Because I like Mana Berry Delight.

Last December, I started what was just going to be a  little side project. It’s one of those things that… Well, it snowballed. I thought a few people might read my funny little pug stories. More than a few people have done so! I’ll admit that the first time I wrote here after I knew people were actually reading it I had a bit of stage fright. I’d open up that new post screen and stare at it. Fortunately, the adventures of LFD provided ample material to keep pushing me to write and get over it.

Once Vidyala “came of age,” I had many people asking if I was going to stop blogging. But I had the blogging “bug” by then, I didn’t want to quit! I kept writing about various Warcraft-related topics, some of them (but most of them not) related to paladins at all. Naturally people tend to assume that I play a paladin… Why wouldn’t they? It’s in the blog title.

Having a “project” for a blog was a fantastic idea for me, but it didn’t make the blog very livable or sustainable. Nowadays when I am trying to think of topics I am stumped because I keep thinking – this has nothing to do with pugging, and this has nothing to do with paladins. I haven’t even specced or glyphed poor Vid post 4.0.

I love blogging. But my paladin is an alt. I realized it was time for a change. (You didn’t think this post was going someplace SAD, did you?)

So, Manalicious was born! The idea is that (with something of a mage flavour, but without “mage” in the name) it’ll give me a place where I can blog to my heart’s content about anything that strikes my fancy. I play casters. I like mana. I like cooking things (and am, at heart, a mage, monarch of the created pastry!). Manalicious was my favourite cooking daily (no kidding) and so… It’s all very logical, you see. It will have more silly mage recipes, caster talk, achievements, lore, quests, raiding – all of the things I like. It’ll probably also have a Pugging Pally feature when Cataclysm has been out for a bit. Yes, I’ll level Vid through pugs, I am clearly a glutton for punishment.

I hope if you enjoyed Pugging Pally you’ll forgive me the hassle of updating your RSS feed and/or any blogroll links to Manalicious. I’m not going to actually take Pugging Pally down – it will stand as a testament to the brief period of PUG insanity I endured in 2009-2010, but I do expect that my writing from now on will occur over there.

In short: I’m not going away, just moving, and will be more active when I don’t have the paladin thing hanging over my head. I see this as a positive change. I’ll post one last “Redirect” post after this one so that people looking for me don’t lose their way. I hope to see you at my new digs! There’ll be cake.

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I’m Rolling Need on You (Lara)

This is a guest post from Lara at Root & Branch, the musings of an Azerothian healer. I saved it for last because it is poignant and lovely, but I’ll let you discover for yourself!

If anyone tells you it's foolish to run Magister's Terrace at level 68, well, they're probably right. But try it anyway.

 

You may not realize this, but every single time you run a dungeon using the dungeon-finder tool, regardless of your level, there’s a chance you might win epic or even legendary quality loot.  What’s more, such loot can potentially drop for every member of the party.

Now, some of you may shake your heads with disbelief when you read this; others may scramble to look up the loot tables on WoWHead to see what you’ve missed.  Don’t bother looking!  You won’t find it there.  But believe me, it’s true.  The kind of loot I’m talking about, however, isn’t something you’ll find on any boss’s loot table.  It’s not a funky trinket, a glowing sword, or a powerful belt.  The loot I’m talking about here is friendship, and it’s the very best loot you can possibly get.

Friends don’t drop in every single dungeon you run.  In fact, the drop rate on friends can often be very low, sometimes!  However, when a friendship does drop, it’s so much better than any other random item you could find.  Friendships are bind-on-player, they are transferable across servers, they scale with your level, they’re not specific to any class or race, and in some cases they will even work outside the game.

It’s my feeling that friends are the best and most important kind of loot you can find, and they’re what really makes this game of ours worth playing.  Without some friends around to share in the struggles, the victories, the defeats, and the puzzles, even the most epic drops can’t keep things fun; all the other rewards of the game can lose their meaning.  World of Warcraft isn’t meant to be played alone:  Compared to dedicated single-player games, it’s not all that engaging when you go it alone.  However, once you toss some friends into the mix, it has the potential to blow those other games out of the water — even the ones that have much nicer graphics.

There’s no doubt that the dungeon-finder has been a mixed blessing for this kind of friend-loot.  The ease of assembling a group of players has made it much easier to meet a diverse group of players from a variety of servers, and the time you save by teleporting straight to the dungeon helps you find more groups in the same amount of time.  This is great!  In the dark days before the dungeon-finder, you had to find people on your own server, and it could often be really hard to get a group together.

On the downside, however, the dungeon-finder has encouraged a kind of “dungeon tourism”, in which groups pop in, waltz through the place in a superficial way, and pop back out, sometimes without even speaking to each other!  Maybe you see a cool suit of armour a shiny weapon, and a pet?  I see a loud, red-faced, pushy American tourist in a loud floral-print shirt wearing a crappy instamatic camera on a lanyard around his neck, bellowing at a harried concessionaire over the price of a hot dog.  It’s a lot easier to understand why some groups behave as they do when you look at it this way.  The Hunter with Tourette’s Syndrome shouting “GO F*ING GO GODDAM GO” and pulling everything in sight?  That’s him.  And just like when you see this as you’re trying to peacefully experience the grandeur of some ancient wonder, it’s all right to be embarrassed for him.

Don’t lose hope, however.  Not everyone is like that.  I promise you, it’s true.  If you keep your heart light, and your eyes open, you can still find those polite, helpful, friendly, patient players who want more from the game than to blunder through the sacred sites snapping blurry Polaroids and bleating about how they wish they were at home.  It won’t happen every day, and sometimes it takes a little encouragement, but when you do meet them, it’s like a little moment of magic, something you may remember for years to come.

Right now, our friends-list doesn’t work across servers.  I hope they’ll fix that soon.  But even without that, and even if you don’t want to give people your RealID information, we can still keep in touch.  How?  One thing you could do is to use an IM account — something like AIM, Google Chat, or Jabber.  Sure, it’s not as convenient as an in-game whisper, but it’s better than losing track!  Are you worried about revealing your real identity for professional reasons?  No problem — it’s easy to create yourself an e-mail address you can use just for gaming purposes.

Whatever you do, though, please don’t click “Pass” on potential friends.  Before you leave your group, take a moment to look at the real loot window, otherwise known as your party interface:  Even a little friendly banter can sometimes lead, in time, to a wonderful and fun friendship, in this big and interesting game we all play.

Don’t believe me?  Well, dear Reader, if you’re reading this blog then you should know that what you’re reading is here because of how Vidyala and I met:  Through pugging.

 

Very few bears were harmed in the making of this picture.

 

Now I want to have an Unbirthday Party.

I haven’t done any search results in awhile, and they make me laugh. Search results, ahoy! But first, if you want a laugh at my expense, roll on over to Rades’ Orcish Army Knife and see how he’s been tormenting me as I level my second mage. I had nothing to do with it.

Also, my friend Lara (referenced in the link below) has recently started her own blog: Go check her out at Root and Branch. She’s got some ideas about how LFD could be improved, and a great piece about how people can use interrupts and dispels to their best advantage in 5-man instances.

2man kael possible? – Yep, Lara and I did it. I can only assume that at 80 it’d be cake, as we were appropriately leveled at the time.

who is the paladin best known for wiping – Umm… uhhh… ummm. I didn’t do it.

you are fools to have come to this place – It gives me a little tickle to think of people googling this and being brought here. Welcome to Pugging Pally, YOUR PATHETIC MAGIC BETRAYS YOU.

rudest players encountered in lfd – I wonder if they found what they were looking for? I’ve met some rude ‘uns, but not as many as I would have expected, really. People in lower level pugs are usually pretty cool.

people hate healers in bgs – I’m going to take a second to quote Dusk from the warlock PvP guide that Cynwise linked the other week (did you follow all of that…?)

Be A Friend To Healers

We’ll just start off with this: all healers are your friends.
I do not care if he is from a different server and has a silly name, he is your friend. Bad people are going to try to hurt your friend.

Save him and he will reward you by making you immortal.
Do not ever abandon your friend to the rogues.

See, you must LOVE your healers. I think the person looking for this meant that people hate healers from the opposing team. I suppose that’s true. I don’t know whether they hate them or not, but it’s good policy to take them out. Then you can pick off their team mates. But the paladin waving her hands around, there, the one with the horns? Leave her alone, she’s cool.

ring of mmmrrrggglll – I really don’t know. If anyone has any ideas they’re welcome. I don’t know what it is, or how I might have referenced it here.

bear roasting moonkin – I thought long and hard about this, by which I mean I thought of the two possible meanings. One means to cook something. The other… I’m not going to get into it. You all have the internet and/or are more knowledgeable than I. Either way, you are not going to find that here! Moonkin are cute and fluffy, what’s wrong with you?!

what is a pally birthday party? – Well, sometimes we have to take a bit of time out of letting things hit us in the face/hitting things in the face/healing the people being hit in the face to celebrate special occasions! Those Dalaran mages make some scrumptious cakes, which we take somewhere very, very secret then we all let our uptight righteousness go for awhile and put on those conical hats. Then we cast spells and blind each other and spill punch on our librams and dance. Because it’s Joe’s birthday. I can’t tell you where it happens or I’d have to kill you.

pugging pally sculpture – Do you mean this? I’ve only really got the one. I accidentally burnt her horns.

This tiny Vid sits on my desk and grins her gormless grin at me when I'm staring into nowhere trying to think of something to write.

Last but not least, I think these two search results are best contemplated together: The first one doesn’t want to move on, and the second one can’t wait.

why cant i just keep running scarlet monastery – Because growing up is inevitable, Johnny. You have to move on to Blackrock Depths. It’s just the way it is. By the time you’re done there, you should be grown up. What did you think this was, Never-Neverland?

why do i keep going to scarlet monastery – Because of people like Johnny. They queue for it specifically and you keep getting roped in. No, actually, there just aren’t many other instances in that level range, if you’re leveling primarily through LFD you’re going to see a lot of it.

Finally, you might remember that contest thing that I am running, The Well-Dressed Paladin! (What does a paladin wear to secret birthday parties?) Today is August 6th and so you’ve got two more days to enter if you were thinking of it. You can still come in under the wire and you have the weekend to get it done. Thanks to everyone who’s entered so far. It’s not a ton of people really (too busy casting shiny paladin spells, I imagine, or else wishing they could) so the odds are pretty good.

Wednesday Linking Love

This tiny Vid sits on my desk and grins her gormless grin at me when I'm staring into nowhere trying to think of something to write. She even had little engineering goggles... but they made her too top-heavy so they had to be left out.

I’m afraid I don’t have the time this morning to write very much of my own, but such times are great for pointing out posts I’ve enjoyed by other people in the last week or so. Here they are, conveniently in alphabetical order (I don’t think that matters, but even so).

Zal over at Blessing Of Fish wrote a good post about designing a tabard for your guild. It even has a colour wheel, which instantly wins my art nerd over. He points out that with the changes to guilds coming in Cataclysm, tabards are going to be gaining importance and prominence. You’ll want to make sure it looks good right now. Personally, I like the lobster – you know, the one who looks like he’s pinching…? Ah, nevermind.

Rhoelyn from Beneath Two Skies writes the story of poor Archavon the Stone Watcher’s diary. You know, it might be his vault, but I don’t see that it’s done him any good lately. “The Makers are gone. I have been left to watch.” Check it out, it made me laugh out loud.

Kae at Dreambound Druid has some strict ten perspective for folks who might be thinking of scaling down from twenty-fives to tens in Cataclysm. It’s about what ten man raiding is, isn’t, and will be, and whether the grass is greener after all. (Hint: When you’re not over-geared for it, it isn’t necessarily easier. Heroic Lich King, yet to be killed by any strict tens guilds in the world can attest to that.)

Windsoar at Jaded Alt writes about what it’s like to experience class prejudice towards her DK before she’s even been given a chance. I’ll admit, I met my fair share of clueless DKs, but I wasn’t even rude to those ones. You could boil this concept down to “just don’t be rude to people,” really, but it’s an interesting read. The universe isn’t doing much to convince me I should level that DK alt anytime soon!

For all you bloggers, Psynister’s Notebook had some great tips this week about leveling up your blog. You’re willing to grind everything else, right? Why not this?

Frequent commenter and my friend Redbeard from Parallel Context recently started leveling up his draenei paladin as a holy paladin in LFD. If you’ve been wishing for some lowbie pug antics, check out his first trip to Wailing Caverns. Oh, the memories.

Finally, last but certainly not least, Gameldar at WoW In An Hour wrote an article I thought was well worth noting: To Fish, Or Not To Fish? The question isn’t “Should you fish?” (The answer is always a resounding, “Yes,”) but rather, is the fish feast the best buff food for your raiding, or would you be better served to bring along your own? I like to think of it as “default fish.” But it’s always better to make an informed decision than just go the lazy route. Plus, it has a fish chart!

Now, because I can’t help myself. I’ve been sitting on these for a little while.

Search results!

leveling a holy paladin in lfd – Have as many heirlooms as you can, get cozy with your Flash of Light button once you get it, and most importantly bring your sense of humour.

do warlocks have any toes? – I thought this was funny because I just re-read “The Witches” by Roald Dahl last month or so, and one of the ways you are supposed to be able to identify witches is that they have no toes, and force their square feet into pointed shoes like “normal women,” (hah, not this one). Anyway, no word on whether or not warlocks have toes. When it comes to pug warlocks, it’s their lack of common sense that I found most alarming, but that could just be me.

paladin gear on draenei – Looks fabulous. There are a few exceptions, particularly for Male draenei. Here, let me show you.

"I'm a champion of the Light, I don't have time for cuddles."

You see, I see this, and I think:

Built like an armoured car.

I’m not quite sure why.

vuhdo paladin setup, vuhdo paladin, vidyala’s vuhdo, vidyala’s vuhdo post, vuhdo addon beacon of light not showing, make vuhdo show beacon of light, vuhdo beacon of light hot icons, showing beacon on vuhdo – Apparently, writing about how to make Vuhdo work for paladins filled a bit of a niche, if this week’s search results are any indication.

you are fools to have come to this place – I hear this a lot. If only I could remember who it is that screeches it in my ear…?

gnomeregan run time – Eternity. I’m sorry. It’s approximately, “Cancel all your appointments, give up your friends, forever, you’re never leaving.” I’m sure some version of Vid is still there, running in circles with leprous gnomes chasing her.

squishy rogue syndrome – Hehe. I’m not sure why this brought you here, but I’ve heard tell of it myself.

when its time to let your girlfriend go – This is a long shot here, but probably when you feel the need to Google it is a fair indicator. Just be nice, would you?

one light in the darkness pugged – Hah! Good luck with that. We went back to do this for some guildies who’d missed it the first go-round, and it was (if you’ll pardon the pun) a nightmare. You really do have to know what you’re doing and can so easily get screwed over by RNG stuff or people not running away from Malady or people going insane in the brain room or people not freeing people who are being choked by a vine or people brushing up against Giant Green Clouds of Death or killed by adds in the last phase…sorry, was I rambling? Anyway, a pug could do it if you had people experienced with the fight, but we basically had to learn it all over again when we went in with folks who’d never done Yogg before, let alone One Light. Try and do it with guildies or friends if at all possible. And make sure you take Thorim! Freya’s sanity wells might be tempting, but the adds in the last phase still pound hard enough that it’s really hard to just brute-force heal and DPS through them without the ability to take them out of commission entirely.

Axe To The Face – Wait, no, Sword.

The problem with having a healing main spec and a tanking off spec is that you’re always taking up room or pushing someone out. Naturally, in five mans (what Vid does the most) I was either having to force a main-spec tank to play his off-DPS spec, or another main-spec healer to DPS, or in the case of heal/heal specced people, to either tank or not run with them at all. Since it happens that I rather like the people in my guild, and have no desire to tank heroic Halls of Reflection again (it went fine), I decided that I needed to buck up and give Ret another go. I liked the prot spec for soloing old instances and for sheer indestructibility, but it just wasn’t practical when I’m married to a tank anyhow. I really wasn’t having fun tanking random heroics. For the record, I did do a few. Impatient DPS barking at me to go faster, people pulling trash packs before I could even get there… It just wasn’t fun.

So I logged in to have a look at the off-spec Retribution gear I had picked it up. It looked pretty good! My tanking bracers had always been DPS bracers; I had crafted the ret goggles with a meta socket some time ago. I had a 219 necklace from the ToC 5-man, 232 shoulders. My trinkets were/are decent but nothing to write home about. My cape was pretty sucky as was at least one of my rings (I had the other 232 ring from heroic HoR). But it wasn’t bad. I dropped some change to buy a BoE cloak on the auction house, and spent some hard-earned Triumph emblems to replace my awful ring. The only piece I couldn’t immediately replace was the chest. I scraped up my engineering mats to enchant everything. I even have a decent PvP libram.

Things were looking good. I spied on my guild’s ret paladins and found a cookie cutter ret spec and glyphs. I even downloaded a retribution addon that was recommended to me. I put Berserking on my fancy new two-handed sword! I was ready. I asked if any guild folks needed to run a random heroic, surmising that they could deal with my noobish ret behaviour. We got a group together – Voss tanking, a hunter, shaman, resto druid and myself, and we went to Halls of Lightning.

I was excited. I was a RETRIBUTION paladin. An EYE for an EYE, baby. I don’t play melee DPS… you know, ever. I had a very, very brief stint as a cat druid and that’s pretty much it. So I was pretty focused on what lay before me – making sure I was close enough to trash packs, watching my rotation (yes, I get it, ret paladin rotation is to hit face somewhere in the proximity of the keyboard, har de har). So I was doing that, but was very anxious to not be utterly terrible. How was it, then, that I glanced over at Recount to…

Utter, abysmal and complete failure. Horrible. Terrible. Legendary, even. “To be later mocked behind my back,” kind of terrible. I was doing 800 DPS.

800. My level 63 Frost mage does better than that. I was ashamed and confused. “I don’t understand!” I said in Vent. “What am I doing so terribly wrong?”

We went down the list of things I might be failing at.
Was I hitting the shiny buttons in approximately the appropriate order?
Yes.
Was I wearing my healing gear?
No.
Did I have the right Seal?
Sort of.
Was I using the right Aura?
That much, at least, I had right. (It’s called Retribution aura, even I can’t mess that up).

I didn’t understand what was so wrong, and I struggled with the misery of fail and not understanding – right up until we were almost at Loken. In my excitement to crush the mobs with my mad engineering skills, I was left behind the group a little bit. As I ran, I had time to I look down at the chat log. Don’t ask me why I hadn’t looked at it before. The entire box, with a bit of loot spam on either side, was a sea of blue text. Can you guess what that blue text said?

Your skill in two-handed swords has increased to 172.
Your skill in two-handed swords has increased to 173.
Your skill in two-handed swords has increased to 174.
Your skill in two-handed swords has increased to 175.
Your skill in two-handed swords has increased to 176.

Yes, that’s right. Ms. I Always Play Casters fails again. My heirloom weapon, you understand, was a two-handed axe… or a one-handed mace, or sometimes a one-handed sword. So when I decided to try tanking, that wasn’t a problem. My previous ret weapon was also a two-handed axe. Even as a healer, I used to run up and smack things in melee range to keep my skill leveled as I went along). When I got the ICC weapon the other day I was so excited to have a great ret weapon that it completely slipped my mind that “leveling two-handed weapon skill” had been on my “to-do” list. I’m pretty sure I started that instance at zilch.

Yes, it took me the entire instance to see that my weapon skill was leveling as we went. The good news is that after I went and beat the snot out of half of Icecrown for hours, I’ve now maxed out the skill, and subsequent ret DPS has been at much more respectable levels. I wouldn’t say really great, especially not compared to our guild’s very skilled DPS… but more respectable. I’m just glad I decided to try it out with a group of friends and not random puggers. I don’t want to be the person someone else writes about in their blog.

Which brings me to another series of search results. I love them so.

ramparts corpse run – You’ve got the wrong person. But you’re in luck, because Shintar has got you covered.

what do you mean by massochism – It means “You pugged your way to 80,” or if you prefer, “When a man and a woman or a man and a man or a woman and a woman love to whip each other very much…”

scarlet monastery graveyard directions – Honey, if you got lost inside the instance there’s nothing I can do for you. I even went to look up Jame’s Scarlet Monastery Guide to see what he says and it doesn’t even have its own heading. It’s like, “As an afterthought, there’s this other instance. Just sort of go into it and see what happens because you cannot fail.” If you’re wondering how to get there… I think the Chillwind flight point is the closest – nip through the Bulwark and head North to the Monastery, you can’t miss it. As Horde it’s pretty easy because it’s right by Undercity. But why would you need to know that when everyone does LFD?

wow paladin healing new icc 5 mans – You’re going to force me to answer seriously! Anyone else, feel free to chime in with a comment if there’s something I’ve overlooked, or if you disagree or something.

Okay, for Forge of Souls, slap Beacon on the tank and don’t stop healing. No, really. The AoE damage in this instance is pretty heavy. Be ready to emergency heal yourself or bubble at Bronjahm if he fears you out into the Soulstorm. Make sure to move in for Soulstorm. Likewise be ready to bubble when all those ghosts come out at the last boss. And be sure to get behind when he does the OMG-it’s-a-wall-of-death-thing. Hilariously for a few runs I could never get the hang of which side was “behind,” continuously resulting in embarassing death.

For Pit of Saron, stick close to your tank. I hate Garfrost as a paladin healer. The LoS with the rocks, the overzealous DPS who don’t bother to go behind a rock… it’s aggravating. Just… make sure your tank doesn’t die, heal everyone else as much as you can, remember to LoS the debuff, and pray. Ick is pretty easy – your DPS may die to a poison nova or to not running when they’re being pursued, but don’t worry, you can’t heal stupid. You can BoP a pursued person if you’re feeling charitable though. Get ready to use all your “on the move” healing skills when the little magic bubbles start exploding from the ground. Holy shock someone, instant FoL someone else, lather, rinse, repeat, more or less, and that’s the whole fight! I even cast Gift of the Naaru. Shash, it’s useful! For the next bit, I like to mount up and run past those two packs of Vrykul but it can be hard to get a pug to understand it so you may end up just fighting them. Don’t stand in the Hellfire. Make sure your tank has prearranged places to pause in the frost hallway gauntlet – we usually run to the circle in the middle and pause there, then move on. You do have the speed enchant on your boots, right? The last guy is pretty easy; don’t stand in anything icy on the ground; stop healing as much as you can if you get the mark on you (I want to say “Overlord’s Brand,” is that right?). There’s a periodic enrage that will hit your tank pretty hard so be ready to heal heavy damage there, especially if your DPS don’t stop attacking when they have the mark on them. In a pug, that’s not outside the realm of possibility.

For HoR, it’s relatively simple. I tend to vary my Beacon target from instance to instance; not always putting it on the tank, but for this instance definitely do it. You’ll need to heal a lot of other people – including yourself, so it’s a lifesaver here. Dispel things as much as you can, but priority is keep everyone alive through all this silly trash. You fight Falric first – he’s a real pain. When I first started coming here with a lower gear score, the fear that he does (it hurts as you’re feared) would nearly kill me every time. You are your top priority – heal yourself, which will top off your tank, then heal everyone else as much as you can. The amount of healing and damage done decreases as the fight goes on, so heal as much as you can, but it’s important to get him down ASAP. More trash, then the other guy – he’s not nearly as tough. Don’t stand in wells of death on the ground. For the last part, the trash gauntlet – you really have to depend on your group’s competence. The tank will point nasty aboms away from you and keep things from eating your face. If he/she is doing that, then it’s cake. If not, be prepared to bubble and sprint something to a tank or whatever you have to do, and you are home free! Have fun in the ICC 5-mans, they are a happy loot-fest. Except if you sort of want the plate chest that Falric drops. I’m pretty sure it’s a myth.

dwarven eyes – Aren’t they purdy? This search came here no doubt because of Anea and her dwarf. Unless you were looking up some kind of creepy recipe alchemical dead dwarf recipe. What’s wrong with you?!

wow moonkin vs maraudon pristine waters – Aaaand in the right corner, we have the crit chicken, resplendent with feathers, fur, antlers, and socially awkward demeanor. In the left corner… Princess? My money is on the moonkin!

pants of the naaru – It’s a talking chandelier, it doesn’t wear pants.

does “zum’rah’s vexing cane” exist – This kind of search result always makes me laugh and feel a bit sad at the same time. Clearly, someone’s been chain-running Zul’Farrak. They hit google in a fit of frustration, furiously typing. They know very well that the thing exists. Maybe they want to find a Lootseeker’s support group? In any case, it does exist… my paladin has it in her bank…and I’m very sorry.

death knight tanking necessities – You want these folks, not me!

pally point – I think it’s the successor to Power Point, don’t you? Every time you go to a new “slide” there’s a brilliant flash of light that makes the audience go “AUGH” and you have to start every presentation with a warning about epilepsy because being this awesome can trigger envy and other harmful reactions.

That Which We Call A Troll

In terms of instances, I’m starting to sort of kind of reach the ones I am comfortable navigating my way through. The other day I managed a few more pugs. There’ll be no more reports of ten minute SM: Graveyard runs here, no. Instances nearing sixty (pre-BC, anyhow) are srs business. They’re taking at least an hour, usually more.

Take the Lower Black Rock Spire group I joined mid-way through their run. I was DPSing again – see what I mean about queue times as DPS? I don’t know how long they waited for another DPS – possibly milliseconds, but regardless, that’s what they needed. I zoned in and saw no one else near the entrance, which usually gives me a sinking feeling. “Can you find us?” the DK tank asked me. “I can try,” I told him gamely. And miraculously (to me, anyway) I really do know LBRS well enough that I had no problem. I know that you go under the bridge to the right to get to LBRS, and left leads to UBRS. I know that you jump down and there are a series of bridges and the like. It was really easy to just follow the path that they had cleared. I’ve come here multiple times on different characters to do things like the pet quests and other various stuff (including getting lost when I was actually looking for UBRS). I’ve farmed UBRS interminably for parts of the dungeon gear set that Drakkisath drops. I am an old hand at Blackrock Spire! Not really, because the only time I came here at level was on my druid when she was level 58, and I stealthed through most of the whole thing to do the pet quests, a feat I was quite proud of, I’ll have you know. Cat druid rushes in where others fear to tread!

But, I digress. I made it to the group easily and joined their merry band of “let’s murder some orcs.” Unfortunately, it was short-lived – because about five minutes later, our DK tank disconnected. I was sad to see him go, because 1) he was a Draenei and 2) he had actually been doing a good job and spoke in complete sentences. I had just typed “Should we try and wait for him?” when someone initiated a vote-kick. I voted no, but he was kicked anyhow. We puttered around a little bit waiting for another tank. It didn’t take too long before one joined, but unfortunately, I had a bad feeling about him. This time, a human DK. His name?

Vagtroll.

I’ll let that sink in a minute. What does it even mean? I spend far too much time examining the dirty underbelly of the teenage unconscious. Is he trolling… for vaginas? Does he think he is a vagina, in a derogatory sense? Does he wish the character was actually a born a troll, and so is contemplating the mystery of his birth in a form of bizarre navel-gazing?

Unfortunately, having witnessed the way that he ran into LBRS and promptly got himself killed by a wandering patrol, I’m going to have to conclude that he was simply a moron. The group fell apart quickly after that, as the healer dropped group, unwilling to wait for Mr. Troll to find his way to us, and I followed suit. I hadn’t been looking forward to seeing the kind of epic tanking he was going to put forth, and I don’t mind admitting I acted with extreme prejudice. But when you choose a name like that, you’re kind of asking for it, aren’t you?

I queued again and this time experienced another unfamiliar loading screen. I’d just put myself in flight to Feathermoon, intending to go and pick up one of the Dire Maul quests that I’m sure was there, but the instance popped up almost right away. Dire Maul! This time I was healing. I zoned into the instance and clicked to respec and change my gear, typing right after, “Excuse me, I just had to respec so I’ll need to drink before we move on.” I ran through the little hallway that leads to Dire Maul proper, and the next words the tank replied with made angels sing and rainbows arc across the sky.

“OK guys, hang on,” he said, “Healer needs mana.” This tank was the opposite of a vagtroll. He was a dream tank. If I could have fallen to my knees and thanked some deity I would have, but I just sat and drank some water instead.

Complete aside – enough with the Morning Glory Dew, already! I’ve been drinking this since level 45, and I can’t drink the Draenic stuff until 60. This is a bit of an oversight, here. It refills 2928 mana over 20 seconds. With a few happy buffs, I have over five thousand mana at this level. Do you think any pug is going to let me sit and drink for a full 40 seconds? If you did think that you’d be WRONG. I’ll forget about this in two levels as I pour Draenic water everywhere in celebration, but seriously. Lowbie puggers need better water desperately.

BUT. This tank was glorious and made of kittens and puppies and happiness, and he let me regain my mana. This is significant enough that I jotted it down on my little pug sticky notes. “Dire Maul – Pally tank. Waited for mana.” He was as considerate as the instant went on, at one point even calling a break so that I could drink when I hadn’t noticed I needed to. “Wait, healer mana,” he said. This guy should hold a seminar for tanks.

My tanking buddy and I. Yes, I took a picture, so I will remember him forever. Oh, and a big Ancient dude.

I also really just plain, flat-out like Dire Maul (so far). It’s lush and interesting to look at. We chased the annoying little imp guy all through the instance, and amazingly enough, didn’t lose sight of him or miss where he had gone to. I somehow managed to lose him when I came here with my 80 mage a long time ago. And then when I engaged him, I managed to kill myself with a Hot Streak proc to the face. Did you know that spell reflect is a powerful tool versus an inattentive and powerful mage? I’m here to tell you.

Another thing that’s a powerful tool of death…

Twitter. I play with two monitors so I’ve usually got blogs/websites/whatever open on my second monitor. I clicked over to ask some pally related questions, because I know that my Twitter list has fabulous holy paladins on it, who did in fact answer my questions. They should’ve told me, though, “Instead of asking about Divine Illumination on Twitter, maybe you should try healing your tank.”

Yes, Twitter was nearly the death of my beloved pally tank. I have another confession to make, too. I said… “Wow, sorry guys, I got some really weird lag just then!” …You know, like the kind of lag that comes from alt-tabbing out to a different window to talk on twitter when you should be healing. Mental lag, if you will. The kind that five minutes later had me ask the hunter by name to dispel the curses, instead of the druid. He said, “Srsly? …I’m a hunter.” Whoops. Of course, the druid never responded, nor did he dispel the curses. So I suppose the greatest example of pug idiocy in this group came from me, never let it be said that just because I blog about pugs I’m ‘holier than thou!’

Although I absolutely am Holier than most of them. Except when I’m not. Because I’m a Holy paladin, get it…? I’ll stop now, honest.

A few search engine terms:

how to heal deadmines on a paladin and can a paladin heal deadmines – The answer is “Holy Light” and “Yes,” respectively, although if you’re level 20 you’ve learned Flash of Light, use it well. And Glyph Holy Light. No problem!

holy pally leveling kings or wisdom – At earlier levels, I went with Kings. It’s immensely powerful for the level. I didn’t take Imp. Wisdom right away either, bypassing it to get further down the tree and only coming back to get it later. Of course the best answer is “Both!” if you’re lucky enough to have another paladin. I say switch it up. Sometimes a larger mana pool (yay Kings!) means you don’t really have to worry about regen too much. Once you start getting all the happy Int talents I think Kings is a clear choice, but please correct me if I’m wrong, resident Holy paladins who know more than I (that’s all of you). I’ve been buffing Wis lately just because I can do the Greater version, and it lasts 30 minutes, and I’m lazy.

cat lovers are masochist and dog lovers are awesome – I might agree, but I’ll never tell. I can hear my dog snoring on the other side of the wall as I type this. He has a very robust snore.

jak zbudować wind furry u shamana enh? – “Shaka, when the walls fell.” I think this might be Polish…? I have no idea how they wound up here, though. Except I do have a shaman. But that’s all I know.