The Long Word :: 10/22/2010

Well, here’s my first shot at my weekly post called “The Long Word”.  Interestingly, I’ll probably be hitting both Holy AND Retribution this time.  In fact, probably hit Retribution a little more, since I’ve had a chance to play it lately.

The Long Word

But first, some general news:

ANZUUUUUUU!!!!
According to what I’ve read as of late, it appears that Anzu the Raven Lord is now a regular spawned boss in Sethekk Halls (Heroic of course). I overheard this while wandering through Dalaran and wanted to be sure. So I looked it up, and sure enough, he is.  So, I made my way on down to Shattrath (Oh I miss that place), and darted over to Auchidoun. Entering Sethekk Halls, I was wondering how difficult this would be, and began making my way through. It was easy as pie…. or so I thought.  Turns out after the patch was pushed, my default 5man setting was still on regular… *sigh* So I just cleaned the place up (Lower City rep is still on my list anyway), and popped out and hopped in on Heroic.  Upon entering, I saw the status text about the Eagle Hawk and Owl spirits returning to their stones, meaning that yes Anzu was there.

Anzu the Raven Lord

Started clearing through, easy enough, takes a little bit to take out groups as ret, but doable with the right CC.  But suddenly I hit a brick wall. Sethekk Ravengers…. these guys come in pairs, just like the normal doorway guards, but attack with such a vengence that it is hard to keep the HP up and still get damage out. I was sitting on about 30k HP in my ret set (both PvP and PvE), and they were eating through it like crazy. Sadly though, I couldn’t use Repentance, as they are Immune to it. So wipes were had, and cooldowns were blown, and eventually I was able to burn through the 3 or 4 sets of these guys and make my way to Anzu himself.  Fortunately, his room is empty, allowing me to get straight at him.

The fight is easy enough. Just start pouring on the pain, using Word of Glory if your life get’s about a quarter of the way down, using the other spots where your Holy Power is full to slap him with a hard hitting Templar’s Verdict. Then he’ll toss up a shield mitigating all damage, and starts summoning a ring of ravens to attack you.  They’re pretty easy, after you clear yourself of his initial stomp (he stuns you as soon as the birds are attackable). Just top yourself off, and start using your Holy Power points on Divine Storm and tossing a few Holy Wraths to burn the adds down. Once they’re gone, it’s back on Anzu, and pouring on more damage.  If you’re lucky he should only summon one more group of adds.  At least in my case, I was able to burn him down enough to take him out before anymore.  Unfortunately, the mount did not drop, though it has been confirmed that it does, in fact, still drop.

So, get your tails out there and have some fun in a nice “new classic” instance and have a chance at a really nice looking mount.

Speaking of mounts, be sure to hit Zul’Gurub every few days to be sure that you have a chance at the Zulian Tiger and Zulian Raptor before Zul’Gurub get’s flushed into the Great Sea.

Naming Conventions and Updates

Hi all, I’m still here, and have a little bit more information for the paladin class. First up being the official GUI update for Holy Power.  it looks like a little bronze dog tag hanging below your player portrait. It provides you with a visual of how many charges of Holy Power you have. Another change were some naming changes for spells such as Healing Hands.  Now known as Holy Radiance, it makes me feel much less pervy if I had to use it.

Holy Power GUI change.

Unfortunately there isn’t a lot of things that I can test, because I am still yet to be in the beta   The major thing that I want to test is the new Masteries. With the removal of Sacred Shield, several folks wondered what was going to take its place.

Basically the Holy Paladin Mastery will be doing that.  Each heal that you provide will be creating a “Divine Shield” and providing a mini version of the Sacred Shield based on the strength of the heal used. This is a really interesting addition, and in a way gives me a sense of Discipline Priest bubbling, except it’s happening automatically. Currently there is a bug that is replacing the shield with the next spell’s shield, no matter if it is less powerful or not. An example being, you cast a Divine Light that crits; this would put a substantial shield on the target. However, if you happen to have Holy Radiance running, it’s heals will overwrite the shield with its own shield, based on the power of the spell. This has been noted though, and marked as a bug.

There is a ton more that has been updated, in fact more that I’d be able to put into this post… yay for a busy RL.   But, I will begin breaking out some of these changes in future posts.

In other news, I went back Ret… yup, again.  I was actually on with some friends and we ran Heroic Halls of Reflection, and simply didn’t have the DPS to complete the final walk.  So, I hearthed out, and respec’d real quick into ret and grabbed my gear.  Needless to say, I actually hit near 5k dps and was able to help my buddies get the achievement for that run. Seeing that damage kind of excited me, so I decided to keep it and see how often I’d have a chance to get some instances in.  After a few runs, and also tweaking my gear to meet the hit cap, and maximize strength, I decided that it would be fun to continue this offspec… again.

Well, the next day, I was asked by a friend if I still had my tank gear.  Of course, I said yes, and ended up respecing AGAIN to go tank a couple of bosses in ICC. What sucked though is that I had just bought the T10 shoulders for my Retribution set… *sigh* Oh well.  So after that run was over, I swapped back.  I balanced the set out again, as changing the shoulders had dropped a good bit of +hit, and went looking for some raids. Fortunately I caught wind of a VoA 25, and decided to join as DPS. What a fortunate move that was, as the Sanctified T10 legs dropped, and I was the only Paladin DPS in the raid! So, I guess in a away, I had a bit of payback from helping my friends out earlier… ah, gotta love karma.

Haven’t really thought of a way to close this up, but will end it by saying that I plan to map out the latest changes for Paladins and provide some posts on the recent updates.  It’s difficult to keep up with, as they are changing almost daily, plus not being in the Beta, I’m having to look up the changes from other sites/blogs, and not blatantly plagiarise them.

So, until next time, Light be with you.

Holy Haste Batman

Morning all…

This. Is. CONFUSING!!!

I have begun to step back and look at the stats that I’ve recently been stacking for my Holy set. You see, I am the epitome for a casual 10 man raider. If you look at my gear, you will see pretty much all 10 man level gear for the current tier (except for a couple pieces). Because I usually only run 10 man raids, I have geared and gemmed slightly differently. However, going into ICC has really changed my perception of what stats should really be used.

I subscribed to the Spellpower/MP5 mentality early on, and have really held onto it for what I feel is too long. Don’t get me wrong, I do loves me some SP as well as some mana regen, but I have begun to shift my stat allocation more towards the current cut and dry preferences. Intellect and Haste are king now, and I think that I’m finally coming to terms with that.

As of right now, I’m sitting at a little over 600 haste, and a mana pool nearing 32k. I don’t think that I ever realized how helpful these stats really were until I first pugged Torvalon in VoA 25, and lost one of the tanks, simply because I couldn’t get the heal off fast enough. Also, I had not realized how hard the Deathbringer really hit, until a tank died because I was OOM from all the Holy Lights I was tossing out.

Haste is a really interesting stat, in that you have to have sooo much of it to really notice a difference. I now really notice the difference. I have learned that Flash of Light is great, but Holy Light is king in several situations. I guess that I just didn’t want this to be true, but I feel that it is. With my new stat allocation, and gemming mentality, I can now spam Holy Light, keeping Light’s Grace up, as well as popping a Judgement every once and a while for Judgements of the Pure, increasing my haste (for Holy Light) even further.

There’s one thing though. Once you begin to get so much haste, you begin casting longer spells much quicker. And because you are casting them quicker, you are casting more of them. Unless you really pay attention, and keep your mana regen abilities rolling, you will go OOM very quickly. Yet another thing that I’m learning the hard way.

From what I have read, the base haste cap to shoot for, as a Holy Paladin is around 700. This is easy to reach with talents and abilities, but it is better to reach that number with stats alone, allowing talents and abilities to increase that amount even further. With haste affecting the spell casting speed, it also affects the global cooldown as well, at least down to a minimum of a 1 sec GCD. I did some research and found some info on the Maintankadin site with some further calculations for the haste effect on spells.

Source: DisRuptive1 (on Maintankadin)
For those people above who aren’t sure, to get the 1-second Flash of Light (and 1.33-second Holy Light) you need:

20.6% Haste from gear
15% Judgement of the Pure
3% Retribution Paladin’s Swift Retribution
5% Shaman’s Wrath of Air Totem

Cast Speed / Haste Effect = New Cast speed

Flash of Light
1.5 / (1.206 * 1.15 * 1.03 * 1.05) =
1.5 / (1.49993235) =
≈ 1-second Flash of Light

Holy Light

2.5 – Light’s Grace / (1.206 * 1.15 * 1.03 * 1.05) =
2.5 – 0.5 / (1.206 * 1.15 * 1.03 * 1.05) =
2 / (1.49993235) =
≈ 1.33-second Holy Light

To get Holy Light to 1 second cast time (fun!) you would need 60.8% haste from gear instead of 20.6% (proof below)

1-second Holy Light
2.5 – Light’s Grace / ([1 + x%] * 1.15 * 1.03 * 1.05) = 1-second Holy Light
2.5 – 0.5 / ([1 + x%] * 1.243725) = 1
2.0 / ([1 + x%] * 1.243725) = 1
2.0 = [1 + x%] * 1.243725
2.0 / 1.243725 = 1+ x%
(2.0 / 1.243725) – 1 = x%
x% = (2.0 / 1.243725) – 1
x% ≈ 60.8% haste from gear

This shows that it is even possible to get a Holy Light down to a 1 second cast, though the sheer amount of haste to achieve that is steep. There is a way to push spellcasting speed to the sub-1sec level; however, it is not necessarily beneficial, as your spell will cast faster, but you can only cast that spell once avery second due to the 1 second GCD.

Well, there you have it. Some good info on Haste, and why it is slowly becoming my best friend. Just remember, the faster you cast, the more you cast, the more you cast, the faster you can go OOM, so keep an eye on your mana bar, as it’ll disappear quicker than you think.

How to Homogenize Healing

How far is too far?

I think that the chemistry definition describes it best.

In Chemistry, mixtures may be homogeneous. In other words, mixtures have the same proportions throughout a given sample or multiple samples of different proportion to create a consistent mixture.

It has been said by the boys at Blue that healing classes are going to be homogenized further, to pull some classes out of their restricted niches. There are folks on both sides of this fence. There are those who fear that all healing classes will be so similar, that there will not be a defined niche for any certain type of healer. There are also those who fear that it may actually push some classes further into a defined niche, lessening their chances at a raid spot.

Personally, I believe that it isn’t a problem of the generality or specificity of the classes, but rather a problem with how Blizzard may plan to keep healing interesting. I do get a bit tired of playing whack-a-mole after a large raid wide damage spike happens.

Whack-a-mole.. err cat.

In addition, there is more than just the spell selection that is being homogenized, as stats will be a difining factor as well, no matter the class.

Blizzard Says:

Homogenization is a risk. Totally. It’s something we try and fight against. In the case of healing, we don’t want to erode the unique aspects of the 5 talent specs. We just want to move the non-unique parts closer together. If you need an analogy, we’re not going to mess with the flowers or the fruit or the shape of the leaves. We just want everyone to have similar roots. Spells like Circle, Chain Heal and Beacon will continue to be an important and unique part of your repertoire. We just want to make sure everyone has the basic tools so that they aren’t in a situation where they’re trying to tighten screws with a hammer.

Now having said that, there are a couple of exceptions. If you are a Disc priest who loved to use PW:S and nothing else or a Resto druid who loved to use Rejuv and nothing else, then you will probably need to use more of your buttons again. We don’t want to promote the strategy of trying to pre-heal as many people as possible without really worrying about who is actually taking damage. There’s not a lot of decision-making or coordination or reactive gameplay there. Disc priests will need to actually cast heals (and Penance can certainly be one of them) and druids will have to mix in some direct heals along with their hots. (Source)

Healing in Cataclysm
I take a different view on a couple of your points here. Healers won’t be forced to spam their most efficient heal because the encounters will be less threatening early on. Later on when your mana regen as at its highest you will need to use your highest throughput spell because the damage is higher. You’ll also need to use your fast heal sometimes for the same reason. Fortunately fully raid buffed and in good gear, you’ll have more mana regen. I don’t think any of these changes encourage players to blame healers more. Bad players are always going to deflect their failures onto someone else. That is why they are bad players. The alternative is to make healing so simplistic that there is almost no chance of failure (i.e. nobody would ever die). You’d never get blamed for anything but you’d probably also be pretty bored.

Minus gaming coefficients, we pretty much had this model with downranking and it largely worked.

My fear is that if they over shoot the homogenization of the healing classes by to far, it will cause healing to become far more boring than it already is. Don’t get me wrong, healing isn’t always boring, in fact it can get pretty frantic at certain points. However, it is still the same spells with the same priorities, on the same targets.

Cataclysm looks to be pulling the Paladins out of their Tank heal only niche, and providing them with tools to provide raid healing. Now this isn’t necessarily efficient or effective raid healing, but we have yet to actually get our hands on it to see. Along with pulling each class out of their niche, it also appears that their stats are becoming far more homogenized as well. If you think about it, a Paladin would have NEVER consciously purchased or rolled on anything with spirit; however, come Cataclysm, it will be a very important addition to their healing repertoire.

I do agree that the stat homogenization is a good thing. There were so many Elemental Shamans and some Balance Druids who were left out of upgrades, simply because they shared stats with their healing equivelant. This appears to be going away with Cataclysm, as +Spirit is now going to be a “healer only” stat, while incentives will be provided to each class to incist on using the armor type appropriate. Grouping this together will make it that much easier for RL/GL to distribute gear accordingly.

It is good to hear, though, that they don’t plan on passing spells around like a mixed drink. Instead leaving Beacon, Chain Heal, PW: Bubble, etc. to their respective classes. This is also apparent with the new “AoE” heal for the paladin, as there has never before been a “moving totem” type spell like that, well at least not for healing.

Gnome demonstrating Healing Hands

Here’s to hoping that they continue with their current design philosophy, and don’t overdo the homogenization of the healing classes. Also, here’s to hoping that the new spells are worth the wait.

To respec, or not to respec

I’m having a bit of a crisis.. ok, not a crisis, but a bit of a conundrum.

To Ret, or not to Ret, that is the question.

I’ve got some decent ret gear… sitting in the bank, all kinds of fancy two-handers to choose from, and some Tier 9 level gear to top it off.

I’ve recently been debating whether or not to change out my tank spec for a little while and have some fun as a DPS spec. I have definitely enjoyed having no wait time, and really enjoy tanking, but it’s been a while since I got to look really evil in my Dragonsteel Faceplate.

I’ve also thought about the time that it would provide me. If I decided to go Ret, then I could do my Daily LFD as DPS, and only DPS, this would enact the wait time that most DPS have.  Because of this wait time, I would then have time to fart around in Sholizar (I keep forgetting to pick up an egg from the Oracles), or finishing up my Explorer and Loremaster achievements that I wanted to get before Cataclysm.

I think that it is a point of discipline. Right now, I will simply get on, hit the button and do the daily dungeon real quick (nearly no wait time), then be lost as to what to do next, and just log off, or get on an alt. The reason that I just log off is because I have nothing to look forward to, or fill in the wait time, because there is none.

I also feel it’s a bit of the OCD in me.  I want to try to get the best gear that I can get as a casual raider/dungeon runner, and do the DPS that I feel that I should be able to do. I was ret before, and it was fun, but I felt that I didn’t match up to those who had done it for a while before, much like I felt when I started tanking. If I decide this, I’d have to have the determination to keep my off spec Ret for a decent period of time to get used to the feel of the spec. This is the discipline part that I talk about. I’d likely swap specs back to Protection if asked by the guild for a run, but would need the determination to go back afterwards.

Lastly, I feel that it would be good for the blog as well. There aren’t a whole lot of Ret DPS blogs out there (at least that I haven’t found yet), and I would like to try it out. Often big Yellow numbers can be more fun to post about than big Green numbers.

What are your suggestions readers? I’m willing to change, should I?

More Paladin Healing

Looks like some more updates and clarifications came down the pipe this weekend. I’m going to go ahead and post the blue post below and follow it up with some of my commentary, and hopefully follow it up with some of your commentary, haha. Anyway, this little tidbit seems to be focusing on the Paladin’s AE healing abilities.

For Tarinae

Our goal is for paladins to be able to raid heal. Don’t look at the designs for spells that none of you have even been able to try and conclude those mechanics can’t possibly allow you to raid heal and therefore our goal can’t possibly be met and will therefore be abandoned. It’s fine to raise concerns — that’s one of the reasons we announce stuff like this early — but some of you are trying to get a spell buffed that you haven’t even cast yet.

I will say our vision for the AE spell though is not that the paladin runs around constantly, but that you position yourself where you can do the most good. Sometimes that will be back with the healers. Sometimes that might be in the melee. Sometimes you’ll have to spread out and your group healing won’t be as efficient (in the same way a shaman’s group healing isn’t as good in the same scenario).

Tranquility is on a very long cooldown. It is not the way druids AE heal. We want to shift it from 5-person group to raid because we’d like to do that with every spell. Having to organize players by arbitrary group is a strange concept since it doesn’t actually manifest itself in the real world (in the way distance from you on the battlefield does).

We aren’t going to give paladins anything resembling Circle of Healing. One (or two) of those spells in the game is plenty.

Spirit will be a good stat to stack but only to a point. Once you can heal say a six minute boss fight without going out of mana, then any additional Spirit is pretty much wasted. At that point stats like crit start to look pretty attractive because they increase your spell’s throughput without increasing the mana cost. Maybe you’ll be able to heal someone with one cast, allowing you to swap over and heal another player. In today’s healing environment, where a lot of that excess healing will be wasted overhealing, getting a huge crit on a spell isn’t nearly as valuable.

We’ll have to see how raid healing goes. We might be okay with the tendency for groups to still assign paladins to tank healing because they are particularly good at it. What we want to avoid are those cases where a group feels like they can’t possibly keep tanks alive because they lack a paladin or they can’t possibly keep groups alive because they have too many paladins.

Wow, that was a good bit of info right there. Sadly it makes my visualization of Hands of Healing null and void, as it stresses that HoH isn’t going to have  you running around like mad, but instead having you place yourself where the heals are needed, limiting the efficiency of the AE healing in cases where players are spread out.  They allude to Shaman raid healing as an example, and how it is limited by range as well.

I do agree that it would be beneficial and a change in tactics for groups to actually group up depending on what healing is needed.  I also really like the idea that paladins will be moving closer to the melee area in some cases, and not always in the background with jazzhands.  However, I disagree with the comparison to Shaman healing.  The disagreement comes with the fact that a shaman can target where it heals bounce from.  While standing in the back of the room, the Shaman can still throw a chain heal into the melee group, and let it do the bouncing; while on the other hand, a Paladin will need to mosey on up to the melee group and start farting heals.  The time lost getting up there could be a factor.

HoH under Thermal Imaging

Now, the Blizzard poster does have a point.

Don’t look at the designs for spells that none of you have even been able to try and conclude those mechanics can’t possibly allow you to raid heal and therefore our goal can’t possibly be met and will therefore be abandoned. It’s fine to raise concerns — that’s one of the reasons we announce stuff like this early — but some of you are trying to get a spell buffed that you haven’t even cast yet.

The point is well taken.  We can’t really determine how the spell will work if we’ve never seen it yet. I would, however, appreciate what ideas they have for range/strength of the heal being emitted. However, again, we really can’t determine what kind of use it will have until we can use it… maybe this post will catch Blizzard’s attention… and get me a beta key!

Another not pointed out in this blue post was the mention of stacking spirit.  It’s stated that stacking spirit is a good idea, up to a point.  An example being healing a 6 minute fight without running out of mana.  I’m assuming that this includes using all of our normal mana regen cooldowns (if they exist come Cataclysm), on top of the stacked spirit. A sentence did stick out a bit, and maybe I’m just reading into things:

At that point stats like crit start to look pretty attractive because they increase your spell’s throughput without increasing the mana cost.

What did they mean by “without increasing the mana cost” in the statement above? Obviously crit is going to increase the throughput of your heals by doubling (think Critical Healing Effect Mastery) their output, but are they meaning “increasing the mana cost” by having to cast more heals? I can only assume that is the case, but could there be a new mechanic being added that allows increased throughput with increased mana usage (think Arcane Power, more power for more mana).  Again, maybe I’m just reading to much into this, but it does pop some light bulbs above my head.

In conclusion though, it does appear that the powers that be, don’t mind letting us fill the Tank healing niche. They just hope that having more than one paladin healer isn’t a hinderance in AoE healing.  As usual, time will tell.

What do you think about the paladin AoE heal? Will you still be running around like mad anyway?

Paladin Cataclysm: Holy Clarifications

Contemplating the new changes.

After the release of the Paladin Class Preview, Blue Poster Nethaera put out some clarifications.  These answered some of the questions that I had about the suggested changes, and brought up a few more questions.  This post will deal mostly with the Healing aspect, and hope to put together another post about some of the Tanking and Ret changes as well.

First up, some clarification of the Flash of Light/Holy Light/Big ‘ol Holy Light change.  According to the post.

Flash of Light remains a fast heal, but will be more expensive to justify the cast speed.  Holy Light will be the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput.  Beacon of Light needs to be changed so that its benefit is letting the paladin heal two targets at once, not letting the paladin get two heals for the mana cost of one. It’s intended to save GCDs and targeting time, not mana.

In addition we’re changing the paladin heal design to match that of the other healers. Holy Light is the middle heal. It’s very efficient, but not particularly fast and doesn’t have a lot of throughput. Flash of Light will be the faster heal that costs more mana. (Currently paladins sort of flip the model around by having a fast, efficient heal.) Holy paladins can talent into an additional heal tha tis like a giant Holy Light. It might take three of these big heals (or two crits) to get a tank from death’s door back to 100% health.

Maintaining a Tank / Healer UI

I had promised to provide more “guides” to tank/healer coordination, and felt that this was a good topic on how they each display and use different UI elements. 

Holy and Protection UIs

I consider your UI (User Interface) the most important thing on your screen when playing WoW, well at least when raiding/dungeon-crawling.  Well, and outside of the fire that you are not supposed to be standing in… that’s important too; but I digress. 

When participating in a raid or dungeon, you need information at your finger tips.  Whether it be the health of your fellow party when healing, or the health of the boss and his adds when dpsing, or even the health of both the boss and your party when tanking.  As I have mentioned before, I’m a glutton for punishment since I have spec’d both Holy and Protection as my dual specs.  Basically I get to either stress out over keeping everyone alive, or stress out over keeping everyone alive and making sure that nobody goes and kills one of my teammates. Kind of speeds up the burnout process, but as the Help Tips during the loading screens say “Be sure to take all things in moderation, even World of Warcraft.” 

Anyway, being both a tank and a healer, my UI needs to change each time that I change specs.  I was in a hurry, and unable to send the pics to the PC that I post from, but will add them later, as I have an example of my tanking and my healing UI, and the differences between each. There are different focuses that you need to… focus.. on when healing or tanking.  I’m guessing that some would say that that’s obvious, but I’m simply trying to point out the specifics. 

Tanking from a Healer’s Perspective

Good afternoon all…

Today I’d like to talk a little about the perceptions that tanks have towards their healers, and vice-versa. I began my paladin as Holy, and it has been Holy the whole way (not including my little foray into Ret, that wasn’t permenant). I have spent my WoW career healing (no matter how ineffectively in the beginning), and have began to learn the intricacies of the Tank/Healer relationship. As of recently, I have been both Holy / Protection dual spec; and thanks to the LFD tool, apparently I am needed as Protection more. With this in mind, it has taught me how a tank can make a healer’s life easier.

When I first began raiding any bit regularly, I felt that it was more the boss fight that determined how hard a tank was to heal; however, I have since learned that in all reality, nearly all fights can be made “easier” if the tank and healer work together. I have healed every tank that there is, and have learned which tanks seem to be more spiky/squishy than others. From this knowledge I have also learned how to tank effectively, while still making life a bit easier for the healer.

1.) Not all bosses are stationary:
I have learned this the hard way. When in a raid, and even in some heroics, the tank cannot always stand in one place, and let the rest of the raid do the moving. Bosses, and even some trash, can have AoE that only affect those within melee range. If not AoEs, then something that you should NOT stand in. Now, this doesn’t only mean you the tank, but also the other melee who should either be behind or beside the boss (think dragons and their lovely hit box safe areas). The more you as a tank move out of the fire/ice/slime/puke the less chance the healers have to hit “oh shnizzle” buttons and save melee. In addition to assisting the healers, this also helps those melee dps, as they won’t have to reposition as much and can continue stabbing the bad guys quicker.

2.) Manage the cooldowns:
This is a given, every tank knows that there are going to be “oh shnizzle” moments. And we have tools that help with those moments. However, they also depend on different cooldowns. I have come to learn that some oh shnizzle buttons can be used more often then that one moment. An example being Divine Protection. (Now this blog is a bit biased towards Paladin tanks and Paladin healers, so you’ll have to bear with me.) As a tank, I can use Divine Protection to provide myself with a shield that reduces damage taken by 50% for 12 sec. This does activate Forbearance which will knock you out of using it again for 3 minutes; however, if used early enough it can be usable again (These cases are usually only Raid bosses, Heroic bosses fall within a minute now-a-days). What I’m getting at here, is that taking advantage of cooldowns early enough can allow the healers to reserve mana for the more expensive moments later on in a fight. But don’t forget your trinkets (I have, and it’s not funny… ok it is, in a sad kind of way).

This also goes for healers; as cooldowns or trinkets used early on can definately help in the long run, but should be managed with those of the tank; as a cooldown wasted is not a good cooldown. An example of this would be Divine Illumination. At first I was paranoid of not having enough mana by the end of a fight, and would always start a fight with Divine Illumination running. Now, if the fight was long enough, sure I could use it again later; however, if the tank used any cooldowns early on, then that 50% reduction in mana cost was really wasted, as I’m not going to be healing as much.

Coordination and Communication are key. This leads to my next point.

3.) Coordination and Communication:
Now-a-days, just about everybody is able to use Vent or some variant. I personally am able to listen to vent but not speak, since my gaming PC is right next to my son’s room, so to be polite, I try not to make too much noise. I do regulate the volume and listen to the other people in Vent, though. The very act of listening to the other raiders in vent can increase survivability of the raid. Especially if the Raid Lead is calling out events that are happening; especially those that you may not be able to see directly on your GUI. This point also pertains to coordination between tank and healer cooldown coordination. If a Paladin healer calls out that they have just used Lay on Hands on the tank, then the tank should know that the heal bomb that they just got isn’t going to come again for at least another 3 minutes. In the beginning this was a point of contention, as Paladin tanks who were healed with Lay on Hands from a Paladin Healer used to get Forbearance (I can’t remember if this was only on the PTR or not), because of this, the Paladin tank could not use any of his oh shnizzle buttons until that Forbearance wore off. This external cooldown heavily limited the survivability of the Paladin tank. So, to prevent this, the tank and healer would need to communicate as things happened, or even strategize prior to beginning the fight.

4.) Pay attention:
I really felt this is important, not only in how I tank things, but also from a story I read from the Big Bear Butt Blogger. It was a story about an oblivious DK tank who didn’t look beyond his tunnel vision to see what anybody else was doing behind them… whether it be dieing or finishing off the mobs that the DK had not gotten aggro on. I have healed several tanks who are like this. No care or attention for the healer or even the DPS, but instead steamroll ahead and finish everything off as fast as possible. Thank God for Divine Plea, Divine Illumination, and if I’m lucky, Replenishment. But I have never been that kind of tank.

When I tank, in heroic instances specifically, I often start off the run by saying “Please let me know if I need to slow down, I’ll be watching mana levels, but just in case holler if I’m going to fast.” Polite and to the point. I’m basically saying, I’m going to try and fly through this for you guys, but don’t want to stretch you thin. I’m open to responses, and even the scathing “SLOW DOWN!”. I don’t however, try to make an instance easysauce, and slow down to a crawl. In a way, I guess I try to teach other healers a bit of skill, in that I will push them a bit but not so hard that they /ragequit. I’m no hardcore healer or tank, but I do feel that I can help others if not in a roundabout way.

This last point seems to circle back to the first, in that paying attention will lessen your chance of standing in the bad stuff. You’ll still need to move out of the bad stuff, and move far enough to keep your melee dps group effective.

This concludes my first “guide” to synergizing Tanks and Healers. I hope to do more of these in the future; let me know what you think. Also please let me know of any other topics that you’d like for me to do a post on, I’m very open to suggestions.

The Casual Tank

Good afternoon everyone.  Welcome to the armored side of Illumination.

If anybody has ever seen my WoW Armory profile, they’ll notice that I’ve got the best chance at never having a wait time in the LFD tool.  This is because I have dual-spec’d both into Holy and Protection on my Paladin. 

I began my little paladin life as Holy, and Holy all the way.  In fact I leveled, oh so slowly, as holy, even when it was not at all popular and endlessly frustrating.

As I reached the max levels (I hit 60 about a week before BC), I began to run into other paladins who were excited about the new possibilities of paladin tanking becoming much more viable.  I took it with a grain of salt, as I was still a dedicated buffbot and FoL spammer.  Deep into my experience with WoW: BC, I ran into a great bunch of folks in (at the time) a guild known as the Merry Marauders.  I had become one of their healers for their late night Karazhan runs.  It was here that I met a fellow by the name of Crownvic.  He and my fellow pally healer Dragonsspear were the ultimate tank/healer team, and it was awesome to see them work together.  By watching this chemistry, I began to learn the little things that worked so well between the tank and the healer, and what one’s weaknesses were covered by the other’s strengths.  In short, this inspired me to begin to pick up some tanking gear, simply to begin experimenting.

At the time I had no plans to tank full time, and instead used the gear simply to “Holy Tank” instances with some friends of mine.  It was truly fun to hit things in the face (though still getting pounded in the face at the same time), rather than filling up health bars for once.  Upon the release of WotLK, I had acquired a decent tanking set, definitely not high end BiS, but something that met the Uncrushable mark, and nearly the Unhittable mark. 

With the arrival of patch 3.0.8, the new talent trees were released, and I became very excited about the changes to the Retribution Tree, and in turn began to collect some offset gear and actually respec Ret to level into WotLK.

This in turn put a lot of gear into my bank, left there to rust away next to all my other nicknacks (BTW, I’m an item hoarder… my bank is full of stuff that I just can’t get rid of, nor move to a bank alt, haha).  This at least sped up my leveling, and brought my Paladin to lvl 80 much quicker that it would have otherwise.  Once reaching that point, I began doing some late night raids again with my good ‘ol Holy/Prot tag team buddies again, and again had to don my healing set again.  I didn’t mind the transition, in fact it was a bit of a nice change of pace, short of the normal healer stress and blame.

In the back of my mind, though, I continued to think about that tank set that I had worked on, and how fun it was to tank, but did not want to spend the gold to spec back and forth.  Instead I just began to collect the pieces of tank gear that I could, and began replacing those that began to grow cobwebs in my bank.

Then came Patch 3.1…

Oh the beauty that is Dual Spec.  I was outwardly excited, though saddened at my miniscule income.  Thanks to the Argent Tournament, it took little time to reach my goal of 1000g, to get my dual spec on, and finally truly try a tanking position.  Sadly, though I had now become one of the most needed class combos that I could think of, my friends had moved on, and changed servers.  I was again, a lonely paladin, roaming Northrend gathering what tank gear I could, with no direction from my tanking buddy.

Well, I won’t drag this on, so we’ll fast forward to the present.  With Emblems of Triumph flowing like rain, and purples glistening like candy at every turn, it didn’t take me long to build up a decent tanking set.  Defense capped, decent mitigation and avoidance, acceptable HP, all the good stuff.  Not much more thanks to the newly implemented LFD tool, and the chance to practice a bit of tanking with less concequence.

Now, this isn’t a post about how easy WoW has gotten, because believe me, if you are as casual as I am, you do not often get blessed with the most incredible players, or overpowered killing machines in the game.  I was fortunate enough to have run a pick up Ulduar run with, what I now feel is the awesome guild of “Unending Nemesis.”  Sure, they’re not the bleeding edge guild on the server, but they are a fun bunch of folks who have skill to back up the gear they have.  As we began trying the new content, including the Trial of the Crusader, and eventually Icecrown, a gap began to form.  That form was that of a missing tank.

Now, I don’t raid regularly, in fact I don’t hardly ever sign up for a raid, simply because my family comes first, and I’d rather 1) be sure there’s nothing else going on, or 2) straight up spend time with them [family].  Anyway, after a few more runs of ToC, we took a step into ICC.  Here is where it got interesting.  They did not need a healer, but instead needed a tank… I thought long and hard, fearing that I was not adequate for the task, or that I didn’t have the skill to make the cut.  But I took the plunge “/g I’ll tank if ya need somebody”.  There it was, my leap of faith, my step into that unfamiliar realm of raid tanking.  Suddenly I got the reply, “Alright, we’ll see how far we can get, summon incoming.”  I quickly activated my prot spec and thew on my tank gear, double checking that I hadn’t forgotten anything.  Fortunately I was sitting in IF, so I grabbed a couple elixers and some Dragonfin, and thew them in my bag, and off I went.

Upon entering the opressive facade of Icecrown Citadel, I got a good look at my fellow tank… another Paladin!  His gear was slightly better than mine, more HP, more avoidance, but obviously more skill as he had tanked for a long time.  I had not read strategies on ICC from the tank’s point of view, but began to learn from his movements, and his cooldown use.  And we started our way through the dark hallways.

Now this group was the secondary raiding group, and wasn’t the creme of the crop, but we were good.  I believe that our group suprised many in the guild as we pushed our way through ICC, oneshotting Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, and the lootship battle.  We did not make it through Surafang, as several of the member either had to leave, or a PuG’d member had simply gone offline.  However, the feeling was exhilerating.  My confidence shot through the roof.

The moral of this post is:

Do not fear the unknown.  Make that leap of faith, don’t expect to be shot down, but do your best, or don’t do at all.

P.S. As a side note, we have gone back and cleared the first wing with no problem, and I have since tanked Onyxia 25, nearly solo tanked Onyxia 10, and Sartharion 10… confidence is a wonderous thing.