Faction Change

I'm sure by now everyone and their brother (or sister, let's not be sexist here) has seen this post, or some variation of it.

Now, the question becomes: how will they do it?

Options:
1. 'Makeover': Similar to how they currently let us redesign our race, new gender, new face, new etc... are we going to have transracial transformations?

Problems:
a: How does this happen on a RP server? Nibuca has already humerously outlined potential pitfalls with this.

b: What if I'm an Alliance paladin... do I HAVE to become a Blood Elf paladin? And what if I'm a Horde shaman, do I then have to become a Draenei?

c: If I'm not limited like that and I could become an Orc paladin, what does that mean for people who are just starting out their orcs? Will they start to bitch: But I want to be an orc paladin too, without having to level Alliance! Or will Blizzard make all classes available to all races?

2: 'Racial Turncoat': They are out there. I mean, we already have humans in the Scarlet Crusade that are against the Alliance, and the Scourge against the Forsaken, and etc. So... let's go one step further, shall we?

Problems:
a: Do we REALLY think that Thrall is going to let some whiny Human join his people? Or Varian Wrynn will let any despicable Orc join his?

b: It will make the appearance of battlegrounds a little more tough to navigate. You see a Tauren on the horizon... quick, check his name against the raid list, do you see his little dot on the minimap? He's too far away to see if his name is red, or green. Is he one of ours, or one of THIERS?

c: It will piss off the Horde in the Rampage battlegroup, that's for sure. Suddenly, all the little kids who don't want to play an ugly Horde, EW! (I'm with ya, little kids. And yes, BE's aren't ugly, but the girls cast/attack like sissies and the boys are prettier than the girls. That's just wrong. And besides, the bones in the Forsaken are put together all wrong. Inaccuracy FTL.), can now play their pretty/cool/awesome/whatever Alliance character, and go all emo and switch sides to the Horde. Suddenly, a Cho'gall Horde premade isn't as scary anymore.

d: The use of 'v' to bring up enemy nameplates will suddenly become MUCH more commonplace.

What do YOU guys think they'll do, and what problems do you think will arise from that method?

Boon personally thinks it'll be Option 1. I kind of hope for Option 2. If I wanted to play an Orc, I would have rolled an Orc.

Resto Shaman PvP... I suck.

Kvasira hit 10,000 honor kills, has the full set of purchasable level 80 epic PvP gear, including trinket and cloak. The only thing I could work towards now is upgrading one of my rings and necklace to the epic form rather than the rare crafted ones. I'm also working towards getting one of the PvP mounts. 30 badges of each of the original three types. I'd have had it a long time ago, except I did a lot of concerted efforts instead to raise my honor faster to buy stuff.

So... I'm bored with that for the moment.

And I decide, given how much I bitch about resto/healers in PvP (opponents, love 'em when they're on our side), I'd take my shaman in and see how I can do with PvP there.

I have a LOT to learn. It doesn't help that I don't have ANY PvP gear with her (gonna craft myself the necklace/rings today). Once the Horde figure out that 1: I'm a healer and 2: I die like a baby mouse against a lion, I'm their preferred target to kill.

Granted, there were a few times where I sat there and said, 'Yeah, just keep hitting on me. While you're trying to kill me, my companions are killing you/capping the flag/assaulting the base.' If I don't get stunned, stunlocked or silenced, I can keep myself alive pretty easily.

I also have new respect for the healers I used to work with. Never again while I am running the flag will I leave them behind unwittingly. There's nothing nothing more annoying than having the flag runner get away from you because you're trying to stay alive, and then watch them die just out of your healing range.

Yeah.

So, resto pvp for me. Any suggestions?

Totems: Tremor (where appropriate) or Earthbind, Wrath, Cleansing and Magma?
Earthshield on myself (or flag runner with Watershield on myself).
And then just heal my tush off.

I'm having issues where I'll try to hit Nature's Swiftness and then a Healing Wave or Chain Heal and I can't get it off in time.

Part of my PvP problems arise from the fact that I don't use keybindings. I've tried in the past, and I just get confused. Now, some of that will go away if I just practice/practice/practice. And I may need to switch to that, and using the mouse to move instead of the awsd keys.

Yeah, I can hear you... yes, I use the awsd keys. And the qe keys. I'm a terribad player, I know.

The Joys (Hahahaha!) of Pugging

That was a sarcastic pathetic whimper of a laugh there, by the way.

Boon is out of town, so I decided that my Tuesday was best spent trying to get in some raids on those characters of mine that never get to see the nonlight of Naxxramas. As opposed to cleaning the house or something.

First up: Keiji needs badges. The likelihood of her getting into a VoA run without another DK that needs the chestpiece, IF it drops, is so miniscule that I'm just going to farm up the 80 badges to buy the chest token.

So I advertise myself for any heroic, and 10 man Naxxramas.

I get swooped up for a 10m Nax, almost full except for tanks. Okay, cool. It's a pug, I don't expect completely smooth sailing, but it sounds like they're all familiar enough with the fights and the like.

I'm a little nervous, since though I've been in Naxxramas enough times healing and DPSing to do it blindfolded (I can probably still tell you how many pulls it takes to get to Gargolmar in Hellfire Ramparts), I've never tanked in there before.

So I immediately hit up the other tank in tells, letting him know that while I know the fights in general, I've never TANKED them before and could he kindly let me know anything particular about the tanking aspects that I may not be aware of. He's cool with it. He only needs ONE trinket out of the whole instance, so anything tank-like that drops, it's mine, all mine!

We hit up military first. After one wipe on Raz because I was learning the whole 'charming the people thing, when do I use bone shield, when do I ask for a taunt, when, what, huh?', we down Raz. We down Gothik.

We have a few wipes on the four horsemen. Why, you ask? Because unknown to me, there's only 2 healers. And the unholy DK in full epic DPS gear is doing barely more damage than me, the unholy DK in mostly epic and some blues tanking gear (I knew this part). So the paladin MT goes holy, saying he can heal himself while tanking the guy, and I'd take the 'burn first' group with all the DPS. The RL says we're not going to switch up front, but just burn straight through. With most of the raid doing a little less than 2k damage (and one doing barely more than 1k, granted, he's off in the back tanking one of the mobs back there), I find this an unlikely win scenario.

Surprise! I'm right. We wind up with like, 7 marks before the Thane (and most of the DPS and the other tank) goes down.

Okay. Fine. The boomkin (who is top DPS) says he'll bring in his holy paladin just for the fight, doesn't mind saving the paladin to the raid, etc. A few more wipes, the back goes down, the RL wants to try one more 'no swap', and then finally I'm tanking by myself with the resto druid on me, the paladin MT is on Thane, and we do the swap method, and we win.

Yegads. Oh... guess how many tanking items dropped? Yeah. None. We swap out a few people, get in a nice warlock that pushes mid-2k dps, and we continue to go.

We go to Construct next. To my COMPLETE surprise, we down Patchwerk in one try. Yeah. Never pictured THAT happening.

We get to Globbulus, and one shot him too. The DK keeps dropping his poison cloud in the raid, but other than THAT, no problem.

Then we go towards Gluth. Now, let me say, when we started, we had two mages. By the time we got to Gluth, we had no mages. We had: roguex2, DK dps, warlockx2, boomkin, tree, holy pal, prot pal, DK tank.

We ask the DK if he can kite the adds. He says he can, sure, but doesn't like doing it.

Then when asked if he knows how to do it, he says no. The RL starts to ask if anyone else feels comfortable doing it... and a few of us point out that he's the ONLY class capable of doing it in the raid. Bonus that he has desecration.

Surprisingly, we get Gluth almost down when the DK dies and we lose it. Then the MT has to go. We swap a few more people. Then the holy paladin says he has to go. And it gets called.

No tank drops for Keiji.

I did get asked by the other DK: u unholy tank? can u do that? (I'm paraphrasing and making it more understandable.)

I exit Naxxramas, they're going to TRY again today. I, oh so unfortunately, have work. I spot Vialora outside of Nax. He says he's in a Nax25 pug. I ask if they have room for a warlock? They do!

I join. Through cajolery, we get a few more KoUers in the mix. The RL is armory'ing everyone. Everyone there is in almost full epics, tier 8, etc. This is going to be GREAT, right?

Spider goes down with only one hitch on the Grand Widow, but we two shot her. I'm on the low end of the Recount at about 2800 dps. The top end ranged in the high 3k, low 4k. This is going to go GREAT!

We go to Plague next. Noth no problem... and then we hit Heigan. O. M. G. I don't think I've ever seen so many wipes on Heigan since KoU first went in on 10man. The tanks kept pulling him too close to the stage, so the healers couldn't heal, so the tanks died. Or the tank would be too far away, so we'd move forward to heal/dps, and then the tank would suddenly be too close again. Like, is he backing up on an S curve through the room or something?

I think we wiped 4 times before we FINALLY got Heigan down. Loatheb was a clean kill (with an amusing 'pre-attempt half-wipe' that happened when someone ran in and aggro'd Loatheb when half the raid was still on the bridge outside of his room). (Granted, at the time, not so amusing considering how many times we all just died on Heigan.)

And then the end. We go to Military next. And we cannot get Raz down. Can. Not. Do. It. The 'lead' spriest wouldn't say when she was starting, she'd be told 'when you're ready', and instead of saying anything, would just slip down there and start casting. Then the other spriest would have to rush to pick up his target. And then the one would pull Raz too far to one side, so the other couldn't get him with their MC target. And people were hitting the MC'd targets with AoE damage? And the call-offs weren't good so the MC targets were taking tons of damage. And they weren't telling when one was being released, or weren't releasing on a regular schedule, because he'd be on one, and then suddenly both he and that target were running at the raid. And the healers weren't keeping the MC targets alive, and we'd run out of MC targets to tank him.

So we called it. Kikidas did get wrist and helm out of there, so not a complete loss on my part. Yet again, another one where they said to get in there again today. Alas, alas, unless I'm inconcievably not part of our Ulduar 25 run tonight, busy for that too.

For the final part of my evening, I went as Keiji to a SUCCESSFUL 10man OS guild-run. No drakes, but meh.

Unfortunately, didn't get the bag of spoils. Those badges would have gone a long way towards my chest piece.

So once again, the joys of pugging are rediscovered. To me, the BIGGEST mind-blow was the UBER Nax25 run that turned into a wipe fest. I think personally it was a bit of 'familiarity breeds contempt'. Everyone knows it well, but slightly different, and with us all KNOWING, no one was leading the attempts with 'tank him here' or whatever, or healing assignments, or anything. The most we got was 'you're MT' to one of the warriors.

So... top five signs that your PUG isn't all it's shaped up to be (and given the already low expectations of a PUG, these are pretty bad!). These aren't in any particular order. Because how do you order these beauties?

5. One of your six DPS is barely (or not at all) outdamaging one of your tanks.
4. The raid leader doesn't vet anyone, just invites people, and then later on asks: 'Does anyone...'
3. You're heading into Gluth and don't have any class capable of kiting the chow. And the RL doesn't notice.
2. The raid leader insists on doing something, when it's painfully obvious that it won't work.
1. The raid leader first says that there isn't going to be vent. And then after one of the DPS finally offers their vent channel, doesn't want to join it. (Or lead.)

As a top five list, it's pretty pathetic, I realize. And it's largely based on my experiences from yesterday, shockingly enough.

In other news... I got Ironman on Kvasira. *rawr*flex*

LFG Disc Priest. --> can u heal?

Now granted, discipline priests can do some interesting damage, but I'd be hard pressed to say that they're a 'DPS' class. Please do correct me if someone out there thinks otherwise, but when someone says they're a disc priest, I naturally assume that they're a healer.

I've discovered the joy of priestly healing once again, and in addition to leveling my hunter with Boon's shadow priest, and playing hordies, I've been pestering Boon to do some instances with me and my priest, so that I can heal heal heal heal!

It's like a puzzle. Heal X, Shield Y, Renew A... some combination thereof will allow us to get to the end of the instance with everyone alive.

I'm interested, once I hit 80, in trying PvP. A few of the things I HATE HATE HATE when I'm PvPing with Kvasira is running across a discipline priest, a resto shaman or a tree. Holy paladins are also annoying, but not NEARLY as much.

Maybe it's just that paladins are somewhat limited in our interrupts. We have a whopping two. No kick. No silence. No silencing shot. No fear. No deathcoil. Nothing. So put one of us against another and it's really just hoping we can burn them down when our HoJ is off cooldown.

Anyway... Boon is going out of town for a week, so I am going to be unable to instance with Kiljara. I'm not allowed to do any leveling without him. So I guess it's PvP with Kvasira, working on reputations and badges with Keiji and writing.

Noooo! RetLoL is gone!

I mean, the site is still there, but the person who updated it has stopped updating due to RL things!

Come back soon, RetLoL! (And come back safe.)

Rotational Queries...

In our recent Ulduar 25 run, I had the pleasure of being one of three retribution paladins.

Of the three, I was second in terms of damage. Now, the paladin who topped me is normally a tank (how galling), and does a lot of pugging (how brave), and has really nice gear.

So I just assumed it was an issue more of gear than of rotation or ability or anything like that.

Then I looked at the WWS for the run. With the exception of Exorcism and Ret Aura, my abilities do more damage than his abilities (if you look at the white line. On the green line, his abilities do more than my abilities. I wish I knew how to read this stupid chart better. It seems that the white is damage, the green are how many? Or something... in which case, I'm just not doing ENOUGH). My Seal, Judgement, Swing, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm...

Yet he's out damaging me. (Shut up. I know on the charts it looks like only by 9 DPS. But that's apparently the difference between #1 and #2. So 9 DPS is GIGANTIC. And I have no idea why Micro, who is pulling over 4100 DPS is so low on the charts. Probably because Paladins are awesome and mages are just glorified water boys.)

So I've been trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

I'm going to assume it has something to do with my rotation. Which admittedly is my hardest to watch/do thing, given that I'm also often using art of war, and moving, and decursing and all that fun stuff that makes being a paladin so awesome. Which means that my perfect rotation, where nothing is off CD at the same time so I don't 'waste' time waiting for GCD, never happens.

I tend to move in and judge light, to get Heart of the Crusader on the boss. Then I'll try to crusader strike, then divine storm, then judgement will be off cooldown (or close to). I use exorcism whenever I have all three of the others on cooldown (or the boss moves away and I'm not in melee range). I'm not sure if I should use exorcism whenever it's up? It does some nice damage.

I think the problem is that I have one 6s CD and two 10s CDs. And I get confused which one I should be hitting first to try to keep the CD's from overlapping.

I guess it's time with the training dummy for me. Or maybe RetLoL has new information.

I'm in the News! (in 1984...)

OS+1

Normally when I'm in Obsidium Sanctum, I'm the OT, the 'add picker upper' - given that I'm unholy and usually less well geared than the other tanks in the instance.

This time, I was given the daunting task of tanking Sartherion. Not sure if the RL did that because of my magic shield eating a few of his flame breaths, or because he wanted the better geared and more knowledgeable of the tanks on the drake and adds, or what, but there it was.

I wiped the first time on a flame tsunami. See, I didn't know that you had to dance between the two safe spots, and I thought there was just the one spot that was safe from all the flames. I am sometimes... not often, but sometimes... dumb.

So the first time, I went to what I was told was the 'safe spot', not realizing there was a second, and sure enough, the first flame tsunami was right on my back.

The next time, I went ahead and stood in the safe spot that doesn't require me to move from the flame tsunami that arrives from my back, so I just had to dance in and out of one tsunami.

I did die on our successful attempt, as neither I, nor my healer, were prepared for (or knew about!) the mini-enrage Sarth gets when you down one of the drakes. So BAM. Dead tank. Thankfully, the other tank was up to the task of picking up Sarth and the DPS were up to the task.

In the future, gonna try to save a bone shield cooldown for that time and be ready with trinket/other cooldowns. As it was, I went from reasonably alive, to dead, before I realized what happened.

So I can finally say that I've tanked Sarth. Go me!

After that, I went and pitifully DPS'd in Heroic OK. I need badges as Keiji for the Tier Chest. On the herald? Yeah. I slapped on my tank set and actually didn't do too badly in terms of killing my friends.

Ironsoul

The other day I was looking at Kvasira's gear and wondering when I'd ever get out of the Spiked Titansteel Helm and the Titansteel Destroyer.

I don't need the hit rating, for heaven's sake!

And I was commenting to Vialora how I hope that Flame Levi, one of those times I'm in Ulduar-10, drops this neat two-handed weapon that he has.

And usually I'm the only plate DPS in Ulduar-10.

And the other night, Vialora is invited along.

And Flame Levi drops Ironsoul.

And Vialora has more DKP.

But Vialora lives in my house.

And I know how to castrate things.

And make brownies.

Together, those two arguments convinced him that passing so I can get the upgrade was a good idea.

I'm sure my guild thinks I beat him into submission.

But I think 'beat' is too strong a word. Strongly demonic glares and the promise of brownies isn't beating. It's negotiation. It's a compromise.

(In all honesty, Vialora passed out of the goodness of his heart, and the fact that I raid far more often than he does, and would use the weapon more. Also, his equipped weapon was better than my equipped weapon at the time (he is using The Jawbone). So I really do owe him brownies and my very sincere gratitude.)

For the Alliance

Got my bear last night. Yup indeed.

Got into this raid around 4ish or so. Then left the raid because no one was in it and it was being run by what seemed to be a 12 year old with ADD.

Then got into another raid... with the same 12 year old, several HOURS later, during which time we had fun with things like PvPing and Arena'ing.

So we head out to Ratchet. Someone pulls the guards on the 'secret entrance', so we have to rush in before we're really ready. Nevertheless, Thrall dies. We go on our way to TB. We go in a poorly organized group of string cheese, and most of us die on our way to Bloodhoof. (I didn't. Rawr.) And then when we regroup, no one waits for buffs, and no one actually tanks the boss and he's going everywhere and we had tons of adds and it's just a MESS.

A bunch of people leave.

Boon steps up to the plate and says, "LISTEN UP PUKES, IF YOU WANT YOUR BEAR, YOU WILL LISTEN TO ME OR DIE."

And surprisingly, that works. We regroup. We buff. We kick Bloodhoofs (or would that be Bloodhooves?) posterior.

Then we head up to UC. We regroup. We buff. We go through the sewers. We get lost and amusingly dead as a bunch of us run off a cliff in the city and think we're going to land in a nice pool of sludge and instead hit the floor. Sneaky.

We get to Sylvanas. We kick her posterior. Little tip? The best way to figure out where she's going to be next is to watch the pets of the hunters. They'll go over to where she's about to spawn before she actually appears. They're smart little minions that way.

We then ride up to Silvermoon. We ride straight up to the group of three people who are in the big shiny area. (Can you tell I know little of Blood Elves?) I don't even know which one is the leader and which ones are just his underlings!

But we get to him. We kick his posterior.

I get my BEAR!

Of course, a few people didn't get the Org achievement, due to releasing or somesuch, so we head on back. Naturally, since most of the people just did all four and got their bear, why would they do it again? (If only for fun, right?) So we get a bunch of people deserting. Including our one tank. So I log in Keiji, we grab a few more puggers (making sure to let them know we're just doing Org) and we charge in for the second time in a night!

I tank the hexing dude. A druid we picked up tanked Thrall. I kept death gripping those few Horde that showed up to stop us into the mix. That was fun. :)

(We 25 Manned Thrall. Yes. We had only 4-5 groups of people, not all of whom were 80.)

And then we run back on out. I'm in combat so I'm running, not riding. Boon stays with me because he's the best. And all the guards are on me... and they don't stop (probably has something to do with unholy blight + DnD (they were hitting Boon! What else could I do but pull them off of him with a DnD... let him die? ... Well, okay, I could do that I suppose...), so we're running and running and this level 80 horde shaman keeps trying to stop us.

I mean, talk about PERSISTENT. He followed us all the way from Thrall's room out. I kept chains of ice on him (and hello, the only cooldown on that is global and frost runes? Seriously? No wonder it seems you can't cross the field in WSG without having to constantly cleanse chains of ice from the flag runner.) and then we were out, jumped into the river, and finally evaded most of the rest of the guards except for two persistent fellows... and that dang shaman!

So the unholy tank and the holy paladin (and how is that for a duo? Unholy and holy together? Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!) went into this epic battle with an elemental shaman! But strangulate, mind freeze, death grip and Boon hammering him got him down. And then he came back up. So we killed him. Again.

I mean, really! Bravo on a good attempt! :)

The highlight was this level 1 orc had followed us out the whole way with the shaman, unflagged naturally, and watched the whole fight. When it was over, I bowed to the level 1...

And then the level 1 logged into their Alliance alt and told Boon that it was the most epic fight he'd ever seen! (I doubt that, but the sentiment is appreciated)

It was, I will admit, very fun.

They're gunning for me!

With the PvP bug again in my ear, I've been running around with Kvasira in the various battlegrounds, rediscovering the joys and ... okay, rediscovering the headaches that being Alliance in the Rampage Battlegroup means.

However, I think I've noticed something! People don't LIKE me! ... well, the Hordies. The Alliance don't seem to mind me.

But dang, if it isn't every time I'm in a battleground, I seem to have one or two hordies that seem to have it out for me. They see me and veer off from what they're doing or where they're going to try (sometimes succeed!) to kill me.

It probably has something to do with the fact that I like to mess up plans wherever and whenever possible. :D

Oh, are you running the flag? HAMMER OF JUSTICE!

Okay, this seems to mostly be a Warsong Gulch thing. I haven't noticed it much in the other battlegrounds, except Strand of the Ancients... and I think that's because in Strand I like to do the bomb defusing thing, and bombing thing, and killing the tanks thing, and taking the graveyards thing.

Anyway, so in between running the flag (cleanse, cleanse, cleanse, cleanse, cleanse) and returning the flag (hammer of justice, hammer of wrath, take THAT!), I seem to, in every WSG, develop a following of two or three hordies that take time out of their busy day to see how I'm doing.

It makes me feel loved. In a very warm, bodily fluids gushing out, way.

Dual spec? No thanks.

With the advent of dual speccing, a lot of people have accepted the task of getting multiple sets of gear together and paying the fee to be able to respec 'instantly' for the need of their guild, or their own personal desires.

While I think that dual-spec is a nice thing for people, it isn't something I have ever shown an interest in doing for myself. There's a good reason for this, for me.

If I wanted to be a holy paladin, guess what I would have played?

If I want to heal, then I'm not interested in being my paladin, but instead I'm going to be logging in my shaman or my priest, both of whom are my healers.

If I want to dps, then I'll be logging in one of the people that I have decided, in my mind, to call my damage classes.

I just think we're assuming that if someone shows up at 80, dual-specced holy and ret, or boomkin and tree, or tree and bear, or shadow and disc... that they can play both equally well. I don't think this is the case.

Now, I'm not saying that someone who is dual-specced can't play both their specs really well. I'm not saying this because I've encountered many people who do. And if I so chose to do dual-speccing, I don't doubt that I'd be good at both specs.

(Because I'm K, like you had to ask.)

However, as I mentioned above... if I want to heal, then I log in Karika. If I want to DPS, then I log in Kvasira or Kikidas. If I want to tank, I log in Keiji. If I want to level a healer, dpser or tank, then I log in one of my poor neglected characters.

For people who aren't as altalicious as I am, it makes sense for them to turn their hybrid 80 into two (or three!) roles. In terms of raid saves, it also makes sense to not have to save two characters to the same raid if they suddenly need you to switch from your dps to your healer.

But it isn't for me. For me, the reason I have so many alts is that it isn't JUST the game or the quest or the fight... for me, it's the CLASS. For me... my paladin is not a healer. Sure, I can toss flash of light here or holy light there, but I am not a healer, unless you count Judgement of Light, then I'm HoT-Queen, druids look out! But my paladin is retribution.

If you want me to be my healer, then you had best know that from the start and ask me to bring Karika along from the getgo.

If you want ranged DPS of awesome proportions, then ask me from the getgo to bring Kikidas.

Someone who used to be a holy paladin but decided to shelve them to be a DPS-only class (which is entirely AOK by me. It's their 15 bucks a month.) told Boon that every ret paladin should be dual-specced holy.

Excuse me?

I don't think I heard you correctly. You're telling me that you don't want to be a holy paladin but instead want to be a DPS-only class, but that I have to take my ret pally and dual-spec holy? Because the option is there? Because why? Please tell me what compelling reason there is that I have to take my kickass plate wearing big hammer swinging retribution paladin and turn her into a plate wearing shield bearing holy paladin just because the raid leader may want another holy paladin?

I don't even take offset GEAR for anyone, because I KNOW that I am not going to be using it.

Now, I wasn't privy to the entire conversation and I'm sure they have their reasons for thinking the way they do. But I'm sorry, I don't have to dual-spec holy. I don't have to dual-spec anything, for anyone.

If you feel that strongly that DPS-hybrid classes need to be able to heal in their spare time, then log in your paladin and dual-spec ret and holy, but don't try to tell me that I have to.

For those out there that dual-spec, because they like to heal and dps on the same character, more power to you! Be it because you like healing and dpsing and tanking on that class, or because it's your favorite toon, or because it's your only 80, or whatever, go you! Have fun.

But don't tell me that I need to dual-spec.

When I log into my paladin, I log into her with a certain set of expectations. Big two-hander. Divine Storm. Crusader Strike. Paladin. Muscle memory guides my clicks and my movements.

I don't log into her and have to decide what spec I want to be with her. I am retribution paladin. I am Kvasira.

Ditto with Karika, or Keiji, or Kikidas. (Yes, I know, warlocks are dps/dps/dps classes, but I'm an affliction warlock, and that isn't likely to change for a while, even though destrolocks are currently higher in the raid damage meters.)

While it would take but a change of mental preparation for me to say, 'Okay, I am holy paladin now, gotta get on my holy paladin hat', I don't want to. At the risk of being obnoxiously repetative... if I want to heal, I want to be my shaman. If I want to hit things with a big weapon, I want to be Kvaisra. If I want to tank, I want to be Keiji. If I want to hit things from a distance with shadowy bolts of darkness and massive amounts of damage over time abilities, I want to be Kikidas.

Sorry, this turned into more of a rant than I was intending it to be, but I find it kind of offensive for someone who chooses a primary DPS class, to turn around and tell any hybrid that 1: they need to dual-spec and 2: that they need to dual-spec into a healing spot.

It ranks right up there with people (I'm looking at you, mages. It always seemed to be mages who bitched.) who used to tell ret pallies in PvP that we should respec holy and be useful. (Of course, my answer was: then you roll a paladin and play holy, otherwise, shut up.)

Guess who isn't getting a bubble. Yeah. That's right. You aren't.