Holy Paladin Basics: Getting Started

I am often asked the question, "How do you heal as a Holy Paladin?" It is a question that is hard to explain in the space that Twitter gives, or even within the space of a single post. Often, the guides that are written are done so with max-level characters who are tackling heroics or raiding content in mind, and the new, low-level Holy Paladin is left in the dark. Holy Paladin Basics is a continuing series of small, specific posts aimed at teaching new Paladin healers how to effectively use the tools that they're given to tackle any situation.

SO YOU'VE DECIDED TO BECOME A HOLY PALADIN

The wet snow was still clinging to the young Dwarf's tattered and mismatched hand-me-down chainmail as he nervously stood in front of Azar Stronghammer, the Paladin who had been his mentor since leaving the comfort and safety of his home in Anvilmar. "Ye've done well, young Paladin, ta make it this far," Azar said, a stern, yet approving look on his weathered face. "But the dangers o' Dun Morogh are jus' the beginning of yer journeys. It's now time to choose which path of the Light ye're to follow. Choose wisely, young one, but choose quickly! Me ale needs me attention!"

Kneel. Kneel before Zod Uther.

At level 10, the fledgling Paladin is faced with the difficult choice of which talent specialization to pursue. Unlike most classes in World of Warcraft, the Paladin has three completely different roles that he can fulfill: Tanking, Healing or Melee Damage Dealing.

Putting the first Talent Point into the Holy Tree and choosing the life of a healer means that you are taking upon yourself the responsibility to keep those around you alive. It means that you are going to thrive in groups, and there will always be an insatiable demand for your services at every level and in every situation.

A Holy Paladin is one of the most powerful healers in the game. Equally at home in small groups or large raids, they bring lot of unique abilities and utility spells in addition to their healing. In a raid setting, a Paladin's natural niche is healing the Tanks, as the direct nature of the healing spells coupled with Beacon of Light are excellent for keeping up a single target taking extreme damage. A Holy Paladin is certainly capable of healing the Raid as well, but has fewer tools to do it than the other healing classes.


HOLY PALADIN ABILITIES

All Paladins get the following abilities as soon as they choose the Holy talent tree:

Holy Shock

An instant cast, multi-use spell as it can be used as an attack or a heal. It generates one point of Holy Power upon use. As an attack it does a moderate amount of damage and is a very useful addition to the admittedly limited offensive potential of a Holy Paladin. This spell, when used in a Holy DPS build, gives that spec it's name: The Shockadin.

As a heal, it is an exceptional spell and forms the backbone of our healing arsenal. Healing for a decent amount and generating Holy Power, this is something that a Holy Paladin will want to cast as much as possible. It has a short 6 second cooldown, and because it is instant is one of the few heals that a Holy Paladin can cast while moving.

Meditation

Allows 50% of your mana regeneration from Spirit to continue while in combat. This ability is a freebie that every healer gets, but it's absolutely crucial for a healer to be effective. Ignore all of the other abilities - this, more than anything, is why a Holy Paladin will be better at healing than a Retribution or Protection Paladin at the lower levels.

Walk in the Light

Increases the effectiveness of healing spells by 10% and removes the cooldown while increasing the effectiveness of Word of Glory by 30%. Another ability that makes a Holy Paladin a much stronger healer than the other specs.

Illuminated Healing (Mastery)

This ability places a shield on the target of each of your Direct Heals (as of 4.2: Flash of Light, Holy Light, Divine Light, Holy Shock, Word of Glory) for a fixed percentage of the heal. It is augmented by Mastery Rating, which can increase the size of each shield. Trained at level 80, this ability is not going to matter much to a levelling Holy Paladin.


LEVELLING AS A HOLY PALADIN

Regardless of your class, levelling as a healer is not a challenge for the faint of heart. Questing will be a lot slower and more difficult than with a Retribution or even a Protection talent specialization. Enemies of all sorts will chuckle as you tickle them for virtually no damage with your weapon. Holy Shock will be your best friend, but enemies will seem like they take forever to die and it's likely that you will become intimately familiar with each of the questing zones many graveyards. You'll probably know the Spirit Healers on a first name basis.

On the other hand, a low level Holy Paladin is a beast at healing in dungeons.  As such, your best levelling path is through instances using the Random Dungeon Finder starting at level 15.

If your plan is to heal once you reach Level 85 (and I can't imagine there is a reason to level as Holy if it isn't), there are several advantages to levelling through Dungeons:

1) Low level dungeons are easy to heal and provide great experience and gear. Even without any guild perks or heirlooms to help boost Experience Point gain, a single dungeon run at low levels will provide a sizable chunk of a level, if not more. As well, the dungeoneering Paladin will almost certainly be clad in the best gear available for any particular level, which makes healing even easier.

2) Levelling as a healer will provide a greater understanding of the healing dynamics of the class. Rather than levelling as another spec and choosing Holy later, someone starting as a Holy Paladin will be able to spend time with each ability as they are learned, and will be able to see how each spell relates in function to the other spells in the toolbox. It is the best way to get an intuitive knowledge of all of the spells in a class's arsenal, and will ease the learning curve in the higher-end content.


GEAR & STATS FOR LEVELLING

Gear

Paladins have a great deal of flexibility when it comes to levelling gear as they are able to wear any type of armour available. Mail armour is preferred until level 40 when it's possible to train Plate. However, until level 50 when the Plate Armor Specialization ability becomes trainable (which gives an additional 5% mana when wearing all plate armour), a Holy Paladin can and should use any armour type that is an upgrade.

Holy Paladins are unique in that they are the only class to have an armour class all to themselves. Plate with Intellect (or Mail with Intellect below level 40) is not desired by any other class that can use it, consequently it can be somewhat harder to find. The advantage is that in a group or raid there will be less competition for that gear, giving you a better chance to get it.

Holy Paladins are also one of only two healing classes that can use Shields, although they can also equip any type of off-hand item other than weapons. Shields with healing stats (Intellect, see below) are rare and precious objects while levelling, and it's more than likely a shield will get replaced much less often than any other type of gear short of a Relic (which you won't see until around level 50).

Stats

INTELLECT is your highest priority stat, and should be on every single piece of your gear. Get used to stacking as much of this stat as you can, because it is your best friend from now on. This stat not only determines how much mana you have, but also your spell power which increases how big your heals are. In addition, Intellect factors into mana regeneration. More Intellect is always better.

While levelling, all the other stats are relatively meaningless and Intellect should be prioritized over everything else. My personal strategy is to equip any gear that has more Intellect, even if it is a lower item level or has worse secondary stats. Until you hit Northrend, no other stat matters.

However, since you're going to get secondary stats regardless, it is useful to know what they are and what they do.

SPIRIT is your regeneration stat. It allows you to increase the amount of mana you regenerate both in an out of combat. It's a very good stat to have if you are having problems with your mana when healing dungeons. Never, ever stack Spirit instead of Intellect as Intellect contributes to your regeneration as well.

HASTE is a throughput stat that increases the speed of your heals and lowers your Global Cooldown, allowing your to cast more spells in a given period of time. This is a great stat to have, but at low levels you will never be able to acquire enough of it to make a significant difference.

CRITICAL STRIKE RATING increases the chance that your heals will land as a critical strike which will make them heal for 100% more. This is nice to have, but it's unpredictable and most healers tend to favour the predictable healing increases that Haste provides instead.

MASTERY is a stat that you will start seeing on gear once you hit level 80 and move into the Cataclysm levelling zones. It increases the effectiveness of your Illuminated Healing shields. As such, it isn't something that you need to worry about for a while, but once you're at level 80 it's generally regarded as the least important of the secondary stats for a Holy Paladin.

Other stats, like STRENGTH, AGILITY, HIT RATING, SPELL PENETRATION or DODGE are stats that will not help your healing at all, and so have very little use for a Holy Paladin. STAMINA will increase your Hit Points, and therefore your survivability, but is not something that a Healer should go out of their way to gear for; your Tank should be taking the large majority of damage in an instance.

We will discuss the various different Secondary Stats from the level 85 perspective later in MASTERY CLASS: GEARING AND STATS FOR ENDGAME CONTENT (coming soon).


NEXT HOLY PALADIN BASICS CLASS:
The Holy Toolbox: Spells and Spell Selection
  
  

Fitting Into a New Guild

"Céad míle fáilte" - Irish Gaelic greeting

Imagine being invited to a party and walking into a room full of people you've never met before who are chatting amongst themselves as if they have known each other their whole lives, but the person who invited you is no where to be found. Finding oneself in a new social setting can, for a lot of people, be one of the most intimidating social nightmares possible.

Well, you know that new druid in the questing greens and blues that just joined your guild? That's what he's going through right now. He is the WoW equivalent of the guy standing in the corner of your guild's party trying to pretend he's interested in the photo of your Great Aunt Olga that's hanging on the wall. Which, depending on the expression on his face, can be extremely uncomfortable for everyone involved.

I started this article while dealing with helping new recruits fit into a very old, established guild as part of my role as the recruiter. Ironically, I now find myself in a new guild as well, trying to make new friends and fit in. In this article, I'm going to talk about this topic from both perspectives.


THE RECRUIT'S PERSPECTIVE
Or, Making Friends for Fun and Purples

"If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair." - Samuel Johnson

Join the Right Guild in the First Place

The first step to fitting into a new guild is to make sure that you are compatible with each other. Sadly, while Blizzard has added a lot of new functionality to make finding a guild easier there is no such thing as eHarmony for guilds, so finding a good match takes a bit of work.

Before joining up with that guild with the cool name that you've been eyeing up, do a little research to find out what they're all about. Whisper one of their members and ask what type of guild they are. Do they PVP, Raid, or just sit around in Guild Chat telling dirty jokes in character? No one is going to think less of you for asking questions about their guild, and they are likely going to be asking some questions about you as well. It's important stuff to know, because joining up with a guild that doesn't do what you're looking at doing is just a waste of everyone's time.

Blizzard's new Guild Finder tool is decent, but doesn't really tell a potential recruit much about the inner workings of a guild, and certainly won't help you determine if you'll fit into their culture. By all means, send in a Guild Request using it, but follow that up with a PM or in-game mail to the recruitment contact of that guild and ask them some questions. If nothing else, it shows that you are genuinely interested and not just clicking the Apply button randomly.

Don't Join a Guild Hoping it Will Change

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy

A player that is mismatched to the guild they're in is an unhappy player who is unlikely to stick around. A guild with unhappy players is an unhappy and drama-filled guild. The best and happiest guilds are the ones which have a membership that is all on the same page as to what they want to do in-game.

As a potential recruit, make sure that the guild you are looking at joining is doing the things that you want to be doing before you join, and don't expect the guild to change just because you show up with different plans. A casual guild will always be casual, a PVP-oriented guild will always want to eat the opposing faction's faces, and coming into that type of guild with a different mindset will eventually cause problems.

Be Social!

As a recruiter, nothing annoyed me more than inviting someone to the guild and then have them remain stone-cold silent in Guild Chat only to quit the guild the next day. Going back to the party metaphor, if someone walks into a room full of people and then doesn't make any attempt at all to interact with the other guests... well, it's kinda creepy.

What I always want to see is a new recruit start interacting in Guild Chat immediately, even if it's just something simple as introducing themselves or asking more questions about the guild and how things are done. It's very hard to jump into a new social group and instantly be the life of the party, and no one expects anyone to do that, but the only way to begin to fit into a new guild is to start talking to people.

I think that the internet has skewed normal social rules to a degree, and it's become normal when going into a new social situation (forums, for instance) to lurk for a while to get a feel for the culture. Imagine yourself back at that party and the new guy is hiding behind a potted plant listening to your conversation: what would be considered strange and abnormal behaviour in the context of normal, face-to-face social rules is now the norm on the Internet. I understand the desire not to jump into a social scenario until you understand the dynamics, but Lurkers in a new guild tend to forget one, simple and important fact:

These people wouldn't have let you join if they didn't want to talk to you.

So talk to them! Ask questions about the guild, or about their Raiding or PVP habits. Tell them a little about yourself. Ask them if they like kittens or puppies or My Little Pony. Jump into a conversation with a joke or an observation. Just say something so that you're not just another anonymous and silent name in the guild roster.


Forums

Virtually every guild has a webpage with forums, and every guild that has forums complains that their members don't use them enough. 

If you must Lurk or feel more comfortable getting the lay of the land before jumping into a conversation, the Guild Forums are a great way to get an idea of your new guild's personality without having to actually communicate with them. The variety of posts will tell a new recruit whether the guild is serious and business-like or whimsical and fun-loving. Most times the forums will also let you in on a lot of the inside jokes and past accomplishments of a guild, helping a new recruit feel more a part of it.

The forums are also a great place to post an introduction to yourself so that the guild can get to know you. Oftentimes it is easier and far less intimidating to post something like that rather than typing it in Guild Chat or saying it in Voice Chat. If your new guild has an introduction thread that other people have used, so much the better, as the previous posts will give you a good idea who these people that you've signed up with are, and what they would like to know about you in your own introduction post.

Groups

Of course, the best way to get to know people in a game is to play together. There are many different ways to group up with your guildies: Dungeons, Raids, Battlegrounds, Arenas or questing, among others.

Sharing an activity is the easiest and most comfortable method - in game or out - to get to know someone. It gives everyone involved something in common to talk about which, given time, will allow openings into other, non-activity related conversation topics. And if nothing else, grouping with your new guildies and sharing a gameplay activity will show them what kind of a player you are, even if nothing is said.

It's unlikely, depending on the guild and how friendly and welcoming they are, that a new recruit will be swamped with group invites upon joining. In my experience, most guilds are friendly to new people but don't go out of their way to try to immediately include them in spontaneous guild activities, and it's left up to the recruit to find a way in. This really is a horrible way to welcome a new member into your social group and in my opinion, the worst mistake that most guilds make with their new recruits.

The best way that I've found to get involved in your guild is to simply ask. Let people know what you're doing and ask if anyone wants to join you. Or, if someone is organizing a group for something, offer to join in. I feel that a brand new recruit in guild is still queuing for Random Dungeons or Battlegrounds by themselves without at least asking for company in Guild Chat is not doing themselves any favours - both in terms of fitting in socially and showing the guild that they are a team player.

Remember, if you've done your homework right and are in a guild with compatible goals to your own then there should always be people willing to join you in doing whatever it is you want to do. All you need to do is ask.

Voice Chat

Ahh, Voice Chat. For a person who is nervous or uncomfortable in new and unfamiliar social situations, chatting in Ventrilo or Mumble can produce a lot of anxiety. Who do you talk to? Which channel? Is it okay to listen into a conversation in a channel, or will you be thought of as that creepy guy behind the ficus tree again? Is it okay to jump into a conversation between two people? Oh god, oh god what the hell do you say?!?

Every guild will have a different culture when it comes to Voice Chat, and it's a lot harder to generalize than Guild Chat. Some guilds will use it only for organized guild activities such as Raiding or PVP, others will use it as the primary means of communication, with a dead silent Guild Chat and a buzzing, lively Voice Chat server.

Everyone knows that Guild Chat is public and available to anyone in the guild to see and therefore the rules are understood to everyone without being spoken. Voice Chat can seem like it's completely different, but it really isn't. Here are some basic things to keep in mind:

Get in there and start chatting! It's surprising how much of some guild's social interaction goes on in Ventrilo or Mumble. If your guild is like this then get in the channel and jump into a conversation!

Voice Channels are public forums unless they are marked private in some way. Normally, as a member of a guild you will have every right to join any of the public channels in your voice chat server. Any channel that you're not supposed to be in will be marked Private or password protected. These are normally reserved for Officers or specific functions, but often there will be specially marked channels for people who want to have a private conversation.

If you interrupt or join a private conversation, the people involved will either stop talking, find somewhere else to chat or ask you to leave. It's important to remember that this doesn't mean that they're anti-social or that they don't like you, it simply means that they are talking about something that should have been done in a private channel. You had every right to be in the channel, but out of respect for the people involved it's best to say sorry and find a different channel. In this scenario, don't worry about it if they're a little rude asking you to leave; you don't know whether or not they are talking about something personally upsetting.

There's no point to being in Voice Chat if you don't talk. If you're in Voice Chat, by all means, say something. Even if you just break in now and then to offer a comment on what other people are talking about. Talking to someone is the best way to get to know each them, and they you.

Don't worry about it. Seriously, there is nothing that anyone can say to you in Voice Chat (or Guild Chat for that matter) that will change who you are. If someone is saying or joking about something that you don't like, simply leave the channel. If you say something stupid that you immediately wish you could take back, don't worry about it - ignore it or make a joke about it or apologize then move on. I guarantee you that everyone you're talking to has said something completely asinine themselves at one point or another.

Surviving the Trial Period

Most guilds will have a Trial or assessment period of some sort, and all of them will have different rules on how they run it. It's a good idea to know about these before you join, or at least ask about them after.

Offering specific advice on how to survive the trial period is impossible because each guild is looking for something different. A Raiding Guild will evaluate you based on raid performance while a PVP Guild will rate you based on how proficient you are at melting Horde faces. Study up on your class, Enchant and Gem your gear the best you can and play as well as you are able is about all you can do.

Outside of game performance, however, there are things you can do to make yourself stand out, and a lot of it is simply following the advice I've detailed above. Be friendly, have a great attitude and play your best. Regardless of performance, it's much harder to kick a friend out of a guild. It may not help you get your raid spot, but a good, friendly attitude will never ever hurt your chances.


THE GUILD'S PERSPECTIVE
Or, How Not to be a Dick to the New Guy

"Ah, beware of snobbery; it is the unwelcome recognition of one's own past failings." - Cary Grant

As an established member or officer of a guild, there are a lot of things you can do to help a new recruit feel at home. Most of them are common sense and blindingly obvious, but rarely done. I can't even count the number of times that I've invited a new person to a guild only to have Guild Chat remain frustratingly silent and unwelcoming.

Include the New Guy

Assuming the goal of guild recruiting is to create stable, happy, long-term members, the most important thing that a guild can do to make their new members feel at home is to actively go out of their way to include them in guild activities. A new recruit that is invited to a Raid, or a Rated Battleground or even a simple Random Dungeon will immediately feel more comfortable and have a much greater likelihood of sticking around than if they were left to their own devices. Think of it as offering to get that new person at your house party a drink when they arrive instead of just pointing them in the general direction of the fridge and telling them to figure it out for themselves.

One of the most intimidating things that a new member of a guild has to do is ask to be included in group activities. Since a recruit doesn't really know who any of the people in the new guild are, running a dungeon or a battleground with a guild group is not a whole lot different than a PUG. And while it's in the recruit's best interests to be sociable and start or ask to be included in groups, it's much friendlier if the guild offers and attempts to make the recruit feel welcome and included.

Engage Them Socially

What is a recruit to think when the rousing and encouraging chorus of "Welcome!" that he gets in Guild Chat when joining is followed by nothing but intimidating, icy silence? Just as with grouping, starting a conversation with a new group of people is intimidating as the new person. It's much more natural and comfortable if the established members of the guild take the initiative and try to get to know the new recruit. Even simple questions like, "Where are you from?" or "How long have you been playing?" will go a long way to breaking the ice and help the recruit feel more comfortable.

This is especially important in guilds that are old and established or composed primarily of real life friends. Guilds like these are very hard to fit into successfully for a new person. Inside jokes fly around constantly, leaving the new recruit on the outside with no idea what anyone is talking about. Large guilds that have been around for a long time also tend to have cliques - groups of people who primarily talk within their own group - which are extremely hard to break into as a new recruit. If a guild like this doesn't make an effort to include the new recruit in some way or give him some kind of acknowledgement that his input and participation is desired, the odds of him sticking around and making the large effort required to be accepted by these groups on his own is slim.


Tell Them How Things Work

You've been a great host at your party so far, you've pulled the new guy away from starting at Aunt Olga and introduced him to a few of your guests and they're chatting away like old friends and getting to know one another. But then you make a mistake and say something like, "Help yourself to a drink in the cooler, but don't take one of Jack's or he'll rip your teeth out with a Yellowstone National Park commemorative spoon". Great advice, unless you neglect to mention which drinks are Jack's.

Having a new recruit that is fitting in but that doesn't know the rules or how things work in your guild is asking for trouble. Let them know the things that they need to know. Are there any restrictions on using the Voice Chat server? What are the Guild Bank rules and does the recruit even have access? If not, when will he? How do the promotions work? How does one sign up for raids? Is there something to never bring up around Jack lest he go postal on your bicuspids? Whatever taboos or unusual policies your guild has should be communicated to a new recruit. Most guilds will have a post on their forums detailing a lot of this stuff, so make sure that the recruit knows where that post is.


CONCLUSION

The guests have left, your house is a mess and your liquor cabinet was emptied around 2am to create a "Super Cocktail" in your dearly departed mother's favourite fruit bowl, but the party was a rousing success. Judging from the fact that one is passed out in the corner with a lampshade on his head and drooling into the azaleas, the recruits fit in fantastically, had a great time and left Aunt Olga's picture unmolested.

Fitting into a new guild, or helping a new recruit get comfortable in an existing guild really just boils down to commonsense and friendliness. The best way to get accepted by any new group is to simply be social, and conversely, the best way to make someone feel accepted is to talk to them and include them in activities. Remember that the people on the other side of the computer screen have the same fears and insecurities that you do. Being friendly and open will, in the long run, make everyone feel that the guild is a safe, comfortable home that they would be crazy to leave.
 
   

This Week in Raiding: Healing Omnotron Defense System

This Week in Raiding is a (hopefully) weekly feature discussing the raiding encounters that my guild tackled this week, the lessons learned from them, as well as any news or thoughts on raiding in general. This week we have the Omnotron Defense Council encounter from the perspective of the Holy Paladin, although much of this article will be useful to all healing classes.  This is not a strategy guide, but everything that you need to know to heal this encounter successfully.  If you would like a more detailed description of the fight and overall strategy, please check out Tankspot's write up and video.

The Omnotron Defense System is a group of four Golems that make up what is typically considered the second boss encounter in Blackwing Descent.  It is a Council style fight; the bosses share a health pool and have a lot of abilities, making this a complex and chaotic fight.  Environmental awareness from the raiders and clear communication from the raid leader are keys to downing this fight reliably.

My raiding team uses the following raid composition for this fight:  Two tanks, three healers and 5 DPS.  A typical raid composition for 25 man would be Two tanks, six healers and seventeen DPS.

IN THIS CORNER, THE BOSSES

Magmatron is the fire boss.  He has two abilities that are going to make a healers life difficult: Incineration Security Measure and Flamethrower.  

• Incineration Security Measure is a raid-wide area-of-effect flame ability.  It has a very obvious flame graphic that is impossible to miss.  You can't avoid this damage, even thought the graphic makes it look like you can, so don't try.
• Flamethrower is a single target ability that shoots a jet of flame, does a lot of damage and is preceded by Acquiring Target, which projects a very large and obvious red laser beam at it's target for four seconds.  The raid needs to run away from the path of the laser beam, and the person targeted needs to stand still so that they don't spread the damage to other people.  The healers should start precasting heals or use mitigation cooldowns on the target in order to ensure survival.  As a Paladin, if you Divine Shield yourself while the laser is targeting you it will cancel the effect entirely, and Magmatron will not cast his flamethrower.  Hand of Protection has no effect on this ability.

Toxitron is the poison boss.  His bag of tricks consists of Poison Cloud and Poison Protocol.

• Poison Cloud. Toxitron will periodically spew poison clouds at a random target that gives whoever stands in them a 50% increased damage debuff.  This includes the boss, so it's likely that your tank will try to stand the boss in the cloud, so be ready to heal through the extra damage if your tank isn't positioned perfectly.
• Poison Protocol is the ability that caused my raid group the most difficulty.  The boss will release 3 poison slimes that will randomly target a player and move towards them.  If they reach their target, they explode and create a large poison puddle.  Getting hit by a slime is instant death.  They are untauntable and need to be burned down by the DPS as quickly as possible.  Avoid them at all costs (See below).

Electron is the lightning boss.  He does Electrical Discharge and Lightning Conductor.

• Electrical Discharge is a fairly straight-forward chain lightning ability.  Spread out a minimum of 8 yards and be mindful of other people moving close to you.  It is not hugely damaging unless it's being spread to a lot of people.
• Lightning Conductor is placed on a random raid member and will do electrical damage to that person and anyone around it.  If it is placed on you, run out of the raid.  As well, be aware of other people around you who have it and stay away from them, especially if it happens to be on the tank.

Arcanotron is the magic boss and he is responsible for Power Generator and Arcane Annihilator. 

• Arcane Annihilator is a large damage, single target ability that will be the responsibility of your tanks and melee damage dealers to interrupt.  As a healer, be aware of sudden health dips when Arcanotron is up.
• Power Generator is a hugely important mechanic for all casters, including the healers.  Arcanotron will put a puddle underneath his feet which will increase his damage significantly.  It's the tanks job to move him out of this.  The ranged DPS and the healers should stand in it for a damage boost and mana regeneration (See below).

Shields:  Two bosses will be active at any given time (except the very beginning), one active and one protected by a shield.  It's vitally important not to attack the boss with the shield active.  Each shield has a powerful effect that will go off if it is damaged, so target switching is extremely important.  Even a stray Judgement can cause a ridiculous amount of damage to the raid.

The only exception is Toxitron's Poison Soaked Shell, which will put a stacking damage-over-time debuff on anyone who attacks it, but also gives a large burst damage increase.  This debuff can be Cleansed, but many raiders will pick up a couple of stacks intentionally for the extra damage.  Ask beforehand if your raid leader wants it cleansed, but in my experience, just leave it if the person who has it is in no danger of dying.  Watch their health closely though, in case they get a bit overzealous in grabbing stacks.


JUDGING

As always, Judge as often as you can for the mana regeneration.

If you are using your Focus Target to determine your Judgement targets, it's important to put it on the right person in this fight.  It is not optimal to Focus/Judge on a tank on this fight because 50% of the time the tank is going to be targeting a boss with his Shield up.  It's better to Focus on a Ranged DPS who is reliable at switching targets, and it's even better to focus on the Raid Leader who is calling out the switches, if possible.

Judging the wrong target on this fight could potentially cause a lot of damage to your raid.  Be careful of your targets!


MANA MANAGEMENT

(or Using Power Generator for Fun and Profit!)

Arcanotron will create a blue puddle on the ground which will give him or whoever is standing in it a damage buff.  Your tank will move him out of this puddle.  You need to stand in this puddle as much as you can, as it regenerates mana while you stand in it.   

Power Generator also grants a damage buff as well, so your caster DPS is going to want to jump in the puddle with you, which most of the time is fine.  It gets problematic when Arcanotron and Electron are up at the same time, however, the chain lightning will cause an insane amount of damage if half the raid is stacked up, costing more mana to heal than will be gained from the puddle.

It's best to keep the DPS out of the Power Generator in this case, and let the healers regenerate their mana.  The damage caused by Electrical Discharge chaining to the 2 or 3 healers (5 or 6 in 25man) is very easy to heal through.  Talk to your raid leader about this if it becomes a problem.


DIVINE PLEA

There is no excellent and obvious period of low damage in this fight to regenerate mana using Divine Plea, so I recommend using Guardian of the Ancient Kings to offset the 50% healing reduction.  Since GAK has a 5 minute cooldown, you can only do this combination once during the fight.  If you are having major mana problems, use Avenging Wrath and Divine Favor in combination with Divine Plea throughout the fight.

If I am on the ball and using the Power Generator wisely, I find that I only need to use Divine Plea once during this fight, so GAK is a perfect offsetting cooldown.  Use your discretion based on your own mana needs.

If you have any Spirit trinkets - like Core of Ripeness - use those on cooldown.

LIGHT OF DAWN OR WORD OF GLORY?

In the 10-man version of this fight, your raid is going to be spread out a lot making it difficult to hit the 5 (or 6, glyphed) people needed to really make Light of Dawn worth it, so Word of Glory is a stronger choice most of the time.  With the increased amount of people in a 25 person raid, Light of Dawn would be the go-to Holy Power heal much of the time.  Just be mindful of how many people you will hit with your LoD before you cast it; if it looks like you won't hit 5 people (pets count too, remember), then go with WoG.

When everyone stacks in the Power Generator, Light of Dawn will be much easier to use effectively in 10-man.

WHERE THE HECK IS EVERYONE?

For a healer, range awareness is key to this fight, as everyone will be moving around a lot and can easily get out of range at a crucial time, causing a death. Stay in the middle of the room as much as you can, and be prepared to move to either side as the situation warrants. Keep an eye on your tanks and make sure that you keep them in range.


USING BEACON OF LIGHT

One of the tanks will get the Beacon of Light. There will be only one boss when the encounter begins, so put your Beacon on that tank.

If you are finding that one of the tanks is out of range a lot, put the Beacon on him instead. Beacon of Light has a 60 yard range, far greater than any of a Paladin's heals. This way you can ensure that if a tank is out of range he is still going to be receiving some healing while you reposition yourself to get within range again.

Unless your raid has incredibly high DPS, this fight will last longer than the five-minute duration of your Beacon, so be prepared to reapply it as needed.


HELP! THE SLIMES WANT TO EAT ME!

Probably the single most frequent cause of wipes on this encounter will be Poison Protocol.  It sounds simple in theory:  Avoid the Slimes.  It's a bit harder in practice, however.

• First thing to do is position yourself as far away from Toxitron as you can while he's active.  Space can get a little tight when both Toxitron and Electron are up, but I'd rather let an Electrical Discharge chain once or twice than be too close to the Slimes when they spawn.
• Set up your Raid Frames to show Aggro.  I have a big, menacing looking red box around my frames to indicate aggro that is hard to miss.  Hopefully your Raid Leader will call out the Slime targets as well.  Either way, once you realize you are targeted by a Slime, start running away from it.  The Slime will only explode if it hits it's target, so it's absolutely vital that it doesn't get to you.  Healing does not matter as much at this point.
• Run around the outside of the room to give your DPS the most time to burn down the Slimes.
• Use the Speed of Light speed bonus from Holy Radiance to put some distance between you and your Slime.  This will also spread some heals around the room as you run.
• Do not let it get too close to you.  It has a much larger range than it would seem.

AURAS AND COOLDOWNS

Try to have Resistance Aura up so that can use Aura Mastery during Magmatron's Incineration Security Measure AOE. If you can time it correctly, you can have double resistance for the entire time this ability is active, substantially reducing damage.

Devotion Aura is much less useful for a Holy Paladin in this fight, as the incoming physical damage is very light. Let another Paladin or a Shaman put that buff on the raid.

Save using your first cooldown until the second boss activates. Aside from Magmatron, the damage caused by a single boss is very minor - Toxitron especially. Divine Favor and Avenging Wrath should be used as often as you can, unless you are saving them to offset Divine Plea (see above). I prefer to save them and hit them just after a boss switch. Magmatron is the big AOE damage dealer in this fight, so if you are assigned to healing the raid, save your cooldowns for when he's active.

Hand of Sacrifice is best used on the target of Flamethrower, or on a tank that is taking extra damage from standing in a Poison Cloud.

Save Divine Shield for Flamethrower. If you are targeted by Acquiring Target, hit your bubble and the flamethrower will not go off at all. If Divine Shield is on cooldown, use Divine Protection to help mitigate some of the damage.

Guardian of the Ancient Kings should be saved to offset the Divine Plea debuff (see above).


THE PAYOFF

Omnotron Defense Council drop two items that are good for Holy Paladins: Security Measure Alpha and Life Force Chargers. Both are worth getting.


* Big thanks Ophelie and Leetsauced for answering a few questions on Omnotron 25, and Rades for helping me get the Wowhead hoverlinks working.  Thanks, everyone!

Let's Be Careful Out There: Account Security - Guest Post by Aoife

While I am neck deep in diapers, baby powder, hyper-aggressive mutant cold germs and a zombie-like wife suffering from sleep deprivation, I have called out to the Blogosphere for help in the form of Guest Posts.  Aoife was kind enough to take pity on this tired ol' dwarf, and responded with a post about account security.

LET'S BE CAREFUL OUT THERE

Hi folks! Aoife of Mok'Nathal here, filling in for Fannon while he tends to Dwarfling Battle Poop (his words, not mine). As way of introduction, Aoife (Gaelic, pronounced 'Eee-fah'), my main, is a lvl 85 Hunter (BM/MM) and the first toon I created back in late 2006. I'm guild leader of the Divine Alliance of Mok’Nathal (we'll celebrate our 4th anniversary on 9th March this year). I have 9 other toons on Mok, 5 of whom are lvl 85, and numerous toons on other realms. No, I don't have a life.

The directive I received from Fannon was to write about any WoW-related topic that I wished. Well, there are oodles of WoW-related topics near and dear to my heart and I couldn't decide on which one. So I sent a message to my guildies requesting ideas for topics. I started to write from the perspective of my lvl 85 healer, Caöimhe (also Gaelic, pronounced ‘Kee-vah’), but things conspired against her ranting about DPS refusing to heal themselves in instances and raids even though they are capable. Plus there were other blog posts that week that shared her views and she just didn't feel the need to be heard. So that post was shelved (deleted) and what took its place was my personal ranting about account and internet security and safety, plus some useful (I hope) tips to keep your account safe.

I'm a webmaster for our guild website and forums, and several non-WoW-related websites and forums as well. I do battle daily with hack attacks and attempts to break into our sites and forums mostly for no other reason than to spew garbage and wreak havoc. About a week ago Sunday, our guild forums came under attack by hackbots that were out to crack the passwords of members. This caused a huge headache and many moments of terror and panic but the attempts were thwarted at the beginning by our tight security which has been made even tighter since the initial attacks. Account security and safety for forum members is utmost in my mind at all times. I can appreciate fully the concerns and efforts Blizzard has on these topics as well.

As a guild leader, I’ve had to deal with guildies who've had their accounts hacked, oftentimes being the one who discovers that hack and opening the first ticket to nail the thief. More than once I’ve even had the opportunity to 'chat' with the thieves who try unsuccessfully to convince me they were the owner of the account. One of them even said to me, "Excuse me, I'm busy – my account has been hacked." <sigh>

In our guild, we talk daily in guild chat and on vent about account security. I post information on our forums under our 'Account Security' board and send out information to our email list. And yet friends and guildies still get hacked. And this past week, one of our own officers received a whisper ingame from a hacker pretending to be from Blizzard. The officer's account was hacked the next morning, and our guild bank was stripped of gold and items. I discovered the hack about 2 hours after it had happened and opened a ticket and notified the officer immediately. We got the items back within a few hours of my reporting the hack to Blizz – they were right on top of it and got the account secured and items returned in record time! As I said, I've had to deal with Blizz folks several times concerning guildies' hacked accounts and I just cannot praise those Blizz folks enough for their efforts.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Let's go over some ways to prevent these hacks from occurring. I will say that attempts will occur. There is no way to stop the attempts. Not with people being paid to do the attempts and being paid to create ways to do the attempts. Not gonna stop the attempts. Nope. Not gonna happen. So, what can we do? There a number of steps we can take that, when combined, will set up an nearly impenetrable defense. And I will state this over and over:

GET AN AUTHENTICATOR! Going without an authenticator on your account is like leaving your car running with the doors wide open and a 'Please Steal Me' sign on the dash. With an authenticator, combined with all the other measures below, you're protecting your credit card and bank account information as well.

A lot of the following information comes from Blizzard’s updated Account Security and You (Yes, You) - World of Warcraft (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2299938).

· Create an email address and password that are ONLY for your Battle.net account and be sure to use that email address and password ONLY for that account. If you get a phishing email to some other email address, you'll know it’s a hack attempt.

· Never give out your account information. Sharing account information with ANYONE is an easy way to lose control of your account and have your account compromised. Allowing someone else to access your account can definitely put it at risk because you can't control how that person will make use of your account information, or how secure their own system might be.

· Be mindful of phishing scams. Phishing scams are designed to trick you into giving out your account information, and they'll usually come in the form of emails or in-game messages that appear to be sent by Blizzard employees. Sometimes these messages encourage you to visit a malicious website, which might contain a web form, or even software that can steal your login information. In other cases, you may be asked to reply with your account name and password. NOTE: Some of these emails can look surprisingly legitimate, and even the links will lead to websites/pages that look authentic. DO NOT BE FOOLED! Suspect every email and whisper! (puts on tinfoil hat) Blizzard will NOT whisper you ingame about potential account violations and threats of closing your account. AND Blizzard will NOT ask for your password in any correspondence.

· Don't use gold selling or power-leveling services. Supporting these types of illicit services is not only against the Terms of Use, but it promotes botting, spamming, and other forms of exploitation -- as well as account theft. And that gold you're buying is commonly stolen from compromised accounts and turned around to be sold back to other players.

· Get an Authenticator. The Battle.net Authenticator and Mobile Authenticator are easy ways to add an additional level of security to your account. They work by providing a secure authentication code on command that's unique to your Battle.net account. After an Authenticator is associated with your Battle.net account, the authentication code will be necessary for each client and Account Management login, increasing your protection against account compromising attacks.

· Install antivirus and anti-spyware software. There are a number of programs that can help you identify and remove any viruses, Trojans, and/or keyloggers that may sneak onto your computer. KEEP THIS SOFTWARE UPDATED!

· Keep your operating system up-to-date. If you're using Windows, you can check for the most current updates at any time by visiting the Microsoft Windows Update page, or by clicking Windows Update in the Start menu. If you're a Mac user, you can check for software updates at Apple.com; Apple security updates are also available there.

· Keep your browser and browser plug-ins up-to-date. Browser updates can include new security definitions and more comprehensive phishing filters.

Paladin Basics: Judgements and Targeting

[PLEASE NOTE: This article has not been updated to reflect the 4.3 changes to Judgement and Seal of Insight. I will be updating it soon! ]




Welcome to Holy Paladin University with Professor Fannon.  This recurring series of articles is going to focus on the How-To's and How-Not-To's of healing Paladin-style, from the basics to the advanced.  In this introductory article I'm talkin' Judgments and how to hit the right internet dragon every time.


As a Holy Paladin one of the things you are going to be doing frequently is Judging.  Judgement is an offensive spell that is extremely important to a healing Paladin as it gives us a lot of benefits over the incredibly meager damage that it does, and you should be casting whenever it is available as much as you possibly can.  Reaching for the Judgement button is completely instinctual for me now.  It's to the point where I need to ensure that on my other characters I put something in that keybind that needs to be cast a lot, because it's an entirely automatic reflex.

A Holy Paladin using Seal of Insight casting Judgement on a target provides a lot of different benefits:

• Causes a small amount of damage to the target
• Automatically returns 15% of base mana (For me it's about 3400 at the moment)
• Counts as a melee attack, sometimes returning 4% base mana via Seal of Insight
• Gives Judgements of the Pure, providing a 9% Haste buff for 1 minute

At a minimum, a Holy Paladin should be casting this spell once per minute, simply for the extra haste from Judgements of the Pure.  However, in the Cataclysm healing environment, the mana return mechanisms are far more important and makes casting Judgement as often as possible critical.  Frequent Judging will help you have enough mana to heal longer fights and be more effective.

HITTING THE RIGHT TARGET

But in an era of Crowd Control, how do you make sure that you're hitting the right target?  How do you ensure that you're not going to get that nasty internet dragon munching on your face?

The trick to healing and Judging seamlessly is target selection, or rather, the lack thereof.  Normally, a healer is going to be rapidly targeting friendly players while casting heals.  If you then press Judgement (or any other attack) without first selecting a hostile target, the game will automatically target whichever mob is closest to you.  There is nothing worse that hitting the Judgement button and having the game select the wrong target, breaking Crowd Control or causing you to get aggro.  It's vitally important to make sure that you're Judging the right target.  Luckily, there is a very simple way to do this that doesn't require any add-ons or effort.

Focus

The default Focus Frame.  Hi Mack.

The easiest way to solve this problem is to use the Focus feature of the default user interface.  Focus allows you to 'tag' a mob or party member that you want to keep an eye on.  In the default UI, focusing on a target will give you another, movable unit frame with your Focus Target in it.  You can use this to keep an eye on your Focus Target's health, use it to quickly switch targets and many other things, but the real power of this feature comes from how it can be used in macros.

For Judgement, this is the macro that I use:

#showtooltip
/cast [exists,harm][@focustarget,exists,help][] Judgement

This macro will cast Judgement on your Focus Target's target if you have a focus, and on your current target if you don't.  This allows you to use it in groups or soloing without changing anything.

For both raiding and dungeons, the best thing to focus on is the Tank.  By always targeting the Tank's target while grouped, it is almost guaranteed that you will always be Judging the target that the Tank has the best threat on, and you will almost never break a Crowd Controlled mob early.  The best habit to get into is at the beginning of any dungeon or raid to set your Focus Target on the Tank and be content that each Judgement that you cast will hit the proper target.

This system can be used for all of your offensive spells by altering the macro for each spell.


To set a Focus Target, select what you want to focus and type /focus or right click on the unit frame and select Set Focus.  For more information on Focus and some of it's uses, check out Wowpedia's article: http://www.wowpedia.org/Focus_target

I have found that using Focus in this way is the simplest method of making sure that your Judgements hit the appropriate target.  What method, if any, do you use to make sure that you're not Judging the wrong target?  Do you use add-ons?  Or is it something that you haven't worried about?

This Week in Raiding: How Long is Your Raid

This Week in Raiding is a (hopefully) weekly feature discussing the raiding encounters that my guild tackled this week, the lessons learned from them, as well as any news or thoughts on raiding in general.  This week the lovely and talented Ophelie from Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon offers a guest post on Raid Lengths, proving that it is possible to be so full of awesomesauce that it could be bottled and sold in very upscale boutiques.


Hi everyone, Ophelie here from Bossy Pally. I'm helping entertain you keep things moving here while Fannon is spending time with his new family.

Since Fannon writes quite a bit about raiding, I thought I'd keep with the theme and write about raid lengths. That's right, lets forget about the size discussions for awhile. It's all about length today. (I'm fully aware of all the possible dirty jokes I could make here, but I'll be a good guest and spare you all my juvenile sense of humour.) 


HOW MUCH DOES LENGTH MATTER?

When shopping for a raiding guild, the raid schedule is most likely one of the first things you try to dig up on a guild website. (Why so many guilds bury their raid schedules under pages of uselessness, I'll never understand.) You check which days of the week they raid, how often they raid, if they raid at times where you'll be occupied with your real life dailies... But how much importance do you attribute to how long they raid?

Me, I'm really picky about raid lengths. Too short and the raid will be over by the time we get warmed up, too long and I'll inadvertently wander off, like a bored child in a shopping mall.

From my guild shopping experience, I'd estimate that most teams raid for 3 to 4 hours. Yet you'll occasionally come across some guilds that raid for less than 2 hours, and others with 8 or more hour long raids.


Making the most of your time

Do you have trouble starting on time? Do people randomly go afk? Do you frequently have players leaving before the raid ends?

If you notice a lot of time wasting, chances are your raids are too long. Your teammates are taking their precious raid minutes for granted. Or maybe your teammates just have the attention span of a newborn goldfish. Either way, too long, too long, too long. Cut, cut, cut.

Not the players, the raid. If you can't start on time, consider pushing back raid start-time by 30 minute. If a lot of people are leaving before finish time, think about chopping 30 minutes from the end of the raid. If people are wandering off outside of breaks, cut whichever side of the raid you prefer. You goal is to make sure that your team is able to sustain interest in what they're doing, newborn goldfish or not newborn goldfish. They need to be able to appreciate the time they spend getting smacked around by virtual monsters.

Obviously, be reasonable here, if you only have 1 or 2 players who are unreliable, and they're consistently unreliable, maybe the raids are too long for them but changing everyone's schedule is silly. If you really like those people and you're of the accommodating type, guilds who do those scary marathon days often swap players in and out after a few hours. If you have a few goldfish raiders, there's nothing stopping you from setting up a similar arrangement for your goldfish to relay each other (breaks make for great hello/goodbye time).


Time Perception: It's Like One of those Visual Illusion Thingies

Pretty much every team I've raided with had 3 hour raids. Most of the time, that's way longer than my attention span (I confess to being a goldfish) and this happens:

Me: ....
Me: ....
Me: Sorry was alt tabbed out.

But sometimes this happens:

Me: WHAT DO YOU MEAN LAST PULL?

What makes time fly during a raid?

• Limited dead time (in other words, fast recovery from wipes, no waiting around)
• Being encouraged to participate in strategy adjustment discussions
• Novelty (this includes new approaches to an old fight)
• A feeling of learning something
• A feeling of teamwork or, at very least, camaraderie (according to my very unscientific and highly biased personal experience, the perceived length of raids is inversely proportional to the number of times the /flirt emote is used)

The Time Spent Raiding Sweet Spot

My paladin grew up on a PvE, fairly casual server during BC and early Wrath. There was one guild that aimed to be "hardcore". They had 6 hour raids several times a week (note: I don't know for sure if this was true or not, but for the sake of the moral of the story, we're going to pretend it was true). Rumour had it that they did all the "hardcore" things: forcing standby players to stand outside the instance during raids , raid kicking anyone who screwed up, imposing unreasonable farming quotas.

"Wow", I used to think. "They're so hardcore."

Then, one day, I transferred to a more progressive server. I quickly realized that the "hardcore" guild was only hardcore in attitude. Their boss kills were nothing out of the ordinary. Despite raiding about 20 hours a week and treating their players badly, they were hardly progressive.

At the other end of the spectrum is Imperative, one of those super intimidating top world guilds. Even though they only raid for 3.5 hours at a time, they cause heroic bosses to seize up and topple over dead wherever they go.

It's like that "Studying for Exams Curve", where the more you study, the better grade you get, up to a certain point, where studying more stops having much of an effect. Everyone plateaus out at some point, and the key to being efficient means finding that sweet spot.




Time, the Elusive Resource

Whether you're raid scheduling or you're shopping for a raid team, keep the sweet spot in mind. The team's sweet spot and your own. Time is a rare, special thing, and you want to make the most of it.

Coping with Limited Play-Time and Lofty Goals

If you have been following me on Twitter, you may know that my wife and I are expecting our first little Dwarven Battle Baby pretty much any minute. I have taken to calling her the Dwarfling, and she represents an upcoming shift in my personal priorities. Apparently my new priorities in life are going to revolve around poop for a long while, and an 'Epic Wipe' is going to have an entirely different meaning than it does now.

A newborn Dwarfling is a wonderful thing that is, aside from poop, full of endless possibilities and uncertainties. The one thing that is absolutely certain is that my WoW playing time is going to be far more constrained than it is now, assuming Mrs. Fannon lets me anywhere near the computer in the first place.

However, even given the limitations on my free time, I still have very lofty goals when it comes to WoW. I still want to continue raiding with my guild and stay on track for getting all the current raid content down before the first major patch. I still haven't abandoned my priestly namesake who needs to be leveled and geared yet. Not to mention the Druid and Shaman that are withering from lack of attention (I can hear them now; the level 18 Shaman is saying in her weirdly sexy dwarfish brogue, "C'mon, lemme heal somethin'", and the level 6 Druid is saying, "Please get me out of these clown clothes already").

And I want to continue writing for and growing this blog, since I have enjoyed writing about WoW as much as I enjoy playing it.

So then, you may ask, what is my strategy to do both? I have been giving this some thought over the past few weeks, and since a lot of people have jobs and children and spouses and all sorts of different things that restrict their playing time, I thought it might be helpful to share my thoughts with everyone.


PRIORITIES FIRST, PLEASE

Firstly, it's important to set priorities. I realize that WoW is just a game, and as such, necessarily needs to take a backseat to what's happening in the real world. If the Dwarfling is crying, poopy or having any of the issues that babies are prone to, my raid team is just going to have to wait until she's taken care of. The bosses aren't going anywhere, and will be there when I'm done.


GETTING THE BOSS ON BOARD

I should mention at this point that despite my best efforts, my Wife does not play WoW. I've tried, believe me, but she just doesn't have any interest in the game.

If you have a spouse, it's important to get them on your side. WoW has a reputation as a nortorious relationship killer, and while that certainly can be true, it's no worse than any other time or money consuming interest that you don't share with your spouse. If I spent all my time out at a bowling alley instead of playing WoW, that could present just as much of a problem. It's important to talk to your spouse and let them know how much you enjoy WoW and what it does for you (relaxation, stress-relief, escape, etc). If they know that it is important to you, it is far more likely that they will give you the time that you need.

My wife and I have discussed my WoW time at great length and various volume levels during the years that I have been playing. I still don't think she quite understands how or why I enjoy the game so much, or how much of a stress release it can be (the stress of an entire nights worth of wipes, notwithstanding). But, after all this discussions and arguments, and I think we have reached a point of mutual understanding: She knows that she has precedence, but allows me my stress relief as well. Well, at least until the dishes need to be done or something.

Communication is key. If you don't talk to your family about this game and why it's important, it will always be an irritant if they feel that it's getting in the way of their time with you. Share it, talk about it, even if they don't play try to involve them in it to some degree. I tell my wife about all my raids, and even through her utter disinterest she listens. She doesn't care, and thinks that killing Internet Dragons is silly, but the fact that I want her to be a part of it means something to her. It's just like telling her how work went, except with shiny purples at the end.


SCHEDULING FOR DUMMIES

I have found the best way to ease the tensions between my wife and my WoW is to set aside specific times of the week for play time. The rest of the time is spent with her, either relaxing and enjoying each other's company, or doing household tasks that seem endless. The arrival of the Dwarfling means that there are a lot more things to do, so scheduling play time becomes even more important.

As of right now, I have two raid nights a week scheduled and essentially an hour of play time per night. It's never set in stone, of course, since Life Comes First, but it's at a point where I have regular play times set aside and the stress and arguments have been drastically reduced. I get the feeling that there will be some renegotiation when the dirty diapers start piling up, but if she knows that my game time on Sundays and Mondays always ends at 9 o'clock, then she can plan things around that. It's all about being respectful to your family and their needs, as well as taking care of your own.


MAKING THE MOST OF THE TIME YOU'VE GOT

How many game sessions have you spent sitting in Stormwind or Dalaran or wherever, just standing in front of the bank, not really sure what to do? I know it happens to me all the time. Sometimes I'm not sure whether I want to hit a heroic, farm some ore, play an alt or whatever, and I just end up idling in the city and commenting in guild chat at how idiotic trade chat is.

As anyone with limited availability will attest, this is an atrocious waste of your precious game time.

When you have a limited time budget, it's ideal to have a plan on what you want to do before you sit down and log in. By setting a goal or at least an activity you will be able to waste less time doing nothing. Frankly, I'm horrible at this, but it's something that I need to get better at. And quickly, too.

My plan is to focus on one thing per evening. I don't really have time every day to do all my dailies, run my daily heroic, farm the ore I need for Jewelcrafting and at the same time level three alts. To be time efficient, I am going to focus on one of these tasks each play session, with the highest priority going to the daily heroic in order to stockpile the valor points I need to gear up. When I only have an hour or so, or at a time when I could be pulled away at any moment, I'll focus on the other things.

The nice thing about leveling alts through questing is that you can stop and log out at any moment without inconveniencing anyone else like you would in a raid or heroic. This makes alts ideal for people with limited play time. If your goal is like mine and you want to be progression raiding however you need to be careful of this, as alts are a notorious time-sink and can take your focus away from your raiding characters. But it's a great way to sneak some play time in when you only have a few minutes to play.


QUEST REWARDS

World of Warcraft is a hobby. As something I enjoy it becomes a bit of an escape from the trials and grinds of the real world. As such, it's a great incentive to use to movtivate yourself to get unpleasant things done so you can have more time having fun in Azeroth. It's also a bargaining chip that you can use to negotiate play time with your significant other, if needed.

When I sit down to spend some time on my computer playing, the last thing that I want to do is to have to stop in the middle of something and go and take out the trash, or pick up the dog crap in the backyard, mow the grass or whatever. The interruptions make getting anything done, both in Azeroth and the real world much harder and much more frustrating. There is nothing worse that telling your raid leader that you need to go and empty the dishwasher and nobody is really going to mind 15 minutes of their flask time ticking away for no reason, will they? Raid leaders know a lot of very colourful four-letter words, and they save them for moments like that.

So, using WoW as a reward for getting your jobs done is a great way to maximize the chances of uninterrupted game time. Baby is asleep, diapers are thrown away and wife is all happy? Great, time for a little WoW. Had a particularly stressful day at work and need some PVP pwnage to make you feel better? Mow the lawn first and then go kill those rogues and warlocks.

I find there is nothing worse than having a task of some kind that needs to be done looming over my head when I sit down to play. It's far better to get things done before playing, and not after. This is also something I need to get better at.


CAN THIS ACTUALLY WORK?

I think so. I think it's possible to still have enough play time to do what I want to do in WoW and still be a great father and husband to my family. They key is to set realistic expectations for yourself, and to be mindful of your family and their needs and most importantly, place them first. If it's your job or other activities that are restricting your time, rewarding yourself for getting everything else done is an excellent way to ensure that you have some uninterrupted and guilt-free play time.

Remember, WoW is a recreational activity. It's really no different than a bowling league, or a chess club or anything else. If you want to play, then set aside some regular, scheduled time and do so.

Second Lesson from Heroics: Hard Choices

As a healer, I take it personally when someone in my party has their health bar dip.  It’s my job, after all, to ensure that they survive so that they can do their thing.  With the new realities of healing and mana management there are limitations to what a healer can do to keep people alive.  This leads to the healer having to make some hard choices when prioritizing who gets what heal and when.

(As an aside, how has no one coined the term Mana-gement yet?  Mananagement, maybe?)

Balance

With very expensive yet weak heals relative to health pools, it has become normal for people to be at less than full health during an encounter.  Therefore, a healer needs to be mentally balancing three fundamental things constantly:

1) The Tank’s Health

2) The Healer’s Mana bar

3) The Party’s Health as a whole

Thinking of the party in these terms simplifies the scope of healing.  You don’t need to worry about 5 different health bars so much as you have to worry about three things:  Keep your tank at a survivable level of health, keep your mana bar up, and keep enough, preferably all of the party alive to finish the encounter. 

Striking the successful balance between these three important factors is at the heart of the Cataclysm healing paradigm.  Sacrificing any one of these elements generally means a wipe, while a properly balanced approach should be successful.  For example, if your tank is low on health but not in critical danger of dying, spamming large heals to top him up at the expense of your mana reserves means that you will not be able to last long enough to finish the encounter.  Likewise, keeping your mana high is pointless if everyone is dying on you.

Yes, this is normal.  Don't Panic.

The Needs of the Many…

A great example of this balancing act occurred last night during a Heroic Throne of the Tides run.  It was a partial guild run with myself, the Tank and a Shadow Priest in the group which was rounded out by a Mage and a Rogue that we found using the LFD tool.  It was a great group, actually, and the run went quite smoothly.  It’s amazing how much easier Lady Naz’jar is with proper crowd control.

However, during the Commander Ulthok encounter I ran into one of these hard decisions that really crystallized this whole balance idea in my mind.  If you have not done the encounter, Ulthok creates Dark Fissures on the ground that expand throughout the fight, similar to the Lich King’s Defile.  There is nothing that can be done about these, you simply need to avoid them and is the key mechanic with this fight.

One mistake that our tank made was that he allowed the first Fissure to be dropped in the centre of the room, which eventually seriously limited the space that we were able to safely occupy during the encounter.  After the first one, he tanked and kited the boss around the edge of the room properly and everything was proceeding fine.

However, about halfway into the fight, I notice one of our damage dealers standing in the middle of the room taking damage from the first Fissure and not moving out of it.  It was the Shadow Priest from our guild, who is a very good player, but it left me with a dilemma:  Do I heal him or not?  In Wrath it wouldn’t even have been a question; I would have spammed big heals on him and the boss would have been dead before it became an issue.  Not so, now.

I chose not to heal him.

That felt really, really wrong, but it was the right call.

In order to heal him, I would have had to start casting my fast, expensive Flash Heal just to keep up with the damage.  It would have saved him, at least for a while, but it also would have destroyed my mana reserves in very short order; jeopardizing the entire encounter and violating the principle of balance.  By recognizing that the Priest was beyond help unless he moved allowed me to focus on what I could save, and ultimately get the kill.

The Lesson

Cataclysm heroic dungeons (and I assume Cataclysm raids, even though I’m not there yet) force you to rethink who you are healing and with what spell.  Many people will tell you that as a healer, you must prioritize the tank and yourself and screw the damage dealers.  I feel this is a flawed strategy, as a party with no damage won’t kill much of anything.  You must strike the balance and keep all three parts of the party alive and functioning.  Sacrificing one-third of your damage to save the whole is one of the hard choices that you’re going to have to get used to making as a Cataclysm healer.

Next Up: Heroics

A few normal dungeon runs tonight and Thosif is now eligible to queue for Heroic dungeons.  Well, barely able to queue.  I am at 329 exactly and had to cheat a little to get that.  I have two ilvl 333 items that have +Hit on them, and PVP Ornate Pyrium Gauntlets that put me over the top.  The gauntlets, while they have a lot of useless Resilience, are still a major upgrade to the Stormhammer Gauntlets that I was wearing before.

This is why I love the Reforging concept so much.  Reforging allows you not only to optimize gear, but to turn a piece that is an absolute upgrade in all ways but one into something useful.  The flexibility is greatly appreciated by this Holy Paladin.  Using the gauntlets as an example:  They come with Int and +140 haste.  I reforged the haste into spirit and then enchanted the gloves to give back +50 haste.  The net result is 56 Spirit and 134 Haste.  An effective compromise.

Ophelie has a great article about reforging for Holy Paladins over at Bossy Pally.  As well, Kurn has put out the definitive list of pre-raid gear for Holy Paladins.

My gearing strategy has been to emphasize Spirit and Haste over Crit and Mastery.   Any item that is missing either of those two stats is getting reforged, if possible.  I am tending to lean towards putting spirit on first over haste for the extra regeneration and I think my mana longevity is good so far. 

The bosses on the normal modes have been much, much easier than I thought they were going to be.  I have been jumping into the dungeons without a great deal of prep work beforehand, and it hasn't really mattered yet.  Some of the mechanics are important (like the Upwind buff on Altarius and Grounding Field on Assad in Vortex Pinnacle), but the trash is way more dangerous than the bosses if it's pulled wrong.  I have yet to wipe on a boss fight on normal; all my wipes have come to bad or accidental pulls on the trash packs.  I'm sure its worse on heroic, and I'll find that out first hand tomorrow.

Fannon’s Tip of The Day:  Once you are at the level cap you can change the XP bar to show a Faction’s Reputation so that you can keep track of it as you're grinding.  To enable this, go to your Reputation Tab (default Hotkey is U) and click on the Reputation you want to track.  This pops up a box with a couple of checkboxes, one of which is Show as Experience Bar.  Check the box and you’ll have a Reputation Bar on the bottom showing you how much rep you need to get to the next tier.