Time for a Main Change

After four years of playing melee dps I'm kinda fo tired of it as my main spec. Yes, I still love the feeling when I pwn my opponents and I love the new Templar's Verdict annimation. Somehow swinging a sword over my head feels incredibly epic. But it's getting to the same boring old "beat-shit-with-stick" point that it doesn't feel challenging or exciting anymore. Not the way that it used to. My other half is currently loving how snappy Retribution is. He says it feels like Ret did during Wrath, but I don't feel the same sense of pure ownage. Especially without Consecration or Holy Wrath, both of which I used to use as part of my rotations for a good 4 years. This combined with a longing I've been having for my Shaman has made me seriously think about maining the shaman for Mists. Achievements are account wide, I've got my pets, mounts, and Over 9000 already so really the only thing holding me back is the fact that I leveled the paladin to 90 and not the shaman. Additionally, on the horde side I'm going to be leveling a shaman to 90 there and I dont' want to get burnt out on shamanism, but I know I'm going to be asked to heal in raids and right now I think I'd rather be tossing "jeebus beams" than Flashes of Light.

Patch 5.0.4: One Week Later

It's been a full week now since Patch 5.0.4 dropped and I've had a chance to play around with some of the changes a bit. Here's my impressions and opinions on the changes.

Paladin
Retribution—I feel like a n00b again. The rotation doesn't feel smooth or even like a rotation at all, more like awkward mutton mashing. Having 5 charges of Holy Power is great. And even feeling newbish, my dps is still through the roof. I think with time and practice it will feel more fluid again.

Holy—Pretty much the same. I miss being able to AoE stun the adds on Mannoroth with Holy Wrath, but healing is smooth and doesn't seem to be too much of a mana drain. Just is odd not to have to use Judgement EVER and not having to recast Beacon of Light on the tank. Overall, I like it.

Shaman
Restoration—RIP Telluric Currents as I knew it, and with it my mana regen. Heals them selves are great and Healing Tide Totem provides great AoE healing. Mana is a HUGE issue. Glyph of Riptide removes the CD on RT and thus makes it a huge drain on mana if you try to keep a rolling HoT on more than 2 people. I still love my Shaman, but right now I'm worried about her.

Elemental—Amazingly fun. Everything I loved about Ele they kept. Rotation feels fluid and with Glyph of Telluric Currents you will almost never go OOM as long as you can cast Lightening Blot. I actually switched my OS back to this because of how fun it was.

Enhancement—Feels pretty much the same. Still capable of high damage, but CDs on abilities leave downtime. Not quite as much fun as it used to be in Wrath.

Priest
Discipline—Atonement has been buffed! Smite healing is now one of the largest heals you can do. Pennance is affected by Atonement as well. This is even better news! But wait, Body and Soul is now a talent we can choose and finally the speed boost that was formerly way down the Holy Tree belongs to the "bubble" spec. Overall really enjoying it as it plays pretty much the same as before.

Holy—Three words: Glyph of Lightspring. Now you never have to worry about your healing suffering from people NOT clicking the Lightwell as your Lightwell is now a Lightspring and emits a smart heal to players with low health around it.

Mage
Fire—Glyphed, Fireblast now spreads your DoTs every time you use it. Combustion only explodes your Ignite and Pyroblast DoTs, not your Living Bomb. Sadly Flame Orb is now gone, but the Fireblast Glyph more than makes up for the AoE. All in all, play is a lot like before and feels solid.

Druid
Balance—Insect Swarm has been replaced with Sunfire that is now a separate spell from Moonfire. Changes to the way solar and lunar power are generated makes it easier to have more Eclipse uptime. You can now mount in Boomkin form! Overall, enjoying changes to Balance.
Restoration—Healing Shrooms. Nuff said. No, there's more, but that's a huge change as our Wild Mushrooms now have healing functionality. Glyph of the Treant allows us a "perma-tree" cosmetic form.

That being said these are the only classes and specs that I have played since the patch and even then some I have had a chance to play more than others. I'm not too worried about my favorite classes in the long run as I know high levels and more of our stats will even things out, just makes me a little worried in the short term.

New Talents = New Toys

I was just checking out the updated Mists of Panderia Talent Calculator and have to say, I think the Pally ones are going to be fun. I really like how most of the really cool abilities have a damaging and healing effect depending on how they are applied. not only does this give Holy Paladins something to do on their downtime besides casting heals and upping the their over-healing it also makes Retribution and Protection Paladins more flexible and more of an asset to the group as a whole. When I started playing Mirax, that was how you played a Ret Pally. You would cast Blessing of Protection on the tank when asked, you covered heals if you were waiting on the healer to get battle rezzed, and you did all that while pumping out crazy amounts of damage. Now as long as Blizzard doesn't mess with the mechanics of playing a Paladin (like they did when Cataclysm came out), Mists looks to be a fun time to play a Paladin.

Making It Official

Prior to raiding on my alt tonight I made the comment in vent to our two raid leads that I was going to be rolling as Holy on Mirax for the current raid content. Starathir said he was probably going to need me to go heals for Firelands tomorrow (well now it would be today, but I have yet to go to bed) due to the melee dps that had been coming to our raid in the last two weeks. Given that my dps pales in comparison to other melee dps and I can keep up with healers I think I'm just going to suck it up and go Holy for now until 4.3 when Blizz is slated to screw up Holy. Besides, I've gotten more Holy drop in FL than Ret drops. It makes me sad, but I've officially become a Healadin.

Mirax in Ret Gear

New Favorite Alt

When is it time for you to move on from a character to another?

This is a question I have been pondering for awhile now. For the most part is in regard to my druid, Ineri, but these days I almost wonder if I shold start asking the same about my paladin, Mirax. The question about benching Ineri comes fro the fact that I feel as though I suck at playing her. Of the three characters I have leveled to 85 in this expansion she has been by far the hardest to gear and run with. Just transitioning from regular dungeons to heroic dungeons was painstaking and I didn't feel comfortable running those with her until she practically outgeared them. I have talked about her restoration and balance specs with the main resto druid in guild. He helped me with my spec and things have become a bit easier, but I still feel that druid healing and I do not belong together. I do love playing bear, but I am a horrible tank with the exception of one boss fight in Violet Hold. For some reason I can kite the kite boss perfectly in there but cannot tank anything else successfully. thus my inepitude at the druid class makes me wonder if I should stop playing a class I once enjoyed so much.

This brings me to the topic on benching Mirax. She is my first character and the main one that I play. I'm not sure I could ever truely bench her for that reason alone. Lately however, I feel as though I am not able to play her to her full potential. Other retribution paladins kick my ass when it comes to dps. Other melee classes that are less geared than I make me efforts look silly. I have been wrestling with making her a holy paladin as her main spec, and while I do well at healing on her I still feel as though I do not play her to her full potential. This combine with the amount of time I have spent leveling my two discipline priests, Elscol and Ayella, I feel as though I am almost more proficient at playing them than Mirax. I'm constantly getting complimented on my healing skill as a disc priest and the insane things I can heal through. Heck, Elscol pulls the same HPS at level 72 that Ineri pulls at level 85. And with my current drive to get Ayella to 85 I'm not sure what I'm going to do in terms of the character I play most when she gets there and gets geared up. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

Time for a Main Spec Change?

I'm seriously considering changing my paladin's main spec from retribution to holy. Don't get wrong, I love ret and am one of the few people in game who can still play it well. (There is a perceived notion that ret pallies are "broken" and unplayable by all the former facerollers.) I've already gotten her her up to honored with the Avengers of Hyjal, have her decked out in her new belt and cloak and managed to get my hands on the Apparatus of Khaz'goroth on the first night of release. I'm starting off on a great foot as a raiding ret paladin in 4.2. Yet, I keep getting asked to heal and well, my healing set isn't too shabby either plus I'm not totally failing at it.

I always considered my paladin to not be the greatest healer due to the fact that I didn't really play a holy pally the way you were intended to. Until now. With the changes to holy pallies that came out with 4.2, holy paladins now play the way I play mine. Thus I'm not failing as badly as I could. that and it makes playing a holy pally that much more fun. I have a tough decision ahead of me.

I think my decision to switch up the main spec on Mirax is going to come down to the fight mechanics of the Firelands itself--how much melee dps do we need? My guild currently has only a handful of active raidiers which include a feral druid tank, a rogue, an enhancment shaman, a restoration druid, occasionally an elemental shaman and me the ret paladin. With this makeup I've gotten stuck healing more often than not when we pug out to fill the spots of our 10 man raids. I don't mind too much because I'd rather be playing my off-spec than sitting the raid out. Both of the shaman have resto as their offspec although the enhancement shaman has been talking about picking up elemental as an offspec to help with our low amount of ranged dps. Firelands should be interesting in terms of our raid group make-up and the changes to it that are coming.

The Lure of Shiny New Healing Gear

Just looked at the new Tier 12 for Holy Paladins. Sweet Jesus that's an awesome tier set with equally awesome set bonuses. I have been seriously considering making Mirax's MS Holy instead of Ret as we always need healers and usually less melee dps. Between the fact that I keep getting asked to heal on her (I've only ever faced Cho'gall as a healer on any toon) and the fact that I feel like my Paladin is a superior healer to my MS Resto Shaman (who I've also thought about Maining as I do love playing her), becoming a Holy Pally is something I'm thinking really hard about and have been ever since I first found out the new Pally abilities for Cata over a year ago. So when 4.2 comes out next week we'll see what happens.

They Hate Me, They Love Me and They Hate Me Again....Or, They Love Me, They Hate Me and They Love Me Again

What is it with PUGs and loving/hating their healers? I currently have a toon of each class that can heal and I do heal on those toons. So naturally I que up in the Dungeon Finder as a healer or get asked to go raid as a healer and I swear that every other group literally hates me and every other group in between those loves me. Doesn't matter if I'm on the Priest, Paladin, Shaman or Druid, that's how the story goes. Like 1-2-1-2-1.

So what gives? Is WoW just full of more idiots than ever or something? Because usually the groups that hate my healing are failing in other ways as well. For instance, two nights ago I tried to run Zul Aman on my Shaman. The first group had one dps that was over 10k and 2 that were at 8k if they tried and the tank was the top damage on every fight. They hated me and the mage kept bitching at me because he kept dying. I got sick of being the one blamed for the fail when the tank couldn't hold aggro and the hunter who could barely do more than 4k dps kept flirting with death preventing me from spreading my heals around. So I left group mid-bossfight and requed. Once again I got Zul Aman and the tank was the highest damage and we had two dps that were barely 8k. Almost the same group makeup. However, this gorup was significantly easier to heal. The other players knew how to watch their aggro and their feet and kept telling me how much they loved my healing.

All of this proves a point I've been trying to make and get some of my newer guildies who are about to be raid ready to understand—your healers and tanks are only as good as the group they are running with so not only know your toon well, but know the fights you are going to be doing.