Miss Medicina has come up with a healing questionnaire on her blog to get some cross-promotion going among smaller healing bloggers. She also has an extremely pretty blog design, but that’s another thing entirely. Anyway, here are my answers.

• What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer? Elisse, human priest. I’m holy for PVE and disc for PVP.
• What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans) A bit of everything, really. I’m not officially raiding, so I do 10s and 25s PUGs, the occasional heroic, and I love my battlegrounds.
• What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why? Penance. You project. Laser beams. On your allies. And those laser beams make little bubbles. It does not get any better than that. Aside from looking pretty, I love the fact that it’s channeled, so that some of the healing always goes through in that clutch moment even if you get interrupted.
• What healing spell do you use least for your class and why? Binding Heal. I know, it’s a shame. A priest of three years, I just never got into the habit of using it, and now it’s ended up just not being a spell I think of when I need to heal both myself and someone.
• What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why? Being able to have many niches! We’re great raid healers when specced for it, great tank healers when specced for it, and we’re very viable in PVP.
• What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why? Being so squishy. I can’t help but feel I’m a liability in fights where there is physical damage going around – like the melee hits from Gormok’s snobolds, or being in the arena on Thorim. Tanks can only help so much when I get healing aggro instantly.
• In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you? Raid healing. I do keep a POM on the tanks all the time though, and my finger hovers over my GS macro for the oh shit moments.
• What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why? Holy paladins. If I’m disc, I mitigate, they heal. If I’m holy, I take over the raid healing and they do the tank healing, which I’m incapable of doing effectively. Plus, they have delicious raidwide and personal cooldowns. Win-win all around.
• What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why? Other holy priests. It’s no secret that priests are notoriously bad to stack, and two or more holy priests have never been a good healing team for any raid of appropriate size.
• What is your worst habit as a healer? I’d say overhealing, but it’s by and large irrelevant right now in the raiding game. Paying too much attention to the meters, I guess. Even though I’m fully aware that they aren’t a true reflection of a healer’s performance, a lot of people tend to evaluate healers solely based on the meters, especially in PUGs. This pressure in turn makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong if I’m not all the way up there.
• What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing? “Heal me” and “healer fail”. If anyone died, healers are acutely aware of their fail, thank you. It’s not like we see damage and consciously choose not to heal it.
• Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing? Yes. We’re jack of all trades when it comes to healing – when appropriately specced, we can do anything. Having two viable healing trees is quite the luxury. Other healing classes aren’t as lucky.
• What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer? First – is my assignment dead? If my assignment is dead, no matter how high on the meters I am, I’ve failed fairly hard. Second – am I in an appropriate place on the meters with regards to my assignment? If other healers assigned to the same role have healed twice as much as me, we have a problem. Otherwise, brag brag. If I’m out of mana, I make sure I check the overhealing meter as well.
• What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class? “Disc is an unacceptable spec for PvE” (no really, I’ve been kicked from groups/asked to go shadow on my backend Horde server for being disc), closely followed by “hey u priest y are u so low on meters u slackin” when I’m disc.
• What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn? Using spells appropriately. Priests have a massive toolbox to deal with damage, but most new priests tend to use only a few spells, and then run around like a headless chicken when something out of the ordinary happens. We’re not only about CoH/PoM/Flash Heal (Or about Penance/Bubble/PoM for that matter).
• If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)? High overhealing, high healing done. Overhealing doesn’t really matter in the content I tend to do, and I overgear most of it, so I spam freely. I’m in the top three in pretty much every 25-man I do, which I feel is where raid healers should be.
• Haste or Crit and why? After 20% crit, I go for haste all out. I primarily keep a bit of crit because it’s good regen and burst via SoL. In contrast, haste is a must have, because Serendipity is always down when you need it most.
• What healing class do you feel you understand least? Well, I’ve played all four healing classes. I actively research all four classes. There’s none of them I feel I understand least.
• What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing? Grid and Clique are love. I have mouseover macros for most of my spells to use with Grid. I also have a Guardian Spirit macro which cancels whatever spell I’m casting and casts GS on my target immediately – I’ve found it to be extremely handy, as it often takes a split second to stop the spell you’re casting and GS a tank, which might mean the tank’s death.
• Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why? I definitely try for balance – that’s because I do a bit of everything.

Go ahead, answer this questionnaire! How do you heal?

Was reading an albeit a little outdated post on the paladin forums about how “the problem of paladins is not being susceptible to spell school lockouts, it is the fact that resto druids easily counter a paladin”.

Resto druids, if permitted to, will lock out any healer class. It is true. In between Pounce, Cyclone x3 + Feral Charge, you are looking at a very, very long CC chain indeed. The trick there is to not permit the CC chain to happen. Leave a resto druid alone without any interruption, and he will keep his team healed to full plus dish out highly disruptive, unremovable crowd control.

But how, exactly, is a paladin supposed to prevent that?

The truth of the matter is, they can’t. The only solution in a 2v2 environment, with paladin+X vs druid+X is to focus the druid. That is, paladin gets JoJ up, and then assists with whatever clutch burst and stuns they can, while depending on their partner to cause the real disruption.

How about the other healing classes?

Shamans bring swift removal of all HoTs from the target – forcing the druid to focus on heals because they will have fallen behind. Then, anything with a cast time is simple to interrupt. They can ground and shock Cyclones. Add to that Bloodlust and you’re looking at something that at least puts a little pressure on a druid. Priests bring the ever-dreaded Mana Burn, plus offensive dispels. Paladins bring absolutely nothing. Nothing that can be a threat to a druid without the help of a partner. JoJ a druid all you want, unless your partner is assisting in killing them, you’re helpless.

My point is that yes, while paladins are particularly susceptible to the amount of CC presented by a supposedly defensive class, it isn’t their biggest problem. The problem here is not enough offensive capability to present enough of a threat and to make the druid concerned with other things. Add to this the overabundance of resto druids in the smaller brackets, insta paladin unviability.

Plus, of course a paladin’s primary problem is spell lockouts – you learn how to pillar hump pretty well when all your spells, literally everything you can do, is of the same spell school. Any class with a spell lockout can be really disruptive to a paladin. There’s a reason why rogue/mage teams are the worst nightmare of a warrior/paladin team. If I’m playing rogue/priest vs rogue/mage, and if I get Counterspelled/Kicked, I can walk up to the mage and fear to deny him the Shatter combo he just set up. (And don’t even get me started about Spellsteal…) If a shaman Earth Shocks my heal I can still mana burn to force him on the defensive.

As a paladin, the second a class uses a lockout, I just get to stand there and look pretty while my warrior dies, or gets so dangerously low that I have to blow my most valuable cooldown to be able to heal uninterrupted, thus leaving me without an escape button for the rest of the game. If there is a priest? Forget it, really. If Zilli hasn’t given the priest anything to be concerned about yet (hello there rage starvation) I’m already screwed.

That’s too bad, because I really, really, really love the class. I really enjoy being a paladin a lot more than being a druid/shaman, and sometimes a lot more than being a priest, too. I just wish it worked.

Soooo we’re rocking some 2v2, Roch and Zilli.

Warlock SP vs us. We have lost to them before, but for some reason this time the priest is just healing, not DPSing, which sort of gave us an advantage early in the match. Not too much damage going around, FoL keeps everyone at full, I have time for cleanses, pillardancing, etc. Zilli’s beating on the warlock, the priest has to heal through MS, I’m dodging fears and relying on Zilli to pummel mana drains as best as he can. He gets off 1 or 2 full ones (f-you draining through pillars, please fix that ^%$!), but meh, okay, I’m used to it, could be worse.

I drag the pet behind a pillar and DF/HS it to see if the healer is paying attention. Nope, not really. Exorcism, Judge, Shock, the pet’s under 30% and I speak out on Vent that I’m killing the pet, and that Zilli needs to prevent Fel Dom summon, I’m getting sort of desperate for drink breaks and BoW constantly being devoured is screwing me over.

20 seconds later, the pet dies.
22 seconds later, I have HoJed the warlock who is around 35%, because I really don’t trust Zilli’s pummels.
28 seconds later, I have Arcane Torrented the warlock coming right out of HoJ.
30 seconds later, Arcane Torrent fades from the warlock.
31 seconds later, “Warlock gains Fel Domination.”
32 seconds later, “Warlock gains Soul Link.”

“…sorry, I couldn’t pummel.”

And I’m just about ready to throw my keyboard out of the window.

1 minute later, the match is over because I’m completely drained of any semblance of mana with zero drink breaks.

Sometimes I really have no comment.

Ugh, 2v2 sucked tonight – losing to one shaman-druid/DPS team after another.

Suffice to say that it’s really irritating to do everything in your power to keep JoJ up, keep stun/silence for important moments, deal with 500 kinds of snares going around on both your partner and yourself (keep BoF on myself and I just KNOW Zilli will be rooted or snared at a crucial moment, keep BoF on Zilli and I’ll be risking JoJ falling off from the druid)… and then see your partner not being able to seal the deal after getting said healer to under 20% repeatedly. My death soon follows since a moment comes where I’ve used up all my get out of jail free cards, and what with getting chain stunned/Kicked/Gouged/Pummeled there really isn’t much I can do.

Vent was literally just “argh Cycloned” “argh stunned” “argh Pummel got resisted” “argh missed my Pummel” “argh lag” “argh couldn’t interrupt” “argh rooted” seriously, I don’t think there was a single interrupt that actually hit on time today, /facepalm. Zilli went maces and made his Stunherald though, and mace stun seems to help loads, giving us that little edge – which obviously is needed since we suck with interrupts so much tonight. I really can’t stand when we get outplayed by our own setup, simply because the other warrior is interrupting me like he was a rogue and the other paladin is free to cast.

Hopefully we’ll take off at some point, although compared to the previous season we find it hard to even stay above 1500, let alone break into the 1700s like we did previously. Warrior priest paladin 3v3 isn’t going too badly though, all we need is to find a priest who actually plays more, since Severian prefers his rogue now. Maybe we can break 1600-1700 once we start playing with a bit more diligence.

1. I am prot. That means I tank. I only tank. Sorry. No healy for you.

1a. As an extension, I won’t DPS either. If the other designated tank wants to DPS, I’ll gladly tank. If I wanted to DPS in groups, I’d go retri (and more than likely, never get any groups. Sorry. Retribution sucks in 5-mans, it has always sucked, and continues to suck even after its buff. Please accept this fact and move on, and don’t QQ about not being able to get any groups. It might be your $15 per month to play as you like, but in a group it’s the others’ $60, and it’s more than likely they’ll take someone who brings in more utility. If you want more groups, spec prot or holy, get all the badges/rep/offspec gear you desire, go retri. Just don’t QQ about it. /rant)

1b. Establish all those rules before you invite me. ie, if you ask my spec, and I say prot, don’t invite me to DPS or heal without getting confirmation. You waste 4 other people’s time, and now I’m pissed because you were retarded and didn’t ask, and I can’t be arsed to group with you again.

1c. If you’re sweet enough, literate enough, funny enough, and I like you, I’ll slap on my healing kit and heal. That’s a lot of ifs.

2. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever pull before me. Sit, drink, heal, rebuff, do your nails, I don’t care. Just don’t pull. I have no qualms letting people die.

A moonkin found this out the hard way when he pulled a boss before I explained any tactics or rebuffed. He called me a bitchy tank for the rest of the instance.

Meh, we made up afterwards. He was a nice guy.

2a. Crowd controlling or otherwise putting me in combat before I pull is subject to the same rules.

2b. If you see me drinking, please immediately proceed to not pull. You can wait 30 seconds. I’ll need that mana in a few seconds to taunt off of your overnuking clothie ass.

3. Make sure all CC is applied before the mobs are smack on top of me. They’re dazed, they’ll take a while to get to me, you have ample time. But if I’ll hold aggro, I’ll need that Consecrate.

3a. Make sure all CC is applied after you see that shiny holy shield thing hit those mobs. If you apply it beforehand, I’ll just break it. If you wait until they are on top of me, I will still break it because you took ages to CC it and pissed me off. It’s a lose-lose situation. Except when you time it properly.

3b. If your CCed mob somehow gets into the Consecrate, for the love of $deity_of_choice, leave it alone. I’ll tank it. Why you are trying to resheep a mob that is in the Consecrate area is beyond me.

3c. Don’t CC unless I ask you to. Trust me, I can tank them all, and the run goes 500 times faster. It ticks me off when you CC without being asked. I’m saving you the trouble, so shut up and run with it. Gift horse and all.

4. If you can give me a viable reason as to why you want a blessing other than the one I gave you, you can have it. “Larger epeen by topping the damage meters” does not qualify. “Larger epeen by getting bigger crits” also does not qualify.

4a. I withhold the right to demote you to Salvation from Might/Kings/Wisdom whenever I see fit. Whenever I see fit is defined as “when you are being an ass aggroing everything in sight”.

4b. If you refuse to turn Growl off, your pet gets Salvation. Good luck with that.

4c. If you’re 384302 levels higher than me, you’re also getting Salvation. Sorry. I’m not a fan of having my mobs run all over because you think since you’re 70, you don’t have to hold back your threat.

4d. Repeatedly yelling at me to “pala give 10 stat buff” “pala give might” “MIGHT” or any incoherent, badly spelled and demanding variation thereof can and will get you a blessing very fast. It’ll be more than likely Sanctuary. Enjoy.

5. If I hit Avenger’s Shield, then run away from the mobs, that means I’m LoS pulling. It does not, contrary to popular opinion, mean you should stand in line of sight and load up your hardest hitting nukes. You’re retarded.

5a. If you’re a mage/shadow priest, a caster is unloading on the group from range, and if you’re busy loading up a damage spell instead of taking out two seconds to cast a Counterspell/Silence, you’re even more retarded.

I don’t know how many times in the past week I’ve had to call for a CS, and still didn’t get one as the mage happily Frostbolted away. (”But I have CSed!” No you haven’t, I didn’t see any CS animation, I don’t see your Counterspell being on cooldown, you’re just a lazy ass.) And a patrolling group walked past the ranged and proximity aggroed us. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

Recent PuG pet peeves, in no particular order:

1. The retarded arms warrior who taunted off me.

Now this guy was an interesting one. He was three levels above me. He got Kings – I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, since I saved him from tanking, he would play nice, right? Wrong. He was aggroing. I stuck Salvation on him. He was still aggroing. The healer rightfully protested after a few groups. I warned him a few times to watch his threat meter.

…so instead of being careful with DPS (ie MAYBE YOU SHOULD NOT CHARGE IN AND UNLOAD BEFORE I GET A CHANCE TO TOUCH THE MOB), this guy equips a sword and board… and proceeds to taunt off me.

I taunt, he taunts back. I taunt, he taunts back.

That was when I dropped group and hearthed. One tank per group is plenty.

2. In this group, everybody is a tank!

Cat druid + enhancement shaman + rogue who had 2 levels on me = so much failicious DPS I don’t know where to start.

We enter the instance – the healer lagged, so he isn’t even in the instance yet. The rogue immediately proceeds to pull. The druid joins in. At this point no one has buffed, no pre-instance preparation, no marks, etc. These guys are sure in a hurry.

I yell at them to chill, demand leadership to mark, blessings and various other buffs are given. The druid doesn’t buff. I have no idea why. He just doesn’t.

And he keeps pulling. Every damn group. Before I get a chance to smack Avenger’s Shield I spot Mangle on my mob.

“Ure too slooow!!!!!11111oneone”

Everyone DPSes a different mob despite marks, I seriously can’t keep track of what mob is where because everything is targeting someone else. MOST FREQUENTLY THE DRUID. The healer is yelling because aggro is everywhere – if I was him, I would yell too. I have dropped groups on Ely before because DPS decides they want to tank.

But the clincher comes when, right after a wipe, I go up, mark a group, and the druid bearforms and charges…. right into ANOTHER, substantially larger, group.

/leaveparty
/cast Divine Shield
/cast Hearthstone

3. The druid who decided meleeing things in tree form was a good idea. Don’t ask.

4. The holy paladin who gave Light to everyone regardless of class.

“It’s my healing style, kk?” Kk. It might be time to hearth.

5. The melee DPS (there was plenty) that constantly pulled aggro but still demanded Might.

Shut up, and accept Salvation. I am not here to provide extensions to your minuscule epeen, I am here to ensure the instance run is smooth and make the healer’s job easier. If this requires that your overaggroing ass gets Salvation, that’s what I’ll give you. If you insist, you get Sanctuary.

6. The DPS warrior who got Kings and demanded Might. I am sincerely puzzled on that one.

7. The random DPSers who demanded damage meters after every pull. Go install your own and shut up. Nobody cares about the size of your epeen.

8. The shadow priest who decided to play epeenflex with the mage three levels below him. “What’s your plus damage?” “270 why?” “405 lol”.

Why oh why do you think the group cares?

This guy also always spoke in /s. Also after we are done, he asked “Go again?” We said no. He found it appropriate to yell “NOOB LOL” and leave the group. To this day I have no idea why.

9. The mage and warlock who were obviously friends, and played a game of “who can aggro and get themselves killed” over me. I just wish a rapid death in a fire for those two. Nothing more.

10. The warlock who fully dotted up everything, regardless of whether it was the main DPS target. AND Death Coiled it. Why. Why. WHY.

/facepalm

So Roch was just tanking a Blood Furnace run. Yes. She was tanking. More about that later.

The first boss drops Pendant of Battle Lust. I hit Need, so does the fury warrior. The resto druid asks if he can also need for his feral kit. The shadow priest replies no, the warrior and I have priority since he is resto.

I win, we move on. The second boss drops Bloody Surgeon’s Mitts. The resto druid rolls Need…

…so does the shadow priest.

“Shadow priests can heal!”

Yeah, maybe you should have thought of that before not allowing someone to roll Need on an offspec item.

Thankfully, the druid won, but ugh. That priest def earned a “do not group with” slot.

(To clarify, I much rather prefer that everyone rolls on the gear for the role they are fulfilling, and take offspec things if no one else needs them. And I will call you an ass if you roll on offspec gear when someone whose main role requires said gear rolls as well. But as long as the loot rules are agreed upon beforehand… meh, I guess. The hypocrisy was what mainly ticked me off.)

I haven’t written for a couple of days, due to finals, real life… and WoW, of course. It’s hard to play AND write about. So what are the news?

Yesterday has been one of the best days I’ve had ingame recently. In the last post I mentioned I was leveling my paladin – well, seeing she was so close to 60, I decided to push hard to 60 and get her epic mount.

She started as halfway into 57 yesterday, and my quest log was, surprisingly, full of quests I finished but had not handed in. So I decided to start handing them in, doing some shopping from the AH to do the Argent Dawn rep hand-in quests the first time around (my suggestion would be to do these as soon as you can, since at the level I did them they were worth 9k+ XP each, and there are about five of them… do the math). Surprisingly enough, she dinged 58 after handing in my load of a million quests (now even MC attuned!) and off into LBRS I went with my favorite warrior to complete my quests in there.

Cue lots of laughing, and wiping numerous times because I’m pulling 500 mobs at the same time and we are being so extremely stupid. We called it near Halycon (didn’t even get to kill her) because my warrior had zero durability for everything but his weapon, and a warrior with zero durability isn’t good for much.

At least I got about halfway through the level, having completed a grand total of one quest and having gotten at least some XP from the mobs. That left a level and a half to go.

Now, I can hear you all yelling “Foolish Elysiane, why not go to Outland, the land of milk and honey and much XP?”

Well… my problem is that I hate Hellfire Peninsula. With the heat of a thousand suns.

Too many mobs, all hitting stupidly hard, things that come out of the ground and own you in the face, things that sneak up behind you and own you in the face, big machiney things that come from… everywhere and stomp you in the face. I hated Hellfire on all my characters, even at level 60 – I think my only character who did not frequently meet a fiery death in HFP was my hunter. But then, due to strategic usage of Feign Death, she hardly ever meets a fiery death.

As for the awesome gear that everyone drools over in Hellfire. People seem to forget something. Mobs in Outland are significantly harder to kill than their counterparts over in Azeroth – that means you actually NEED the awesome quest greens you are given as rewards. They aren’t anything extra that Blizz is throwing your way, they are what you should have if you want to meet a fiery death less often. That doesn’t make the gear awesome, it simply makes it a need, just like the gear everyone had over on Azeroth. /rant over.

Anyway, so I had firmly decided on leveling to 60 in the old world again, and moving to Hellfire with my spiffy, new charger. But my warrior said “Hey, here’s a deal. If you go to Outland now, I can boost you through enough quests for you to get to 60, and then we can go do your charger quest!” Because he’s sweet like that. /love Zilli

So I hearthed to Shattrath, and off to Thrallmar we went. After going through the first Thrallmar and Reaver’s Fall quests with lightning speed, I dinged 59, just one single level to go. I was really excited at this point, but it was time for our weekly Karazhan run – so I logged Elysiane, my warrior logged his rogue, and off we went.

Karazhan, though, was equally exciting this week (Zilli claims otherwise, for he says he spent the entirety of Karazhan spamming his Hemorrhage button and watching a movie in windowed mode, but that’s just him). Being the only caster DPS clothie, I ended up with quite a few pieces: Boots of the Infernal Coven, Robe of the Elder Scribes (the jury’s still out on whether this one is an upgrade over my old robes, we shall see, it does proc quite frequently though from what I observed), Brooch of Unquenchable Fury from Moroes (\o/ spell hit!), and ow… Prince was AWESOME to me this week, and dropped both Ruby Drape of the Mysticant and the Mindblade! I was in seventh heaven at this point, also was the only one to roll on both so no competition.

Prince also dropped the Warrior/Priest/Druid helm, which would have been a welcome addition to my healing set, however I’d gotten so much at this point that I knew I’d pass even before the rolls came. The fact that Zilli and our amazingly funny offtank rolled just clinched my decision. Plus I’m wearing a gemmed and enchanted Whitemend at the moment, the only reason I’d take the T4 helm would be the meta socket and the added raw stats. There’s always next week =)

As for how I did on damage, definitely better than last week – I was not dead last, which is an improvement. I think having an elemental shaman in my group affected this a lot, with Wrath of Air and fully buffed I was easily running above 1k damage every boss, sometimes even breaking 1.1k. That and Totem of Wrath bringing me above or very close to the hit cap for most bosses were the tiebreakers (realising you forgot to wear your hit gear after seeing five Mind Flay resists in a row = not amused). At the end, the elemental shaman topped the meters, with the enhancement shaman coming in a close second, my friend’s hunter third, me fourth, and the rogue fifth (well, that’s what you get for watching a movie while spamming Hemo… AND bringing your warrior for two bosses =P).

After Karazhan ended, I hopped back on Rochalie without even getting my enchants, and off we went questing again. Moving at neckbreaking speeds, in around an hour and a half I saw THE ding – I immediately hearthed, picked up the supplies needed, and ported to Silvermoon to start the mount quest.

Now, I’ve done the warlock epic mount quest a few times pre-TBC to help my boyfriend and a good friend out. And that quest felt… truly epic. Getting to the end of Dire Maul, clearing around the entire chamber, starting the quest, trying to keep up with the healing having no idea of what will come and how hard it will be… and being excited about someone you genuinely like accomplishing something.

I think the paladin quest lacked a lot in that aspect (the blood elf one at least, I realise the Alliance one is harder). Almost the entirety of the chain is soloable, the most time-consuming part being the flights back and forth from LHC to Silvermoon. Even the Tyr’s Hand step is soloable through a couple of strategic deaths and liberal use of bubble hearth (not that I soloed it… we mounted up, strolled in, I pulled the entire abbey as is my custom, Zilli killed the entire abbey, I looted the basin and we strolled out all casual).

If you are level 60 you will need a hand for the last step in Stratholme, bring someone who has the key to the city and it makes the quest absolutely cake. However, I think a 65+ prot paladin would be able to solo even the last step. It took a 70 warrior and myself less than ten minutes after we entered Strat to finish it (see what I mean about the quest not being epic?). Then a hearth back to Shattrath and a port to SMC, and I had my new charger and a sexy as all hell tabard.

And that concluded my adventures for the day. Next up – leveling mining on Rochalie. Yes, that is about as entertaining as actually leveling her. -.-

So yesterday in a fit of boredom, I decided to go back to Roch the paladin. Rochalie is my highest level alt among those who are not 70, and it feels like if I just make the push I can get her to Outland.

Now, I’ve always hated paladin leveling. No matter what way I do it, it feels horribly, horribly, horribly time-consuming. Holy? I’ve already grinded enough with a holy priest, thanks very much. Retri – SoC autoattack lol? Granted it’s looking a bit better after the patch now with the changes to Crusader Strike, but it still is every bit as boring as it used to be, plus mana issues even with Wisdom… argh. DO NOT WANT.

And prot, the new leveling spec. Okay so, in the beginning, prot was looking better than retri – many numbers, many mobs, what’s not to love? So I dragged Roch’s skinny elf ass to level 35 asap and went berserk on the DWM murlocs.

Result? After 5 levels of doing nothing but “SoL swing swing, Consecrate swing some more” I stopped liking it in a hurry. Holy Shield made no difference other than “SoL swing swing, Consecrate swing some more, oh look Redoubt procced, Holy Shield swingity swing!” Prot leveling is hard to mix up with questing in my opinion, because single target prot DPS is somehow akin to pulling teeth. And if the quest involves mobs spread apart or are ranged/casters – bye bye efficiency, don’t bother to write.

But if you don’t quest, you sure as hell ain’t getting the good XP or the couple of pieces of gear upgrade. Rochalie is still walking around in a crafted level 25 breastplate. At level 55.

So after level 40, Rochalie leveled in long painful pushes, mostly comprised of boosts by my favorite warrior. (He always jokes that there should be a new rank in the game, Boostmaster. Complete with a tabard.) My primary aim was getting her to 50, where she could max out her jewelcrafting, since my little group of friends needed a resident jewelcrafter. And it is a pretty lucrative profession to boot.

After 50, I don’t know how I did it, but I somehow got her to 53, where she sat for quite a while, being logged on only to prospect/craft for friends and stick gems on the AH. Until yesterday.

After looking at my quest log a bit, and trying to figure out what to do, I decided I didn’t want to complete the Ungoro grind after all, nor did I want to quest. To hell with this, I was going to go back to prot and see if it felt any better with the hordes of undead mobs to grind in WPL.

Some things I found out really fast:

1. DO NOT go to Felstone Field. Most prot leveling guides speak of Felstone Field as THE spot, this is simply not true. There are way, way, way too many casters with an annoying snare (3 Frostbolting skeletons when you are trying to gather a group to AoE ftl). Even if you are outleveling the place, avoid Felstone Field.

2. DO go to Sorrow Hill, even if it is a bit too close to Chillwind Camp for comfort (for Horde, at least), and pretty far away from the Bulwark to boot. All mobs in Sorrow Hill are melee, thus can be comfortably pulled in groups of 5-6. The Ghouls cast an annoying poison that drains mana, so you have to cleanse that as often as you can, but it’s nothing you can’t deal with. In Sorrow Hill, I was regularly doing 8 mob pulls with ease, it really is a good spot (also the human rogue who took ages to kill me with 3 mobs beating on me can QQ more).

3. If you are Horde, oh God… repair fully and make sure you have tons of food and drink before coming out to WPL. The vendors in Bulwark sell fk all, and it’s one hell of a ride back to Undercity.

You may also opt to park a main close by at this point in order to repeatedly dispose of any dumbass who thinks engaging a prot paladin with 500 mobs on her is in any shape or form fair. It’s fun to make arrogant lowbies suffer. Even better if you can get them to bring their own mains.

4. As soon as you hit 54, you can move to Dalson’s Tears, which owns Felstone Field in the face. Again, all mobs are melee, they cast two diseases which you don’t really have to ever cleanse (one of them will interrupt your drinking/eating though, so cleanse that after combat if you like), and they are in tight little groups that respawn fast. I loves me some 10 man pulls, not to mention 500 xp/mob I was getting with rested.

5. Make a macro that announces in /s I am AoE grinding, I am specced and geared to handle many mobs, please do not assist. Because it felt like every passerby had to stop, dismount, and assist me with the group I was killing, even after explaining that I am prot and fully qualified to handle massive mob pulls.

I admire your kindness, dear strangers, but just no. If I’m not getting hit, Redoubt and Reckoning ain’t proccing. If Reckoning ain’t proccing, I ain’t getting my sweet sweet chain SoL procs. If Redoubt ain’t proccing, I ain’t blocking, and thus not dealing any of that sweet sweet holy damage. I have to be hit for this whole concept to work, not to mention, you are stealing my XP by assisting my kills. Thanks for being sweet and lovely, here is a Kings for your trouble, /hug /love /lick, but please move along.

6. When you are in deep excrement, a good combo is bubble/Holy Wrath/bandage. Then resume the pewpew. I don’t like bubble HL HL to get my health back up, since it takes up too much mana for my liking. Bandage is a better option, especially if you like to twink yourself out by maxing First Aid at 50 – you’ll have bandages that easily heal for more than your max health.

7. If you are specced into Ardent Defender, which you should be, you can comfortably hover at 30% health forever while things drop dead around you. It’s fun.

8. Carry potions and bandages. In between bandages, health potions (some people prefer mana potions, but I carry mana oils instead, leveling enchanting on alts ftw), bubble, Lay on Hands and BoP, you should take quite a while to die.

This was quite fun and I really enjoyed the XP, fully rested I was comfortably running 60k+ XP/hour in Dalson’s Tears. I started doing this yesterday night as a new level 53, and this morning Roch dinged 55, probably the two fastest levels of her entire leveling career.

Now I’m considering a Thorium Shield Spike instead of a Mithril one, and Lifestealing on my mainhand to make things go a little faster. Not sure if I want to shell out the cash for Lifestealing since I might end up replacing my mainhand soon, but eh. We’ll see about that.

On other news, most of my guild has gone back to playing their characters on Grim Batol EU, claiming that our server is dead. I’m personally not too bothered since I wasn’t particularly close friends with any of them, or friends in any shape or form to begin with – just feels like now it will be harder to get a ZA run going.