Blaming the healers

Lately I’ve been playing with my wife and our guild leader in random dungeons and sometimes raids, but even if I’m not amongst the healers myself, I always choose their side when the need arises. Luckily, most PUGs have the common sense not to blame the healer unless it’s really just the healer’s fault. If they don’t, the healer leaves and the group either falls apart or waits for a long time to get a new healer.

Now, I’m not saying that the healers are never to blame when things go wrong. On the contrary, failing healers are something I’ve seen a lot, myself included, and in those cases the healers can and may absolutely be slapped around gently to make sure they’re paying attention. I’ve even caught myself falling asleep during a boss fight at one time, luckily it was only for a second or two and nothing went wrong. But that’s another story.

Usually, there’s no problem with the healers. Everybody understands their role and follows tactics. Everybody tries their hardest to kill that boss or whatever. But sometimes it happens that somebody makes a mistake and there’s a wipe. Nothing serious, nothing to get all worked up for, it just happens sometimes. But sometimes, it’s a really stupid mistake or lack of listening to the raid leader. And in that case, that person should absolutely take the blame for a potential wipe. But sometimes, that’s not what happens.
Sometimes, the healers get blamed. They get blamed because somebody didn’t do their job right. And for all I’ve seen, 9 of out 10 times shit happens, it’s not the healers’ fault. And even if it is the healer’ fault, yelling at people really won’t help solve anything. The best thing you can do is to get back up and try again.

On other news, yesterday evening I got into an ICC 25 group with far too low gear, so I was really happy to be accepted in the group. I know tactics and they needed a pally healer for the tanks, so I gotl lucky. Okay, it helped that my wife was already in that group and recommended me. But still!
I got extra lucky, some trash dropped the Belt of the Lonely Noble, so I got a major gear upgrade. Even without gems and enchants, it’s better than what I had. I got some time to gem it right before starting the Marrowgar fight though, so at least my gear was decent.
Basically, I healed my ass off and at the end of the second wipe at Marrowgar I was on top of the healing meters. I know they don’t say how good a healer you are, but it does prevent bitching about me being a healer with a lower gearscore than others. The funny thing is, I managed to keep me and my assigned tank alive until the very last second. I don’t think anyone could’ve said anything bad about my healing, even if I wasn’t on my best that evening. Too bad the group fell apart, but the raid leader did whisper me and wanted me back for another run sometime soon. So, yay for me! Maybe someday I’ll have to rename this blog because I won’t be a failadin anymore 😉

ToTC 25, Ony 10 and more

It’s been a hell of a week! I’ve been kept busy writing up a report that had to be done while ago, but that hasn’t kept me from some late night failing with my failadin.

Late Friday night (more like early Saterday morning) I managed to get into a group for ToTC 25 man. With my current gear, that’s pretty insane. I don’t have the achievement, so I was really happy to have been accepted when I told the raid leader I didn’t have the achievement, but I do know the tactics.

A little background information here: I’ve been looking up and explaining tactics for my guildies whenever they would raid. Mostly just by being logged in, whispering them what to do on which fight. Reading up and watching the fights as they go on (I could easily watch over my wife’s shoulder as she raided) really helped in creating an understanding of the fight mechanics. Besides Ulduar, there aren’t a lot of fights I don’t know the tactics for.

So, back to the ToTC raid. I got into the group as a healer, so I was pretty excited. My wife joined on as a healer too, so we got on ventrilo. The raid got full pretty quick, so after summoning a bunch of people we got inside and prepared for the first fight. Which, of course, are actually three fights. The whole thing went by pretty fast, I only died at the end, on a charge from Icehowl no less. First big fat fail of the evening, and counting.

Despite my death, the fight went smooth. Gee, what a surprise. For the healing meter addicts among us, I only managed to push about 2.1k HPS at that point, so I’d been pretty much useless compared to the other healers. Of course, I know that the healing meters don’t say it all, but still.On to the next fight. Lord Jaraxxus went down pretty fast, and as I had healing tunnel vision, I’m not even sure what was going on. I know I died right at the end though, again. Big fat fail #2.

The next fight, Faction Champions. Complete and utter chaos. There seemed to be some form of coordination prior to the fight, but once it started, everything was chaos. I personally believe nobody really knew what went wrong as we wiped, as everyone was blaming someone else. Luckily the healers didn’t get the blame though. I did manage to be the last man standing, twice. We wiped at least 5 times before the raid disbanded. No interesting loot, but that’s okay. High repair bill, but it was worth it.

On to the next raid of this week. Last night a few guildies and me set up a group for Onyxia 10 man. We agreed that I wouldn’t heal, but my wife and our guild leader’s alt would heal. So, a druid and a priest. I would try to be useful in my Retribution spec. Not that I really like Retribution, but it got me through the last 10 levels questing and I managed to get some gear from drops in heroics. We pulled through pretty easily, despite a wipe on the first trash due to not everyone being ready and overpulling by accident at the same time. Unfortunate, but nobody really seemed to mind. We also wiped on the first Onyxia try, but again, nobody really cared. It was the offtank’s fault, he admitted it before anyone was pointing fingers. Pretty relaxed group, even though I say so myself. After that, everything went as it was supposed to. No speed kill achievement, but that’s okay. We managed, I got the achievement for Onyxia 10 man and we went to bed after one last heroic dungeon run. Failure count: only 2!

My first steps into 80

So I posted a little late. By now my pally is 80 and has begun his first steps into heroics and even raids.

It’s Sunday evening as I finally break 80 and I immediately get a gift from the guild leader, the TitanSteel Guardian. I have some more level 80 gear in my bank, so my starting gear is at least acceptable. My wife, the guild leader (who is a very good friend of both of us) and me start doing some heroics. Achievements keep on popping up and I’m the happiest little (I am a dwarf, after all) paladin Azeroth has ever seen. After a little while, the guild leader goes offline and my wife pushes me to get me into a raid. The weekly raid is Patchwerk and since it isn’t exactly the hardest raid boss to kill, I get in. As a healer no less. Imagine my surprise as I ended up single-handedly healing through Patchwerk in a 10 man raid for the weekly. Not only did I have to do it, I did it! With relative ease, even. My confidence boosted, I went to buy my first piece of T9 gear, the gloves. They made the biggest difference, stat wise.

As my gear score went up, my wife convinces me to join in Wintergrasp. After getting the Within Our Grasp achievement, both Dalaran and Wintergrasp are swarming with people looking for a group for Vault of Archavon. I get into one, even with my low gear score and no achievements to show. Too bad they didn’t let me heal, but it was probably for the best, even though my dps sucks. No, really. I just got a new weapon and didn’t have my weapon skill up to par. So I ended up doing weapon skill training in VoA. Nobody cared for my low dps though, so now I have 3/4 VoA bosses down in 10 man mode.

Last heroic dungeon of the day, Forge of Souls. It’s getting late but that’s no real excuse, since I’m still quite awake. Of course, after doing all those new things for my fresh 80 pally tends to get the adrenaline pumping. And now, Forge of Souls heroic? Not really sure if I could do it, I managed to let a few people die, lots of times. The spike damage seemed just brutal. I couldn’t keep up at all. Luckily, I did quite good considering my relative low gear for that particular dungeon so I didn’t get too much bitching about my healing. We managed to get to the last boss without any people leaving, so I am kind of proud of that. On the final boss however, we wiped, twice. I just couldn’t keep up, again. At all. Not even close. Lucky for me, the tank was a pally too and he seemed impressed by my healing, even though I couldn’t quite cut it. All of our dps’ers left the group after the second wipe, so we decided to let me switch to dps and find new people. We didn’t have to wait long, and we did finish the dungeon. I even got a new piece of gear from it, though I forgot what it was. The tank and I ended up need rolling on it, but I won 😛 better luck next time, mate. But, I did manage to fail properly as a failadin should. My day was done.

The next day, I manage to get into a VoA group again, this time for 25 man. And this time, I get to heal. Loving every second of it, we boost through VoA like it’s nothing and my healing really didn’t suck that bad. I’m not a big fan of the all-saying healing meters (can you smell the sarcasm?) but I did manage to push myself to a neat 3.1k hps. I did feel kind of proud I wasn’t absolutely useless, even though my gear suggests otherwise. Gawd do I hate the GearScore addon. It’s nice and al, but people tend to hang on to those numbers far more than they should. Skill is worth something too, and I think I’ve proven that.

Now, I’m only 3 days into level 80 and I have the speedkill achievement for Patchwerk, 3/4 VoA 10man boss kills, 2/4 VoA 25man boss kills and a load of heroic dungeon achievements. I even managed to get into a group for the new weekly raid, as a healer. So add a few achievements for Ulduar to that list. I already have 2 pieces of T9 gear and more sweetness coming up (another gift from my wife and guild leader).  Man, I feel like I’m the luckiest pally ever.

I may be a failadin, but I managed to do something right for once.

Playing the Failadin

Welcome to my first blog post, ever. I have absolutely no idea if this is going to work out or not, but stick around and we’ll see.

Allright, here goes…

I’ve decided to start blogging a bit about my thoughts on Holy Paladins and WoW in general. Mainly because I’ve been reading about different approaches to Holy Paladins and felt a need to express my own feelings towards them. Partially because I just love playing my Holy Pally and want to share my thoughts on different aspects of playing, or playing with, a healadin.

I’m about to hit 80 as I write this (my wife is so kind as to finish up a few quests for me) and I wanted to share my thoughts on leveling as a healadin. First, some history on my character, Kaboomski. I’ll post an armory link somewhere later on.

I started out when my wife was already playing for a few months. Shortly after she hit 80 and things were still looking fun, she decided to get me a trial account. Partially for the mount, but mainly because she knew I love playing WoW. Both of us had been playing before, on her account. She started a few years back, pre-TBC, as a NightElf Druid. We’ve both played that toon for a while, but when a friend of us started a private server, we went to play on that. We didn’t play much at first and we thought it would be a waste of money, which we didn’t have much of anyway. After a two year period of playing on a private server, we got fed up with the numerous annoying and sometimes gameplay ruining bugs. Raiding or battlegrounds were just not an option on the server we played on. Even though we didn’t even miss it at first, after a while we just stopped playing.

Then, when WotLK came out, the urge to play came back. We purchased both TBC and WotLK and my wife started playing her druid again. This time, she decided to stick to the game and push through. After a while, she got into a very nice guild and things were looking up.

Back to where I got my trial account. I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to play. I knew I wanted to play Alliance because I wanted to play together with my wife and her toon is a Night Elf. I knew I loved the flexibility that druids have, but I didn’t want to play a druid because I felt I would be imitating her. Besides, it’s always more fun to play different classes together. So, I got to thinking and decided that I would try a paladin.

My wife created an alt, a human warlock, and we started playing. The beginning is still the beginning, but after only a few levels, I knew I made the right choice. My story about me leveling really isn’t all that interesting, as it involved lots of boosts by guildies and the like. The only interesting part about it, was that I could easily pretend to be useful, by doing the one thing I really wanted to do: heal like crazy. Of course, healing an 80 when you’re only about 40 isn’t all that spectacular. But hey, it made me feel useful. Imagine how I felt when I got to use BoK! No penalty for being a lowbie, that buff never changes. I loved every cast of it.

Fast forward to now. I’m about to hit 80, with the help of my wife’s druid. We’re going to finish up some quests in Icecrown and that should get me there. I’ll keep blogging about my experiences as a, probably often failing, paladin. Until then, remember to have fun! It is a game, after all 😉