Tearing Up The Charts Again

It's been awhile since I last posted. I'll admit I've been a bit distracted by real life, but I'm still addicted as ever to WoW.

I can gladly report that I am once again running on Mirax as a Retadin for raiding. In fact, I've been consistently the highest DPS in guild for all of my guild's 4.3 raiding. The best part is that I'm actually loving Ret once again. With the introduction of Holy Power in Cataclysm, Retribution changed completely from it's incarnation during Wrath. It took some time to become comfortable with these changes and I was decent at playing my class, but not as good as I could have been. A lot of that had to do with me healing more often than not during both 5-man dungeon runs and raids.

In a previous post I noted my decision to be a main spec Holy Paladin for the remainder of the Patch 4.2 lifetime. True to my statement, as soon as Patch 4.3 came out I went back to being Ret and have kinda put my foot down on the swapping specs for raiding. In fact, I haven't even healed on Mirax since 4.3 came out. Sure, I've gotten some upgrades for her healing gear, just I haven't made that my gearing priority. One thing that has helped me in being able to stay as Ret, are some real-life friends, Rolo and Ruckis, who x-ferred to my server and joined my guild. I have to say they are far better raiders than half the people in guild, and I respect their talent and insight into class and raid mechanics. They've also been supportive of "not making your highest dps heal," as one of them pointed out a few weeks ago when the RL was going to ask me to go Holy and then started looking for a new melee dps even though I had not agreed to heal. Since that time I've proven myself to be a consistantly high dps and being one of the two dpsers in guild who can hold their own against the PuGs we bring in to fill out raid team out, the other being Ruckis.

I'll admit, I'm kinda of missing playing Holy a bit. But ow that I have an equipped ilvl of 390 for my Ret set and average close to 30k dps on boss fights, I think I'm ready to start working on my Holy set and playing Holy again. That's part of why I've been logging out in my Holy gear so I can check it out on Mr. Robot and get it all itemized properly. I don't think I'll be going back to raiding as Holy any time soon, but I won't mind switching into it for a final boss attempt or two if a healer leaves early. This happened two weeks ago and I brought my Shaman, Rhysati, in to heal thinking that we wouldn't down Ultraxion. Well, Rolo and I two-healed it and while I have credit for the kill on Rhys, Mirax doesn't. I don't want my alt to end up farther along in progression than my main again just because the alt is the healer.

Mirax and Ruckis at the Faerie Circle in Tirisfal.

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

Drawing the Line on Guild Raid Performance

My guild has a BIG problem. Our players are constantly getting outshined by the PUGs we bring in to fill out our 10-man raiding team. Last week in the first official guild-sponsored Firelands run one of our 3 dps was constantly lower than the tanks on the meters and the undergeared PUG was outshining our fully geared out in Tier 11 enhancement shaman. Had our dps been pulling the numbers we needed them to we would have had Shannox down no questions asked. Many times we got him to 3% but then everyone started taking too much damage and the raid wiped or we were too slow on the dps and he hit enrange. At 3%.

Our officers, who coincidentally are our regular raiders, had an impromptu meeting after the raid to discuss the issue. Sadly the meeting didn't result in much except our low dpsers saying their dps was low "because we're melee and have to run around a lot." This kinda pissed me off because the main spec on my paladin is retribution and earlier in the day I had been pulling 14k dps without thinking about while running around like an idiot trying to heal the tank while do ranged dps in a ZG because the healer and dps kept dying. And I'm just as geared as the enhancement shaman. Hell my under geared enhancement shaman pulls the same dps as the other raider. Back to the issue at hand, being melee dps isn't a good excuse for low dps in a raid. I think I was so pissed off about the comment because I had been asked to heal for that raid due to the fact that we have too much melee dps and the only other melee with a heal offspec is the guild lead who pulls the trump card. And this issue has come up before--forcing one of the best dps in guild to go heals.

So last night a few of the officers were talking about the raid dps issue once again since our previous meeting had not produced anything other than excuses. We realized that our guild is in the EXACT same position it was in when Trial of the Crusader came out--our guild dps and overall player performance is lacking and Zeffra and Mohrrgun are not in the picture currently--and the guild needs a gimmick to re-invigorate it. (Zeff and Moh are two of the guild founders who happen to be the glue that holds us together.) And just like when TotC came out we decided that we are going to start running 25-man PUG raids on Saturdays that are not guild sponsored and thus we are not obliged to take under-performing guild members along with us. This also means that any PUG we bring in has to pull at least 15k dps or they will be kicked from group. Granted leading 25-man raids makes out main tank and primary raid leader go batty, but he was the one who suggested it. However, unlike TotC he's not running the 25-mans on his own. He has both myself and his co-raid lead to help with group formation and raid execution.

I will always hold out hope that our guild can regain the glory days of our 10-man Ulduar raid team that made our guild 9th on server for 10-man progression. Maybe this is what's needed. Maybe we need to stop walking on eggshells around guild members feelings and be straight up asses about the raid performance. Maybe we should just start our own new guild or go join another. But I don't want to leave a guild I have worked so hard to make a great place to play WoW that it is.

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 Law of Alts

First off this post has nothing to do with Paladins. Just getting it out there.

As Patch 4.2 started looming closer and now that it's hit, I've been working on my resto shaman to get her up to snuff and do a bit more raiding on her than I did during the previous tier of raiding content. This is a similar pattern to the days of Wrath for me as I focused only on the paladin until she was BiS geared out for non-heroic raid content. Well, that's starting to happen again, although this time I didn't have to get both the paladin and Shaman up to max level from scratch so the whole process is going faster. That and some days I really feel like playing a badass resto shaman as opposed to a face rolling ret paladin.

So in an effort to not get burnt out on Mirax, I took Rhysati to a Bastion of Twilight run today. Her tier shoulders did drop, but I lost on them to a hunter. However, Rhys did get an upgrade for her enhancement set in the form of a new helm. (Which I felt really bad because our guild's main enhancement shaman was there on his prot pally and needed the helm for his main toon.) I feel like my shaman is stuck in the law of alts, but a twisted version as the only raid drops she's gotten in Cataclysm so far have both been for her off-spec. So the main sees gear for the alt and the alt only sees gear for the wrong spec. I love it. Someday I'll be a tiered out shaman again. Blizz just needs to leave a raiding tier in place for a full year so everyone gets bored of it and starts gearing out their alts.

Bittersweet Victory

Yesterday the main tank in my guild ran an ICC 25 doing achievement for the mount as well as to get us our Kingslayer 25 so we can go do a Light of Dawn run next week. However, a a big part of his motivation for doing these runs is to get me my Shadowmourne and our guild the 'We Are Legendary' achievement. For the most part everything went great during the run. We cleared everything, wipes were only caused by people screwing up achievements and thus wipes had to be called. The only downside really to the whole night was me and my silly quest. I'm still on the infusions portion of the questline and am the person in our guild who is farthest along. (We never downed Putricide 25 during ICC's heyday so I could never progress with them until a post-Cataclysm ICC 25 run.) I had already done my plauge infusion a few months ago and thus was on Blood Queen. Everyone held back dps so I could be the first one bitten and so that I could get all three bites in and then we killed her. To may dismay, my quest wasn't complete.

I had read up on the quests months if not a year or more ago when it was looking like we were gonna push for the orange and before the raid lockout was shared between 10 man and 25 man. Due to how long it had been since I had read up on the quest I didn't realize that the buff I needed I got by standing infront of the BQ with the tanks. I also don't play a tank so I didn't even know what the extra debuff they get was callled. So to my dismay I have to do it all again next week when we do heroic mode and have to do the Sindragosa one on heroic as well. Ugh. I feel like such an idiot.

Heroic Mode: We Can Do it, Now What?

My guild is comfortably farming Blackwing Descent 5/6 and Bastion of Twilight 3/4 and a couple of us have actually killed Cho'gall and thus the guild can make attempts at Heroic Halfus. I was discussing the issue of heroic raid bosses with the guild's main tank last night. We both agree that the guild can do it, it's more a question of if we should and would the guild want to?

From what I can tell our guild members all want to down raids but their reasons for doing so are varied. Some people are concerned with the lack of raid drops they have been getting. Others want the achievement for the full raid before even attempting heroic modes. Still others just want guild members to show so we don't have to PUG. Personally, I would love to see our guild make attempts at heroic Halfus. I think we can do it and not to mention there's better loot associated with heroic modes.

The More Trolls You Know

first off, I think Guild Portal's site is broken. I can't even update the welcome note for my guild. It saves, but doesn't update the page and I have Super Admin access.

On that note, I think this will become my new WoW blog as Blogger has been reliable and is highly customizable.

Now the bulk of the post on which I wanted to cover.

Last night I made the comment to our main tank, Sheltem, that sometimes your ability to down raid bosses is less about your knowledge and gear and more about who you know. This came after I got asked to go to a Cho'gall run with Longjohnboom, one of the noteable Trade Chat trolls on our server. Longjohn is a really good player who knows his toons and being asked directly to run with him was kind of an honor. I ended up recruiting Sheltem to come tank and after about 5 tries I finally got Mirax her Bastion of Twilight achievement. Shelt had to agree with me on my comment about it matters who you know.

I've been on my server for over two years now and have been active the whole time, but I primarily only do things with my guild. During Wrath a rogue kept asking me to go run things with him like Ulduar hardmodes for the drake and Trial of the Grand Crusader runs. But that was only one character. And now with Blizzard's introduction on Real ID friends it's easier to keep track of people you like running with. Unlike Longjohn, all my toons don't start with the same prefix. However, if someone knows Star Wars Rogue Squadron female characters my naming scheme makes sense (except Mirax should be Human not Draenei.)

Anyways, my lesson here is that it doesn't hurt to make friends with the trolls on your server. They might just lead you to new opportunities.