On Haste, Crit, And Other Secondary Stats

Ah, the haste-crit conundrum. I'm not going to say I was completely avoiding talking about this, but I was completely avoiding talking about this. However, it comes up a lot and so I want to share my thoughts on the situation thusfar and attempt to give folks some sort of basic idea. Now, I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm not really a big math person. I'll let the folks over at Elitist Jerks handle the math, and I'm going to focus more on what their numbers mean, and the practicality of them. We will go over numbers, but I see no need to reinforce the math they've already done, so any rating conversions are pulled from there.

My goal here is to just give you at least an idea of where to begin when looking at gear, particularly for reforging purposes. So to achieve that goal, we are going to take a look at haste, crit, mastery, and spirit. Let's look at what they do, how they interact, and what gives you more bang for your buck.

Regarding Blessed Life in PvE

Rank 2 is just a 100% chance.

Not often I delve into more theorycrafty posts. Theorycrafting in general is difficult to understand for a large amount of players and that's not really the reader base I'm going for. I like simple information that is easy to understand and put into practice. A lot of times things are explained in a complicated manner and not given the proper context, which leads people to misuse the information. And frankly, I prefer to leave the numbers to those better suited to it. I do occasionally do my own calculations, but I'm a psychology student. Statistical analysis is about as mathematical as I get. However, combing World of Logs is something anyone can do so I wanted to just show some of my results here and throw in my two cents about this often debated talent.

Holy Paladining in Cata - A Beginner's Guide

A new expansion is here, and it's time to re-learn our class. Things are a little different than at 80, but overall, we're in a solid place right now. This guide will follow the same format as my previous guides, covering spec, gems, glyphs, and playstyle.

Last updated: Jan 27th, 2011

10 More Tips For Cata Healing

I rather like this picture. Thanks Google!

I wanted to have my "How to Paladin" guide updated by today, but alas, work has gotten the better of me, and between that and gearing up, I just haven't had time to properly finish it. Expect it early next week. Anyways, thanks to some links, and a big thanks to the people who linked to me, I've been receiving a ton of e-mail in response to my Cata healing tips for Paladins. People have still been expressing some concern to me though, and I've been asked several times for more, so I wrote up a few more general tips to survive through these beginning gear levels on my Blackberry at work today. Hurray smartphones! Anyways, here's a few more tips that will hopefully help somebody out.

Did We Really Not See This Coming?

MS Paint: Because Photoshop wouldn't open and I was short on time.

Let's be honest. As much as I hate to admit it, as someone who plays more than one healing class....Paladins were OP. You're lying to yourself if you say otherwise, or at the very least you haven't done a raid and seen how we utterly destroy other healers in mana efficiency and output yet. That was remedied with the hotfixes last night. Folks, Tower of Radiance has been nerfed. Light of Dawn also got hit in the swinging of the bat. (I mean seriously, look at that guy's arms!)

Initially I was, like many of you probably are, pissed. But, after I thought about it a little, we had this coming. I'm not saying it brings us inline though, we still have some kinks to work out, let's take a look.

10 Tips for Cata Healing on a Pally

Don't freak out! We're still OP!

Now that I've gotten a decent amount of heroics under my belt, I can honestly say I have never had more fun healing. Every one of my spells has a purpose, and managing mana isn't as bad as I thought it would be. However, I've been sad to hear that a few of my friends who are healers are throwing in the towel because they feel it's too difficult. Don't give up yet! Here's some notes that should help you out a bit when it comes to adjusting to this new system.

Why The Paladin?

I have a ton of healers. An unhealthy amount even. So one question I get a lot is "Why do you play your Paladin? What makes you like it more than your other healers?" It's kind of a hard question to answer, but there's a few things about the Paladin that just have me hooked.

More H Pally Beta Info - Build 12759

New beta build, new stuff to talk about! Sorry for the sloppy/ugly format, just trying to get this posted for my own use more than anything else. I do have some screenies of the new holy power ui element though.

Holy Paladin - A Beginner's Guide

So I know there's a large amount of holy paladin guides out there, but someone asked me a question in trade today that got me wanting to write this. How do you play a Holy Paladin? I couldn't really give a quick and simple answer, so i wanted to make a post to cover the basics, so when I get asked this, I have a reference to link to. It's the end of an expansion, and I know a large amount of this information is changing soon, but it's also the ideal time to begin playing with your alts and offsets, so here goes.

Spirit to Hit Conversion: Best Thing Ever? Quite Possibly.

When I say I love all things healing, I am conveniently forgetting to mention something: I hate leveling. Leveling healers is pretty much the worst thing ever. Sure, you can sit there for an hour while ten mobs beat on you, but that's about how long it takes to kill them. Yea, you can group up and instance easier, but isn't that what dual specs are for? I'm sure plenty of people level as a healing spec just fine, but I'm not one of them. It's pretty much the only time I DO bust out a dps spec, as most of my toons are usually dual specced healing, whether that be for pve and pvp, or simply utility for different fights. So, how does this change affect the hardcore health bar junkie? Do we need to start building up an offset just to level without missing every other shot? Short answer: Nope.

Mana Management - Tips to Avoid Going OOM

While mana management becomes fairly obsolete at high gear levels, it's something that lesser geared players and newer raiders do need to concern themselves with. Having an endless mana pool is something that many geared players, myself included, can easily take for granted, and that can come back to bite you. For example, as a Holy Paladin on hard mode LK, if I stop casting at the wrong time, my tank will die. Because of this, I need to be aware of my mana pool and my surroundings, and know how to manage my resources so that I don't run out in this long fight. With Blizzard wanting to make mana management part of a healer's routine again, I want to take a look at some strategies healers can use to maximize cooldowns and intelligently manage their resources.

Paladin Spell Values in the Beta

I really couldn't think of a better title. Forgive me, I'm tired.


Anyways, what this is is just a comprehensive list of all the spells in beta right now, and how they compare to spells currently in live. My goal with this is to give an idea of how the playstyle is changing, strictly by the numbers. Click past the jump for the break down of the Paladin class in a live vs beta comparison.

The Stonecore - My First Experience In Cataclysm Healing

The Stonecore

Last night I logged into the beta server and realized that much of the information I had gathered thus far was really not much without application of it. Data alone is useless. So, I donned my healing gear and opened up my queue page. Not knowing much about any of the instances, I decided to just hit the "random Cataclysm dungeon" and see what happened. After about 15 minutes of waiting, I was on my way to The Stonecore.