Ulduar Gear?

As most of you might know, the new offset gear, even some set gear is really all about MP5. Now as a Paladin, I never really bothered with MP5. I did a bit back in TBC, but now I’m INT + Crit + haste all the way. Our new set seriously nerf our + crit with only stacking up haste and mana per 5 seconds. But this has to be done for a reason, I don’t think blizzard really wants us to soak up all the Elemental shaman gear. All the Paladins would run around in a mail suit, with only one or two pieces of Aegis.

On the EJ forum, I saw a topic a while ago about the spell crit coefficient. What it basically stated was that once you hit over 50% crit rating (and this is raid buffed). You can stop stacking it. Because 50% is “Either You crit or you don’t.” Stacking it up even more doesn’t make you crit more; hell it might even make you crit less.
So having MP5 to back you up while you are casting, since casting is all we do.

My last recount showed that I have 51% crit chance with Holy Light. And during the raid period, It actually did crit 51 times out of a hundred. That gave me an X amount of mana back, but recount also showed me that most of my mana returns are either by other people’s buffs (Retloladins, Huntards) or when I used Divine Illumination. Third on the list was my Meta socket. (Change on spell cast to return mana). Now they are nerfing the mana regen for us, so having a steady MP5 really helps. Without the shamans totems stacking with out buffs, we will lose a serious amount mana. (I think about 110 mp5) and I am quite sure we will notice this downfall. With the new Ulduar gear, for example the BoE craftings, I’m sure we can get around 3-400 MP5 (while casting). Can you imagine what would happen with a let’s say: 45% chance to crit – solid 400MP5 (unbuffed) – 500 haste (without our own buff).

That way, we will never get oom. Or at least we shouldn’t.

Lol, as if we do now. Hahaha.

Flash of what?

I’ve found this interesting post on the EJ forms. And I especially liked this quote & reply.

Tzeni said:

I wasn't saying that FoL is useless to the paladin. I said it was useless as a
spell, period.
It's not enough to keep a tank up, it's not enough to do any
meaningful raid healing.
Paladins use it out of necessity (low mana or too many
healers, needing to sneak in FoL heals to beat other healers), but never with
purpose.

Tifordin replied:

I disagree. I'll often do little group heals topping off raid members with FoL
after some AoE damage (e.g. on Maly P1). It's quite effective when combined with
HS.
You can heal up a bunch of small damage on multiple people relatively
quickly, and certainly quicker than casting a HL on each one. With a beacon, you
also maintain a fairly high HPS on the tank (although not as high as HL spam
obviously).
In a typical raid my healing done breakdown will usually be highest
for HL, but in terms of the number of times a particular spell hits, my numbers
for FoL are often higher.
I think it's a case of understanding your available
arsenal and intelligently selecting the appropriate spell.
It also means I very
very rarely have to use DP, often finding myself on 60% mana in the last 20% of
the fight, at which point I'll spam HL just for the sake of dumping my mana
pool.

I couldn’t agree more with Tifordin, Which is exactly the way I heal. If small heals suffice, then why waste 700more mana and over heal anyway?
I mean, I tried healing the tank with Sacred Shield + Heroism – Which gave me a 0.8 FoL. I just started spamming my button healing him for 3-5k every hit. Having almost 80% change to crit when Sacred procs. That’s a roughly 10k heal in 2 seconds for less mana then Holy Light. And it is quick. And that is what we are, quick healers. And never forget that.

Rules of Raiding

Rule #1 – Make sure you know what your healing targets are. We paladins can’t AoE heal like the rest of the classes can. But we sure are able to keep two people up at the same time. And with the HL Glyph we help a little bit with healing melee dps. (Although it’s roughly 80% overhealing). Personally, I tend to make the Tank my number one priority. Myself as the second priority. Why? Because if I die, he dies. And then the rest will follow. I also keep in mind who the top 3-5 dpsers are. And I keep an eye out for them, using OMEN and RECOUNT I can see who’s punching the boss and where they stand threat wise. As I quote another Paladin. I vouch by this standing. “Sometimes letting someone die to heal someone else is the correct move.”

Rule #2 – Know your Paladin. You should know that Holy Light is your BIG HEAL, but expensive. While Flash of Light is the small heal, but then again, the mana usage is that low that you barely notice it. Know that Divine Favor is something you should use everyone minute (free mana back) and know that Divine Favor can burst heal someone in dire need. DIVINE FAVOR -> HOLY SHOCK -> (making FoL instand) -> FoL. This will not top your tank, or you dps, but it will give you enough time to heal him back to full. Until the new patch launches you could use HL instead of FoL in the abovementioned rotation, but since we can’t use it after 3.0.1 I suggest not getting used to it. We have one more healing spell, which is Lay on Hands a (if not talented) 20minut cooldown instant heal for the amount of your HP. (which is similar to HL nowadays.) Although it can crit up to a 32k heal. You can only use it every 20min. But that makes it your fail safe.

Rule #3 – Mana efficiency. If you know(or are completely oblivious) about an encounter, you should start saving mana form the first moment into the fight. I personally, burn mana the first few seconds into a fight and immediately pop Divine Illumination. Then I start spamming my heals again, even FoL just for the small damage that has been taken. I do it just for the regen, if I check recount after a boss fight I see that 40% (if not more) of my mana regen is done by Divine Illumination. I also like the Divine Favor + Divine Illumination + Holylight combo. With a 4T7 + EoH Libram + Glyph of Wisdom the amount of mana you get back from critting with HL is amazing. And if HL only costs half his price the MPS (Mana per spell) is simply crazy. And last but not least is Divine Plea, the spell that is not made for Holy, but we all keep using it. What I did, I made a macro that when I use DP I whisper in our [Paladin channel.] “DP used. Healing decreased 50% for 15seconds.” - This way they know that I am regening so I can’t heal as burst. But if I don’t have Forbearance on, I’ll pop my wings as well. Just to cover my HPS (Health per second)loss.

Rule #4 – Hands of a Paladin. Use your hands. We have different types of hands, which can benefit the raid in any way. Freedom when your tank is stuck, or some dps are stuck. Protection to save a poor AoE-ing mage from death, or just Sacrifice to make sure the tank won’t die. I’d like to give you a good tip, as a holy paladin, you can Hand of Sacrifice your tank and BoP yourself, so you won’t get any damage while your reduce the damage on the tank by 30%. And Hand of Salvation on your highest threat-gainer. Keep a close mind to your dps meter / threat meter. Very powerful in fights where the boss resets the agro. I even use it on myself sometimes. When doing 5man heroics, just to make sure that the mob won’t attack me. J

Rule #5 – Beacon of Light and Sacred Shield; are two very powerful spells, SS is even to powerful so they nerf it in the next patch, it will be only castable on one target. I assume that will be the tank, but I’d vouch that only the paladin with the most + healing would cast it on the tank. It doesn’t stack anyways. Plus there is a shared cooldown, so even if the tank has 5 SS buffs, there will be only one at the time. So, it is pointless. Beacon on the other hands, can be a very effective healing, if used correctly. If you notice that two people are going down at the same time, you can beacon one and heal the other. (pref. the one with the lowest HP gets healed.) This way you spend 2300 mana to heal two targets AT THE SAME TIME. Instead of 2200 mana (if not crit) to heal two targets right after the other. One other thing I like to do is beaconing myself. As a tank healer I can simply not die.

Rule #6 – Blessings. Install Pallypower or ZOMG. It speeds up the process of buffing your raid. It’s an easy tool, you can assign single buffs for hybrid classes. (Elemental Shaman with BoW and the Enhancement Shamans with BoM). What I like to do if people summon pets, like DK’s and such give them a quick single buff. Just for the extra little AP or stat increase, it will result in more dps, easier boss fight.

And last but not least, a tip. DIVINE INTERVENTION. It’s like a Paladin’s version of a Soulstone. You can save someone or something by using this skill. You can even use it in combat If you are running low on mana (nearing oom, all cooldown used) and you have a soulstone. Use DI and res, and get about 40-50% mana back. It works, because Shamans do the same with Reincarnate.

Healing Sapphiron.

I was just browsing in my video's and I came across a movie of me healing Sapphiron. So I've uploaded it on YouTube for everyone to display.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNk5HdGNEWU

Reactions and Keybindings

So, I was talking about raiding earlier, and with raiding come reactions. Reactions on situations which if you fail to comply might end up in disasters. Although with the current raid content, you don’t really have to react, it’s more predicting. You can predict what is coming next. Things like Patchwork healing, you know he’s going to slap the tank silly so you know you have to focus your healing. And it’s hard to wipe if one paladin can keep up two tanks at the same time, since he (or she) knows how patchwork “works”.

This will all change when Ulduar launches, since then we can’t predict what the boss will do, or what the trash mobs will do, we have to learn by reaction to situations. If you encounter a boss fight, and you have no clue what he is going to, you will just have to wait and see. Watch your surroundings; watch every movement the boss makes. He can for example, do a “Crushing Blow” ability. So then you have to react by topping the tank or tanks back to 100%. He can spawn adds at a certain health percentage, or he can shift into another phase mode which makes the raid take damage. Take into account that you will have to be quick when things like this happen, I’ve seen players just run around as a headless chicken not knowing what to do.

What you should do instead, is stop moving at all. (Unless you’re on some sort of magic ground.) Just look around and see what the rest is doing. First of all, if you start running like a mad bull, the healers won’t be able to reach you if you take damage and are 20yards away from the raid, secondly, if the encounter is new and you start running you might up dying out of the blue.
But what if you are standing on some firetrap, molten lava or freezing trap. You are getting damage, so you should get the hell away from there. Usually, healers stand at a safe spot, since they most likely need to stand still in order to heal. If you don’t know where to go to, you can always click on a healer and head his direction. In the mean time you can freely browse your area and find out where you can go in order to do complete your task.

One thing which I find really handy is KEYBOARD BINDINGS. These things make life so much easier! In situations as stated above, key bindings are perfect. If I e.g. have to run form incoming mobs, AOE, damage. I am still able to heal. How? I rotate my camera using my mouse, and move it quickly to the target I want to heal. I smash the “F” key on my keyboard and I HOLYSHOCK my target. Nine out of ten it’s a crit and if he still lacks HP I will press the “E” key and throw him an instant Flash of Light. Target saved, although he didn’t move out of the flame strike. I’ll give you a basic set up of my keyboard bindings; I’ll toss in a screenshot so you can see how I’ve set things up.

(s1 means Shift+1 a1 is Alt+1 c1 is Ctrl +1)

~ - Cleanse
1 – Judgment of Light
S1 – Judgment of Wisdom
2 – Hammer of Wrath
3 – Shield of righteous
Q – Divine Favor
5 – Beacon of Light
6 – Consecration
E – Flash of Light
sE – Holy Light
cE – Lay of HandsF – Holy shock
sF – Divine illumination
R – Sacred Shield
sR – Resurrection
T – Hammer of Justice
G – Hand of Protection
sG – Hand of Salvation
aG – Hand of Freedom
cG – Hand of Sacrifice
V – Bubble
sV – Devine Intervention ( /w warning macro.)
F1- F6 – are my Aura’s.
Z – Mount (/w Macro /cast crusader aua)
sZ – Flying Mount

As you can see, I use loads of keybindings. You will also notice that I don’t have my BoM and BoW binded. That is because I use Pallypower.
My Mods list:

-Bartender4
-AG Unit Frames
-Grid
-Pallypower
-Recount

I’m still looking for a decent “Square Mini Map” mod and maybe a lightweight titanbar-ish thingy, But currently I have enough to come around with.



I hope you like it, if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact me.

Welcome to Raiding 101 [III]

MOAR BUFFS
Buffs, in WoW you are able to get a few buffs by yourself, even without being in a raid. Being an alchemist or a cook helps a lot, but there is always something called the Auction house. There are 5 kinds of buffs you can use, let me explain them briefly.

Food buffs
These buffs benefit one or two things your character needs. For example, “Great Feast” will boost your stamina, attack power and healing power. There are tons of different food buffs, One gives your crit, the other one gives you more haste or expertise. (if you lack the expertise or the hit cap, you can use a food buff to temporarily increase it.) The best part of food buffs is that they stack with everything else.

Battle Elixirs
Since there are two types of elixirs you have to be careful not to buy two of the same kind. Back in vanilla WoW you were able to use as much elixirs as possible, but thank god they changed that back in TBC. You can only use two, but two different ones.

Guardian Elixirs
Pretty much the same elixirs as the battle ones, only increasing other stats. These elixirs can also temporarily increase your power, like 3minute armor buffs.

Flasks
The most expensive of all buffs, usually because of all the mats that are needed to create one, but they benefit starts greatly It’s a shame you cant use Elixirs and a flask at the same time, but it also cuts the costs of raiding. J Flasks for example give you 120more attack or healing power for 2whole hours. And if you die, the buff will remain, instead of vanishing just like the Elixirs and food buffs do.

Scrolls
Yes, they do work. Although not all scrolls are as useful as you, for example the intellect scrolls are only useful when there isn’t a mage present. But armor or agi scrolls might be very handy when you want to increase you dps.

Welcome to Raiding 101 [II]

GEAR
Gear, yes, GEAR. With the current set up in WTLK. Heroic loot is the same item level as Nax10. So in theory, you can get a “ full epic” set outside of Naxx and you would be able to just barge into Naxx25. This however is not recommended. But you are able to get a couple of nice items and they venture into N10 to either upgrade or extend your capabilities.

At level 80, all the dps gear, crit gear etc is replaceable. So you shouldn’t have ANY level 70 items. Blizzard made items levels scale with player levels, so if you for example have a +26 critical strike rating rings on 70. Which was 1.5% back then, it is now only a merely 0.5% or even less if the item level is lower. At level 75 all the tier 6 gear COULD have been replaced with other gear, even Quest Reward gear. Some guilds didn’t do this because of some of the set bonuses but they got hot fixed in a flash. For example, the 2 set bonus of the tier 6 for Paladins; 5% extra crit on Holy Light became a merge 1% which made it pretty unless. The rogue set bonus that gave the additional haste by 5% got nerfed to 1% at level 80. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing, since we’re 10levels higher now, it’s time for a change.

It is really easy to get your gear, although you have to be a bit lucky sometimes, but instancing in WTLK is easy, but I find it easy to get a group on ‘ the venture co” . My friends list contains loads of people, mainly tanks (since I’m a healer) and some dps guys. If I logon nine out of ten times I get a whisper if I want to heal something. I know this doesn’t work for everyone, since most of you are dps; but making friends in 5man makes you benefit a lot. Another example, I’ve been helping a guy named Balador, just a random person, I met somewhere randomly to get his trinket form AN HC. We’ve been farming AN HC devoted for two weeks straight. It’s an easy instance, takes around 30minutes and gives 3badges (or 5 with it is the Dailey.)

With the Emblems it is easier to get decent gear; I know that DPS usually goes for a weapon to start with. But look at your options, the Emblems gear has only off hands, such as the “Glasscutter” and “Pride“. And the main hand weapon usually is something which you can create by a profession. (Titan- destroyer, bone crusher).

After that you might want to dig into the tier set, with 80 and 60 badges your gloves and chest piece are easy to get. If everyone would get this, you have a full 10man in 2/5 tiers. This will boost your dps/healing/tank-age really fast. Also you can see what stats you need; usually the chest piece and the gloves have for example, crit, haste and intellect on them. The only thing you have to do is prioritize what you need most.

Apart from HIT and EXPERTISE for dps.

*Please note that for DPS your MAIN STAT (!!!) above all other stats is getting your HIT cap. You van find that hit cap here for all classes. After that, for melee DPS make sure you also go for your Expertise cap (for more white damage!). When both capped / really close then you can start focusing into other stats. * I would like to suggest that you try to get a much hit and expertise as a default stat or on your RINGS/NECKLESS so you don’t have to waste important socket holes to fill them completely with +hit. (Although it is good to start with)

After you got both tiers, it’s time you check your gear and see what needs to biggest update, you can get trinkets (41Emblems) or a necklace (25!) easily afterwards. If you have any empty wholes, there are two more options to complete your “epic “set.

Reputation and more crafting: I know that both LEATHERWORKING and TAILORING make BIND ON EQUIP items; this is big big big upgrade then the gear you could get in TBC because everything was BINDS ON PICKUP / REQUIERED X-TAILORING 375. Farming mats is do able for every class, with the boost of spell power all healing classes are able to farm.

"YES YOU CAN DO YOUR DAILEYS EVEN – DO THEM SLOWLY."

To quote a good friend.

Even though, you can respec for 50gold, do all your dailies, respec back and you still made bank. (Around 250/300g). So no bitching about having no cash.

The reputation items are really good, for example the argent crusade have some nice gloves, boots for dps (leather and mail). Don’t forget the HELM enchant you can get from being revered (which is too easy to get). Personally I did make it Exhalted with two different factions within one week. It's too easy really!

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.