Thorns is Number One

My alternate Druid healer runs Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle and using a cute little mouse-over Thorns macro, and the Thorns glyph that reduces the cool down, to put it on the tank.  I only used Thorns at the beginning of pulls.  Overall damage done by the tank at the end showed 14% by thorns, which was ranked number one.

Druid healing post 4.0.1 at level 80 is over powered.  During the Bone Storm I went to tree form, put instant cast regrowths on anyone taking damage, carpet bombed lifeblooms on the whole raid.  During the raid I never casted a nourish, and I only used Healing Touch when Nature's Swiftness was up.  I swiftmended on the tanks constantly, whether they needed it or not, just so I could see the pretty green circles.

denounce removes nouns?

Denounce is one of those talents you skip over if you are looking to maximize PVE healing performance.  I put a couple of points in there and started machine gunning exorcism during heroics.  The first time I ever felt like my "holy" DPS was fun.  Watching those 5k and 6k hits roll over the targets was so distracting sometimes I would forget to heal.  Not that heroics require much healing anyway.

It's all about Holy Shock now.  I put on my 4pT10 gear to get the extra fast Holy Light after a shock, now Holly Light takes about .4s after a shock.  Most of the time, I just wait for Holy Shock cool downs to heal during heroics.  Working on using the combinations and procs more effectively is going to be fun when serious raiding starts again.  I am looking forward to a totally new healing experience.

Plate Specialization

Why not just remove the ability to wear mail, leather and cloth items?

During my career as a Holy Paladin, I have always had some cloth, leather or mail armor equipped.  In most cases the gear was less then optimal, which was the punishment for using it.  It will now also cost 5% of our intellect to use a non-plate drop.  This is also a 5% drop in spell power and mana regeneration.

With mana and heal pools skyrocketing the 5% bonus will always trump any upgrade a non-plate drop could provide.

It feels like Blizzard is trying to influence raid loot rules.  Why not just put class and SPEC restrictions on all the items?

Meanwhile, my mail iLvl 277 bracers have be replaced by my old iLvl258 bracers.

New 80 looking for Naxx guild... want to enjoy tier progression...

• Hero Points -- Low-tier, easier-to-get PVE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, but no cap to how quickly you can earn them. Earned from most dungeons. (most like the current Emblem of Triumph)
• Valor Points -- High-tier, harder-to-get PvE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, as well as a cap to how many you can earn per week. Earned from Dungeon Finder daily Heroic and from raids. (most like the current Emblem of Frost)

Is this a "welfare" system to allow players who don't raid to get top end gear by grinding the same heroics day after day?  Or is it a system that allows more players to see top tier content without having to slog through the lower tier raids first?  The answer is both.

This system just like the current badge system ends up making top end content more accessible, but unfortunately closes older content.  New guilds won't be formed around running lower tier raids, because players can farm better gear by just grinding heroics. 

The casual player that doesn't want to spend 3 hours in a single raid can still get some top tier gear by playing an hour a day.  This casual player base pays their subscription and deserves access to top end gear.  This is a good system for them.

I think the goal of getting more players into top end content is a good idea.  The idea that some content is exclusive to raiders that are willing to spend 20 hours a week just raiding will lead to less subscriptions, not more.

Blizzard should come up with a system which meets these goals without removing low tier content from progression.  There should be some incentive even now for a new guild to form and start progression at Naxx.  

Currently gear is the only incentive for raiding.  The achievements, titles, and special mounts are a good start.  Those don't provide an incentive for guilds to start progression at a lower tier level.  There either needs to be a completely new incentive or gear has to gated.  

Gating gear leads to exclusiveness and barriers to top end content.  So a new incentive needs to be created.  

Goodbye to Johnny Train Set?

Cataclysm Raid Progression changes (source):

• 10-Man and 25-Man raids will share the same lockout.
• 10-Man and 25-Man raids difficulty will be as close as possible to each other.
• 10-Man and 25-Man raids will drop the exact same loot, but 25-man will drop a higher quantity of items.
• Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel
• For the first few raid tiers, our plan is to provide multiple smaller raids. Instead of one raid with eleven bosses, you might have a five-boss raid as well as a six-boss raid.

I'm not sure if a larger number of drops will be enough incentive to do 25-man raids.   

Dealing with Johnny Train Set for 16 hours a week has never been a fun part of raiding.  It's been more of a necessary evil to fill out the 25-man roster.  In most raids a 25-man team will include Johnnies who are brought along only because raid leaders need to fill out the roster.  A lot of raid leaders would not include these players given a solid replacement.

Not to mention the job required to schedule 25 players and deal with players that don't show up consistently, are tardy, just leave without notice, etc.  I believe a lot of the "no show" problem is directly related to the current pace of raiding.  We all love to play the video games, but when it becomes more like a job then fun,  there's a tendency to blow it off every once in a while.  A new slower progression requiring less hours per week should lower the "burn out" rate of Raider rank.

If the pace is a lot slower, I imagine their will be an explosion of ALT raiding.  

10 man heroic BQL or why you need to trust your healers...

I am almost sure I've written about this topic before, but it's important enough to write about again.  


Last week my 10-man team lacked Replenishment. On our first heroic BQL attempt my mana got low, even with a mana potion and casting Plea and Trinkets on cool down.  We had three healers, a restoration Druid, a discipline Priest, and Big Healer(me).  Being a Holy Light spammer, I was tossing out big heals on the raid liberally on anyone that didn't have a full health bar.  This attempt failed when a Pact'ed pair didn't close in fast enough. 

Attempt #2.  My plan is to only use Holy Light when another healer has Pact or Swarming and during the Air phase.  I would Aura Mastery Shadow during the first Air phase, pop wings and blow out heals to everyone.   The second Air Phase would get Aura Mastery and Divine Sacrifice and of course Holy Light spam. 

This plan requires that I trust the other healers in my team to be healing too.  On most fights, I don't run out of mana, so I don't really worry about over healing and it all goes to the tank via Beacon anyway.  My Flash of Light heals range from 7k to 10k, which is between 1/4 and 1/3 of a typical raiders health.  I have 2 other healers backing me up so that should be enough.  Of course if anyone looks like they are going down fast, a big heal will be coming.

This plan worked great, the raid stayed up, vampires all hit their marks, and the Queen died just as she was going into the second air phase (maybe Divine Sac during 1st air phase next time).  I was spamming my 1 second Flash like a Hyper healing machine.  My effective heals were lower then on the first attempt but people didn't die and I was never too low on mana to cast a big heal.  Trying to top the meters and playing smart are not the same thing. 

Party? What Party? Cataclysm ends wow Parties. Or Divine Sacrifice nerf not in the Spirit

Tranquility will always be raid wide, just because the concept of a "group" within the raid is kind of a strange one. What does that group refer to in the game? It's not distance for example. We'd like to do this with every spell. (Source)

Divine Sacrifice was changed in Patch 3.3 to be "party only" to the dismay of many raids who now had to shuffle paladins around to groups that needed the extra protection.

I imagine in the new party-less world of Cataclysm, we could get something, like 

• 30% of all damage taken by the 5 lowest health raid members within 30 yards is redirected to the Paladin...

which could fit well into the new Healing Hands model of paladins radiating heals and protection to players around them.  

If the goal is to make Holy Paladins be better raid healers, then I think it makes sense for them to more like Discipline Priests then Holy Priests.  A Holy Paladin should be a damage shielder, redirecting damage from the raid into some mechanic that sheds the damage.  Currently the mechanic is Divine Sanctuary, but The Bubble is too powerful to be on a lower cool down.  Some sort of Divine Aegis that absorbs redirected damage but has to be managed carefully by the paladin.