Cassabry - Protection Paladin

[Cassabry]

My apologies Raer! I had logged out in my "questing" set which has a lot of Ret pieces. I'm in my Prot gear now.

/wave to all the fellow female raiders/players that have said hi and Happy new year to everyone =)

[Negido]

Hi! I'm Negido! Serious question. Would you consider yourself pessimistic or optimistic?

[Ashin]

Hi Cass and thanks for the application. Could you talk a little bit about why prot paladin? (Also could you clarify whether the prior experience you listed was as prot paladin / tank?)

How do you feel about prot paladins in mists - and what do you see as their strengths and weaknesses v. other tanking classes?

[Cassabry]

Hi Negido

I do consider myself optimistic. If we're short members in a raid, I'd rather try to 9 man or 24 man it before calling a raid. Or if the comp isn't ideal, rework a strat and keep going. Or take the mail man at work. I've been with my new company for 3 months and the mailman has never smiled at me. I wished him a Happy new year and he said "yeah, see ya". But someday I just know he'll smile and be nice, I'm optimistic lol.

Hi Ashin,

All my experience has been on Prot. I started this game only on a RAF account years ago to help my brother level. I had zero intention of ever playing beyond that but I got sucked in and fell in love with my pally.

MoP started off difficult with how spikey my damage was. By the time trash was done in heroics I'd have every major CD used including lay on hands. This carried over to raids when they started. Damage was just spikey and I wasn't used to seeing so many dips in my health. CD's couldn't come close to smoothing it out.

I'm very happy with how Paladin feels today though after all the gear upgrades. I'm back in a great spot with it. The smoothing of incoming damage has been so noticable. My favorite thing though? The movement speed talents! I've wanted movement speed on paladin for years and I'm loving it. There's hardly a fight I don't enjoy it, even if it's just Long Arm of the Law to move in faster on the pull.

Paladins do great for controlled spikes during a fight with the shear amount of CD's we have. For Spiritbender, with Holy Avenger and Clemency for double BoP's, there's times I can CD myself for close to the full minute I'm tanking.

I think Monks and DK's make great assets because of the amount of DPS they can bring to the table while tanking, quite a bit more than paladin. DK's and Druids are great on heavy magic fights. Monks, may take a lot of mana to heal, but it's more controlled and their damage intake can be very smooth between stagger and their high dodge. Shield tanks are great for heavy add fights. DK's have amazing self heals.

I think tanks feel really balanced to me right now. One may bring higher DPS or one might need more external CD's help during a fight, but you need differences to make it interesting.

[Ashin]

Alright thanks for the response. Currently we are in a bit of a holding pattern until Hip, my MT, returns from family travels. But I know he will be looking over your logs and providing some feedback within the next two days.

Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

[Twelvesoft]

I am not a tank, but I must say that I enjoyed reading your app and all of the responses you have made to the various questions posed to you so far. I wish you luck! I don't know if you've mentioned this already in the app and I missed it or not, but how do you handle criticism? And I mean criticism in the sense of someone constructively and respectfully trying to point some things out to you. I don't think anyone really responds well to criticism that comes in a standoffish manner. In some of my older guilds I noticed that the majority of the tanks seemed to think that only they could possibly know what was going on in their respective domains during a fight, and did not like to be informed that they were doing something wrong. I don't get that feeling from you at all, but figured I would ask and see what your thoughts on the matter were.

[Hip]

What up Cassabry,

Havent gone through the logs yet, but I will shortly.

So far I'm impressed with your app, you're saying all the right things and answered a lot of my generic questions through your intro (thanks for being so thorough).

One off the top. You mentioned spec'ing clemency, which i agree is great for some fights. Are you using any tools to help you get HoPs/HoSs out to other players?

What tools are you using for multi-target threat?

Finally I don't think we should overlook the amount of testosterone you must have in order to be a successful tank.

/chestbump

[Hip]

So,

After looking at the screenshot you provided I may have answered a few of my own questions, but I'll let you confirm >.>

Interesting choice of Execution Sentence for Windlord, why that choice?

I've seen a trend in some of our app'ing Prot Pallies of using Seal of Blood. What are your thoughts/reactions to this? Is it something you've tried? I see your consistently running SoI throughout your logs.

I can tell you've spent time honing your usage of CDs, uptimes look good for all your personal CDs.

You're also doing a good job of weaving in Healthstones, Barkskin, and trinkets. I'm impressed.

Only real area for critique there is you could do more with your HoS and Salv.

You appear to be meticulous with your Sacred Shield use, what do you think of the 5.2 changes to Holy Flame? What talent route do you plan to take then?

thanks again and catch you later

[Midri]

*_* OMG you raided with Sunnier! /starstruck

[Cassabry]

Hi Twelvesoft ,

I look at the tanks as people that need to learn a fight fast so the other 23/24 can learn it while the boss is under control. The tanks job is to position the boss or adds wherever it makes everyone elses job easier and we might have no idea where that is if people don't speak up. Seriously, if there's something that I can do better or different during a fight, I'd hope someone would speak up. In the end, it's all about getting those pixel dragons dead!

Hi Midri,

I have to admit there was a certain cool factor when I found out I was going to co-tank with Sunnier...I totally knew who she was already from her blog. The interesting part was having 2 female tanks on the team. I'd like to know statistically how often that's happened in this game lol.

Hi Hip,

You mentioned spec'ing clemency, which i agree for some fights. Are you using any tools to help you get HoPs/HoSs out to other players?

So far the only fight I've found clemency useful for is heroic Spritbinder. I might find more uses as I get further in to heroics. I use Vuhdo clique for HoP's. I have 10 keybinds on my mouse and anything bound there is considered a “premium” keybind since they're fast and easy to use for me. This is a good time to answer you on the Salv/Sac comment, both of which are on “premium” mouse keybinds. But I fully admit my usage is poor and it's not unnoticed by me. I am my own worst critic.

What tools are you using for multi-target threat?

Awesome question. I miss Righteous Defense something fierce...I was so spoiled with it. I use the Tidy Plates threat option (not threat plates) but they're buggy and inconsistent. When I pull trash, I always mark a skull. Keep people on one target so I can get threat on everything else. My Vuhdo is set up to show aggro, so if anyone other than the tanks light up, I use target of target to taunt off them. I'd be curious to know how another fellow pally that lost righteous defense is doing this.

Interesting choice of Execution Sentence for Windlord, why that choice?

I wanted to go for the damage. I figured I could switch to HP or LH later if the raid needed the extra heals. It might seem counter intuitive that it would do more damage than an an aoe damage ability, but it did. I checked a few logs after for comparison and ES was consistently a few percent higher in overall damage than HP. I couldn't find anyone running LH.

I've seen a trend in some of our app'ing Prot Pallies of using Seal of Blood. What are your thoughts/reactions to this? Is it something you've tried? I see your consistently running SoI throughout your logs.

By Seal of Blood, I think you mean Seal of Truth? I was admittedly resistant to switching to SoL after the nerf to Truth, but it didn't take long for me to get addicted to checking my healing meters at the end of a night. They wanted us to have a seal that felt like it belonged to a tank and they sure accomplished this. Once I switched, I haven't really looked back. The option exists if I hit a fight with a strict enrage timer and start tweaking myself for DPS, but right now I can't imagine leaving all that passive healing off the table.

You appear to be meticulous with your Sacred Shield use, what do you think of the 5.2 changes to Holy Flame? What talent route do you plan to take then?

I fooled around with Holy Flame at the start of MoP. Our healers were really struggling on Will so I switched to Flame to see if that would help. It felt so horribly awkward wasting 3 Holy Power and a GCD on it. But the boost it's getting is pretty significant. Best I can do is say I plan on trying it out and see what kind of HoT's it'll put out with decent vengeance. Perhaps with enough haste by that time and such a high uptime on SoR already, the end result will be SoR + HF > SoR + SS.