Unfortunately I won’t be providing any PTR-related content for a while, as the biggish PTR patch last week rendered 2.4 unplayable for me – I get 5 FPS or less in almost all areas, and the towns are particularly horrific.
I’m hoping this clears up before 2.4 goes live, but in the meantime I can’t provide much more in the way of a Patch 2.4 Preview, apart from what I can research on other sites. Apologies!
Leafy of Leafshine: Lust for Flower has created a “Don’t Nerf Druids!” campaign that I’m proud to support:
I know this is a cute cause, but I really do believe that the lifebloom nerf is a bad idea. It sets resto druids back months in their PvE gearing for no apparent reason other than the mythical goal of PvP balance (which is never going to happen until everyone in PvP plays the same class, with the same talent spec, nude).
Blizzard! Don’t nerf trees!
There’s a lot of stuff in the game that requires farming, and farming is pretty tedious by itself. You can skip it if you want, but you miss out on quite a lot like that.
I know farming. Since TBC’s been released, I’ve solo farmed my way to:
So, here are a few tips and tricks.
1. Break the job into chunks.
Don’t try and fish yourself from 300 skill to 375 in a day. It’ll seem like a dishearteningly mammoth task, you’ll burn yourself out, and never pick up your fishing rod again – not much point in having 375 skill at that point, is there?
Instead, just say to yourself “I’m going to get 5 skill points on this fishing trip before I log off and play that alt instead.” Do that, and do another 5 points later in the evening. You’ll get your 75 fishing skill within a couple of weeks, and you’ll still be fairly sane to boot. Apply the same principle to anything you’re farming – “just another 10 drops and I’ll go”.
2. Maximise your returns.
Take a look at what your goal is, and work out how you can get incidental benefits.
Be creative and opportunistic to see what else you can get out of it when you’re farming for a specific goal. Also, be openminded about ways to reach your goal. For instance, I was having troubles with Scryer rep – I was trying to farm for Sunfury Signets, but as a holy pally I found it hard to kill the blood elves fast enough to get a decent rate of return. So I switched back to farming for Aldor rep items off the various demons in Netherstorm – the increased DPS I could get from my demon-specific damage spells turned frustration into ease (not to mention the fact that unlike blood elves, demons don’t run away at 10% health to fetch five buddies). On my server, you can trade Aldor and Scryer items at a 1:1 ratio in the trade channel, so I just farmed for Aldor items, traded them for Scryer items, and handed them in. Presto, exalted.
3. Distract yourself.
No matter how efficient you are, farming is boring because it takes very little mental effort.
So, distract yourself. I find podcasts work really well for this purpose – a farming session is about the only time I listen to podcasts, but they certainly do the job nicely. Other people I know recommend audio books. If you have friends you don’t see very often, hop on Skype or an IM service that allows voice chats, and natter away with them.
A friend of mine on the other side of the world talked me through the killing of about 789235238 ogres for my Consortium rep – he works from home and keeps funny hours, so we’d power up iChat and voicechat for hours at a time… I barely even noticed the ogres falling under my mighty hammer.
So! There are a few handy macros that will make life as a holy paladin a little easier. Here are a few of my favourites:
Heal-through Flash of Light Combo
#showtooltip Flash of Light
/stopcasting
/use Lower City Prayerbook
/use Pendant of the Violet Eye
/cast [button:2,target=player] Flash of Light; [target=target,help] Flash of Light; [target=targettarget,help] Flash of Light; [target=none] Flash of Light
Heal-through Holy Light Combo
#showtooltip Holy Light
/stopcasting
/cast Divine Illumination
/cast [button:2,target=player] Holy Light; [target=target,help] Holy Light; [target=targettarget,help] Holy Light; [target=none] Holy Light
Edit: Please see the comments for some revised syntax tips since patch 2.3. The above will still work, but the revised syntax is cleaner.
These two macros work in much the same way.
The really important line of these macros is the part where it heals my hostile target’s target if friendly. This is what’s commonly known as a “heal-through” macro; it’s great for tank healing on a boss who requires multiple tanks – like Gruul or Void Reaver (or, say, BWL’s Broodlord Lashlayer, back in the old days). You just target the boss, and heal away; the spell will land on whoever was the mob’s current target at the time you started casting the heal. (That’s something that can catch you out, so be careful of it, if the mob changes targets a lot.)
Personally, I think that every single healer should have a heal-through macro for this kind of situation.
Note that you can apply this kind of principle to any spellcasting macro. I’ve got similar ones for Blessing of Protection and Lay on Hands.
Rez Macro
#showtooltip Redemption
/cast Redemption
/stopmacro [nohelp,nodead]
/say Resurrecting %t.
This one’s helpful because it means other rezzers don’t waste time rezzing your target instead of moving on to the next deadie. Breaking it down: the /stopmacro line means that it doesn’t announce itself if your target is hostile or dead. The %t is a placeholder that is replaced by the name of your target. And of course you can edit the /say text to say whatever you like – mine says “Upsadaisy, %t!”
Mouseover/Castthrough Cleanse
/stopcasting
/cast [button:2,target=player] Cleanse; [target=mouseover,help] Cleanse; [target=target,help] Cleanse; [target=targettarget,help] Cleanse; [target=none] Cleanse
I bet you can guess what this one does already. The trick with this one is that its first check is to see if I have my mouse over a friendly target (either their actual body in front of me, or their unitframe in my raid or party display), and if so it cleanses them (or tries to). Very handy for raids with mass decursing, or PvP situations; lets you cleanse without having to change targets.
Those are some of my favorite healadin-specific macros. You can find some useful tanking and DPS macros at the WoWwiki page for pally macros – and don’t forget to mine macros designed for other classes for good ideas about what can do with your own! If you’ve got any good healadin macros, please let me know in the comments – I’m always keen to see more.
In all the hoo-ha about the big changes on the PTR, a few smaller changes have slipped through.
Here’s one I’m keen about.
Turn Evil
This is The Spell Formerly Known As Turn Undead (Rank 3). It’s effectively the same, except now it applies to demons as well as undead (and, as a result, is subject to diminishing returns and lasts 10 seconds in PvP).
This is an excellent change.
This quiet little change is mostly getting attention for its arena implications, but its effect on PvE is just as interesting. Previously, warlocks have been the only classes able to CC most demons (excluding hunter traps), and it’s made life hard for those guilds without many warlocks.
Now, well… don’t have enough warlocks for Magtheridon? Never fear! Your pallies can team up to keep a few infernals busy – enough to trim down the ranks of infernals beating on your squishies, at any rate. This change reduces guild reliance on a specific class for specific encounters, and that’s always a good thing in my opinion. (Encounters that require a specific class balance are made of fail; we’re not all hardcore guilds who can snap up recruits whenever they like, nor force guildies to play something other than what they want to.)
You can’t chain fear with Turn Evil/Turn Undead, because it’s got a 20 second duration and a 30 second cooldown. Two pallies teaming up can chain fear between them, of course, and you don’t need to be able to chain fear to keep a mob under control with it. You just have to use your environment and your other abilities to spend those ten seconds in between fears, to keep the mob under control.
If you’ve got any other good ideas about how to make the most of Turn Evil, please leave a comment! I’m looking forward to playing with the spell.
After tweaking my gear sets, I now have 902 spelldamage and 25.74% spell crit in my DPS set. Not bad for a healbot.
I am not displeased. :)
I wrote this as a reply to a thread on the PTR forums where the original poster was complaining that you could buy T6 loot with BoJ. I felt it’d fit here as a general statement of my opinion, too.
The only real problem with having high-level loot accessible via badges of justice was that it was going to be more appealing for guilds to farm Karazhan than to progress through Tier 5 content, which is obviously a bad thing. Now that 25-man bosses will drop badges of justice as well, some of that issue goes away (although Kara’s still the best rate of return timewise); that solves most of the issue.
Honestly, anyone QQing over the fact that pre-T6 raiders can buy 5-6 pieces of T6 loot (out of 17 gear slots) by spending 485 badges (ie 22 full Kara clears, or 7-heroics-a-week for 22 weeks)… needs a sense of perspective.
Everyone knows who the good progression guilds on their server are. If you’re in a casual raiding guild that’s in the middle of T5 content right now – like mine is – no-one’s going to ooh and aah over you when you get your phat T6 loot or when your guild uses the leg-up in gearing to finally hit MH and BT… because everyone who cares about that kind of content will have the same opportunities to do it. It ain’t going to be a status thing by then, and that’s fine. The ‘top’ guilds on the server will still get the respect they’re due for the dedication and ability they’ve displayed for their server firsts and their pre-nerf clears (minus any respect they lose for being arrogant jerks about it)… and that’s not going to change either.
Making better loot available to those of us in the mid-levels of raiding does not mean that BT is suddenly going to be full of scrubs in greens with a handful T6-level badge epics — or if it is, they’re going to have an expensive and wipetacular night, and more power to them if they want to waste their gold like that.
It just means that those of us who started late, or who have reasons to stay in less-progressed guilds, still have a chance to see some of this pretty awesome endgame content before WotLK hits… and none of that is going to threaten the status of the serious achievers in PvE.
There’s a popular quote that says “the right to swing your fist ends where your neighbor’s nose begins”. Stop trying to ruin our fun – it’s not going to be impinging on yours.
I’ve made myself something of an expert on Jewelcrafting, ever since I wrote a levelling guide for jewelcrafting during the TBC beta (which is now somewhat error-prone thanks to Blizzard changing recipes and skill levels around; I’ll redo it someday).
There are a number of gem options that are suitable for healadin pallies, but you should make your choices carefully. Let’s look at a few of them:
Choices
The A Team:
[Teardrop Living Ruby]: red. +18 healing.
[Luminous Noble Topaz]: red, yellow. +9 healing, +4 int.
[Royal Nightseye]: red, blue. +9 healing, +2 mp5.
The three cuts above are all popular with paladin healers, and with good reason. Choosing between them is mostly a matter of personal taste, personal playstyle, and sometimes restrictions on gem color to activate a meta-gem or socket bonus.
[Dazzling Talasite]: yellow, blue. +4 int, +2 mp5.
[Gleaming Dawnstone]: yellow, +8 spell crit.
Both of these are decent second-string contenders, the talasite more so than the dawnstone. You wouldn’t want to focus on using either of these to the exclusion of the better gems, as your +heal would just fall too far; however, they can be useful to boost a problem stat (particularly the talasite) or to meet gem color limitations for socket bonuses or meta gems.
Do not, on the other hand, use [Lustrous Star of Elune]s. Compare them with [Royal Nightseye]s or [Dazzling Talasite]s; you lose 9 +healing or 4 +int, for what? One measly mp5. Don’t do it. (Also, do not even think of using a [Sparkling Star of Elune]. You will be fired from the paladin club. Seriously.)
Picking Your Gems
Unfortunately, for most holy paladins, there’s no One True Rule for picking gems to put in your healing gear. (The exception is for paladins in a decent amount of T6-level gear, who are advised to stack pure +healing gems, as they don’t generally have mana issues.) Instead, you should consider how fights generally tend to work out for you. Are you desperately throwing mid-rank Flash of Lights while desperately counting the seconds til your potion cooldown refreshes? You might want to add some +mp5 or +spell crit gems to extend your mana longevity. Are you having to use inefficient Holy Light spam just to keep a tank up? Throw in some pure +healing gems to increase your healing output, allowing you to use a more efficient spell rotation. None of the good pally healing gems is a bad choice; it’s just a matter of knowing your personal healing style and how it meshes with the rest of the raid team.
Now, if you look at this Elitist Jerks thread (which is some excellent healadin theorycrafting, if unfortunately aimed at players who have access to the best of the best gear), the poster sets up a system allowing you to numerically compare the value of different gems.
If you put a point value to the gems comparing blue vs epic, say 18 pts for a blue to equate it to healing, you get the following level calculations:
1 healing = 1 pt
1 mp5 = 4.5 pt
1 int = 2.25 pt
1 spell crit rating = 2.25 ptBecause mp5 can only be applied in whole values however, the actual worths of mp5 on epic gems is greatly diminished because of the other stats you are loosing.
This is a really interesting system that’s good for comparing gems at a glance, but one of the big problems with it is that it gives +Int more Weighting than it deserves (because Int is magnified 10% by the Divine Intellect talent, and also contributes spell crit (from basic game mechanics), and damage and healing (from the Holy Guidance talent)).
Systems like this are tempting, because it gives you one easy answer: Gem A is categorically better than Gem B, because the formula says so, so there. If you pick your gems based on this system you’ll wind up with a huge mana pool because of the way it favours +Int, and that will contribute to your spell crit and +heal — but, in my opinion, not by enough to warrant the loss of mp5 or +heal directly. Instead, you really need to examine your playstyle and the effects of that playstyle, and decide on gems for yourself. (Which is not to say you shouldn’t socket gems with +int on them; I’ve used quite a few. Just don’t use them to the exclusion of everything else.)
Why Purple Isn’t Always Better (But Sometimes Is)
There’s a strong temptation to make use of the epic gems that you get in Heroic instances. However, most of them aren’t that great, and are definitely inferior to using more appropriate rare gems.
Let’s look at a couple:
[Blessed Tanzanite]: red, blue. +11 heal, +6 sta.
[Durable Fire Opal]: red, yellow. +11 heal, +4 resil.
[Soothing Amethyst]: red, blue. +11 heal, +6 sta. (This one’s actually from a Karazhan quest to kill Nightbane, not a Heroic drop.)
Don’t they look great? Look at that awesome +11 heal! And they’re epic!
…Yeah. And look at the other stats. +6 sta? +4 resilience? Useless to a PvE healer. (Unless you’re specifically gearing up a stamina set, of course, but as a general rule you shouldn’t be consciously sacrificing healing power for stamina unless your survival is more of a progression stopper than your tank’s is.) Leave the stamina and resilience for PvP healers, and stick with PvE healer stats.
On the other hand, there are some really really nice epic gems that are very suitable:
[Iridescent Fire Opal]: red, yellow. +11 heal, +4 spell crit. From Heroic Hellfire Ramparts.
[Rune Covered Chrysoprase]: yellow, blue. +5 spell crit, +2 mp5. From Heroic Shadow Labs.
These are both very tasty, because you don’t find spell crit on healer gems when you’re looking at the BoE gems from jewelcrafter cuts. (Don’t believe me? Check the chart!)
(There’s also [Luminous Fire Opal], [Royal Tanzanite] and [Dazzling Chrysoprase] from Shattered Halls, Slave Pens, and Old Hillsbrad heroics respectively. You should recognise all three as being epic ‘upgrades’ of the cuts recommended above in the ‘Choices’ section.)
Meta Gems
There are two reasonable options in the meta gem selection (although many helms these days don’t actually have meta sockets).
[Bracing Earthstorm Diamond] – this gem is a lot easier to get now that the prerequisites have been relaxed (now it only requires more red gems than blue; it used to require more yellow gems than blue as well, which was very hard to juggle). However, it still requires some jiggery-pokery to get it working, and the reduced-threat bonus isn’t nearly as appealing for paladins as it is for other healing classes.
The most popular choice is [Insightful Earthstorm Diamond]. The Int bonus is nice, the proc goes off a lot, and the activation is easy to manage. It’s an all-around winner.
Socket Bonuses
Socket Bonuses tend to act like a homing beacon. You see your shiny new shoulders with two yellow sockets, and you think “omg, must socket yellow gems!” and before you know it, you’ve put in two [Luminous Noble Topaz]es without actually checking to see if you need more int – or would mp5 suit you better?
There are some socket bonuses you just don’t need. For instance, I just picked up [Crystalforge Pauldrons] – two yellow sockets and a +4 stam socket bonus. I really don’t care about that 40 health, so I’m under no obligation to socket yellow-compatible gems in there. On the other hand, you better believe I stuck to the socket colors for my Mask of Introspection – the socket bonus is +9 healing; that’s half a rare gem right there!
In other words: yet again, there are no hard-and-fast rules. Look at the socket bonus and decide if it’s worth getting, then look at the gems you’d put in to achieve it, then decide if you’re sacrificing too much for the socket bonus to be worth it overall.
So, with all the new faction stuff in 2.4 comes a new title: “of the Shattered Sun”, which you get by hitting Exalted with SSO and then spending 1000 gold during a specific phase of the world event. (And to be honest, I’ll probably spend that money, because “Sailan of the Shattered Sun” sounds frankly awesome.)
It’s made me think about some other titles I’d love to see in game; titles are really just flavour, vanity rewards for stuff that doesn’t sit on your shoulders or glow in your hand.
I’d really like to see, for instance, some class-, race- or profession-specific title options. How about “Tinkerer” and “Demolitionist” for 375 Engineers (Gnomish and Goblin respectively) who’ve done a further quest? What about “Sentinel” for female night elf warriors, hunters and druids who are Exalted with Darnassus? “Peacekeeper” for those who are Exalted with Sha’tar, Lower City, Scryers or Aldor and Sha’tari Skyguard? “Hero of Outland” for those who are Exalted with all five dungeon factions (Honor Hold/Thrallmar, Cenarion Expedition, Lower City, Keepers of Time and Sha’tar)? “Crusader” for Paladins with certain faction levels or quests? “Wayfarer” for people who’ve done a given (very high) number of quests?
Some of the above are probably too easy to get, but they’re an example of how Blizzard could provide a range of titles for different kinds of achievements. You get the idea of how they can provide some nice flavour and variety, for people of all different playstyles. I’m sure Blizzard won’t actually implement any of the above, but they’ve said they do want to expand the existing title options, and I’m eagerly looking forward to the results.
See my complete guide to the Sunwell dailies here.
Okay, so time to give a rundown on a few more of the PTR’s new daily quests:
Crocolisks in the City
This one’s a fishing daily.
“Hello lass. I’m glad you’ve stopped by to talk to this old man– there’s trouble back home.
A traveling merchant recently sold a batch of baby crocolisks to some gullible children. Crocolisks are wild beasts, and many have escaped and now lurk in city waterways.
Grab your strongest fishing pole and drop a line in Stormwind or Orgrimmar and bring one of the little devils back to me. I’m anxious to see one.”
It’s pretty straightforward from here – just do what the quest says; fish in the waterways of Stormwind or Orgrimmar until you catch a baby crocolisk. I got one on on the fifth or sixth cast.
Intercept the Reinforcements
This one’s a fun and easy half-bombing half-kill quest. You hop on a dragonhawk which flies you out into the bay and you ‘bomb’ the sails of the three blood elf ships out there. (Just aim the bomb circle at the sails themselves.) Then the dragonhawk lands, you kill six Dawnblade Reservists, and then you mount back up on the dragonhawk (which kindly stuck around for you) and fly back. The Reservists are easy kills, and drop Sunfury Signets.
Reward: 7.6g, 250 rep.
Taking the Harbor
A straightforward kill quest; kill 6 Dawnblade Summoners, 6 Dawnblade Blood Nights and 3 Dawnblade Marksmen. I haven’t completed it yet due to overcrowding and server instability, but the rewards are 12g and 250 rep.
Making Ready
Kill Darkspine Myrmidon (ie nagas) and use their keys to steal three pieces of ore from their chests. I can’t actually complete this as the NPC is mobbed on the PTR, but the quest rewards are 12g and, according to WoWwiki, 150 rep.
Know Your Ley Lines
This quest is fairly easy, particularly when the island is busy with fellow questers. All you need to do is run to three locations, use the quest item (a crystal) at the spot in question and then hand it in to Astromancer Darnarian to receive a scroll that will teleport you to Shattrath (and 12 gold and 250 rep).
The three locations: