Cataclysm Week 1: Reflections

*Disclaimer: This post is not about reflections.*

Wow, what a week! Leveling dungeons were hard, leveling quests were super crowded, and raids were on the cusp of impossible. Rating conversions dropped, health pools rose, and mana evaporated into thin air. It's been an exciting week, and not just for healers.

Speaking of which, for those keeping tabs, you may think that I'm not a healer. Cataclysm changed that too. Discipline healing is fun again! Heroics are fun and challenging again! Healing heroics has been some of the best fun I've had all year. My first heroic, Vortex Pinnacle, found me gasping for mana and healing on fumes at the end of every boss fight, usually with no more than 20k HP total spread over the entire party. And it was awesome! When I finally (yes, finally, as in, after multiple wipes) defeated a boss, it really felt like I had improved as a player. In heroics! Awesome!

Not only that, but the encounters were interesting! The bosses in there had a variety of important and unique abilities, ranging from 70 odd whirlwinds roaming the room that would knock you around, to an AoE that was absolutely always lethal if you weren't in a particular safe zone in the room (combined with a root effect to prevent you from reaching it!) It was hard! It was fun! Bosses were unique and strategy mattered!

The launch was smooth, servers rarely crashed, bugs were few and mostly unimportant, and the price of new gear and trade materials is still ridiculous.

Healing is very different, particularly at low gear levels (like 329, for example,) and I'll have a post with tips on the new healing model in the next post.

PallyPower and You

No doubt we've all had this problem before. You show up to the raid, and there's like 6 paladins, and you still don't have the right buff. How does this happen? Nobody knows. Actually, it's a well understood behavioral pattern that often occurs when multiple people are responsible for some task that only requires a portion of them to complete. See: Diffusion of Responsibility. That's all well and good, but sometimes you see things like an Elemental Shaman running around with Wisdom, but not Kings, even with only a single paladin. That's because properly buffing a raid requires a P.H.D. can be difficult, because the correct buffs depend on the spec and role of each individual. So how do we fix this? PallyPower.
PallyPower addresses both causes of poor paladin buffing by allowing the raid leader (or an assistant) to explicitly assign Blessings and Auras to each paladin in the raid that is using Pallypower. Additionally, it makes maintaining these blessings easier for the paladins, with an on-screen indicator showing whether all of their assigned buffs are active or not, and allowing one-click auto-Blessing.
If you don't already have PallyPower, and you're a level 80 paladin, get it now. If you plan to lead raids, or to help lead raids, I also recommend getting it.
Click here: PallyPower on WowInterface, or PallyPower on Curse. (Note: due to some rumors of viruses on Curse, I recommend using WowInterface for the time being.)

So, you've got it set up, loaded it, and now you see this in the middle of your screen:

If you don't plan to lead raids, and you want to just pass out your assigned buffs, then you don't need to know much. The top rectangle is the Aura button. Click it to turn on the aura you've been assigned. Red means you have the wrong aura on right now, and green means you have the right aura. The rectangle immediately above the little green circle is the Blessing button. Left-click to pass out Greater Blessings, right-click to pass out normal Blessings. Red means no one has your buffs, yellow means some do and some don't, or that some are low on time. Green means you've given out the buffs you were assigned. The little green circle is the anchor; it can be dragged to move PallyPower around, and you can click it to lock it in place, so you don't accidentally drag it later. And that's it! Easy, right? (A note: none of these buttons work while you're in combat.)

For raid leaders, right-clicking the anchor will open the options menu. Inside, you can see a chart of the paladins with PallyPally and the classes. Simply click in a cell on the grid to change the paladin's assignment for that class. You also set auras in this chart by using the aura column. Underneath each paladin's name, there is a listing of all the buffs that paladin can give, in the format: Rank+Talents. So, for a level 80 paladin with Improved Blessing of Wisdom, you would see 5+2 next to the wisdom icon.

So what should you assign? Tanks prefer Sanctuary, then Kings, then Might, in that order, unless you have a Discipline priest, and then only Paladin tanks will want Sanctuary. Healers prefer Wisdom, then Kings, but if you have a Shaman specced into Restorative Totems, Mana Spring Totem will overwrite improved Wisdom (you can expect half the raid to whine about not having Wisdom). Warrior DPS prefer Kings; they provide Battle Shout, which is as good as Might (again, expect half the raid to whine about not having Might). Rogues, Death Knights and Feral Druids prefer Might, then Kings. Hunters, Enhancement Shamen, and Retribution Paladins prefer Might, then Kings, then Wisdom. Shadow Priests, Moonkins, Warlocks, Mages, and Elemental Shamen prefer Kings, then Wisdom, the Might (Might often improves pet damage very slightly.) Pets prefer Kings, then Might, then Wisdom (Not because all pets need the same thing, but because trying to buff pets correctly in a raid environment is hopelessly complicated.)

As for Auras, have the paladin with the most-improved Devotion Aura run that, and otherwise use whatever is most useful for the current fight. Remember that Priests provide Shadow Protection, Shamen can provide Fire (instead of Mana or Healing) and Frost resistance (instead of Spellpower), and that Stoneskin Totem stacks with Devotion Aura AND with Gift of the Wild.

Damage resistance buffs, by ICC boss:
For Marrowgar and Sapphiron, run Frost Resistance Aura.
For Deathwhisper and Lich King, run Shadow and Frost.
For Festergut, Rotface and Putricide, run Shadow and Nature. (Shamen and Hunters can provide Nature, but it fucks hunters' DPS to do so.)
For Princes, run Fire and Shadow.
For Lana'thel, run Shadow.
For Valithria, run Fire, Frost and Shadow (in that order).
...and for Trash, make sure someone runs Concentration Aura. It's not needed to clear it, but it will prevent DPS blue balls.

So, there you have it. A basic intro to PallyPower. Enjoy.

You just lost the game.

I just lost the game.