Blessing of Light

Well that was quick

2009-08-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

So, I was talking about starting a blog with a friend and guildie, Lilitharien, who plays a discipline priest. And she was all "I've wanted to start a blog too, but I'd rather blog with someone else, so there's shared responsibility and it doesn't feel like a chore."

And so, from the minds of two bored tank healers (see, it's a unifying theme!) Divine Aegis was born.

I'll be moving the FoL-tracking post over there at some point in the future, hopefully along with a small update that covers a couple mods I didn't give enough attention. "Paladin healing in the Coliseum" and a post about healing assignments and the new Beacon are both in the works, to appear this week on Divine Aegis.

Tracking the New HoT

2009-08-10T08:18:00.000-07:00

As you all know, in 3.2 we were given the gift we didn't know we wanted (and some of us still aren't sure): a HoT attached to our Flash of Light spell. In the legalese fine-print style that has become common of so many of our spells (have you read Hand of Protection's tooltip recently? void where prohibited) it will only apply if we cast Flash of Light on someone who is currently affected by Sacred Shield--the buff itself, not the proc.

Personally, I've wanted a tank-healing HoT ever since Azgalor, but I'll save discussion of the merits of the HoT for another post. This one is all about tracking the darned thing. Since 3.2 was released, I've tried a lot of different add-ons for this, and I thought I'd share the options I've found in a brief rundown.

The Contenders:

Power Auras: Classic

This is one of my favorite add-ons. Its versatility is unparalleled in terms of the way you can display cooldowns, used abilities, buff or debuff durations, procs, and more. I've had some trouble getting it to read my focus target's buffs, but I'm told that it is capable of tracking the FoL HoT on your focus target, even if I fail at getting it to do so. I still use it for things like Judgements of the Pure, Light's Grace, Divine Plea duration, trinket procs, and notably Art of War procs in my ret offspec.

Advantages: Multiple ways of displaying information, much more varied than your standard bars and timers.
Disadvantages: Some problems displaying Focus target information.
3.2 Compatible?: Mostly yes, even though the add-on itself hasn't been updated in some time.

ClassTimer

This is a new find for me, but it's one that I ultimately decided had earned a permanent spot on my UI. It's a fairly standard timer mod, with options for every class and virtually every ability you can imagine. At the time of this writing, you have to add the spell "Flash of Light" manually, but after doing so it worked like a charm. You could very easily use this to track all of your buffs, debuffs, and cooldowns, but since I was already using Power Auras, I limited (by painstakingly unchecking about 4,000 things) my monitoring to Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield, and Flash of Light.

But here's the big reason I like ClassTimer:

See how there are two Sacred Shield buffs? ClassTimer tracks and displays both the buff itself as well as the proc. They (annoyingly) share the same name, which causes problems for a lot of add-ons.

The reason this is great is because there's a little skill minigame involved in maximizing your FoL HoT. Many forumites have declared the way Sacred Shield works and the way Flash of Light works to be contradictory: surely the 50% crit means you want to spam FoL on the target, but the HoT means you only want to apply it every 12 seconds. In practice, there's synergy there, you just have to look at it without our pre-3.2-conceived notions of what SS+FoL is for. Even having dropped a boatload of crit for mp5 in 3.2, with raid buffs and the Sacred Shield proc up, my FoL crit chance is very nearly 90%. That's an almost guaranteed crit, meaning a HoT worth 150% more. With an addon that lets you track your proc, which tank avoidance will help stay up for the one second you need, you can time your refreshes to ensure that your FoL will crit, meaning maximum HoT coverage.

I also love that it uses the Shared Media library, so I can plaster my frilly Glamour textures on it and make it match my Pitbull frames. >.>

Advantages: Simple, easy to configure, wide-range of uses, tracks SS buff AND proc, Shared Media library!
Disadvantages: As with most of these mods, you'll need to make your SS target your focus target to track these buffs.
3.2 Compatible?: Yes.

DoTimer

This is another tracking mod very similar to ClassTimer. The configuration is more complicated and it doesn't use the Shared Media library, but it'll track Flash of Light and anything else you need tracked.

Advantages: Solid all-purposed tracking mod.
Disadvantages: No pretty glamour textures. QQ.
3.2 Compatible?: Yes.

HealMinder

Here's one you probably haven't heard of. It was made by a paladin specifically to track the new Flash of Light HoT, and I have to say: it's absolutely perfect for what it does. It also displays the information in a way that none of the other mods do: it shows the health value remaining on the HoT, which ticks down in real time. This is useful because it lets you know the strength of the applied HoT. It does not show the duration. As such, I think it's the perfect complement to one of the timer mods. Configuration is a snap, it's very lightweight, and it can alert you with text and/or sound when your HoT expires. And best of all? It doesn't require your Flash target to be your focus target. It'll even work on random un-grouped bystanders in Dalaran.

Advantages: One of its kind in terms of display, easy config, easy legibility, lightweight.
Disadvantages: Only shows the duration in terms of health value, not time. It's also a very limited mod, but hey that's what we're here for.
3.2 Compatible?: Duh!

GridStatusHoTs

This is a plug-in for the popular raidframe, Grid. It tracks HoTs and buffs like Sacred Shield and Beacon of Light. It can track the FoL HoT just fine. My only problem is that it cannot tell Sacred Shield (buff) from Sacred Shield (proc) and so if you set it to flash or change colors when Sacred Shield is about to expire, it will read the proc before the buff, which is [i]always[i] about to expire. It's a bit maddening--so much so that I ended up going back to Healbot for a lightweight click-to-heal mod.

Advantages: Tracks the FoL HoT and similar trackable buffs.
Disadvantages: Confounded by Sacred Shield.
3.2 Compatible: I know Grid has a 3.2 update, but GridStatusHoTs does not. I believe it still functions though.

Aaand, that's my HoT-tracking roundup. This is by no means an exhaustive list of add-ons capable of tracking our new HoT, but it's certainly a good place to start. Honorable mentions that did not make this particular list include CLCBPT and TellMeWhen; I haven't personally used either of them, but I'm told they're both very good. So do check them out if none of the above float your boat.

Coming up next: paladin healing in the new Trial of the Crusader raid instance!

What's in a name?

2009-08-09T13:33:00.000-07:00

So, I've been thinking about blogging ever since one of my favorite Holy Paladin resources went temporarily under due to some messy identity theft issues.

I feel like I'm in a good place to talk about holy paladins--I raided as one throughout the entirety of Burning Crusade, and I've continued to play one in Wrath, having cleared everything through Yogg-Saron and a small handful of hardmodes. I'm not in a corporate-sponsored top US guild, nor do I have any illusions about being the most knowledgeable about... pretty much anything! But I love my class and have a lot to say about it. So while I'm pleased that the aforementioned Ferarro blog has resurfaced sans drama, I still wanted to give this crazy blogging thing a shot.

Which leaves me with the first dilemma of any blogger: an original name. (As you might have ascertained, I failed hardcore at that dilemma.)

I ran through my spellbook, looking for iconic "Holy" abilities that would serve as a decent name. All taken. Every. single. one. of. them. Most of them were defunct blogs about paladins, but some were totally not (Beacon of Light will likely not be appearing on my blogroll, for example.)

So, I said to myself: "what about an ability that doesn't exist anymore?" It hit me immediately, the spell that caused me by far the most frustration throughout all of the Burning Crusade expansion:

That's right. The peskiest of all blessings. Want to heal to your fullest potential? Then you better hope you have 5-6 other paladins who can provide the other important blessings, because your tank will totally whine about not having Kings or Sanctuary or Might, or even Wisdom back in the days of prot paladins as potion-chugging trash tanks. It was even worse because in order to get anything out of our Libram of Souls Redeemed (which you'll note has since changed) we had to have this thing on our targets--all of them. Fortunately this was also a time when automated libram-swapping was available to grease those logistical wheels, but still: Blessing of Light was a pain.

So what could be more iconic of Holy Paladins than a mandatory buff that no one wanted, required constant maintenance, and was eventually deemed unnecessary by the developers!

I thought so too.

Unfortunately, it rings a little similar to one of the best paladin blogs: Blessing of Kings.

Can't win 'em all, but at least I managed to refrain from using Holy Schmoly or Bunsen Burner Shoulders.

Next up: the best add-ons for tracking our new Flash of Light HoT