Please note that Oswalt is a paladin. I was in a VoA several weeks back and ran into this. For all you non-paladins, Pally Power is a definite must have addon that assists paladins in giving out buffs.

Be careful how you abbreviate “things”.

Well by now you all know that Amber’s our new GM. Mach did a wonderful job in my opinion, but I for one can more than sympathize with stepping down. Hell it had gotten so bad for me that I not only stepped down, but made the tough decision to leave friends behind and go to another server. But damn it! She’s already got me helping her clean out the bank…Mach never made me do crap!

So what did I do this weekend? Well, I leveled alts mostly. I was supposed to raid on Saturday, but personal things got in the way. My wife and I made the conscious decision to get rid of one of our cars a few months back. I only live 3 miles from work so it works out pretty well and saves some money. But at times it gets a little annoying.

On Saturday I had to take my oldest son to get his H1N1 vaccination. We waited outside in the cold for 1.5 hours. It wasn’t exactly fun, but I have to thank my kids for being so good about it.  To do that, I had to drop my wife off at work and pick her back up which conflicted with raid start. I thought I’d just be a little late, but it turned into more than that. We started Christmas shopping a little early this year.

My wife works at a department store, if they even use that term anymore. And we decided this year to buy a Wii. The store was having a buy 2 get 1 free on Wii games. So she got the Wii, games, and a couple of accessories for the family with her 10% discount. My son has been begging for a DS, but he’s 6 and still hasn’t done a great job of taking care of his toys and mine for that matter. At the end of the week there’s always a stack of games and DVDs in the living room and it often takes 30 minutes to find the cases and put them all away. Yeah, I’m not buying a $200 handheld toy for him to destroy…

Anyway that made for a late evening and we picked up G.I. Joe to boot and watched that when we got home. So Saturday became family night and I have to admit it was a lot of fun.

So mostly that left time for leveling alts which was a lot of fun. I know I’ve been rather negative about the end-game lately. We had an Ulduar10 hardmode run this week which was the most fun I’ve had in raiding for a long time. We didn’t complete any hardmodes, but we sure had a hell of a time trying! I think we would have had XT with a slightly different makeup and a couple of slightly more geared dps alts.

But in the meantime, leveling has been a huge blessing! I’m having a ton of fun with the rogue, hunter, and warrior. The warlock is a little boring still, but I seriously dislike dotting and wanding. If I do much more, I aggro and in the few cases where I don’t I end up running seriously low on mana and have to sit and eat/drink afterwards. Trying to keep the downtime to a minimum, so wanding it is. There has definitely got to be a better way, but I’m a noob and haven’t found it or found the motivation to really go and find it.

I will admit that the mage has gotten a little better since I’ve learned pyroblast! I can almost kill mobs my level before they reach me and anything 2 levels below is dead. I need to figure out a better cast sequence though. I’m basing it solely on cast times which has got to be the dumbest way of doing it.

Unfortunately I was ganked several times yesterday and I finally raged enough to park my DK in the zone. In fact, I ran around the zone for 15 minutes trying to find the four or five guys that had ganked me. I had even attempted to move into Stranglethorn Vale, but there were a couple of guys literally parked at Nesingwary’s camp waiting for Alliance lowbies. They stared at me for two minutes across the river before I finally gave up on them leaving.

Is it wrong that I want to level my rogue to 80 just so I can camp lowbies like Scrappie does in Redridge Mountains? You got a kid that apparently has been doing this since BC every weekend and most weekdays according to several people in the zone and through my own personal experiences. It’s a nice dream I suppose, but one I’m likely to never do. Man sometimes I wish I was more of an ass*!

*In all honesty, it’s probably less of being an actual ass than just a different method of playing. But it’s less fun to bitch about!

I wasn’t going to comment on this because everybody and their dead ancestors already have (Merlot has a great one btw), but unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few days you are well aware that Blizzard now has two new pets for offer for the small sum of $10 each.

As we’ve seen it’s caused quite a stir as predictions of doom and gloom abound. Blizzard has gone the way of the microtransaction. Soon we’ll all be able to buy gear with real money instead of having to farm away in-game. No more grinding Naxx, Ulduar, and ToC for those shiny purples! No more farming heroics to buy emblem gear! Just whip out your credit card and deck out your new level 80 for raiding Icecrown in 5 minutes!

Bullshit.

The game, like any other, revolves around progression. You create a character, you log in, and you begin progressing.

Oooh! I’m level 2! I got a new ability! What’s it do?

Awesome! I’m level 40, I can start wearing plate!

Only 5 more pets and I get my achievement!

I know that spirit beast is here somewhere. If he’d just spawn…

<pant, pant>…Only 5 more laps around Dalaran…<pant>…I will fit into those jeans again, I swear it!!!

Whatever you’re after, whatever you’re doing, you are attempting to progress in something. Otherwise what’s the point of playing?

So my prediction is that yes, we will see Blizzard introduce more microtransaction items into the game; pets, mounts, and other vanity items will be all up for grabs. Just like race changes, faction changes, and server transfers these little transactions will have absolutely no effect on gameplay. We will NOT see items for sale that have an impact on PvE or PvP gameplay.

Have you ever played a game and used an invincibility cheat or an unlimited ammo cheat with an extremely powerful weapon? What happens? Oh sure, it’s a ton of fun initially being able to beat all those hard areas that you couldn’t before, but do that for a few minutes, a few hours, or possibly even a few days and the game becomes boring. There’s no challenge. So what’s the point?

If I’m wrong, then this game will become so pointless that this paladin will sadly hang up his mace.

Just ran across this post over at MMO Champion. For those of you that can’t access it at work, etc. Here’s the part that’s interesting.

Icecrown Raid Difficulty Functionality
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)

In the upcoming patch we are adding a new feature to the Icecrown raid instance that allows the raid leader to change the instance’s difficulty setting on a boss per boss basis. The way the raid leader chooses to switch is the same as now, by right-clicking on the character portrait. The difficulty settings can be changed from inside Icecrown Citadel, with some restrictions. For example, you cannot change the difficulty in combat or during certain events specified by our design team. To enable the ability to change the raid difficulty to heroic, you must first defeat the Lich King on normal mode, as doing so unlocks the heroic version of this raid instance. There is no heroic version of trash; meaning changing the difficulty will only affect boss difficulty.

We chose this particular functionality because we didn’t want to use the Trial of the Crusader method, and have four versions on a raid of this size. We felt the Ulduar method of having to know a certain trick to do on the boss was difficult to communicate and tied too heavily to achievements. We might eventually convert Trial of the Crusader over to this new system but Ulduar and Naxxramas will likely never change.

Not that it’s really all that important, but I think I’m confusing myself a little. With the release of Arenafest, we saw the introduction of heroic raids. If you recall, before 3.2 we had always assumed that the 25-man versions of raids were the heroic raids. Trashlessfest changed all that for us. We were given 10- and 25- man regular raids and heroic versions to boot. It appeared that this was going to be the new system going forward. Some believed it was Blizzard’s way of copping out on new content. Instead of giving actual new content, just release something and give it three other versions to tide us over.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Snoozefest, but that’s because it doesn’t feel like an instance to me and in general it’s easier than Ulduar which is more of a personal dislike of the progression rather than anything really important. My brain tells me that content should get harder as you move on. It didn’t, at least not in the way I thought it would. Remember, I still haven’t experienced heroic ToC, or ToGC, or whatever the hell you kids are calling it these days. I bet I’d have a shitload of fun in there!

But I still have fun in regular 10- and 25-man ToCs because it’s still challenging. Well, maybe not 10s so much, but we still haven’t cleared 25s and still wipe on every boss at times. I like that. Some don’t. They feel we should already have it down pat and get pissed off when we wipe. Me? I’m playing a game I really enjoy with people I really enjoy. I don’t need anything more.

Anyway let’s abandon Mr. Sidetracked here and get back to the topic at hand. Bear with me as I try to piece this together while clearing cobwebs out of my brain.

“In the upcoming patch we are adding a new feature to the Icecrown raid instance that allows the raid leader to change the instance’s difficulty setting on a boss per boss basis.”

• So we will still have 10- and 25-man heroic versions of each of the bosses.
• Since they can be changed on the fly, we will not have a regular and heroic version of each instance. This means there’s only 2 versions of the instance instead of 4 like Lootfest.
• Ultimately this appears to be similar to the hard-mode mechanics of Ulduar except it’s automatically selected instead of sometimes having to do something special.

So how do I feel about this? Actually it’s kind of neat. How many bosses does Icecrown have? Wasn’t there 31 announced? But I think some of those included the 5-man instances as well, but still it’s gotta be a lot. Can you imagine trying to run both versions in the same week? LOL!

I also find it interesting that Bornakk states “we didn’t want to use the Trial of the Crusader method, and have four versions on a raid of this size” and further that they “might eventually convert Trial of the Crusader over to this new system”.

I’m not a big fan of the multiple versions, but I don’t know that I can say it was broken. But does this mean that Blizzard is saying that their switch to the 4 raid versions didn’t work or was just impractical? And what does this mean for future small raids like ToC and Ony?

I’ve really got altitis right now. If you’ll notice on my sidebar, all of my alts at this time are currently at least level 30, except the mage.

Try as I might to love the Mage, I just can’t. I was leveling frost spec until last night. It’s boring!!! So when I hit 24, I switched to fire to change things up. Problem is it’s still the same at level 24. Boring! There is a good chance that I’m dysfunctional and don’t know what the hell I’m doing… Frostbolt, Arcane Missiles, Fire Blast, Ice Whatchamafreezethemob*, run away or Blink, and continue blasting until dead. At least fire spec changed it up a bit so instead of Arcane Missiles I was using a lot more fire spells for the hell of it. Saw a little faster damage, but overall still boring.

The Warlock finally got a little play time and to be honest, it isn’t as much fun as it once was. My little tank fiend is getting better at holding aggro, but I still often have to just dot the mob and wand away. Pretty boring. I was finally able to practice aoe’ing a little bit though since I’ve noticed his threat has jumped significantly in the last few levels. But it’s somewhat difficult to do still since I end up aggro’ing extra mobs and even when I do survive the downtime of getting mana back sucks. Then again, I could totally be doing it wrong and I’m just one of those noobs.

The Hunter is fun. I tamed a raptor in Wetlands the other day to see what that was like compared to the bear. Works pretty well! Mana is an issue though. Seems like I always run out way too fast so I usually end up hitting a mob with poison and then auto-shooting. Not sure why that’s more fun than wanding with a warlock, but it is. Maybe it’s the sound of the gunshot?

The Warrior is surprisingly fun! More so than I thought it would be. It used to actually be the one class I disliked above all others, but it’s definitely picked up some. Especially now with dual-wield I can generate enough rage to keep going. And I can even hit multiple mobs with little downtime.

The Rogue is fun. I never thought it would be. I’ve tried leveling them in the past, but I never could get past about level 15. The combo point mechanic was just too weird for me, but after having leveled a druid it definitely is a lot easier to understand and stealthing is always fun. I’m also motivated by the potential of pvp’ing with the rogue. There’s some definite sense of satisfaction about sneaking up on an enemy and hitting him while he’s trying to cap something.

I am ashamed to admit that I did gank someone last week. I was level 28 and snuck up behind a level 29 Horde paladin near Southshore. She was leveling near Southshore and I stealthed with the intent to move to another area when the bright idea hit me to see what all the fuss was about:

You know. That paladin probably wouldn’t hesitate to gank you. You haven’t yet run across a single Hordie on this server that hasn’t at least tried to kill you if they were anywhere close to your level or much higher.

Yeah, but I don’t play that way. I have nothing to prove by being able to kill someone. At least not outside arenas and battlegrounds. It’s why I never accept duel requests.

You don’t accept duel requests because you suck at PvP!!! Besides she’s one level higher than you! It’s basically equal footing. It’s not like you’re 10 levels higher which would prove nothing more than you’re an ass!

I got better things to do, like questing.

Come on! Just try it! First, you’re dying to see it from a rogue’s point of view and second, you’re curious as to why people do this. Try it! You may find out why the average rogue is such an ass!

Fine. Let’s see what happens.

Anyway, all I proved is that when you engage someone while they’re already in combat with mobs, you generally have the upper hand. I did feel somewhat guilty after the fact because this isn’t how I play. I did however try to console my guilt by saying that this person probably ganked me on her main at some point.

But why the sudden altitis this past month?

I’ve been debating for about a week whether to bring this topic to light. In fact, I hinted at it recently. Then Amber, Rivs, and Cel all hinted at it too so what the hell.

Bottom line, I’m tired of raiding because of attitude. It’s negative. We all know I don’t care about loot. I have sufficient for the content we’re doing. I’ll get sufficient for the content we’ll end up doing. I’m not worried. It’s the fact that raids are no longer fun.

To be fair to all, I must point out that I have little to no detail in some areas and am guessing at others. Bottom line it appears that illness and real life issues have cropped up in the background. The added stress has not helped the raid leaders and complaints in guild, raid, healer, and officer channels have brought a couple of people to the breaking point where tempers flare.

Whatever the causes it has finally been acknowledge by our officers. We had a brief meeting after our so-called “fail raid”.  We will be working on it further so that even if our raids are still “fail” in the sense of difficulty on bosses, they will not be “fail” in the sense of fun.

P.S. Mach, I really miss this…

P.S.S. To the rest of you, we were having a little trouble with this fight way back when. Amber abused Raid Warning while Mach calmly explained the fight in Vent. Now one might find that distracting and annoying while an explanation is going on and perhaps it is, especially by someone not as entertaining as Amber, but I think the added effect was it made the raid a little more fun.

Now I don’t have a recording of her in Vent, although I should probably start doing that, but Amber is also very good at voicing things in a certain way. Her tone doesn’t carry the harsh accusatory tone you often hear in pugs. I’ve heard her get that motherly tone in her voice where she starts to speak softly when she says something like “Ky, dear. You have to stay out of the fire. Standing in fire is bad, mkay?” If most of us tried to say something like that, it would come off as condescending. Perhaps some people think she is, but I for one find she’s not and it’s a lot easier to accept her comments as constructive criticism than accepting someone yelling ”Ky! Stay out of the fucking fire!”

As an officer, and more importantly as a raider, it’s my responsibility to help out the raid leaders in whatever capacity I can. They aren’t getting paid to provide me entertainment. What they do can be very difficult and like I said I’m no good at it and don’t want to be. I’d rather someone else lead the way and I’ll enjoy the ride.

So basically I just need to help out by being a little more positive. Maybe that attitude can be contagious.

So in the interest of being positive about negative things, have fun with this.

Man I miss his show!

*You have to give me credit for even remembering the names of the first three spells. I can’t ever remember the names of my healing spells!

FYI, my traffic has increased quite a bit over the year and comments have increased by quite a bit as well. Unfortunately, this means that spammers are also getting smarter at getting around the built-in Akismet spam filter.

For those of you with blogs, you’re probably seeing smarter comments being left with the actual links in their names instead of in the comments. Although I still laugh at all the ones that say “this is a great forum. hope to really contribute and get to know you all.”

I’m not one for deleting comments. If you troll me, disagree with me, etc. I will not delete your comment given that it pertains to whatever the post is about. I do reserve the right to delete or edit comments that attack other commentors. Blast me all you want, all I ask is you treat others in a respectful manner.

Now with all that said let me point out this hasn’t been an issue on this blog thankfully. However, because the spammers are getting better and starting to sound more like legitimate commentors, I apologize to you in advance if I accidentally delete a legitimate comment.

I just deleted one that looked legit, but the name was linked to something I wasn’t sure was. So I Google’d it and the short description was definitely odd. Not scary odd, but odd enough that I deleted it.

Mortigan started this and he’s wrong. No, not just that he’s Undead, which is wrong on a whole other level, but that he’s just wrong.

Amber picked up on it and bless her heart, try as she might, she’s wrong too!

Wipe #1
Cause of Wipe: The Tank just sucks.
Person to Blame:  Blizzard. Heirloom gear has spoiled the leveling game where people are supposed to learn their classes, but everyone avoids the instances now. The debacle that passes for gear progression in end-game is such a mess that again everyone avoids the earlier raids and is ill-prepared to tank current content.
Possible Solutions: Remove heirloom gear. Bring back gear progression.

Wipe #2
Cause of Wipe: The Tank dies.
Person to Blame: Blizzard. They nerfed our poor tanks. Probably due to some PvP imbalance which royally screwed tanks over.
Possible Solutions: QQ on the public forums.

Wipe #3
Cause of Wipe: Boss immediately ignores Tank and 1-shots the DPSers.
Person to Blame:  Blizzard. Again the tank nerf screwed them over and they can’t build/maintain threat. Also it’s probably patch/maintenance day and the encounter is bugged.
Possible Solutions:  QQ on the public forums.

Wipe #4
Cause of Wipe: The Healer dies.
Person to Blame:  Blizzard. If a healer aggro’d, the encounter is glitched. Or possibly another version of Wipe #3
Possible Solutions:  QQ on the public forums.

Wipe #5
Cause of Wipe: The adds are killing everyone.
Person to Blame:  Blizzard. Again encounter is bugged and/or tanks can’t maintain aggro because of their nerfs.
Possible Solutions:  QQ on the public forums.

Wipe #6
Cause of Wipe: The DPS is too low, and the boss Enrages.
Person to Blame:  Blizzard. They didn’t make the encounter easy enough to cater to the casuals.
Possible Solutions:  QQ on the public forums.

Wipe #7
Cause of Wipe: The Healer dies, even though you have a rocking Tank.
Person to Blame:  Blizzard. Again similar to Wipe #3 and #4.
Possible Solutions:  QQ on the public forums.

Wipe #8
Cause of Wipe:  People don’t know the fights.
Person to Blame:  Blizzard. Encounters are too easy so everyone feels they don’t have to research up on it OR encounters are so complicated that no one understands it anyway.
Possible Solutions: QQ on the public forums.

So who’s really to blame for all our problems?

OK, all you healers out there are already aware of the healing meme/webring started by Miss Medicina going around. And I got tagged by Christine although she did it via a comment on my blog, and again by Amber. In fact, I got crit by the healing meme as I have four freaking healers!

OK, I’ll be a good a sport. Here’s how it works.

Post this questionnaire, with your answers, on your blog. Pick the healing class you know most about (or is the focus of your blog) for the questionnaire, and then send it over to another healing blogger you know and love who heals with a DIFFERENT class. Include a link to the blogger who sent you the questionnaire, as well as a link to the blogger to whom you are sending it.

• What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

Since I have one of each class and they are all main spec healers, I’ll just point out here that Kyrileanthos (Paladin) is my main toon, always has been, and always will be. That said, Erdkrieg (Shaman) is my main healing toon right now because we usually have access to at least one paladin healer, or at least other paladins for buffs, and Amber’s effectively recruited EVERY FREAKING PRIEST HEALER on our server and a few other servers as well so Maedchen (Holy Priest, cuz Disc Priests are just fooling themselves) is out. And then Selfreya (Druid) is somewhat undergeared for our current content, although the next time we do Ony25 I may have to beg to bring her along because she’s never going to get geared otherwise. So everyone wants my uberleet chain heals…yeah ok, they’re only interested in me for my heroism. Bastards!

• What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

Raids. I rarely run 5-mans anymore because I refuse to grind emblems and I get really bored of content that provides no challenge. I rarely if ever have healed in PvP. Most of you are well aware that I dislike PvP, although I’ll admit to having recently taken my Ret PvP gear in battlegrounds while tank spec’d. That was actually fun at times because I had a hard time dying, even though I couldn’t kill crap!

• What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?

Paladin – Holy Light is just cool, especially when it crits! But honestly I’m a Flash of Light spammer.
Shaman – Chain Heal because I like watching it fly all over the place and attempting to anticipate the best directions to cast it.
Priest – Circle of Healing. I love the group aspect of this heal. Prayer of Mending is fun, but I have a hard time tracking it.
Druid – Tranquility because it has a great animation. (Yeah it’s purty and I’m a guy! Sue me!) All kidding aside, I still haven’t figured out tree healing yet. I use Rejuv the most I think and Nourish too. Nourish is actually pretty cool.>

• What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

Paladin - I use them all. It used to be Holy Shock because it’s a very ineffecient heal, or was. I think they made it a lot better now and I’ve gotten more comfortable with the insta-cast FoL, because my HS crits a lot! Usually heals in the 7-8k range when it does. I always Beacon, even on trash. I judge. I spam FoL. And I use HL on tanks and emergencies on dps.
Shaman – Healing Wave. I’m rarely on primary tank heals. Although I barely use Lesser Healing Wave either since the mana cost between that and Chain Heal is close enough to make Chain Heal the better choice when more than one person is taking damage, which is often.
Priest – Divine Hymn and Greater Heal, although to be honest I think I have cast Greater Heal at least twice. Not sure I can say that about Divine Hymn.
Druid – Lifebloom has to be a great healing spell, but I haven’t yet figured out how to best decide rolling it vs. letting it bloom. I also don’t have the mana pool to roll it anyway. As I said, I’m still fairly new to tree healing.>

• What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

Paladin – Tank healing. Beacon the tank taking the least damage. Heal the other one with Holy Light and you have a killer combination.
Shaman – Throughput. Chain Heal can heal for a lot over multiple people. Mana regen is great. I only ever have mana issues when I die and self rez.
Priest (Holy) - Versatility. I think the priest has a fuller arsenal of spells than any other class and can switch roles on the fly if necessary.
Druid – Pre-emptive healing. A druids HoTs are amazing.

• In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?

Paladin – Tanks.
Shaman – Raid. Personally I’m not spec’d for tank healing, though I can still do it fairly effeciently.
Priest (Holy) - Raid.
Druid – Raid.

• What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

Paladin. Ever since the changes in Wrath, Paladins have become more versatile healers in the sense that they have more of an arsenal of things to deal with. When I don’t heal with my paladin after a while, it is somewhat of a struggle to remember how to juggle all the different spells. They may not have the versatility of a priest or the HoTs of a druid, but damn they’re fun!

• What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

Druid. I think this is primarily due to inexperience. The druid to me is a totally different type healer than the others. Even though Holy Priests have HoTs, I still play one as a reactive healer rather than proactive which seems to be pretty much what druids are. And I haven’t even tried Disc Healing which I think I’d find rather foreign too.

• What is your worst habit as a healer?

Getting too comfortable watching the unit frames and not what’s around me. I run with a pretty good bunch of players, regardless of what some people say*, and it becomes very easy to get a little too comfortable that things will be OK regardless of if I’m paying attention. This makes it more difficult when I get back in a progression raid.

• What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?

Someone who calls for heals. I have unit frames. Fancy enough, I can even see my screen. I don’t drink so I’m not squinting at the screen wondering which of the pretty colors are YOUR health bar. Asking me to heal you is like asking you to target hostiles and not the tank (minus any assist macros). And I admit to having let people die because asking for heals got annoying. I will more than likely continue to do so. I have a priority list and unless you’re the tank, who I’ll just yell at to “Shut Up!”, you will end up at the bottom. I will leave you to another healer or your own devices.

I do need to point out my 2nd pet peeve. Range. Get in range. Seriously! Why do I have to tell you?! Can’t you see you’re 60 yards from the nearest healer in the raid?! WTF?!

• Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?

God I hope not! I seriously hate this attempt to homogenize all the healing classes. What’s the point of having a squishy priest healer if the plate wearing paladin can raid heal just as easily? What’s the point of having a tank healer if say the Holy Priest could tank heal as good as or better than the paladin AND be able to raid heal all at the same time?

I understand the problem a lot of guilds were having because of an excess in one class and lack in others, but to make them all balanced would be asinine. Each class should have something that sets them apart from the others. Keep homogenizing the classes and you may as well just make 3 classes total. Tank, healer, and dps. Don’t even give them special names like Warrior.

• What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

Used to use Recount a lot. I will from time to time still look at it, but I rarely evaluate myself on it anymore. The criteria I use is: Did my assignment(s) die and was mana an issue?

• What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

Paladin – Either that we can’t raid heal or that we should raid heal. We’re not the best raid healers, but we can still do it. I’ve been in groups where I was the only pally healer with priests, druids, and shamans available and been assigned to raid heal. Think that was an ego trip somewhere, but ok…
Shaman – Can’t tank heal or heal 5-mans. I read a post somewhere this week, or last, where someone was ignored for a 5-man invite because he was a shaman. Sorry, can’t remember who wrote it. Must have had a bad experience, but that’s seriously ignorant.
Priest – Although I’ve never healed Disc, I have run into several people that think Disc sucks because they’re always last on the meters. I’m not even going to comment further other than to say that people who evaluate healers solely on the numbers are bigger idiots than those that spec 100% into a single tree**.  Ironically, it’s those evaluators that usually pick on those that spec that way.
Druid – Can’t tank heal. I’ve seen some pretty good druid tank healers.

• What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

Trick question. I think healing is fairly easy. It doesn’t take long to figure out which spells to use when. Even druid healing, which is still foreign to me, I’m pretty sure will be easy to learn. The difficult thing to learn is how to pay attention to your surroundings. It’s really easy to look at health bars all day long and never look at where you’re standing.

• If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?

First, let me state that anyone who attempts to evaluate my performance using Recount is asking for a smack upside the head! The reason why is because I have run into too few people that know how to evaluate a healer using Recount. They look at the numbers and that’s it.

Paladin – Flash of Light spammer, although come to think of it I do use Holy Light a lot more now in Wrath than in BC. Low overheals. High output.
Shaman – High output. Low overheals. Chain Heal spammer to the extreme! We’re talking 65-70%. I know that’s probably bad and a really bad habit, but Healing Wave is rarely required and Lesser Healing Wave is only about 100 mana cost less than CH which will heal more people so… I do use Riptide a lot on the tanks though.
Priest (Holy) – Middle ground output and overheals. Flash Heal and Renew spammer. I’d like to say I spam Circle of Healing, but with the cooldown I just cast it when I can. Low Prayer of Mending. I cannot for the life of me remember to keep this bouncing around and I’ve seen some healers have it as their highest heal!
Druid – Haven’t played enough to see a consistent pattern.

• Haste or Crit and why?

Paladin – Crit. Even with the Illumination nerf, I still get decent mana regen. Besides I get enough haste with Judgements of the Pure.
Shaman – Haste. Faster chain heals. That’s one slow ass spell! And mana isn’t an issue with faster spells.
Priest (Holy) - Haste. Slow heals again. Crit’s for Disc anyway.
Druid – Not sure yet. My gear is a mix of nice epics and crap greens.

• What healing class do you feel you understand least?

Druid. Lack of experience. I’ve healed a few 5-mans and no raids…at least that Amber and I can remember. We questioned it the other day and neither of us could remember.

• What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?

Mouseover macros on all my heals, cleanses, etc.
X-Perl
Quartz
Deadly Boss Mods & Big Wigs

I cannot bring myself to configure Grid and I hated Healbot. I really need to sit down and configure PowerAuras. I’ve never gotten it to work quite the way I want though.

• Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

For paladins, I used to stack crit as high as it could go. To be honest, I really don’t care about my stats anymore. If I can get through a fight without experiencing major issues, like running out of mana, then I let the gear fall wherever it may fall. If I notice mana issues, or spell output not being high enough, then I’ll look at stats like spellpower, haste, crit, etc. Otherwise, I feel like I really have better things to do now.

I suppose that’s sort of a lazy place to be and the road to a failplayer, but honestly I’ve lost interest in that aspect of the game due to…let’s call them personal issues and leave it at that. But this isn’t a rant so that stops here.

Consider yourself tagged Mikata!

*Yes, this is becoming a sore spot for me and this is my coward’s way of letting them know because I haven’t figured out how to broach the subject.
**I believe that you can spec however you want. It may not make a whole lot of sense to me, but if it does to you and you’re happy, then more power to you! You may not get invited to a whole lot of raids or instances, but that’s your choice too.

I finally got around to finishing this book last week. I bought it a couple of months ago and I’m a little embarrassed that it took me so long to read. I seriously need to quit playing WoW so much and start reading again. Hell, The Gathering Storm came out yesterday and I still haven’t read book 10 or 11 yet!

Anyway, this book was definitely a fun read. As someone who played Warcraft 3, albeit badly, it was kind of fun to experience the story again. In fact, it got me wondering how much like the game the book really was. Did they stay true to the story? Did they take a few artistic licenses?

So what I did was start looking around YouTube for answers and found one of the many various playlists available for Warcraft 3 videos. As I started watching, I remembered a few of the things surrounding Arthas, but found I had forgotten several other things like how Uther died. Yeah, I’m a paladin. Sue me! It’s been nearly 10 years since I last played and as Mikata is so keen to point out, I’m old! My memory isn’t as good as it once was.

What I began to notice as I watched was how familiar some of the dialogue was. In fact, it sounded spot on! Sure enough some of the exact dialogue was penned in this book. Actually a lot of it was. The book just expanded on it.

The book itself covers events from Arthas’ early childhood, before events in Warcraft 3, setting the stage for his eventual fall from the Light. The story continues through the events of Warcraft 3, including his growing relationship with Jaina Proudmore which is only hinted at in the game unless you actually read the Game Manual which flat out states there is one, and Arthas becoming a death knight for the Lich King.

Wait! What?! Arthas wasn’t the Lich King?!

Yeah, a lot of us know he wasn’t the original Lich King, but there are a lot of people that play World of Warcraft that have never played Warcraft 1-3. Shock! Awe! Sputter! No!!! Although I have no proof to back it up, I’d venture to guess that less than half of current WoW players have ever played Warcraft 3.

Anyway, the story continues and ends with events from Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne, the expansion set to Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos. Although a lot of the game deals with other characters rather than Arthas, the book grabs a lot of those details and stays true to the lore already established by Blizzard. The book builds on the excitement as Arthas races to the Frozen Throne to become the Lich King.

Remember how I said I was bad at Warcraft 3? I wasn’t very good at it in single-player. I was abysmal in multi-player. Hot keys? Point-and-click is easier. Yeah…

Reading the book and watching the game videos got me really excited about lore. But after watching the videos of The Frozen Throne I began to realize something. I never finished the game. I was so bad at it that I now remember getting frustrated and quitting after the first couple of levels. No wonder Burning Crusade made little sense to me! Anyway, I was so intrigued about the lore that I went out and bought the Warcraft 3 Battle Chest and am slowly working through the game again.

It really is amazing how much more sense Burning Crusade makes now. Why was Draenor (Outland) in pieces? Who was the original Lich King? Who the hell was Magtheridon and why wasn’t he in the Black Temple? I’d already forgotten who Kael’thas was, if I knew who he was to begin with, and his relationship with Lady Vashj and Illidan. In fact, he’s now a much more interesting character than he was for me previously. The book actually adds an interesting twist to why Kael’thas hates Arthas aside from the fact that Arthas destroyed the Sunwell and his home.

But perhaps the best part of the book for me was the actual ending. The book answered a question I’ve had for years. Who is the Lich King?

For those that don’t know, Ner’zhul was the original Lich King. Ner’zhul was an orc shaman that struck a deal with Kil’jaeden that ultimately led to the orcs enslavement and was responsible for the events in the original Warcraft. He was replaced by Guldan when Kil’jaeden decided he didn’t have what it took and Ner’zhul defied Kil’jaeden by refusing to help further. He was ultimately responsible for the destruction of Draenor and was later caught by Kil’jaeden and tortured near to death. He was placed in the Frozen Throne, made into the Lich King, and given the responsibility of bringing about the plague on Azeroth in preparation of the Burning Legion’s next attempt at conquest.

At the end of the book and of the Warcraft 3 expansion, the Lich King is under attack and sends for Arthas to save him. Joining with Arthas, Ner’zhul is freed of his prison, but the question remains. Who is the Lich King?

Has Ner’zhul taken over Arthas’ body and Arthas is trapped away in some corner of his mind? Is Arthas the fallen hero fighting for redemption even as we prepare for battling him in Icecrown? Could we be moving towards saving Arthas rather than defeating him as we now believe? Can someone say Return of the Jedi?

Is Arthas in control having absorbed Ner’zhul into him? Has he truly forsaken all that he was and is an evil son-of-a-bitch that we’re eventually going to enjoy sticking it to?

Or have the two become something new, something greater in power, something ultimately more evil than the two were apart? Are they now a new being that really is the Lich King and nothing more?

You’ll just have to read the book*.

*Or the ending you cheating bastards!

Apparently the Kalu’ak Fishing Derby is headed our way in 3.3 and I can’t wait.

Wait! Did he just say he can’t wait?!

That’s right, guilty as charged! The guy who’s pissed off about progression (or more specifically the screwed up gear progression enticing people to skip entire sections of raiding) and wanting a chance to finish Uld25 or even get into heroic ToGCs, or whatever the hell they’re called, does in fact want patch 3.3 to hit as soon as possible*!!!

Holy Hell, the world ended!!!

Be that as it may I like fishing, but haven’t done it in a really long time**. I already have my fishing title and the guild still has sufficient fish feasts, so there hasn’t been much motivation…

…except for that damned turtle mount that will not drop…

…anyway now I have even more reason. According to Blizzard:

• The derby happens at 8:00pm Server Time every Wednesday. OK, a little tiny issue with raid times. Fortunately, we have several healers so if we’re running 10s I should be able to wiggle my way out of a raid now and then. But I don’t wanna!!! Crap.
• You have to be the first person to catch the Blacktip Shark and turn it in to win the Derby. Awesome! Just like the Stranglethorn Fishing Tournament…which I already won…on a PvE server…I’m on a PvP server…this is gonna suck!
• The quest giver, Elder Clearwater, is located in Dalaran. Um…OK, but isn’t this the Kalu’ak Fishing Derby? Shouldn’t the quest giver be in one of their villages? Then again I’m on a PvP server that’s got a serious Horde advantage. OK, maybe that isn’t such a good idea.
• Two item rewards. One is a ring, and one is a pair of boots.
• Winning the Derby increases Kalu’ak rep by 5000. Too bad I’m already exalted.

Oh wait! That’s right. What about the items? The boots are actually kind of cool.

Boots of the Bay
Binds When Picked Up
Feet
Requires Fishing (200)
Equip: Increased Fishing +15. - Woohoo! Yeah, I don’t need it, but whatever.
Use: Whisks you away to the finest drinking establishment in Booty Bay. (1 Day Cooldown) - Yeah…don’t care.

The item I do care about?

Dread Pirate Ring
Binds on Account - Awesome!
Unique-Equipped
Finger
+34 Stamina
Requires level 1 to 80 (80)
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 53.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 29.
Equip: Experience gained from killing monsters and completing quests increased by 5%. - HELL YEAH!!!

I so want that ring!!! I’m leveling 5 toons to 80. Another 5% definitely wouldn’t hurt. Come on Patch 3.3!

*Screw it! I can be pissed off all I want, but I can’t change anything so I may as well accept it and find something to do.
**I haven’t fished in months. I started fishing again on Saturday after I got my Violet-Proto Drake. The only fishing achievements I don’t have are that stupid rat and the turtle mount. Don’t really care about the rat, but both of these guys have eluded me for almost a year now. I spent the first six months of Wrath farming them…