[WoW] State of WoW.

So I broke down last week and transferred my Druid Waash to my new realm ( The Forgotten Coast). I leveled him a bit to get him to 80 and into the Cataclysm content. This, plus my Priest dinging 85 gives me 3 high level (80+) characters, 2 mid level ( 50+) characters and my lowly Mage at level 12.

I think I've burned out a bit on leveling, once Waash hit 80, I couldn't bring myself to do one more quest. Instead I've been leveling professions, trying to make gold.

Waash, 80 Tauren Druid

So I decided to make Waash a Tauren. I was considering making him a Troll, but I just did not like the Troll fight form. He's now my second Tauren, after my DK Caaz.

I'm currently trying to make money using Inscription, which was one of the big reasons I wanted to transfer Waash. Its not as easy as it used to be, there's a lot of competition and nowhere near as many people buying glyphs. Currently I'm cherry-picking all glyphs that sell for 500g+. This gives me about 15-20 I need to craft, and they're selling ok. I'll sell 1-2 a day, which while not great amount of money, lets me work back into the flow of things slowly.

In Wrath it was easy to be in the glyph business, all herbs below Outland level were going for about as much as Icethorn, so you just buy all Icethorn and trade the inks in for the correct one you need. This time the prices of Cata-level herbs are much much higher. So now I have to compare both the level-appropriate herb prices as well as the cata-level herb prices, to get the cheapest inks. I might switch over to cata-herbs only if the prices drop a bit more, and my revenue stream gets more reliable. So far its been ok, and I'm making a bit of money.

I need that money because I'm spending it left and right. I'm going to buy Artisan ( Epic) flying on Waash soon, so that'll be about 4800g. I've also been leveling his Alchemy. I have quite a few herbs saved up so its at least not costing much out of pocket. But leveling Alchemy and doing the glyphs has drained my herb stores quickly.

Alchemy is probably one of the easiest to level crafting professions. Waash is currently at around 505 or 515, I can't quite remember. I've already been able to craft a few potions, flasks and elixirs that Solinari and Hooff can both use for healing and DPS. Also I've been able to make a nice Epic trinket for Waash as well. That should help quite a bit for leveling. I've hit a bit of a wall right now, since the only way to skill up is to transmute one of two rare gems, the mat requirements being a Twilight Jasmine and 3 uncommon gems. Unfortunately the uncommon gets are worth more than the resulting rare gem. I am an xmute master, so if I proc an extra gem it would put me over, but thats very very rare. I might just have to suck it up and do the xmute, so that I can level Alchemy. Once I can get the truegold xmute then that should recoup some of my losses.

Inscription also has quite a few off-hands and relics that can be made. I made one for Solinari, but I forgot that priests use wands, not relics. The Relics themselves sell for almost nothing on the AH, so I might just end up saving it for my warlock or if Waash ever wants to heal.

Solinari

After hitting 85, Solinari already had quite a few rep rewards available to get her ilvl up quickly. She just recently got to ilvl 329 technically letting her queue for a heroic. I don't feel near ready enough to take her into a heroic, let alone a PUG heroic. I still have some trouble healing heroics on Hooff, and he's much better geared. My plan for her is to keep doing Normals until she replaces all her < 333 ilvl gear, then try doing the PUG heroics. There's quite a few more rep grinds she can do to get that gear.

On a more cosmetic front, she recently did a PUG Obsidiam Sanctum raid, 3 drakes run. She DPSed, and was a respectable 3rd or 4th in DPS. She also won the Black drake! It looks mighty cool and she's the first toon I have to get that drake. Its actually spurned me to want to get it on my other toons as well as go for more mounts in general.

Hooff

Unfortunately for Hooff, he's been stagnating as of late. He's my only raid-ready toon, but since we're not raiding, I haven't been using him much. He can certainly handle a PUG heroic, given a good tank. But most of the time I just don't feel like putting myself through that. My love for healing has been going away lately, specially when there are tanks queuing for heroics at the bare minimum iLvl, then blame the healer for not being able to keep their squishy butts alive.

Solinari, 85 Disc/Shadow Priest

Solinari hit 85 a little while ago. With the questing she did in Hyjal and Deepholm, she was able to get a few nice piece of rep gear. That plus normal dungeon drops and technically she's ready for heroics ( iLvl 333 ). Of course she's nowhere near ready to actually heal a PUG heroic. I tried last night and on the first pull everyone went down. There was a lag spike in the middle but I was already in trouble by that point.

She had more luck doing old school raids. There was an OS-3D group forming on Trade, so I had her join as DPS. Sarth went down pretty easily and everyone rolled Need on the drake and bag. I lost on the bag but won the drake! It looks mighty cool. Who would have thought that just shading the same drake model differently would make such a difference. She also got the Green proto-drake from the egg in the same week. Not bad at all.

[WoW IC] Elementals Attack

Hooff focused on channeling the light into the bruised body of the blood elf warlock in front of him. Having just cleaved an elemental in two, he was still in the retribution mindset. Just a few seconds ago his hands glowed with the white hot fury of the light, but now they had a softer, healing glow. Because his mind was not in a state attuned to the healing side of the light, a simple healing spell strained him more than it should. It would only take a few minutes to calm his mind and reattune but those minutes, the warlock did not have. Besides, there are bound to be more crazed elementals about, no use being a healer in a fight with no one to deal damage.

The felguard stood near the warlock, eyeing the paladin warely. Most people would assume that a demon would take this oppurtunity to run, or possibly kill the warlock and sever the ties of servitude that bind the demon. Hooff has quite a bit of experience with warlock demons, and was not surprised at the concern the felguard showed for the young warlock. The felguard had done its best to slow the onslaught of the elemental, but it wasn't powerful enough.

Hooff looked at the armor and robes of the young lock, Nuiitari was her name? They were high quality, but well worn. Definetly handed down as an heirloom. In fact the robes looked very familiar. They should look familiar, the armor he gave to a priest a few months back.In fact when Hooff was fighting, the robes is what caught his eye. As the elemental was bairing down on the young warlock, Hooff thought it was the priest he had saved back in Tarren Mill. Looking at the face of the young warlock, Hooff could see the family resemblance.

Unfortunately he wasn't able to get to her in time, and she was struck down by the elemental. The felguard did its best to shield the warlock, but it was just not powerful enough. The bruised and broken bodies of orcs, trolls, tauren and blood elves littered the grand courtyard of Orgrimmar. These are the bodies of those who had no business fighting such powerful elementals. Many were evacuated by mages shortly before the elementals attacked, but they couldn't get everyone. Those of the lowest rank were evacuated first, since they were the most vulnerable. These are bodies of those who were high enough rank not to be on the first few groups evacuated, but not high enough to protect themselves. This blood elf was surely low enough rank to have gone with the second, if not first group to be evacuated. Why did she stay?

Still they didn't sit idly by. Many took to putting out fires caused by the fire elementals, much more of Orgrimmar wouldn't be standing if it weren't for these Experts, or Artisans. Only those of Grand Masters rank could reasonably face even single elementals, and only the highest of Grand Masters could face more than one. Hooff was facing three at once when he saw Nuiitari being overrun. Her felguard faced the oncoming elemental but it was no match and was swept aside easily. The blood elf was struck and severely wounded before Hooff got to her.

Nuiitari wasn't doing well, his holy spells were able to heal her most critical wounds, but she was still very weak. The felguard phased in and out, obviously the warlock was losing her connection to the demon.

"Maybe I can solve both these problems at once" Hooff thought to himself.

"Demon, come here." Hooff motioned towards the felguard.

The demon looked at him, but didn't move. Obviously it doesn't take orders from anyone other than this warlock. Hooff would have to get the demon's attention another way.

"Felguard, I require your assistance to save your mistess" Hooff said, this time in demonic. The felguard snapped to attention. The grunts and clerics tending to the injured stopped and stared at Hooff. Not every day that you hear demonic speech come from the mouth of a Paladin. A few grunts instinctively grasped their weapons, waiting to see what happens next.

"Jhuutom." replied the felguard as he moved closer to the paladin. "Jhuutom is my name".

"I am Hooff, and I will bind you to your mistress, with a Soul Link spell. Are you familiar with it". Hooff said, still in demonic, as he placed one hand on Nuiitari's forehead.

"I am, Mistress has only successfully cast it thrice before." Jhuutom said. Hooff placed his other hand on the Felguards chest.

Hooff cast the spell quickly. It was a low level spell, learned at Journeyman level by warlocks specializing in the Demonology. It has unexpected results when a warlock of another specialization tries to cast the spell. The fact that Hooff can cast the spell was almost impossible.

Hooff finished casting the spell, it was a short spell, but required an extreme amount of effort on Hooff's part. Spent, Hooff leaned against a wall to gather his wits.

Color returned to Nuiitari's skin, and she seemed to be stable. The spell linked her mind and body with the felguard. They could now share each other's strength.

"How are you able to cast this spell Paladin?" questioned the felguard. The felguard no longer needed to speak, since a side effect of the spell was that now all three of their minds were linked, in a manner.

"My people are ... adept ... at manipulating fel energy, and I was taught this spell by an old Warlock." answered Hooff with a thought. No need to cause more of a scene by speaking.

"You are not an elf." Jhuutom stated.

"No, I'm not." Hooff answered.

"You are an Eradar?" Jhuutom questioned.

"Hold your tongue Demon." Hooff scowled.

"A Draenei then." Jhuutom concluded.

"Yes, from ... very far away. Keep that to yourself" commanded Hooff.

"I shall not repeat it to any mortal" Jhuutom promised.

Satisfied that Nuii was stable for now, he waved over an Orgrimmar Cleric to finish the healing. Though the scene was horrific, Orgrimmar had powerful clerics and many of these heroes will live. All but the most lifeless of corspes can be brought back with the power of the light.
Hooff then picked up his mace and took a contingent of Grunts to finish the job of driving the elementals out of the city.

[WoW] State of MyWoW

This weekend saw quite a bit of playing. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had quite a bit of time to play. This let me knock out a few of the things on my todo list:

Hooff

Finally hit exalted with Therazene faction. I will no longer have to do those daillies. I bought the shoulder enchants, and bid them a fond farewell. The sheer number of daillies, plus the fact that you start out past honored after questing in Deepholm made this pretty quick.

I'm still doing the Dragonmaw daillies. They're quite a bit more annoying, mainly because you have to gather/destroy things, competing with both Horde and Alliance players. That plus there is a high possibility of getting jumped by mobs makes one or two corpse runs common. Just bad enough to be annoying, but not enough to make me stop doing the daillies.

We two-healed Baradin Hold again over the weekend also. This time it was Hooff and Raenna, a holy-priest in the guild. We got him on our second attempt. The first attempt, the priest's side started getting overwhelmed with damage. We adjusted a bit and were able to down him no problem.

We then attempted to do a REAL raid. Blackwing Descent. We got as far as the mobs before Magmar. The twin mobs that charge the most distant mob from each other. The healing required was intense. We brought in a third healer, a Disc Priest. But she was PVP specced, and the high amount of healing required made her OOM quickly. I myself had to spam my fastest/hardest hitting heal also.

If we have to constantly spam heals like that, I think we must be doing the encounter wrong. We looked up the strategy, and when we applied it ( tanks at opposite ends of the room, DPS clumped together in the middle to the side) it went much better. Unfortunately, we still couldn't get the trash down. Maybe it was just not enough healing, or our tanks weren't geared enough. Either way we need to gear up and practice some more.

Solinari

My priest hit 80 over the weekend. Then hit 81 on Sunday while questing in Hyjal. I was afraid that Hyjal would be a repeat of the PITA that Tedrassil was. So far its not bad. There's only been 1-2 quests in a cave, and the lore is rich. I've already met Malfurion Stormrage (woot) and Ysera ( hott ). I bet my druid would get a kick out of it.

I'm not sure if the mobs just don't hit as hard in Hyjal or if its because I expect them to hit really hard, but my priest isn't having near as much trouble killing things as my paladin did. Right now I can kill 2-3 cataclysm mobs no problem. It could also be that the spellpower of my heals are high, and my health is low enough that a cast of Flash of Light can heal me to almost full.

I've already replaced my heirloom shoulders and chest. They stop functioning at level 80, so I've replaced them with Cataclysm greens. Its a bit annoying because that effectively cuts my +XP bonus by more than half. I now only have the +10% from guild and +5% from cloak. Guess I should shelve the priest for a few days to get some rested XP back. My trinket has also stopped scaling, but I haven't found a better replacement so I'm still using it for the time being. So far I've replaced 7 pieces of armor, and my mana and Health is already double what it when I hit 80. My iLvl is still too low to queue for a the LFD, but i'm hoping to change that in the next few days.

Nuiitari

My Warlock has languished at 53. Her tailoring is already maxed out for her level (350). She's been a steady money maker. Buying Netherweave Cloth from the AH when its cheap, and creating Netherweave Bags to sell. Its not a huge amount of profit, but its steady. Something to keep her occupied until she can level again. I still haven't chosen her other profession. I'm still thinking of bringing my druid over, so that takes care of Alchemy and Inscription. Blacksmith, Jewelcrafting, and Engineering all really require a miner to fund the leveling, or else it is very expensive. I could do leatherworking, but again, I don't have a stockpile of leather to help her level. My skinner is Hooff, and while he could probably farm stuff pretty quickly, the prospect of going back to lower level zones to get the leather sounds horrible.

[WoW] Baradin Hold ... or Holy Pally Heaven

Baradin Hold

Baradin hold currently only has one boss ( A'la Vault of Archavon when it first came out). Just like Archavon, the first boss Argaloth is pretty straight forward. The mechanics to the fight lend very well to Paladin healing. Another paladin and I were able to 2-heal this in 10-man normal. The tank mechanic is normal 2-tank swap. Its really a DPS race. The enrage timer is 5 minutes, with his health being roughly 21Million, all DPS need to average 10k DPS at least to be able to get him down in time.

The strategy for the boss is available in better detail on other sites so I won't go into here. Summary is, the raid splits into 2 equal groups. One tank, 3 DPS and a healer on each side. The boss does a meteor slash that is shared between everyone that gets hit and puts a fire damage debuff. The tanks taunt of each other after so that only half the raid gets hit and the debuff doesn't stack. At 66% and 33% the boss casts Fel Firestorm, it leaves fire on the ground that everyone has runaway from. This goes on for a bit, everyone running and DPS as best they can. Afterwards you go back to original positions and repeat.

Pally Love

This style encounter is great for paladins. All our healing targets are stacked together, with predictable damage patterns. This makes our Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn especially effective. All this healing gets funneled to our Beaconed Tank, so they're getting constantly healed. As an added bonus, because we get to stand in Melee range, we can Crusader Strike the boss to build Holy Power. That gives us free Light of Dawn healing goodness. Heck if you position yourself correctly you might be able to heal your group and the other group as well.

Even during the Fel Firestorm phase, our Holy Radiance gives us the increased run speed, making sure we can both get out of the bad, and reach injured teammates quickly. I like to spot heal with Holy Shock + Light of Dawn partway through the Fel Firestorm, and then when returning to positions hit Holy Radiance. That ensures I'm there quickly, and that I'm healing everyone plus the tank as they get in range. There's also a debuff that we can cleanse that the boss puts onto random people.

This dungeon almost seems tailored made for the Pally healing style. I've yet to try healing this on another class, or with another class. I'm not sure if its because of the synergy between the fight mechanics and pally heal style, but 2 pallies were able to heal this dungeon in ilvl avg 340 gear. Thats technically high enough for heroics, but I certainly wouldn't try any of the entry level raids with it.

Enjoy.

[WoW non-IC] What happened to Hooff?

This is my first crack at writing a story, but not in first-person point of view. Lately it was difficult for me to have an "exciting" story, told in the past tense, so I thought I'd give this a shot.

"We have news of Hooff" exclaimed Rohan.

"How?" Questioned Hotplate.

Hotplate looked around the room, taking in the strange scene in front of her. The concern in her voice seemed out place on her normally stoic and, understandably cold expression.
While not particularly close, she did deeply respect the old Draenei. When they first met, they were already at odds. Hooff's draenei roots and training with the light gave him an automatic aversion to Hotplate's unholy ways. None of the "family" accepted her easily. She was only allowed to stay in the manor by decree of Bob. While Hooff mistrusted Hotplate a great deal, he trusted in Bob's judgement more. Strange to hear that a Paladin would trust the judgement of a Warlock in regards to a Death Knight, but these are strange times. How Hooff came to judge Bob's judgement so completely, is a story only Bob and Hooff seem to know, and neither are considered "chatty".
Eventually in battle, Hooff came to respect Hotplate. Many times Hotplate would charge in, standing toe to toe against a hulking monster, adeptly dodging and parrying its attacks while simultaneously keeping its attention. Hooff would be behind her, calling upon the healing powers of the Light to mend whatever strikes Hotplate was not able to dodge. They made a good team, eventually developing a deep mutual respect. Hooff came to think of her as younger sister.
In the room was Rohan, the archmage that had cast the spell to send Hooff off, a few other nameless mages, and Waash the night-elf druid. Zoee was understandably absent, her and Waash had had a falling out, and she left the manor shortly after. Even if Hotplate wanted to contact her, it'd be next to impossible. The only thing harder to find than a druid that didn't want to be found, is a Rogue that does't want to be found. A glowing eye wandered around the room on occasion, Hotplate recognized it as Bob's Eye of Kilrogg. The old warlock was rarely ever seen in person. Any time his presence was required someplace, either the Eye or sometimes one of his minions would go in his stead.

"As you all know the teleportation spell I cast worked, too well." explained Rohan.

"Instead of sending Hooff to the future, I sent him to another dimension. The dimensions seem to be linked by the twisting nether. There's still quite a bit about the twisting nether that we know nothing about".

"How did you find him? How's he doing?" Hotplate asked again, with more concern in her voice than she meant to show.

A blink of light and Thantomm ( or Tom as he's called around the manor) appeared next to the Eye. He was Bob's Felguard minion, his Axe still had the blood of whatever he had last killed.
"A felguard mentioned his name to me, in the twisting nether" Tom said.

"How would another felguard know about Hooff" replied Hotplate.

"Apparently, he was summoned by a young Warlock. During an elemental attack, they were saved by a Paladin. The Paladin had a strange accent, and his eyes looked strange", continued Tom.

"None of what you said makes me think that it was Hooff" Hotplate replied, clearly loosing patience.

"The felguard and the warlock were stil very young. The Warlock, Nuiitari is her name, was still just an Apprentice, and thus her connection to the felguard wasn't fully established. Normally an Apprentice Warlock does not have the power to call upon a felguard. Imps and Voidwalkers are considerably less... straining. Nuiitari was losing the connection because of her injuries, the paladin cast the Soul-link spell that kept the connection and allowed Warlock and Felguard to share each other's strength".

"I didn't know paladins had such a spell" remarked Waash.

"They don't." answered Tom.

The Eye of Kilrogg moved and settled nex to Tom.
"An Apprentice Warlock can cast that spell, but only to herself and her minion. To cast the spell to bind another Warlock, to its minion, requires a fairly higher level Warlock. To have a paladin cast the spell is very rare". an eerie voice, seemingly out of nowhere explained. Some of the nameless mages looked around, trying to find the source of the voice. Hotplate and Waash simply listened, they were used to hearing from Bob in this way.

"I've only known a handful of Paladins with enough power to cast the spell, enough knowledge about shadow magic to invoke the spell, and enough familiarity with demons to attempt the spell. Hooff was one of those paladins." Rohan added.

"We've known that Hooff was a powerful paladin, but I never knew he knew so much about shadow and demons". Waash said.

"He learned from me." said the voice.

"Indeed, a side effect of the third-party Soul Link is that the demon has access to the caster's mind, if only bried glimpses" Tom said, continuing his story.

"Within the paladin's mind the felguard so images of a human warlock, a human death knight, a night-elf priest, and twin draenei, a shaman and a hunter. He tracked me down when he saw an image of me in the Paladin's mind"

"Ok, thats more convincing" Hotplate finally said.

"How'd he know it was you? All of you felguards look the same to me" asked Waash.

"We can tell" retorted Tom.

"Well there is a bit of a problem... all this happened in Orgrimmar". Tom added.

"What would Hooff be doing in Orgrimmar, helping a Horde Warlock?" asked Waash.

"The Paladin, was a Blood Elf" Tom said.

[WoW] Back to the minors...(normals) with you.

Remi (Goblin Mage) and I tried to run a Heroic PUG a few nights ago. That did not go well. We got Throne of Tides. The group was doing ok on the trash. We got to the first boss and everything went to blazes. We wiped once or twice before the tank dropped. We got another tank, he tried 2-3 times and then dropped as well. This gave us yet another tank.

Each attempt got progressively better ( except for a few where an interrupt didn't get done), but the enchancement shaman would get progressively more ... vocal... about his displeasure. After the 10th or so wipe, I dropped. If the group was having that much issues, I don't even want to imagine how bad the next few bosses would be.

Last night we decided to go back to the minors. We queued up for normals. This time we got Grim Batol. The tank was very good. He marked and asked for CC. He didn't know some of the fights, but we got through it fine. Halfway through the run, I noticed he only had about 94k health. This seemed strange because as a healer, I had about 109k health. Then I looked at his level ... 84. That was like he just earned +150 rep with me. He was tanking very well, on a non-max level character, and doing it with the poise and maturity of a seasoned vet. Bravo goblin warrior who's name I can't remember from a realm I also can't remember.

Bravo.

[WoW] Holy Cooldowns... use them!

Holy Paladin Healing Cooldowns

Recently I've noticed that I don't make near enough use of my
cooldowns while healing. Making good use of cooldowns is very
important to performing at the top of your game. If you're not using a
cooldown that gives you +20% haste for 15 seconds every 2 minutes, why
bother worrying about that extra +10 Haste you got from upgrading
gear?

Paladins have 6 major healing related cooldowns available to us. There
are also "Hand" spells that could help with healing, or preventing
damage as well. I'll go over both and hopefully give suggestions on
when and how to use them.

Cooldowns

Avenging Wrath

This is probably the most iconic paladin ability ( next to the bubble). "Wings", this provides 20% more damage and healing done for 20 seconds. This is on a 3 minutes ( 2 mins with talents) cooldown.

This can be used pretty often. Some people ( me included) tend to "save" it until healing gets intense. Unfortunately this means it doesn't get near the amount of use it should. I personally tend to try to save it so much that I end up rarely using it. That's 20% less
healing i'm doing every 2 minutes.

People have suggested that it should be macro'd to something like Holy Radiance or even Divine Light, the justification being that if you're casting either of those spells, then you'll probably be casting more in the near future. I partially agree, at least for my usage. I really only hit Holy Radiance when 1.) I need massive tank heals, 2.) Everyone is taking damage and I need to pile on the healing. Both of these situations would do well with Avenging
Wrath.

On the other hand, my usage of Divine Light is a bit different. I mainly use it when it would cost too much mana to do multiple Holy Lights or Flash of Lights. In fact with Cata-level health pools, Holy Light does almost nothing at this point. I may or may not be in a furious healing state.

Divine Favor

According to ElitistJerks, Divine Favor is actually more useful or powerful in many situations than Avenging Wrath. This adds 20% more haste and crit for 20 seconds ( +10 with the glyph) every 3 minutes.

With such a short cooldown, I would macro this with heals as well. Holy Radiance is a good candidate, for the same reasons as above. Plus since its basically a mobile HOT, more haste means more ticks and more crit means each tick has more chance to crit. I definitely need to make more use of this cooldown.

Aura Mastery

This is more of a damage prevention talent. "It will give you 6 seconds of "enhanced" auras every 2 minutes. 4076 extra armor, double damage retribution aura, silence and interrupt immunity, 195 extra fire/frost/shadow resistance or extra mount speed" - ElitistJerks thread. Personally I'd recommend the 195 resistance. This is a major boon on fights where you know that a boss is about to hit everyone for major damage. 6 seconds is just enough time to mitigate that one big hit.

Lay on Hands

This is the BIG heal on a LONG cooldown. It will heal the target equal to the max HP of the casting paladin. It will also return 10% of the heal to the paladin as mana. Note: If cast on yourself, it will trigger forberance. Cooldown is 10 minutes ( 7 with the glyph). Very useful for when the tank is going down, and you can't keep him up. This is instant "oh-shit" button. Gives you a bit of mana to boot. The cooldown is long enough that its one use per fight, probably saved for boss fights only.

Guardian of Ancient Kings

This spawns our newest tool, a angel looking pet. It will duplicate all heals done by the paladin. The heals go to the same target the paladin healed. It will also splash heal all targets within 10 yards for 10% of the amount healed. Lasts 30 seconds or after 5 heals. Cooldown is 5 minutes, 3 with prot talents, but that doesn't apply to us.

Some people like to macro this to Avenging Wrath, to power up the heals done by the Guardian. That seems like a good idea to me. I'd be hesitant trying to macro this to other, heals though. The cooldown is just long enough that I wouldn't want to "waste" it. Plus my usual "oh-shit" button Holy Radiance, isn't duplicated by the Guardian.

I personally macro'd this up with Avenging Wrath, and left it as them as something I can press when I need that extra oomph.

Divine Plea

When mana is as much of an issue as it is in Cataclysm, any kind of mana-regen abilities will be used. This ability returns 10% ( +5% with the glyph) of total mana over 15 seconds. Penalty is that it reduces healing by 50%. Cooldown is 2 minutes. Definitely useful for times when damage isn't so intense. But be careful, if you have to do more heals to make up for the healing penalty, then the 15% mana returned will do no good. With the cooldown at 2 minutes, its possible this could be used more than once in a boss fight.

I personally like to hit this in between fights on trash, instead of drinking. I also hit it at the movement portions of some fights (such as during Firestorm in Baradin Hold).

Divine Shield

I'm including this because, while it doesn't raise healing throughput, it reduces the number of players that need healing by one, the holy pally. This helps immensely when shiet hits the fan, so you're not worrying about running around, or getting interrupted because of damage.

Hands

Hands are very short term buffs than can go a long way towards making the target's life easier.

Hand of Sacrifice

Think of this as a bubble with teeth. When cast on a friendly it transfers 30% of all damage done TO the target to the paladin, up to 100% of the Paladin's HP. This lasts 12 seconds or until total damage transfered equals 100% of the paladin's HP. Cooldown is 2 minutes.

A good hand to use on a tank when a boss enrages. With the 100% limit, plus Tower of Radiance talent, as long as the healer is still healing other targets then the healer shouldn't have to worry about dying. This coupled with Divine Shield would mitigate the entire 30% damage.

Hand of Protection

This is the poor man's bubble. You bubble a team member. All damage is prevented, but they cannot attack or use physical abilities. 5 minute cooldown, causes forberance on the target.

This is useful if a DPS, or even another healer's health is dropping way too fast to get a big heal, or taking so much damage that a Holy Shock+WoG can't keep them alive. It also helps DPS that are standing in fire.

I've also used this to calm over-active DPS. If they pull aggro, you HoP them and the boss will go to the next person in line on their aggro table (hopefully is the tank). Hand of Salvation is really designed for this, but sometimes its not enough. Plus this has the added benefit that it cannot be ignored, and their DPS takes a nose-dive. This is bad in a DPS race type fight, but handy to wake up auto-piloting DPS.

Hand of Salvation

Reduces threat of the target by 2% every second for 10 seconds. So after 10 seconds, they've lost 20% of their threat, if they stopped attacking. This is useful if the DPS out-gears the tank and the tank is having trouble staying ahead of the DPS in aggro. 2 minute cooldown.

Hand of Freedom

More of a PVP talent, removes all snares and slowing spells on the target. Useful for the tank if they're having trouble moving. Also useful for dps who might be slowed or snared during movement heavy fights.


Hopefully this little run-through of our major cooldowns has helped someone out there. I've personally macro'd quite a few of the cooldowns to my "big" heals, Flash of Light and Divine Light. Reasoning being that if I'm casting either of those mana-intensive spells then major healing is probably called for. If not, the cooldowns are short enough that they'll come up again.

Even if I do end up wasting the cooldowns half the time, thats still 50% more usage I'm getting out of it than I normally would. Now off to try it out in some dungeons.

Cheers.

Phat Lootz

So Hooff finally got off his lazy belf butt and started going back to work. I spent 2 days questing in Deepholm ( which I completely skipped on the 80-85 leveling ). It took some time but the therazine daillies are now open to him. This plus the dragonmaw daillies provide a small bit of gold, and a steady stream of reputation gains. Relying on getting upgrades purely through normal dungeon drops doesn't work fast enough. I don't run dungeons often enough to get steady upgrades, plus I've gotten almost the best gear I can from normal-85 dungeons.

Reputation rewards have quite a few nice blue, and even some epic pieces for me. A few nights ago the guild did a heroic dungeon run, and I healed. It went pretty well, we wiped once or twice, sometimes to mistakes. My throughput definitely started to wane as the dungeon progressed. We first queued up for random and got Grim Batol. At the first boss we wiped because we had no offtank for the adds. Nib( the tank) asked if anyone minded if we did a different dungeon, I was fine with it. We went and did Blackrock Caverns instead.

The dungeon went well, and I got 3 upgrades total, one for my ret set and two for my healing. I got Heroic: Raz's Pauldrons. With the rare-quality +40str gem, thats a pretty major upgrade to the green iLvl 318 shoulders I was wearing before.

For healing I got: Heroic: Crepuscular Shield. That was also a nice upgrade from the ilvl333 shield I was using before. I also got: Quicksilver Amulet. Wowhead comments say its "The best pre-raiding neck piece for healing classes" which is quite nice. My previous neck piece was a blue ilvl333 neck, so it wasn't terribly huge upgrade.

A nice addition to running that dungeon was that it finally put me over the edge and got me exalted with the Ramkahen faction. This enabled me to purchase their nice blue and epic pieces.

For Healing I got: Sun King's Girdle. An epic healing belt. I'm glad I didn't buy the Light Elementium Belt that was going cheap on the AH. A +40 Int adds even more mana/spellpower goodness. I should also probably get a belt buckle for it, for yet another gem slot. Have to check how much those are.

Ret I was able to buy a Gift of Nadun. A very welcome addition to my then-deficient ret set. I also bought Sandguard Bracers. They are obviously meant for tanking, but the stats were already much better than the ilvl 318 green piece I was wearing. Plus reforging the +dodge to +hit, makes it nice hold-over piece until I can get a proper dps bracer.

If that wasn't enough, opening up the Therazine daillies also let me talk to their quartermaster. Just by questing in Deepholm you already end up at Honored, or close to it. This enabled me to buy some of their lower level items too.

I got Diamant's Ring of Temperance, a nice healing ring. Also Gorsik's Band of Shattering, a dps ring. Both were ok upgrades, but not as dramatic as the earlier upgrades.

To round out the loot parade I also acquired Shroud of Dark Memories and Shield of the Iron Maiden for my probably never used tanking set.

All in all Tuesday night was a loot filled night. My healing set now has an ilvl average of 339, and ret is 334. With this new gear I might be confident enough to try healing a heroic PUG. Maybe, maybe not.

Update

So with my newfound free time I've been steadily leveling my triumvirate of alts. Unfortunately I haven't been leveling them evenly. I worked on Solinari for a while, got her up to Outland, got bored of that, then leveled up Nuiitari. Lunitari is languishing at level 12 merely because I can't have that many characters in the guild. I'm thinking of replacing Caaz with Lunitari, so that I can finally level her. But the guild is short on tanks right now so it may pay to keep Caaz in instead. I haven't decided.

Solinari Level 73 Priest

Soli has gotten up to Borean Tundra. Outland was uneventful, if boring. I've done the 58-68 grind so many times, I do it on auto pilot. It truely is a big letdown after the revamped quests from 1-60.

Before starting outland I had to go back to train up her herbalism. Actually, I leveled to 60 first in outland, then went back. Having a flying mount made training up the herbalism sooo much faster. I even bought her Epic 280% flying, since I was getting tired of how slow the mount was.

Mana has become less of an issue as shadow. With the combination of Shadowfiend and Dispersion, I can usually handle being chained pulled DPSing a dungeon. My DPS is actually pretty respectable, but only on boss fights. The only AOE I have access to, even at this level is Holy Nova, which I forget if it knocks me out of shadowform. Either way it uses a lot of mana for not much damage. I tend to just single target nuke everything.

For healing, mana isn't too bad. I'm trying out the new "smiting" way of healing. Which keeps you constantly casting. Its ok I guess, but I think I prefer the shield+renew way of healing. That might not be too viable once I get into the upper Wrath/Cata instances, so we'll see how that goes.

I've leveled Soli's Enchanting to about 320 or so. Arcane dust is crazy expensive now so I was hoping to bank on DE'ing greens made by Nuii leveling her Tailoring. To do that Nuii has to be at least level 50, so I started leveling her.

Nuiitari Level 50 Warlock

I leveled Nuii to 50 in order to further train her tailoring. Unfortunately the price of Netherweave Cloth is high, probably because of the inflated prices of Netherweave Bags. This makes leveling tailoring in the 300's expensive. The last time I did this on Bob, I had a huge stockpile of cloth, so that helped soften the blow of gold.

At first I was trying to level Nuii as demonlogy. It was the one spec I didn't have much experience with and it seemed to make sense. Having a felguard at such a low level was a boon. I rarely had to stop to drink, and I was plowing through mobs quickly. But as she got higher in level, having the felguard wasn't as imbalanced. Towards the 30's the send-in-the-pet-and-dot style was getting tiresome. I already have to dot the target on my shadow priest, I wanted more burst. I then switched to destruction, which gave me conflagrate. This made quite a bit of difference. Now I send in the voidwalker to tank, hit immolate, conflag and then either a shadowbolt or drain life if running low. The shadowbolt is a long cast, but some talents and procs do bring the cast time down. Its unfortunate you don't get incinerate(fast cast) or even soulfire(instant with soulburn) until much later.

Switching to destruction has really opened the class back up again. With the shoulder, chest and now cloak heirlooms ( +25% XP total), the mana regen BoA trinket, and the guild's +10% XP bonus, you can fly through the levels very quickly.

Unfortunately Lunitari is still at level 12. The main reason being that because she's not in the guild, she loses out on that 10% of xp, which is enough of a psychological reason for me to avoid leveling her.

[Server Farm] Retiring Downy

Yesterday I finally retired Downy. I copied over all the files from the 2.25TB RAID5 array onto frisket's 6TB RAID5, and then shut the machine down. With the changes needed to the den, it was good timing. I was able to move frisket somewhere less conspicuous and downy will be put into "storage" ( probably into its box and then into a closet). I'm not getting rid of downy, just putting it away until my whole situation stabilizes.

Quite a few of the fans in the computers are starting to give out. First it was the exhaust fan in Squirrel. I'm not too surprised since Squirrel, Downy and Frisket are on constantly. Guess I'll have to buy new ones for them.

[WoW]Nuiitari's first PVP kill

This is a comment I left on Miss Mediocre's blog in response to her post Hell hath no Fury

Haha nice story. I suck pretty bad at PVP but I will get into tussle if the need arises. I don’t usually nerd rage from being camped or dying in PVP. Though getting called out as a “bad healer” from a loud mouth in a dungeon will rile me up good.

My own little story:

I was on my lowbie lock, female belf level 36 or so? I was just questing feralas when I notice I was getting dotted up. I noticed a female human lock, level 38 was sending in her voidwalker on me. There was some distance between us so I ran and hid through the thicker part of the forest. Eventually I got far enough away that I was out of combat. I felt a bit betrayed that another lock would try to kill me, the whole honor among deranged, sadistic, demon wielders and all. I said so in guild chat and healed up. Got some laughs and an 85 guildie that offered to help, I said no I would do it myself. Switched out my own void walker for the fel pup ( for spell lock). Mounted up and searched for the lock. Found her questing in an area. Smart play would have been to get her while whe was fighting a mob, but I’ve never had an overabundance of brains. She was at full health and so was I. I sent in the puppy and started with dots. I am destruction spec, so the dots don’t hit as hard as an affliction lock’s. She sends in her void after me. I’m not being dotted up so I guessed the spell lock worked. I hit immolate and a quick conflag. She’s at half health. That’s when the dots start coming. Good thing her void hits like a wet noodle, but the his are interrupting my longer casts. I run in close and hit Arcane Torrent ( idea having just popped in my head a second earlier). By then the dots were widdling her health down to 25%. Conflag came off cool down and another shadow bolt seals the deal. The [An Honorable Kill] achievement pops up in guild chat and the grats start coming in. I don’t stay to revel in my victory in case she calls in friends.

And that’s the story of baby lock’s first PVP kill. My 80 lock on another server would have been so proud.

I'm not sure, maybe I'll rewrite this in character when I get some time/inspiration.

iPhone4 on Verizon

Verizon announced today that the iPhone4 is coming to its network. I'm mildly interested in it because recently I've been somewhat annoyed with ATT's business practices. The most annoying being the change from "unlimited" data to "3GB" limit, for no other reason than just because they can. While I understand that the majority of iPhone users probably don't even approach 3GB, its the fact that we were able to get unlimited before, but now we can't, simply because ATT changed their minds. Thats crap.

Another annoying thing is tethering. They want to charge extra for tethering. So basically they want me to pay an extra monthly fee so that I can use the bandwidth that I've ALREADY PAID FOR. Thats also crap.

Verizon's iPhone4 is playing up that it has mobile hotspot built in. This has been available for a long time on jailbroken iPhone's via MyWi. Not exactly a game changer but still nicer to have it built in rather than having to hack your phone. Of course there will be an extra charge.

When my contract is up I'll have two decisions to make. Whether to stay with ATT or hop to Verizon, and whether to stay on the iPhone train, or jump ship to Android.

[Personal] Lack of posts

I wanted to explain the lack of new content. Currently I'm going through a life changing event. To be honest a lit if the motivation in keeping the stories has been lost. I'd like to keep it going but I've fallen so far behind, the story didn't even mention the shattering yet. I did have a few ideas in mind about how the characters experience the changes to the world, unfortunately I feel that I don't have the skill to do it justice.

I'll keep posting and there will be new installments in the story eventually, when? I have no idea. At this point I'm just trying to emotionally and mentally survive each day. It's been hard I'll be honest.

During my childhood I wouldn't have considered myself a happy kid. I wasn't emo, or outwardly depressing, I chose to keep it in, suffer in silence as it were. The past few years I'd been happy, for the first time in my life things were coming together.

Now I'm back to where I was. I have to relearn how to be happy. It's a long road.

[WoW] Cataclysm Heroics: Halls of Origination

Just ran this HEROIC with the guild. Yesterday I got enough upgrades from normal dungeons to qualify for Heroics ( iLvl 329 average). I barely squeaked by. I didn't consider myself at all ready to actually heal heroics. Today some guys from the guild asked if I'd heal a heroic for them. I told them that I just got to 329 and that I probably wasn't geared for it yet, but said I'd give it a shot anyway. We ended up in Halls of Origination, which I hadn't even run on normal yet!

It went very well. We one-shot all bosses. In fact our only wipe was 3 trash pulls into the instance. I lagged or had a brain fart and tried to keep a dying DPS up. The tank got an extra mob on him and started dropping fast. A dps and the tank dropped, while we had 2 mobs still up. We ping-ponged one of the mobs between DPS until it was dead ( it was pretty close already), then the mage polymorphed the other mob. We were then able to wait until the tank and 2 dps were able to run back in. Guess technically we didn't wipe, but other than that it was groovy.

Impressions

My first impressions of heroics? They're SOO much harder than Wrath heroics. To be honest Wrath heroics were hard at first, but these are at the level of Wrath raids. I truely felt like I was in a raid ( and not just cause it took 2+ hours to do the heroic). The trash pulls had to be CC'd, and I was on my toes the whole time.

Interrupts are crucial. In one of the fights (Temple Guardian Anhuur) its absolutely required that there be an interrupt capable DPS to do the fight well. We happed to get a compitent PUG DK with us. He did very well and stayed up on the platform on his own. He was even able to keep himself up with Death Strikes until the ground phase was done and I could sprint back to heal him up. To Riakk of Wyrmrest Accord, you were awesome. He did very well considering that was also his very first heroic.

A lot of fights required more twitch healing than I thought it would. A few times I absolutely had to use Flash of Light because anything other than a Holy Shock + 3HP Word of Glory wouldn't have been quick enough and hit for hard enough to make it.

Mana

Mana was a much bigger issue in Heroics than in Normals. With casting Judgement on every CD, and heavily favoring my mana-efficient spells, I was able to heal pretty well. I'd have around 30% of my mana left at the end of a fight. But if ever started to neglect casting Judgement my mana would plummet and I would be OOM very quickly.

Also, if I ever let the tank get too far down, it takes an extraordinary amount of mana to catch up. I had to do it a few times and it wasn't fun. Good choice in healing spells was important as well. Sometimes everyone is just taking so much damage that you NEED to use your AOE heals. Being a pally healer having AOE heals is new to me and as such under stress I go back to the furious whack-a-mole style healing that's ingrained in my muscle memory. In some situations this was simply not an option. Holy Radiance was very very useful. When everyone was getting low and I just absolutely needed to do a crazy amount of healing, there's nothing popping Guardian of Ancient Kings, Avenging Wrath, Holy Radiance, then a 3HP Light of Dawn towards a melee heavy group. The entire screen lights up with green number and the little green bars shoot up like jack's beanstalk. Its a sight to see. Of course you hope this is towards the end of the fight because its difficult to regen enough mana to be useful much longer.

All in all it was a good experience, and I gained some upgrades. There really is nothing than a trial by fire to hone your skills and see how you do. If Heroics are already so epic-ally raid like, how are the raids going to be?

[WoW IC] Lunitari out on her own

Lunitari, Apprentice Mage, - Sunstrider Isle

Taking a break today from working. Thats right, I'm working. I decided that I'm not going to let Nuii or Soli have all the fun. I'm gonna strike out on my own. Of course I haven't TOLD them this, but they're both away for work for at least a week so I can do what I want. I decided to start out slow, so I made my way back towards the Mage School, on Sunstrider Isle. This time I took the Windrunner service, got there in fraction of the time.

Currently I'm doing odd jobs, tending to whatever needs tending. The scourge are still everywhere so there's plenty to do. I've also done some training from Magi Sunstriker. My power has steadily improved, and yesterday I decided to focus on the Frost aspect of magecraft. The first spell I trained for was to summon my own Water Elemental. Unlike the Earth and Fire Elementals that Shaman's are able to conjure, mage summoned Water Elementals are allowed to stay on our plane for much longer. Whether this is an inherent ability of Water Elementals or because of the Mage summoning, I don't know.

Communicating with the Water Elemental seems almost harder than learning to summon. As far as I can tell, its the same Elemental every time. He ( or she? ) seems to be able to pick up strong emotions from me, but direct communication is more difficult. Mistress Garidel says that eventually I will be able to speak with the Elemental intuitively, but for now its mostly just him protecting me when I run into trouble.

Work is going pretty well. I've been helping out Starbreeze Village mostly. They're closer to the remaining scourge than other towns, so the fighting there is a bit more common. Its not terrible, there aren't overwhelming hordes of scourge set to pounce on the town. The local militia tends to keep the numbers low enough that travelers aren't in too much danger. Still, sometimes I have to go at it alone and I'm glad I have my elemental with me.

Malware and Blue Screens

Currently the den has felt more like a triage center for computer than a place of gaming and merriment. A few days ago my desktop gets some spyware on it. By "my desktop gets" I mean that I was browsing on the seedier side of the internet, where I knew I really shouldn't be going, and ended up clicking on a dialog box. I'm pretty sure I said "no" to whatever it was that popped up, but I don't think that mattered. "System Tools 2001" stealth-installed and then proceeded to "Scan" my computer. Eventually the system is unusable. I'm able to get it removed by booting into safe mode and installing malwarebytes.

Still, I wasn't completely satisfied that Squirrel( yes all computers in the house have a name, as they should). So I set to work backing up and reformatting the system, just to be sure. As the reinstall is progressing, I work on Fiance's computer. I decide that its defenses need some bolstering so I proceed to grab a "few" anti-spyware/malware/firewall programs. Get those installed, a few quick scans. I fire up WoW and merrily quest. Everything is fine for a few hours until I switch to my lowbie mage. I start to quest and BAM Blue Screen of Death. I find that odd, but I chalk it up to doing too many things at once ( I was still scanning as I was playing). I fire it up again and start to quest, 10 minutes later another blue screen. I disable the newly installed programs, but same result.

At this point Squirrel is back up and running, I copy over the WoW folder from the backup and try playing there. Almost instantly I get a blue-screen. Wow... that was bad. As I'm googling to find a way to remidy this, it blue-screens even while NOT in WoW.

I think I'm going to reformat Squirrel yet again, and this time not install anything but the bare essentials. I'm pretty sure its just software. If it was just one computer failing then I could see that it might possibly be hardware, but both at once?

[WoW IC] Hooff

Traveler's Journal, Illustious Grand Master Paladin, Hooff

Day 180

Well, I'm still here. I'm still me, I think. I've been in this land for 180 days now, and things have certainly been interesting. When Rhonin first approached me about this assignment, I didn't think it would turn out like this. The one constant has been that I don't know when or even if, I'll ever get to go home.

At least I'm not alone, theres about a dozen other warriors gathered here. Some I've worked with before, a fellow Paladin, Nib, a hunter named Kess and others. They also went through the "program" with Rhonin. There are also others from other lands. Many were able to keep their original forms, most from my homeland were not. I have taken the form of a Blood Elf. Valen help-me, I've had to become one of them. The fact that these Blood Elves aren't the ones that committed the atrocities against my people is of little comfort. They've committed atrocities against other peoples, just happens to not be mine.

Why I've come is still not clear to me. Rhonin mentioned that there is a coming evil, and that this land was in need of warriors. I naturally thought of the Lich King, infact we did aid in storming his Citadel. My batallion fought for and defended Valithria Dreamwalker. Our warriors were able to keep the Scourge at bay while the healers tended to the great dragon's wounds. Eventually the green dragon was well enough to move and was able to escape. We also faced the undead wyrm Sindragosa, but repeatedly she was able to repel our advances. There were heavy casualties but we were able to escape with our lives.

I heard days later, while recovering from my wounds that another Batallion was able to kill the Lich King, and the war was over. After such a long campaign ( both here and at home), it was almost bittersweet to not have had a direct hand in his downfall.

Since then the scourge has been steadily declining. Not all attacks have ceased but their forces are on the decline. It seems without their master, the scourge are content to hold onto whatever lands they've conquered. It will take years to reclaim what was lost, but it will get done.

I'm headed back "home". The warriors from home, as well as other distant lands have formed a guild of sorts. We are few, but it helps to keep ties to what you still have. We have a guild office in Orgrimmar. Apparently to be recognized by Thrall as a "sanctioned" guild, then you must have an office. It consists mostly of a table, a small chair, and a sign in the window that reads "Out". The only time the office is ever occupied is when we have a meeting, which is few and far between. Each of the members have their own residences in other horde controlled areas. I've taken to staying at an Inn in Silvermoon. While I have no love for Blood Elves and their precious city, they do have the most comfortable of beds.

[WoW] Healing thoughts

Miss Medicina made a comment on her come-back post that got me thinking. Here's the original post She's Alive.

The comment was that she was having to re-adjust to healing again from the hiatus from WoW. Specifically she remarked that "I throw heals on people and it is the perfect example of a drop in an ocean." I couldn't agree more. I've really started to notice this when I'm healing the new dungeons ( still on normal as I haven't reached 85 yet). The health pools are quite massive, even at pre-85. A guildie tank at 82 had 70k health, an 84 DK DPS had 85k+. With healthpools that massive, even our big heals won't make a dent if the target is <40% health.

I think this is one of the big causes of healers feeling very underpowered. Personally, when I heal the big green crits are nice, but they're not my main focus. My main focus is how much of that little green bar filled up after my heal. So even though we're healing for huge amounts, since the bars aren't refilling near as quickly as they used to, it FEELS like we're weak.

This also contributes to the feeling of OOM that many healers have complained about in the forums. What do you do when your last heal didn't bring the green bar up high enough? You cast it again and again until the bar is comfortably full.

Don't let it fall

The way I've handled this is actually opposite of what Blizzard was telling us we would be doing in Cataclysm. I'm topping off more than normal. More specifically, I'm using my smallest and/or most efficient heal, and topping everyone off as soon as I see that the heal won't just be 80% overheal. For pallies this is Holy Shock/Word of Glory on cooldown, or Holy Light if needed. In a perfect setup I would time the perfect heal, with the perfect cast time, to do as little overheal as possible. But since we're all still learning these fights I'm giving up some overhealing in order to keep the healthpools up in the 80-90% range.

This keeps me used to seeing smaller changes in the healthpool, and reduces the frantic heal spam when someone's health is in the 30% range. Once I get into heroics I'm sure I'll have to alter my strategy a bit, but for now this seems to work well. This is especially useful in pugs where, to be honest, I don't trust the DPS or even the tank to blow defensive cooldowns when they're in trouble. I'll be more adventurous in a guild run, but any group from the DF means I'm on my guard.

Mana regen

Since the server transfer, I haven't had a chance to go back to my old server and try healing on my shaman, so I can really only comment on Paladin, and to a lesser extent, lowbie Priest healing. But Blizzard seems to have built an offensive mechanic to allow healers to regen some mana. Priests have their Smite + Archangel combo, but I have yet to see real gains from it. My priest is stuck at around level 50, so I can't comment on how well this regen works.

For Paladins, being a hybrid class, there seems to be some intended, and possibly unintended synergy between our offensive abilities and mana regen/conservation.

1. Judgements: Judging restores 15% of base mana. Thats a lot considering the cooldown and cost of our judgement spell. Not only are we doing a small bit of damage to the boss, refreshing our Haste buff, but we're also getting mana back. At 83, with a mix of t10 and cata quest blues/greens I'm getting back about 6% of my mana per judgement.

2. Divine Plea: Our old mana regen. Blizzard nerfed it like crazy, but it does still give back some mana. Watch out for the healing debuff though. I usually cast it more in the beginning of the fight, when damage hasn't ramped up yet. Also useful for trash pulls, instead of drinking.

3. Crusader Strike: Yes, it requires being in melee range, something no other healer would dare. But we're paladins, wearing plate, with more defensive cooldowns than some tanks ( sorry warriors ). CS won't actually return you mana, but it will gurantee a holy power charge. If you can position yourself in a semi-safe area where you can melee on a mob ( I personally go behind a caster mob, or slightly back of the melee hitting the boss), you can CS on cooldown significantly increasing the rate at which you can Word of Glory or Light of Dawn. Even a single CS gives you a free heal.

Also, this works well with Holy Radiance. Most pally healers would probably use Holy Radiance by sitting next to the casters. They can cast holy radiance to heal the casters, and use Light of Dawn to AOE the melee. I turned this backwards. I sit next to the melee, and Light of Dawn the casters. Since the casters tend to like to spread out, this fits with the cone targeting of Light of Dawn.

Obviously this won't work for every boss, and in some bosses it would be bad news. For these normal dungeons its working well, as long as the boss doesn't have a stomp or anything. I'll keep you guys posted if and when this thing backfires on me.

Happy Healing.

[WoW] Dungeon Finder "First Impressions" or How to fix "meet the requirements for this dungeon" error.

The past few days I've been receiving that error whenever I've tried to queue up on the Dungeon Finder. I finally figured out that though I HAD discovered Throne of Tides and Blackrock Caverns, I still needed to discover The Stonecore before DF would let me queue. Yesterday I discovered it, and got brave. I queued up as DPS or Healer.

About 10 minutes later the DF pops and I'm notified that I will be a healer for an "Already in progress" dungeon. To me this was a bad start, as there are quite a few disadvantages to being matched into a dungeon thats already started.

1. Less loot, since they're already killed mobs and bosses then there's less chance for loot you.

2. Ditto as #1 for XP. Less mobs killed, less xp.

3. There's a good chance that the reason they need to REPLACE a healer is because the previous healer got fed up with their shinaniggans.

This was the experience I had in this dungeon. It had almost EVERY stereotype DF fail-group personality. The gogogog rogue, the hunter that "accidentally" pulls more mobs, and the tank that loved BIG pulls. Here's how it went down.

I zone in to the dungeon and switch specs/gear. As I'm switching I call out in chat that I've never done this dungeon, so someone may have to explain if there's something complicated I need to worry about. The tank chimes in that its his first time also. This seems like a plus to me, inexperienced tank means he might be more cautios. Rogue immediatly pipes in and says "gogogo" (-100 for him). I guess the tank pulls, and they fight a pack of mobs. I say I "guess" because I'm still at the front of the instance running towards them, while they're somewhere in the middle. They last a little while, tank dies, then the rogue, then the pally. Hunter feign's death.

Tank asks in chat "heals?".

I reply "Still in the front of the instance, I just zoned in".

Tank replies, "Then why did someone say gogogo?"

Surprisingly the rogue speaks up and apologizes ( +1 for him ), then asks if he can be rezzed ( -1 for him ). I rez him and the tank, and we buff up and eat/drink.

The rogue then says "gogogo" again.

I reply "Jeez, chill", since one of the DPS is still running back, as her body was too close to the mobs for a safe rez.

We were making decent progress, so I decide to stick with it. In the room before Ozruk, where there are 4-5 groups of mobs pretty closely packed. The tank decides that he'll tank one group of mobs where they were, but not before waiting until a patrol comes by so that he can get them both. That was annoying but nothing I couldn't handle. This is when the hunter decides to tab-target once too much and pulls ANOTHER group. Unfortunately they're ranged so the tank can't just taunt. I end up having to run over to the mobs, stun them, and then line of sight them over the tank, and hope that the tank notices and hits a thunderclap. At some point in the fight another group is pulled. I'm healing like mad, bubbling the DPS, throwing out Light of Dawn on CD. Eventually we live, but not before I was completely OOM. The DPS are cheering, and I just put one phrase in the chat.

"Smaller pulls please."

We did down the rest of the bosses, so I can't really consider the group a fail-group, it certainly wasn't relaxing. I did the same dungeon again, but this time with the guild and it was much smoother. The tank did die once, because I got line-of-sighted in the Ozruk fight with the falling rocks. Other than that smooth sailing.

The guild then 4-manned Blackrock Caverns. I think we've 4-manned every dungeon available to us so far ( except The Vortex Pinnacle, we've never been in there). The dungeons are certainly doable, and having one less DPS just makes the fights last a bit longer.

Keep in mind this is all on Normal difficulty as we level up. I'm sure it'll be much different once we hit Heroics.

[WoW] Ganking in Vashj'ir

Last night was my first real experience with Ganking/Griefing. I was trying to do the quests inside Nespirah, the ones that involve you going to his "brain" chamber. 3-4 Alliance toons decided that it'd be a hoot to sit there and gank any horde trying to talk to the quest giver. 3 Alliance toons is enough to cause even a decent PVPer some issues, especially when one is a healer.

I had to wait until there was a sufficient amount of hordies being killed that we could run in together and kill the gankers. This didn't take long at all, but as soon as we did that, grabbed our quests, everyone dispursed. 10 minutes later, when I'm trying to turn in said quests, the gankers were back. This got annoying quickly, since we had to go back to that NPC multiple times. Eventually 1-2 people stayed at the NPC in order to keep the ganking down. Funny enough, the horde "keeping the peace" let Alliance members get the quests as well. They only attacked when attacked.

That really shattered my long and totally illogical image of the horde as the "Mean" faction.

True Story.