Main vs Offspecs Loot in 5 mans

I've been kinda pondering this because of the pally (78.6 and leveling!), and a post over at You Yank It, You Tank It made me decide to write about it.

I likely have a bit of a odd perspective here.  After all my first toon has the exact same gear for main and offspecs (though I do keep meaning to get her some tier 5).  And as for Lyllea, well, disc wants int and spellpower, thinks spirit is icky, and doesn't care much about mp5.  Most people see spirit or mp5 on cloth and go "healy gear" so I've had more than one argument about what should be main spec gear for her.  Mostly with caster dps, who are grumpy that the healer's rolling on gear they perceive to be theirs.  My philosophy on that is "it's only reserved for caster dps if it has to hit, otherwise it's fair game."

I'm of two minds on the "queue as what you're rolling on" idea.  On the one hand, I do agree that the tank or the healer should get first dibs on tank or healer loot.  In a guild run or a raid, I would never roll on tank or healer loot unless I was performing one of those rolls or none of the tanks or healers wanted it.  But in a 5 man, the rules are a little bit fuzzier, simply because I cannot count on my fellow puggers to observe those principles.  More than once during Lyllea's gearing process I lost nice pieces of healing loot because a tank or dps was building a heals set.  Didn't matter to them that I was the one actually healing their butt, all they cared about was getting themselves gear.

Rolling need on offspec gear almost seems like rolling need on the Frozen Orbs, simply a way to prevent yourself from being screwed.  After all, if I go into a dungeon with Adowa as holy, and want to get ret gear, it's going to be a bit of a struggle.  Loads of competition for dps plate and weapons, and there's sure to be some very annoyed plate dps if I started rolling on "their" stuff.  But I could wait in the dps queue, and get my pick of spellpower plate (not much competition there).    And then we have the time investment.  The healing queue's quick enough that I could probably run twice as many heroics as holy, getting twice as many emblems and twice as many shots at gear.

I don't really think there's a clear answer to the main/offspec thing in 5 mans.  I'm thinking that I'll probably do more or less what I do with shadow gear on Lyllea.  I watch to see if the caster dps roll need on the shiny before I roll.  If they need, I greed.  Same thing should work for plate stuff, especially if I announce at the beginning of the run that I'm trying to gear my ret set as well as my holy set but will pass if a plate dps needs.  Will I get screwed?  Probably, but at least this way I feel like I'm being fair.

And in case you were wondering, I'm currently the lootmaster for my guild and our loot rules for raids are...
1. Main spec before off spec, main spec being the spec you're in the raid for.  If we ask you to switch, you can pick which spec you want to be your main.
2. Once you win something you go to the back of the line
3. Hunters get preference over melee for ranged weaponry, melee get preference over hunters for melee weapons.
4. If you want something that isn't your armor type (like a caster druid wanting cloth), it's an offspec roll.
5. Patterns are open roll if you have the profession at a high enough level to learn the pattern on the toon you're on.
And the most important rule... Don't be a dick!
We pug a lot so they're pretty simple, but they work.

10 Random Things about me (and nothing whatsoever to do with WoW)

I don't really have much to say, but I figured instead of my normal Random Tuesday Thoughts, I'd give you 10 random facts about me... Mostly because I can't really think of anything WoW related to say.

1. I get most of my vitamins in gummy form.  Yes, my daily multivitamin, my calcium, and even my omega 3 are all in gummy form.  I have to take a lot of vitamins and the gummy versions tend to be easier on my stomach.

2. My hair has not been its natural color since I was 14.  As pale as I am, my medium brown hair is too dark and so I lighten it with highlights or dye it blonde or red.  It was even blue for a short time.

3. Despite being a huge fantasy buff, I did not read the complete LotR trilogy till after I saw the first movie.  I had tried to read it when I was younger and gave up.  I made up for it later by reading not only the trilogy, but also the Hobbit, the Simarilion, and the Unfinished Tales.  At one point I could recite Elrond's lineage.  I think those brain cells are now dedicated to random wow and D&D lore.

4. The Hobbit (Rankin-Bass version) is one of my all time favorite movies.  I love the music.  And the idea of Elrond singing "tra-la-lala-laley, down here in the valley" never fails to crack me up.  In fact I wrote an entire fanfic about it.  And I am still amazed that I was not banned from church for wandering around singing "When there's a whip, there's a way" when I was 6.  It's a very catchy tune.

5.  I read War and Peace.  Twice. For the fun of it.  I blame my Russian novel kick in late adolescence.  And yet I can't get through Twilight.  Draw your own conclusions.

6.  I wanted to be head of NASA when I was little.  Then I learned it was a politically-appointed position and was sad.

7.  I was allowed to watch Monty Python when I was little, but not the Cosby show.  My grandmother, while sweet and wonderful, was also born in the deep south in the early 1900s and had some prejudices.

8.  I became a fan of Firefly when it was first shown on Fox.  I still love it, and I've gotten to meet several of the actors.  Jewel Staite is a sweetheart.  Yes, Joss Whedon is my master now.  I even liked Dollhouse.

9.  I am a Harry Potter fan mostly because I adore Jason Isaacs.  Tom Felton isn't so bad either.  And I'd listen to Alan Rickman read a phone book.  Man has a great voice.  I live in hope that the endless camping will be cut from the Deathly Hallows movies and they will add more Lucius.  You really can't go wrong with more Lucius, especially if you throw more Severus in as well.

10.  I am a gamer geek girl.  I have even used THAC0, though I prefer D&D 3.5's system.

WTH do I do with the pally?

So the pally is halfway through 77, and I need to figure out what she's doing at 80.  Right now she's ret/holy, but hasn't healed a 5 man since that ok run, and I'm completely unenamoured of holy in 5 mans.  Things might change once I get some gear, but I a) can't stand the lack of group heal options, and b) am so sick of going oom it's not even funny.

I'm leaning towards keeping the current specs, using the awesome tank/heal combo in our guild to gear with instant queues, and reciprocating by queueing with the heal on his dps so his queue is shorter.  Lyllea doesn't need anything from emblems of heroism at this point, but I figure helping him is good for the guild and good for me.

Once I get full holy tier 9, I will hopefully be able to tag along on some of the positive push alt runs, get some gear, and maybe even pug my way into icc.  I honestly don't see me tanking any time soon (I really don't like being in charge), and melee dps is not my cup of tea, so I'm not sure what else I would do with her besides extreme soloing, and I plan to try that anyway once I have a viable holy set.

The problem is that holy pallies, while insanely kickarse at healing tanks, are kinda well, mediocre at any other type of healing.  I can run 5 mans on my druid without a problem, but I fight to keep a group up as a holy pally.   The idea of fighting through heroics, or of waiting for the dps queue (generally about 15 minutes), well neither appeals.  Honestly, that would be why Garetia isn't better geared, I can't stand the wait as pure dps, and if I have another option I will take it.

This might be why I don't see myself raiding with a non-pure dps class till after Cataclysm.  The gearing options are well, not as good as the hybrid options.  I don't really see a way around that for Blizz, other than giving priority in dungeon queues to the nonhybrids, which just doesn't seem sporting.

Healing 10 mans. Not as scary as they used to be.

Ran ICC 10 today as disc.  It went really really well.  Two healing with a shaman, and we made it through Putricide and even had a couple attempts on the Princes.  I got new gloves with to hit for shadow, a hat, and a new ring with a shiny red socket.   Still no offhand, but I continue to hope.  Having such a good run really did help with my confidence level.  It was odd at first, but I concentrated mostly on the tanks, threw in a prayer of healing now and again, and flashed and penanced like there was no tomorrow.  I need to remember that my flash heal hits harder than I think it does, so I use less greater heals.

I did respec back to shadow after the run.  Holy was a nice change of pace, but I missed my bubbles and face-melting is FUN!   Plus eventually our pro holy priest will return from Italy (volcano willing) and I'm more useful as healer/dps/mana battery.  But Tam, I will remember your advice, and I appreciate the help!

In other news, the pally continues her relentless assault to level 80.  She's 76 and spending a lot of time in Zul'Drak.  It's a zone none of my toons have really done yet, and it's nice to see new lore.  And kill trolls.  Killing trolls never gets old.

Arena-wise, I am still waiting on the aforementioned priest to return so we can discuss things.  Thanks to Cynwise for your advice, and I made a cute gnome frost mage.  Then I remembered why I don't play gnomes.  I can't stand being short.  Yes, I am weird.  I am a pervy elf fancier who doesn't do short toons.  I like the gnome models, but the shortness drives me nuts after a little while.

Now back to figuring out shadow gearing options in Rawr.  I realized I have an entire bag full of purple gear, and I'd like to winnow that down a bit.  Sure, I have 4 gear sets, but there is a lot of overlap, and I'm pretty sure I don't need 3 different sets of pvp gloves.

ACK, my shield has a cooldown!

I respec'd Lyllea from disc/shadow to disc/holy mostly because we're trying toc 10 again tonight and the team of two disc priests wasn't really cutting it.   Okay, so part of that was having a healer and a tank who've never seen toc 10, but still more group healing power would help.

And yes, that was my first impression.  I'm very used to PW:S spam, so this cooldown thing is strange and alien. But I do love circle of healing's group heal and wow, I have a fail angel now.  My tank healing tools kinda stink (I miss my lasers), but Renew is actually half-way decent now.  Still doesn't make up for the shield thing.  

My keybinds haven't changed much (because confusing myself even more would be bad), but I think I need to stick Circle of Healing on its' own, really big bar.  I keep hitting divine hymn or desperate prayer or hymn of hope instead.

As far as I can figure, holy healing goes like this...

Coh.

Flash heal or renew.  Throw a greater heal if you have 3 stacks of Serendipity (wth is Serendipity?). Repeat till coh off cooldown.  Then coh again.

Profit.

I am probably vastly oversimplifiying, as I have many more buttons I could be hitting.  And I hear things about Guardian Spirit, so I should probably look into that.

This may end up being a very short-lived respec, or not.  I am supposed to heal ICC 10 on Sat, after all, and having the extra flexibility would be nice.  And I have all this tier 9 gear, might as well use it, right?

How to Disc, a Simple Guide. Part 3, leveling disc and the disc ui.

First off, leveling disc.
It's not bad.  Really.  I leveled as disc from 60 to 75ish, and still am far more likely to do dailies and pvp as disc.  Your damage is nowhere near as good as shadow, but your survivability is, well, kinda ridiculous for a clothie.  If you don't want to dualspec, and still want to be viable in both questing and dungeon healing, disc is the way to go.
I followed this guide which I found on the forums.  It's a nice leveling build with decent damage potential and you can still heal in dungeons without any trouble.  Now, if you're wanting to just level in dungeons as a healer, you're better off going for the standard disc build, and glyphing flash heal and power word: shield.  Either build will give you some pvp survivability, and combined with heirlooms you should have no problems at all.

Now, the disc ui.  
There isn't much in here that's specific to disc, it's more of a general healer ui thing.

First you want a good set of raid/healing unit frames.  I really would not recommend the default ui for this.  Get Vuhdo or Grid or pitbull or shadowed unit frames or Xperl or something.  I heart Vuhdo and it's what I would recommend for healers, but try different ones out, see what you like. Some have click-casting, like Vuhdo, and some don't, and honestly I'd hit the plus heal forums ui section and look at what different healers use.

Second, you need to be able to see certain buffs and debuffs very clearly.  Your unitframes should be able to do this for you with some configuring, but it's also helpful to know things like "Borrowed Time is active" or "You're been silenced/locked out".  For that, I recommend the awesome that is Power Auras Classic.  You might also want a good set of buff frames, but that's more optional.  Just make sure that Weakened Soul and PW:S are really obvious.  Trust me.

Third, a good set of bars.  I use LunarSphere on my priest, because it doesn't switch bars when I switch specs, only when I switch forms (aka go into Shadowform).  This is nice cause it means I have all my healing spells easily available in shadow for when extra healing is needed, but I hate it for most of my other toons and use Bartender exclusively instead.  You can also set bars to fade out in combat or unless you mouseover them, which is a good way to have spells you need once in a while available but not in your face.  Dominoes is also a nice option for bars, but I've never used it.

Fourth, your standard ui stuff, aka Omen, Recount (with Recount Guessed Absorbs), and DeadlyBossMobs. You know, the addons pretty much every guild expects you to have to raid with.

Things to consider with a disc ui...
You're going to need to keep track of a lot of information, so minimize unnecessary info.  For example, do you really need to see your minimap in raids?  Why not set it to fade out unless you mouseover it?  Why not put your chat windows somewhere where they won't distract you?  Do you need to see combat text? Do you need to see how long your buffs have left or just when you need to reapply?  Think about things like this.

Put your raid frames near your toon.  This is some of the best advice I can give. If your eyes are glued to your raid frames and your raid frames are all the way over to the left edge of your screen, it's really really easy to stand in fire.  If your raid frames are near your toon (mine generally go under my toon) you can see when you're in ick.  Also, having your raid frames and bars right near each other means your eyes have to move less and it's easier on them.

Building the UI
Sit down with some paper.  Make a list of what you feel you need, then draw out where you want things to be.   The below is an example.  That's actually a combination of my pally and my priest's uis, but it gives you an idea.  And that took me no time at all in paint.

As you can see, I have my raid frames, my two main bars and my casting bar all right together and all right under my toon.  Things I occasionally need to glance at (chat, omen, hot tracker) are off to the sides, and stuff I only need to check once in a while (buffs) are at the top.  I use a Sunn Viewport Art panel at the bottom to arrange all this stuff on (you can see it in the left corner though it does extend all the way across the screen), and I use Align liberally to make everything line up.

And now that you have a layout for your ui, it's much easier to make it both look nice and be functional.  So that's how to build a disc ui (or really any ui), and we have now reached the end of the How to Disc series!  I hope you found this informative and useful, and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to email me or bug me in game or on twitter.

Arena Tourney

I signed up for the Tournament because well, I want the pet.  I have a guildie in the same boat, and we need a third.  Anyone just in it for the pet and want to play?  We don't care about winning or losing, we just want our murlocs.

I'm also trying to figure out what I want to play.  I know she's thinking either priest (probably holy) or shaman, and while I really like the idea of a plate wearer (yay survivability) I know that melee dps is not something I'm good at.  I have mobility issues.  So I'm trying to figure out if I go disc priest (yay familiar spec and abilities), go hunter (again familiar abilities) or try another class.  I could also try holy pally, but I probably shouldn't play a healer if she wants to play a healer.

I do like the idea of a mage, but since my highest level mage is 30, it may not be the best idea.  A boomkin's a possibility, or a lock (which has the same problem as the mage).  No matter what I'm going to be learning a completely new way to play so is it really going to make a difference if I'm learning a new class on top of it?  Plus, playing a mage or lock might inspire me to actually level those toons.

So what would you guys recommend for a complete Arena noob?  I've never even set foot in an Arena, only done BGs and I prefer to heal in those.  I can roll 3 toons total on the server, so I have some flexibility.  Hmm, maybe one disc priest, one ret pally, one frost mage?  Oh, and if you've got any good places to look for strats and addons and builds and all that stuff, please pass them along.

(and third part of how to disc (leveling and uis) is coming.  I got distracted by trying to figure this out)