Last night was the easiest, smoothest, fastest, and all around best night we have ever had in Icecrown Citadel. I don’t know if something was in the water, or if everyone took their vitamins that morning, or if Anafielle and Valja brought over some powerful mojo with them from their last guild. Either way, something clicked and it was amazing.

First pull was at 6:36 server time, six minutes late, but we made up for it by chain pulling to Marrowgar and keeping a good pace going. After that we basically just steamrolled our way through and up to Saurfang, eventually reaching the first designated break at 7:21 server time.

When everyone was back, the pain train started up again and we burnt through Dreamwalker (where I scored the Grinning Skull Greatboots, finally) and then on to the Blood Wing. The weekly raid quest was for BQL, which had since eluded us. And, by eluded I mean we’ve gotten the quest a few times, just never completed it. The raid always insisted on a few “shaking off the rust wipes” to keep my blood pressure at a healthy level.

Once everyone was there we were off to the races. Minimal marks on the pre-Council trash, just enough to focus down the tacticians one by one. Council was dropped with no trouble, and then we shot up the steps to pull the Blood Queen. The first go was a last second wipe, thanks to losing a dps to a mind control (who, thanks to lag, somehow still managed to get his bite off, though) and a mis-timed Blood Lust. No matter, we quickly regrouped and then downed her with complete ease the second go, managing to snag the weekly quest in the process.

It was now 8:21, a full hour after Saurfang was down, and we were making fantastic time. Off to Plague Wing.

For Festergut, Anafielle and I had an arrangement where I’d get to kite the Rotface ooze if she got to tank Festergut first. I acquiesced and was helpless to stop her relentless march to shaming the dps on that boss. When we switched my devious plan was to call for blust at my 9-stack portion and post a higher spike than her. Unfortunately, hubris got the best of me, and like some trashy Bond villain I taunted her in vent, “and once I get to nine stacks I’ll have blood lust! And then–Wait! No! I didn’t call for–” BLAARGGLAARGAARRGGHH “Nyoooo!!”

She ended up posting some ridiculous dps and apparently scored the 32nd place on the prot pally Festergut rankings. Not too shabby!

Nonetheless, the rest of Plague Wing was fairly uneventful. We steamrolled Rotface, then Putricide as well, posting our cleanest kill yet. When Herr Doktor bit the dust, it was 9 server time, an hour left to go in the raid. Good god, I suddenly realized, we had time to do Sindragosa that night.

So, as we headed over to the Frostwing Halls again we did our best to dash any optimism Ana/Valja might have been feeling after our two and half hour 10/12 marathon. Sindragosa was no where near on farm, we’d probably be coming back tomorrow to finish the job after some aforementioned rust-shaking wipes.

Imagine my surprise when at 10:42 I found myself staring at the corpse of Sindragosa. We two-shot her, after spending an entire raid night on her the week before.

And to top it all off, we have an entire night to spend on Arthas now. Three and half hours of Lich King. Glorious.

Last night was definitely one our best raid nights ever, and succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I hope those successes are foreshadowing of a Lich King kill tonight.

Festergut and Rotface suck. They are hard bosses and require each and every raider to give 110%. Each player needs to maximize the performance of their role and minimize anything that hurts the overall team effort (especially avoidable damage!).

Here are some dopey little tricks you can use to bring your A game to each fight:

1. Use a slow dps weapon for Festergut

Considering how tight the enrage timer can get, dps from every member of your group matters, and as Paladins we have the luxury and privilege of contributing more than our fair share of tank dps to the pile.

While Festergut may hit hard, he only does during a small window of the fight. Assuming you have the defense to spare, don’t be afraid to use a slow dps weapon (the slower the better) to maximize your damage. The slower your weapon is, the more damage each 5-stack proc from Seal of Vengeance/Corruption will do.

2. When not tanking Festergut, stand behind him

You should be soft-capped for expertise anyway, so to maximize your damage done on this fight, stand behind the boss to avoid causing parries for yourself and the person currently tanking.

3. Make the best use of your Gastric Bloat buff

Let’s combine points one and two. When you hit 9 stacks of Gastric Bloat and get the boss pulled off you, jump behind the boss, cancel Righteous Fury, self-cast Hand of Salvation, pop wings, and go to town.

Doing that in the ten man last night, after my tank switch I ended up pushing little more than 8000 dps. You can see it after that second huge dip in my dps, I slid behind the boss and immediately exploded in damage.

4. Make sure to Judge when kiting the Big Ooze

Judging is an important part of keeping threat on the Big Ooze while kiting. If you’re just shield tossing every 30 seconds you’re going to find the healer aggro riding hard on your heels. So, you definitely need to judge when possible.

The easiest way to manage Judging without getting murdered by being too close to the Ooze is to run ahead of it (as you would normally) until you’re just out of range and the Judgement icon is red on your bar. The millisecond it gets color back, click it/hit the hotkey, unleash your Judge, and then keep moving.

You can also use the range on Judgement to safely gauge your distance from the Big Ooze.

5. Use Seal of Righteousness for Big Ooze kiting

Seal of Righteousness will give you the most threat bang for your buck. Since you won’t be able to get close enough to build a 5 stack, Seal of Vengeance/Corruption is useless. Moreover, Seal of Command is only really good for aoe situations.

Thus, the burden falls on the neglected Seal of Righteousness. Each time you judge with SoR you’ll do more threat than you would judging any other seal.

So a couple of months ago, when SoComm was first changed to its current Holy Cleavin’ incarnation in 3.2, I recommended against speccing into it. Well, the situation has changed somewhat and so has my position on SoComm.

Now, what changed was Shield of Righteousness (as mentioned earlier this week) had a mechanic tweak which made it parriable/dodgeable. Not only did this make expertise a very worthy threat stat under softcap, but it also had the side effect of making ShoR able to proc SoComm’s cleave proc. This suddenly makes SoComm viable for trash pulls (provided trash doesn’t survive more than 30 seconds) if you’re looking for a threat boost in that arena, or the joy of many yellow numbers.

Does this make SoComm mandatory? No. Does it make it useful and fun? Oh yes.

The cleave effect of Command will now proc from three of our attacks (please correct me, readers, if I missed one/others): ShoR, white melee attacks, and Judgements. However, Judgements will only proc the cleave (and this is also true for the additional proc of Seal of Vengeance) if you are specced into Judgements of the Just. Don’t ask why. Just keep that in mind for later in this post.

But how to pick up SoComm?

Well, you’ve got two options: one being just swap the lone point from Conviction into Seal of Command. The main downside to this is a single-target threat loss, and if you have Seal of Vengeance (which you likely do), you’re looking at a “wasted” glyph slot when SoV isn’t active.

The other way to get SoComm–and hell, the crazier way–is to make a separate spec for trash/heroics.

Wrathy inspired me with his epic tales of pulling crazy dps numbers in heroics with his specialized Heroic Anub’arak spec, the crux of which was Seal of Command. I, sick of ret and never using that offspec, followed Wrathy’s lead … though I find now I need to make a few tweaks to it since I’m using it on heroics trash and not Nerubian Burrowers.

The results otherwise were pretty impressive–I easily did most overall damage done in a UK run, and that was with frequent mana issues. Not the best metric, admittedly, but there is definitely potential here.

Putting a few tweaks in the new trash spec I’m going to adopt tonight, I placed a point in Spiritual Attunement, one in Judgements of the Just (so judging will proc the seal), leaving 3 in Reckoning, and skipping Vindication to put 3 overall in Conviction. Considering this is, as I said, a spec for heroics and trash (where survivability is not an issue), I’d rather max threat talents.

As for glyphs, I’m going to go with Holy Wrath, Hammer of the Righteous, and Judgement. Again, for threat maximizing. I won’t be using SoV in this trash spec

So overall, like I said, SoComm is not mandatory. It will not help you generate more threat on a boss or live longer. Rather it is for putting out some obscene numbers in heroics, farm content, or large packs of trash in raids (though there is something to be said for the cleave’s snap aggro potential).

I wish I had a screenshot of a cloud of yellow numbers to illustrate my point. Nonetheless, with all the heroics running we’ll be doing into the foreseeable future, SoComm has the bonus of making slogging through a heroic dungeon fun again.