Xbox of worms

It was early in the morning and I decided to grab a coffee at the local Starbucks.  Right next door was a small video game shop.  I had been flirting with the idea of purchasing an Xbox 360 however I have already gone through 2 so I was a little intemedated.
Anyways, the Guy at the store was awesome and I decided to just buy one and have some fun. 
I got home and opened it up only to realize I didn’t have any RCA inputs on the tv I was using.  SO, off to best buy where I purchased an LED Samsung 40 inch tv.  I needed to buy HD cables and Xbox live just to get my Netflix to work.
SO,  what started as a $200 purchase escalated into more like $2000.  I told the Best buy Guy it was a can of worms.

HOW DID YOU DO THAT? Were you Moving?

Over time I have developed “combos.”  At least I call them combos.  There are several key cool downs your paladin has and the trick to becoming successful  is understanding what the right circumstances are for hitting each one.

I love hearing paladin’s say that they can’t heal while they move.  It’s an excuse, and there are ways around it.  Moving around the map as a paladin can be tricky but I have two combos I use which will help you out.

The first one is the easiest and it only requires 2 buttons.

The idea is to put Hand of Sacrifice on the tank and than pop Divine Shield as you move.  In doing this damage will be transferred from the tank to yourself however you will not be taking any damage because of the Divine Shield.  This is good for an extended move or in times where the whole raid is taking damage and you need to move.  Honestly, I use hand of Sacrifice all of the time without Divine Shield.  I tend to keep Divine Shield for special circumstances, however this is a valid and good option that I recommend practicing.

The second combo is the most powerful.  We don’t really have a hot so it’s hard to get big heals out fast.  This is your solution.

Hit your Divine Factor first, this will ensure that your holy shock will crit.  Because of your talent points, the holy shock crit will allow you to do an instant cast.  Use flash of light.  I use this a lot if I’m moving around, or as a OH SHIT combo if the tank is dangerously low on health.  This is the #1 combo, and I never see people do it.  It’s a nasty little trick for PVP too.

It may sound obvious, but Sacred Shield is a great tool for running as well.  People are often scared to take it off of their main target.  Don’t worry; It’s okay to do this!  I use it primarily if I’m running from something and a raid member is close to dying.  If I can’t Holy shock them, I’ll put sacred shield on them to buy enough time for either myself or another healer to top them off.

To clarify, you shouldn’t do this unless you are sure the main tank is all right and only do it sparingly.  As soon as the coast is clear throw it back on the tank.

This should be a good bag of tricks for you.  Practice and try them in different circumstances so you know what works for you.  I only talked about 2 real combos but there are more we will talk about later.  The big thing in this post is to use combo 2, and REMEMBER you have hand of sacrifice.  Everyone forgets about it.  Don’t be that paladin!

PALADIN HEALING GUIDE (Judgment of Light)

So we’re into the second posting for the Paladin Healing Guide.  Since I’m assuming you’ve read the first post we can get right into the tips and tricks for becoming a stand out healer.  Since I’m hitting each area in depth I can only fit one aspect into each posting but I will include easy UI changes that will help you out tremendously.

I still see healers ignoring their judgments and it’s a sure sign they don’t understand what they are doing.  If you’ve ever been in a fight where the entire raid is taking tons of damage, example is the Twin Val’kyr in TOC, than you’ve probably noticed that druids shine in these encounters.  Your judgment is the key to keeping up with them!

Firstly, if you don’t have the show enemy health bar over their head turned on you should.  I can’t tell you how powerful of a tool it is.

As we know, the Judgment of light puts a DOT on an enemy that heals party members that attack that target.  If that makes no sense you can the description below.

By placing the judgment on the enemy the party is attacking you passively heal the raid.  Now the problem I constantly see in paladin healers is that they hit their tab key and than cast the Judgment of Light on a random enemy.

Be specific!  At the beginning of the fight, you should be applying the judgment to the main tanks target.  Do you have Target of Target turned on?  If not you had better do it!  As we know, sometimes DPS will attack random targets and the target the main tank starts on isn’t always the one that dies first.

This is okay at the beginning of the fight, however, as the fight continues you should be looking up from your healbot at the health bars over the mobs heads.  If one is lower than the others just click on that one and cast your judgment.

Having that visual reference makes it much easier to switch your judgment.  So, while the other paladins are casting on random mobs, you are constantly hitting the ones that are being hit.

To get back to the Twin Valkyr example, by keeping your judgment of light on the twins and tabbing between them you should have no trouble keeping up with the druids.  Keep in mind however that the judgment is most effective when the raid is taking constant damage.

Make sure that your judgment is always up on at least one target.  Start being very specific about where your judgment is being applied and I guarantee you will see substantial improvements!

Paladin Healing Guide (The Stats)

And it’s here, the beginnings of the Pally Healing Guide.  We’re going to start with stats and how to gear your self for success.

All the forums and guides for paladin healers say you need to choose between being a flash of light healer or a holy light healer. This is true to an extent, but an effective healer finds a medium between the two.

Intellect is the key stat for us. It does two things.   1.) It increases our crit chance, which as we know, returns our mana from casts.  2.) It increases our base mana pool. Why is base mana important? Our Divine Plea spell gives us back 25% of our base mana over 15 seconds and it has a 1 minute cool down on it.

So basically, the larger your base mana pool is the stronger your Divine Plea will become.  Now the question is whether you need mp5 or if you should rely solely on Divine Plea?  If you aren’t spamming holy light over and over again you should have no problem keeping your mana up with just DP, however there are other tricks I’ll hit later.

MP5 isn’t as important but it cannot be completely ignored.  In honesty, you really don’t need more than 200, and any higher than 400 is just overkill.

Spell power drives me nuts when I talk to other paladin healers.  You really don’t need more than 2400 spell power to heal effectively.  I usually tell healers to get it to 2k and forget about it.  It may sound crazy to you, however you would never notice a difference of 500 spell power as a paladin.

The reason is because your Holy Light is almost always going to be over heal, so to add additional healing power to it just means more over heal.  What spell power does work well with is flash of light.  When we talk about rotation in a later post this will make more sense.  For now, just know that your spell power is for your flash of light which should be about 20-30% of your heals.  So, to stress about it or stack spell power makes little sense since it doesn’t account for much of your overall heals.

The last thing to talk about it haste.  Haste is great but it’s really the third stat I look at.  For the most part, follow the rules I’ve set and the haste stacks up after.

TO RECAP

1.) Get your spell power to 2K, but there’s no reason for it to be above 2800 as a raid healer.

2.) Mp5 to 200 but 400 is overkill.

3.) Get your Crit to at least 40% for holy, no more than 45%

4.)  Start stacking haste and remove from other areas that are too high.

All of these stats are assuming you are unbuffed.  If you reach these levels, you should have no problem healing any of the WOTLK raids.  The rest is truly skill in timing ,which are things we will talk about in later posts.

Pally Heal Guide

So my buddy Sheqeri over at Pain Suppression asked me to guest post on his blog. In the attempt to kill two birds with one stone I will be creating a series of posts for basic and advanced paladin healing techniques.

I hate hearing people say that paladin healing is easy and there’s only three buttons to push. There is so much more! I’m hoping these series of posts will bring more inside, tips, and tricks that have helped me tremendously.

Since I have a tendency to be long winded in explainations I will probably break it up into several short posts instead of one long one. Expect the first one up in the next days.

April fools and gearscore rant

Lol. I love April fools day and I always get a kick out of what blizzard comes up with. This year wasn’t as good as the previous but I still found it entertaining. The gearscore type plugging was good and I had read it on mmo champion which made me believe it was true at first.

My first thoughts were holy shit blizzard decided to add that stupid pluggin to the ui. As soon as I saw the rediculous bars in the photo I knew it was a lie. The problem I have with gearscore is that raid leaders constantly take the gs as a device to determine how a person will perform.

I would love it if it had a pluggin where when I scrolled over someones name it would tell me their average dps and divided it against the gs to create a performance %. That would be much more benificial than a stupid score of gear. If someone made this I would be sold on the addon.

The best April fools prank by blizzard was the Bard. If you’ve forgotten that was the one that looked like guitar hero and they included pictures of staff with the keyboard positioned in the air like a guitar. That was a great prank. Can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

10 percent is victory

Wow. Another 5 percent increase to the icc buff. Blizzard is really trying to make the game more accessable for players and it’s almost rediculous. I understood the tier pieces for players and to be honest I’m glade they implemented it. In conjunction with the random dungeon tool it is easier then ever to gear an alt and get him in icc. Example would be my shaman.

It took me 2 days to get him a 3600 gs and his dps was 4k in a 10 man. All in all blizzard seems to be pushing towards a puggable game which in some respects I agree with. There’s plenty of times where I would love to log on and start raiding but don’t have the players from guild on yet.

Pugging is making end game more accessible but once they release he 40% bonus it’s going to be less of a challenge or feit and more of a mindless ordeal we farm as we wait impatiently for more content. I say lose the buff and make them struggle.