New Content agony

Happy to say that over two nights, my 25man raiding guild managed to kill 3/4 bosses in ICC. It was a painful adventure. Yay! Now on to the negatives...

As a healer we saw our healing corps go from 5 in TOC to 7 in ICC. The sad thing with this is... the guild has overinflated opinions of us healers. D: There was griping that we were wasting at least one dps slot on a healer. Even though we wiped a goodly number of times with those 7 healers as we were learning the fight and perfecting our strategy.

Many of the raiders in the guild have raided with the top Alliance guild on our server, so quite often comparisons come up in random conversation. It's a bit hard edged as most of us do not want to get compared, but as a benchmark it's useful to keep in mind. So, after my "sorry guys but 7 healers is pretty standard for new and hard content" was swept aside by those that think us healers are miracle workers and/or slacking on our jobs making 7 necessary, I just randomly asked if anyone knew how many healers that top guild ran with. Keep in mind that guild cleared 25man heroic versions when we never accomplished jack in 25man heroic. So the gear curve is steep. I was served back with "no it's not about the gear it's about the skill".

Digest that. Enjoy.

THEN there was a cloth spell-hit bracer that dropped and 2 healing priests and an elemental shaman rolled on it.

Needless to say I'm going to be either guildless or not raiding some time soon. Because I don't raid with assholes or jerks. I'm not competitive enough to put up with them, and have plenty of other toons I can level or play and enjoy without the aggravation of stupidity and greed in a 25man raid.

Let's go over the basics.

1. Loot items have stat budgets on them. Raw white stats, and green stats. Yes, duh.
2. Different classes and specs prioritize those stats, green and white, differently.
3. Some green and white stats are completely useless to some classes and specs.

Do we all agree with this summary? Good.

Progression is hard. It's going to take everyone getting gear and using that gear to move forward. The best practice is for items to go where they will do the most good. They will be used, and used for the longest time before getting replaced. This ensures that more people get more overall upgrades.

And, here's where I will lose some people. Armor classes exist for a reason. Guilds, especially raiding guilds, should be working to make people happy, and need to keep loot fair and balanced so that the whole raid can improve and move forward. It is not fair that a holy paly is the only one rolling on the plate gear, but then gets to roll with the holy/disc priests on the healing cloth, and also gets to roll with the resto shaman and the resto druid. FAIRNESS PEOPLE. I don't understand why guildies want to be dicks to each other. In fact it boggles my mind.

So, would I begrudge a holy pally from picking up cloth if no clothy wanted it? Not at all. Do I get a tad pissed off at a holy pally or a resto shaman taking that cloth from a cloth-only-wearing priest? Fuck yes.

Sadly, this has an added issue. The stats you find on "healing" cloth are at the very least marginally decent for dps. While there does exist one dps stat that is COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY USELESS for healers, aka spell hit. So, bad enough a healing cloth wearer might get ganked by their fellow healers from different armor classes (if your raid/guild leadership goes for that sort of thing). But the cloth wearing healers also have to consider competition on cloth items from dps cloth wearers. Sad, but true. But that's just the way it is. I can happily tell a cloth wearing healer "hey dude, sorry, but you know as well as I know that all those stats, while not super, are not bad for that dps" as long as I don't have to put up with a wrong-armore-class healer also ganking that priest's gear too. Priests can put up with some, but I don't think they should have to put up with that.

And now to the real issues.

2 healing priests rolled on cloth bracers with spell hit on them, against 3 cloth wearing dps and an elemental shaman. In my opinion, the healing priests were GOD DAMNED WRONG and need a re-edumacation on "let's not waste item stat budgets for your healing, when it is 100% useful to those casting dps and only 75% useful to you since you don't use spell hit AT ALL" and the shaman was marginally wrong for rolling on gear against those that have no other options in gear choices. They can't be like the shaman and choose to take some druid's leather, and still have zero competiton on dps mail too. It's not fair. Why do I have to tell people they aren't being fair? WHY CAN'T THEY FUCKING SEE IT FOR THEMSELVES and say "hey. This isn't cool. I wouldn't want to be in that person's shoes, so I'm not giong to do it to them."

My guild does use a dkp system by the way. But numbers were reset for ICC, so we have a lot of roll offs.

Northrend on the Horizon

My paladin alt is on the verge of entering that frozen land in the great north of Azeroth. I finally gathered up the gold to get dual spec, and have to actually consider my talents for holy, as well as reconsider my erstwhile levelling prot-ish sort-of talents. My group mates trust me to hold aggro but I'm not a very professional paladin tank, that's for sure! I had to beat my mage buddy into playing as frost for most of our leveling time because it certainly made my job a tiny bit easier, along with he stayed alive longer to actually kill the massive amounts of crap we were pulling..

So I've gotten the Dual Spec and now I'm staring at the Holy tree in bafflement. Did I mention I haven't hit a healing spell more than ten times during leveling? Lifeblood doesn't count.. neither does Lay on Hands. (Sadly I have hit that one quite a few!)

So, with experienced healer eyes but brand new paladin eyes, this is sort of what went through my mind choosing talents:

Spiritual Focus vs. Seals of the Pure : Though I hate pushback talents on all my healers, given the nature of pally "stand there and heal it!" healing, and the alternative with seals that seem to have nothing to do with healing, Spiritual Focus was an easy choice to go deeper into the tree.


With my shaman and priest experience under my belt, Divine Intellect and then Illumination were easy choices to move on down the tree.

In level 4, I need something to connect to Divine Favor from Illumination. Improved Blessing of Wisdom is only 2 talents, so to find where to put 3, I had to jump back up the tree. No offense, but my pally isn't raiding yet, and I have no troubles healing instances I know she's geared/level appropriate for, so that improved Concentration Aura talent seems silly while I'm trying to learn my holy pally business. My eyes glazed over at the hands talent choice in that level too. Who knows I'm probably just one of those bad pallys.

So I found those other 3 talent points fit nicely in Healing Light, level 2 of the tree.

Moving on down, we grab Divine Favor and then Sanctified Light. I don't know much, but I know pallys like crit! Last point I dumped into Improved Lay on Hands in level three. The text of Pure of Heart really interested me, but didn't seem immediately apparent in usefulness. As I do some healing and deal with all the northrend debuffs, we'll see if I revisit that choice.

Filling up Holy Power seemed like a no brainer, and then we have our point in Holy Shock, leaving 4 points to play with. I liked the Light's Grace and have high hopes for it! One point left, back to Improved Lay on Hands I go.

Now we're at level 8. This whole level looks good. My first choice is just to move down the tree, so 5 into Holy Guidance we go. I'll reconsider Sacred Cleansing later, maybe.

Level 9 is another level full of goodies. I really wanted Divine Illumination, mainly from all the OOM hell of prot tanking lately. My blue bar has been pissing me off a lot. So, grabbed Divine illumination and put the other 4 points into Judgement of the Pure. This was a tough choice as there seemed to be an interesting mix of "wait I have to do what to the bad guys?" and "mmmmm yummy haste". But with nothing else obvious in the tree jumping at me, I'll stick with Judgement of the Pure. I really do need to become a better pally.



Infusion of Light is sexy and an easy choice as I was so damned determined to move on down the tree! Even I know that holy pallys do cast judgement on bosses and mobs, so the Enlightened Judgements seemed like one of those talents I should have, even if I'm not 100% sure how I'm going to be using it yet. The last point to get to the final level I put into filling up Judgements of the Pure on level 9.

FINALLY the bottom of the tree. I know I've got it good, having never pally healed before Beacon. Trust me I know. That doesn't stop the excitement at finally having it.

So there was my stroll through my chosen holy talents. 51/0/0 The rest is just icing on the cake, right? On one hand I want to get to Conviction in the ret tree, but I know that bubble is somewhere in the prot tree. I guess I get to do some experimenting, if I really do get to play holy some as I move towards 80. At level 68 my pally had 5 in Divinity in the Protection tree, and 3 in Benediction in the ret tree, though I'm considering putting those back in holy's Sacred Cleansing talent.



Fun times ahead!