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.

The Long Word

Good afternoon folks…

I’ve decided that I’m going to start changing up my format.  As you can tell, I have not been able to post much as of late, partly because I’m busy, and partly because there hasn’t been a whole lot to go into until lately. So, I’m going to start doing a weekly post (much like Tuesday with Tarinae) called “The Long Word”.  It’ll be a mixed bag of Retribution, Protection, and of course Holy info as it comes in throughout the week.  I may even throw in a few little extras from my alt’s classes, etc.

The Long Word

I’ll probably begin this either Friday or maybe next week, we’ll see how the schedule goes.  I hope you all will like this new format, as it’s a bit easier for me to handle, and get out to you all. (Don’t worry, I’ll have a much better banner than just the Word of Glory icon :P)

Until next time, Light be with you.

The First cracks appear

Well, like I promised, with the new patch out, and the impending Cataclysm coming December 7th, I’ll likely be posting a bit more again.  And so, here I am 🙂

First up, let me say, the new UI changes are nice, I really like the new spellbook and talent tree setup.  It took a little getting used to, and took some time to iron out my talent choices, but since the servers were halfway stable last night, I hopped on to set up my specs on my paladin.

Sadly, this blog’s namesake, “Illumination”, no longer exists *sigh*. Oh well, probably won’t change the name though. Anyway, back to the subject at hand.

Patch 4.0.1 brings in a plethora of changes. Outside of the entire talent tree revamp, we also now have access to Reforging, Mastery, a handful of new spells and to top it all off a new resource system for us Paladins. My fellow blogger over at A Healadin’s Tear has done a great job of descibing how each of these work, so I won’t reinvent the wheel, I will however comment some on what I think of the change.

I ended up with a slightly different 32/2/2 build, taking advantage of some of the new Holy Power generating abilities, and getting more out of Holy Shock since it will be a very important spell now.

This post will pretty much be a quick intro to a more detailed one tomorrow (I don’t have any screenshots, and can’t really show you the choices I made).

But, 4.0.1 has begun to crack open the potential of the next expansion.  I hope to help with some of the transition in the coming posts.  Until then, I will see you in the new world.

The candle begins to flicker

As one of my favorite Staind songs goes… “It’s been a while.” Things have chilled out a bit at work and at home, but so have things around Azeroth, at least until the next patch goes out. I’ve been keeping myself busy with the current expansion, hitting a few raids, doing the casual thing, even got my Kurenai rep topped off (finally, Talbuk mounts!!).

The candle begins to flicker.

Anyway, I guess that I’m starting to see the candle that is WoW burn down to its base. I’m not saying that I plan to quit, nor that I’m closing this blog (it hasn’t even been open that long), but that you can expect fewer posts for a while.

I currently have the 4.0.1 patch downloading, and plan on hitting the PTR once I’m able to copy a character over (3 day queue… is long). I don’t really want to start a new character, and plan to just let the queue burn down a bit, and hop on then. You can be sure to expect some Talent Tree posts, as well as usage of the new baseline abilities now available, and some pretty pretty screenshots of the new UIs.

But until then, if you still check out this blog, I apologize that it will be light on content and posts for a while.

Rabid Yoda with a Mohawk

Hello everyone, I hope that you all enjoy the upcoming Labor Day (if you’re here in the US and get the nice long weekend).

Today’s post is going to be a bit off topic.  I’ve been reading a lot of the recent feminism/racism/gnomism posts that have been floating around the blogosphere and one really caught my eye with its Azerothian subject matter.

That would be Krizzlybear’s latest post on how Gnomes are treated in Warcraft Lore and how they are represented in Role Play. Now, to make a quick note, I don’t actually RP while online, one because I’m not on enough to really build a story or relationship with other players, and two, I’m kind of content on my current server (lots of local friends here) and am really slow to level so couldn’t really have a lot of “tools” to use for a while.

My bitch, you will be.

Chat Window: It’s there for a reason

WARNING: INCOMING VILE SPEW OF WHININESS AND QQ…. 

Ok, maybe not that bad, but it is a bit of a rant, but don’t worry, I’ll lighten it up. 

The Chat window.  It’s that thing that you start out with in the bottom left of  your UI, it’s where you can see what other folks are talking about in the area, or even what kind of stories or villainous rhetoric is being spewed in Trade Chat. It’s where important information appears, whether it be Blizz GM’s replying to a ticket, or achievement spam from your most recent conquer. 

It's got a purpose

 

It is also where instructions are relayed, and information provided to help your situational awareness. Addons take advantage of it to provide you with quick glimpses at information, or even warnings of incoming danger. 

Most importantly though, at least in most cases, it’s where your party or raid is commenting/talking/instructing/YELLING. It’s where your fellow members can inform you that you are standing in the bad, or not standing in the right place at all.  It’s where Raid Warnings appear before showing up in the middle of your screen. 

I went through all of this to get to this point… It’s there for a purpose, and that purpose is to convey information to  you that may be very important to the ongoing encounter. 

Seeing the Forest through the Trees

Good morning fellow Paladins… and the others 🙂

I’m here today to take a look at some of the Cataclysm Paladin Talents, and what should/could and shouldn’t be chosen, based on your role. Yes, I’ve decided to dive into it for just a little while, as I’m sure that the talent trees will change (in fact it was just stated through MMO-Champion that the next build would likely change the Holy tree *sigh*).

Welcome to the ever changing world of Cataclysm

This will likely be a LONG post, as I’m going to try to include each and every talent in here.  It’s as up to date as I can get, though I’m sure it’s to change as mentioned earlier. So, prepare for some information overload, as there is a lot to come.

So, without further ado, here is what I’ve come up with for us Holy types.

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.

I sowwy…

Well, here’s a nice fluff post for you all until I’m able to write something a bit more substantial (like how neat the Holy Power Interface looks, and where Sacred Shield went, and, and, and… lots of stuff I’ve missed).

I sowwy... 😦

Anyway, with me being sick, my son being sick, and then the A/C going out at the office, it’s been a bit hectic here in Illumination land.

So, if I’m able to get something out there, I’ll be sure to let you all know.

Thanks for those of you who have hung around, don’t worry, I won’t dissapoint… I hope 🙂

Real Friends on RealID

Good morning everybody!

Been a bit since my last post, but as usual, in the eloquent words of Tinkerpriest:

“If I got paid like as porn star would, every time I got bent over by work, I’d be rich”

Things have calmed down a bit, and I’ve had a chance to get online with some local friends of mine and both of my brothers. About a year ago, maybe two, I learned that some of the folks that I work with also play WoW, and at the time we were all guildless, so after migrating a few characters to a single server, we started up “Wanderers Among Realms” (see what I did there :P), yes, it’s not correct grammar, but I couldn’t fit “Amongst”. Anyway, we got together, and were all leveling through The Burning Crusade, and eventually running some heroics together.