Wednesday Linking Love

So I’ve been doing some thinking about my lovable Holy paladin since I wrote the last post. I’m contemplating some radical things. Well, not really. First of all, I took Lara’s most excellent advice. I’d been meaning to put gems in the (leather, sigh) gloves that I’d nabbed from Underbog, but I was planning on Northrend green gems. Meantime, I have no less than eleventy-billion Autumn’s Glow in my alt bank – why not use two to twink out my gear a little? Same with the Intellect enchant on my shield. It was 12 Infinite Dust… It’s really not that big a deal. So I gained a good chunk of Int there. (You know you’re a twink when the base stats of your shield are 11 intellect – and you enchant it to have twenty-five more). That should help somewhat with my mana issues.

But another thing I’m thinking of doing is just not using Beacon that much. I’ll admit it here freely. I didn’t even look at the mana cost (duh). 35% of my base mana? That’s huge. I know for a holy pally at end-game swimming in Int that wouldn’t be a big deal – plus there’s things like Divine Plea that I don’t have yet. Just because it heals two people at once, so what? Isn’t much of that going to overheal? So I’m going to try that strategy for five-mans for now, or even consider Beaconing myself at times. I know, it’s not the ‘right’ way to do it and everything holy paladin I’ve read is all “Beacon tanks don’t be that noob,” but do they mean in a raid? Sure, you go into a raid and you’re a paladin so you beacon one tank and heal the heck out of the other, but in a five man at my level? I’m not sure. I belatedly found Ferraro’s leveling as holy guide and how to healing five mans but the second one draws on talents and abilities I don’t yet have. So I’m just going to muddle my way through and see how that goes for the time being.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is related to this article by Matticus I read when it was published, almost a year ago. You know a blog post is a good one when you remember and go back searching for it, deliberately! It’s called The Secret to Being A World Class Healer, and I remember it because it’s part of the reason I’m pugging like I do. This is related to what I was saying in my last post about making myself available to a series of stupid pugs, battleground healing, whatever. I know of no better way to learn how to play as a healer than to just heal, heal, heal. I’ve always got room for improvement. Although the article is healing specific, you could apply it to any class or role. You want to tank? You can practice tanking even if you’re just leveling with a friend! When I was leveling a warrior, I leveled for a time with my husband’s DK and he was so annoying. He spent the whole time deliberately trying to pull aggro from me, even when we were just out questing (not using taunts or anything, but just pushing as much as he could). He forced me to become familiar with my tanking tools and we’d pull huge packs of mobs – Thunderclap and Shockwave were my friends! Consequently, the first time I stepped into an instance to tank it, I wasn’t completely green. I was pretty green, but I knew my tools.

The best tanks I know are the ones who just really love it. They’ll take any opportunity to tank an instance and it’s not because it makes for a faster queue time, it’s what they truly enjoy. Obviously, I don’t always enjoy the pugs I do. (Matticus laments that there is no ‘healing dummy,’ like there is for DPS, but… oh, do I have to say it? There are SOME dummies anyhow, they just aren’t stationary). The fact is though, I enjoy my pugs more often than not.

Since my last post, I’ve successfully completed Blood Furnace. I was all excited because the bear tank was so good, and I looked at his HP and said, “You have four thousand more HP than any other tank I’ve healed!” He laughed… He was level 66. I don’t know how he wound up tanking a Blood Furnace run, but I was glad that he did.

The Ramparts run I did after that saw me again being the element of fail, well, sort of. I always have a hard time finding the right entrance in the maze of Hellfire Citadel instances. I’m afraid I kept my group waiting during a corpse run. I was starting to get frustrated and said that I’d understand if they just wanted to ditch me and find a healer with a sense of direction, but the whole group was super nice. The DK tank had been very up-front at the beginning about how he’d never tanked before and we’d had a bit of back and forth. One group member remarked as we came to the first boss, “We should have been done by now,” and I told him I’d rather have a slow, calm Ramparts run than rush through and have a frustrating wipe-fest. And also, that it was the tank’s first time, so give him a break. The guy chilled out, and we finished the instance. Sure, it took longer than many others. Yes, we even wiped. Do I remember the cause of our wipe? No, I don’t. I remember that the group agreed to do it at a pace that would work for the new tank. I told the tank to just be conservative with his pulls, pull carefully, and we’d be fine. And we were!

Since then I’ve gone to Slave Pens and Underbog. Slave Pens had a druid tank who was extremely excited about Frenzied Regeneration. She kept saying, “Do you like that I’m healing myself and helping you out?!” Yes, Bear Butt, I certainly do. I was confused at first because I thought she meant she was dropping bear form and actually healing herself, but she wasn’t. She was just really happy about being a bear. It’s hard not to have fun when someone else is so clearly enjoying themselves! Also, stupid fearing mobs at the end of this instance can go and die in a fire. That’s it for Slave Pens.

As for Underbog, we had yet another struggling DK tank and a rotating roster of DPS that would either leave or be vote-kicked. The hunter was kicked because he kept pulling for the tank (I think, I voted “I’m going to stare at this box indecisively for a long moment because no reason for kicking was entered). A mage joined and said after one pull, “Ah, I see that the tank is very bad. Good-bye,” and left. The tank was greatly offended by this, incidentally, and spent the rest of the instance trying to prove how Un-Bad she really was. Which was actually good, as it meant that we made it through the Nightmare Hallway of Crowded Naga and Broken Doom relatively unscathed. I’m afraid we had a sacrificial warlock, though. And this ‘lock, she wasn’t doing it to herself. I couldn’t blame her at all. She just… made a lot of threat, and the tank did not. I made it a point to guard her carefully after her first two deaths, tossing her Salv when it was off cool-down and being ready with a quick “Save my warlock” CD when necessary. Once I focused on it she didn’t die again, so I was proud of that. See, I’m learning!

I don’t do linking love often enough and I really should, so this post is also about that. I’ll try to do it more often… perhaps on Wednesdays!

Here’s another great Matticus article I found when I was looking for the other one: 11 Reasons Guildmasters Fail. Obviously there are more reasons outside of the guild master why a guild might tank, but this one is aimed at GMs personally. It’s got some good points to consider, as always.

In a similar vein (aimed at keeping your raid healthy and happy!) I really liked what Natarumah over at Twisted Faith wrote about  Wipe Nights and Sustaining Your Raid. Breaks, people, it’s not that hard! Ultimately I believe you have better attempts after taking five minutes to stretch your legs and step away from things than pushing through and wiping interminably. It took our guild 121 wipes before we downed Mimiron’s hard-mode (back when our gear was equivalent to the encounter) and even the other day we went in with a number of new people to do it again and wiped a few times. It’s not easy. We had 70 LK wipes before a kill, and we took a break shortly before that kill.

A conversation from one of our wipe nights on LK:

RL: “OK guys, we’ve got time for one more really good attempt tonight so let’s make this one count”

Raider: “Or two or three really sh**** ones.”

RL: “You know what I mean!”

Other Raider: “I loled”

Raider: “Well it’s true!”

I also liked what Reversion over at LFM had to say about  Tanking 101: Leadership. I know very well the difference a good tank can make to how smoothly a run goes, and a lot of it is due to leadership. The “Dungeon Guide” can be anyone in the group, but it’s the tank who sets the pace, decides if they are going to pay attention to the healer’s mana or not, and can make a run very fun or very frustrating. I know, no pressure.

Spinks at Spinksville (How did I never know Spinks before now?) has some great points regarding How to Switch to Being More Casual. It’s an excellent post not just for people looking to switch to more casual, but also utilizing your game time and keeping it in perspective. I think so, anyhow!

Leafie has recently been through the classic instances, and she’s got quick reviews of each. Find ’em here at  Classic Instance Nutshell Reviews. I might have to follow her example and do something similar sometime!

Dristanel at Physician’s Log talks about the  Top Ten Things Paladins Can Do (In Bed). I play a Paladin now, folks, and it’s all true, oh yeah. You want some more Beacon? I’m not surprised. But I am quite sleepy. (p.s. both of these links are probably not safe for work).

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Hi, I’m Vidyala. You can also call me Vid.

Anea wrote a really great post with some advice for new bloggers. I wish I had followed some of it myself before I went ahead and pushed “publish” for the first time. Some of it I’m still not doing – like post categories. My reasoning was something along the lines of “It’s called pugging pally! It will all, always be about a pugging pally, what kind of category is that?”

Short-sighted, I know. There are some things I just don’t think about because I get too excited and dive right into something. A few I did “properly” – I had a custom header, right from day one! Also a Gravatar. Because I can’t resist the compulsion to draw my characters, anyhow.

The problem I face now, and I’m trying to have a bit more foresight here – is what’s the future for a Pugging Pally? Eventually she’ll be 80, and probably still pug a bit. But she’s not liable to ever be my “main character.”

Actually, I just switched main raiding characters. I still love and adore my mage, Millya – one of a score of Draenei characters I call my own – but it behooved me (har) to be a bit more flexible and I do love me some druid also.

Anyway, I digress. Having made a fairly topical blog I’m uncertain what to do with it. What if I wrote about some things that didn’t involve 1) pallies or 2) pugging? What would I call it? Would anyone who likes reading about ridiculous people – either me, or the ones I’m healing – actually read it? The good news is that no matter which character I’m writing about it’ll involve at least one ridiculous person in that case…But these are questions to ponder as I plod my way to level 80. I’ve actually been doing some pugging with my other characters which is always good for a lark. I had my very first Hordeside pug with my troll mage – she’s now level sixty-one! I wound up in BRD, (this was back at level 59 or so, I can’t exactly recall), but it was precisely where I didn’t want to be. I have nothing against it, I just knew that it was big, and complicated. I zoned in and stood there for a good ten seconds before I realized the rest of the party isn’t here.

“Where are you guys?” I asked hopefully. They must’ve just started. They’re just around the corner, right?
“Somethingsomethingthatmeansnothingtome but included the word ‘West.'”

West, right. I can find west. I will just head west. Yeah, not so much. I thought I was making progress – at least I seemed to be nearing the directional arrows on the map that indicated my Patiently Waiting Party.

“I think I’ve got it!” I cried gleefully. “Wait, this looks kind of familiar. Isn’t this the… Am I back at the beginning again?!”

I ‘fessed up in party chat. “I’m really sorry guys, but I have no idea where you are and I’m awful with directions. I can drop group if you want to find someone who can actually find you.”

“Stay where you are, I’ll come get you,” the paladin said. I stayed, and I was ashamed and relieved all at once. The paladin came into sight and I seriously backed up a step. “AH IT’S A BLOOD ELF…waitaminute.”

PvP instincts: I still have a few of them. I’m glad they’re serving me so well whenever it’s important, like in BRD when I’m the same faction, not so much in Sholazar when I’m fishing and get my tail handed to me by a paladin because I was flagged flying over Wintergrasp.

It turned out I was missing something completely obvious – a door I had to go through at the beginning. I’d tried other doors and found them locked. So I’m not sure if this was a door that required a key he had, and I didn’t, or if I had just missed it completely but I suspect the latter.

The pug went really well. The people knew their way through the twisting maze of BRD, and now my troll mage is the only character who actually has that achievement because goodness knows I’ve never found my way to the end on my own. I love leveling Frost, incidentally. I love my permanent water elemental. And oh, my gosh, Troll racials ARE overpowered. Berserking is just like Icy Veins, well without the pushback reduction, but who cares? I had Icy Veins from level one. And now I have a second icy veins. I macroed that to frostbolt with unabashed glee and never looked back.

It’s a strange feeling playing as the other faction when you’re used to being one almost exclusively. I feel the whole time  like someone infiltrating a secret society they’re not supposed to be a part of. At any moment, the members of the pug I am in may turn to me and say, “Hang on. You LOOK Horde-like but you aren’t really, are you? You’re really Alliance.” And they tug on my troll tusks and my head pops off to reveal (of course) Draenei horns. But they don’t, and all the pugs I’ve run over there have actually been quite nice for the most part. I’m also leveling a Tauren druid slowly. Notice a trend – my two main Alliance characters, a druid and a mage. My characters Hordeside? A mage, and a druid. Because I need an intervention, I may actually do some pug healing with the druid as she comes of age.

That ought to prove interesting. You see, if Vidyala is the spoiled “born with a silver shield strapped to her back” kind of healer, my Horde characters are the complete opposite. My druid is wearing pants, and some dodgy leather vest she ripped from an animal’s carcass, carrying a wooden stick, and precious little else. She has no heirlooms. She does have bags thanks to a friend I have who traded me some money (He gave my Horde characters gold, I gave the same amount to his Alliance characters, as each of our fortunes resided in different places). So she has Netherweave bags, an unaccustomed luxury. I could spend some money to buy her a few greens, but I’m actually interested to see how leveling a character goes without any of these special perks. They say that precious few people who play trial WoW stick with it. As I’m clubbing swoops to death in Mulgore with my wooden cane because I’m OOM, I feel I’m plumbing the depths of exactly why that might be.

Yet somehow, I keep coming back to roll alts and relax, try out the other faction, try out pally healing when half the world says “go ret noob.” Endyme over at (Un)holy Randomness wrote some thoughts about things that drive people to need stress-relief in their game, and coping mechanisms. I know that I definitely turn to alts as a means of stress-relief or just for a quiet place. Although I may be doing that a bit less since I read this post by Gnomeageddon about how WoW is no better than a holiday. In brief; you may go on holiday but your problems are still there when you get back and it’s not always as relaxing as it may seem. I need to remember that.

And the post title is because Ophelie didn’t know my name but she was kind enough to link to me anyhow. And now I need to go through her post and meet many more great paladin bloggers because they all sound fantastic, and I am a mere imposter in their midst. Druid by day? With a side of mage? I also updated my blogroll. I’ve been adding lots of people to it on my Google reader but never updating it here. And yes, please do call me Vid, or Vidyala, it’s all good. I choose all my character names and ensure they are easy to shorten after my first character was named “Lafaera.” It’s not a bad name, but what do you call her? Most people opted for Laf, though I tried to encourage Faera, it was a pain.

Don’t even get me started about the pugger who called me “Laffy Taffy.” There’s a good reason she got a race change and a new name in the process.