DPS in his gear was awesome, don’t underestimate yourself and don’t let them push you around.

You know what happens when you Assume?
When you are fresh to 80 people assume a lot about you. Speak up at the start like this hunter did, you don’t have to ass kiss like he did, but I am sure it helps. Tell them you are gearing up and that you know your rotations, and will push to help move the group. Most groups will appreciate the upfront honesty and you will move along with no issues. You should read up and learn a little about how to spec, gem, enchant, your gear and def have some knowledge on a good DPS rotation. You can find out all of these things for your class with a quick Google search. You can easily pull respectable DPS in entry level gear if you know how to play your toon.

On the same lines, if you DON’T know an instance, let the group know that as well. They can help you learn as you go. Yes you will run into that group or that guy that is an ass and will want you gone. It happens, just keep at it and continue being up front, players will be more open to giving you advice (good and bad) and forgiving mistakes when you state your intentions up front. Deservingly, the hunter won the bronze drake too! Not a bad reward for being up front and knowing your stuff!

Tip: New to level 80? Do about 30 min of research and spend a couple gold on some cheap gems/chants. Then speak up in your random and impress everyone with your skills!

Note: DK’s please, please, please, stop popping your army for boss fights, it’s really annoying.

Why don’t we help each other out anymore?

2010-01-25T13:11:00.000-08:00

I have noticed reticently that our lower level guild members and alts are in need of a lot more help from the guild, more than ever when running into group quest and tougher solo content.

I can guess at a few reasons for this.

1. We are porting right into dungeons now. So there are not as many 80’s bouncing thru the zones that can hear the cries of the level 77 needing help with a 2 min quest.

2. In our rush to get more purples and get to end game faster, we are just ignoring these needs so we can keep going faster. Even though most of us were helped out on our way to uberness, in the world of 3.3 who has the time to return the favor?

3. Less people are on for “free time”. A lot of people are now logging in queuing up for a quick frost emblem random, popping right into the raid, or logging in to do their daily CD/trade skill quest and then logging right off. The speed you can accomplish things in the game has increased and there are a lot less down times now. These days casual PuG raids form faster than ever (and sometimes fail just as fast).

4. Fewer people leveling alts or fresh characters, instead they are focusing more on end game and getting their current level 80’s into ICC end game.

Maybe we are blinded by purples? Or overly excited about all the new content that we are digesting (I am loving all of it BTW). I set aside some time for each session I log on to help out lower level guildies and fresh 80’s in heroics, now more than pre 3.3. I know the next toon I level, I will appreciate the payback. Remember you were new to 80 once and someone probably helped you out a ton to get where you are now. If you just turned 80, remember how you feel right now, in about 3 months you are going to run into someone just like you and you will have to make a choice (Kind of like the time traveling quest in Dragonblight). Pay it forward, or pay it back whichever way you want to look at it, help your future self out.

Help?!

New to Level 80? Why do they keep asking for my measurements (creepy)?

2010-01-22T06:08:00.000-08:00

As you gear up and get into harder instances and the under 60 min raids, you may hear party and raid leaders asking for a gear score and or your DPS. What they are referring to are calculations that come from a couple of add-ons. There is a whole debate on skill trumps gear and difference variations of that, I am not going to get into that. I will tell you what they are, how they work and why in the case of the holy paladin they tend to be a little off.

Mine's bigger than yours is!

Gear Score or GS:
This is determined a couple different ways. One way is in game using an add-on called GS or Gear Score. It adds up the ilevel of your gear and give you a number. It then plugs that number into a chart and that tells a leader if your GEAR is good enough for the instance. In some cases you can be the greatest skilled player in the world and your gear is just not good enough for you to do some things, you have “maxed” it out. In other cases you can have lower leveled gear but have a killer DPS rotation or know your heals and cool downs inside and out and can maintain 3K HPS (heals per second) over a 10 min fight. Your skill is at a level to do the instance, unfortunately there is no tool to measure skill and that is why if you are new to the scene you may be held back due to it. Once raid leaders get to know you and get comfortable with your skill, you will get more and more invites.

Another way to determine your gear score is by going to sites like http://www.wow-heroes.com/. A site like this does take into account more then just the ilevel of the gear you are wearing. They add in points for your enchants and gems, they even give you recommendations for better gems or enchants if you do not have optimal ones. I feel that this gives a better view of your over all gear, and you will notice that GS and Heroes gave you two completely different numbers for a score, so when sending your score to a leader make sure you tell them which way you calculated it.

Where there are problems with both of these methods
The first problem comes when you look at how some gear is itemized or procs from the gear. For example the healing paladin libram of choice is [Libram of Renewal], this has a very low ilevel (200) however it is by far and away the best item you can put in this slot. Now you can go get the T10 Libram and shoot your GS up 50-70 points and give people the impression that you have great gear. The simple fact is, that libram will make your healing less effective, period (if you are HL build). That leads us to the second problem with this process. People can trick the system to get into these instances, if the leader is not paying close attention I can tell them I am a pally healer, then they look at my GS and see a nice 5K+ number and I get an invite. After the invite I switch out of my uber PvP gear and into my 4K GS healing set. Take this with a grain of salt if you are told no when you ask to get in a group that requires a gear score, don’t feel bad you probably didn’t want to be a part of that one anyways. They usually have too many alterative motives for asking for a high GS and end up wiping a lot.

Recount:
The next thing they might want to know is DPS. Now this is something you can easily lie about. There is no add on that will tell someone just by looking at you how much DPS YOU can put out. They might have an idea of what a toon that is speced the way you are can put out. But so much goes into your DPS number that it can vary a lot from player to player. Now, there is an add-on that can tell you and others that are grouped and fighting with you what your DPS output is for that fight or instance, but they have to be grouped with you to see that. You will want to download this add-on, [Recount] and set it up in your UI. You can then do one of two things, head out into an instance line up a boss with your group and blow everything you got to get as high as you can. That will give you an idea of your DPS. The other thing you can do if find one of the heroic target dummies in one of the main cities, buff up and blow everything you got on that. The numbers will vary in these cases depending on who you are grouped with and what buffs you have from other classes and if you have multiple mobs that you are AoEing or not. Either way this will give you an idea of where you are and a point that you can measure yourself for improvement. Don’t bother lying to leaders about your DPS, after the first couple pulls or attempts they will see that you are on the bottom of the meter and probably kick you. So just be upfront when you get into the group.

New to 80? Dual Spec,Add-ons, and BACON!

2010-01-20T06:23:00.000-08:00

Dual Spec:
Once you reach level 40 you can pay 1000 gold and dual spec. That means you can have two separate talent tree set ups. Most people use this in conjunction with the equipment manager tool and can swap from heals to tank or DPS. This is very useful in raids and also makes it easier for you to level as DPS but run instances and raids as a healer. If you made it to 80 without knowing this or stumbling on it, now you know.

The reason I bring it up? If you notice when you change talents your action bars change with it. You need to make sure you check ALL of you spells not just healing ones and make sure that you have the highest level spell on your action bar (if you are an action bar clicker). This noob (yes me) went thru a painful time of healing and going oom very fast in heroics. After looking over some spells and logs I noticed I was casting a holy light spell ranked 3 levels below the max. In 3.2 Blizzard changed your mana usage with down ranked spells. So there is no need to down rank spells to conserver mana any more. In fact it has the opposite effect because it will use the same amount of mana but heal your target for less, making you heal more, for more mana and hence going oom.

runnin on empty

Another point along the same line, make sure you have purchased all of the holy spells from the class trainer (not just the first level). You will not be able to purchase them if you are not in your holy spec because some of these spells require you to spec into them to learn them. An example is Holy Shock, you have to spec to get it, and you probably did when you did your dual spec, but as you level, higher versions of that spell become available. If you were DPSing your way to 80 you probably did not go back to the trainer in your holy spec, so you do not have the higher levels of the spell learned.

That brings me to add-ons. Add-ons are programs written by players to help you do ____X_____ better. For example there is an add-on (RankWatch) that will notify you (and others if you tell it) that you are casting a spell that is not at max level. You have to install add-ons, or you can have a curse program do it for you. If you want to do it manually you have to find the interface and then add-on folder in your wow program files. If you are on Vista it is under users/public/games/worldofwarcraft/interface/addons, if you are using XP you can simply go into the world of warcraft folder and find the interface then add-ons section. You simply move the add-on files/folders you have downloaded into the wow add-on folder and load the game. You will see at the character selection screen a button in the lower left hand corner that says “add-ons” you can click this and enable or disable programs you do or do not want to run in your user interface.

There are simple add-ons that make your UI look pretty, and others that will give you a warning that you are standing in something bad. This is a list of add-ons that I use.

Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield, Judgment, and HoT Tracker: Long name, amazing results. This will put 4 small countdown bars on your screen. You will only see them when these spells are active and you can move it around so that it is not in the middle of your screen. It will show you how long you have left on each of the spells you should always keep up, and will flash a big reminder on screen 2 seconds before it wears off. This is great for when you are intensely staring at health bars and need a friendly reminder that Beacon is about to run out. Blue is SS, Red is Bacon, Yellow is Judge

HealBot: This is an add-on that will allow you to view an entire raids worth of health bars in one window. You can then hover your mouse over their health bar and click to cast a heal, cleanse or any other spell you want it too. I have it set to heals and cleanse on normal clicks, shift clicks activates Beacon and Sacred Shield and Alt clicks give out blessings. This tool has endless uses, it even tells you when someone has poison or disease that needs to be cleansed. I healed without healbot for about 2 months, if you are just running heroics, you can click a portrait and put a number key to cast a heal and you should be ok for most of the instance. I recommend healing this way to start for two reasons. First, you will have an even greater appreciation for healbot and all that it can do and second on patch day or if your UI fails in the middle of a fight, you know where your spells are and how to click heal people.

Colors like purple mean they have poison that needs to be cleansed, if the name is grayed out they are out of range

DBM (Deadly Boss Mods) This add-on give you a wealth of knowledge about boss encounters in instances and in raids. Useful things like time until enrage, and time until the bosses special ability is off of cool down. IT will even tell you when you should get out of melee range or get out of the fire by yelling at you to “Run away little girl, run away!”. This add-on has too many feature to tell you about. Best thing I can do is tell you to get it and enjoy!

Its not as bad if you remove all the labels

Omen: This add-on is a threat meter, if will give you a shot of who is where on a mobs threat table. This is great to help you anticipate heals and heal proactive instead of reactive. It will also tell you that you have pulled threat so you can save your rear. For the most part I leave this add-on turned off. I do see where it is essential to all DPSers to have this one.

PallyPower: This is a buff tool for your blessings. Raid leaders and other pallys use to make sure that we all know what we are doing and who we are buffing. One person will assign each paladin a blessing and possibly an aura that they are responsible to give the raid. It helps to make sure that a critical buff is not missed. If you are not going to be raiding, or at least not anytime soon, you can save the system resources and turn this one off.

This is not an add-on, but I love this macro!

#showtooltip Divine Plea
/cast Divine Plea
/in 60 /script PlaySoundFile("Interface\\AddOns\\theholypaladin\\divine-plea.wav")
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Obviously it came from my favorite place to plug, theholypaladin! If you don’t want to change the macro and just want to cut and paste it, make a “theholypaladin” folder in your addons folder. Then put a .wav file that has been named divine-plea.wav in that folder. I cut up about 5 seconds of a catchy song and renamed it divine-plea.wav, you can chose any sound or effect you want. Once you have done this open the menu in game and select macros. Now create a new macro paste in what is above and test it out! Never again will you forget to use your divine plea!

Beacon The Bacon!

I say that because 9 times out of 10 you are going to put your beacon on the meat shield aka the tank. So make sure you beacon the bacon ( I know I want bacon protecting me, because bacon is awesome!). Your beacon spell is the easiest way to keep your group or raid up, sometimes you are healing two bacon shields at the same time with it. Make sure you use it to its fullest.

Beacon of light has a 60 yard range right? There are some fights in the game where you and your beacon target are out of range of each other. The way beacon works is, the heal you cast on target A is copied to the beaconed target B as long as target A is within 60 yards of the beacon target B. That means, in theory, you could be out of range of your beaconed tank, but as long as your heal hits someone that is in range of the tank, the heal will still copy! It’s rare when it happens but its good to know.

New To Level 80? So you want something to shoot for? (Part 3 Gear)

2010-01-19T13:36:00.000-08:00

Here is a basic road map for gear, you can make many detours along the way but this will give you some goals in end game to get you to where you want to be. Let me start by saying I did not start healing Heroics until I had a decent amount of healing gear collected from DPSing heroics and regulars. Here is a list of gear you can work to get (again I’m not about to reinvent the wheel, I am labeling this Level 1 healing pally gear). I practiced my healing in lower level instances to hone my skills, but the goal here is to get you healing and progressing thru the heroic content.

You can DPS your way to all of this gear, most of the drops would be vendored or disenchanted at this point. If you choose that route make sure you tell your group you are trying to gear up your healing set so they know. ESP if you are in a random group. Currently the LFD systems loot rules will NOT let you roll need to mail items, even though they are perfectly acceptable and sometimes preferred gear for healing. In randoms you can’t roll need, only greed (unless its plate of course). Let the group know ahead of time and hopefully they won’t be disenchanted and they will be traded to you by a party member.

Again I suggest, to get your healing chops you should heal thru this upgrade process. I understand that at times it is frustrating and a bit stressful, welcome to the world of healing! I am assuming that you leveled your paladin in ret spec and that you probably have some decent DPS gear. In some cases you may need to rely on your DPS set to get you the gear you need/want to be able to heal that instance. For example Pit of Sauron and Hall of Reflection, you should have most of the gear I am going to list below before you try to heal these. You should also have healed a lot of other heroic instances before trying to heal these. They are very mana intensive fights and your skill defiantly needs to match your gear here.

Ok I am done preaching, onto the list. The focus of my list is INT > Haste > Crit/SP > MP5. My reasoning for this is as follows (and you can read basically the same thing on any other holy pally site), Int will give you a large mana pool to pull you thru more intense fights as you cast your big spell, Holy Light. Int also gives you MP5 and Crit so you want to stack it everywhere you can, including gems! Haste will allow you to cast your heals faster, the faster you can react and get a heal off, the less likely it is your target will die waiting for the spell to go off (yes it’s elementary). The goal is to get to the haste “soft cap” of 676. This combined with some other spells and abilities will allot you to cast your little heal, Flash of Light, in one second. Haste will come on your gear, I would not gem for haste. Crit/SP will make your heals bigger and better, it will all come on your gear, don’t bother gemming or chanting for it unless there is no better enchant for that slot. MP5, Bliz tried to make this an important stat for pallys, it is simply not. You will get some on your gear and you will get some from your Int, but in no way would I seek it out.

With this much haste you will be flinging heals like this

As you progress thru Heroics you will come across some nice healing plate and mail drops. Feel free to pick them up and plug them in for now. When you are starting out you can ignore haste and focus more in buffing up your int. Here is a list of what drops for you from Heroics, most are from the end bosses and are ilevel 200. Remember if you are going to replace it soon, don’t waste your mats and money on the purple gems and enchants. Defiantly enchant and gem the gear, but I wouldn’t spend your cash on high level ones. See this post for more thoughts on that.

Level 2 Pally Healing gear:
(taken and broken down from www.theholypaladin.com) Drops from Heroics, rep rewards and crafted items ONLY. I am not including Blacksmithing crafted items as they require Titansteel and that is still rather expensive unless you are a miner.

Click here for this list (sorry I need to get off of blogspot as I cannot post charts, or I can’t figure out how to anyway)

Level 3 Pally Healing gear:
This is a gear list that will not require you to step foot in a 10 or 25 man raid but will have you prepared to participate in them (gear wise). This is your ultimate goal for now if you want to get into raiding even on a casual basis. This is the last of my three levels of gear progression for level 80’s (for now, I will have an ICC one soon). You can skip gear on the level 1 and 2 lists as you acquire triumph badges. You can buy from this list (level 3) and ignore the lower two levels. The top line is your best in slot for the available gear and stats we want. The exception to that is with trinkets, you can change them in and out depending on the fight you are on. You can attain epic level gear for every slot except for a weapon using only badges to purchase gear (no gold spent!). So if you do not want to even step into the new instances you don’t have to. Quite a few nice upgrades come from the first one (Forge of Souls) including the weapon, I would highly recommend at least doing that one to start!

If you only get badge gear, you will need 434 Emblems total. Unless you go for the Ensorcelled Nerubian Breastplate you will need 8 crusader orbs which are 15 emblems each and would take your total up 70 to 504 emblems. This is where you will get your healing chops. This means running random instances with an average of 6 emblems per run; you will have enough emblems after 84 runs! This will be cake as a healer because you should get right into groups, and by the time you complete those 84 runs you might have enough of the new emblems (Frost) to get a nice beefy piece of T10 gear as well!

If you follow what is best in slot, and get the all dungeon drops listed, you will only need 308 Emblems (including the ones for the crafted chest) which would only take about 51 dungeon runs. In short it won’t take you long at all to gear your new level 80 up! By the time you get all this gear, you should have grown in your healing skill and as a player in general!

NOTE: The Ensorcelled Nerubian Breastplate is an amazing chest for you. You can’t get much better until you get into Icecrown Citadel Hard-modes, which aren’t even released yet. What you will need to get this chest is the following.

Mats:
8 Crusader Orbs
8 Eternal Air
8 Arctic Fur
8 Greater Cosmic Essence
40 Nerubian Chitin

Make friends with or look in your guild for a skinner, they can help you get the Nerubian Chitin from spiders in the Old Kingdom instance or the Azjol-Nerub instance. Arctic Fur has a chance to be skinned from animals anywhere on the continent and can be attained by turning in 10 Heavy Borean Leather to create one Arctic Fur. Borean Leather is also skinned off the animals of Northrend (you can buy Arctic Fur for about 80 Gold from the AH). The greater cosmic essence you should be getting when you have an enchanter in your heroic groups. After running all the randoms you will be running, you should have plenty of these and other enchanting materials (hint, keep them all to keep the cost of enchanting your gear down). For eternal air, you can farm them easily, look HERE for mobs that will drop these for you. The crusader orbs are bought with your Triumph badges, 15 per orb. Start saving now for this amazing chest piece!

On some of the emblem items you may notice they are not Triumph emblems. You can trade your emblems down to the “older” ones (Heroism, Valor, and Conquest) to purchase the older emblem gear. The vendors are all next to each other in Dalaran so it makes this process easy. Note: do NOT trade down any frost emblems you come across, you are going to want to save those!

Click here for the List (sorry I need to get off of blogspot as I cannot post charts, or I can’t figure out how to anyway)

New to Level 80: So you want to Raid? (part 2)

2010-01-15T14:19:00.000-08:00

First off you need to gear check yourself and see if you are of the level for the instance you want to do. You can do this by going HERE and dialing up your character. You should also make sure you are comfortable with the role you intend to play in the raid. If you haven’t healed a heroic instance, you are not going to heal a raid. Skill will always trump gear, so first and foremost make sure you are comfortable with your skill level . Get some friends together or some guildies and try your hand at the “entry level” raid, Naxxramas or OS. This will give you a good feel for if you can raid skill wise. You will most likely not need anything that drops in this instance, especially the 10 man version. You can get better gear from badges and the new regular and heroic version of ICC 5 man instances.

So you have some good gear, you have played your roll through some hard heroics and think you are ready. You want to get into a raid, for fun, for a challenge, for shinny new purples? Be prepared, not just with regents and mana potions and any flasks you may need (yes you should bring plenty of everything) but …

Be prepared to wipe, a lot. You can read all you want about a raid and its bosses. You can watch all the videos you want (check out Tankspot.com’s video section), but until you actually experience it firsthand you really won’t know how insane (and fun) the raids in Wrath are. Experience trumps everything else. If you are in a guild that can carry you and everyone is over geared for the encounter, you will probably be fine (if you a healer or tank you probably can’t be carried). If you are jumping into a PuG, that’s a different story. There are four things you should do off the bat (i am sure others can think of more);

1. Let them know you have not been here before, but have read up on the fights and have an understanding of them.
2. Make sure you have blocked off at least 3 hours of time.
3. Install Ventrilo: Ventrilo or Vent for short, is a voice communication tool used in game by most guilds. Don’t worry if you don’t have a microphone to talk, most raids are ok with it as long as you can listen to the leader and follow directions.
4. Check your Add ons: Do you have the ones you should use for your class? Turn of the ones you don’t need to improve your computers performance. I recommend that everyone have Deadly Boss Mods (DBM). The next post in this series will be about add ons so stay tuned for more info.

Raids are NOT like 5 man instances. In most cases if you wipe more then 2-3 times in a heroic, people are going to leave or get /kicked. In a raid, especially a progression or a “new to the raid” encounter, you are going to wipe many, many times before you get the mechanics of the fight down. The higher the instance, the less room you have to recover from mistakes. So be prepared for this and do not get frustrated there is nothing like the feeling you get when you get your first boss kill! As you learn the raid, and you become more familiar the easier it will be to move thru it. In short, don’t expect to run regular 10 man ToC for the first time and get it done in an hour.

It’s funny, as I am writing this I have had an experience in ToC25 over the weekend that was exactly like this. First, a little background, I can’t raid on weeknights, I just don’t have the time. After I run my daily I have a little time to farm or work the Auction House, (AH) maybe get in a Wintersgrasp if it is up and that’s it. Work comes fast and last really long if you only have had 3 hours of sleep. There are two different types of raids in WoW PvE (as I classify it).

Type one: 60 min or less (Ony, OS, VoA)
These raids have been around since the start of the expansion, well Ony was revamped in September but its mechanics are basically the same. These raids have little bits of Trash and have been experienced by the vast majority of raiders. So if you are in them for the first time, you are probably the only one (or one of two) that have never experienced it. It makes it a lot easier for you to be taken thru the instance. These raids are short in length (distance you have to travel) and you have easy access to the boss. For example, in Onyxia’s Lair, you have 4 trash mobs before you get to the “boss”. The fight with her takes about 10 minutes. So from group formations to buff to kill (even throw in a couple wipes) you should be here no longer than an hour. Lots of nice loot drops from them so read up and get in there!

Type two: Multi Days, Multi Hours (Naxx, Uld, ToC, ToGC, ICC)
These raids have many bosses within multiple wings (except ToC, you fight in the same spot). With each boss fight taking aprox 5-15 min and travel time, most of these raids have 10 + bosses so you are looking at a good chunk of time spent in that instance. These are the raids that you will need the most patience and time for. If you want to experience this content, be prepared, you will need to invest time, gold, and concentration. For the most part you can get equivalent gear thru other means, so if you think that raiding is the only way to get high end gear, you have another path, I will give you more details on that in the next post (thanks Bliz).

I do have a type three raid, but that is for PvP and will go over that another time.

With all that out of the way, back to the story. I want some nice things from ToC25 (as you can see from my wishlist), I try to do it every week and it is usually on a weekend because that is the only time I can dedicate the time to make sure we do it right. I have a couple of guilds that I PuG with so I know most of the people that will be there know the fights and we should have a relatively easy time of it. Somewhere in the past month or so, the idea has come about that you can run ToC25 in an hour and be done. That might be true for a highly tuned raiding guild that has a full (experienced) team. A PuG, is a different story. We had about 13 regulars and the rest were pulled from friends lists and *shudder* shouting in Dalaran for more. The first two boss encounters are handled with ease, even after 6 raiders went down during the Beasts (Acidmaw and Dreadscale), we still pulled it out. We are about 35 min into the raid, at this point; we are discussing strategy for the next fight, Factions Champs. This is the fight that I see most raids stall and have problems with. In this case after the 2nd wipe, I start seeing this in chat…

“I gotta go gotta get up tomorrow, thought we would be done by now” X leaves the raid, and then
“yeah me too, sorry all” another X leaves the raid.
Then 4-6 others bail some without saying a word. At this point we call it and are now saved to a raid that probably won’t be finished.

My point here is simple, if you are not committed to putting in the time, effort, and gold to try and get some high end gear. Raiding the larger instances is NOT for you. Save yourself the repair bill and save your server mates the frustration of having to replace you. Unlike the new LFD system, (for now) raids are made up of players on your server only. If the raid leader is regularly leading PuGs and you pull a vanishing act, people will notice and take note. If you stick it out and do a great job, they will also take note. Both will get you added to a list, one to a friend’s list and the other to the ignore list. You only get one shot at your in game reputation. Once it is tarnished it is very hard to work your way back. Especially if you are like me and have a limited raid schedule.

New to level 80? Did You Know? (part 1)

2010-01-13T14:30:00.001-08:00

I am going to perma link this article so you can look it up again and again if needed. This is the first of many articles that will address what the new 80 should know, at least these are things I wish I knew when I hit 80. I am not going to get into details of quest or” how to” theory’s. I just want to make you aware that these things exist and I will post resources to help you on the way.

For those of you who have stumbled over looking for more in-depth info, please let me know what questions you have and I will answer them. More post are in the works for people who are further along in end game.

Term Definitions: If you haven’t come across these term or have but don’t know what it means, here you go. (referenced below)

iLevel 245 crafted: Each piece of gear in the game has an iLevel or Item Level. It tells you what Tier/stats the gear is associated or on par with. The stats increase as the iLev increases. The gear can be a drop from a raid boss, a quest reward, purchased with reputation and crafted by players. If you are a fresh 80 you will probably have a couple pieces of iLevel 200 and 187 on you now. As you run dungeons you will quickly gain access to iLevel 213,219,226,and 232 gear, 245 is accessible but will take a little more work and a little more saving. The ilevel should help you quickly determine if a drop is an upgrade for you or not.

T9: AKA Tier 9 Gear. The tier of the gear is usually associated with the expansion or major patch that it was released with. The highest level currently available is T10 which comes from the Ice Crown Citadel raid and emblems of frost. T9 gear is what you can purchase with your emblems of Triumph. Usually you have a couple different iLevels within a tier, for T9 we have 232 and 245.

Gems: So you have just dinged 80, you are getting shiny purples, you’re ready to start give a serious look into item enhancements! Then you see that you have a yellow gem spot on the new chest piece and want to put something in it …. So you head to the AH and see lots of shiny purples there too, but wait, what’s this, 200,300,400 gold?!?! Scroll down, scroll down, next page, ahh some cheap blues. Look, this one is 20 gold and is +16 int its only 4 int less than that purple one? Cha Ching right?

Did you know that in addition to getting PvP gear, cool mounts and trinkets from Wintergrasp, you can also spend your honor on getting epic gems? Yes for 10K honor you can buy the raw gem you would need to make an epic gem (vendor is in Stormwind) . You can purchase epic gems from the emblem vendors as well but, unless you are T9ed out and have all the crusader orbs you need for 245 crafted gear (they cost 15 emblems of triumph each), you should probably hold onto those emblems of triumph and frost. After you have bought the gem, check in trade for a jewelcrafter (JC) that is looking for work, or see if you have one in your guild. Check and see if they can make your gem. If they can, meet up and give them that 20 gold you would have spent on the blue gem as a tip!

Dont know what Wintergrasp is? Click here

Go enjoy Wintergrasp or any other battle ground and gain some honor! If you do the weekly quests in WG you can get 10K in one fight! You can also turn in all the wintergrasp shards (not emblems) you get during your heroic runs (if your faction controls WG when you’re running it) for more honor! Your faction needs to have control of WG in order for you to visit the vendor that you turn in the shards to for honor. The WG battle is pretty simple, either you are on offence trying to take over the keep or you are on defense trying to protect the keep. You can drive vehicles and can get involved in some other aspects/tactics of the battle as you become more comfortable with the battle. The best thing about PvP is you don’t have to pay to repair, so don’t be scared run in and hit/heal something! Try a couple battles out and you will find yourself setting a timer for every 2 hours and 15 min so you can log back in and do another one!

Does that extra 4 to any stat really help? Yes, and here is where personal preference and time/money come into play. If you are not planning on replacing the gear anytime soon (soon= with -in 10 days), then I would put the epic gem and the highest appropriate enchant on the gear. Let’s do the numbers, if you have 10 gem slots and you fill them with blues you would have +160 to that stat. If you use the purple you now have +200 to that stat. A +40 gain can make the difference when you are trying to squeeze everything out of your ilevel 232 gear. Not to mention as you grow you will potentially have room for 20+ gems on your gear. Even better is if you take up Jewelcrafting as a profession you can make and equip +34 to a stat gems! I am getting ahead of myself, just giving you something to look forward to as you progress thru end game.

Guide to WG Battle

Enchants:
Each class and even build within the class have best in slot enchants. For holy paladins you can check here for the current best enchants. Theholypaladin.com is a great resource for everything holy (and has helped me a ton)! I am not about reinventing the wheel and the wheel at holy paladin is a really good one so check it out! Other classes should be able to do a quick Google search on the topic for a list of what to get. Most enchants are easily accessible, if you have been running your heroics hopefully you have been in some groups with and enchanter (or maybe you are one)and you have been disenchanting some unwanted gear for mats. Most mats can be purchased in the AH for relatively low costs. You can also save your green and blue BoE’s and have an enchanter friend disenchant them for you for some of the mats you will need. If you cannot afford the mats for the enchants on the list above or you’re not planning on having the gear long, there are usually lower level enchants available for a lot cheaper costs. Check your enchanters lists for the lower versions of their enchants. Try to avoid buying the enchant scrolls in the AH, they are usually way overpriced.

Pant and belt enhancements: Your pants and belt are not enchanted by enchanters. The pants you can have a tailor or leatherworker make the “enhancement” and you apply it to your armor. For your belt you can have a blacksmith make the eternal belt buckle. You can probably buy the belt buckle in the AH for under 40 gold but the leg enhancements are still pretty expensive, gather the mats and have a friend make it for you.

Shoulders and head enchants: are not given by a player, but acquired thru reputation with NPC’s. For holy paladins you are going to want to get exalted with the Wyrmrest Accord and the Sons of Hodir as fast as possible! The best part is with the new changes in the game these enchants are account bound so you only have to do this grind once and can send them to your other alts later on.

How do I get exalted?

Four of the reputations can be build up by wearing that reps Tabard during WoTLK dungeon runs, each kill will yield a rep reward. You can also gain reputation by completing daily quest available in the area of that reputations quartermaster. A third way to gain rep is to spend emblems on the rep tokens that you then consume for rep; they are purchased from the emblem vendors in Dalaran.

Reputation:
Get your 4 Tabards
Wyrmrest: From the top level of the Wyrmrest temple
Argent Crusade: From Veteran Crusader Aliocha Segard' he can be found at the Argent Vanguard in Ice Crown (near the top in a tent)
Kirin Tor: In Dalaran at the top of the stairs in the Violet Citadel
Knights of Ebon Blade: The quartermaster is in the Shadow Vault in Ice Crown. You have to do some questing to open this area up if you are new to the zone.

You can wear these tabards before you get to 80 and get rep in the lower level dungeons. So if you are reading this in preparation for 80, get that tabard on NOW! The quartermasters will have gear and enchants available for you to buy at different levels of reputation, so check with them for gear upgrades. You need to be friendly with the rep before you can purchase the tabard.

Sons of Hodir rep: This use to be a long grind but with 3.3 they have eliminated the needs to really do the dailies. Once you have completed the quest line (when you get to the part where you are turned into a big blue lady make sure you /dance) to have access to the Sons of Hodir (I think its 34 quest long and starts in K3) you will have access to a repeatable turn in quest. You can turn in 10 relics of Ulduar for (I think) 600 rep (they buffed this in 3.3) . You get the relics from killing mobs in the zone and from running the two instances in the zone (Halls of Lightning and of Stone). They are tradable so you can purchase them from the AH if you wish to. In addition to the dailies and the relics you can purchase rep tokens from the emblem vendor in Dalaran and level up that way.

Full Details on the Sons of Hodir Here

That’s all for this addition of Did You Know!
Stop back soon for more installments. I will continue to add “Did You Know” segments that will address other new things as you progress thru 80 and end game.

An Introduction:

2010-01-12T11:24:00.000-08:00

An Introduction:

I started my MMO life as an Erudite Enchanter on the Luclin server in the world of EQ. After many years of “The Grind” life took over and I could no longer support the hours of play needed to level characters in EQ. So in 2004 I quit, gave my beloved crowd controlling monster to a local guild mate, made him change the password and promise to never EVER tell me, no matter how tortured I may seem. He held up his end of the deal, the only problem was that in 2005 I discovered World Of Warcraft. After a year and a half of very casual play and many different level 20 something chars on multiple servers, that same ole friend admitted to me that he was also playing WoW. I promptly started a character on his server and we went on our merry way.

Wow was very different in a good way, I could play on my time and to the level of seriousness that I wanted. I chose my first character, a gnome mage because at the time I thought it would be similar to the crowd controlling enchanter I had played in past lives (and it was close, except for the nuking/melting faces part). I finally dinged 70 two days before WOTLK came out, so I did not get to spend very much time at 70 end game. I leveled to 80 quickly and after getting involved in a hard core raiding guild that would yell at me for PuGing Naxx 10, I decided a change was in order. I was getting too close to the play style I left EQ for and I was enjoying many other aspects of the game way too much. My friend and I started new characters, being that we were both Mages on our first chars and found it difficult to raid together. We decided I would make a healer and he would make a tank and we would relearn all of WoW in these new rolls.

On a side note LFD is lightning quick when you queue up with a healer and a tank already together.

Enter Vailladin, I leveled Ret and dual specced into Holy. Now I am all Holy and planning on leveling in Cataclysm as holy (well I am gunna try for shits but will probably go back to Ret because I am impatient when it comes to leveling).

Why the blog? :

I have been reading all the Healing and Pally info I can about everything from 5 mans to 10 and 25 man raid strats, to how to gear my pally out for my style or healing. I should state (and make a couple enemies) that I don’t like the FoL build but have seen it and tried it in raids and did not think it was anywhere near as effective as HL build. My goal with this blog is to help up and coming pallys to pick a play style and have enough of an understanding of the class so they can advance steadily in the game.

I do not have a ton of time at home to play, usually 3 weeknights for about 2 hours and Friday and Saturday for about 3-5 hours. All late at night and on a server that is in the same time zone I am (yeah not too bright I know). I do have plenty of time during the day to do lots of things, except play WoW. So in my spare time I read all the details I can on Paladins etc… I want to help those pallys and other players in my situation become the best players and sometimes raiders that they can be!

Yes I raid, most of the time on 10 man and usually when friends in my guild really need a tank healer. I have been to Naxx, 3 of 4 wings. I walked into Uld once and made two attempts on a boss in the 2nd tier. I have done both 10 and 25 man ToC up to Anub, but playing late has its disadvantages, when the raid breaks up they usually finish it when I am not on the next day. I have completed beasts on ToGC 10, and have been through the first 3 bosses in ICC 10. Finally I have done 10 and 25 of VoA, OS and Ony. I am a Wintergrasp junkie, and I have completed every heroic more times than I care to, including the painful HoR and Occ.

Some of the topics I will be covering:

Skills: What spells to use when, how they work together, what spells other classes have that are helpful to you and the most important why you should do X instead of Y.

Gear: This is not a, bring the player not the gear score area. Gear is a part of the game and a way to help improve the results of your skills. Players that can’t commit to hard core raiding usually have a hard time finding upgraded gear for themselves or at the least, don't know where to look for it. You can gear your pally out with all 213+epics that will get you to the soft haste cap (676) and have a 23K+ mana pool all without ever steeping foot in a raid. You just need to know where to go and what to get. Not to get too deep into this topic but a helpful hint to new healadins, you don’t HAVE to wear plate!

Enjoyment: Ways you can get the most out of the game with the limited play time that most “casuals” have. Holiday Achievements, new titles and other fun activities that don’t take a ton of time but are a lot of fun.

General Things: This is still a blog, I occasionally will bitch about RL and dumb things that happen in game. Some post will have no relevance to being a new/casual player or even being a Paladin and or a Healer. I am going to be modest to start here and will be posting a couple new post every week and will do more if I have some great thoughts flowing.

The look and the feel of the blog will be evolving over the next couple weeks, I am sorry if I move things around on you as I add resources …. For the 1-5 people that might actually stumble on and read this.

Vailladin