Welcome to Raiding 101 [I]

Hi all,

I wrote this piece of text not to long ago to help out a guild of potentially good raiders, I just tried to help them out by shouting a few comments in their direction.

Talents.
Anyways, I wanted to talk to you about raiding, I see and hear a lot of things and as I like to check armories, profiles and such so I noticed a few things, Things I’d rather see changing, and I know you would like it afterwards. To start off, please don’t get this/me wrong. I’m only trying to help, although it may sound a bit harsh and rude, please do NOT take it personal; just give it a second thought.

Firstly, what I noticed is that people “Just do things.”
A very good example is are Ret Paladins, but their Retribution spec makes no sense what so ever. If you look at their talents closely they are 0/5/66. I do wonder, 66 points in ret? Why? If I go down the tree I think there are around 51-56 points to spend in it to have ALL the mandatory PvE talents. Then you would have around 15 to 20 talent points left to increase your dps / survivability / crow control in other trees. Now I know that Holy has nothing to offer you, but protection actually does.

For example, kings (this benefits the entire raid, AND most holy or prot paladins DON’T have it. It’s a ++) Secondly the increase of strength talents, (which you probably have. /thumbs up) but there is more, you can even go for improve hammer of justice so you can stun more mobs, although this wont work on boss, you’ll fight thrash more often then an actual boss. And stunning targets causes more damage and causing more damage is more dps, plus a mob is stunned which makes tanking and healing easier. So actually it’s a REALLY good talent!

Now, I don’t want to blame Ret Paladins for everything, but they are just one of the examples. There are millions of players who actually play world of warcraft, half of those have no clue what they are doing, and I’m hoping I’m not talking to those people. Some people might say. “Yeah, but I know what is best for my class.” Well... Actually... I don’t think you do, since no one really does. But you can find out, I bet you 1000g that most of you never visited Elitist Jerks, the USA WOW forums, or any class-related WOW forum at all. You will see that if you did, you won’t have chosen the spec or spell rotation you would be doing now.

And personally I’m a big fan of PvP movies, not that I am into PvP but those people will always use the abilities just a bit different, which might give you idea’s for PvE. I think we need a simple example. Since I’m a paladin, I’ll give you a paladin example, Hand of Sacrifice; a spell which a paladin can cast on any target, if that target takes names, 30% of the damage taken is transferred to the paladin instead. So A 100hit would only do 70. Isn’t that great? It’s a life saver (plus, this one gets buffed next NerfPatch. ^^;).
In pvp it was used like this, a paladin and a warrior in a 2v2 arena had a match vs 2 paladins. Who both have “Repentance” a 8 second (1minute in PvE) stun.
But it will release when the target takes any damage. The paladin in warrior team buffed his warrior with Hand of Sacrifice and everything went as planned. The first paladin used repentance and they attacked the warrior, dune to the buff the paladin gave the warrior, he got damage. So the repentance disappeared, again quickly the other paladin did repentance but because of HoS it again disappeared.

I think most of you remember the “ Maiden of Virtue” fight in Karazhan, back in TBC? She did the exact same thing, and if you didn’t have HoT healer with you, your tank could have been one shotted if not for HoS. And now we have the same type of fight in Halls of Stone.

I hope you are getting a clue of what I am heading at, if you want to be successfully in PvE you can’t allow any spec to join the raid, (then again, any spec can own if played correctly. On a side note 0/0/71 in frost is not a spec, it’s stupid. ) I’ll make a list of what the “best dps spec “for PvE is. I’m not telling you that you have to follow it, but I sure think it would increase your damage. I’ll also put down what rotation you have to use. I know, I know it cant get any easier.

(list is yet to come)

Please check the spec you think is right for you, and then check your current spec and see if there are any differences. I think there are, for example having talents which give you X if you kill a target that gives experience or honor. You no longer need those, maybe for a bit of Pvp but this “guide” is not focused on that.