Dps role vs Healer role

I am not very active in blogging these 2 months since everyone is just waiting for Legion while WOD slowly rest in peace. For the sake of keeping this blog alive, today I’ll just rant about random stuffs =)

Time really fly, we have already play this game for 12 years. That’s a decade! I remember starting WOW as a tank for 1 year, switch to healing for the next 8 years, and finally a DPS for the most recent 3 years. Although I still off-spec heal and tank once in a while, my main focus is DPS nowadays.

Tank Role (2004)

nah, there is nothing relevant to talk about here. i am just a noob, doing 5-man dungeons and having fun :)

Healer Role (2005 to 2013)

I started raiding as a healer because back then it is very easy to join a guild if im raiding as a healer. At that time, all healers wear cloth (it is quite funny that many players don’t understand why my paladin is still a tailor today) back in classic wow because the best healing stats are usually found in cloth.

Healer role is quite stressful because we have to look at the HP bars of everybody and also respond to boss mechanics and re-positioning, etc. In addition, I often find myself at the mercy of other players too. What I mean is the stress of healing is greatly affected by the performance of the DPSer and the tanks. Many things will make a healer job tougher. For example:

• when the tank is not using proper gears
• when players make mistakes / stand in fire
• when DPSer/Tanks are not using their own defensive CD to ease damage-taken
• when everyone is under-geared and boss takes longer to kill
• when players did not research / min-max their class potential

Naturally, most of these usually happen during progression when everybody is not ready to tackle the challenge. Due to all these difficulties, it can be very rewarding for a healer when the boss is finally down the first time.

I specifically mention (the first time) because on subsequence kills, the job of a healer will be significantly easier as compared to the first time it is down. And then it became relax for the healer once the bosses are on farm mode (assuming it is still the same team of players/characters). This will also become the ceiling heal cap for the healer because in most encounters, once you managed to out-heal the damage, there is only so much to heal and the next efficient way is to reduce the number of healers in the raid, which is kind-of weird.

DPS Role (2013 to 2016)

My guild took a long time to accept the reality that I finally decided to switch to a DPS role. Well, I did heal for 8 years after all. Eventually, everyone will get used to me as a DPS.

At first, I thought DPS role would be easy because I only need to take care of our own position, and then I just focus on my DPS rotation, like a solo job. I was wrong of course, as the more I played, the more I realized how dynamic DPS role can be.

Blizzard principle of “easy to learn, hard to master” really shines in a DPS role.

For example, 2 players with the same gears can have very different DPS result. The one with a better DPS rotation is the main factor why he is better. Talking about our own class, Ret paladins have single-target rotation, 2-target rotation, 3-target rotation and the AOE rotation. In addition, our rotation changes again during the uptime of a major CD or talents (AW / HA / DP). And once we acquire tier set bonus, our rotation will change again.

Even when 2 players are equally geared and equally skilful in our DPS rotation, the player who spends more time to research is still capable of pulling quite a margin ahead. There are many creative ways to do higher DPS. For example, if you know the timing of events in the fight, such as the timing when a wave of Adds appear for you to AOE, or a timing period when you will receive a buff to double your DPS, or when the boss is weaken for you to max DPS, etc.

Unlike a healer role, there is no ceiling healing cap. As a DPS, we always strive for more DPS. We will min-max every possible advantage to deal more DPS.

Paladin Gold Transmog Glorious Set

as i was playing Legion alpha, i find that paladin has quite a few new abilities and animation changes, and some of them looks pretty fancy with shiny effects.

a simple thought came to my mind is to match my character transmog with a bright gold color theme. that should match the overall feeling very well i believe.

there are 2 popular "gold theme" transmog, and they are known as the glorious set and the conqueror set.

conqueror set

glorious set

both transmog are bright colors although conqueror is more towards orange and glorious is more towards yellow.

conqueror set is quite cheap, around 300g to 700g per slot, and you can acquire the whole set around 5k gold. but for glorious set, because it is so rare and thus, very expensive too, it cost around 300k gold to acquire the whole glorious set.

while looking for alternatives, i found several off-pieces transmog that looks golden too but eventually i came across 2 items in particular that shine out from the rest. the 2 items are the heroic SOO tier set helm and shoulders. although the SOO tier set is not design based on a gold color theme overall, the helm and shoulders is very shiny, and definitely good enough to achieve the bright gold transmog that i have in mind.

so i decided to use the helm and shoulder as the base theme for my upper body transmog. and then i slowly brought out the entire conqueror set and glorious set from the AH. after some mix and matching, i decided to settle down on using glorious set because it matches the SOO tier helm and shoulders better than the conqueror set.

and there is a matching shield from TBC rep

my list of items:

Head - Helmet of Winged Triumph - heroic SOO
Shoulder - Pauldrons of Winged Triumph - heroic SOO

Chest - Glorious Breastplate - 4000 gold on AH
Wrist - Glorious Bindings - 6000 gold on AH
Hands - Glorious Gauntlets - 7000 gold on AH
Waist - Glorious Belt - 7000 gold on AH
Legs - Glorious Legplates - 220000 gold on AH
Feet - Glorious Sabatons - 25000 gold on AH

Back - Brightcloth Cloak - Tailoring
Shirt - Bright Yellow Shirt - Tailoring

Shield - Sunward Crest - TBC reputation (Shattered Sun offensive)
Weapon - Brutal Gladiator's Greatsword - 800 honor points in Origrimmar


however, i can't seems to find a good weapon to match with my transmog. all the gold weapons i tried looks pretty dull when compared to the shiny armor. the pvp sword managed to catch my attention because it has a bright glow on it. unfortunately, only the top half of the sword is glowing.

anyway, there are 2 gold mount that matches my color very well.

Sunstone Panther (jewelcrafting mount)

Heart of the Aspect (store mount)

Ret Solo Heart of Fear Heroic 10m

MOP raids can provide some fun at level 100, and heroic MOP raids can be quite challenging.

i know prot spec is the best for solo-ing old raids but i have to maintain my retribution/holy spec for guild raiding/pvp. therefore, i can only solo as retribution for now.


Heart of Fear - Heroic Mode, 10 man

1 Imperial Vizier Zor'lok
2 Blade Lord Ta'yak
3 Garalon
4 Wind Lord Mel'jarak
5 Amber-Shaper Un'sok
6 Grand Empress Shek'zeer


Imperial Vizier Zor'lok - Heroic Mode, 10 man

seal choice: SOT
talent choice: HA, ES, Sera
trinket choice: Vial, EDH

FYI, if the boss has no target to melee, it will start to channel Song of the Empress which does a lot of damage on us.

the fight begins at 1st platform. when you dps the boss to 80%, it will leaves behind a copy of himself and start flying to 2nd platform. don't chase after the boss to 2nd platform yet because we must kill this copy asap, otherwise this copy will start to channel Song of the Empress if left alone. once the copy is dead, rush to the 2nd platform quickly and melee the boss once to stop the Song of the Empress. take the time to heal yourself to full on this platform.

when you dps the boss to 60%, it will leaves behind another copy of himself and start flying to 3rd platform. this time, we must ignore the copy and chase after the boss because on the 3rd platform, the boss will cast Convert on players, and it will be a wipe since you are the only player in the raid now. the only way is to burn the boss ASAP, which is why i decided to save all my major CD for the 3rdplatform. take note that the 2nd copy (on the 2nd platform which you ignore) will be free to cast Song of the Empress so you may like to use a divine protection or simply LOH yourself at the end.

platform 1 - AW on the copy
platform 2 - AW on the boss
platform 3 - ES + Potion + AW + Sera + Ring + Vial + HA


Blade Lord Ta'yak - Heroic Mode, 10 man
Garalon - Heroic Mode, 10 man
Wind Lord Mel'jarak - Heroic Mode, 10 man

seal choice: SOT
talent choice: HA, ES, Sera
trinket choice: Vial, EDH

we can simply zerg these 3 bosses down, they are all very easy and no strategy is needed.

on pull, take your time to build 5 holy power, and then use all CD

ES + Potion + AW + Sera + Ring + Vial + HA

the legendary ring will explode and kill the boss, skipping the last phase of ta'yak as well

for mel'jarak, you will get stun once, but you can divine shield out of it anyways


Amber-Shaper Un'sok - Heroic Mode, 10 man

seal choice: SOT
talent choice: SW, ES, Sera
trinket choice: Vial, EDH

this is by far the hardest boss in heart of fear because of the Reshape Life mechanic. if the boss transform you into a Mutated Construct at any time of the fight, it will be a wipe since you are the only player. the strategy is to make sure that this never happen by pushing phases quickly.

1st Reshape Life = 50 seconds
2nd Reshape Life = 40 seconds

to prevent the first Reshape Life, you must finish both phase 1 and phase 2 in less than 50 seconds. and then kill the boss at phase 3 in less than 40 seconds.

in order to push all 3 phases successfully, you need to plan your CD according to the dps requirement.

phase 1 - reduce boss hp to 70% (around 2.7m)
phase 2 - kill the Amber Monstrosity (around 2.8m)
phase 3 - kill the boss (around 6.23m) in 40 secs

phase 3 has the highest dps requirement therefore i save my legendary ring for it.

phase 1 - Potion + AW + Sera
phase 2 - ES + AW + Sera + Vial
phase 3 - Drum + Potion + AW + Sera + Ring

in phase 3, you are going to take a lot of damage. it is necessary to use scared shield + divine protection + LOH in order to survive. when the ring is about to explode, you should also try to use a divine storm and clear all the adds so that the boss take the full damage of the ring itself.


Grand Empress Shek'zeer

seal choice: SOT
talent choice: HA, ES, Sera
trinket choice: Vial, EDH

final boss is very easy (as compared to amber-shaper un'sok), the only problem is the last phase where you will get feared and heavy damage, but that is ok, because we can divine shield out of it and bust her down, or we can simply skip the last phase if the legendary ring kill her on explode. she has around 8 mil hp, so you can consider hitting her to around 80% hp, and then unleash all your CD

ES + Potion + AW + Sera + Ring + Vial + HA

when i use my CD around 80+% hp, my ring is able to kill the boss on explode.

Playing as a Hybrid

ever since the gear changes in 6.0+ for WOD, i am very satisfied with the way blizzard allow our gears to transform the primary stats according to our class spec. that make things so much easier for a hybrid class, such as my paladin, to be able to use all my 8 pieces of plate dps gears as my holy/tank/dps gears.

in WOD, jewellery slots (neck, cloak, ring, trinkets) gears have to be separately earned, but it is still a lot easier as compared to the past. although jewellery slots offer the most important secondary stats and proc, we are still capable of performing at 50% to 60% of a pure healer class by using a set of sub-optimal jewellery gears, since we already achieve our tier-set bonus automatically from the 8 pieces of plate.

and then things became even better during HFC. our class trinket is useful in all 3 specs and 1h weapon/shield is also use-able for both prot/holy spec at the same time, and we can also buy the legendary ring for all 3 specs. that makes us almost capable of performing a high 70% of our offspec role immediately upon demand.

i remember my role during mythic HFC progression is rather chaotic because im being requested to switch between retribution and holy as and when needed. just for your info, this constant switching between ret and holy is very bad due to the first floor of HFC. the healing requirements of the bosses in first floor is very inconsistent.

for example:- mythic progression

assault - 4 heal
iron reaver - 5 heal
kormrok - 3 heal
council - 5 heal
kilrogg - 4 heal
gorefiend - 5 heal

that means im required to switch my role every alternate boss, such as healing reaver, switch dps for kormrok, and healing council, switch dps kilrogg, then healing gorefiend. some nights, i heal 3 out of 6 bosses, sometimes 5 out of 6 bosses.

my raiding role initially is very confusing because i feel that im healing way more often than i dps, but healing is only my offspec, and my loot priority is on dps gears, not healing. the overall feeling is pretty bad until we progress into the second floor of HFC, where majority of the fights will be 4 heal, exception of Xhul being 3. when first floor is finally on farm easily, we can cut down healers and that is when i became a full-time dps raider.

and now i've been playing Legion alpha for a while, i notice some changes in the jewellery gears:
Neck - ITEM
Ring - ITEM
neck and ring slot has no more primary stats!
Cloak - ITEM
and the primary stats on our cloak is transformable now!
seems like blizzard is moving one step further with our gears. that means trinket is the only slots we need to collect for off-spec in Legion.

another good news is that the cost of switching specs is going to be free in Legion. changing specs and talents will be so similiar to D3. personally, i enjoy all the 3 specs of paladin, and have also invested a lot of time into playing them well, so i definitely welcome such a friendly change. Legion is around 6 months away so things may still change, but so far it feels like Legion will benefit hybrid players even more than WOD did.

my only concern will be the off-spec artifact. of course blizzard mention that we are able to get off-spec artifact as well (although this is not available in alpha), i'll assume the off-spec artifact to progress much slower than our main spec because we will be spending all the relic and ancient powers on our main-spec artifact first.

PVP Rated Battleground

happy new year, and this is the first post of the year. i have been pvp-ing with the guild during the spare time. rated battleground is actually quite fun!

some random pvp achievements :p

our group photo after getting first sergeant :)

we are still a pve guild but there is really nothing much to do nowadays. since mythic HFC is just a one night raid, we end up having a lot of time for alt runs, leveling new chars, farming achievements, and pvp, etc.


Starting from Ground Zero

legendary ring don't work

tier set don't work

pve trinkets don't work

pve gears are all scale down to level 725 (worse than blue pvp gears)

0 versatility

we keep losing initially, in fact we are basically getting raped every match lol. that is expected of course, without any pvp coordination and experiences on our part, and without any pvp gears, and without knowing the maps well, there is no way we can survive in a rated battleground.

after playing a few rounds, we began to form up our own strategy for each maps, and also begin to play more in-sync with each other. our mmr drop after losing few rounds, and we start to collect more pvp gears, things became more "meaningful" now.


PVP Gearing

pvp gearing is very simple & straight forward

the priority is trinkets > weapons > pvp set > off-pieces

pve trinket is totally useless, nothing more than just a stats stick. and yet pvp trinket is so powerful. so logically, it is top priority.

weapons is our best dps slot, and became our next priority.

from then on, we try to get as much versatility as we can, from gears and enchants.


PVP Addon

i didn't know there are useful addon for pvp, until someone pointed out that we should use them.

battleground targets
http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/battlegroundtargets

healers have to die
http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/healers-have-to-die

with the help of these addon, we can easily see who are the enemy healers and everyone can switch to the same target quickly as and when we need to focus down a specific healer.


Gearing Up Choices

as mentioned previously, our 2 trinkets and weapons is the most important upgrade initially.

priority upgrades

1 Trinket x 2
2 Weapon

after these, i decided to came up with my own list of gears changing priority. surprisingly, sockets still work in rated battleground.

our pve gears - scale down to level 725
honor pvp gears - level 730
conquest pvp gears - level 740

however, if the 725 came with a socket, it is potentially better than the 730 pvp gear. since we only play rated battleground, we should be earning more conquest points than honor points too.


using honor points (gears without socket)

1 Shoulder
2 Glove
3 Boot
4 Cloak
5 Bracer
6 Ring

using conquest points (gears with socket)

1 Chest - socket
2 Helm - socket
3 Legging - socket
4 Belt - socket
5 Neck - socket
6 Ring - socket