I know I’ve been a little absent over the last while, but I hope the recent posts from Xtasia and Adriella has kept you entertained!  It also doesn’t help that I’ve been really sick with a raging cold, that kind that makes sure my nose is well stuffed and forces me to breathe through my mouth at night.  Yes, that kind.  I feel really lousy but I’m hoping I’ll get over this stupid cold soon, thank you for all your well wishes for my recovery

Now onto the good news,  I’ve decided to go back to school and I am hoping I get accepted.  What does this mean for this website, and WoW in general?  Well, I can honestly tell you that it won’t be my priority any more because I’ll be concentrating more on school.  I’m okay with that though, because I’ve got other people helping me run this site, and they’re funny as heck.  I can’t say whether I’ll be playing WoW often, but I’ll definitely be around, up to no good like usual, rubbing shoulders with other good folks in Twitter and WoW.

So with that out of the way, it’s time for some bad news now.  My raid team has been having difficulties, so we’ve decided to scale down from 3 nights a week to two, and will continue trying to raid.  I’m sad about this because I love raiding and wasn’t expecting to change things so soon.

So in an attempt to keep our team raiding, I’ll insert a recruitment note here.

Eternal Destiny (Alliance) is a totally laid back guild, and as long as you’re fine with the occasional geeky or dirty jokes, you would fit right in!  Our main raid 10m team is looking for exceptional players to fill in a ranged DPS slot as well as a tank spot.  We are currently 3/8 Heroic in Dragon Soul, and we are working on clearing everything, old content included!  We raid Tuesday and Thursday nights at 8pm-11pm MST..  if you’re interested, drop me a line and I’ll hand you to my recruitment officer to go from there.  Hit me up on Twitter, or email him at paladinadri@gmail.com-  we would love to hear from you!

I’m not entirely sure what I’d do if my raid team folded eventually.  I’m actually not sure why I’m so resistant to it either, because I don’t play WoW much myself, so it wouldn’t be a huge deal if I stopped raiding.  But I don’t want to stop raiding entirely, because I have fun and love raiding with people.  I don’t reckon it’ll be too difficult to find a new team if this happened, especially since I’m a healer, and this may very well give me the opportunity to play other toons other than my druid.  Like my rogue!

Sadly, she’s still not well geared to the point where she can’t quite do LFR yet, but I know that gearing her up wouldn’t take long once I get her geared running the new dungeons.  So with that being said…  hit me up if you ever want to run dungeons, I would love to take my rogue  I’ve really missed playing her since I made my druid my main character for Cataclysm, so if I had a choice, I’d definitely play my rogue to fill in a DPS spot somewhere.

Ah well, it is what it is, I guess.  If we made it this far, I think that’s a positive sign especially with so many raiding guilds disbanding these days.  How has everyone been boding so far late into this expansion?  Have you been enjoying Dragon Soul, and managing to get through this expansion with your raid team still intact?  Hard times, indeed-  I’d love to hear from you!

Hello fellow Healers,

Since we seem to communicate very well outside of and during our raids, I thought it might be useful to post this to occasionally discuss healing, fights from healing standpoints and our teamwork as healers for our encounters.  Also, some things to think about.

This isn’t just for ourselves to look at and learn but for other healers who may want some advice.  Sharing our knowledge if you will and a little bit of healer ranting.

Chances are, if you are in our guild and a healer…you probably know your class well enough to perform the skills required for standard healing.  Also, you should already be aware of and joined into the Healer channel in-game when you are raiding to communicate with your healing team effectively for each fight.

For a side note as a healer,  Be prepared for criticism!!  BUT make sure it is received or giving in a constructive manner, not because “you think something sucks”.   You get nowhere with a poor attitude.  Take the grain of salt and work towards improving.

With that being said, this would be more oriented towards “more than standard”  discussion.

Simply put, We all know how to heal.  Knowing when to use your spells, proper execution of your cool-downs for maximum benefit and learning to work together to make a great healing team are the more difficult aspects of healing for your raid these days. If you plan on being a permanent healer in any raid team, teamwork and communication is the key to success for your healing team.  Not to mention these fights are a lot more demanding than they ever used to be.  Not only are we healing but our situational awareness is now more demanding than ever.

Sure, some of these fights (referring to FL) are pug-able.  Like Shannox, Beth and Ryolith.  The good teamwork comes into play for the fights that are more difficult if not impossible to pug, Balerock, Alysrazor, Major Domo and of course, Ragnaros requires that teamwork and communication for cooldowns and AoE healing.   Each new boss that we come to we generally have already reviewed the fights and are ready to rock on first pull.  If we don’t know it or are unsure, we ask questions and get it down as fast as possible so the raid is not hindered.  No offense to the dps or tanks.  But I’d rather the fault be on them when it comes to these fights because I know we healers know what we are doing.

We come prepared.

Enough ranting.   So, a few questions to ask, as a healer to another healer, what do you bring to the table for your raid? What are you doing to ensure that the raid is successful from the healing teams standpoint?  Do YOU communicate with your other healers? Are you the type of person after a raid wipe that says, well I did my job so it’s not my fault we wiped?  When you could have asked for help or lending help to another healer that might have been struggling with their assignment?

I’m passionate about my healing and my raid team’s success.  So these questions matter to me.  What makes you tick?

Not really a guide but more of an informational list.  I’ll list all of what you should be using and some brief information about each spell as well as seals and aura information, healing tips and useful add-ons.

Please keep in mind this information is based around level 85 characters and mainly focused with 10 man raid healing.

Direct Healing Spells:

Holy Shock  HS -  Instant cast, low mana cost.  Used quite often and should be kept on cooldown. ie using it whenever it’s up. Builds holy power.

Holy Light  HL -  You basic and most common healing spell.  It’s a slow casting heal but works well.  Mainly for use during low damage periods or only 1 target taking damage during a raid.

Flash of Light  FL -  Fast casting but high on mana cost.  Use when you need to cast a quick occasional heal.  Builds Holy Power when used on the beaconed target

Divine Light  DL – Slow casting, but your biggest heal and your most mana expensive heal. best used during periods of high damage on tanks or low health raid members.  After a while you will be able to tell how big of a heal it is.  So you can look at a person and be able to tell which healing spell to use to top them off.  Builds Holy Power when used on the beaconed target

Word of Glory  WoG -  Instant cast, no mana cost. great for an extra heal.  Word of Glory activates when you build holy power, the more holy power, the stronger the heal.  Makes for a great combo with a Divine Light.  I also like to use it when im focused on healing tanks but need to heal another raid member quickly without taking away from healing my focus target, just switch pop your WoG and go back to your main focus.

Area of Effect (AoE) Healing Spells:

Holy Radiance  HR -  A great AoE healing spell, but short lived, 3 seconds I believe and it only heals a certain amount of targets for AoE.  Also has a slow cast time and expensive mana cost, literally about the same as a DL.

Light of Dawn LoD – Also a great AoE healing spell, but similar to HR in that it only heals a certain amount of targets, it actually heals the most injured first which is awesome.  LoD is also activated by building Holy Power and same as WoG, the more holy power, the stronger the AoE.  Keep in mind LoD is a frontal cone AoE and only heals what is in front of you. So when you are going to use it, make sure most of the raid is in front of you.

Cooldowns:

Hand of Protection  HoP – Commonly referred to as BoP.  Can protect the target from damage also helps tanks clear some debuffs, It prevents you from doing physical attacks though so beware when using it on a tank that isn’t ready to click it off.

Aura Mastery AM – Good booster for a short burst of damage mitigation, your raid CD.

Hand of Sacrifice – Oh No, tank is out of CDs! What should I do..  <–

Hand of Salvation – Use on somebody who has aggro that shouldn’t.

Hand of Freedom – Seems more of a PvP thing now a days but good at freeing you from slowing effects.

Lay on Hands LoH – Your “Oh Shit” button.  use when someone is about to die. preferrably a tank.

Personal Cooldowns:

Divine Protection – I like to use this when there is a lot of magical damage (recommend you glyph for this). Since holy paladins aren’t usually up with the tanks most damage is magical. so using this with the glyph will help reduce damage and keep the heals off you and focused on everyone else.

Divine Favor – mini heroism!

Divine Plea – mana regen.  I usually tend to use this around 70-75% the first time.  It does nerf your healing while active so I recommend using it during periods of low damage where you can almost stop casting for 9 seconds.

Avenging Wrath – aka wings, provides a temporary boost to healing.  good for last minute push throughs or periods of high damage.

Guardian of Ancient Kings -  also good for last minute push throughs or periods of high damage.

Divine Shield – your bubble, use it as needed.

Auras and Seals:

Plain and simple with this one.  You should only be using Seal of Insight and should be using resistance aura, if you are in a raid with another holy paladin I would suggest one of you using Concentration Aura.

Beacon of Light:

This one deserved it’s own little small part in this because of the few things I want to cover dealing with your Beacon.  Now keep in mind, this is my preference.  It’s just what i’ve learned over the time that i’ve been healing.

- When determining which tank to beacon, I usually always beacon the higher HP tank.   Nowadays the higher the HP on a tank, usually means the better the gear since stacking stam is a thing of the past. (unless the tank is ridiculously geared).  So the logic behind it is simple.  Since the higher HP tank has better gear we are going to assume he has better damage mitigation and such so the beacon is placed on this tank and receives the “splash” heals or indirect heals from the beacon(50% carry over unless you are using Holy Light then its 100%).  The lower HP aka less geared tank gets the direct healing.

Now this doesn’t always work, but most of the time this will be how it is.  Some tanks are just better at mitigating damage than others via CD usage or specific boss fights which play a role based on who’s tanking what.  Feel it out and see what works for you.

- You should always have your beacon up.  Beacon lasts for 5 minutes, so you should only have to refresh it once, maybe twice for each fight.

- During periods of high damage, I tend to direct heal the non beaconed tank and let the splash keep the beaconed tank up, only when the damage gets really intense and the 50% carry over isnt enough is when I switch to direct healing the beaconed tank.

Your Healing Team, Play style and Healing Roles:

Some of my play style is set due to my healing team.

Am I self sufficient?  Yes.  Can I carry the burden myself?  Yes.  Should I?  Not always.  This is where it is important to have that chemistry with your healing team.  Learn to trust the other healers and they will learn to trust you.  You each have each other’s back at some point or another.  I heal like I do because of who I heal with.  Each healer on your team should be self sufficient but also work well as a team.  Communication is important.  Set up a chat channel for your heal team to discuss healing points.  How do you guys feel about the fight?  How’s mana?  What is our CD rotation, who’s going first? Who’s on cleansing duty?  Things that you should be communicating about with each fight.

Tank Healing:

You shouldn’t be the only one healing the tanks.  More than likely though you will be doing most of the direct healing and during those high damage times but the other healers on your team will be helping.  Holy Paladins are tough to beat when it comes to straight up direct healing.

When tank healing your primary spells are HS, DL, HL and WoG.  In no set order.  HS is always on CD.  DLs should be used for moderate to heavy damage.  When damage is light, throw out some HLs.  Remember your beacon rules and use the transfers to heal both tanks rather than wasting your mana healing each seperately.

Raid Healing:

Holy Paladins have stepped up to the plate in the realm of AoE healing this expansion.  LoD and HR are great spells, especially when used right.   The raid team is usually stacked or close proximity when you need to be using your AoE heals, naturally.  Remember, we are newer at this than other classes when it comes to AoE healing.

For example, with LoD, holy power is needed for this spell and is strongest when stacked at 3. BUT you are also healing with at least 2 other healers that are also using AoE healing spells.  For max effectiveness, I only stack my HP to 2 and then use my LoD.  by the time you gain 3 HP to use your LoD, chances are your raid will be back to full. and your numbers will be low making it look like you aren’t doing much.  Also, if you are stacking to 3 that means the other healers are having to work harder to compensate for your slow AoE.

My rotation for AoE healing is simple.  HS + HR = LoD.  HR + HR = LoD. rinse, repeat.  Always keep HS on CD it’s instant cast and helps you get to 2 HP faster to push out that AoE.  Also if you have 2 points (like you should) in Blessed Life, it will help you generate HP faster as well.

Add-ons:

This is all personal stuff from here on out. but still may provide usefulness to some.

Call me old fashioned but I actually do not use healing add-ons, ie Grid, Healbot etc.. A lot of healers also use Power Auras, I prefer to keep things simple and as natural as possible.  That’s not to say that I do not use add-ons though, I still have some that I use to best maximize the way that I heal and how information is received and sent on screen.

The add-ons I list here will only be relevant to healing.

Current list of add-ons:

- Decursive for cleansing.

-  DBM and DBM Spelltimers (seeing when tanks use CDs can be vital information).

-  Fatality.  Puts a message in raid of who died, by what attack and the damage amount.  Rules out excuses from raid members saying they didn’t get heals or not knowing how they died!

-OmniCC  for cooldown monitoring.

- Shadowed Unit Frames.  Cleaner.. mostly for ease of use.

- SmartRes2 for rezzing..

Everything else is optional.

UI Modifications:

Something to keep in mind.  Too many add-ons is a distraction.  So things like Recount or scrolling combat text add-ons is distracting for me.  I still use Recount but I’ll tell any healer, don’t stare at it!   Keep your head on the game.

I also have disabled floating combat text in the Interface menu.  Why?  It gets in the way of seeing things.  Do I want to see my 40-50k+ heal?  Hell, yeah but do I need to see it?  No.  I have A.D.D., so the last thing I need to see is a big number popping up on my screen and getting excited and then someone dies.  It’s happened to me before.  Hell, I stop healing and run if I see shiny loots.

As always, questions, comments or concerns, feel free to hit me up!

Information current as of patch 4.3:

Let’s get started.  First off, this is a column geared towards PVE and raiding Holy Paladin Guide but may also be useful if you are a new level 85 gearing up. I have added bits of information here and there for those that are gearing up.  I will cover as much as I can to ensure everyone gets off on the right foot.  I have researched other sites for my own information and while I’m not dumb, a lot of them can be confusing.  I will add information from those sites as some of it is the most reliable around and to provide them as additional resources for you.

Starting with the basics and most frequently asked questions:  What should I spec for?  What about glyphs?  What stats should I be going for?   How should I be gemming?   What enchants should I get?   What about Reforging?   What is my rotation for a Holy Paladin?

We’ll break it down in the order you would probably (should) do it in game while you are staring at your Paladin.  Specs, glyphs, importance of stats, enchants, gems and reforging.

For holy paladin spell breakdowns, please check out “The Arsenal“.

Holy Specs :

Starting with the first question, for the most part the spec is the same.  The more you play your paladin, the more you will know what talents you will truly need.

To start with, fill in your talent points based on the cookie cutter spec below and go from there. To keep it simple I will provide two specs, one being the cookie cutter and the other being my personal spec to show you all points used.

Spec 1 is the basic cookie cutter spec with most of the talents chosen and a few for you to fill in yourself:
31/3/3

Spec 2 is my spec (to show the full usage of points):
33/3/5

Let me provide a little more information in dealing with my spec.  If you look at both of these specs side by side you will see that the talents chosen are the same.  My spec fills in the remaining points left over.

Now, why did I put my points where they are?

Let’s start with the extra points I added to the Holy tree.  I put 2 points into Blessed Life.  This one should be self explanatory but in case you are still wondering,  the chances of getting physically hit are fairly low.  But, now more than ever before there is raid damage, and in some fights, a ton of it.  This talent allows you to build holy power quickly.

I placed the other extra points in the Retribution tree. I put 2 points into Improved Judgement. The reason for this is that Holy Paladins lack some mobility while healing.  We are not druids who can cast some HoTs  (Heal over Time) spells on targets on the move (aside from our instant cast heals).  So the more range you have with your judgement, the less moving around you have to do while healing.    Judgement by itself only has a 10 yard range which can make you too close to the “action”.  Although, some fights require you to stack under the boss, in this case, you can also use your crusader strike to help build Holy Power.

With the 2 points added, it increases your range to 30 yards from the target.  With the 1 point into Enlightened Judgements, it will add an additional 5 yards bringing you to a total of 35 yards range from your target which is plenty being that most of your heals have a 40 yard range. You could grab the other point in Enlightened Judgements if you wanted to.   But I do not think it’s necessary, the 2nd point is a little over kill and leans more towards PVP than PVE. 1 point is sufficient for the extra yardage and a little bit of self heal as well.  The 1 point also gives you hit based on 50% of your spirit which is sufficient enough to make sure your judgement hits every time.  But that’s just my opinion, of course.

Why did I not put any points into Eternal Glory, you might ask?  In my experience it does not proc often enough.  Sure,  30% is a decent amount (rank 2),  but with the 2 points I put into Blessed Life, it helps me build holy power fast enough and more frequently than the proc for 30%.

Is Aura Mastery (AM) worth it?  This is a good question, and one I asked myself for a long time.  I like the benefit of it, but the thing that turned me off was that it only lasts 6 seconds.  So timing it was always a pain.  Initially, I did not choose AM while raiding until I started raiding T11  Heroic Blackwing Decent.  I chose to respec at a friends advice and added it in to try it out.  It proved very useful!

Now, it’s mandatory to have for any Holy Paladin.  Most of the fights have a lot of raid damage and most of that damage is timed and predictable.  So you are able to use it effectively as a vital raid cool down.  Especially now with Firelands and Dragon Soul under the belt where it’s used more often than not.  So, the end result is it should be a talent that every Holy Paladin chooses.

Glyphs:

On to the second question.  Glyphing for a Holy Paladin is fairly simple.

Prime Glyphs :

• Glyph of Divine Favor
• Glyph of Holy Shock
• Glyph of Seal of Insight
• Glyph of Word of Glory

There are only 4 you should be worrying about as a Holy Paladin.  The 2 most obvious choices are Glyph of Seal of Insight and Glyph of Holy Shock.   For the 3rd slot it is a personal preference between Glyph of Word of Glory and Glyph of Divine Favor.   I tend to lean towards the Glyph of Divine Favor because the extra 10% to Word of Glory is not as beneficial to me as the additional time to Divine Favor which works as your own personal heroism.  Again, it is a personal preference.

Major Glyphs:

• Glyph of Light of Dawn  Debatable, I could see this being ok for some specific fights.
• Glyph of Divinity  More beneficial than Glyph of Lay on Hands, a good choice.
• Glyph of Lay on Hands While a reduction in cool down time is nice, if you’re in a fight long enough to use it twice, something’s wrong.  Although, some boss fights are longer than 10 mins.
• Glyph of Beacon of Light  Now that Beacon of Light lasts for 5 minutes, it”s not worth grabbing this Glyph.
• Glyph of Cleansing  If you are a new 85 getting gear where mana may be an issue, running random heroics or Baradins Hold then this might be beneficial for you.  As your gear improves you will probably drop this glyph for something better.
• Glyph of Divine Plea  A must have. Why would you not? An extra 6% mana!
• Glyph of the Long Word Not worth it,  but that’s just my opinion.  Paladins are direct healers, I look at Word of Glory as an extra mana free heal but also as an additional emergency heal (which is why you grab at least 1 point in the Last Word talent.) So having this glyph that provides 50% up front and the rest as a HoT is not that great in my opinion. If you want a short HoT on your target, use Holy Radiance.
• Glyph of Divine Protection  Since you are not in melee range of being physically attacked most of the time it’s a pretty good idea to pick this one up for extra magical damage reduction.

A lot more to choose from for Major Glyphs, huh?   Another Glyph not mentioned above would be Glyph of Holy Wrath.  For some fights you may be asked to assist with add control.  So you may want to consider switching out a glyph for this one depending on the fight.  i.e. Ragnaros (when the adds spawn and DPS are busy slowing them down, they don’t always have the time to grab the farther ones out.  You can easily run in, hit your Holy Wrath which will stun them long enough for the DPS to take over.)

Minor Glyphs:

• Glyph of Insight
• Glyph of Blessing of Kings
• Glyph of Blessing of Might

Not much of a breakdown considering you will only need these three.

Stats:

This brings us to question three. The stats.  I’ll break down the list of what you’ll use as a Holy Paladin and discuss them all as much as possible.  They are listed  based on priority as well.  Since I’m going to keep this section simple if you want more technical info on your stats, please visit the Elitist Jerks Holy Paladin forum.

• Intellect – Increases your mana pool, your Spellpower, your crit and even some mana regeneration.
• Haste – Decreases the cast time of your spells.
• Crit – Increases your chance to cast a critical heal.
• Mastery – Adds to the absorb amount generated from Illuminated Healing
• Spirit – Increases the amount of mana regeneration in and out of combat.

Intellect:
It’s the best stat by far and it’s what you should be stacking.  When it comes to gemming, enchanting and your trinkets, you should be focusing on Intellect, especially your trinkets. and im not talking a spirit trinket with an int proc.  You should always be going for trinkets with Intellect as a stat on it.  Oh yea, and try to avoid mastery with those trinkets.  Leave those for the caster DPS.

Haste:
Everybody wants to cast faster spells right?  Well, haste is what makes that magic happen.   Haste also has a better chance at keeping Conviction up compared to Crit.  This is due to 2 talents in the holy tree, Protector of the Innocent and Light of Dawn that apply towards Conviction.  It is your most important stat next to Intellect.

The break point you should be shooting for is 1859 Haste Rating or 14.5%. Now, the more the merrier but anything over that is sort of a waste, and should be reforged/regemmed or enchanted elsewhere because the next break point is 2945 Haste Rating or 23% which is not achievable with current Tier gear.  So I would take haste to around 1900 or so and anything over that put it into the next best stat, which is….

**This may have changed with patch 4.3  I’ll need to do more research and edit this post if necessary.**

Crit :
Who doesn’t love crit?  I do… and everybody else does too!  But, it’s not as beneficial as haste… bummer.  It’s still somewhat beneficial to help keep Conviction up but it doesn’t do as good of a job at that as haste does.

Mastery:
Now the idea for Mastery is awesome but in actuality, it sucks.  Funny thing is that Blizzard knows it!   They keep trying to buff it, but it’s still weak.  Now they did a pretty good buff to it a few patches ago but it’s still not worth climbing up the ranks for stat priorities.    Each point of Mastery increases the absorb amount by an additional 1.50%.  The absorb shield it places on your target lasts for 15 seconds or until that target takes damage equal to it.  It only places a certain percentage of your heal on the target as an absorb as well.  For example, my Paladin has 8.88 mastery which equals to 13% of the amount healed placed on the target as an absorb bubble.

Spirit:
Mana regeneration is important for healers but I wouldn’t go as far as gemming or enchanting for it.  Maybe 1 or 2 gems at the most if you are gearing up or are having mana issues but otherwise, you shouldn’t be aiming for it.  Spirit will come with gear!   The better your gear gets, the better your spirit will be.  When judging, where you should be with your Spirit, you need to look at your Combat Regen.  With Blessing of Might, you should be aiming for around 3000 to 3100 Combat Regen (probably higher now with 4.3).  That will suffice for all your needs.  Anything higher than that would be safe to say to reforge into a more important stat.  Start with getting rid of those Spirit gems if you have any.

This is a personal preference, I’ve seen and raided with a few holy paladin friends that have a few more int/spirit gems than i’d like to see, but it works for them.  Find what best suits you!

Gems:

The forth question:  how should I be gemming?

First and foremost, the only solid color you should be gemming is Red.  Do not gem a solid yellow or a solid blue.  The only gems you should be putting on your gear are Intellect and Intellect/Haste gems.  With that said, I will not provide information on those other solid gems or most other gems.

**Upgrades to epic quality gems are now available thanks to patch 4.3 and the Dragon Soul raid.  I will not be listing them here though.  The colors and such are still the same, just look for Brilliant and Reckless in the name.**

Red:
Brilliant Inferno Ruby
Your main gem.  Use it!

Orange:
Reckless Ember Topaz
If you are gearing up you will probably have a few of these gems in your gear.  And that’s fine. As you reach your Haste break point you should start replacing them with the straight +40 Intellect gems. Make sure you leave 2 in your gear though for the Meta Bonus from your helm.

Purple:
Purified Demonseye
If you need some spirit, use this gem.

 Meta:
Ember Shadowspirit Diamond
This is the preferred Meta you should be using.

Enchanting :

Question number five!  Enchants are as follows:

Helm – Arcanum of Hyjal  +60 Intellect and +35 Crit
Must be Revered with Guardians of Hyjal

Shoulders – Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone +50 Intellect and +25 Haste
There is also the Lesser Inscription of Charged Lodestone at Honored for those that aren’t exalted with Therazane which is +30 Intellect and +20 Haste

Cloak – Enchant Cloak – Greater Intellect  +50 Intellect

Chest – Enchant Chest – Peerless Stats +20 to all Stats

Bracers – Enchant Bracer – Mighty Intellect +50 Intellect
If you have not met your haste cap go with Enchant Bracer – Greater Speed +65 Haste

Gloves – Enchant Gloves – Haste +50 Haste

Leggings – Powerful Ghostly Spellthread +95 Intellect and +55 Spirit
Crafted by Tailors.

Boots – Enchant Boots – Haste +50 Haste rating
You may want some movement speed sometimes so Enchant Boots – Lavawalker is good too.

Weapon – Enchant Weapon – Power Torrent chance to proc +500 Intellect.
Some still use Enchant Weapon – Heartsong as well. chance to proc +200 Spirit.

Shield – Enchant Off-Hand – Superior Intellect +40 Intellect

Reforging:

Question number six-  This may sound a little complicated but I will try and keep it simple.

A couple things to remember, always reforge to the best stat possible unless you are capped in that stat.  Secondly, just because you have something that can be reforged doesn’t mean it needs to be.

Since you cannot reforge into Intellect, go to the next one on the list-  Haste.  You can also reforge Spirit out if you have too much Spirit.  Reforge based on the stat priority list.  If the piece of gear only has Haste on it- don’t reforge it out  unless you are over the cap and can afford to reforge it out for the next best stat.

If the piece of gear has 2 reforge-able stats on it, reforge the lowest priority stat to the highest priority stat as necessary.

Rotation:

The last question.   This one deserves a little chuckle.

There is no real answer for this.  Each healer heals differently and each holy paladin will give you a different answer.  It is up to you to find that groove and use which spells work best for you.

Sure, I could give you some more information on this.  I’ll even tell you how and what spells to use for certain situations or boss fights at certain moments and some healing combos that work well.   But some things are better left unsaid, for you to learn on your own so you may find your way and your rank among Holy Paladins.

For some additional information on this topic please see The Arsenal page for spell break downs and Paladin healing tips.

Things change with every patch!  I’ll try and keep things updated but in an event that I don’t, please feel free to let me know!  If you have comments, suggestions or if you just wanna talk about healing, drop me a line!  Feeling lost in your place among us holy paladins and need some advice?  Email me at PaladinAdri@gmail.com!

I’m the raid leader of a raid group where there are two couples that raid with us. One in particular is a healer and a tank.

Everything has been going great.. until they broke up. Ever since the break up, they have been bickering about EVERYTHING. From strats to personal problems… even in vent. It always starts from something small and it turns into screaming matches, and I have to stop the raid to take 5. 

It makes everyone uncomfortable and it’s getting to the point where nobody wants them to raid with us anymore. They’ve been with us since the beginning and are very valued raiders. How should I approach this situation????  I don’t know what to do…

I would like for them to get along if they want to continue raiding with us. I’m really hard pressed finding replacements for them, especially for two critical roles (tank and heal if they get kicked). I’d rather avoid letting it come down to this!!  Help!

- Heartbroken Raid Lead

Dear Heartbroken,

As a raid leader it’s normal to feel uncertain about how to give your friends support through their separation but it is possible to navigate this situation and still maintain a strong raiding team.

To begin with, I suggest scheduling a meeting to talk with each of them separately as soon as possible – preferably on VOIP so that they can hear your (non-threatening) voice – if you feel you’ll have problems keeping the appropriate tone, bring an officer for moral support. If there are moments where they are behaving a tad irrational, remember they have just been through a traumatizing life crisis and will not be the rational, wonderful person you’ve grown accustomed to working with. They are more sensitive, lonely, and volatile and will behave so regardless of wether or not they show the outward signs of it. While it may be tempting remember it’s not your place as a raid leader to judge, offer advice, or slam them or their ex.

You’ll want to write down the points you want to discuss in advance so that you can stay on track.  Whatever you do, don’t take sides and don’t offer advice. Here are the points I suggest you make…

• As they work through their own feelings, reassure them that the raid is a neutral party in their break up. You were all friends before the break up and intend to remain friends after the break up.

• Explain your objectives as a raid team (progression, an adult environment, recreation for example).

• Let them know that their behaviour over X period has been making everyone uncomfortable and it is no longer acceptable.  If they wish to continue raiding with the team, and you hope they do, they will have to focus on the task at hand and put their differences aside during the raid or different arrangements will need to be made.

• Reiterate that you value them as a member of the team, you are here to support them through their transition.

• You hope they’ll be ok and you are here to listen.

Now one of two things can happen..

SITUATION A: The conversation is a meeting of understanding and both parties behave as mature adults (unlikely). If this happens you’ll need be clear about the chain of command, what sort of behaviour you’ll tolerate (no heckling, no arguing, comments can be sent via whisper to the officers.. etc)  and monitor their behaviour. Be ready to crack the whip if someone steps out of line. You’ll need to be firm and fair. Remember they are your peers so try not to humiliate them in the process.

SITUATION B: One or both of them could go nuclear in which case, I recommend keeping the dialogue going  so it may run it’s course. For some, after having an initial outburst, they’ll realise the implications of their behaviour and come around… You may be able to salvage one of the two. Chances are you’ll have to lose one There’s no easy way around it, you have to play the cards and see where they lay. I’d also recommend putting fingers out to look for a new tank and/or healer early on so that if this goes downhill quick you have a backup plan. It’s not easy but you’d be surprised who’s out there looking for an opportunity.

Ultimately, the job of a raid leader is a challenging one that includes melding support with uncomfortable conversations and confrontations.

Happy Raiding, Xtasia!

Gee, this is a tough one because I have so many!

The Death of the Lich King:

Aviria, my rogue was my main who I raided full time in ICC with my guild on Cenarion Circle.  The guild was the first guild who I started raiding seriously with as a 10 and 25 man raider.  I became good friends with one of the holy paladins, Niero, who befriended me when I was a new pug raider for a ToC 25 man.  We started raiding regularly together and discovered that we liked to play together, that we had great chemistry between the two of us.  I’d FoK adds away with ToT if I saw any mobs staggering towards his holy paladin in raids, and he’d save me with Divine Intervention if I got into trouble.  We were murder in battlegrounds whenever we teamed up- we took great pleasure in killing the Horde together, with my rogue ganking people and him making sure we stayed alive.  I loved playing with this guy.

Niero and Aviria

He started expressing his frustrations with the game in late Wrath when we were struggling on killing the Lich King.  “I don’t know if I want to keep playing WoW,”  he told me.  My heart sunk when I learned that he might be quitting the game.  I would be losing my favorite pocket healer for battle grounds and I would be on my own in raids again.  I would really miss him, I knew.  He was undecided, and as a friend, I told him if that was what he wanted to do, I would support him 100%.  “I would miss you a lot, but if that’s what you want, go for it,”  I told him, giving him my sincere wishes for the best.

As a month of mind-numbing and frustrating nights of wipes on the Lich King passed by, we were getting close.  The longer it took, the more frustrated he got.  The cracks crept a little wider every time I heard him talk about quitting the game.  But he was determined to see the end of the Lich King.  He wasn’t going to quit until he killed the Lich King, he declared to me one day, finally sure that he was going to quit once the Lich King was dead.  I was glad he was going to stay by my side and see to it that we killed the Lich King together.  But he wasn’t the only one who were feeling really weary of the fight.  I shared the sentiments with him except that I wasn’t the one who wanted to quit the game.  But damn it, we were getting so close, wiping at the very last minute right before the Lich King wipes out the raid.

“I think we’re going to down him this week, I’m sure of it,” I told him before a raid night the following week, convinced that would be it.  He thought the same, adding that he had this one-use item that would boost his stats that he was saving for the LK kill.  I don’t remember what it was, but he mentioned he was saving it for a special occasion for a long time and decided the LK would be perfect.

“Shit!”  A dps swore after he dropped dead from one of the Valkyrs during that fateful night.  Healers were out of brezzes, and we were very, very close.  Our offtank was the next person to die after being smashed by a Vile Spirit that explode if you came in contact with one and damage everyone in the blast radius.

It was do or die.  Adrenaline Rush came off cool down and I remember spamming the button for AR to feed my energy starved rogue.  Damn it, damn it, gogogogo!  For a few seconds, time seemed to stop.  The adrenaline kicked in as I eviscerated the LK and hit Blade Flurry.  Everyone’s health were steadily dropping away because we lost another player- a healer from one of those vile spirit suckers.  Everyone else would start dropping one by one like a row of dominos if we didn’t kill the Lich King.. fast.

Exalted and Lich King

I got blasted back from a vile spirit but my health got topped off by my trusty holy paladin friend, Niero with the last of his mana.  I literally saw his mana bar drain to empty as he healed me, struggling to keep the raid going while his own health also dwindled away.   I got back on the LK like glue once the daze wore off, and I could see the tank was going to be next with his health dipping dangerously low.  Please, just let us get him.. I silently pleaded, hoping to negotiate with the would-be pixelliated WoW god, if there ever was one.  This was all we had, dead healers and the main tank was quickly approaching death, desperately using CD’s as the Lich King smashed away at him.

Before I knew it, we were all dead.  Yes!  My hands were shaking so badly, because that was a truly epic fight and that we finally killed the Lich King.  Someone we relentlessly pursued since the beginning of Wrath, ending in his own domain in the Ice Crown Citadel.  As soon the big bad boss of the expansion died and loot windows popped up, I turned around to face Niero.

Ice Crown Citadel

My face wet with tears, I wrote a tell to him, “Yeah!  We did it!”  jumping around on my rogue while we waited for roll calls.  “Grats!”  He wrote back as he hovered near the edge of the platform of the ICC tower.  He turned to face me and waved at me… then he jumped. Off the edges of the platform.  Stunned, I rushed over to the edge to see where he had gone,  ”Niero, no!”   I immediately realized that this meant the end for him, what he had been talking about for months were finally here, with his story ending when Niero finally slew the Lich King.  The realization struck me the moment he died at the bottom of the tower.

He stopped playing the game shortly after, selling everything he had and giving away gold to his friends, myself included.  We exchanged our good byes before he logged off for good and unsubscribed from the game.  Nowadays, we’re still friends and he sounds like he’s been doing pretty good, but whenever I talk to him, he reminds me of that night.  Him jumping off that platform to his death after the LK got killed symbolized a turning point for me in the game.

After he left, I took a step back to re-evaluate what I wanted out of the game.  While I liked the guild then, I wasn’t feeling like I was getting much out of it, especially now that Niero was gone.  The guild was focused on raiding, but I guess you could say that they were a casual progression raiding guild.  Casual wasn’t helping me reach my goals, so I applied at another guild.. the same guild that I’m still with today!  I’ve become very good friends with many of the raiders I play with, so I definitely don’t regret making the decision to leave.

I didn’t make the decision lightly either, because I was with them for two years and would miss some people I knew.  I cut down on raiding a lot and focused on what was important to me in life shortly after he left.  Even though I didn’t raid as much as I used to, good things still came out at the end of the day.  Good things like the creation of this website and being able to raid with a great team, playing WoW only when I’m raiding.  I don’t often log on when I’m not raiding or when I’m busy with other things.  I don’t put off other things for WoW anymore, so it’s less of a priority for me now, I don’t feel the need to log everyday because it’s as good as it gets for me.

The best part is that I’m okay with that

Meet Yogg. He's an ancient god and normally a bad dude, but he's generally misunderstood.

Cadistras Art was the inspiration for this Yoggdoll

The working blueprint for Yoggie

Here is the cuddly Yoggsaron Doll inspired by Cadistra’s art, as photographed by J33lee of ParadeOfApples

On his off days he likes to lazily hang out and watch people go by.

He practices mindful eating.

He is fascinated by this apple and the mysteries it holds.

Sometimes he contemplates what if he just listened to his Dad and went into dentistry.

He can be a big softie. It's hard to tell when he's trying to kill you with his tentacles.

Just like you and me, he likes to catch a few rays when it's sunny...

Maybe next time invite him over to watch an episode of Glee.

I get the weirdest looks when I wear him around on my head at the office, but trust me when I tell you this, his tentacles wrapped around your melon is a miracle cure for headaches. What do you think I should make next?

-  Xtasia

Came across the blog and decided to write you. I am a gm of a small raiding guild, and we tried to get a raid group together for Dragon Soul. We are mostly casual, but we are running into problems when it comes to keeping our raiders. Some raiders have left because we don’t raid enough, or aren’t progressing enough, and this puts our raids on hold for the raiders who do still raid casually.

Recently, my raid leader approached me and said he wanted to add one more day. But with the recruiting issues, I didn’t see how this would be possible without a solid roster, but I asked people anyway. Some raiders do not want to add a day more due to RL conflicts etc, so now my raid leader is threatening to leave also.

This sucks because some of the raiders are long time WoW friends who enjoy playing together, so I really don’t want to let this fold.

What to do?

-Burnt out from Raiding

In long term raiding, progression and commitment are symbiotic. You'll need both to complete objectives, like epic weapon quests.

Dear BOFR,

A successful and long lasting raid team is a group that shares the same progression values, commitment and schedule. Your big problem is your raiders are not on the same page for progression, time commitment, and calibre of performance. These things are symbiotic. If any of these things go up or down, the rest must change as well. Your job is simple depending on your preferred outcome.

If you want to move up to the next level in raiding then you’ll have to do a few tough things.  Decide who are your best players and cull the weak links. Build your new team around this core’s schedules and values. Heartless? Maybe, but if you don’t do this, and do it right you’ll end up with more headaches.

With more time commitment comes an expectation of results, so you’ll need to establish your groups values, such as “everyone must read the strat in advance, everyone must cap their valor, everyone must min/max their gear. Establish this now with your core, and make sure all new members understand and agree. You are building a culture…

You’ll have positions to fill so figure out the classes that would optimize the group, and begin recruiting for like minded high performace players who can raid at your times, in the appropriate classes, and perform at the level you expect. Do not compromise or you’ll be in this situation again. Your team deserves the right people and the right chemistry even if it means you are pugging for a few weeks. Usually players of similiar skill level will stick together, so don’t be upset if a superior player moves on… In progression circles, better now, than later when they’ve soaked up all your gear. Conversely don’t be a pussy and keep a player thats terrible because you are afraid to hurt their feelings. Your other raiders are counting on you to cut the chafe so do your job!  Be creative where you recruit someone ‘LIKE YOU’.

Raiding with a close knit team can be rewarding but its not as easy as it looks. It takes a fair, strong leader.

The other alternative is to maintain the casual team. First I’d take a good brutally honest look at your team’s skill. There are generally two types of teams that fall into this catagory.

Weekend Warriors: good players who have real lives and can’t make the 5days/week commitment of progression raiding teams because of work, families, etc. You can pick up other Weekend warriors by promoting an enjoyable, results oriented raid team. You’ll need to be moderately choosy but ultimately it’s all about making the best use of limited time online so group chemistry and competency is the most important aspect here.

Terribads but TerriFUN!: Terrible players who have alot of fun and see the content, eventually. You can appeal to this group by being an opportunity for new players just beginning to raid, and keeping the experience social, light, fun, and easy going. You can recruit for this team by running random dailies and meeting people picking up pre-raiding gear. Look for a personality you enjoy with a decent understanding of their class. The downfall of this type of raid is that you need to be ready for people to move on so they’ll be a bit more turn over.

Good luck, Xtasia

That’s easy, but hold on your hats, folks.  Fannon has added a twist to this challenge, and renaming it the The Battle Medic Rule of Six by Six by Six.  Instead of doing just one folder, the Battle Medic tradition calls for a few!  Since the torch was passed down to me, I’ll carry it on by starting with..

My World of Warcraft Screenshot folder:

My screenshot folder does not have any subfolders.  Yeah, I know, the horror, considering how many screenshots I’ve taken.  A total of 1293 screenshots in this folder, and that’s not even counting my old WoW screenshots from my laptop.  Since there were no sub folders, I’ll just pick the sixth image from this folder:

Aidrana with raid team at Deathwing

I like to organize my files by date, so for this image, this was taken on January 26, the last time I raided before going on my trip.  I’m not sure what I was doing, but I liked how the aspects were looking in the background and were messing around while I was waiting for the raid to pull.  There really isn’t much of a story behind this picture, but I can tell you I love taking random pictures at random times.  I’d look at them later on and find some really great pictures that sometimes were completely unintended, those are great to use for post images or as fillers.  This picture will eventually be used some day

Screenshots folder: Six Down and Six Across

Weird Clouds in Auction House and Swimming Druids

I don’t know what was going on in that auction house that day I walked in on my paladin, Oriolle.  There were fireworks going off nonstop and smoke billowing out of the ground in purples and greens.  There were druids in seal form swimming around!  I couldn’t figure out how they were doing that, because if I can swim on land as a seal, I’d totally do it on my druid too!

It’s somewhat a habit of mine to take pictures of players doing silly things like this, or when they’re flying around on their mounts and freeze mid-air upside down.  I see players flying their mounts in a looping circle on their backs, and that’s awesome as heck, except it frustrates me because I have no clue how to do that too.  Someday, I’ll learn the secrets to all this

misspewpew.com sub-folders:

I’ll have to explain how I organize things on my hard drive for my website.  Right now, the folder for everything from this site is actually a sub folder of a folder called “websites”.  I have several folders for different websites, and my WoW blog isn’t the only one I manage.  It is so important to keep each website seperate from each other, so I’ve typed in different domain names as actual folder names.  There are other websites that I’ve made for other people that also reside in their own folders in the website folder.

So let’s find out what the sixth image in the sixth subfolder of  misspewpew.com is:

Hagara Main Phase strat

Ah, ha ha.  I was asked to draw up some pictures for strategy on Hagara for my raid team..  I made a few pictures outlining each phase, what the spells were and what to do in each phase.  The pictures weren’t fancy, but it got the job done with a graphic tablet and Photoshop.  I got my information from icy veins and drew everything out in pictures the best I could to convey movements that icy-veins were calling for in their guide on heroic Hagara.  I’ve never posted any of my raiding stuff that I’ve done for the team, and this stuff is in the misspewpew.com folder because I write about my raid experiences there.  I don’t want to mix my WoW stuff with anything else on my computer, or else it’d become a ugly mess

misspewpew.com folder: Six Down and Six Across

Arcane Background

We’ve just found ourselves a old background I used to have for my articles.  It’s actually got a transparent background so it would work with any color, and you would still see the arcane circles.  I removed it because I wanted a cleaner background for my posts and opted to have my posts displayed on a plain white background in their own containers.  I might use it again someday, but it’ll likely be for something like the footer or an aside container.  As much as I love to mess around with different pictures to use for backgrounds, I still have to keep it to a minimum for folks with slower internet connections

Artwork/Photos folder:

Luckily for us, in this folder there are tons of sub-folders floating around full of goodies.  Like this one as the sixth image in the sixth subfolder.. oh, gee.  It’s the folder where there are pictures of me and other people.  I figure it won’t hurt to post a picture of me because I’ve seen some bloggers do the same.  I used to be a huge fan of make-up and I used to frequent the MAC cosmetic counter in the malls.  Whenever I came home, I’d excitedly try on the new eyeshadows I bought from the store and then take pictures of the results.  This photo is one of those, that I kept for my personal use because I thought it was a lovely picture.

You can really see how grey my eyes are-  I’m not kidding you, I have steel grey eyes.  I’ve been told it’s a beautiful color, and I agree sometimes, but my eyes have NO COLOR.  Grey is NOT a color.  Why wasn’t I born with something more colorful, like perhaps blue?  At least I didn’t get stuck with brown eyes

Picture of the real person behind Aidrana

And finally, the last one…

Hiking with some beer!

I went on a hiking trip with some friends a few years ago.  It was my first time hiking in southern Alberta, and you can bet it was hot that day!  I was kicking myself for wearing pants the entire day and were trying my best to keep myself cool, short from stripping down.  We were hiking through what seemed to be like a desert that day.  We stopped somewhere for a quick break and broke out the beer.  So you can see me hanging out here with a can of beer in my hand (yes, I drink beer!).

I miss hiking to be honest.  I suppose, as people got married and started having families, there isn’t really anyone around who would have the time to dedicate a few days to camping with me in the back country.  It’s unfortunate, but I’m glad I got to do a lot of those trips when we were younger before life started bogging everyone down.  Ah well.

That will be all for the challenge, I hope I did a good job

There are tons of posts for me to do-  I recently started a write up on the revised MoP talents for druids and I still have my 20 days of WoW blogging to do.  I’ve been trying to space out posts by a day but this month will be the first month where this site will have been posting on a nearly daily basis from me and the rest of the crew here.  Xtasia got a couple of lovely emails asking for help with managing some raids, so you can definitely see that coming up in Guildmaster QQ as well in the next few days, on top of my own posts.

Now who do I pass the torch to?

Here are the lucky 6 winners:

• Vidyala at http://manalicious.wordpress.com/
• Amerpriest at http://amerpriestblog.com/
• Beru at http://fallingleavesandwings.wordpress.com/
• Draccus Moonsayer at http://druiddoodles.blogspot.com/
• Gladly at http://thereadycheck.com/
• Lufitoom at http://lufitoom.com/

I don’t know if any of you will do the challenge, but it’s fun digging through your folders.  Good luck, everyone!