Oh Alts, How I loathe thee

I have realized that with Ulduar not being released for over a month, no more Holidays for even longer and nothing else to look forward to besides rep grinds and other tedious achievements, the time has come for my first Alt of the Expansion.

Meet Classaria

Enter Classaria (or just Saria) my little frost mage fledgling. As some of you may have read on my lengthy Info page, I played a Mage as my main for about 2 years. Those 2 years is when I encountered most of my Raiding Experience and was also Mage Class Leader. So much has changed with the class since last I’ve played and I really wanted to see what I’ve been missing out on. In addition to that I had never played as Frost either so I figured it would be a new experience for me.

I had leveled her pretty much to 60 with a mix of the Refer a Friend promotion and after that expired with some good ol’ fashion grinding of my own, however I soon let her sit around and gather dust. She was pretty much my DE bitch and that was all. After giving her a Character Recustomization (for a new face) and about 10-15 different hair cut and color combinations (which I still can’t really settle on >.<) I’ve finally started working on her again, dinging 65 before I was cut-off by server maintenance.

Frost was interesting to start out but I’m slowly and surely getting bored with it.  I plan on sticking it through for the next 10 levels until I get Frostfire Bolt and then going with a spec like that to hopefully take her through some pug raids and possibly an alt run that Vae Victus is thinking about starting up when we get enough people with alts to 80.

For now though, look for more mage informative posts in addition to my Holy Pally posts and feel free to reccomend any blogs you know of full of magey goodness!

Talk with your Hips

I have a post incoming about my journey this week to get my Ambassador title, but WordPress is acting funny and not letting me post it.

I did however want to post about how awesome Rudilyn/Ayrel is, because he surprised me yesterday with the marvelous Orb of Deception, which is a trinket that I have wanted for a very long time.

He has had one for awhile and after he gave me mine we had a little dance party in Orgrimmar to celebrate our Space Goat Glory.

Shake It!

I love how it turns me into a Clothadin and makes him look like a lvl 40.

Holy Paladin BIS Gear List: 10man

If your guild is like mine then your primary focus is on 10man raiding. I believe there are a lot of guilds out there that are like this. A few weeks back I was trying to locate a Best in Slot gear list targeted for those of us who only do 10mans but I was unable to find anything. So I figured that I would try to compile my own list.

Looking for a Holy Paladin BIS Gear List for 25mans? Siha over at BananaShoulders has a phenomenal list that coincides greatly with my own gearing choices.

First I want to mention that this list is based on what my own preferred methods of gearing and gemming are. After looking at some of this gear I’ve discovered that some of the Emblem of Heroism Rewards are better and that some of the Reputation and Heroic Dungeon Rewards are comparable and will include those in this list as well. I have not included any other armor classes other than plate either, mainly to cut down on what I would have to filter through.

A note on Tier 7 Pieces:

A lot of the pieces are in fact better than T7 when comparing them separately. I will offer comparisons in the notes for each item. Personally, when dealing with Tier upgrades, I tend to look at set bonuses. If I won’t gain a set bonus and the Tier piece is not an upgrade, I probably won’t wear it. However if the Tier piece is a downgrade, but I’ll pick up a set bonus, that changes how I look at the item in question.

I hope this list proves useful to my fellow 10man Healadins! On to the shinies!

New Banner, New Gear, and other Upgrades

Its been awhile since I’ve posted with what upgrades I’ve gotten. I have been a little occupied raiding 25mans with Ayrel and his Glorified Pug, not to mention the hustle and bustle of Love is in the Air. Comcast finally seemed to get whatever their problem was under control and my internet has been doing well.

However now that all that is taken care of, I’ve made my post on Best in Slot 10man gear and gave my blog a makeover, I can post about whats been new with my gear.

Sometime after getting my Elder title I also finished up my Argent Dawn rep and snagged the Argent Champion title. I also finally got my Chef title! Which I will probably start wearing again when I see too many people with the Love Fool title. Last Week I also got a handful of upgrades in both 10 and 25man Naxx.

Yay! Numero Seis!

Lae the Love Fool

I mended the rest of the hearts I needed this morning and finally early this evening got another Bag of Candies. It took 4 charges to get the one I was missing but I’m glad that I got it.

I also got the Romantic Picnic Basket which I really wanted!

Aside from my new title, I wanted to post a site for all my fellow Achievement whores.

WowAchievements.com is a pretty nifty site to track achievement rankings on your server, guild, etc. (Thanks to Abi @ Fear.Win for the link) My friend that I have done a lot of achievements with is in the top 50 on our server. I was in the top 100 but apparently I got bumped back a few spots T_T I really don’t have as many as most people but I don’t think 3400 is too shabby!

Good Luck to everyone still working on this Holiday, as its our last until late April.

Love is in the Easy Mode

I just wanted to make a quick post about how easy the newest holiday is. I signed on early this morning because I was up and had nothing better to do and started working on my Achievements for Love is in the Air.

In the span of only a few hours I have almost gotten all of the Achievements neccessary for the title. I am only short a handful of Friendship Bracelets and a Bag of Candy. Mind you I am 3/4 of the way done with HeartMender and am only missing Be Mine by one Candy.

I actually wasted a good amount of time as well due to some confusion with Nation of Adoration. After not getting credit for getting Adored in a city, I somehow came to the conclusion that you had to actually turn in a Horde Gift Collection in each of those cities. However after some further reading I realized you had to be Adored by a Citizen from each city and not just a Guard.

I easily got my Bouquet of Ebon Roses on a whim. A group of lowbies were looking for a normal UK run but they couldnt find a healer. I offered to heal it for them if I got dibs on the Bouquet and they complied.

I also received the Peddlefeet pet randomly, securing that achievement although its not a requirement for the title. I tried to send a Lovely Black Dress to myself in hopes of getting that achievement, but it didn’t work. Again, its not required for the title though so now harm, no foul.

I don’t really have anything else to keep me occupied or I would stay on to get the rest of my Friendship Bracelets and hopefully another Bag of Candy, but it can wait.

I’m just so shocked to almost have the title so fast!

The Ice Stone has Melted!

Edit: I saw this over at Killing em’ Slowly and it made me chuckle http://hastheicestonemelted.com/

Here’s an idea…

Lets implement a nerf within a week of releasing any information on said nerf! Sounds good doesn’t it? Of course it does.

I had already begun to adjust to this incoming Divine Plea nerf. I realized that a lot of the times I would get lazy and not even bother to hit DP on every cooldown. I really wasn’t fearing this nerf as much as I thought I would. I figured by the time Ulduar came out I would have gotten a lot of upgrades too, probably getting the 4pc. T7 set bonus as well.

Haha! Nope! Screw the PTRs! Lets put this nerf out right now! *grumble grumble*

Lots of Paladins are bitching and complaining about it, so I’ll spare you guys my additional whining. Lets focus on the good things. There is a silver lining to this nerf.

For starters it does solve my ever present question on gemming for Intellect. Without the ability to use Divine Plea every cooldown, you do in fact need a hefty mana pool. Not to mention with how crappy mp5 and spirit are, we’re really only relying on Refreshment (is that what its called? I’m tired Z.z) from Hunters, Rets, Spriests etc to give us mana back. As EJ pointed out, the more intellect you have, the more mana you will get back from that. It is undeniable that Holy Pallies should gem for Intellect.

This will also keep us healadins a bit more on our toes. I will admit that the whole *lays forehead on Holy Light key* scenario can get redundant. This will give us something else to really pay attention to. I can honestly tell you that this weekend during Malygos, I found plenty of holes during combat where I could indeed use Divine Plea without causing any problems. There are lots of those in Naxx as well. We can only hope that the encounters in Ulduar prove to be as forgiving.

I am glyphed for mana conservation for the most part as it is, specifically Glyph of Seal of Wisdom. With them bumping up Seals to 30mins, this is even more mana I will save on, as when it was 2min I often found that it would wear off without me noticing. I really think 30min is a bit extreme (10min would have been plenty) but at least its not really harming anything and it freed up a hotkey for me.

I am sure that we can get along without Divine Plea being so accessible. We just will need to take a better look at the fights and learn when to use it is all. Not to mention Holy Light will still do as much as a high end Flash of Light even with the 50% reduction and there are plenty of Pallies who still swear by Flash spamming. We still have Divine Illumination and Avenging Wrath will be there as well to make up for the new loss in healing.

So yes, while it was hasty and untested, while it does kinda suck to not be as OP as we once were, I suppose I can come to terms with the fact that it did need to be nerfed. I think there were better ways of nerfing it (Hello? Too much to simply increase the CoolDown?) but it was pretty OP.

I would have enjoyed my moment of over powered glory a bit longer though. Hmph.

Breaking News: 3.1 Pally Changes

Information about the upcoming content patch is starting to be released on MMO Champion. Earlier in the week they posted on some of the changes hitting Priests, Shamans and Druids and finally today they have released the changes to Paladins. Lets go over these changes and look at the pros/cons.

We are planning a lot of exciting content for patch 3.1.0, and we are doing a three-part preview series on upcoming class changes. This is the third in the series: Mages, Paladins, Hunters, and Death Knights. Please keep in mind, that this list is not at all comprehensive, and subject to change.

Paladin

• Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.

Thats is -awesome- I have missed having Kings since dropping it to pick up Sanctified Seals (Which every Raiding Holy Paladin should do imo, let your rets and prots do Kings). I have also grown tired of explaining why I don’t have Kings to people who don’t understand. This will be a good change, though I wonder if it will be the Improved Version.

• Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.

This is obviously for Rets, but its good for Holy Pallies too. Should make farming, soloing, etc a lot better for us. Good Change!

So far everything sounds good, but there is more. Here are some other changes to healing in general, specifically changes to Mana and Mana Regeneration:

As we have suggested, we have become concerned that mana regeneration is currently too powerful, especially for healers. We want players to have to keep an eye on mana. We don’t want you to go out of mana every fight, but running out of mana should be a very real risk for sloppy playing or attempting content that you aren’t yet ready for. When mana regeneration is trivial then certain parts of the game break down – classes that offer Replenishment are devalued, stats that offer mana regeneration are devalued, and spells that are efficient are neglected in preference to spells with high throughput.

Here are a list of changes you are likely to see in 3.1. They will be available to try out on the PTR. Mana regeneration is somewhat technical, so please bear with us.

• Regeneration while not casting (outside of the “five second rule”) will be decreased. We think that (1) the ability to cast heal over time spells and then sit back and (2) benefitting from a clearcasting proc that also gets you out of the five second rule both provide too much mana regeneration, even over short time periods.

This could mean a lot for Paladins as we are never out of the 5 second rule. We’ll have to wait and see exactly how they change it, but it has potential…

• To make this change, we are reducing mana regeneration granted by Spirit across the board. However we are also boosting the effects of talents such as Meditation that increase regeneration while casting. The net result should be that your regeneration while casting will stay about the same, but your not-casting regeneration will be reduced. This change will have little impact on dps casters, since they are basically always casting.

Hmmm. Is it possible to reduce the mana regen from spirit anymore? I’ve heard nothing about complaints since they changed it back in 3.0 as it is.  Again since theyre saying it will stay the same for your regeneration while casting, this should have very little affect on Holy Paladins.

• Since paladins rely less on Spirit as a mana-regeneration stat, we have to address them in other ways. We don’t want to change Illumination or Replenishment. However, we are going to increase the healing penalty on Divine Plea from 20% to 50%. Divine Plea was originally intended to help Protection and Retribution paladins stay full on mana. It should be a decision for Holy paladins, not something that is automatically used every cooldown.

…

…

What? Ugh.. this is not good. I am not happy with this information at all really and I’m wondering what the people over at Elitist Jerks will say about it. Part of me thinks that this might change how Paladins are healing at the moment and we might have to go back to flash spamming, but I’m not 100% sure how this will change the way we are currently supposed to gear/gem/etc. Actually the more I think about it the more irritated I get, mostly due to the changes they are making to Priests and other HoT Healers. Basically theyre buffing all the other healers while nerfing Paladins when to me we’re one of the weakest healers due to our lack of an AOE heal. Holy Light -is- our AOE heal because we can cast it so much and not go OOM… and now they want to take that away from us? *headdesk*

• In addition, we are also changing the way Spiritual Attunement works. In situations with a large amount of outgoing raid damage, as well as in PvP, this passive ability was responsible for more mana regeneration than we would like. We want to keep the necessary benefit it grants to tanking Protection paladins, while making it less powerful for Holy paladins in PvP or raid encounters with a lot of group damage.

I don’t really have much to say about this… another nerf to Holy Paladins, but not as bad as gimping Divine Plea and not for all Holy Pallies.

• We are also taking a close look at clearcasting procs themselves. One likely outcome is to change them to an Innervate-like surge of mana so that the net benefit is the same, but healers won’t shift to out-of-casting regeneration so often.

Again, since Paladins don’t have any clearcasting, this is irrelevant. Not sure if it would be considered a buff or a nerf to the healing classes that do have these.

• We balance around the assumption that even 10-player groups have someone offering Replenishment. To make this even easier on players we are likely to offer this ability to additional classes, as well as make sure that existing sources of Replenishment are more equitable.

• These changes are ultimately being done to bring the different healing classes more in line with each other as well as to give the encounter team more leeway when designing encounters, who can balance with these new mana regeneration numbers in mind. In a world with infinite healer mana, the only way to challenge healers is with increasingly insane amount of raid damage, so that global cooldowns become the limiting factor since mana fails to be. An example is the Eredar Twins in late Sunwell. We weren’t necessarily happy with that model, and this change hopefully allows us to move towards giving healing a more deliberate and thoughtful pace rather than frenetic spam.

I don’t know, to me this is already how the game is working. There is SO much AOE damage now making a lot of things difficult for Paladins to heal as it is, the only thing we had to combatant that was our ability to spam large heals without going out of mana. I really feel like these changes will just make us less desirable healers again.

It is possible that increasing the penalty to DP won’t be that detrimental, though I’m really not sure how. Looking at my current spells (and just a quick peek mind you) this would take my Holy Light down to about 7k.  With my FoL being about 5k I don’t see what the benefit would really be to using Holy Light at all. Which is what leads me to believe we will go back to being Flash Spammers.

Its not that I really mind that, it just the whole fact that its an obvious nerf to us while all other healers are getting buffed. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see. Maybe enough Paladins will QQ enough to where they re-think the mana changes.

Belts and Comcast: Why I’m annoyed

Since my last post I have officially started raiding 25mans regularly. I have teamed up with bestest Pally friend Ayrel (Rudi) on his adventure of putting a 25man co-op together. Its had its ups and downs, but I think he’s capable of getting it situated. Plus since he’s my holy-lover, (and is better geared than me) he normally kicks me down some good pally lewtz ♥

In all seriousness though, it seems like our main trouble has been getting people to just SIT and FOCUS. A good portion of our raid team is between the ages of 16-20 or so and they tend to be a little… jittery. Still, I have faith that it will all come together, we just need to weed out some of the bads.

Speaking of the almighty purples, I picked up a few upgrades since last posting. I’m actually sitting here staring at Wowhead.com and Wowarmory.com as they try to load, but of course COMCAST is being a pain in my holy ASS and my connection has obviously crapped out just enough to where I am still able to type on WordPress.com but unable to pull up any other pages.

*insert slew of profanity here*

This pretty much brings me to what Abi has been posting about over at Fear.Win the past few days. My main source of headaches, frustration and annoyance this week has been with my internet connection. Time for a little backstory.

Ever since Abi and I ventured out on our own together (about 7 years ago) we have trusted our internet connection within the hands of AT&T. However when we moved over the summer, we were sadly informed that AT&T didn’t offer the same speed of connection at our new place. Our only other option was to go with Comcast… who I already hated due to their monopolization of the cable market in my area. We had no choice though so we sucked it up and went with them.

For 6 months everything was fine and dandy. We had random DCs here and there, but nothing life altering. Rarely was there any lag or any other sort of obnoxious connection activity. About a month ago, Comcast did some sort of random maintenance. Our internet connection was down for about 4 hours or so. It came back up and has never been the same since. It dropped again and this time didnt come up for a few days. That weekend we ended up having to cancel our 10man Naxx because we had no internet. It came back up eventually, but it was as if the connection couldnt make up its mind. Sometimes it would let me on Wow, but only if I didnt have any add-ons running. It was as if the connection wasnt strong enough to do anything but the very basic.

We called Comcast and they sent someone out with a new modem. It worked like a charm. Steady connections through raids, addons running, no problems… or at least for 2 weeks or so. This weekend it started acting up again. Granted we could still run Wow with addons and webpages would load, it seemed to just randomly hit us with 10-20 second lag spikes. Naturally this all decided to start happening in the middle of Naxx. Fantastic. I was so mad I called Comcast right then and there. To give you an idea, I called them before pulling Gluth (I remember because I sat there through the entire Gluth fight trying to cast Holy Shock -yes an instant cast- and the raid team never even saw me on the ground. I died in the tunnel to the dot that ticks for 300 damage) and I was on hold all the way through Thaddius. I was very, very angry.

So whatever, I talked to a rep and they scheduled an appointment for TWO days later. In those 2 days I had to raid my 25mans, without the ability to talk on vent and also having random 10-20 seconds lag spikes and disconnects. It seemed like everytime we downed a boss, I would DC. I’m a healer, its not like I can just disconnect in the middle of a pull or a boss fight… or have these 20 second lag spikes either. I tried to stay calm, knowing that I would have my new modem soon.

So yesterday the tech comes out. He was super nice, replaces the modem. He explains that when Comcast did the maintenance they were implementing a new system to make everyones connection faster. Instead of bouncing to one server, you would bounce to two servers, basically making everything go faster. Not the wording he used, but you get the idea hopefully. He went on to say that while it did make it faster, one of the servers kept failing. So I assume that whenever we got bounced to the fail server, thats when our net drops, until we get bounced to the working server and our net picks up again.

So yes, geek-speak aside, he gave us the new modem, tested it out and everything seemed to be fine. Mind you this was about 8am. I went to sleep and prayed for a lag-free raid later in the evening.

No such luck.

Same problem, No change. I could scream. I called Comcast again and told them this. Their solution? Oh we’ll get someone back out there in another TWO DAYS.

*insert more profanity here*

I went ballistic. I talked to a supervisor who basically didnt know dick about anything. When I questioned why it would take them an other two days to get back out here and actually fix my shit she said it was “First come, First serve” … Again I went nuts saying “We’ve been without stable internet for 3 weeks, to me, that makes us first”

It doesnt matter. I didn’t get anywhere and no matter how much hell I put that supervisor through it wasnt going to make my internet stop being stupid. She said she would try to get the appointment moved up but I highly doubt she will. I laid on the couch and watched bad Tv and silently QQ’d in my head about how I have to go through yet another 25man Naxx with a shit connection and since I’m one of the only healers for 10man Naxx, it won’t go well at all, if it even happens. Unless of course by some magical workings of all that is the interwebs Comcast actually fixes it when they come out here.

Aside from all of that, I have been highly annoyed with upgrading out of my 10man Gear into 25man gear. It might just be the particular items I’ve come across, but honestly the 25man gear seems to be more of a side-grade than a genuine upgrade. While I am a min/maxing freak, I always have trouble with side-grading. Should I give up that .05% of crit for 6 more intellect? What about 10 Intellect for 12 spell power? Its very annoying to me and since its all based on your personal preference, there is no real answer.

Mostly I keep running into the problem with belts. I have the badge belt which has a socket. In addition I added another socket to it. I’m finding it hard to replace it due to the socket already on it. I have gotten 2 belts and neither of them have been a full upgrade because they dont have a socket. I eventually just gave up and went with the belt I got from25man Naxx sacrificing some intellect for spell power. I am tipping the scales with over 1100 intellect and my spell power has yet to reach the 2k mark unbuffed, so I figured that was the right thing to do.

I had just hit 21k  mana unbuffed though =/

I’m sure I’ll pick it up somewhere along the line… you know, assuming Comcast ever lets me raid like a normal person again.

Well, I suppose thats all I have for now. Hopefully I can update later with actual links to the gear in question.

Titles, Gear and Stats: A Quick Update

I’ve been really busting my plate covered patootie since my last post. Tuesday I ran 4 raid instances, 10/25 Voa and 10/25 Sarth and also completed all my Achievements for the Elder Title. I spent a good amount of time farming herbs and used the money to finally get some Frostweave bags. I’m only 2 recipes away from the Chef Title, but I still need to spend the time farming to get my cooking to 450 >.<

Aside from all of that I ran a handful of heroics. VoA 10/25 proved to be unprofitable by way of gear, but I did pick up some new shinies from Sartharian:

• Chestplate of the Great Aspects – +8 stats, 16 Intellect

I had my T7 chest, but this was a ridiculous upgrade for it being from a 25man so I decided to use it. Its very pretty and blue. Much easier on the eyes than the dark gold.

• Heroes’ Redemption Gloves – 28 Spell Power, 8 Intellect/3 mp5

Very excited to get these. These were the main reason I was running VoA, strange that I picked them up in an impromptu 10man OS run. I normally don’t like the Dazzling Forrest Emeralds, but I wanted to get the crit from the socket bonus.

Since I picked up my T7 gloves, I had a bunch of badges that needed spending. Since I got my trinket after last week’s Naxx, I decided to go ahead and pick up the last piece of badge gear.

• Magroth’s Meditative Cinture – 16 Intellect x2

This was a sidegrade but it had a lot of crit on it instead of the pretty much useless mp5 that my other belt had. Since I replaced my chest, I wanted to make up for the lack of the 2-set bonus.