Blood is Thicker than WoW.

Last night we continued our 25 ICC run from Tuesday(shocker, because for the past couple weeks we’ve been doing 25 up to Saurfang and then not making it back in due to attendence issues. Last night though, we got in there and spent pretty much an entire night on Rotface. I assume we did Rotface because our 10 man kills of him were still fresh in our minds, and he was the more challenging fight. What happens? We wipe. Wipe after wipe after wipe. Not wipes at the beginning of the fight either, I’m talking every wipe saw him below the 20% mark, with one leaving him with 270k health left. He was going down last night, I knew it, but I didn’t want to jinx it. All that aside I was watching my (/sarcasm) favorite Paladin healer (/endsarcasm) on the healing meter just to keep an eye on him. Sure enough, for 90% of the fight he was even below one of our Ret Pallys. This in and of itself pisses me off. Sure, when the shit hit the fan and we started wiping, his numbers jumped up, but before that point he was below a Ret Pally. Not cool. 3 or 4 wipes in and I called him out in party chat to start healing full time. In comes his uncle with the healing meters whispered to me. Thanks, I see them. I know what it looks like right now, but that’s NOT what it was the entire fight. Try again. After this he started trying, and we eventually downed Rot. Not that our wipes were DUE to him, but I hate putting forth my 110% to have someone not even give 100%.

After the raid I whisper his uncle and apologize for calling him out like that, but that his nephew needed to work on his healing a bit, that he was standing around quite a bit, and was found being below a ret pally for most of the fight. I was nice, I apologized, I was trying to be mature about it. What did I get in return? “I stand around too, spamming heals doesn’t work.” As well as a link to the Overhealing Done meters, of which our druid healer and myself are on top. “Overheals are bad, if people don’t need heals I’m not casting heals.” This from the Priest, not the one I have a problem with. I calmly explained that Paladin’s are PROACTIVE healers, that if I try to heal reactively then I have no control over a situation and people generally die. Mind you, this is all through whispers. So what does he do? He gets onto Vent, and begins talking to someone else about an article he read saying that in Cataclysm, spamming heals will cause healers to go OOM, that the way to heal in Cataclysm is to choose the right heal at the right time, and anyone NOT doing that right now is “is setting themselves up for failure and is fucking stupid”.

Really? You really want to take our private conversation out onto Vent? Roger the fuck out of that. My response? “When you’re quite fucking done, this is Wrath, NOT Cataclysm. When Cataclysm comes out, I’ll fucking handle it and adjust appropiately, until then, I heal the way I’m fucking supposed to, and I do just fucking fine!”

This followed by a long guild chat message that if I bring a problem to your attention in whispers, it’s quite fucking rude to bring it into Vent or some other public channel. From now on, if I have a problem with someone or something, I’ll be bringing it out for everyone to see and hear, in raid and vent. To fuck with etiquete and keeping the boat from rocking.

Vent pretty much shut down. Our assistant GM started whispering me asking me whats up, and after a few minutes I’m calmed back down, situation is explained. I’m told to bring it up to the healing lead, and if that doesn’t resolve it take it up with the guild leader. I apologize to her for causing a scene, but I absolutely do not stand being told that I’m healing inappropriately when I know damn well I’m a good healer(not trying to toot my own horn, but dammit I know what I’m doing, I know my limits!).

A bit later, I talk to our healing lead about it. I tell him I know this Pally is doing good on the meters, and we’re not wiping because of him, but dammit he’s standing around most of the time, and it’s BS. I inform him of the confrontation with his Uncle(I feel the leaders should know of strife between people in the guild), and that from now on, I’m not being quiet about this stuff, next time I’m calling people out in raid. He acknowledged my concerns, told me he sees it, and that this Pally is just coming back from a hiatus and to give him a bit to get back into his groove. He also threw some flowery stuff in there, telling me I’m a great healer and other shit like that, trying to divert me from this problem, and I know he was doing it. This is the thing that got me though, “I know, and the rest of the leadership knows that you’re a damned good healer, the guild got lucky when we got you, you know you’re class and you know what you’re doing, you’re fully capable of picking up the slack.”

…….

What. The. Fuck. I KNOW this Pally can heal, I’ve seen him do it, he’s quite capable. I have no problem picking up slack from undergeared or people who simply don’t KNOW what to do, but picking up the slack when people simply aren’t giving their full effort, I have a problem with. In the essence of having a cohesive healing team, I told him that I’d hold off on speaking to the Guild Leader, and give this guy another week or two, but if his shit doesn’t start coming together, it’s over. When I hear people complaining that they’re not getting invited to raids, and this ass hat is here, but not putting forth a full effort, I have a problem, and if I was a Guild Leader or Raid Leader, I’d want to know.

So, I’ll give him another couple weeks. Maybe I’ll actually try talking TO him, see if that’ll do some good. But somehow I doubt it. If he doesn’t improve, I’m lobbying to have him out of the raid group.

In other news, I joined this guild with 3 iLvl 232 pieces, and I’ve replaced two of them. I got Lockjaw off of 10 man Rotface, and I nabbed Bulwark of Smoldering Steel(I think that’s right?) off 25 man Marrowgar. I snagged the Frost Emblem healing belt(replacing my 264 belt from Gunship, due to it not having haste), as well as the Rot-Resistant Breastplate from Rotface last night.  All in all I’m upgrading quite nicely, bringing me to 33k unbuffed mana, 2921 Spell Power, and 809 haste. All unbuffed. I felt like a machine gun last night with my 700 something haste, 1.02 second Flash of Lights were quite fun. All I can do now is save up for the Frost Emblem gloves, and get 3 more Primordial Saronites to have the craftable boots made and I’ll be mostly set. Except for my neck piece. I’m still rocking the 232 neck piece from Forge of Souls. I DID win the neck piece from 10 man Gunship, but then in the same run I had to trade it to get Lockjaw(from another Pally Healer who won it, but I make all 25 man raids while he does not, so he willingly made the trade for the benefit of the guild). So I finally got rid of that damned DPS weapon.

I know this means nothing, but it’s a nice number that I like looking at, but my Gearscore has risen to 3059, bringing me to the 9th ranked person in my guild, and the 29th Holy Paladin on the Alliance side of the server.  Like I said, I don’t swear by this number, and I don’t judge by it, but it’s nice to see where I stand against the other Paladins on my server and in my guild. It also helps me judge on when to pass on loot and who to pass it to.

Anyways, sorry for the lack of posts lately, between work and raiding, I’ve had to fix my motorcycle, and my computer, so I’ve been a little preoccupied. I feel bad to the one person I have subscribed to me. I get a few hits a day, some days I get none, but still, if people are going to read it, I feel I should be putting stuff out there, stuff you guys want to read. So please, if you feel like there’s something here you’d like to see, let me know. Anything, seriously, it doesn’t have to be about the Paladin class, or healing, or even about raiding or WoW. This is a place for me to vent and to talk, but it’s about you guys too. So help me make this better for you, what would you like to see?

-Sady

Revelation

So something was brought to my attention during my last raid. We currently have two Pally healers who are pretty consistent at making it to raids. Myself obviously, and one other. The other Pally, when he first came back(I guess he was on a hiatus or something like that), immediately began questioning my choices as a healer, such as me stacking int, why I hadn’t picked up the Frost libram yet, etc. That was 3 weeks ago. Since then I’ve been missing something so huge, that I’m surprised it didn’t smack me in the face with a brick wall sooner. Well it did on Tuesday night. Hard.

He’s not healing. Not just not healing well, at all.

At. Fricken. All. Seriously, on Marrowgar, he had just over 300,000 healing done. That means if he had beacon up, he did 150,000 of actual healing to someone. That’s NOTHING. We’ve got DPS doing more healing then that.

But, I had to ask him. I don’t want to just be the guy who assumes. So I asked him what he was doing to heal. His response was almost as shocking as seeing him on the meters. “Oh, nothing really.” Why? I’m still waiting on a response. I asked our assistant GM later that night about him. It’s a family oriented guild, with most of the core having been together for a while, so I had to check. I asked if this healer was a family member, whether the leadership knew that he was absolutely being carried, or what. Her response was that he’s the nephew of one of our healers, and he doesn’t really like healing. I had to take a step back at this point, and look at where I was at.
1. He doesn’t like to heal.
2. He isn’t healing.
3. He’s making raids, taking up a spot from someone who actually WANTS to be there.

I’m having a hard time with this. I’ve got 3 choices, as I see them.
1. Talk to him, try to help him out. Or at least talk him into healing a little more.
2. Talk to the leadership, try to get them to see that he’s simply being carried, and that we can fill his spot with someone who WANTS to be there, be they healer or DPS(I vote DPS since we’ve been fine without his heals so far).
3. Ignore it, don’t rock the boat, let a sleeping dog lie, don’t cause trouble.

My first instinct is to go with #1, I’m constantly trying to help people out. But, this healer isn’t the most mature, and I have a short temper when it comes to people just acting immature. The problem with that is I don’t want to alienate myself from his uncle, due to his uncle being one of the longest standing members of the guild. His word carries weight. I don’t think the guild would boot me cause he said so(or anything along those lines), but really, who wants to be the guy who causes trouble like that?
If I go with #3, then what happens when that rare piece of Pally Loot drops, and he rolls on it? I’m a firm believer in you get what you earn. And if he’s not doing anything, but still being given the chance to roll against me on something, then I have a serious problem with that. Not because I’m losing out on purple pixels, but because the guild as a whole is losing out on an upgrade. It’s going to someone who’s not doing anything, who’s being carried. It hurts the guild no matter which way you look at it.
With #2 I run into the same problem as #1, they could go to his Uncle, and again, I don’t want to rock the boat.

Seriously, this is a problem for me. The entire situation is. I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. What would you guys do in this situation? I have a feeling I know what I’m going to do, but I’d like to see your ideas on how to handle this. More than likely you’ll think of something I haven’t.

-Sady

Space Cows R Us!!!

So I got tired of looking at my human. They’re just so ugly. I hate showing my helmet, but I had to on this guy, I just couldn’t do it. SO, I’ve made the switch. Sadysm is now a Draenei, and has never looked better!

Libram of Blinding Light

Well, this WAS going to be a post about how I don’t find this Libram as something I’d want, but then I actually LOOKED at it. It gives you 85 Spell Power each time you use Holy Shock, stacking up to 3 times, for a total of 255 Spell Power for 15 seconds. That’s MUCH better than a CHANCE at 234 Spell Power everytime you use Holy Light. I think this might be the next think I buy with Frost Badges, 4pc T10 is so far off, and this is actually a really good Libram to have. I usually throw Holy Shocks out when someone in the raid needs a quick heal, but with this I’d be more inclined to keep it up. One problem though, I would need an addon to track the buff this gives. Right now I’m using ClassTimer, but it doesn’t even track the proc off my Revered Ring, so I don’t think it would track this either.

Any chance one of you guys having  a decent buff tracker, something where I can specify which buffs I want tracked and how much time is left on them? I like the way ClassTimer tracks the buffs, but I need one to track my item CDs.

Any ideas?

-Sady

Rotface

So I got my first attempts with my new guild in on Rotface last night. A quick rundown and we were off. First attempt we had him down to 54%. Each attempt after that, unless we had a freak accident and we were definitely wiping right then and there(tank dying for some reason), we got him down to the 30′s. And to be honest, this is the first time in a while I’ve been in a progression raid where I haven’t wanted to complain about something.

So we’re going to try something new here. I’m going to explain the fight, as it pertained to me as a Paladin Healer.

For those of you who don’t know, the way this fight goes(or at least how we did it, obviously strats may vary) is you’ve got one tank tanking Rot in the middle of the room, and you’ve got an off tank out on the perimeter, and everyone else piles up on Rots ass. Fight begins and everyone gets into position, Rot begins to throw out a disease on a random person(which deals decent damage to them over 12 seconds) who then has to run out to the off tank to get cleansed. Once the disease gets cleansed or expires, an add called a Little Ooze spawns, and once you get two of these little adds, they merge into a Big Ooze, which must be kited by the off tank around the room. Once you get 5 Little Oozes to merge into a Big Ooze, it explodes and everyone plays one big game of don’t get hit by the rockets. Disperse for a little bit and once the rockets(not really rockets, just globs of ooze) are done falling, everyone groups back up and it’s rinse and repeat. All while this is happening, Rot will pick a random direction, and turn to puke, causing damage to anyone in his way, so once he turns to puke, everyone has to get out of the way. Eventually what we did is we split up into two groups, and put a group on each leg of Rot, so that when he turns and pukes, only one group has to actually move, allowing the other group to stand and continue DPS. As if that wasn’t enough Professor Putricide will activate Slime Pipes in a random quarter of the room that puts up a slowing poison that hurts pretty bad.

It’s a pretty simple fight, but there are a number of things that can make everything go horribly wrong:
1. Over-Zealous Cleansers – It’s strongly suggested to assign one person to cleanse the diseased person, and tell everyone to not even THINK about touching it. Spawning the little ooze too early can cause unnecessary damage to the raid as each little ooze does 3,400-3,600 damage every 2 seconds to everyone within 10 yards, and make the off tanks job harder. It killed me seeing a disease up on my Grid, but not being able to cleanse it.
2. Not being able to find the Off Tank – We had a hard time last night with DPS finding the Off Tank. The initial disease is fine, everyone meet up at the South side of the room, but after that, it just seems like it was hard for some people to look around the room for either the Big Ooze or the off tank. Marking doesn’t work because DBM puts  a mark up on the Diseased person, and should your Off Tank get the disease(which WILL happen, Murphy’s Law is great!), then his mark is suddenly gone. So unless you’ve got someone who can mark in the middle of the fight, it’s not going to work out real well.
3. DPS not high enough – DPS needs to be really good here, as the interval for the disease gets shorter and shorter as the fight goes on, so eventually you’re going to be dealing with having multiple diseases and multiple little oozes.

All in all, it’s a fairly simple fight on paper, it reality it’s more like organized chaos. Your main thing will be making sure your DPS is high enough and that people can find the Big Ooze or Off Tank.

One thing I did notice, when Rotface pukes, it doesn’t do a whole lot of damage, but don’t take that to mean you can stand there, cause your healers won’t be happy.

As a Pally Healer, this is an extremely simple fight for you. Beacon the off  tank, heal the hell out of the main tank. Tank damage isn’t insanely high(thinking like Marrowgar), so if you get a chance to help out with a little raid healing, do it. Your healing team will thank you.

I’m disappointed we didn’t get him down, but we had to call it early due to people having to go, so definitely next week we’ll have him.

——————————————————————————————————————-

On a side note, went in to do the XT-002 Weekly afterwards, and sure as shit, what drops? Pulsing Spellshield of course. I wanted this thing back when I was a Horde and Ulduar was the place to be, it never dropped. Unfortunately for me it was a slight downgrade, but I gained something I did not have in that slot before, Haste. I went from Vigilant Ward to Pulsing Spellshield, in case you want to compare to two side by side. I lost only a couple BASE Int, but of course I lost the socket. I also believe I lost a couple spell power, and exchanged MP5 for Crit. From a 232 to a 219, it’s not a huge downgrade, I believe it’s worth it to gain the haste that’s there, but the iLvl drop did make me cringe a bit. I can’t wait to get into a 25 ToC and nab the shield in there, or maybe I’ll get lucky and get the one off 25 Marrowgar, though now I have another Pally and 2 Shamans to compete with. Maybe I can convince them to let me get the first healing weapon with Haste on it in exchange for not rolling on the shield, because as much as I cried inside for grabbing a lower iLvl shield, I’m still using a fricken DPS weapon to heal with, and it kills me inside.

But, to make up for it, I got my T10.5(Is it really 10.5 from 25 man? Or is it just plain T10?) helm after one shotting Saurfang.

That’s all for now. Take care.
-Sady

On Tier 10

So I got my 2 piece T10 last night after weeks of waiting and being hacked and switching guilds, I now have the greatness that is the 2pc bonus. If you haven’t looked at it recently, please, go do so, I’ll wait.

………**Queue Jeopardy Music**………..

Oh you’re back? Yeah, I had that same reaction too. It’s an AMAZING bonus. When I first saw it I was like “Wait, I can make my heals cost half as much, AND hit 35% harder?!” Yes sir, this is definitely the first thing you should be going for with your frost badges. Forget the off set items(I dearly regret getting the cloak first), forget trinkets and librams and everything else. That 2pc bonus should be the VERY first thing you pick up. Unfortunately for me I had to wait a little longer because the gloves don’t have haste on them, so I refuse to get them, so I had to save up for the helm after my shoulders. Ahh well, all is right with the world.

Speaking of Haste. I saw something the other day that made me cringe. Like seriously, it was like someone punched me in the gut, I doubled over as soon as I saw it. A Paladin healer, gemmed for HASTE. Now, I don’t know where this guy gets his information from, but all I have to ask is W……T……F…..?

Last night saw the return of my guilds regular Pally Healer(not me BTW), and I welcomed the addition. It would feel good to be with another Paladin who was helping his guild progress, and knew what he was doing. Sadly, that feeling lasted about as long as the first pull. I’m not sure if this guy has been on a seriously long break, or if he took a blow to the head while he was gone, or what, but he did horribly. No no, I’m not talking about wiping us horrible, but dammit, there were Ret Pally’s with more healing done than this guy. To top it all off, clearing up to Gunship, I heard him say over Vent “Guys, I think I forgot how to heal!”, and I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, which really held me back from making the decision to strangle him or not. I was expecting great things from this guy, I mean, we had a nice little discussion about gemming Spell Power instead of Int(Currently I’m an Int Stacker, while he loves his SP). Oh well, tonight I’m gonna try and throw some pointers his way, kinda aim him in the right direction, refresh his memory, something.

Anyways, that’s it for right now. Hopefully something interesting will happen tonight. Maybe I’ll get lucky and be able to get rid of this damned DPS weapon I’m using to heal with right now. It makes me cry when I raid to see me using Seethe, it really does.

-Sady

Enter the Shaman

Well, to top off the list of my alts, I’m adding a Shaman into the mix. I’ve ALWAYS wanted a Shaman, ever since BC when I saw a Tauren Enhancement Shaman waltz into the Aldor bank and faceroll all the mobs in there. I also raided with one in BC who did pretty damn well on the meters. I’ve seen my share of Shamans in raids nowadays who do really well, when they’re good, they’re good. I really want to go Enhancement, but I’ve also never had a Caster DPS, so I might do that as well. We’ll have to see. I will be Resto though, it is my goal to have an 80 of each tank and each healer, so Resto is a given.

So, the leveling plan with this guy is, 1-40 I’m going to level as Elemental, just because I don’t think going around whacking things with an axe is gonna be real fun. Shooting balls of lightning fury does. Once I hit 40 or 41(I kinda wanna have both Dual Wield and Stormstrike when I convert), I’m gonna respec over to Enh for questing and Dual Spec into Resto for instances. I’ve already got all the Heirloom items I need(outside of a second Spell Power trinket) for both specs, so all I need to do is sit down and actually level.

On top of this, I’ve still got my Druid sitting at level 71, as well as a Priest at 67. I’m definitely not lacking for alts to level.

Speaking of which, why is it I can’t bring myself to level professions anymore? I want to be Enchanter/Jewelcrafter on my Pally, but I can’t for the life of me actually break down and level Mining on my DK so that I can supply my Pally with the mats to do the leveling. I’ve got no idea what professions I want for my warrior, but I know I wouldn’t level them either. My Druid has Herbalism and Alchemy, but they’re still sitting in the 100′s. The only profession I feel I might actually be able to break down and level is Tailoring on my Priest, but that’s cause mats are insanely easy to farm. Don’t even get me started on secondary professions. Fishing and Cooking on my Pally? No way. I’ve gone through that mess once before on my DK, I kind of want to gouge my eyes out with sporks when I think about leveling Fishing up again. On top of it all, I’ve got 2 80′s that do NOT have Epic Flying on them, and that bugs me. But where to make that 10k gold?!

Seriously, this brings me to the realization that this game is good at one thing: Giving People No Lack Of Things To Do!!!
Everytime I turn around I think of something I’d LIKE to do, but actually making the decision on what to do is hard. I want to level my alts, but I also need to level professions on my main, but then I need to level professions on my Alts to support my main. Oh but then there’s raid time, as well as time spent in the real world with my wife and friends. This seriously bothers me because I hate not feeling like I’m giving 110% in a raid for my guild. I don’t have Dragon’s Eye Gems in my gear, though I’m a JC, that’s not 110% to me. I have to hop on an alt to farm up the mats for Fish Feasts, and I can’t even drop them on my main, that’s not giving it my all in my eyes.

Maybe I’ll just have to take it one step at a time. Once I got into it, Fishing and Cooking weren’t that hard to level, and it really didn’t take me all that long to do both at the same time. I think that’ll be my goal for tomorrow, get Fishing and Cooking up as high as I can. Should really only take me a week or so of really trying to get them both to 450. Then I suppose I’ll work on Mining on my DK, sending all the mats over to my Pally for JC leveling. Hrm. That’s a big order of stuff. Oh well, it’ll get done eventually.

-Sady