Rotations

There's this one blog that i love reading.  The guy who writes it is pretty entertaining.  but he speaks truth even in an entertaining form.  he's a little over-the-top when it comes to explaining things.  but hey, it gets the point across.


so from Jong and Forbearace comes this:

What are you doing "thinking" about your rotation anyways? It should be like breathing. Do you sit there consciously observing the intricacies of inhale/exhale mechanics? It should just float off your finger tips while you tend to the real task: orchestrating the efforts of clueless scrubs running around flopping they arms.

So with rotations, live it. breathe it.  make it roll off your fingers without even thinking.  go to the target dummies and spend 10 minutes a day there.  watch your dps meter and adjust if you want to, just to see if you can gain more dps.  you'll do two things here.  you'll hone your rotations to maximize damage on your own (and not from a website) and you'll train your fingers to press the right buttons at the right time all the time.  when it comes time to top dps in instances, you'll have that muscle memory working for you.

remember to switch it up.  that's the main thing.  people dont take the time to put different spells in to spice up their rotations. and sometimes, that results in an increased dps you never knew you could have done.  some will argue that you have to do it in the instances for it to be "real" since that's where it counts.  but i find that doing it at the target dummies make it much much easier to transfer all that newfound skill into the "real" world. 

and its always good to go back to the target dummies every 10 levels while leveling since you're always learning new spell and abilities as you're leveling. And every time you upgrade gear sets at 80 (or even one or two upgrades, since they offer bonuses or stats that may alter your rotations for maximum dps).

just a reminder to visit the dummies.  i love dummies anyway.

Monday Report - Outlands: Halfway mark

It's Monday and I just want to update my two or three followers out there about the happenings of WoW and stuff for me and my gf.

This weekend we got our deathknights to level 66-67. We've been going through dungeon after dugneon trying to get some very nice gear but unfortunately, things arent going that well.  Neither of us got the boots from Ramps (tho we both have hellreavers and the belt).  i could never get quagmaron to drop the chest piece so im stuck buying fel iron chestpiece from the AH.  quest reward items and green drops have been sucking lately as well.  my gf has a bit more luck with drops tho.  she's got matching chest and pants from some dungeon.  What we're trying to get are shoulderpads, boots, a new sword or hammer, and a nice chestpiece for me.  Sucks. but oh well.  with all the gemming we do to the new gear (note that these gems are from the Wrath expansion and not the Burning Crusade expansion) we are pretty over-geared for the content we do, even if we dont have all the gear we want. and this is the sole reason why i see level 65s do 600-1000 dps in dungeons.  back when the burning crusade was the only expansion, the gems that you can place in these slots werent so hot, but helped anyway.  seeing 600 dps was the cream of the crop.  but now, seeing 600 dps is the standard.  anyone below that?  we know they dont know how to really "play" their class.

anyway, with the list of rewards slowly going obsolete in four levels (and it is very important to a tank, as every tank that i took personally to northrend who wasnt geared in northrend items usually died in two to three hits, with any pulls that had more than 3 mobs obliterating each and every one of those tanks) i think its a good time to save a little bit of cash to buy up cobalt bars.  i'll also have to get someone to craft the entire cobalt set.  actually i've been looking since two nights ago and can only find the gloves (since the material costs to make it is low, people usually make tons of these to level up their profession, not knowing that other pieces will sell for a lot more). 

Since its a whole set, im probably going to buy up the cobalt bars i need and tip a BSer to make the items for me.  they will fill in nicely at level 70.  i dont think i want to tank anything in northrend until i actually get this set.  i've healed some squishies in UK and Nexus before, and those were people who had really nice gear from outland. and they're squishy in northrend. seriously they are. 

in any case, back to outland talk.  we've just opened up Escape from Durnholde. Hopefully we'll find a group for this during the weeknights.  I know a lot of people dont bother to do the quest to open up these instances, but how many more times can someone go through mana-tombs and sethekk halls before they rip their eyes out?  durnholde, and the followup dungeon Black Morass, will help break up the monotony. actually i kinda want to do tempest keep stuff before we hit 70, but seeing that these dungeons are 70, i might end up skipping them.  sucks for a tank, because tanks need to be able to soak up the damage the mobs deal.  but we'll work on it. 

doing the higher level dungeons will probably be a lot of fun.  its not a breeze like northrend, really.  what i mean is that these dungeons are still "hard" if you dont come to it with your full attention.  i actually would rather just do instances for content rather than gear. so these instances will still be on my list of to-do even while im past level 70.  actually, my paladin, Devynity, was still doing tempest keep and magisters terrace at level 74 (which i think, is the last level i can queue up for those dungeons.  sad but yea).

okay, so coffee is kicking in now and hopefully i'll have more to say a little later on today. so there, we're about halfway through all of outland's dungeons. we barely scratched the outland contenent itself, but we're slowly getting there.  in any case, six instances explored, about eight more to go.  gonna write more later, hopefully. 

Compliments

Just to think, i thought my tanking kinda sucks cos of all the stupid things that keep the tank sapped, disarmed, or feared. and then i get this...

I was actually complimenting the healer as he never let me drop below 50% health.  okay maybe once but that was due to a bad patrol running around.

keep on tanking?  hell yea!

now all i gotta do is figure out why dks have bad rep.... ha!

DK Blood Tanking Lv 60

Death Knight Tanking So Far

So my girl and i decided to make death knights!  i already have several death knights.  Unholy Tank, Frost DPS, and some others i got bored with.  What i find most interesting is the whole experience of tanking at level 60, and then turning around and healing other DK tanks at the same level.  Here is my experience so far.

Death Knight's POV
Here i am standing at the entrance of Ramparts, level 60, with brand new spells like Death and Decay.  I dont have all the talents i need yet to be effective (and when i say effective, i mean super good that everyone praises me and stays in hopes that i queue up again).  But i do have enough points to do what i need to do.

Preface:  There are talents in every tree for tanking, and in the first tier.  these talents should be used by all tanks at level 60, even if it keeps us from the juicy Howling Blast talent.  These talents are easy to get, as they're in the first tier of each tree.  Blood tree, get Blade Barrier. Frost tree, get Toughness.  Unholy tree, get Anticipation.  These talents are there for every Dk to easily get so they can tank effectively in any spec they choose.

I am spec'd in blood so i have some of the juicy self-healing spells that totally rock.  i also have the DK's version of the warrior's last stand.  I am sooooo hoping for icebound fortitude soon (warrior version is shield wall), which will reduce the damage taken by about 40%.  since i dont have defense rating, i'll need to glyp it, but i already have my two glyph slots filled (dilemas!!!) with Death Strike and Vampiric Blood.  I should probably get rid of the DS glyph. its more damage anyway.  I was thinking of replacing it with Rune Strike, but +10% crit "can" help, but not really if my main concern is just to hold aggro and stay up.

My blood tree is filled with talents that improve my survival, increases my runic regeneration, and gives me nifty tools to regain lost health.  it does not include any extra crit, but i do have the 2-hand weapon talent.  more damage is, actually, more threat.  but im more concerned about survival. 

I've also gone ahead and put 5 points in the frost tree in Toughness and 5 points in Unholy tree in Anticipation.  These are the bread and butter of tanking, but it does require 10 points spent elsewhere, and early on.  optimally, we'd want to spend those 10 points after we fill up 51 points in our main tree.  but for tanking, im at 40/5/5 instead of 50/0/0.  Since i only have 40 points in Blood, one juicy tanking talent (the one that reduces damage if im lower than 35% health, i forgot the name) is missing.  Imagine being a Frost tank, and not having howling blast (a staple) until level 70 because we have to spend 5 points in blood and 5 points in unholy first.  that sucks for frost tanks (unless they skip Blade Barrier and Anticipation to fill them up between 60-70). 

I am now building up my unholy tree and hopes to get a shorter cooldown/CD on Death and Decay and longer disease durations.  As of right now with zero points in Morbidity, i find that if DPS are decent, we will kill a group about 10 secnods before my DnD is refreshed.  What i'd like, is for the DnD to be available immediately after killing one group, so that i can use it on the next, or that i can use it again should there be adds. 

What i also find is that tanking is not as smooth as dps.  every pull requires Death and Decay.  why?  because of Disarms.  that's correct. for those who have never tanked Ramps, it is an annoyance for many tanks due to the mob's disarm effect.  they will "disarm" me for several seconds.  in which time, i am unable to attack much (but i do punch!) so having DnD down to maintain aggro is a great tool.  I cant imagine tanking without some AoE tool that will allow me to hold aggro until i get my sword back. and once i do get my sword back, i get disarmed again after a hit.  its quite annoying, but im still doing my job.  oh how i miss DPS.  i never get disarmed and my rotations are always as smooth as silk.

Positioning: In terms of positioning, Ramps is quite a challenge.  Every group is spread apart OK, with very little wiggle room to move around.  Not only that, there are patrols roaming around.  If those patrols arent dispatched properly, they can aggro during a fight (and not only the patrols, but also the group standing close enough to the patrols, so then you'll be dealing with two GROUPS of adds, instead of just one).  what i try to do is face the mobs to the side so my back is usually against the wall.  this offers lots of camera angling and zooming just to be able to see around me, but it keeps me and the DPS from "butt" pulling the next group. To butt pull, simply walk backwards into a group.  They will notice your butt and spank it.

This "buttpull" happens a lot with new tanks, actually.  They seem to not realize that when they charge into a group of mobs, the melee dps needs to stand BEHIND the mobs they're tanking.  in so doing, there is a possibility that the DPS will aggro a new group.  This is stupid play and all tanks should learn to move the group of mobs to a safer spot in order for the dps to actually stand behind the mobs.  now if you have only ranged dps, where the tank faces sometimes does not matter.  The tank still needs to be able to face the group to see if there are mobs running to chew on the healer or ranged dps.  but i find this practice uncommon in the many instances i've been in lately. 

Although it seems like i can handle two groups of mobs at a time, i usually try to keep it to one group only.  the reason for this is that i do not have all my cooldowns yet, my rune usage is wonky, i dont have rune strike until level 66 and i do feel a bit squishy.  When am i not squishy?  when i never dip below 35% health (this is when Mik's Scrolling Combat Test chimes me that im low in health).  But when the healer constantly has to work to keep me up, i know that im taking a lot of damage.  Whats strange is that i've healed many dk tanks similar to me and it felt just fine.  my mana usage was decent, my heals were flowing nicely, and i rarely had to use Nature's Swiftness emergency spell.  But when it comes down to me tanking, i have this irrational idea that if i dip too low in health, i shouldnt tank (maybe this is due to countless heroics where i've tanked, and kept many tanks up where we're never below 50% health unless somoeone screwed up bad). 

Anyway, that about wraps up my thoughts on level 60 tanking.  it sucks.  i dont know how people do it. 

I Heart Shields

i like shields.  i really do.  they make life a little easier when it comes to healing.  now i havent played holy paladin healing much (since he's holy pvp, and i do mainly pve crap) but i have played the other classes.  what i find most awesome is that each class has its own version of a shield, whether it seems like it or not.
I'm writing this because i have been thinking about the differences in playing styles between my druid (which i love love love) and my shaman, as well, with my priest and my paladin.  heck, throw in my death knight and warlock (because they can heal themselves!) and we'll have a nice healing party.  i'll bring the kungaloosh.

Lets start with the obvious, priest's Power Word: Shield. I wonder if there are any other "Power Word" spells.  anyway, this is the obvious shield, with disc getting a secondary shield as well.  this shield rocks my socks and it does exactly as it says, it shields.  damage taken is damage absorbed.  makes sense right?

The second shielding type of healer is the paladin.  his shield absorbs damage as well. but it also increases healing on the target with the shield with this thing called a HoT.  like the shield above, it lasts for a certain amount of time or until the shield is completely used.

The third class with a shield is the shaman.  now his shield acts a little different because it shields the person kind of.  what it does is each time it gets whacked, it heals the bearer of the shield by a certain amount.  its not as effective as the priest shield with its "partial" absorb, but it has one thing the other shield doesnt have: longevity. it lasts for quite a while, and only needs to be refreshed when the shield runs out of charges.  whether it has 8 charges or 2 charges, the heal per hit will be exactly the same.  only limitation is that this shield only works on one person, per shaman, at a time.

The last type of shield isnt really a shield at all.  it comes from the awesome tree druids and they call it rejuvenation.  this spell is an inexpensive heal over time spell that simply exists.  if your "shielded" party member gets hit, it will kick in once every three seconds to heal him back up.  if the party member doesnt take any damage, it overheals, but its waste is neglegible (liken unto a shield that doesnt get used up).

people will argue that the druid talent living seed can be this shield. i find it lacking the very basic concept of a shield.  the fact that it only plants by chance makes it unreliable.  with all the other spells, the shield can be cast at-will, barring any cooldowns or debuffs.  although living seed may seen like a great "sheild" type spell, its very situational and would probably be considered a proc heal that may or may not be used.  what?  well what if the tank gets a living seed proc, awesome! but what if the tank is also at full health?  that next hit, whether it be blocked, parried, dodged, or taken, will still cause living seed to burst, thus wasting a good heal. i'd love living seed to go off if the tank were to die. that would rock.

but anyway, rejuv is a shield.  it is also a hot.  but it acts as the shield in many cases and tops people off nicely.  it is used in conjunction with swiftmend and nourish to blow away the competition.  it is the base for which druids get their healing bonus.  sounds like a sacred shield, power word shield and earthshield to me!

anyway, those are the shields in my life and i love them. 

Swift Backhand of Justice

The Swift Hand of Justice is a trinket.  It improves haste rating.

Like all other heirloom gear, the haste rating incrases as you level up.  Now imagine using this at level 20, healing through some very bad pugs.  this haste increase, at that level, does nothing for my cast time.  actually, my casting time is exactly the same unless i do a resurrection (which takes 9.9 whole seconds). 

At level 40 somewhere, i notice that my casting speed has increased by 0.1 seconds.  yay for haste improvements!!

so now my lesser healing wave takes 1.4 seconds. and my healing wave takes 2.4 seconds.
and its been sitting there ever since.  im now level 62 and i still dont see an improvement.

I know haste rating is great, but at lower levels, it doesnt do jack.  it isnt until much later on where i can actually see a difference in my cast time.  i know 50 haste at level 80 isnt a whole lot, but almost zero haste at level 20 sure doesnt help one bit. its illogical. haste doesnt work the same as spell power.  it doesnt work the same as stamina.  the scaling is different.  if the trinket gives me hast by percentage, then that would make sense.  i'd like a 15% haste to my spells at all levels.  that would rock.

Death Knight DPS Spec vs. Tanking Spec

Here's why i am writing this post:

GF: Hey which DK spec is for tanking?
Me: All of them.
GF: ???   What about DPS?
Me: All of them.
GF: What?
Me: It depends on the talents within each spec. 


So here's a picture i stole somewhere on the internet. it shows the basic Unholy DK DPS build that many people have agreed as good.  Well, i took it a bit futher and put yellow boxes around the talents an Unholy DK would pick if he were to tank as Unholy.  Then i crossed out some of the talents that's blatantly for dps (as in, no respectable tank would ever pick these talents. although there's some talents in the blood tree that needs to be "wasted" to get to improved runetap). 

Click Pic to Enlarge

Note that this is the level 80, single target (ie. bosses) talent spec.  leveling spec would be a little different but very much the same.  also the only different between this spec and an AoE spec is the switching of two talents.  otherwise, everything's the same.  note that for tanking, you'll need talents from every tree.  note also that some of your fun dps talents are crossed out.  this is because no tank needs a ghoul, and no tank needs a gargoyle.  those are strictly for dps.  since this is an unholy spec, you're also giving up some nice dps talents from the blood tree as well.  you still want 2hand swords, but you're going to give up some in bladed armor to jump to blood tap and improved blood tap. 

I can do this for the Blood tree and the frost tree as well, but since my GF is Unholy, i fugred this is the best way to explain so she'll have some idea what im talking about.  unholy dps is really good with the AoE dps.  I also find that Frost dps is great as well.  Blood dps is solid, but rather boring.  tanking, however, is a totally different game and requires a familiarity with your buttons and surroundings that requires a good proficiency in one of the three specs.  what i mean to say is, get good with one spec before you plan on tanking in that spec. 

So to debunk some common misconceptions (pre-cata, ofc)...

1. All specs can tank.

2. The difference between dps and tank are the talent choices within their relative tree.

3. Frost is not THE tanking spec.

4. Unholy DPS is the highest dps spec, for you.  this means that if you spec into all three specs, assuming skill level is the same, you'll do more dps as unholy.  This does not mean that i wont come by in my frost dps spec (and since my skill > your skill) and decimate your dps.  again, assuming the same skill level, unholy will do more dps.

The Kerning of Instances

Today's blog entry is on the kerning of instances and a brief update:

Brief update of this past weekend. Me and my gf went off and completed a few more instances of Dire Maul East to finally reached 58. My gf was sitting pretty at 59 but I wasn’t the bit worried.

We traveled to the dark portal the long way so she can pick up some flight paths along the way plus see some of the zones she'll probably never return to. we ran through swamp of sorrows and killed a few things. I honestly would never want to quest there again. I did it on my paladin not too long ago and hated most of the quests. Anyway, we entered the dark portal and was ushered into a whole new world full of demons fighting. it was a pretty awesome sight to see. that battle has been going on for ages, but to every new person passing through that portal, it is fresh and feels like things are happening as we speak (not 4 years ago). we then went through the intro quests and finally on to thrallmar where we collected blood, destroyed some tanks, killed a bunch of demons and broke nearly every demon teleports there are in Hellfire Peninsula. I wonder if HFP was actually a peninsula before the world got broken apart. hmmmmm...

After we took care of the bombing runs I decided to skip the quests in southern HFP (Spinebreaker post) simply because it’s a very crowded area full of mobs. it’s a busy zone. there were quite a few people leveling through that area, much more so than in azeroth. the reason for this is probably because in azeroth, there are various different zones of the same level and many of us are able to pick and choose which zones we'd like to quest in. not so with outland. everyone starts in hellfire peninsula. we're encouraged to play against each other. I like that idea. but I also like the idea of northrend, where there are two level 68-72 zones. and all the zones somehow kind of overlap. dragonblight isnt level 73, you can go there at 71 and still be okay. etc.

Now that we're both 62, I think we can go back to southern HFP and finish off some of the quests there. however, we really do not need to. we can just move on to the next two zones to play (Zangarmarsh and Terrokar forest, with terrokar just a smudge higher level than zangar).

Outland Instances and their Set up
Now in terms of instances, we went through quite a few over the weekend. I still do not have the kilt of rolling thunders, and my gf is still looking for the gloves from the maker in bf. I did end up with a nice belt. I got leather gloves from the first boss in underbog then saw it drop about five more times. I would love that totem for some more mana regen though. gf got the belt from the hydra and shoulderpads from the hunter. just gotta get the pants from the hunter next time around and the hammer from the hydra. I will run ramps again for the shaman pants. this works out because my gf can get the boots off the dragon boss too. she already has everything else she needs from that instance, hellreaver included.

So here we are sitting pretty at level 62. we've been here for four levels and have done four out of the six lower level instances in HFP. The other two are in mana tombs and auchenai crypts. but I think by the time we get to level 67, we'll be doing sethekk halls durnhold. Its somewhat sad to see this because there's quite a few more instances out there left to do. In Tempest keep, there's the Arcatraz, the Mechanar and the Botanica (think: the Exodar, but as three separate dungeons). Hellfire citadel has one last instance at level 70 called Shattered halls. Coilfang reservoir has one called Steamvault and Auchidon has one called Shadow Laberynth. Oh and lets not forget Caverns of time's The Black Morass. These are all level 68-70 instances that may be skipped. /sad

Here is the breakdown of dungeon clusters in Outland:

1. Hellfire Citadel: Ramparts & Blood Furnace (58-62), then Shattered Halls (70).

2. Coilfang Reservoir: Slave Pens & Underbog (60-64), then Steamvault (70).

3. Auchindon: Auchinai Crypt & Mana Tombs (64-66), then Sethekk Halls (67-69), then Shadow Laberynth (70).

4. Caverns of Time: Escape from Durnholde (66-67) and The Black Morass (68-69)

5. Tempest Keep: Arcatraz, Mechanar & Botanica (68-70).

There are also raids that are obsolete, but people do still run those from time to time.

So with this list up, I see things pretty spread out, having things for everyone to do at whatever level they might be. The problem for me is this: We're pretty much going to skip 7 or 8 of those instances. Forget all the ones I've marked as 70, since those will be skipped in favor of Utgarde keep, a level 68-72 instance in northrend. Also skip escape from durnholde and black morass since much of the population do not know how to unlock it, or wont be assed to do it even if they knew how. I will tho, I love those two for the same reason I like culling of stratholme. Theyre not a regular instance like everything else.

what I would love to see is that the level requirements for most of these instances reduced a bit. im sure these instances have been nerfed in the past, and so lowering the level requirement will only help for a bunch of people to actually see some of this stuff. I do want to do Shattered Halls, Steamvault, Shadow Lab and all of the Tempest Keep instances before I hit 70. My last level 80 did them all as well, but Devynity didn’t get to finish all of those instances until level 74. Yes, level 74. I remember fishing in Dragonblight waiting for the queue for Mechanar and Arcatraz to pop. Really? 74? come on bliz.

I want to see some of this stuff before im too high leveled for it. that's basically my point. I know, no one is stopping me from doing them now, or later. But the rewards they give don’t match up with what new content can give. This is the same for the transition between Azeroth and Outland. Stratholme, Scholo and BRS do not offer enough incentive to stay.

I know, there are people who do not have the expansions necessary and are limited. But in a day and age where I can simply check the AH for some Outland gear at level 58, even on a toon who's stuck maxed at 60, he can still wear some of this good stuff found in outland. Same with Northrend. I can check the AH if I don’t have the Wrath expansion and get some gear that can suppliment my tanking, dps, or healing. Heck, at level 70, I can get the Cobalt tanking set and tank all of outlands with it. it’s a lot better and can be easily made (since every BS has to make some of those items to level up).


Cata hopes:
What I am hoping to see in Cataclysm is that the instances don’t start at level 78. I would hope they start out at level 83. yes, 83… all so that people will be arsed to do the level 80 northrend instnaces as well as the harder icecrown citadel instances.

It would have made a lot of sense if the new instances (back when they were new) were bumped up about two levels or that the old instances be pushed down about two levels. actually, the older instances have been nerfed to oblivion, so I don’t see why they wouldn’t lower the mob's levels as well (and also lower the level requirements for some of the boss drops).

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the layout and pacing of all the instances in this game. not saying they did a bad job with it, as it was a pretty awesome job back in the days. but as time progressed, expansions entered the picture and things should change. What I see is that things arent changing as newer content is being added. I think it would make a lot of sense to actually go back and tune some of these instances for lower levels.

How I Play a Demonology vs. Affliction Warlock

A lot of people has stated that affliction leveling is best with a warlock.  i am not sure why, as i do not think people play as i play. Sure, my corruption ticks for a little more, but my pet sucks balls compared to demonology.  destruction is as boring as... well, mage leveling without evocation.

So what is the difference between affliction and demonogy exactly?
Besides the different spells they both have?

- Demonologists have stronger pets, has some procs, and a transformation once ever few minutes.

- Afflictionists have stronger Corruption, two more DoTs, possibly another curse (of exhaustion), and more efficient lifetaps, howl of terror, and darkpact (you know, those things you might need if your pet isnt cutting it, or if you're not using the pet at all, which makes complete sense).

This is how i play my Demonology Warlock while questing.
1. Use felguard (or voidwalker before lv.50).  send him in.  wait a second for him to get some aggro.
2. Add the following spells: Immolate, Corruption, Curse of my choice, Shadowbolt if mob has lots of health, drain soul if mob has less than 25% health.
3. Shadowbolt if Nightfall procs; Incinerate if Molton Core procs. 
4. Check cooldowns for spellstones. tap when necessary.

thats it.  easy huh?

This is how i play my Affliction Warlock while questing.
Single Target:
1. Use Felhound/felhunter.  Imp before that.  Voidwalker if mob hits hard.
2. Add the following spells:  Haunt, Corruption, Curse of my choice, Unstable Affliction. Refresh when theyre down.
3. Fear
4. Lifetap twice before Haunt finishes.
5. Shadowbolt if Nightfall procs
6. Drain soul when mob is below 25% health.

Multiple Targets:
1. Use imp, leave on passive.
2. First mob: Haunt, corruption, curse of agony.
3. Second mob: corruption, curse
4. Third mob: corruption, curse.
5. Fourth mob: corruption, curse
6. HOWL OF TERROR
7. Fear mob #4
8. Lifetap/darkpact
9. target mob 1, refresh dots (drain soul til dead)
10. target mob 2, haunt. refresh dots (drain soul til dead)
11. target mob 3, refresh dots (drain sould til dead)
12. mob 4 should be coming out of fear now.  refresh dot and drain soul til dead.

note:  lifetap and dark pact takes your life and gives you mana.  imp is your mana battery.  your spells, haunt and corruption gives you life back.  this allows you to lifetap endlessly.  drain soul will return 15% of your mana.  so its okay to not lifetap in steps 9 through 12.

Have fun.  good luck.  and be prepared to die a few times getting all this right. 

My Alliance Toons

So my girlfriend noticed that i did not list any of my alliance characters on my blog.  you know that little widget on the left that has all my characters?  well there's no alliance characters at all.  and i have to say, i do have quite a few alliance characters.

The only problem is, most of them arent touched, ever.  i've made them a long time ago and i dont expect to return to play them any time soon.  maybe one day, when i get over this whole Horde>all mentality. but even still, its only a designation in-game and doesnt really mean much. it just gives us gamers a sense of belonging.  and i have no hate for alliance. some of my favorite people are alliance.  actually, no they're not.  but some of my favorite bloggers are alliance.  does that count?

Here is a list of my Alliance Characters:
Server: Shadowmoon
1. Thalyndarr - first toon ever.  Level 40ish mage. died like a billion times on this guy.  farthest i took this guy was to the deserts of Tanaris where he tried to kill Calif Scorpidsting and failed.
2. Elsegundo - its actually El Segundo, for "the second" as he was.  he's a gnome warlock who has also died a billion times.  he went a little farther and leveled to 68 when level 70 was the max.
3. Azurielle - She's blue, hence the name.  Night Elf priest, level 40ish.  i got really bored drinking water after ever 2 pulls, even with spirit tap.  she's basically retired.
4. Azuriella - Level 67 death knight.  supposedly its Azurielle resurrected, but i couldnt figure out how to write a story about that.  oh well.
5. Primoprimero - stupid name, huntard, dwarf.  died a billion times as well. level 64, i think.  bored of playing him? yes.  totally. bored of playing casters, actually. and he was a caster of sorts! 

The remaining toons there are just trials.  they dont do anything but take up space actually.

Server: Ysondre
1. Cryogin - Mage.  Cryo - frost. Gin - iono. it completes the name. he's a male draenei mage.  leveled to 20 so he can easily teleport to cities and buy pets to trade to the horde, and buy pets from the horde.  but that project sucks because there's like 10 others on my server doing the same thing.  currently, he's leveling with my girlfriend, slowly, but surely.
2. Voltaris - Night elf warrior not even level 20 yet.  first i wanted to try out Arms dps. but after remember how long dps wait times are, i just decided to go Prot again.  prot level is fun anyway.

And that's pretty much all my notable (keyword notable) alliance toons.


Now that i've listed by toons, let me answer a question my gf has been asking me for a while.  Why horde?  why dont you like alliance?  every time she mentions that she's going on her alliance mage (cos she really likes mages, and she thinks draenei women are the hotness) i always either roll my eyes or sigh.  and she keeps asking.  so let me see if i can answer.

Alliance has no mystique.  Every race (even the gnomes) are set in a well-established city.  They're cut and dry.  its just, for lack of a better word, boring.

The humans are in this nice, claen city. although there's much going on under the surface, it feels clean, organized, and of proper society.  there are no vagrants, no crime and no demonstrations.  nothing. the buildings are nice.  the canal is clean.  the park is awesome.  the only vice to the humans is that Goldshire is a mecca for sexual role play.  otherwise, its dull, dry and drab. 

The dwarves live in a mountan, with a city dug out from the inside.  its gigantic, but still, its nothing more than an indoor city with a small gnomish population.  the homes are carved from the stone and rock, the lava running through it are channeled through varous parts of the city to provide for smelting purposes. even the dark corners of the city look like the rest of the city because the whole place is dark.  the dwarves have been in azeroth since forever and are nicely situated in an area relatively free of hostiles.  They also make beer. boring.

The gnomes live with the dwarves.  what else is there to say? they make machines?  sure. 
The night elves live in this faraway "tree" that's bigger than most zones. isolated, they like to consider themselves better than everyone else.  they only agree to siding with the alliance out of convenience.  they're guys that used to live forever, but currently are dealing with the loss of their immortality.  They're all about the moon, and Elune, and being one with nature.  a very perfect view of nature, or the outdoors.

The only race that may not fit this, although it still feels really boring, are the Draeneis.  you're set in a crashed spaceship. but they came from a very advanced race.  their spaceship is made out of a large diamond with lots of diamonds and crystals to power it.  although there is a lot of damage to their ships, the look and feel of it is still very clean and rich as if you're walking into a palace of marble and crystal.  they're refugees running from a race of demons out to hunt them down.  or bloodelves. i forget.

How does the horde differ? 

The orcs are invaders from Draenor (aka Outland) who walked throug the dark portal like years ago.  decided to conquer azeroth, and in its wake, caused the humans and dwarves to take up arms. they were effin invaders.  they were tools of destruction.  can you get any more awesomer than that???  not only that, they have since freed themselves from their imprisonment (physically and mentally) and are rebuilding their nation in Durotar under Thrall's leadership.  These guys are gruffy, dirty, and often do not speak in complete sentences.  they're the ruffians of any society put into one race and location.  badass.

Trolls have this character about them.  they're into voodoo. they're into the mystics, the darkness, the bad stuffs, if you will.  they're also refugees driven out of their island homehald and has joined thrall for the time being.  they're ugly. yes, ugly.  well the guys are.  the girls can be ok.  anyway, there's not much you can say that's pretty about them.  just like orcs, they have features that arent desired in humans.
Now lets talk about their home.  its rough.  its dirty.  it looks like several makeshift villages put together and called a city.  the streets are made of dirt, the buildings are made of trees, not stones or concrete or crystals. even the stone buildings look primitive. 

Blood elves.  now this is supposed to be the "pretty" race for the horde.  well they're not that pretty if you look around.  half of their city is in ruins.  half of the good part of the city seem to be under some kind of martial law and oppression.  right at the entrance of the city, there's a harrassed citizen.  in the bazzaar, there's a demonstration and/or gathering with people arguing. the robots seem forcibly subduing citizens to keep them in order.  everyone else in the city is suffering from withdrawal.  i really think smc will see a riot before long. it was a great society gone to ruin. seems to me like Rome before their fall.  Or rome after their fall. or something like that.

The undeads.  These guys are like all the other undeads, but because of Sylvannas' powers, they're able to live and think for themselves.  These guys are trying to live and struggle in a world that's not meant for the unliving.  not only that, they're trying to fight the mindless undeads still roaming the lands.  they're basically fight two fights.  they do have a score to settle with Arthas but also will, in the future, need to fight for their right to exist in Azeroth.  Formerly humans, now granted imortality, these guys will be the cause of much conflict in the future.  Like the night elves, the undeads are merely entering into an alliance with the horde for the simple fact that its convenient.  Although it might seem that the relationship between Sylvannas and Thrall may strengthen the bonds between the two races, the undeads really do not need to allign themselves with any of the races of azeroth. 

Finally, i just have this annoyance for humans.  King Wrynn of Stormwind.  He's an idiot.  he's been hating orcs for so long and cant see past it.  he cant even get it right.  why the hell does he dual weild one-handers?  Titans grip came out two years ago.  Fury is, indeed, one way to describe him. His ass-hat-ness makes me want to delete my human toons.  Arthas, another piece of royal idiocy.  Culls stratholme?  really?  goes to northrend and becomes the lich king.  why?  stupid cowboys.  Jaina.  Queen of Theremore?  not anymore.  she's some pansy who's running around calling Wrynn her king and Arthas her man on the side while she's really into Thrall but cant say it because she likes how Wrynn does it too.  or something.  Make up your friggin mind you stupid blondie. The whole human race is the whole reason why we have so many friggin problems in wow.  screw them.  FOR THE HORDE!!

/opinion.

Its that Voodoo that You (un)Do.

Today's topic will be quick and simple.  It's about my addon i call voodoo, but the maker spells it Vuhdo.  but its pronounced the same.  in any case, its a "healing" addon +decurse. now i put healing in quotes because, although its marketed specifically as a healing addon, it does way more than that.

1. it works with mouseover macros as if you were pointing your mouse over the raid/party member's portrait.
2. it works with more than just healing spells.
3. it alerts you with dispellable debuffs (curses, magic, slows, snares, poison, etc) and with mouseover macros or clickcasting, you can decurse with ease.
4. it works like clique, where you can bind mousekeys to actions (rightclick=heal, leftclick=renew) when mouseover.
5. it works with your scrollwheel!!!!!!!!!!!
6. its highly customizable and works with your macros.
7. there's more.  i just cant think of it right now.


What it does is this, it gives you a bunch of health bars in any configuration you want.  but it works fine right out of the box.

Snapshot 1          Snapshot 2         Snapshot 3

Here are three screenshots i've taken on my paladin in a 5man group.



Let me explain the image above a little.  i was in a 5man group and decided to take snapshots of my Vuhdo health bars during one single fight. 

Snapshot 1:

The first health bar shows Meatdept and Zagak with a magic debuff.  The blue color tells me i can cast Purify.  I also have it so that any curses on my team will change their healthbars to purple.

You can also see in the first party frame snapshot is that Zagak (who's a rogue) grabbed aggro too early. I have it set so that i can see a red box around his healthbar plus red arrows around his name.  This lets me know instantly who has aggro.

Snapshot 2:
The middle snapshot shows Zagak at full health and Meatdept taking aggro back. not much to see here except that Zagak has his health back and things are as they should be, with the tank having aggro. Note that their healthbars are still blue.  In this case, i think they were slowed by some frost spell, but it could mean any kind of magic debuff, including polymorph, etc.

Snapshot 3:
I decide to purify the two suckers.  so i put my mouse pointer over their names and scrolled up on my mousewheel.  you dont see it happening, but that's exactly what i did.  and bam! their debuff is gone. you can see Zagak has taken damage but he does not have aggro.  this usually means a mob has some kind of AoE spell thats tearing up the melee.  but i let the healers deal with that.

As a paladin (DPS no less), i have Purify on MouseScrollWheel UP. I have Cleanse on MouseScrollWheel DOWN.  its that simple.  If you're used to Decursive addon, you can set the Purify/Cleans to Left and right mouse clicks if you want.  yep, that easy.

My other DPS/RET paladin commands are as such:
Left Click:  Flash of Light (especially useful when i have Art of War up)
Right Click:  Righteous Defense (yes i use this sometimes to save the healer.  better me dead than him/her... always.  though this does piss the tank off sometimes.)
Mouse Button 4: Hand of Freedom
Mouse Button 5: Hand of Salvation
Alt+Left Click: Targets the player.
Alt+Right Click: Hand of Protection (I use this often but usually never on the tank)

Although i can customize the mouseclicks with the shift key and control key, its already pretty complicated.  add to that the fact that i dont use my "Hand of" spells all that often, i may accidentally give someone hand of something they dont want.  and no one wants a hand of something bad.

So my Vuhdo, it does more than just help me with click-healing.  it helps me with decursing, dispelling, removing disease, taunt, casts my hands spells, casts some healing spells, and and and.... add to that some mouseover macros, and you have yourself an awesome healing tool.


Holy PVP. Yes i went ahead and made Devynity a holy PVP spec solely for BG's and WG (Battlegrounds and Wintergrasp).   And i made it so that Vuhdo can distinguish between Spec 1 (ret) and Spec 2 (holy). Awesome, aint it?

Now in doing this, i try to keep things pretty similar.  Meaning, my Purify is on mousescrollwheelup. and my Cleanse is on mousescrollwheeldown.

But i've changed my buttons a little.  I no longer need Righteous Defense, as it will not work on other players.  Instead, my Right Click is now Holy Light. The hands spells are the same. but i've added several mouseover macros to help assist in healing.

As a pvp paladin, i also expect myself to attack at times.  so some of my usual DPS spells are still there like Judgements, Hammer of Justice, Consecrate, Exorcism and Hammer of Wrath.

What i've added was a mouseover button for Holy Shield, Holy Shock and Beacon of Light.
The macro's looks like this:

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, help] [] Holy Shield

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, help] [@mouseover, harm] [] Holy Shock

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, help] [] Beacon of Light

Note that my Holy Shock macro has a condition for "harm" as well as "help".  this is because holy shock will do damage to enemies as well as heal friendlies. 
the empty brackets "[]" is coding for a failsafe feature.  it means, if all conditions arent met, then it tells computer to "just cast Holy Shock as you would normally do it if it wasnt in a macro."
This [] will also allow me to use holy shock on myself if i press ALT.  as well, it will cast holy shock on whoever i have targetted manually. 

So with those few macros, and Vuhdo, i am able to run out into the battlefield of WG and cause some holy hell, or holy healing, or whatevers, for a while.  Now i could have added holy shield and holy shock to my Vuhdo instead of making mouseover macros.  but i find that it would totally confuse me when i switch back to ret for those moments of Hand of Protection, or Hand of Freedoms. 

Brd is the Word

Rockdarr, Lv. 55 Orc Shaman

Imagine that, three nights in a row and we end up doing BRD, blackrock depths each night.  My shaman Rockdarr and my gf's paladin Kriss7 ended up in BRD for the 15th time this past week.  Since people start brd around level 52, and move on to BRD Uppoer City!!! at level 54, we have been through this dungeon more times than we'd like.  especially when no one can figure out how to really get the "random dungeon completion" for doing the upper city. 

through one of my first trips to brd, after a wipe, i picked up the stoneforge key quest that got me the, well, stoneforge key.  this just gave me access to the rest of the city.  it wasnt all that awesome really.  basically i had to kill a boss, turn in the quest, and from between this dead guy's legs, out comes a key.  yep, thats how it happened.  i kid you not.

but brd holds several items of interest to me.  one, full clears means 1 more level (actually now, about 80% of a level).  two, i get to see some super silly accidental mass pulls.  three, the opportunity to see the highest dps die several times. and four, craptastic items that actually look cool, especially weapons.

but other than those things, there's really not too much i want to take from these instances. like SM or Uldaman or Sunken Temple, i wanna get out of there as soon as possible. 

BRD isnt like Maraudon.  Mara is split up into three sections. but each section has a different look and feel.  it could have possibly been three different instances, each with a different entrance and no connection between them.  Instead, we're given a massive dungeon with two different entrances and a possible item to teleport us to the beginning of the third section.  kinda involved, which is good, but still. i'd rather be told i cant enter Mara-falls because i havent done Mara-ugly yet. 

BRD changed that.  They added the requirement of a key and still do! Not only that, they drop us into BRD thinking we'll do the upper city.  but we're sent to the beginning of the map and no one really knows we're in the dungeon group for "upper city" until after we kill the prison boss.  everyone stands there confused and wonders where their ballsack of goodstuffs is.  but its not there.  we dont get the message that we're done. so we move on forward and try to kill as many bosses as possible.  i have the key, so i open the locks and we go through every single boss we can kill.  NONE gives us the acheivement for finishing the upper city portion of BRD.  none.  /sad

Am i complaining? sort of.  i dont mind the large dungeon.  with a good group, thats a lot of experience.  i went from level 52-55 over the weekend.  it was easy.  i did get a few groups that stopped after a few bosses.  there's really no incentive to stay after the prison boss.  but others stayed, and thats how i got my key.  i find that the level 55's would rather finish the whole instance than requeue because its basically the final push to get to outland.  everyone's sick and tired of dungeons.  everyone's sick and tired of trying to deal with groups and fail tanks (i dont know why, but they all seem to be druids).

Queue times have increased.  from 10 minutes to 20-30 minutes.  why?  because no one wants to run the dungeon any more.  i mean at level 55, there's just a few more levels til we hit the next continent.  some are already out there trying to kill things. others are better off questing or finishing off some chain quest they've been meaning to do.  others dont mind a little bit of pvp.  but really, before i hit outlands, i'd like to complete blackrock spire (another stupidly long dungeon, and doesnt look like a spire at all), scholomance and stratholme.  when people hit 55, they're able to make themselves a deathknight. but there's so many people i see playing on alts that this reason is a bit pushing it. so... why the queue times have gone up i have no idea.  these are only my guesses.

in any case, i think the last azeroth dungeon we'll be doing in LFD will be blackrock spire and scholo.  on my other alts, i've never been in a group for stratholme.  scholo, yes.  UBRS yes.   upper black rock spire. ubrs.
most scholomance groups make it all the way to the end.  most ubrs groups usually die out since no one knows where the hell to go for anything.  we dont even know how to capture the worg for the pet.

In any case, i've seen BRD more times than i really care to see.  although i am a healer and i look mostly at healthbars the whole time.  i still find it very dull to see the same content over and over and over. i dont mind having choices, but make them well-defined.  the way brd is laid out, no one really knows where to go.  if we're doing upper city, drop us off in upper city.  if we're doing prison, make sure everyone knows we're doing prison. tell us who we have to kill to finish the dungeon. i think we've killed every boss in brd without getting the upper city acheivement (although i got the acheivement for completing all of BRD. what??)


Xylie, Lv. 36 Belf Priest
My priest is named after two things.  One of my friends on wow is named something similar.  Xylie is also named after one of my daughter's mermaids. actually from the movie A Mermaid's tale.  tail, tale. get it? old pun. i know.

I got into a random the other day.  Yes i know, randoms are so much easier to do than questing.  why? because i get to learn healing.  as very many people know, leveling as a healer sucks.  the old way of doing it was to level as dps then switch to healing/tanking at level 60, or 70, or now, 80.  but those days are gone thanks to LFD.  it has made finding groups, and leveling as holy, restoration, disc, "heals" much much easier.  sure, people can get sick of dungeons. but that's the nature of anything you do over and over and over again (besides sleep, ofc).  In any case, leveling as a healer is much eaiser (minus the stupid tanks and stupid dps out there) now. 

Stupid tanks still exist, especially those who insist on pulling large quantities of mobs while the healer is drinking.  also for the druid who insists on pulling more and more mobs, especially when the healer jumped into the dungeon mid-fight, fuck you.  learn to respect that others zone into dungeons and most often, expect a minute to ready themselves.  the grim guzzler isnt exactly the best place to chain pull anyway, especially with knockdowns and curses up the wazooo.

Speaking of curses. i landed in a RFK group the other day and was healing the tank pretty effortlessly.  its funny that the tank mentioned that i was pretty good at healing.  not only that, that i was spot on with my decursing and dispelling.  why isnt that what healers do anyway? but he's mentioned that his whole day was littered with horrible healers.  i gave myself an immaginary pat on the back. but decursing is as easy as a mousewheel scroll up/down (i made it that way).  mouseover macros are awesome.  remind me to add that function to Rend on my warrior. that would be a nice addition in between thunderclaps.  thats all tanks do anyway.  run in, thunderclap, revenge, rend, thunderclap.  thats really all i need to do to hold aggro.  but that's an aside and i should really talk about healing.  lol

in any case, at level 36, my healing consists of Power Word: Shield, which is a stupid name for "Shield".  or "Bubble".  but i think of Divine Aegis as the "bubble" and PWS ans the "shield".  so lets leave it at that. i've yet to get divine aegis anyway.  what im really looking for is mana returns on used shields.  meaning, whenever one of my shields gets used up completely, i get some mana back.  this will be awesome although i really dont need mana regen right about now.  i put a shield up on a tank, stand there for 30 seconds, then run to the next group, reshield.  i might toss a heal. and that's about it.  things get hairy when i get tanks that insist on tanking several groups at once.  although it is a little more fun that way, my mana drops like a rock.

Here are my priorities when healing.
People Priority:
Me. Tank. Good DPS. lowest dps last.

Spell Priority:
Shield.  Flash Heal. Greater Heal. Prayer of Healing. Renew.

Renew is last? yes.  its an aweful spell for disc.  it has its uses.  like if i shielded someone, and let renew do the ticking. that would usually be used on a dps and not the tank.  coming from a druid healer, who has HoTs of every flavor, you'd expect renew to be up at the top of my priorities.  i would too!  and that's what i used to do when playing my priest. but after a long time playing disc, i have switched over to a more direct heal and mitigation approach to healing.  it just takes a little getting used to. but after seeing how lackluster renew is for a disc priest firsthand, it wasnt hard to shed the habit of blacketing HoTs. 

tanks get more direct heals if i can help it. its mainly because the tank's health is going down faster than the rest, and a renew wont fill up a health bar. however, it will help to keep him from dying should i get a nasty chain pulling tank. i usually keep flash heal very handy, which is why my next talent points would be to lower the cost of my flash heal.  lately though, my flash heal only heals for about 15% of the tank's health. hopefully, my spells will catch up.  i do like to see about a 25% gain on each heal, much like how most other "flash" heal type spells work.  oh well. it will improve in time.

Baron Rivendare's Mount - Finally

I began running Stratholme about a year ago after i lost interest in leveling any more characters.  i've been through the whole instance several times and the Baron's side of the instance many many more times than i can count.  each and every time, the baron would not drop his mount.  there were times where i would queue up for a dungeon and the queue would pop a minute or two before i would get to rivendare.  so those opportunities are lost. 

Last night, i was a little bored and decided to hop onto my death knight Devyn.  she's the main character who have been running stratholme for the mount.  although she has never seen it drop, he has looted rivendare's runeblade three times.  i have two runeblades in the bank. the third (or first) was sold some time last year. she's exalted with the argent dawn, and 100% due to killing mobs in stratholme.  now, if only i can gain old world faction rep like that, i'd be exalted with all the horde factions as well.  surely, i've been running around with the title, "The Argent Champoin" for almost a year.  i've been there that many times.  i can probably do the instance in my sleep if it werent for those pesky gargoyles that fly around.

So last night Devyn created a deathgate to the Acherus and flew straight to Light's Hope Chapel.  there, she rode on her trusty chopper to the service entrance of stratholme.  once in, she began killing as if she had never taken a break from killing (in reality, she's had about a three week break).  she did get confused on whether it was good to use howling blasts on mobs. she soon remembered that it would have just been easier to take one down individually.  In any case, she finally got to the Baron Rivendare with barely half her health left.  she made quick work of him tho, and he dropped right when he was summoning his minions.  the minions died from a single blood boil from Devyn.  as the mobs dropped, a little sigh was heard from under both mine and devyn's breath.  we were both pretty sick of this instance, and sick of the baron never dropping our steed.

i clicked the body expecting just to pick up the usual items, but instead, on the second page, saw the Baron Mount.  i was pretty happy, and releived i do not have to come back to this instnace ever again (at least not on Devyn anyway).  I was pretty stoked i had to link it in guild chat.  people congratulated me. i wanted to tell everyone of the 50 to 100 times i've been into this dungeon without ever seeing it dropped.  i wanted to convey my frustration and happiness as i received the mount.  it wasnt one of those, oh hey, i got a nice shiney! yay me!!   no, its one of those "finally, i can cancel my subscription!!!" moments.  but i wont. there's still much more to do.  and there was no way to tell anyone in guild just how i felt after a year's worth of baron runs.  maybe my guildies knew, but i wouldnt know. 

in any case, i do enjoy the mount.  its really fitting for a deathknight anyway, since we are, after all, undead.  i keep thinking how redundant being an "undead" death knight is (which is also why i never made one).  but i've thought about it and thought it was interesting how the undead has infultrated all factions and races in azeroth in the form of a death knight. 

So with that said, screen shots!!!!

Now im gonna work on my undead quests, because that white skeletal horse is pretty pimpin.

On dying slowly... but still dying.

I die slower.  I dont die less. but i die slower.

Devynity has gotten a few more pieces of PvP gear, you know, the intro stuff you can get from emblems of triumph? yea, those.  and also, has enough honor to get the libram and a pair of bracers.  Next up would probably be some rings, necklace, trinkets and cape. The belt and boots require some arena points, so im just going to see if i can get comparable gear from WG or honor only. although they arent better, something is better than nothing.  I'm getting closer to 600 resilience (and 2k spell power!), which is helping me to live just a little longer, allowing me to pull off another heal or two.  in WG, its great. but i still have to remember to beacon myself, use righteous fury and remember all of my special spells for pvp and healing.

I tend to run low on mana quite often.  i do not know why as i dont really pay much attention to the mana bar as im fighting.  i always shield myself, holy shock whoever i can, and flash heal as much as i can.  i have been seeing dismal numbers when i do flash heal though, so i would switch to holy light.  this is a great heal and one i'd like to continue using, if it werent for the mana costs and things, i do like to use this spell.  whats even cooler, is that my casting is sped up by my sacred shield.  sacred shield is the awesomeness.

My damage sucks. i mean im a healer right? but still, wouldnt it be nice to have some attacks like every other healing class?  no.  those attacks need to be talented.  Here is what i can use to attack as holy:
1. Holy Shock, which does crap damage.
2. Judgement, which also does crap damage.
3. Shield of the Righteous, yes i do wear a shield, and this ability does crap damage (since its really a protection ability and my equipment has almost no strength, cos you know, im a healer).
4. Consecration.

Here is what other classes get as damage spells if they need to:
Priests: Devouring Plague, SWpain, mindblast, smite, penance if speced.  notice how almost all of these spells are available to the healing priest in all specs?  notice they're modified by spell power?
Shamans: Shocks, any shock, lightning, chainlightning, fire totems.  Note that the shocks and ligthning spells are what other shaman classes use as well.  notice that they are modified by spell power?
Druids: cancelform and start casting your balance spell attacks, starfire, moonfire.  notice how moonkinds also use starfire and moonfire.  notice how they're spells, so they get modified by spell power.

Notice that the DPS spec for paladins is RET. it has nothing to do with spell power.  we get STR gear as ret.  we use it to kill things and increase our spell power and damage via STR.  when we reduce our str to zero, and put all our attacks into holy, shield of the righteous does squat.  consecration does some damage, but its as impressive as making the ground glow.  but whatever helps right? Then there is the judgements, which is on an 8 second cooldown, or 10 if you're not specced.  and of course, why would you be specced for that? holy shock has a 6ish second cooldown. but the problem with that is that its 6 seconds.  twice to four times longer than many of the other spells mentioned above.  i can fill that time up with countless moonfire spams, or wrath spams. lightning bolt spams with frostshocks weaved in, or dot up a player then mindblast/smite after i fear them.  actually no, im exaggerating. but my point is that i can do more "stuffs" on my other characters than on the paladin if i need to kill something (you know, when you're the only one left and there's a big seige engine beating on your wall).

See the difference?  on the other hand, when you back a holy paladin into a corner, they will last for a while. but they most certainly would not have been able to take out any dps type class. heck, put him in there with a tank and they can duel for 30 minutes with no winner.  put him in there with a priest and you get a duel that will last until cata. 

what do i want? another offensive spell.  also, a better control spell... hammer of justice is great every 40 seconds, but thats every 40 seconds.  how else will i keep them away from me?  consecrate and stand in the middle of it?  lol. jump off a cliff? thats about it.

This is hard work

Black Rock Depths is hard work.  It's long.  So long, in fact, that it took a group of us over an hour to do the first half of the instance.  Yes.  just a tad over an hour.  Not only is the place super confusing, but its laid out in such a fashion that doesnt have any real path for the raiders to go (especially if we zone in for the random, "Prison" section of the instance, no one really knows where the hell that is). 

Of course, since its so long the first half of the instance got me one whole level, i still find the place a horror to run through (even if i know the paths).  I still get confused and lost at times.  And in an instance where i'd like to play and relax a little, i find myself stressed, annoyed, delayed quite often, especially with corpse runs.  cant they make graveyards a little closer? At least it will help alleviate the length of the instance.

Holy Paladin is hard work.  They do crap dps. Yes, they do. I was in my pvp holy gear trying to figure out how to do nessingwary's quests (really, i just wanted the kungaloosh recipe) and did a few of them in sholazar.  My dps meter shows a whopping 400 dps.  kills were annoyingly long.  but i did come away from that experience with 100% health and usually 75% mana. Judge, Holy Shock, Consecrate and Auto Attack.  those were my three spells.  although i should have just turned on Ret aura and let that tick as well, the core of my attacks are from the above four things.  Lets just say i felt like i was beating a horse.  i could probably live for a while, but i would also be doing my 15th holy shock on the mob before it dies.  i know leveling as holy/resto/disc is hard since you have all the healing capabilities in the world but zero damage, but i really do wish that more of our healing spells can be used for damage too, on enemies.  i know we have penance and holy shock, but there should be more.  just my thoughts.

Healing is hard work... until we get chain heal, circle of healing or wild growth.  and paladins get this half baked version of it called beacon of light (whose duration should be a whole lot longer, even when glyphed). But seriously, its hard work for a healer to try to heal tanks who are in a hurry, dps who are in a hurry and dps with pets who are in a hurry.  i know some hunters who love to pull a mob away from the pack and have their pet handle the mob.  it makes healing a little easier since the tank is not taking as much damage. but it does require that i also heal the pet (which i do anyway, but still).  when i see a tank shoot an arrow to pull mobs, then seeing those mobs get hit by some AoE before the tank even does his thunderclap (need i remind people that the tank needs to attack and be attacked before he can even thunderclap?) i build a little bit of rage.  when i see tanks running around grabbing mobs with their face and thinking they'll get healed, i roll my eyes a little.  Please note that a heal would bring all aggro to me, yes.  that's how it works if you facepull.  stop, do some damage, then move on. that works much better.  tanking is an art, and if you cant do it then learn to do it.  at level 50 you should already know how to do it.  but no, there's stupid play everywhere i go.

Tanking is hard work.  Especially with an AoE happy mage in heirloom gear thinking she (he, 14 y/o, irl) can tank it instead because he's so special. and the healer that keeps healing stupid? come on. stop it. i know you want to get through this instance, but its a 10 minute instance. really. just kick the dumb fuck. its fine and we'll get through it even without his sorry ass.  anyway, i won the roll on the boss drop and left.  no need to be idiots in an instance.  sure, rfc isnt that intensive.  but do that in ramps and i'll let you eat floor the whole instance. 

Rolling greed is hard work.  especially for a group who doesnt know where the greed button is.  and then to have them tell me its just a game, things drop in here all the time, its just level 35, give it a break. and when ninja looter ninjas what you actually needed, then left?  thats poetic justice (at work, dont have time to relay the whole story, sorry).

And running alts is hard work.  no really, i dont know who really loves doing low level stuffs at all.  it is an archaic style of leveling (it was novel in 2005, but its 2010 and its not a new game) that needs to go.  i know cata expansion might fix it, but still. life today sucks because leveling alts through levels 1-58 is tedious.  and i have to do it four times in the past three weeks.  please, for the love of god, level to 80 first. i dont want to level four characters through at the same time.  do you know what that means?  instead of running mauradon 15 times to level up, i have to see that fucking place 60 times (4x15).  yes, 60 fucking times.  is that fun? no. sunken temple?  i dont ever want to see that place again.  SM? scarlet monastery sucks, especially when there's FOUR sections, with FOUR characters, and each character needs to go through each section about 10 times each.  4x4x10= 160 friggin times.   so instead, we're going to do some quests and find out the story behind all of these instances.  problem is, we level so fast now we only get half (or 1/4) of the story before we move on to the next sets of instances with their own stories.  really annoying dont you think?  I declare WotLK version of WoW officially broken for leveling. 

Learning to Heal

I have been leveling my shaman with my girlfriend's paladin (well kinda. half the time we're playing on our own because we're not really home together at the same time except for 11pm to 2am. and 2am is when I sleep to get up for work at 8am the next day.  yea kinda nuts.) and it has been a blast so far.  as many of you know, I have leveled up a paladin as a tank a year or two ago and it was pretty fun to actually be able to kill several things at once, albiet slowly.  with a ret paladin, I usually try to keep it to two mobs at once, but killing speed is roughly the same. I find mana management with the ret paladin a lot easier than with the prot paladin.  earlier this year I started a ret paladin on a new server and leveled him all the way to 80.  I really wasn’t planning to do much with him but to save up his triumph badges for some pvp gear and try out pvp a little.  but this was before my gf decided to start playing. 

Lately, the new server is basically where im spending a lot of my time when on WoW.  over the past two and a half weeks, I've leveled up a disc priest to 30 and a resto shaman to almost 40 as of writing.  The Warlock/Priest combo is on hold until my gf gets sick of the Pala/Shaman combo.  although I highly doubt she'll stop playing the paladin, as she's already level 40.  in a couple level's she's going to have a whole bunch of new spells and abilities that will actually make the paladin a little more involved.  the only proc she really has to manage is Art of War.  everything else are just new attacks or new seals, in which she's already familiar with. 

 Im learning to heal with my priest all over again.  Its really difficult to heal in the beginning as most of my spells are not talented, my gear was crap and the tanks are all newbs. but as time progressed, I got a little better as well as the groups.  things began forming and falling into place.  no longer do I see fail groups.  I see more competent groups as I continue to level on beyond the basics of RFC, WC, VC, RFK and Stocks.  Actually, I've begun to see much more improvements to the groups when running RFK and Stocks and now, as im doing SM more often, I find that everyone, especially the tanks, know exactly what they're doing.  well almost.  there's still tanks with LOS issues, or tanks who don’t pick up the casters and whatnot, but they're still learning.  at least, im not healing squishybear or onetargetwarrior.  everyone's utilizing their AoE abilities and it rocks.  Even the casters, who usually aggro on me when I heal, now are LOS'ed back to the tank, if not, I reply with a Wind Shear and they come running into the tank's Thunderclap or Consecration.  

At around level 25, things began to take form as a disc priest.  my shields are buffed, my healing is better, my mana and regen is a little better and my heals are a little more efficient.  namely, I have flash heal sheild and heal ready to go.  I don’t have my favorite moves yet (pain suppression, penance, divine aegis) but they'll come in time.  Somehow im learning to heal with a disc all over again.  it wasn’t so fun the first time around, but that's mainly because there wasn’t a random dungeon finder tool.  but now, I queue up and I go.  quests? what are those?

The same thing happened with my shaman at around level 25.  He became much easier to play due to the addition of some abilities and spells.  prior, I was using healing wave. that's the only healing spell I had.  my totem selection sucked too.  it was one earth totem, and one fire totem.  I didn’t even get my water totem until about level 25.  glyphed water shield is great as it returns mana to me passively and when I get hit. having four charges makes it even better.  what I try to do is grab aggro from one mob first just to get my water shield charges to go off.   In any case, mana regen is a lot better.  additionally, with two healing spells and some very nifty totems, healing has become a lot more versatile.  the addition of a damage buffer and a HoT from my Earthliving imbue makes healing even more involved.  it is no longer cut and dry with just one heal and no real supporting spells/abilities.

But learning to heal with the shaman has got me thinking about the uniqueness of all the healing classes.  Namely, how to use my totems as a supporting role for the group.  Paladins have their blessings and hands. which is great.  these are direct spells and such.  priests have fortitude and a few other buffs.  druids have paws (Mark of the Wild).  But shamans have totems.  and these totems do different things based on what I decide to put down.  faster attacks? more spell damage? slowing mobs down? doing damage?  adding armor? all of these things can be done with totems. and I get four differen types to play around with at the same time.  fun times when you have another shaman in the group.  I usually put down healing specific totems and overall support for the group.  but my fire totem is always the magma totem because I find that a 6% damage increase to spellcasters simply isnt as great as having a 30% increase to all dps.  what?  yes.  I do 30% of the dps in most groups with that totem. whatever gets us through the instance faster is fine by me.

now the fire totem, in this case, the magma totem is my fire totem of choice, always gets planted at my front left.  and so I try to position myself close enough to the group to drop that totem as close to the group of mobs as possible.  in a pull, I usually accomplish this even before I have to heal the tank.  sometimes I can pull off a fire nova before I even have to heal.  a fire nova is basically "activating" your fire totem to blow up things around it.  this causes massive damage all around.  and if the tank has 4 or 6 mobs on him at one time, I usually do awesome damage.  sometimes I do pull aggro but that doesn’t last too long. the tank would pull them back a quick second later.  what this does, however, is cause my watershield to pop, giving me a bunch of mana back.  I do want this to happen.  and sometimes I purposely pull aggro with my fire nova (although I sometimes get more mobs than I want) in order to get some mana back.

I find that with this method, I have very little mana problems. I often drink but I do know that when I do DPS with the totem, I am expending a lot of mana.  I am not complaining, since healing alone would take up a small amount of my mana supply but remain pretty boring.  im sure as I level on, things will get a little more exciting.  I will have to heal more and use more spells.  im anxiously waiting earthshield, chain heal and riptide.  with those added to my arsenal, I hope to never have to use Healing wave again. 

Q for all the shaman healers:  How often do you use Healing Wave anyway?  I would assume that Lesser Healing Wave +glyph is the way to go for quick healing, chain heals for multiple targets and riptide +LHW for big heals.  this is my theory since I am unable to test any of this out at the moment.  I am level 38 currently so I don’t have any of those spells to work with.  I want to know this because I want to know if I should respec my talent points later on, meaning, once I get riptide, do I want to remove my talents from all the Healing Wave talents? the one that reduces cast time by 0.5 seconds? the one that increases healing done from HW by 8% per talent point?  I find myself using Healing wave less and less. Much like how I don’t use greater heal at all on my priest.  I use shield, flash and penance. on my druid, I use healing touch (the Healing wave equiv) only with swiftmend.  Just pondering right now.  not sure what to do, but im more of a ABC caster (always be casting), so I prefer to continually cast Lesser healing wave than to cast Healing wave, wait 5 seconds, cast HW again, wait 5 seconds, cast HW again.

Thanks in advance!