As I am quite busy with work (since one of my colleagues is not here) I’m not able to update the blog as much as I would like to. But here is a short list of thing I’m planning to write down:

- Macro’s
- More UI tweaks
- The Holy 3.1 guide
- Ard’s 3.1 Tank guide
- Number crushing about mp5-gear
- And much much more!

‘Till then!

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.

Why are you on my friends list?

The Venture Co has a lot of Paladins, mainly because currently the class might be a bit superior to other classes. Personally I hate this, because I like playing something people don’t often play. Which can be troublesome, because our usually raid is packed with loads of paladins. Our last raid night we have 11 Paladins online and ready to raid!
Further more, all the paladins in our guild, all the raiding ones are Female Humans, all apart from me and one other ret paladin. So, I’ve decided to join my fellow followers of the light and bought myself a sex change. Yes, I am a shemale now, a transvestite, you name it. Pauleh no longer exists, but has changed into “ Dahlia “ . This cause for a lot of fun conversations with people on my friends list;

Warrior: “ Hi there, who are you, and how did you hax yourself into my friends list.”
Me: “ Sorry, but..”
Warrior: “Did you hax mai account?!”
Me: “ Yes I did. I think.. I..”
Warrior: “ What?! What did you do!?”
Me: “ Nothing, but.. I ..”Warrior: “ I’m reporting you!”
Me: “ But, warrior, I.. luvs you.”
Warrior: “ Pauleh?”
So, Dahlia, where did I get that name? Basically, I’ve been through a lot of names, since I always need to find a cool name otherwise I wouldn’t take it. Firstly I thought of “ Skrewdriver.” Which was one of my old Paladin friends, after googling some I came across a “ Extreme rightwing “ punk band who sang songs with lyrics such as: “ White power.” Now I care to disagree on that so I decided not to stick with Skrewdriver. I asked Ard (the paladin) and Kashmira if they had any cool names, some said “ Paula” or “ Pauleha” Or really cool name as “ Reverance”.
After I completed the payment, I logged out for half an hour and searched for some names, and found one I really liked. “ Tehnurse.” Firstly it looks cool and secondly it’s pretty funny. Since it basically says: “ The nurse”. And being a fulltime holy paladin, it was very applicable.
When I logged into Warcraft, all of a sudden a song form my favorite band popped up.
The Black Dahlia Murder.
So I though. “ What the heck, lets try that.” I typed in Dahlia, hit the enter button, and logged in.



(Apparently Dahlia looks like someone both Ard, Kash and me know in real. O_o)

New Mac, New Raid, New Belt

What a weekend! Weekends are such an indulgence at our place, My wife and I both play Warcraft so weekends usually turn in a 2-day gaming fest. Here's some of the highlights of last weekend. I got a new iMac on Thursday, so everything is a bit smoother/shinier and my screen is now widescreen which gives me more space to put my interface (see screenie above, click for full size.) I levelled my Rogue to 75, so he can open Froststeel lockboxes. He also got the Gruul's Lair Achievement and the Tier 4 legs, still surprisingly good at lv 75 though mostly thanks to the set bonus.

Of course I played my Paladin as well! My guild has been slowly progressing in Naxx. Just over a month ago we had a few goes at getting a raid together but we were hopelessly undergeared and the majority of the group had never been to Naxx at all. Even with explanation we had no chance of downing anything. As main tank I needed to build up some experience (though my gear was up to Naxx.) I Joined pick up groups to get a few runs under my belt and learn the encounters and two weeks ago we started again with the guild. We can now clear the Spider and Construct wings, kill Noth in Plague Quarter and just last night we had out first kill of Razuvious the instructor (understudies died in the fight) but bubble then taunt, trinket usage and an indestructible potion on my part saved the day. We edged him out with only 4 people left standing. Gothik proved a bit too difficult to control, so we headed for Heigan instead.

Heigan is a tricky one. Once you understand what happens it just flows and it never goes wrong again (or very rarely anyway). There's a few in our group for whom the dancing part hasn't clicked yet so each attempt we had too little survivors, we just don't make it. More attempts this week.
I also got a new belt, Waistguard of the Tutor, from Razuvious which put me another half percent closer to that elusive unhittable cap. 100.28% now, 2.12% to go!

Numbers...

Two numbers occupy my mind because I'm a tank: 540 and 102.4%.

540 is the Defense Skill cap, emphasis on Skill because there's also something called Defense Rating (which is the number you tend to see on Equipment, I need 690 Defense Rating to get 540 Defense Skill.) I need that much Defense because if I'm doing it right, the mob will constantly be hitting me. Mobs have a standard chance to score a critical hit on me. Having 540 Defense stops that from happening.
Having the Defense cap ensures that mobs can't score critical hits on me at all, means that my damage intake is steady, means that a healer can easily heal me.
Gearing up in Northrend from quests and the nonheroic dungeons, get a blacksmith to make you some items, maybe get one or two items because you have the right level of reputation with certain factions (Kalu'ak, Oracles or Frenzyheart) you tend to end up with somewhere around the 540 cap. You may be just below (happens with DKs a lot because they can't use shields) or just above (Excellent!) I found it was pretty easy to get the cap, but hard to keep it. Heroic/raid gear tends to have more Stamina and other usefull stats but not quite as much Defense. By gemming and enchanting correctly, I kept the cap while upgrading my gear.

The other number... That's the clincher!
102.4% is the unhittable cap. How does a mob hit me? In short, when a mob take a swing at me there are 6 things that can happen: Crit, Hit, Block, Dodge, Parry or Miss. Miss is a set rate that can't be changed (sometimes, mobs have a bad day and just miss me.) I've removed Crit already with my Defense so when a mobs swings at me it's down to 5 possibilities. Due to the way hitting works in WoW if I were to have have a lot of Parry, Dodge and Block that'll remove Hit completely as well. When Hit is removed, there's only 4 possibilities: mob misses me, I parry the mob's attack, I dodge the mob's attack or I block the mob's attack. So at worst, I'll block the attack! A blocked attack does 1k less damage than a straight hit - this is what tanking is all about.

I'll talk about this some more in a future blog as the consequences of these two numbers reach out to almost everything I do.

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.

The Dedicated Undying Few.

Oh yeah! We did it! Our guild managed to get the Undying title And “The Dedicated Few” at the same time. Although we didn’t start so well, we started at Instructor Razuvious and we wiped. But without killing the boss, so we disbanded the raid.

And someone else started to invite us back. It’s a bit like cheating, but fair enough. We gave it another go. Again we started at the Instructor and this time managed to get him down swiftly. That is when our Raid leader said. “Alright guys, Undying started Game-face on.” We had a pretty good set up if you ask me.

We have two Shamans, one was Elemental and one was Restoration. There was one Rogue, specced in assassination. Two tanks, one was a warrior and the other one was a druid. One mage (My guess is Frostfire), one hunter which was survival and one Paladin. (I was 51/5/15 for this raid.).
Even though it’s not stated in “The Dedicated Few” achievement, we did kill the 4 horsemen with 8 people. It was a hard battle; I was healing the “back.” And I kept moving the wrong way. So I was getting the debuffs. Which almost killed me, I got 15k damage at one point and that just shocked the raid entirely.
I’ve taped that encounter, and you will see me making mistakes, but we made it. You will see that the hunter keeps getting further and further away form me and getting Out of sight for my heals. It was really annoying. But a talk with him (afterwards.) He now knows what NOT to do. J I did have a movie of KT killshot with only 8 people. Who are trying NOT to die. But while I was finalizing the movie ( which is done in WoW itself) For the first time in history my iMac crashed and I lost it. I still have the files and now I’m trying to get it back through another program, I’ll keep you posted.

So here is a screenshot of my Character screen with my new title.

And here is the 4 Horseman movie (unedited).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ZgIPUo-hM