3.2 and Holydins.

So they want to give holy the option of raid healing.

Logical ways to do this:

1: Give them a new tool to do this. Balance the tool with a strong counter reason to make it not be something they depend on constantly and not be OP when used wrong.
2: Change the tools they have to MacGuyver a new way to heal. Then castrate the tools in an attempt to force balance.


Any guesses which they took?


If you think #2 is stupid and are doing a /facepalm right now, you get a cookie.


Seriously, how hard would it be to have a spell like this?

Sacred Beacon: The paladin focuses the Light into the Sacred Beacon. Immediately heals the target for (number between Holy Light and Flash of Light) and once every second for 3 seconds afterward. Up to 5 friendly players within 40 yards of the sacred Beacon are healed for 50% of the amount. If the sacred target is the Beacon of Light, the other targets benefit an extra 25%.
100% base mana. X second CD. This spell cannot benefit from Illumination.

Now you have another tool for an arsenal. The spell costs a ton of mana and is an emergency heal more than anything. Allowing Holydins to use the other spells in their arsenal to do the bulk of the healing and do single target still, but giving them an option if raid healing is a priority.


But that'd be too easy.

Instead they nerf illumination to uselessness, make overheal important (WTF?!) and hammer a single target healer into a raid healing ability unsuited to them.

I stopped recruiting Holydins when I read the changes. No thanks, we'll use discipline priests. They can switch to holy if we need AE heals. Not that we need to worry with Druids around.


My suggestion to Holydins is to enchant your tanking gear. Not like you have Ret to go to anymore.Funny how that worked out. Holy was expected in TBC, Ret a joke and tankadins a novelty/joke. After this prot will be expected, ret a joke and holy a joke/novelty.

3.2 and shaman

Patch notes have some good news.

Totems will be made to not suck so bad they are worthless when solo playing. 1 GCD (hopefully 1 minute) and you are good to go. Some minor annoyances are there, but I can handle that.

Base health will go up. Considering shaman in better gear have less health than rogues by a stretch you can look forward to them being alive in melee longer without healers being assigned just to them.

SR gets it's effect cut in half and it's CD dropped by half. This is very good. Yes, you have less mana on demand right away. But now you won't need it as you can simply pop it on CD. Also means more survival during melee AE fights as the 30% DR will help a ton.

Resto sees some love and some annoyances. Healing Way is still crap. Even if it is better, Healing Wave is still a mana hog big heal that doesn't do the job. Oh, look, we get to use it 50% because they lowered the CD on NS by a minute. Not really impressed with a spell that they indicated would be used more like this. If we aren't using it more than once every 3 minutes because it is too slow, costs too much and doesn't do enough to justify the cast time, maybe the solution is not to make it instant more often? Maybe the solution would be to make it better...

Tidal waves change to LHW means more output, but less speed means it is not a great tank healing spell. There went the last bit of viability as resto. Even with CH getting a better jump over longer distances it won't help much. Sorry, but that's still in range of most of the AE that kills people. And do you get something that does 34% of the original heal on the third (last) target, or something that does 100% of the original heal on the fifth? Gee.... Priests and druids are still miles better.

Improved Water shield = what it should have been originally. I seem to recall putting this into the commentary on this talent DURING THE BETA!!! Wow, only took 7 months for them to realize how stupid a design decision that was...

Shock range is 25 yards. Should be 30. Not like earth shock is miles better than the alternatives. (oh yea, fyi: fuck wind shock)

Earth Shield change: again, should have been done months ago.


Some changes are nice. Glad they are coming in. But boy are they not enough.

Sticking to the tankadin as main.

How to tankadin- threat spec

First thing you need to know is how to spec.

Here is mine...

I left 1 glyph slot open.
Spiritual Attunement or Judgement both work here.

Note my taking Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian over Divinity.
Divinity isn't helping you receive heals enough to be worth 5 pts.
Deconstructor and Malygos taught me the power of the DS/DG combo.

(Hint: pop bubble, activate divine sacrifice. The damage you take is 0, so the health restriction is non-existent. It's a free 40% less raid damage for the 10 seconds.)

So why did I go all the way to Crusade?
Threat.

3% damage, (6% on the ones it specifies) along with more crit means my threat is pretty significant. When dealing with some trigger happy DPS with a bunch of special buffs from encounters (looking at you Thaddius) it means they have a much harder time making me look at omen to make sure.

Remember, tanking is 2 jobs in 1.
Job1: Make the bad guy so angry at you they ignore the people killing them for real.
Job2: Survive Job1.

This spec does both quite well. I'll explain the other stuff later.

GC promised me a pony!

Okay, so maybe not.

The shaman Q&A left a lot to be desired, of course. When people see the obvious issues but won't move quickly to fix them, you get frustrated.

We know totems suck, but we aren't going to fix them anytime soon.
We don't think it is that bad an issue in PVP that you are paper tigers and everybody has matches...
We won't get rid of a mechanic that has been dragging you down for 3+ years.


My shaman needs wintergrasp marks for a decent upgrade (sad as that is) and I might as well just look for something else, because it just isn't fun.

There is good news. They are working on the totems, they might actually fix a few dozen complaints and they realized that having less health than a mage while being in melee is a bad thing. There is a glimmer of light on the horizon.

Fun stuff.

I love this.
Funny little mocking of the "I'm a PC and I'm a Mac" comercials.
The girlfriend names are over half the fun because I know I have seen the first.

I type too much.

Let's make this short and sweet. This blog will be able Paladins, Shaman, and fun WoW stuff.
I'll go over specs and such. I'm planning on letting my guild see this so they can see what I am rambling on about.

So without further ado...