*smiling*

Just wanted to flip the lights on in here in the ol' blog. Shake the dust off.

Tanking going just fine. Paladin tanking is solid right now. Druid tanking is still awesome-fun, however does not have the oomph as covered in recent dev-chat posts in the forums.

Rogue is a blast to play. Well on his way to legendaries.

Hope all is well with you!

Fishing Tips

Level your fishing - the time efficient way. There are a lot of philosophies on how to level Fishing - there are any number of advocates for actually not leveling Fishing at all and just as many advocating innumerable ways to go about leveling it and what to level it with.

Having leveled many toons and for most also their professions, I've tried out several different ways and found several "time efficient ways" to go about it. This post is not about telling you the 'best way' - not sure there is one given that some people simply enjoy fishing in game, some like to do it as they level, and some do it because it serves a need (alchemy, cooking, or simply checking that box that something was not left "undone"!).

There is a very time efficient way to level your fishing and it falls generally into the following two steps:

1) Fish while you are unavoidably waiting. Invariably, you will have downtime during which you are waiting: waiting for a cool down (e.g. hearth, other profession CD, heroism, mass summon), waiting for a boat, waiting for a respawn, waiting for your friend(s) to get online, waiting for an invite, waiting for your quest mob to rez (thank you other faction for wasting our time), or simply the invariable waiting to then again be waiting again. Find a pond, stream, shore, water-body within a city and cast a fishing bobber into the water. You might find that you are in a zone that requires a higher level of fishing than you have currently, use a lure, Use ability on a rod or  hat or what not - or simply pass up on that moment and don't stress it.

2) Fish while you do your fishing dailies. Have no fear, you will get to max cap level and there will be dailies and you will level your fishing simply casting to complete the daily; however, you can begin doing your fishing dailies much sooner (pretty much right away) and as long as you are hearthed at a major city, you'll be able to do them - wait for it - daily. The added perk of doing your dailies often is that you also get guild xp and rep.

For extra time efficiency bonus points, do your fishing dailies while you are waiting. Oh yeah!

If your guild is looking to accomplish achievements associated with # of fish fished out of pools, leveling your fishing while waiting near a fish pool is a great way to contribute. You can also participate in guild events structured around fishing - for example, if they are giving away one of those snazzy other faction non-combat pets to the person that farms up the most fished fish from fish pools that week (typically conditional on the guild passing a certain milestone (half way mark to the achievement for example).

 

 On the cusp of the 4.2 to 4.3 transition, and with fresh eyes having just returned to the game recently, the State of the Paladin is very healthy. Overall, without feeling imbalanced, the paladin class feels strong in all three of its roles.

Tanking - Even with Holy Shield manually (or macro) applied, the tanking rotation has returned to a natural-feeling and physiologically/mechanically comfortable rhythm with ample room for spice and options. You can easily slide in an interrupt if your Captain America shield is on CD with Rebuke without missing a beat in holding the pack or single target mob. You can heal yourself or the group and spread Hands or other helpful spells all while doing your primary task of keeping the targets under control, moving to stay out of the bad, and keeping your friends from harm's way. Most of all, something that I am hearing confirmed by many healers, is that the Paladin tank is not squishy and is not difficult to gear with a little focused discipline. As a healer and in speaking with other healers, DK tanks continue to be very squishy and bad can go to ugly quickly for them; warrior tanks are either rock solid or highly squishy and the former are far more rare than the latter - this may be more that they are DPS warriors putting on the gear for the shorter random queues; druid tanks are a mana hole in the ground however if you are not in such a rush that you cannot drink between every 1-2 fights, it is not that much of an issue. Of all of them, the Paladin tank is coming across as the easiest to heal with average mana pools and without constantly having to trip CDs under code red conditions.

Healing - Long gone are the days where the Paladin was immediately set to tank healing role and our capability to take on any healing role and task is now well established. I highly doubt this will be reversed even in future patches or releases now that Blizzard has found how to allow any class to take on any healing role. Whereas the tanking role is really about control and moving the boss when the boss needs to be moved and if someone is standing in the bad it is someone else's problem, the healer's role is to try to find the places from which they can reduce movement as much as possible, heal the people standing in the bad, and if the boss needs to be moved, it is someone else's problem. And healing people standing in the bad (as long as they do it only for limited times as exposure to the bad is now designed to be fatal) is brisk and does not interrupt keeping the tank alive - in fact, it contributes to keeping the tank alive with Beacon and well-placed shocks to build up LoD or single-target WoG.

DPS - Mercifully, not seeing anywhere near as many Ret paladins swamping the 5-mans anymore. That ravaging swarm has phased out and passed on. Those that remain, have learned - for the most part - how to play their role within a larger group rather than be an individual who happens to have 4 other people in the same instance with them! Extremely well-geared Retadins are certainly out-dpsing other classes, however, for the most part they are running a strong 2nd place with respectable dps output and enough utility spells to be a strong contributor to the group success - especially when things go bad.

In summary, while I am hearing a lot of "they need to fix this" or "hope they improve that in the next patch" for other classes, I am not hearing the same for the Paladin. Fabulous. Play on!

Rest Bonus

Over the greater part of 2011, I parked my interest in wow in 'the inn' and came back just recently after much-needed break... and the rest bonus is helping me compound my interest for the troll heroics and the changes since I left early Spring.

It wasn't a 'much needed break' because I needed time away from the game for any negative reasons within the game but rather that I simply needed to focus more time on things offline. Work had me traveling a fair amount and when not traveling, there were plenty of things at home to catch up on.

That being said, when you have time to get some distance on something, you have opportunity to see things in a different light than you typically view them in. And what I was hearing from players still playing the game, and what I was reading online from time to time, or hearing during the occasional log on all pointed to a rather negative prognosis for the game. That being said, how the heck would I know? I wasn't there.

Having recently returned, it is still too soon to speak authoritatively; however, perhaps it is the strength of the rest bonus, or perhaps that I was hesitant due to the negative image I had heard and hence it seems far more positive than those claims, or perhaps it is something else. Regardless of what it is, I can assert that within the game, I am finding lighthearted (no pun intended) camaraderie again - even amongst strangers in pugs. Sure, there is the occasional asshat, however it is by no means the majority as I saw in early Spring as I was headed off for some wow-rest bonus. It is nowhere near the levels described to me from those still steeped in the game while I was offline. And I have not heard much to do about negative reports in the past few weeks - so perhaps as a community, we have moved past that phase and are back at it again.

One way or another, we're headed off again in a forward direction.

A long time ago, I tanked and healed (back when you paid the gold to re-spec each time and had to go to the bank to get your other set of gear because 14-slot bags were *huge* -- come to think of it, even the bank seemed huge even though it did not have bag slots). Therefore, it seemed appropriate to return and seriously dual-activity (not just dual-spec) into tanking and healing -- and what a fabulous amount of fun variety that provides!

I needed the rest bonus. It is making things so vivid now and that's a great way to spend time with friends.

(If you look at the image with the post previous to this one, obviously the toon has come along quite a ways in just a short few days: the clown suit is gone, and he appears to have greyed quite a bit - that might have to do with his player!)

Clown Outfits Again!

 

There seems to be an uncomfortable stage again as evidenced by the image of my paladin above. He is clearly wearing baby blue, aquamarine, green, yellows, red, purple, pink and many other colors in the palette. This is what happens when you have a good range of gear from i316 to i346. Sadly, none of it went very well together at i316 or i325 either for that matter! On the upside, the clown outfit performs very, very well. His healing set is significantly more cohesive and toned down - healing, after all, in Cata is no laughing matter!

Druids Use Agility Trinkets, not Tanking Trinkets!

It is good advice that when you cannot say something nice, do not say anything at all.

Heroic pugs with uninformed, lazy and disrespectful players that interact in a manner that I cannot fathom they would do in real life is how I have been spending my time.

I guess I have nothing to say on the topic. = )

From 85 to Raid Ready Timelines & Expectations

The leveling and "raid ready" timelines have been completely inverted from the BC and Wrath models. In the BC and Wrath expansions, it took longer to level to the new end cap level (70 and 80, respectively) than it took to gear up to start raiding the new tier. However, players would be well advised to change their expectations on how long it will take to be ready to join a raid group after they hit level 85 in this Cata expansion - it takes much longer to gear up to be raid ready than it takes to level from 80 to 85.

Depending on how well players aligned themselves while leveling to the faction reputation gains they need in order to purchase the blues or epics, they may have a short or long road of faction reputation grinding ahead of them before they have those requisite pieces to hold their own in heroics (the epics translating also into pre-raid readiness).

If they managed their gold well, they will be in a great position to purchase mats or finished crafted pieces; however, there is a chance that they may have some significant grinding to do in order to finance crafted gear and certainly in order to maintain a good supply of flasks which are easily selling for 250g a piece.

Of course, with so few guilds currently unlocking the new fish feast, every raider needs to either cook their own 90 stat buff food, or buy stacks of it. They will need these in the heroics anyways.

Last but not least, there is surviving the heroics over and over in order to get those requisite i346 pieces in order to perform at an entry-level in raids. A tremendous benefit of how Blizzard has set up the end game pre-raid is that rather than spend a lot of time practicing leveling and little time practicing raiding like in BC and Wrath, in Cata we spend very little time practicing our leveling skills and spend a lot of time practicing our raiding skills in fabulously interesting boss fights in the heroics. In effect, we are spending our time practicing the skills we need to be successful for the majority of the expansion (unlike in Wrath and BC).

While it will take most people only a small handful of days to reach level 85 from level 80, it will take them a much longer time to run the regular dungeons to prepare for heroic dungeons to then run the heroic dungeons to prepare for raids.

Raid leaders and guild officers are well-advised to manage these expectations to reduce the chances of people getting frustrated with an unexpected delay in gratification.

As a rule of thumb, I tell people that if the random dungeon finder tells you that you are not geared enough for heroics, you aren't and you should do more regular randoms. Also, if you do not have at least an i346+ average item level on your character sheet (and that doesn't mean stacking items in your bags that are not your main spec!), then you are not ready to start raids and be helpful to the raid group. Btw, items in your bags are averaged into your character sheet Item Level average - putting them in your bank and checking your average item level when the only gear on your character is worn gear will give you a more accurate average.

There are no hard and fast rules and we all hear about the ultra guilds that cleared Naxx wearing T6 still. Sure. However, for the most part if someone is not wearing the epics from reputation and crafting, I don't believe they have put in enough time to get ready to join the rest of the raiders that have. They are also the ones that have not read up on the fights.

Time in preparation is never wasted.