When I do get picked up by a group, I ask “am I healing or hurting?”. When they tell me that I’m healing, I tell them that I’m a noob healer. Then I notice that everybody usually targets me. My assumption is that it’s to inspect me.

Some dude said “LOL, liar, nice gear noob”. That’s when I have to tell them “my healing gear is epic, my healing skill is not”  – I’m going to macro that cuz I’m tired of typing it. I let them know that I’ve never solo healed before and that I’ve only healed 10 and 25man raids where I always have someone to somewhat cover my ass.

Now, having said all of that, HEALING IS FUN SHIT, despite what some people think!

Perhaps it’s because I’m new to healing and am only used to tanking or dps’ing, but it is very fun to me! In the first heroic VH I did, there were only two deaths (sorry random mage, I blew my Holy Shock since I momentarily forgot which mouse button it was keyed to; here, have a Sacred Sheild – woops, I’ll rez/buff you in a few seconds) and no wipes. I healed another VH later (after the reset an hour later). Then I healed heroic UK, despite my not-knowing how long I couldn’t heal after the last boss does his silencing thing. In case you’re wondering, I got silenced, so I didn’t wait long enough.

In other news, I finally got my ring enchants, 2x19sp for my holy gear and 2x32ap for my ret gear! My enchanting is at 405 now. I don’t plan on advancing it further than that, but it might happen eventually. My unbuffed spell power is over 2k in my holy gear. My self-buffed ap is just under 4200 in my ret gear.

My glyph selection is very weak at the moment, for both of my specs. The scribes must be making a TON of money right now – good for them. It’s amazing that some people will buy a glyph for 300-400gold.

I (re-)started fishing too! I’m up to about 200 so far. The new fishing dailys are pretty cool. I really like that I can start to level my cooking with the new fish that I’m getting. Being able to fish from outside of VH is very cool stuff. I find that if I can fish while I’m in LFG, I don’t get so bothered at how long it takes to get a group for <insert random heroic name here>.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: enchanting, glyphs, Healing, heroics, holy

I logged in just for a few minutes, mostly to buy my 2nd spec, spend the points and to glyph up both specs.

My account still stands as canceled but I am definitely more intrigued than I have been recently. I believe my boredom with the game stemmed from doing the same thing for too long. I’d log in, do my JC daily, heal some battlegrounds (as ret, in PvP holy gear), look for a group for a heroic and very little else.

Since I canceled my account, I changed my habits a bit. I finally dropped mining and picked up enchanting, like I said I would many months ago. I needed to keep a minimum of 1k gold so I could get the dual spec talent so I didn’t want to spend a LOT of gold leveling it. As a result, I spent a lot of time in Sholazar Basin and did all of the quests there, mostly for the green quest rewards. I made a lot of gold in the process.

I manage to get enchanting up to 380. I was able to DE most of the epics that I no longer use. Another 20 points, and I’ll have access to the ring enchants that enchanters can use.

As for which specs I chose, my primary is ret and my secondary is holy. I’d link to my builds, but my armory appears to be borked!

Regarding the ret major glyphs that I will be using, I’m going with Josh’s choices: Glyph of Judgement, Glyph of Consecration, and Glyph of Exorcism. If I find I need more mana, I’ll be using Glyph of Seal of  Blood in lieu of the consecration glyph.

As for my holy major glyphs, I’m going to be using the Glyph of Holy Light, Glyph of Holy Shock and one other, that I haven’t determined yet.

I haven’t purchased the glyphs yet because they are crazy expensive at the moment. The judement glyph was selling for 75g last night and the exorcism glyph was selling for 86g! It serves me right though, I should have been more diligent about buying them before 3.1 came out.

I currently have 25 JC tokens stock-piled. I assumed the new JC resilience patterns would require JC tokens to purchase, but I was wrong so it looks like I’ll be buying dragon’s eyes and selling them so that I can fund my enchanting.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: 3.1, dual spec, glyphs, holy, ret

Talent Dual Spec Q&A with Ghostcrawler
With the next content patch, we will be introducing a number of additions and changes to the game. One new feature in the works is the ability to set up two separate sets of talents, or “dual spec”. While the complete feature may not be immediately available in the Public Test Realms (PTR) and specifics are still liable to change, we wanted to go over some questions with Senior Game Designer Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street to find out more.
Nethaera: What is dual speccing?
Ghostcrawler: Dual speccing is the ability to save two separate talent specs, glyphs, and action bars.
Nethaera: Why are we allowing players to dual spec after all this time?
Ghostcrawler: We really felt like this was a great way to increase the flexibility available to players and encourage them to take part in more aspects of the game. To use just one example, some players like to participate in both raids and Arenas, which is awesome behavior that we want to promote. But, there are some talents which are more useful in one part of the game than another. Currently, players have to pay respec costs and go through the process of setting up the desired talent spec and action bars whenever they switch.
The new system makes this a much more logical process, saving on time and cost and allowing players to easily move from one aspect of the game to another.
Nethaera: Who will be able to use it?
Ghostcrawler: Players who have reached the maximum level will be able to set up dual specs.
Nethaera: Why do players need to be max level in order to do this?
Ghostcrawler: We didn’t want to burden lower-level players with extra complexity as they’re working to level up and learn their class. But if the feature proves popular we might consider expanding it.
Nethaera: How will you be able to set up a dual spec?
Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to visit their trainer and pay a one-time fee to be able to use it.
Nethaera: How do you switch between specs?
Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to switch between their talent specs by visiting any Lexicon of Power provided they’ve paid for the ability to have a secondary spec. Lexicons of Power will be available in major cities, and inscribers will also be able to create a new item that summons one. Anyone can purchase this item, but it requires a ritual of several players to summon it for use by the party. It’s similar to a repair bot in that it will exist in the world for a short duration. It’s important to keep in mind that you will not be able to switch specs while in combat or Arenas. While you won’t be able to switch your spec without the Lexicon, you will still be able to look at your secondary spec whenever you want to.
Nethaera: Will solo players have the ability to switch their specs outside of the cities or will they still need to visit a Lexicon of Power?
Ghostcrawler: Solo players will still need to go into the city to visit the Lexicon of Power to switch their talent spec or will need to get together with other players to summon one in.
Nethaera: Is the item that allows you to summon a Lexicon of Power reusable, or is it used up?
Ghostcrawler: We haven’t made a final decision on that yet, and will be evaluating how it works on the PTR.
Nethaera: Can I respec only one of my talent sets, or will I need to respec them both if I reset one?
Ghostcrawler: When you reset your talents, it will look at the spec you currently have in use as the talent set you want to change.
Nethaera: Will you be able to switch gear easily to match your spec?
Ghostcrawler: At the same time we implement dual specs, we will also be setting up a gear system. The feature is called “Gear Manager.” It can also be used to just swap weapons or trinkets or put on that tuxedo to strut around town. It will not automatically switch your gear when you change your talent spec, but it will allow for an easy gear change between them. The feature may not be fully functional immediately in the PTR, but we’ll have more information to share about it before too much longer.
Nethaera: What about hunters? Often their pet talents are set up to match the talents of the hunter. Will they be able to switch their pet specs as well?
Ghostcrawler: We will wipe the pet talents. However we are going to remove the respec cost for pet talents so that players won’t feel like they need to jump through an additional hoop to respec their pet. In addition, we are going to provide hunters a new core ability to let them remotely access their stable on a long cooldown. This way if their exotic pet heads off to the stable, they will be able to get a different pet. We hope to be able to discuss this new spell in more detail when we get a little further along.
Nethaera: Will you be able to change your Glyphs as well?
Ghostcrawler: Glyphs will be tied to each talent spec so that if you switch between them, so too will the Glyphs. You’ll notice the UI will have changed a little bit so that the Glyph panes show up alongside the Talent panes now that they are associated.
Nethaera: What about hotbars? Will players be able to save them for the talent spec they’re running?
Ghostcrawler: Yes, you will be able to save hotbars and use them with your talent specs. It just saves your bars at the same time as it saves the glyphs and talents. If you want to switch to your other action bar, you will need to change specs.
Nethaera: Is there a way for players to choose their talents without them being saved? Currently, once you spend your talent point, it’s spent unless you pay the respec cost again.
Ghostcrawler: With the dual spec feature, we are going to allow players who respec to configure all their talents before they get saved. They will be able to allocate the points, then choose if they want to use that as their spec, rather than needing to carefully diagram out their talents ahead of time. This will allow players a little more freedom when deciding on the talents they want to pick and avoid costly mistakes.
Nethaera: Will players be confined to only setting up two specs?
Ghostcrawler: We will be launching the feature with just two specs, but depending on how we feel it works out, we might consider additional specs in the future.
Nethaera: When can players expect to try out dual specs?
Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to try out the dual spec system on the Public Test Realms when they are made available. This has been a pretty big project with a lot of people working toward making it a reality in the game. We’ll definitely be watching the feedback and looking for ways of making sure the system works the way we all envisioned it to.

I cannot wait to test this out! I’ve very excited about this feature being implemented.

My idea, for right now anyway, is that I’ll be prot and holy as my two specs. I’ve been wanting to try out holy since I’ve been collecting good gear for it through various raids and heroics. This is my chance to try the spec with a net in case I really hate it. I won’t be out 100g just to try a spec and then decide that I hate it.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: 3.1, dual spec, holy, prot, ret

Naxx

I raided Naxx with my guild on Friday and Saturday nights. On Friday, we did the Arachnid (achievement) and Plague (achievement) quarters. On Saturday, we did the Military (achievement) quarter and attempted the Construct quarter. On the Construct quarter, we downed Patchwerk and attempted Grobbulus a couple of times. We couldn’t get Grobbulus down since over 1/2 of the raid was lagging including our MT (who d/c’d on 2 of the attempts). We called the raid after the last wipe.

I walked out of Naxx with four drops, three of which are holy! The fourth drop was a cloak (that I will link when I am able to log into WoW) that is not any better than my current cloak. The holy pieces were Helm of the Corrupted Mind and two others that I’ll name and link when can log in to WoW.

Tanking

We were going to try and finish Naxx on Sunday night but couldn’t since one of our healers was having internet issues and couldn’t log in. We decided to split up into groups and do some heroics instead. Our MT has been wanting to respec ret and knows that I’ve been wanting to try my hand at tanking so we switched specs. I went with the most popular prot pally build (5/60/6) according to talentchic.com.

We attempted the first boss (Slad’ran) of Heroic Gundrak three times before skipping him in hopes of getting some emblems from two other bosses and then returning to him.

We downed the other bosses in the instance without a problem and went back to Slad’ran. We wiped on him once more before the freshly minted (read: very low dps) lock logged out and into his much better geared mage. After that switch was made, that boss was very trivial. Once attempt, one downing, altar switched and then it was onto the last boss, Gal’darah. The last boss was just as trivial as the others.

I got the achievement for completing Gundrak on Heroic. After reviewing the dps of my group (to myself), I commented that I should get the achievement for tanking my first heroic. Then I looted the boss and saw my achievement waiting: the Horn-Tipped Gauntlets! Those dropping was the icing on the cake for me.

The dps for the group was pretty low considering it was a heroic run. The top dps-er averaged ~1400 dps while the second was 1100ish. The fresh 80 lock averaged just over me, with 900ish dps. I rounded out the bottom with 823 dps (which I feel is extremely low for a WotLK tank).

I had a lot fun tanking that instance, despite the low dps of the group and the many wipes we faced. Tanking is a lot more hectic than dps but I’m ready to tank some more.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: epic, gear, gundrak, heroic, holy, naxx, naxxramas, raiding, ret, tank

I did a little searching online and found a very helpful post over at tankspot.com titled “Uncrittable from crafting and rep only“. Following that guide to fill out the pieces I needed, I got to 535 defense easily.

I was looking up the new titansteel stuff on wowhead.com and noticed that the mats for the Titansteel Shield Wall were relatively cheap. I had that crafted by a guildy and that pushed my defense to 541.

My only issue now is my health. Currently, my health sits at 18,400. I could gain a lot of health by enchanting my gear so that will be my next goal for my prot gear.

The Titansteel Shield Wall was my first WotLK epic.

I was only able to do one instance run as prot since our server seems to be suffering from a major lack of healers, which is why I’ll sadly be dropping my new prot spec (and all my new awesome gear) and eventually going holy.

I’ll go back to ret and try to get into heroic or regular instance groups as dps. When dual specs are implemented, I’ll go ret and holy so that I can solo and still fill out an instance group, when needed.

With the new glyphs on the PTR (patch 3.0.8), healing as holy should get a bit easier. The Glyph of Holy Light will now heal everybody by 10% within 20 yards (up from 5 yards). The new Glyph of Flash of Light now increases the crit chance of the Flash of Light by 5% (changed from “Your Flash of Light heals for 50% less initially, but also heals for 140% of its initial effect over 12 sec”).

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2008. | Permalink
Post tags: 3.0.8, dual spec, holy, pally, prot, respec, ret, titansteel, uncrittable

Protection

* Divine Protection The penalty has been removed.
* Divine Shield The penalty has been changed so that all damage done is reduced by 50% in place of an attack speed penalty.
* Hand of Protection now Cannot be targeted on players who have used Avenging Wrath within the last 30 sec sec.
* Avenging Wrath now Cannot be used within 30 sec sec. of being the target of Divine Shield, Divine Protection, or Hand of Protection.

Retribution

* Judgement of Wisdom now give each attack a chance to restore 2% of the attacker’s base mana. (Old – 1% of the attacker’s maximum mana) *NERF to Holy pallys*
* Judgement of Light now also procs from ranged attacks.
* Seal of Blood now deals 27% of normal weapon damage. (up from 22%)
* Seal of the Martyr now deals 27% of normal weapon damage. (up from 22%)

Talents
Retribution

* Seal of Command now Gives the Paladin a chance to deal {0.45*Min Weap Damage+0.45*0.23*SpellPower} to {0.45*Max Weap Damage+0.45*0.23*SpellPower} additional Holy damage. (Old – Didn’t scale with Spell Power)
* Vengeance now stacks up to 5 times. (Up from 3)

Holy

* Judgements of the Pure now Increases the damage done by your Seal and Judgement spells by 5/10/15/20/25%, and your Judgement spells increase your casting and melee haste by 3/6/9/12/15% for 1 min.

Protection

* Sacred Duty no longer reduces the attack speed penalty on Divine Shield and Divine Protection. Rank 2 now increases total stamina by 8%. (Up from 6%)

The Glyph of Holy Light was buffed as well:

Glyph of Holy Light — Your Holy Light grants 10% of its heal amount to up to 5 friendly targets within 10 20 yards (up from 5 yards) of the initial target. (yay!!)

While this isn’t the holy pallys answer for an AoE heal, it’s better than it was. The old glyph, effecting everybody within 5 yards, barely covered other melee. If melee dps are positioned where they should be (behind or to the side of a mob), then that put them out of the 5 yard range of the glyph (generally speaking of course, that would vary by boss encounter). The buff to 10 yards makes this a must have glyph for all holy paladins.

Edit (12/15/08): Two other glyph changes were announced on mmo-champion.com:

Glyph of Flash of Light - Your Flash of Light has an additional 5% critical strike chance. (Old – Your Flash of Light heals for 50% less initially, but also heals for 140% of its inital effect over 12 sec.)
Glyph of Hammer of Wrath – Reduces the cost of Hammer of Wrath by 100%.  (Old – Increases the range on Hammer of Wrath by 5 yards.)

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2008. | Permalink
Post tags: buff, holy, nerf, pally, patch, protection, ret

The major glyphs that I plan to get at level 70 are Glyph of Judgment, which increases damage from judgments by 10% and the a Glyph of Seal of Command, which increases the chance of proccing Seal of Command damage by 20% (takes it from 7 procs per minutes (ppm) to 8.4ppm).

The minor glyphs that I plan to get at level 70 are the Glyph of Lay on Hands, the Glyph of Blessing of Might and the Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom.

The Glyph of Lay on Hands increases the mana restored by your Lay on Hands spell by 20%. The Glyph of Blessing of Might increases the duration of your Blessing of Might by 20 minutes. The Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom increases the duration of your Blessing of Wisdom by 20 minutes. The last two glyphs of blessing (of might and wisdom) make those two 10 minute buffs into 30 minute buffs and that is very nice.  Currently, I’ve been using the Greater Blessing of Might and Greater Blessing of Wisdom group buffs so that I could avoid having to remember reapplying whichever buff I was using every 10 minutes. The greater blessings required reagents to use. The greater blessings also cost roughly twice the mana and the non-greater blessings.

The current glyphs suck, I hope they get better once WotLK comes out!

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2008. | Permalink
Post tags: 70, glyph, pally, ret