I've returned from that far off Texan-land, and it's time to get myself back into the swing of things. Hopefully I'll start picking up where I left off, and what better time to start than during Tuesday morning maintenance, eh?

First thing up: Pally Q&A!

Juicy Healer focused tidbits:

In Lich King up until now, MP5 has not been as valuable to most paladins as say Int, Crit, or Spell Power, and really it wasn’t intended to be. It is particularly relevant that you are hardly ever choosing between Int and MP5. However, we also think that MP5 became undervalued as a stat and as most of you know, we are buffing it for 3.2. Furthermore, we think we have allowed paladin mana regen through Int and Crit to get a little out of control. We don’t want to force paladins to care only about MP5, but we also don’t want them viewing it as a total junk stat, like say Agility, either. Crit is just too beneficial to be strictly a regen stat.

[...]

Q. Do we feel Flash of Light and the changes in store for it will allow for additional diversification for the existing healing spells available? Aside from Holy Light, Flash of Light, and Holy Shock, are there any plans to provide paladins with other interesting healing spells later down the road?

A. Later down the road most likely, but it won’t be for 3.2 and it won’t be with something that looks like Prayer of Healing or Wild Growth. We do think paladins will have more of a use for Flash of Light now with the extra benefit to Sacred Shield. The changes to Beacon of Light in 3.2 should make paladins an exceptional dual target healer.

Mmmm... Bornakkdrool... ahem. anyway.

Nothing really too new from this Q&A. My opinion on these Q&As is that it is Blizzard's attempt to look like they are providing more feedback to players about their classes, letting them in on the development mentalities... but really it's not that informative. The questions are not all that challenging - just one place for them to regurgitate everything GC says, IMO. Love him or hate him, at least GC reaches out and talks to the player base about what the hell is going on behind Blizz doors regarding classes. He's the best thing to happen to WoW since... well, priests. :P

Valany'r changes

From the newest patch notes:

Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings: This item's stats and level have been increased to match the power level of healer weapons coming from the Coliseum 25-person normal difficulty instance. In addition, each time Val'anyr is equipped, Blessing of Ancient Kings will be placed on a 45-second cooldown before it can occur.

According to WoWInsider, the stat changes so far are as follows:

• 3 more Stamina
• 3 more Intellect
• 34 more Spell Power
• 3 more Critical Strike Rating
• 3 more Haste Rating

I actually like this change, though one of the commenters (TrueHeart) over at wow.com made a very good point when he said "Blizzard, early on, stated that the proc was what made the item legendary, not the stats. " Apparently there have been a lot of bugs in the proc, and instead of fixing the bugs, it looks as though Blizz may have simply decided to change their philosophy on how the the legendary mace should work. I cannot confirm myself whether or not the proc is buggy, but I'm currently looking through forum posts to see if there has been any discussion about it.

And lastly...

Healers all over the world rejoice (and a few aware tanks as well!):

"Mirror Image: Images will no longer trigger the death sound when their time expires."

Halle-freaking-lujah. Gah, mages. Can't live with them, can't have strudel without them.

Our alliance makes our first attempt at Ulduar 25 tonight. I have only made a smattering of attempts at even Ulduar 10, and one ridiculous and ill-fated Ulduar 25 pug. Needless to say, I’m quite pumped. Coupled with that is the fact that for the first time in weeks, we had several healers sign up – to the point that I don’t think we will be facing any extreme problems in handling the healing situation.

About three weeks ago, when we began seriously discussing starting Ulduar, I ran across this post on wow.com. I took that advice very much to heart, and after starting a discussion on the item in our forums, and listening to what others in our Alliance had to say about it, the officers decided that the best way to handle Valan’yr was to let the entire Alliance decide. We chose to hold a vote.

This is how it will work. One healer will be designated as primary recipient of Valan’yr shards. A secondary healer will be designated as recipient for whenever the primary healer is unavailable. If neither of those healers are in the raid when a fragment drops, it goes to open roll for all healers. There will be no tier reductions for someone who receives a fragment (our loot system is a modified tier system).

After taking nominations via the Alliance forum, a poll thread was started with the nominees allowing everyone to vote. The healer who receives the most votes is designated as Primary recipient, and the one with the second largest number of votes is secondary recipient.

In most guilds, the officers will simply select the healer who “deserves” the fragments, and thus, eventually, the mace. I cannot express how happy and proud I am that we did not choose this approach. Perhaps it is because I am both a healer and an officer, but I did not want anyone to think I had an agenda of securing a legendary item solely for myself. It just breeds bad blood and resentment amongst our healers.

I didn’t actually expect to win the vote.

This isn’t some misplaced modesty. I didn’t vote for myself. As an officer, I was able to see who voted for whom, and over the past couple of days, as the vote has been progressing, I can’t even express the warmth I felt for my Alliance members. I mentioned earlier today that I am the kind of person that needs positive feedback. For weeks now I’ve felt I wasn’t doing a very good job – I’ve been absent due to real life circumstances. And to see so many of my fellow raiders show their support for me in spite of all that has really touched me.

I’m feelin’ the Valan’yr love. Some legendary items proc all kinds of warm gooey feelings.

As a side note, I respecced from holy/shadow to holy/disc, so that I can fulfill whatever role is needed most on our raids.