I often get asked "What happened with you and Downfall?".  My reply usually varies, depending on how much time I want to spend explaining.  In the Downfall community, I think there is a great "rift" between those that know "of" me and those that "really" know me.  On the contrary, if you leave the Downfall community, you will find a community of people who have grown to love and respect me.  Why is there such a difference of opinion about me?  Well, in a nutshell, it's mostly my inexperience in dealing with RL issues that were placed before me at a time in my life when I thought the world should be revolving around me.  That's the two minute version, but it doesn't even cut the ice or begin to explain much of anything.  Since there is a great deal of history here, bear with me as I begin telling you the story of Dangly, or better "My Story".

Over the course of my WoW experience (about 5 years), I have visited only three servers.  I started out on Agamaggan as a Nelf Warrior (don't laugh), and played with my brother until I grew bored with the warrior mechanics.  It was then that I created Dangly, and continued to level him up to 80 and began to heal for <Underoath> as they progressed through Molten Core and eventually Blackwing Lair.  They eventually made me an officer, but one day our GM decided that he needed to quit wow to focus on his wife and kids.  I understood that and so did everyone else.  However, the guild ended up disbanding and we were all left guildless on a dying server.  I then applied to <Onslaught> ( the only guild worth a damn on Agamaggan at the time ) and they accepted me after a "proving run" and we raided for a few weeks.  However, they eventually all xferred to other servers due to Agamaggan's lack of competent players.

I was not going to follow them.  Instead, I began searching the web for a good guild.  I came across downfallguild.org and I was immediately drawn to the level of community and organization that oozed from the pages.  After a few talks with Garreth and some other officers, they decided to invite me to xfer over for a proving run.  After a test run or two, I was offered a ginvite and a perma spot in Hamfist as a healer.  At the time, I didn't realize what an honor this was, but apparently most people have to wait a while before receiving an invite to the main raid.  I had really hit it off with Downfall and I felt like I finally had a home. 

Things went amazing for a while, but then life started to rear its ugly face.  The girl I was dating at the time ( who is now my wife ) was struggling through depression, anxiety, and OCD.  She kept it bottled in for so long, that it finally surfaced in a terrible way.  I always knew that she suffered from these problems, but up until that point, she had it under control as far as I knew.  This directly and negatively affected our relationship because I wasn't ready to deal with it.  I had to learn and cope "on-the-fly".  WoW had been a big part of my life for a long time before this happened, and I was starting to realize that I would have to let it go for the sake of our relationship.

This realization ultimately led to my own "downfall".  I couldn't spend my free time playing the game that I love anymore, and I was angry.  One night after what should have been a routine Vashj push, I decided to disenchant all of my gear and sell the shards off on the AH.  I also deleted Dangly, but quickly realized that I had gone too far and at least got him back.  However, there was no way I could predict the aftermath that would follow the next day.

I logged on the next day and told Garreth what I had done, and that I was quitting wow.  I was very short with him.  However, once people started to realize what was going on (since I wasn't in the raid anymore, it was obvious), I received lashings and brow-beatings from almost everyone (minus a few).  In the volatile and adolescent state that I was in at the time, I barked back and said hateful things and began digging myself an endless hole that would soon become my place of residence.  To make matters worse, they thought I was a thief because of all the shards I had posted on the AH.  Earlier that week I requested shards from the gbank to enchant my gear.  I was swiftly kicked from the guild after I went off on a few people.

I didn't much care that I had been kicked, nor did I care that I had been an ass.  I was too selfish to realize the error of my ways.  While they said hateful things too, that gave me no excuse to retaliate like I did.  It all boils down to the problems I was having with my wife.  I'm not trying to make excuses, but I do want you guys to know where I'm coming from.  I don't normally talk about this stuff with anyone, but I feel like it's worth it, if it clears my name just a little.  Dealing with those issues was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.  I never knew what to expect or when it would end.  The only ting I was certain of was that I loved her and it was my job to help her.

I didn't play wow for the better part of a year after that, and things got better and we got help and worked it out.  We got engaged, and I decided it was time to log back in.  It was then that I met this awesome group of people called the <Red Panda Brigade>.  They took me in and quickly promoted me to officer in a matter of weeks.  I went on to build their website and we had excellent times running kara and naxx.  However, there was a bit of drama in the guild (not caused by me) that caused it to slowly start breaking apart.  The guild master had some real life issues to deal with and I finally threw in the towel and moved to Dawnbringer server to play with some RL friends ( college buddies of mine).  I hated it, and as soon as my month was up, I quickly xferred back to Gorgonnash. 

Since then I've been trying to get back into Downfall.  You guys have my deepest apologies for the way I acted.  I've definitely become a better man and a better husband through all of this.  I just thought you might understand me if you knew my "whole" story.  I know its long, but I don't normally wear my heart out on my sleeve, so thanks for taking the time to read it.

Ben (a.k.a. Dangly)

my first attempt at a custom ui. /wave default ui

I. The Spec

   A. This is all you really need for dps Barebones dps spec

   B. This is how you should probably spec for raid Downfall Ret Raiding Spec

        1. Please note that the points in stoicism can go into either stoicism, anticipation, toughness or righteous fury.

IIa. Key DPS Abilities

    A. Crusader Strike - 110% Weapon Damage (Base) with a 6 second cooldown. This boring strike will be your bread and butter attack. In your rotation this should also be your attack that is used first if it is off cooldown.

    B. Judgement - You unleash the seals energy hurting the boss, hurting yourself, padding your healers numbers and getting some mana regen go to with it. If Crusader strike is on Cooldown, this is your next attack in your rotation.

    C. Divine Storm - Our Divine Storm is closer to a Pacific Northwest mist nowadays than an actual storm. This is the paladin version of whirlwind, now with a little heal attached to it. This also does 110% weapon damage and has a 10 second cooldown. If Crusader Strike and Judgement are both off cooldown, use this spinny glowy hammer attack.

    D. Consecration - Because nothing scares a boss more than an 8 yard radius of your piss extending out from you in every direction. This has no target cap and is great for padding numbers on trash. Also a great thing to drop when casters actually try to CC things and you don't want them too. If Crusader Strike, Judgement

   E. Exorcism -

IIb. Key Utility Abilities

II. Gearing

III. Enchants and Gems

IV. Glyphs

V. "What should I judge?"

VI. Useful Mods

VII. Useful Macros

VIII. Useful Boss and Trash Tips

So it's been a long while since I've posted my misadventures with Pally alt healing.

Levels 70-80

The first thing I did was messing with mods and UI.   With new tricks with Judgements, Beacon, and stuff the old one definitely couldn't do what I wanted.    The first thing I wanted was something to better track the Bacon, ClassTimers wasn't good enough for me.   I figure since it only tracks Focus, Target, and Self, the Bacon I may need to track more targets than that. 

The mod I found was SpellReminder, able to set up timer bars and audible warnings of debuffs/buffs you cast.   This allowed me to put a beacon on anyone, heal someone else, have a focus on another person, track judgement debuff on a boss without focusing/targetting it, track mutilple sacred shield casts, while still targetting a different guy, etc.    The bars are similar to boss mods, with a "short timer" warning you can move to somewhere more visible to you while having it audibly alert you.    And able to set up each buff/debuff to have diff audible warnings so you don't even have to look, just listen for what's falling off.

Anyways, after that was over with, I decided to try my hand at instancing, and it was quite interesting.    It usually only took a few mins for me to find a group for instance rested xp and loots!    By the time I was 80 the only quests I really did was Dungeon ones, Borean, and Fjord.     Well, exception to that is at level 77, I started up on the Hodir quest chain.    So I was doing dailies by level 78, and 3 weeks into 80, already exalted with them.

Week 1:

So being a noobie 80 my plan was to get a bunch of heroics under my belt.   I wanted the gear, experience, and knowledge that I can pull my weight in anything higher I'd do.    Though, I did get into a Salmon VoA25, couldn't do much though, slow and weak heals!    Same with a random OS25.

Sticking back to Heroics, chugged along what was approximately an increasing level of difficulty.  Nexus and UK were easy targets.   VH was sorta but a bit of a crapshoot if the Void Walker showed up, still managed through it, but definitely needed a lot of spamming.   Even did AN and OK, but those were shaky, well more cause the groups themselves were too.   Strath, Pinnacle, HoS, and even Occulus, were on the completed as well.

Week 2:

With the heroics, I took as much gear as possible, leather, cloth, mail, etc, all to boost stats, fuck the armor.  lol    Still wearing a leather helm to this day.    Also by this time there were of course some epics, heroic ones, heroism emblems ones.

So tried my luck with a pug Naxx10.   Partial pug maybe, a few of them did know/run with each other a bunch I believe.   Definitely an experience in noob healing.   Mistakes were made, I died, people died, Pudo lived, stuff took forever to die, etc, etc.   It did take a 2nd night, but did manage a full clear.

For the most part I think I did fine.  Mistakes on trying to heal during Heigan dance killed me.   Learning to time things on Loatheb took getting used to.   Sapphiron took some running around, but it wasn't much trouble.     It was Kel'thuzad that became something that forced me to learn more.

The trouble was Frost Blast.   First was the folly of not configuring Grid to properly show it, well I thought I did, but it didn't work, so had to look it up.    Second, really need better reaction time to handle it, clicking to target then casting heal was a bit slow, and of course the other healers probably fail at this too so when all 3 of us fail, fun times.   Especially when they don't have a mod to show em who has it and started relying on yell macros to read then find the person then heal.

Anyways, got the kill eventually, but it definitely forced me to look up another mod afterwards.   Clique.   Binding spells to mouse buttons basically.   Spent a day experiementing with it and mouseover macros with heals.   My first thought was to just bind heals to standard mouse clicks, only have a 3 button mouse.     But that quickly was a mistake, doing that no longer allowed me to target anyone, anything, or right click for stuff like inspections and stuff, it all got sent to heals.  

Scrapping that idea, leaving the standard click alone, I went with modifer keys to combine with clicking to use this.   I set up CTRL-LEFT, CTRL-RIGHT, and CTRL-MIDDLE as my Flash of Light, Holy Shock, and Holy Light buttons.    CTRL being easy to just rest my palm on for standard healing scenarios.   The next set of buttons was Shift ones, putting the Hand of Salv, Prot, and Sac on those.   Lastly, the Alt handled my Sacred Shield and Beacon spamming.   Had one left over so I just slapped it on Hand of Freedom for that one.

Week 3:

This was also the first week I did heroic HoL, never want to go back.  lol

Anyways, Naxx10 this week was a fail pug.   Real pug, truly random bunch gathered together with no real organization.   Did 2 of the wings before falling apart.  lol

But the highlight this week would be Naxx25 partial pug, I guess, seems to be some guild hosted or something.   Went through that with minimal difficulty with all my new fanlged mod and macro set ups.   I did screw up on Thaddius charges, towards the end, failed to keep watch.

At this point, I've actually finished with Heroic gear.  Well, heroic emblem gear.   There are still a few upgrades I suppose in heroics themselves, but nothing major or it's an instance I'd like to block from memory.   lol

Week 4:

That would be this week.   Last night I did a pug Naxx10 again, semi-organized people though so good start there.   The problem was, they decided to just 2 healer it.    Scream in terror!

It was definitely the most ooming experience I've had.   I actually had to pot a few fights, and used Divine Plea quite a bit.   And, it was pulled off.    Only wipe was at 4H in which only cause the 2 handling the back fudged it up.

And by ooming I really meant ooming.   For Sapphiron though it was kinda close sometimes, there were enough breaks in the air phases that I could Divine Plea and stuff without much trouble.    For Kel'thuzad, it was very very close.   Especially coupled with the mana detonation, even with Divine Plea just ran out of mana for the Holy Lights.   Resorted to Flash spamming a bunch at the end barely keeping up both tanks, couldn't afford to keep bacon up, and started to ignore dps, cept for maybe a frost blast one heal to save em.

Anyways, stay tuned for more misadventures of the noob pally!