Startin' a Ruckus

Still AFK

2010-09-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

Still AFK from WoW. Finished up my full Wrathful set a long time ago, including the Tabard. Account's been inactive for a good long while now and I haven't even picked up Starcraft2, yet. Do I miss the game? Yes, but it's more about the community and camraderie that I miss and the ability to engage in a group activity on any given evening.

On the plus side, I just completed my first Olympic distance triathlon, so I think I might start a blog about that, though I'm not sure what I'd name that blog... I'll have to think about it.

For those who are still spending 6 hours a night in front of the computer/TV after a full day's work, take some time to get outside more, get active, and spend some time engaging in some physical activity. The health benefits alone are worth the effort.

ORLY?

YaRLY.

I'm not just the President. I'm also a client.

An Update, of sorts

2010-04-30T08:44:00.000-07:00

So, it's now approximately 5 months since my last post and not much has changed. I've been playing here and there, doing some Arena and grinding out some BG's. Season 8 started (Wrathful!) and some friends and I pounded our way to almost 2300 as Arms/Protret/Resto. My Resto Druid got his 2200 rating Main Hand weapon and I'm almost full Wrathful. I would have been full Wrathful by now if I hadn't taken 2 weeks to snowboard in the Austrian Alps, but sadly, I had to take one for the team and hit the slopes.

Since then, my Protret pally buddy quit for good and has made me promise to him to not regale him with stories of WoW so he'd be tempted to come back. Warrior buddy and I have been getting 10 games in a week with a Warlock we know. I've reduced my play time significantly, mostly out of boredom, but also because there isn't much to look forward to. I suppose I could try to push ratings, but gaming time isn't something that's abundant right now. In another sense, I feel accomplished. Getting the 2200 rating weapon is somewhat of an achievement in of itself. Alot of players cant break 2k, let alone 1800, so I'm somewhat satiated. Yes, I'm not a Gladiator, or even a Duelist, but perhaps I'm not meant to be. I notice that I make a ton of mistakes all the time in matches: Poor positioning, poor cc, poor prehotting.. yet it doesn't bother me as much since I know I have the goods to get past 2200.

So what of Cataclysm and beyond? I'll probably give Cataclysm a shot. I've been really enjoying playing as a Boomkin in BG's, even in nearly full Resto gear and I think I could enjoy rated BG's where people are actually trying. The Mushroom talent sounds like fun and the positional Silence seems like fun as well. With regards to the rest of the talents and abilities that will come with the expansion, I'll wait until I see them (if I make it that far) to comment on them.

The one thing I'd like to see is a Battleground that doesn't have any primary or secondary objectives other than killing the opposing team. Make it a sizeable map like AB or EOTS with LOS objects and elevation objects and allow unlimited respawns. Dying in the Arena is such a heavy penalty for your team (near guaranteed loss) that there really needs to be an 'Arena lite' where the responsibility of dying isn't as great. Allow for a respawn and maybe a comeback. Allow for swings in map dominance. Allow for regrouping and strategic decisions. Penalize people who have died with respawns with 1/4 mana so that they can't run back, blow cooldowns and turn the tide that easily.

Yeah, it's not an original idea, but in a way, it's the opportunity to come back from a disadvantage that makes an FPS fun for me.

Just sayin'

Gaming the Random Dungeon System

2010-01-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

Apologies if this is an already widely known tactic.

If you play as DPS, then you know how terribly long the queue is for the Random Dungeon team making system. Sometimes it takes literally forever and a day to get a team going.

Want to know a faster way to get into a team and off earning your Emblems of Frost/Triumph without waiting until the cows come home?

Grab a friend who plays a class that 'can' tank. For the people who are completely ignorant about class abilities, that's Warrior, Paladin, Deathknight and Druid. Even if they only heal or DPS, have them queue as role = Tank. Once the team gets put together, which should be absurdly quick, have your buddy enter the instance and then drop team. Immediately elect to search for a replacement. This will put you at the front of the queue instead of at the ass end of it, giving you the first Tank available.

Voila! Instant reduction in frustration!

And knowing is half the battle.

Sometimes You Just Know

2009-12-29T08:00:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, when you're in a pressure situation, your game elevates with the stress of the situation and when things click, you just know that you did something right.

On my day off, I randomly did some 2's games as Rogue/Shadow Priest, with myself as the Shadow Priest. Games were fast and high pressure, rarely lasting longer than 2 minutes. The beauty of it all, was that, having not played as Shadow in the Arena for any appreciable amount of time, we were able to pull out trinkets and defensive CD's to force kills, usually by the second fear or silence. In no time, we were beating 2k MMR teams (not that it's a huge deal, but.. you know.. just sayin')

It just feels good when you figure out the steps to beating an opposing comp and you know that for the most part, success is just execution.

Oh, by the by: 2nd run ever on my Druid in H. Pit of Saron and 2 Battered Hilts dropped. Guess who won one?

Thats right, the Feral with the il200 gear.

Maybe it will bump my DPS from 'terribad' to 'scrub'.

Pissin' My Life Away...

2009-12-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

Just when you think you've broken free of a soul breaking obsession, certain sequences happen in life that make you run eagerly back to indulge... nay, -feed- whatever addiction that held you so captivated for so many weeks, months or years.

Yep. I'm back playing WoW.

I'll get into what I've been doing recently in a bit, but something happened last night was prompted me to write today.

I was doing VoA 10 PUG on my Priest when a raid member, and complete stranger piped up with, (paraphrased) "Rukuz? What are you doing online?"

Befuddled, I responded with my best 'this is how I respond to strangers shorthand': "?"

The stranger went on to explain that he/she had saw that I had quit playing via my blog.

!

Wow. Stunned, I quickly explained (in non-'I don't know you shorthand') that a buddy of mine had suckered me back into playing WoW. but that I hadn't posted anything about it.

In a way, I felt pretty good that someone had actually read this jumble of poorly thought out analogies and excessive carriage returns, so I tried extra hard to DPS Archaevon the Stingy* & friends with my janky outdated gear. (*That b!tch never drops anything useful) I was surprised that I broke 3.5k dps. I'm such a bad dragon slayer.

So, what have I been doing? Well, considering this is a PvP blog, I've actually been.. well.. PvPing.

Actually, that's somewhat of a lie. I actually stealth leveled a Warrior from 70-80 without telling friends and ground some honor under the auspices of possibly gearing him out as a new main character. It's quite amusing how the first thought (among my friends, at least), when we get seriously frustrated with our Arena experience, is to change classes. I thought that swapping to a Warrior would make me happier with Arena and PvP overall.

Did it?

No.

The problem that I had/have with PvP is the massive amount of time I have to spend grinding honor. I've said it time and again, but grinding honor is mad stupid. Watching the Nightfall Horde, geared in what digitally resembles used tissue paper, repeatedly fling themselves single-file like lemmings into the Alliance woodchipper is not fun. Playing a brand new 80 and grinding honor while expecting the Horde to not act like a SPED gym glass that takes to kicking each other in the nuts as a good idea, is a decidedly even worse way to work up a whole new level of frustration towards the BG Honor grind system.

So the Warrior got relegated to status: Not Even An Alt, and I started picking up honor on the Druid again to build up my Feral set. I already had my Furious Staff from last season's left over points, so I went to work grinding up Relentless offset pieces while saving up my pittance of points from my bogus weekly throwaway teams. I'll (maybe) comment about Feral in a future post, but let's just put it this way: Even poorly geared, Feral does a ridiculous amount of damage to equally poorly geared BG denizens.

Somewhere along the line, 3.3 came out and Haste got synergized with Dot classes and my Priest got forcibly yanked out of retirement. I will say that I've never actually been good on my Priest. I got carried to 2k+ in 5's as Discipline, and never really broke into the 2k+ brackets as either Disc or Shadow. However, 3.3 is about as close as we can probably get to 'The Golden Age' of the Shadowpriest, and 5 things in 3.3 really make Shadowpriests shine alot brighter (darker?) that before:

Haste affecting Devouring Plague & Vampiric Touch,
Vampiric Embrace becoming an undispellable buff on the Priest
Improved Devouring Plague hitting alot harder upon initial application
Mind Flay range increase without losing the snare
WotF nerf.

The amount of pressure a high haste rating Shadowpriest can generate to force cooldowns is absolutely ridiculous. Again, I'll (maybe) comment about Shadow in a future post, but for right now, melting faces is really, really easy and Rogues aren't as bad as they used to be (however, still a pain to deal with).

So, I'm back for a bit.. still not playing crazy amounts like I used to, but trying to stay positive about my gaming future.

Will this return herald more posts in the future? Tough to tell, really, but we'll see.

Cheers.

Goodbye!

2009-11-02T07:00:00.000-08:00

Sorry folks.

We're done.

Likely, you've noticed that our blogging has been non-existant for several months now and that's largely due to my waning interest in WoW. I've been playing here and there, but 8 months ago, I embarked on a journey to fix up my life and since then, I've lost about 40#, gotten better sleep, and have achieved a much better outlook on life.

It's a win.

Don't feel sorry for my languishing Arena ratings. I don't.

All that means that I don't have much time to really get fully invested in WoW...which I've realized is the missing ingredient to become and stay competitive in this e-Sport. More on this later.

So what have I been doing?

Well, I have replaced alot of my interest in WoW with fitness and diet health. I've been getting my workouts from the great folks at Crossfit and have cut alot of junk from my diet. I've pretty much cut out all wheat, corn, potato, rice, sugar and pasta products and gone from a near size 38 waist to a 30-31. I even signed up to run a Marathon in January, 2010 with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Before this life turning point, I had never run more than 5 miles, and that was in highschool.

Here's the shameless self promotion link for those that might care to read about the training progression and possibly donate to help the LLS out:

http://pages.teamintraining.org/nca/pfchangs10/chucifer

So why did I quit?

Well, the big issue was time and energy as aforementioned. With so many new things to think about, I naturally had less time on my hands. Coming home to cook/eat healthy takes time. Exercise takes time. But most importantly, an active lifestyle begets an active lifestyle. You want to go do stuff. You want to try new things. You want to spread the word about how awesome your new experiences are.

The smaller issue behind quitting was the immense amount of time staying competitive in WoW required. This season started off with a whimper and the honor grind pretty much killed any desire of mine to keep playing. Endless BG's sucked. Poor comps sucked. Poor class design (reliance on Mortal Strike debuffs) sucked. It all combined to literally suck the life out of my WoW experience.

I won't hide it: I like to play with smart players. Sitting in a BG where 90% of the players are both undergeared and underintelligent is frustrating at best. If you've ever been on Ventrilo with me, you'd likely be familiar with the torrent of cursing that usually comes with my Honor grinds and that usually preceeds my sudden logging out of WoW in utter frustration and disgust.

For me, the Battleground or Arena experience should be the reward for your effort. Not the gear. And this is where I believe that Blizzard has ultimately finally & successfully created something that is unsustainable. The reason why an e-Sport is sustainable (Starcraft, CS, etc) is because the reward is the feeling of accomplishment, not something that is only relevant for the current Arena season. I can take my feeling of hitting 2200 in 3's with me forever, but will I remember my Furious Shoulders? Well, that's pretty unlikely.

So, will I be back?

Well, to be honest, I already tried coming back. With some generous help, I was able to level my Warrior from 70-80 and do a little bit of Honor/Arena grinding. It was fun in a way, but ultimately more of the same old, same old. The feelings of frustrating kept coming back and because of them, I haven't been back in the game for a while.

Will I come back with Cataclysm? Maybe. I'm not entirely sure. If Blizzard gets rid of the stupid Honor grind then there's a good chance of that happening. If I break my leg before my Marathon, then it's likely as well. (stay away, all you would be Tonya Hardings) I am looking forward to Starcraft 2 and a little Diablo 3, however, so you might see me pop up there.

So what of the blog?

In some ways, I wanted to be the next Resto4Life or the next BRK, and get widespread acceptance as a go-to person for my class, but my general distaste for raiding and talking about what I view to be mundane (anything not associated to PvP) didn't exactly make me a popular destination with the general masses. I think

As such, It's unlikely that there was -THAT- much traffic here, but from a casual writer, it was a good exercise in expression. I was able to give a bit of info, get a sense of level of effort that some of the more prolific bloggers output, and vent a few frustrations all in one outlet. Hopefully, I was able to do it in a easy to read and readily consumable form. So, thank you, reader(s), for giving me the space to be creative.

I'll probably leave this as the last post until I come back or move on to another MMO or competitive video game.

Any regrets?

Nah. Things are better now from a macro perspective.

Actually, scratch that. I do have a regret.

I regret that by leaving, there will be one less PvP healer willing to subject themselves to the mindless paintrains and that my friends who are still playing this game will be forced to find other healers to help them out.

Because, in the end, it's about the people, not the game.

Cheers!

3.2 Is Here! Thoughts about Resilience Changes...

2009-08-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

And without a doubt, this new patch has generated the least amount of hububb amongst my group of friends than any other patch.

Rest assured, I haven't quit the game, nor have quit this blog, but the game hasn't changed very much to warrant any real substantial thought provoking posts. For me, while content is good, meaningful content is far more desireable. I'm acutely aware of the level of distaste among the general blogosphere readers towards "we cleared this boss this week! Yay us!" type posts, and since I don't enjoy reading that type, I refuse to post such drivel.

Substance is key!

It's like the difference between a hookup with a non English speaking trick and a one that not only speaks English, but can hold their own when discussing ways for Blizzard to overcome the disparity between Arena and Battleground gameplay and their corresponding reward lists. After the deed is done. Of course.

Whatever. Make up your own bad analogies.

I will, however, briefly mention a few things of note: First, I'm finally full Furious on both of my characters, am starting to piece together a Shadow Priest set and have obtained [Just the Two of Us: 2200] as Prot Pally/Resto Druid. Secondly, from recent Blue posts, it's likely that Season 6 will end on August 25th (2 week notice) and Season 7 will begin a week after; August 31st... just in time for all the nerds who don't go anywhere for Labor Day to apply SPF 5000 sunblock in anticipation of monitor burns.

Anyways, let's talk about the Resilience change and how it affects gear and why I have mixed feelings about the change.

Keep in mind that with 3.2, there were two Resilience changes:
1) Resilience affects all damage, not just crit damage
2) You need more Resilience to make up the same amount of mitigation. (15% more)
For the average player, the first change seems huge as playing in full Hateful gear (or even full Deadly if they run enough heroics for Badges of Conquest) isn't often enough to prevent getting gibbed. But, in reality, is this change really that game changing for the average player? Maybe...

Maybe not.

From a personal observation perspective, the majority of the players that I see in BG's are either wearing a smattering of Hateful pieces, a bunch of Naxx 25 stuff and maybe some crafted blues. Titansteel Destroyers are a very common commodity. Going forward, I'd imagine that while the ilvl 200 BoE's will be omnipresent, the ilvl 219 ToC epics will be abound. Regardless, survivability will still be terrible, especially against top geared players in either full ToC25 gear or Relentless (Season 7). Will this new change help players save themselves because they're taking less damage and have a couple extra globals to use their abilities? No. Not in the least for average players.

As a point of note, I often recommend to PvE DPS (ie: Guildies) that are trying to get into PvP to wear their full Uld25 gear and go for the quick gib. Non-Pally PvE Healers get a different recommendation from me and usually that is to spend badges for PvP gear and stack Stamina so that 15k noob Ret Pally doesnt two shot them in a HoJ. For many of these average BG participants, gimping either their damage output or healing ability/longevity for a tiny bit of resilience isn't worth it. They're going to die anyways, so they might as well DPS/Heal as much as possible before they go down.

Let's look at the second change from an average player's perspective: This change, which requires a player to add 15% more Resilience to achieve the same amount of crit reduction, is definitely not going to help the average player, who is often wearing much PvP gear in the first place.

The rationale behind this change is a good one, and that is to encourage players to wear more PvP specific gear to increase personal survivability as opposed to stacking PvE gear. However, when players are sporting marginal amounts of Resilience in the first place, this change won't encourage casual players to start working towards PvP gear. The survival difference between 0 Resilience and 300 Resilience (arbitrary amount) is very small. On top of that, to achieve the same amount of crit mitigation as 3.1's 300 Resilience (which is still a pittance when you consider that many DPS are rolling with 500+ and healers with 900+), players will need an extra 45 Resilience, which is another piece of PvP gear.

So, if these changes are limited in their effect to promote PvP gameplay to the average player, then who do they primarily affect the most? The answer there is: mid to top level PvPers. Top level PvPers are affected by these changes the most as top players will do anything to obtain the best gear to help them succeed. In previous seasons, many top players were mixing and matching PvE gear because they had enough Resilience (at no risk of exploding), creating a gear gap that was often unsurpassable to players who only had access to PvP gear. These changes promote a balanced playing field.

So what about the average player or the starting PvPer? Unfortunately, they're completely up shit creek because they need everything and are at a severe disadvantage from the get go in their efforts to obtain such gear. Off the top of my head, I'd estimate that they need approximately 5 billion honor to get PvP offset pieces and some mainset pieces, rating to be eligible for current/previous season offset/mainset pieces, and/or hundreds of Emblems of Conquest to buy Deadly gear, which will be 2 seasons old once Season 7 comes out. Throughout this time, they're getting crapped on in the BG's and crapped on in Arenas. By the time they get all their stuff in order, Season 8 will be upon them.

Isn't there a better solution to getting people gear so they don't just implode when someone merely contemplates attacking them? To the many players last night who melted to zero, just from my 3 dots (I was playing Shadow), I'm sorry that Blizzard hasn't implemented a system for you to even have a chance to succeed.

I believe, that to get more people into PvP, Blizzard must make PvP gear easy to get... especially if there is PvP specific gear. I propose that Blizzard incorporates PvP rewards with the achievement system. Win 10 3v3 Arena matches? Here's a pair of Deadly Gloves. Win 30 Arena matches? Here's your Deadly Legs. Turn in 10 'For Great Honor' mark turn in's? Here's your Deadly Bracers. Turn in 30? Deadly Belt. 60? Deadly Feet. Ad nauseum.

The rewards are 2 seasons old with Season 7 coming and if Blizz is afraid of Deadly gear becoming ubiquitous outside of PvP, they can make the gear usable only in BG's, Arenas or BG zones such as Wintergrasp. Speaking of which, WG marks are such a poorly implemented function. If you're a new 80 trying to get a full PvP set, not only do you have to grind BG's and Arenas, but you have to be online at specific times to get enough marks to buy pieces of PvP gear that don't even contribute to your main set bonuses. Who has that kind of time?

Intrepid readers might wonder why I'm so concerned about the average player or the starting PvPer? The reason is as such: For anything to be successful, it needs participants. The more players that use the BG's or the Arenas, the better the competition and gameplay. It also stands to reason the Blizzard will spend more development dollars on something that is more widely utilized than someone only a small percentage of players even acknowledge. Right now, the barrier of entry is just way too high to become competitive.

Also, I now have a 62 Shaman and I'm already dreading the gear grind.

Q n A

2009-07-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

8thDragon, a reader, recently asked me this:

My situation is this: I have a fairly well geared priest, but my 2v2 partner is a ret pally that has trouble tracking debuffs and using freedom / cleanse on me. This results in lots of CC chains that leave one of us dead. I tried 3's with him and an enhance shaman, only to get frustrated by how
easy it is to get tunneled to death by 2 melee on the other team.

So I started leveling a druid myself. She's up to 72, and I'm starting to question my decision. It seems to me that a druid is better able to self-sustain in 2's and 3's, but giving up on my 5/5 deadly priest (with all the furious off pieces) makes me want to start breaking keyboards.

What do you think? Find a rogue (or a mage, or both) and profit?

Response:

8thDragon, my initial gut response here is that the problem is two fold, as these kinds of issues are often unable to exist with some mistakes on both sides. Let's address each of the scenarios and point out some things that you and your partner(s) can adjust to make playing your Priest more enjoyable.

2v2: Ret/Priest. Before going into what your Ret buddy is doing, ensure that if you're playing a comp that's trying to kill your Paladin before you, utilize LOS as much as possible while trying to get your Psychic Screams off whenever you can.

Ret Paladins are quite mana sensitive if they spam Cleanse and so they need to pick and choose when to use their GCD's to cleanse you to stop a cc chain or when to play defensive. Recognize, first, that Cleanses weakness is that it can affect three different types of debuffs: Magic, Poison, and Disease, and that it only removes one application per Cleanse. That acknowledged, there are two scenarios in which Cleanse could benefit: If the CC effect is protected by alot of magic/poison/disease debuffs or if the cc is not protected by many debuffs.

The first situation comes when you are playing against Warlocks, Ret Paladins, good Frost Mages, Unholy Deathknights, or Mutilate Rogues who like to sit on you. As these classes can easily and quickly apply debuffs, it may not be worth the GCD's, mana, and time for your Ret Pally teammate to cleanse as their likelihood of hitting that cc debuff is quite low. In such cases, if it looks like your partner is going to die while your trinket is down and you're getting chain cc'd, your partner needs to play defensively to try to interrupt the cc chain with Hammer/Repent and/or your partner needs to learn how to get out of LOS of the opponents so that he can pick up a heal once you get out of the cc chain. It's cruicial for DPS to avoid the tunnel vision syndrome in order to recognize when they need to gtfo.

The other situation comes about when you're playing against Priests, Survival Hunters, Frost DK's, who are not paired with one of the classes from the first group. In this case, the likelihood of snagging the CC on the first or second Cleanse is very high and as such, should be a priority for your Ret Pally buddy to remove. I highly advocate creating separate macros that auto-target teammates for both yourself and your buddy for dispel purposes. A simple /cast [mod:shift,target=partnernamehere]Cleanse;Cleanse macro is a great way to quickly dispel your partner without having to manually target them.

Additionally, I would recommend practicing calling out every cc that you get hit with or specifically asking for a Cleanse. Optimally, your partner should be dispelling the moment he sees the cc land on you, but that can be difficult to see unless he a) uses a mod to tell him when you're cc'd or b) is expecting it. It seems as though he isn't expecting it, so I would recommend having him configure a mod or two to help him keep track of things. This is especially cruicial for Hand of Freedom as it can save you from many a Kidney Shot or Hammer of Justice.

In 3's, tunnelvisioning melee cleave teams are currently plaguing many battlegroups. The weakness of 2 hybrid melee teammates is that you have neither a Mortal Strike effect or multiple chainable cc's. However, you should have superior mobility with both Earthbind Totem and Hand of Freedom to help you remove snares so that you can escape. Your Shaman should Frostshock to help peel stuff off you and your Paladin should force defensive play through swaps. Force your teammates to save their Freedom effects for you as you will need them for every Rogue, Warrior, or DK that likes to sit on your face and take a big steaming ... yeah you get the picture.

With respect to your DPS teammates, since their damage is healable, they need to prePurge their swap targets and swap quickly and often. Repentence, Hex, and Psychic Scream can be and should be chained as much as possible, and depending on opposing healer, can be either used offensively or defensively (Tree's can't be Repented or Hexed). If your swap target is a healer, dump your cc's into their main peeler. If your swap target is a DPS, dump your cc's into the healer and try to pull out a Trinket. If you can get that healer to pop his trinket, either immediately swap to him and cc the DPS or play super defensively and wait until the cc chains comes back up and do it all over again.

What about the Druid? Well, if you have spare time, level her up. Druids have a very, very, very different game play from Priests and with the right classes can be a super easy faceroll to whatever rating. However, some people prefer the offensive power of a Priest and the safety of defensive dispels. Go with what feels right to you. I will say that both classes are incredibly fun when played correctly, so either way, you can't go wrong there.

Another Milestone

2009-07-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

A funny thing happened on my way in today... somehow, we hit 100 posts.

...and while every writer wants their milestone posts to be insightful, funny, helpful and memorable, I've got nothing.

It feels like doing stand up comedy without a prepared set of jokes...

But, in an effort to keep our posts marginally weekly and to break through the drought of posts due to wanting to create an uber 100th post, today I'm going to touch upon where I'm at in the game, some reflections of the current season and my future prospectives.

My Priest and Druid are both well geared, fun to play and primarily specced for healing. My Priest has predominantly been involved in the 5v5 bracket and sporadically through the smaller brackets. The Druid has been mostly just been playing 2v2 with my Warlock buddy. In previous seasons, breaking 2k was a milestone, but this season, it hasn't felt quite the same. I can't put my finger on it, but I believe that part of it has to do with the new rating system. I don't particularly like it when new teams are created and have nothing to lose, because they don't have any real rating. Since they have no real rating, all it takes is for a lucky streak of wins to ramp their MMR up to the point so that when they do fight me, I have a huge risk of losing alot of points if I disconnect or make a bad call, to their zero risk (real rating <>

With regards to my future PvPing through WoW, I'm really looking forward to competitive Battlegrounds. Hopefully, Blizzard will make good on their plans and not take forever to make them a reality. The new Battleground should be a good time and it seems reasonably complicated. However, I hope there are no aspects of it that make a mockery of mentally challenged players like the Flag does in EoTS... I swear that flag is the biggest noob magnet in the game.

Looking at my Priest, I don't think I'm that great of Disc Priest yet, as playing the Priest class to it's utmost potential has been a difficult learning curve. I am slowly picking up Shadow gear as my hope is to play a little bit of DPS with the next patch. Healing all the time can get pretty old and since I've completely cut out raiding from my schedule, another distraction will likely be a positive experience. I'll still heal with both classes with 3.2 and Season 7, but I need to mix things up a little bit. Blizzard, please give Triple Specs. Dual Specs just isn't enough!

As for my Druid, it will always be Resto. I'm not a fan of Feral, although I do swap to kitty to complete dailies quickly and Boomkin largely escapes me as it has very few tricks beyond Cyclone and Typhoon. I'm hoping to find a strong 3v3 and 5v5 team next season that can use the strength of my Druid. We'll see if that comes about.

I do have some alts on their way up: a 76 Mage (will probably go Fire PvP) and a level 50 Shaman (will probably go Resto). Recruit a Friend is an amazing tool if you want quick alts. Definitely worth it if you have a few extra bucks and a few less hours to level.

Last point: It looks like the Egotistical Priest is closing their doors and with that, another blogger is leaving my 'Blogroll'. Sad times, but moving on is a part of life. Hope they find enjoyment wherever they go.

Well, that's it, folks! Thank's for sticking with me for 100 posts and cross your fingers for a few more (and Pandaren in the Expansion!).

Just a Couple of Thoughts

2009-07-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

Re: 20% healing debuff on Permafrost and Improved Mind Blast:

Healing debuff effects (a la Mortal Strike), even if it's only 20% for casters doesn't address the issues of melee consistently trumping casters in the Arena or in BG's. Limiting healing effects on players strains healers and their mana pools. It doesn't make casters any more viable than they currently are. For anyone thinking that this will improve casters or move casters further into the limelight in the 'cleave' dominated Arena needs to think again. Warriors, Rogues and Hunters are all far better at applying the debuff, which, coincidentally is also far stronger.

Re: Caster viability

Making changes to allow for all casters to become more viable from an average player's perspective needs to center around instant AOE snares/slows and movement abilities, both on a reasonably short cooldown. The snare needs to be an AOE because multiple melee can truly lock down a caster now that nearly every melee has an interrupt, pushback and/or other forms of cc. In addition, movement abilities need to also be on a reasonably short cooldown to allow for escape. I'd argue that movement abilities should also almost guarantee a reasonable distance gained strictly because of the need for casters to actually cast.

Blizzard has already taken steps to move in this direction, but there are a few issues that need to be resolved, also coincidentally to classes that are very under represented in the Arena: Shadow Priests, Warlocks (Affliction/Demonology), Boomkins all need AOE snares. These classes have virtually no escape options if multiple melee get on them. Shadow Priests also do not have any short cooldown movement abilities that guarantee distance. Fade is not a solution.

While I realize that some classes are designed differently and function differently in combat, there needs to be a bare minimum with caster class parity or even homogeneity when it comes to dealing with melee. With classes scaling differently with gear/abilities as we move through the various expansions, it becomes more and more important that the bare minimums are met throughout all of the caster classes purely for survival, if nothing else.

Faction to Faction Transfers = Comp Racial Homogenization?

2009-07-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

Edit: Nethaera just answered some questions regarding the Faction Change service. Answers to some questions are in red.

If you've been actively following some of the blue announcements across the WoW forums or through the blogosphere, you've undoubtedly heard about the upcoming service to switch factions. What isn't known about this service are the specifics:

Whether or not a player will be able to change races, but keep the same faction. No. Players will only be able to switch to a race of the opposite faction.
Whether or not a player will be able to choose a specific race in their new faction, regardless of their original race. (Unlike the Orb of Deception) Yes, but you will only be able to switch to a race that has your class type available to it. So, if you play a Human Paladin, you'd only be able to change to a Blood Elf Paladin.
What about switching back? No. You'd only be able to switch back to your originally chosen race.
Whether or not accounts will allow a player to have both Horde and Alliance characters on the same PvP server.
What the cooldown of this service for a single character will be. We do not have any information to share on this at this point in time, however, we will have restrictions on the frequency by which players can change their faction.
What the impact will be on servers with existing faction imbalances due to raiding popularity.
What the impact will be on battlegroups with consistently lopsided starts due to faction imbalances.
What the impact will be with regards to comp racial homogenization with respect to Arena trends.

While the first five questions will likely be answered soon (yep, 4 of the 5 already), the last three are unlikely to be answered until the faction change utility goes live. What I am intensely interested in is the last potential issue.

From a comp and meta game perspective, racials can make or break a fight. For example, RMP (Rogue Mage Priest) mirror fights, teams with triple Undead players generally have a short term advantage as Will of the Forsaken functions to nullify the first Psychic Scream of the opposing Priest. Likewise, if, through the upcoming changes to Resilience, Warlocks become dominant again, classes that have the option of playing as Undead for WotF will fare better in the long run.

On the Alliance side, with the nerf to Stoneform, the 'talent-fication' of Desperate Prayer and the change to the Human racial from on demand Perception to a two minute cooldown trinket (Every Man For Himself), Humans have become one of the more popular races across the board. As Humans are able to utilize an additional trinket, they often have more burst or utility depending on the trinkets available to them. In the past couple of seasons, especially in the 2v2 bracket, this has been a pretty huge benefit as burst damage has often surpassed the average mitigation capacity for the average player.

When it comes to race to race comparisons across faction lines, certain racials tend to be more beneficial to the teeming masses than to top players. One example is the Night Elf Shadowmeld compared to the Tauren Warstomp for Druids. While top pros can use Shadowmeld to avoid a fear or other form of CC through good timing, I believe that the average Druid would benefit far more from Warstomp, if anything to get Cyclones off on interrupt happy melee or to stun multiple players in an attempt to break a train.

So, what do I think about this? I think that IF Blizzard allows you to choose your new faction's race AND if Blizzards allows accounts to have characters of different factions on the same PvP server, there will be a definite shift in faction for specific comps. This will be particularly true if players a) focus on 3v3 instead of 2v2 and b) stack resilience, thus creating a slower, less burst-centric game. Paladin healer based comps will likely go Alliance for the Human racial. Priest healer based comps will likely lean towards Horde for WotF. Shaman comps will likely sway towards Horde as well due to the Orc/Tauren racials being favored over the small heal over time and +hit aura from the space goats. Druid healer comps are likely to go either way depending on their DPS' favored classes.

Honestly? I don't want to play a Night Elf chick or a Human Priest, because I abhor the animations, but if the crew swaps factions, I may have to tag along.

Wintergrasp Instanced = Poor Judgement

2009-06-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

Back in City of Heroes (CoH) Issues 7 and prior, there was no end game content to speak of.

Well, almost no end game to speak of.

What CoH had was Hamidon. Hamidon was this outdoor raid boss that was essentially an ernormous cell complete with various 'mitochondria' (mini raid bosses) that performed various functions. Due to the ridiculous number of hit points, the regen rate and the mez resistance, Hamidon required nearly an entire zone (only level 47-50 allowed) of heroes to defeat, with the whole process taking a substantial amount of time. However, at the time, Hamidon loot was the best in the game so people would plan their evenings around these Hami-Raids. For many servers, Hamidon was not a feasible raid encounter for one Supergroup (Guild) to take down by themselves, and as such server wide raids were often scheduled for maximum participation.

The problem with the Hamidon encounter became clearly evident: Due to the high powered rewards from a relatively easy boss, everyone on the server that was eligible to participate in the fight would attempt to join in. This generated immense latency due to hundreds of players grouping up in the same location with the server processes grinding to a near halt as it slowly performed all of the necessary combat and reward calculations. On the Virtue server, the last 5 minutes of the Hami-Raid looked like a bunch of people standing around a dot as the server wasn't able to render Hamidon, any of the attacks that were being auto spammed, or even fellow Heroes a mere 10 yards away.

Why am I telling a tale of an old encounter from a different MMO?

Because the problems that plagued the Hamidon encounter from several years ago will continue to plague Wintergrasp even after its upcoming fix.

From the Blizzard Staff:

To provide players with a more transparent notification of when Wintergrasp battles occur, as well as better control zone population and stability, several changes have been made:
-Players now have the option to queue for Wintergrasp from a Wintergrasp Battlemaster in any capital city or by simply entering the Wintergrasp Zone.
-Queuing will begin 15 mins before each battle. If chosen, you will automatically be teleported to the zone.
-Any players in the zone who have not been chosen from the queue will be teleported out when the battle begins.
-The queue system remains active for the entire battle. As soon as a player leaves, a new one will be chosen from the queue.
-Trying to enter Wintergrasp during an active battle for which you have not been chosen will teleport you out. Please note that, as you are now able to fly over Wintergrasp, you will only be
teleported out if you try to land and join the battle.
-Level 80 players get higher priority in the queue than lower level players. In addition, a random selection of queued players will be taken from both the Battlemasters and the zone itself.
-The queue will accept 100 players from each faction, resulting in a maximum battle of 100 players at a time.

I believe that Blizzard will only be creating new problems with this patch and sadly, these are problems that will increase the apathy towards Wintergrasp and the possible world PvP opportunities it brings to the table.

Problem #1: People will be forced into non-participation as the queue is a random selection.
Tuesdays after resets are key for any players who are holding off on grinding Battlegrounds for Honor based rewards (Furious T1 weapons count as well) because they know they'll get 10k+ honor from completing the 3 basic Wintergrasp quests (Win Wintergrasp, Kill 10 of the opposite faction, Destroy/Protect 3 Siege Vehicles). Not everyone wants to nor can wait for the next Wintergrasp as many players have schedules, such as planned raids or real life obligations.

Granted, the argument can be made that the weekly quests can be done later, but aside from Algalon, this is the only other content in the game that doesn't guarantee participation. Strangely enough, this seems to go against Blizzard's motive to create content for widespread consumption. Unfortunately, this is going to create a lot of angst from people that set aside time on Tuesdays to 'get Wintergrasp done' only to be randomly prevented from participating. Consider that player that resides on a server with a very high population of his/her faction and doesn't randomly get selected for Wintergrasp twice in a row? What about missing out three times in a row?

Still not convinced? Let's draw a comparison to raiding. If you're short just 10 Badges of Heroism to be able to purchase a piece of badge gear and the game prevented you from joining a raid , you'd be pretty peeved right? Same deal. You could go do Battlegrounds for that 10k+ honor and you could go and grind PuG Heroics, but it's far more lucrative and consistent to Raid Naxx or participate in Wintergrasp.

Problem #2: Latency will still be a problem.
Latency occurs when many players congregate together and the server cannot handle all of the simultaneous actions by that many players in such a short amount of time. On my server, Tuesdays after resets can generally get 4-5 full raids of players Horde side. Tops. Granted, the Alliance side is far more populated and as such, they're likely at 7+ raids, however, at those numbers, when even half of the Wintergrasp population congregates at the gates of the Wintergrasp Fortress, the latency sets in. Even a late night Wintergrasp last night with barely 2 full raids on each side created some latency, because everyone sat around by the Fortress gates. That's 80% of the proposed population maximum.

Problem #3: Still no incentive to not camp the gate.
The implementation of the tower mechanics have pulled some people away from camping the front gate, but it's not enough. By camping the gate, players that are in a raid can: a) rank up faster than those assaulting/defending the southern workshops and b) obtain more kill honor, even at 1 honor/kill. It follows the Battleground Zerg Paradox: where players that zerg from node to node obtain more honor than those who defend nodes, thus forcing the defenders to zerg if they want a piece of the kill honor pie. Gate camping = latency and we're back at square one.

Problem #4: No way of dealing with AFK'ers.
Every Wintergrasp has its share of AFK'ers. You can find them on both factions hidden in alcoves around the Fortress front gate cannons just soaking up kill honor. Right now, there's no issue with them as the huge numbers of players on both sides generally reduce the impact of non-participators. However, with a possible cap on players in Wintergrasp, the impact of their inactivity may soon be felt.

All of these sticking points in Wintergrasp were prevalent in the old school Hami-Raids of CoH, even down to the 200 player cap on every zone. However, the problems persisted to the point that the developers completely revamped the encounter and limited the specific encounter zone to 50 players. The big difference with CoH is that when one zone is full, another identical zone can be spawned, effectively allowing for continuous consumption of content. Unfortunately, WoW doesn't utilize this technology, so we're looking at what amounts to a Battleground that can only be accessed by 100 players of your faction every 5 hours. 5 hours? Yep. Because, if you're like me, you really only care about cranking out that quick Offensive Wintergrasp win once a week.

So, do I have any suggestions to solve the problems that currently or will soon plague Wintergrasp?

Honestly?

No.

The inherent design of Wintergrasp is far more suited to a Battleground than a PvP zone. Amusingly, the new Battleground (Isle of Conquest) seems more suited to a PvP zone than Wintergrasp.

However, my best suggestions to alleviate some of the server stress during the early week Wintergrasps would be as follows:

1) Allow for all of the quests to be completed independent of an offensive or defensive Wintergrasp battle. Better yet, allow them to be completed without any battle, so players don't feel the need to go to an Offensive Wintergrasp to have the best chance of completing the Victory in Wintergrasp or the Defend 3 Siege Vehicles quests. This will remove most of the people who are there just for the honor the current quests give.

2) Give a node defense honor bonus like what is proposed for Battlegrounds in 3.2.

3) Create teleporters at each Workshop that allow players to quickly travel from their faction controlled nodes to other faction controlled nodes to defend them from attackers. Create zone wide notifications when a node is about to be lost. Most defenders hate to mounting up to ride to a node only to have nothing show up. It's a waste of time and a waste of potential free honor while standing by the front gate. Do not allow teleportation to the Fortress from the various nodes.

4) Remove the destructable nature of the southern towers, turn them into capturable nodes a la EotS. If the offense faction controls towers, weaken the Fortress gates/walls for each tower. Think reverse Tenacity. If the defensive faction controls towers, speed up the timer. If there are no players near a tower, immediately set tower to neutral (middle point of the capture slider).

Will these suggestions fix all of Wintergrasp's problems? Probably not, but I believe that attempting creative fixes to adjust player gameplay expectations is a far better course of action than the anticipated implementation of a very heavy handed random queue system.

Patch 3.2 - Arena Changes

2009-06-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

There are alot of big changes coming so lets get down to brass tacks.

Edit: How did I miss this one?

Resilience: No longer reduces the amount of damage done by damage over time spells, but instead reduces the amount of all damage done by players by the same proportion. The other effects of resilience (reducing critical chance, critical damage and mana drain effects) have not changed.

Wow. Just. Wow. This makes resilience HUGE. This also makes long term classes like Melee/Warlocks much stronger if matches can be drawn out long enough through defensive play. Inccoming Season 3 all over again? Hrm. Time for everyone to reroll Druid imo.

3.2 Arena Changes

-The newest season of Arena gear can only be purchased if you meet the requirements with your 3 or 5 player team rating. Rating requirements form 2 player teams can still be used to purchase previous season of gear.

This is probably the biggest change as the 2v2 Arena bracket has been the go to bracket that most of the Arena population plays due to the ease in which people can come together to get games in. Naturally, 2v2 is inherently imbalanced as many comps live and die by the comps of their opponents. A renewed emphasis on 3v3 and 5v5 will likely encourage players to compete in a seemingly less Rock/Paper/Scissors type of environment. However, this is only conjecture as it seems to be harder for casual PvPers to coordinate some of the larger team sizes as evidenced by the complete dearth of teams in 5v5. In addition, casual players may continue to flock to 2's as they may see the Season 6 (Furious) gear as 'good enough' and as such, keep the 3v3 and 5v5 ladders relatively bare.

Remember, the strength of a bracket is completely dependent on the number of active teams. Only time will tell to see if the casual crowd embraces these other brackets and if Blizzard lowers the rating requirement of the next tier of gear to tempt causals. My best guess is that Blizzard would create 2 tiers of Season 7 gear, one that the casuals can easily obtain and one that the pros will want, much like the tier 8 and 8.5 gear from the raids. Let's see if I'm right.

-Dalaran Sewers
--The Entire Arena has increased in size by 25%

Good. This should give people more room to work with both on top of the platform and while running around the edges.

--Mounts can now be used in this Arena

Great. Not being able to charge into combat sucks. Not being able to catch up with a travel form Druid pillaring you with the entire map sucks.

--The position and collision of the crates on the central platform has been modified

Awesome. There have been times where, due to the geometry of the crates, I've had failboat fears or had others LOS my cyclones while still blatantly in LOS. This should help eliminate those issues and make it less random or prone to the effects of latency.

-Ruins of Lordaeron
--Alcoves have been removed from the starting chambers

This is an interesting change as it prevents players from kiting between the two starting chambers, LOS'ing and drinking. Naturally, this will make RoL a faster map and reward teams that seize control of the central tombstone.

--Two line-of-sight tombstones have been added to the slime pool on the southern side of the map

I'm not sure how large these tombstones will be, but it seems they will be a good place to run towards if the other team dominates the tomb with AOE snares.

--The collision around the central tomb has been smoothed out to prevent players from becoming stuck on the terrain as often.

I have mixed feelings about this change as the current tomb showcases experienced players from complete nublets from the way they move across the tomb. This change will likely allow melee to stick to their targets easier, speeding up the match even further. I think in the end, this will be a positive change as people will likely complain less with regards to the map geometry.

-----

Note: WHERE ARE THE CHANGES TO RING OF VALOR (A.K.A. RING OF BUGS?)

Staying True?

2009-06-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

Upon meeting a fellow WoW player, the first question that is invariably asked is "What class do you play?" Many of us become identified by the classes we play to the point that we know that Joe is the Paladin, Bob is the Warrior and that mysterious Blood Elf mage named HermioneX, but never talks on vent, is probably a guy masquerading as a girl.

Sad, but true.

To get to the point where we players become identified or self identify as a particular class, we spend countless hours playing that one character and/or favoring one class over others. Typically, we call this character/class our 'Main' and refer to others as 'Alts'. However, with the cyclical nature of class strength, there are times in which our favored classes outperform others and times where a raid spot is more of an active charity than of actual need. The same applies to the world of competitive Arena PvP where class success for an average player can vary drastically from season to season. As an example, back in Season 5, Survival Hunters were absolutely ridiculous, but after a heavy round of nerfs, have dropped back down to obscurity.

The question that begs to be asked is: What makes one stick with (or abandon) a certain class when it's average success rate is consistently average to below average across multiple seasons (or raid tiers)? In this case, I'm not talking about weak classes that are being piloted by pros to the top of the ladders, as pros will succeed regardless of class strength. I am referring to an average player comparing themselves against other average players.

I happened to choose two classes that have been perennially strong since Season 2 (Priest/Druid), however, Season 5's Paladin dominance made me question the choice of my classes. The 3.1 buffs to my classes and nerfs to Paladins have rekindled my desire to continue playing my characters, but I was on the precipice of rerolling if the demographics didn't change. Unfortunately, I have friends who have been affected by the dominance of other classes over their preferred class across multiple seasons and some are to the point that they are struggling to find the fun in the game. Yes, there is probably an overemphasis on class comps and on Arenas with it comes to determining class viability in WoW, but shouldn't there be parity when it comes to having fun regardless of the activity that is chosen?

It just so happens that my friends are staying true to their relatively weak classes because they enjoy the gameplay of the classes more than the gameplay of their alts, but I suspect that without positive changes to their classes, this may be a subscription cancelling point.

I hope it doesn't come to that but from my experience with Season 5, I can see where they're coming from.

Why I'm Not Going to Blizzcon

2009-06-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

I thought about trying to nab a ticket to Blizzcon and taking a trip out to California, but for whatever reason, I couldn't justify it. I am, however, completely cool with not going because my twisted imagination has me thinking that the random conversations out there would resemble something like this:

Me to neighbor prior to the PvP discussion panel: Hey, nice to meet you! This panel should be pretty interesting. I hear Ghostcrawler has some interesting points to bring up about the weakness of casters against melee.
Neighbor: Eff that, ganker. I hope they announce that they're removing the Arenas and BG's. You griefing assholes ruined my game!
Me: ...

or

Me to dude wearing a Boomkin costume: Nice costume! What are you? Some kind of demented WoW Furry? You know there's no real life achievement for pretending to be the product of a Pigeon, Deer, Bear 3 way, right?
Boomkin: ...

or

Ghostcrawler: We're buffing melee!
Me: ...

Regardless of the possible exchanges with tardtastic WoW nerds, the underlying sentiment that completely nullifies any possible justifications for buying a ticket is that the game as developed a pattern in it's production/development cycle. Due to that established pattern, there is no real anxiety for me to go as I can pretty much anticipate what's coming next in WoW. To explain this, let me give a broad and reasonably vague example.

In the world of software, a typical business model for generating a continuous revenue stream consists of 3 phases: Implementation, Maintenance and Renewal. The implementation phase is where the software company installs their software and trains the end user how to manipulate the program to their benefit. Teething issues are worked out and eventually the software goes into the Maintenance phase where the software company supports the continued use of the product. When the next version comes out, the company works to secure continued use of the product (via the upgrade) and the cycle repeats itself: Implement new version, Maintain new version, sell next version. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

WoW has gone through this cycle once already from Classic to TBC, and now from TBC to WotLK. Heroic 5 mans? Check. Badges for Gear? Check. Entry level 10 man? Check. Entry level 25 man? Check. Completely borked first Arena season? Check. Completely stupid Honor grind? Check. How many people suspected that there was going to be a 'New Isle of Quel'danis' in WotLK? I know I did.

The bottom line is that the formula for Blizzard's last two WoW expansions works. It's generated record sales and subscriptions and has consistently produced excellent consumable content for a variety of gamers. To me, this formula is also stale and unexciting. As Blizzard is the master of taking what works and building upon it, I can already predict how the next expansion will play out and unfortunately, going to hear presentations on their upcoming content (ie: how they're tweaking their established business model) doesn't excite me or make me anxious for future releases.

And that is why I'm not going to Blizzcon.

Actually, that's all a big fat lie. I could justify it, but I totally forgot that the tickets were going on sale and happened to be away from the computer.

... Sorta.

P.S. I would totally wear a Boomkin costume for some hot cosplay action.

Discipline Priest PvP Glyphs

2009-06-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

Note from the author: Sorry about the lack of posts. Plants vs Zombies has eaten up a lot of my free time. It's that addictive.

With the advent of the Glyph system in 3.0 and the new glyphs in 3.1, there's been quite a bit of talk as to the Major Glyphs to use for PvPers of all classes. There are a number of excellent Major Glyphs that are consideration worth for Discipline Priests, so let's work our way through them.

---
Glyph of Penance: Reduces the cooldown of Penance by 2 sec.

If you're a Discipline Priest in PvE or PvP, this glyph is an absolute must have. Penance, with a 10 second cooldown, goes down to 8 seconds with the glyph. With 2/2 Aspiration, this 8 second cd goes down by another 20%, to 6.4 seconds. In many BG's and Arenas, the Priest is horribly trained upon by melee and anything to help them stay up like the now self-castable Penance is a huge help for personal survivability.

---
Glyph of Pain Suppression: Allows Pain Suppression to be cast while stunned.

This is another outstanding glyph considering two things: 1) the amount of burst damage a team can dish out and 2) the number of stuns present in the game. In 3's and 5's it's invaluable as most teams will play a cc game on healers over focusing them as the main target. Either way, however, this glyph will save your butt and you will be glad you had it.

---
Glyph of Inner Fire: Increases the armor from your Inner Fire spell by 50%.

This is an excellent mitigation glyph as it increases your armor against physical damage by a pretty huge amount. As Inner Fire is no longer dispellable, if you find yourself constantly trained by melee and your teammates aren't peeling well enough such that you fall behind on healing/mana, consider this glyph.

---
Glyph of Power Word: Shield: Your Power Word: Shield also heals the target for 20% of the absorption amount.

This glyph is a great utility glyph. With the new talent Soul Warding, chain bubbling people is a great way to mitigate alot of incoming damage and provide a minor heal at the same time. If you find that you bubble multiple targets alot or your teammates aren't great at playing defensive, give this glyph a look.

---
Glyph of Dispel Magic: Dispel Magic spell also heals your target for 3% of maximum health

This glyph used to be the go to glyph, as it is similar to the Glyph of Power Word: Shield. Unfortunately, while PW:S is quite consistent in it's utility, pure throughput (offensive/defensive) has become far more desirable than a possible heal off of a defensive dispel. Furthermore, as cleave teams become far more prevalent, spending a GCD on a defensive dispel isn't going to be that great, as only one melee puts up enough magic debuffs to warrant this glyph (Ret Paladin).

---
Glyph of Smite: Smite spell inflicts an additional 20% damage against targets afflicted by Holy Fire.

The premire glyph for Priests that play in a comp that has enough control or damage avoidance to allow them to nuke. Primary comp partners are Rogue and Mage. With this glyph, Smite becomes a very legitimate threat, often pumping out 4k+ of holy damage. With Focus Magic and/or Tricks, the Priest essentially becomes a DPS class when needed.

---
Glyph of Renew: Reduces the duration of your Renew by 3 sec. but increases the amount healed each tick by 25%

This is an underappreciated glyph, as it is generally outshone by other defensive glyphs. However, the additional healing is quite consistent, which, if it is kept on multiple targets, can help mitigate aoe DPS such as Affliction Warlocks and Death Knights.

---
Glyph of Mass Dispel: Reduces the mana cost of Mass Dispel by 35%

Unfortunately, this glyph was recently nerfed from a 50% mana cost reduction to 35%. Back in it's previous state, it was a wonderful tool in 5's to strip an entire team of buffs for less than the cost of a Dispel Magic. Sadly, with the nerf, the utility of this Glyph has pretty much gone down the toilet.

---
So, which glyphs am I using? Well, as a Discipline Priest, I have to go with the Glyph of Penance because it's just sheer awesomeness. The other two glyphs are really the ones up for debate. Personally, I prefer the Glyph of Pain Suppression and either the Glyph of Power Word: Shield and the Glyph of Inner Fire. I was a skeptic of Glyph of Pain Suppression for a while until it started paying off in spades across multiple brackets. In 2's I'm often focused by double DPS teams, of which 99% of them feature a Rogue. In 3's and 5's, I'm more likely to be cc'd, but swaps to me do happen quite frequently. If I can Pain Suppression the first coordinated nuke, Hand of Protection usually helps me survive the second and either we win because the opponents have just used 2 sets of offensive cooldowns, or the match lasts long enough that either Pain Suppression comes back up, or I run oom. When looking at most of the top teams, it becomes apparent that many have a stun that is either used to cc me or to bring me down in a coordinated burst: Charge, Intercept, Kidney Shot, Gnaw, HoJ, Deep Freeze, Shadowfury, Intimidate, etc. The list goes on and on.

As for the last glyph, it really depends on the trend of melee and how well your teammates peel. If melee starts stacking Armor Penetration, the additional armor provided by the Glyph of Inner Fire may prove to be useless. Warriors using Grim Toll have given me problems as they bring me down to zero armor in a hurry. I usually bite it once Pain Suppression and Hand of Protection are down. In this case, a passive healing glyph like Glyph of PW:S may be better as it can give you a little bit of a boost to keep the target away from Execute range as you set up your next heals. If your teammates can peel very well, you may not need the extra armor from Glyph of Inner Fire as it is likely that your PW:S will last longer. In nearly all cases, avoidance is better than mitigation.

New Druid Cat Forms - Answered Prayers!

2009-06-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

A few posts ago, when the new Druid Bear forms were exhibited, I humbly made this request to Blizzard:

To the Blizzard artists who are in charge of creating the various Tauren Cat Forms: Please change the Tauren Cat Form face. It has the same face as the flight point Windriders and looks flat out downsy. It's a wonder that I can sneak up on people in my tard-lion form without them hearing me mouthbreath across the Arena.

My prayers have been answered!

The new Tauren Druid Cat forms are amazing! They're sleek looking with Tauren-esque horns and murderous looking eyes. This is a far, far cry from the current Cat Form design, which essentially looks like the lion example from National Geographic's little known series, "Inbreeding in the Animal Kingdom."

Which color kitty/bear am I going to sport? I'm really digging the black colored version of both, because I think it will be harder to discern the nuances of its movement but the white/polar version does lend itself to a 'louder' fashion statement.

Such a dilemma!

Check them out on www.mmo-champion.com

Loltrains and 3v3 First Impressions

2009-05-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

While getting in games last night to grind our 3v3 team up in rating (a.k.a.: QQueueing), we fought 2 predominant team compositions across the MMR spectrum from 2k MMR to 1300 MMR. Some we won, some we lost. In all, it was an incredibly angsty time with lots of heavy sighing.

That's MatchMaking Rating for you not in the 'know'.

The 2 teams were:

1) Cleave (2 melee, 1 healer)
2) RMP (Rogue, Mage, Priest)

We play Death Knight, Warlock, Resto Druid and games usually went like this:

Melee brings the pain train on Warlock or Pet
Warlock Dies
Game Over

or

Rogue opens on Warlock or Tree Druid
RMP forces either Barkskin or NS on Warlock
RMP reopens on Druid before Barkskin comes back up
Druid Dies
Game Over

The only time we were able to pull off wins was when I (Druid) was able to rotate cc's on both melee, but if my cc chain was interrupted, either I'd blow up post Barkskin, or the Warlock would be nuked something fierce.

I know we're definitely playing the comp wrong, but when the strategy in 3v3 is simpler than anything we'd try to pull off in 2v2, i.e.: train1 target until it blows up, there's something very, very wrong with the game design.

There's much work to be done in this here bracket, y'all, and come hell or high water, we're gonna git 'r done.

Druid News and PvP Related Possible Changes

2009-05-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

Over the past few days, there's been quite a bit of news about Druids. If you subscribe to the various other blog feeds or WoW news feeds, I'm sure you already know, but let's list them out.

First off, Blizz announced that Druids will be getting different animal forms based on their hair color (Nelfs) or their skin color (Cows) at the next major content patch. Sadly, this coloration/art change won't be coming for a few months at the very least, as Blizz has mentioned that Icecrown (aka Arthas) and Season 7 will be the next major patch content. Seeing as though most Arena Seasons last about 4-5 months or so, we still have approximately 4 months to go, so look for the Rainbow of (Care) Bears around September.

Just an educated guess, people.

I'd like to make a request, however, to the Blizzard artists who are in charge of creating the various Tauren Cat Forms: Please change the Tauren Cat Form face. It has the same face as the flight point Windriders and looks flat out downsy. It's a wonder that I can sneak up on people in my tard-lion form without them hearing me mouthbreath across the Arena.

Secondly, there are some impacting changes across the board.

Improved Barkskin: This talent now also grants 80/160% additional armor while in Travel Form or not shapeshifted.
Improved Tree of Life: The armor bonus to Tree of Life Form from this talent has been reduced to 67/133/200% bonus armor. This is down from (80/160/240%).

Overall, I think this is yet another buff for PvP Resto Druids as 160% armor while not shapeshifted will encourage Druids to get into the mix and cast Cyclone/Entangling Roots more instead of spamming HoTs in ToL Form. Granted, its a loss of +40% armor (240% to 200%) at the top end of mitigation so that ToL won't be as good against melee teams, but keep in mind that Armor also has diminishing returns, so it grants less mitigation per point of Armor as your Armor value climbs. I will be gladly trading +40% of ToL armor for +160% Armor while running and casting.

Here are some pretty impacting nerfs that may change the PvP landscape:

Overkill: Talent redesigned. Now increases energy regeneration by 30% while stealthed, and for 20 seconds after breaking stealth. This talent used to reduce the cost of the opener and abilities used within 6 seconds of breaking stealth by 10 energy. This is a huge nerf for Rogue burst, effectively reducing their initial burst by 1 to 2 abilities.
Juggernaut: This talent now also increases the cooldown on Charge by 5 seconds. This is a pretty big nerf to Warrior mobility. It's not huge, but it will definitely slow Warriors down a bit. Charge has been nerfed quite a few times, ever since Juggernaut allowed it to be used in combat. This brings the cooldown up to 20 seconds, or perhaps to 18.6 seconds with the Glyph of Rapid Charge, though it's probably not worth it.
Death Knight PvP Gauntlets: The chance to refresh a Frost Rune when casting Chains of Ice has been removed. When equipped, these gloves now generate 5 additional runic power whenever Chains of Ice is used. Awesomely huge nerf. Death Knight CoI spam at range is/was/will always be ridiculous. With the current PvP glove bonus, a DK has a pretty darn good chance to proc a third CoI after the first two, but this will force DK's to manage their Frost Rune usage. This should help against DK/Resto Druid teams, where the DK could create huge openings for his Druid to drink and do silly Druid tricks.

I'm glad that Blizzard seems to be on top of completely overpowered class functions, although I'm a bit scared of when the time comes that Ghostcrawler decides that both of my classes are going to be utter crap.

Oh wait. That was Season 5.

Dru/Lock to 1850 & What's Wrong With Locks

2009-05-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

Last night, my Warlock buddy and I went on a win streak to get the rating for our T1 Furious Weapons. We would have gone 9-1 for the evening (stopped because of mental exhaustion due to a long work week) but suffered a couple of extra losses due to mistakes on my part: 1 DC and 1 silly pre-hot mishap. The one team we were far from beating was a well coordinated Priest/Rogue team. Try as we might, there was virtually nothing we could do vs Priest/Rogue on the Ring of Valor map.

The fight started out with the Rogue tunnel visioning my partner with double Wound Poison while the Priest spammed dispels on both of us. To keep my buddy up, I was forced to full HoT him, ensure that Abolish didn't fall off, and use Swiftmend every time it was up when Wound Poison was temporarily off. The Priest was chasing me the entire match, forcing me to waste mana by going into Bear Form to avoid Mana Burns and threatening me with Psychic Scream through superior positioning, which essentially shut down my casted spells. Lets face it, there's no where to run and no where to hide in Ring of Valor. Due to the low (and very dispellable) damage output my Warlock was doing with the Rogue making him a virtual a prison bitch, the Priest even found time to drink while letting me cast some cc's on the Rogue, only to have them either trinketed, Cloaked or Vanished.

It's entirely possible that we played that match up all wrong, but after playing Dru/Lock for 3 seasons, we've come to the conclusion that Priest/Rogue is as big of a counter comp as we'll ever get. After the laughter subsided (we're both good natured about impossible fights), we tried to think of a solution to that fight and ultimately decided that, unless we got good double fears off and/or cc chains on the Rogue first with the Priest second, and were able to force the Priest to heal instead of Dispel, we'd lose every single time.

Through our games up to 1850, I've come to the realization that Warlocks are inherently flawed with their class design that prevents them from being competitive in the hands of the average player.

I know that this isn't a Warlock blog, but here are my top issues with the class in PvP.

Too much emphasis on dispellable damage.
Overly reliant on pet for survivability
Movement buff is reliant on map obstacles to succeed in mitigation of damage.

Let's talk about each one, shall we?

Too much emphasis on dispellable damage.
Both Affliction and Destruction are relatively weaker against dispel heavy teams than their fellow caster counterparts. Aside from 2 instant DoTs, the Affliction Warlock must cast Haunt and Unstable Affliction to really pressure their opponents. Even if UA is up, a few rounds of dispels are all it takes to remove several GCD's worth of time spent on the Warlock's part and a few thousand potential damage. Theoretically, it is completely true that if a UA lock is let loose on an unsuspecting team that allows him to freely stack DoTs, the Warlock can do alot of damage, but let's be serious here, who allows a Warlock to roam free? UA burst damage? Unless you get back to back Nightfall procs, its a slow and arduous process. Searing Pain just doesn't cut it anymore.

Destruction Warlocks fare a little bit better when it comes to burst damage, but they are entirely dependant on Immolate not being insta-dispelled to provide their burst via Conflagarate. In the design of Conflag, Blizzard mentioned that the concept behind the ability was to essentially create an inverted Swiftmend, which relies on either a 2 second cast Regrowth (which can be applied from the safety of LOS) or the instant HoT of Rejuvenation. The unfortunate part of this corollary is such that while a Druid's Regrowth/Rejuv is often protected by 2 or more Lifeblooms, which essentially function as instantly applied dispel protection, Destruction Warlocks have no such protection other than an instant Corruption. Even if Regrowth or Rejuv is dispelled, Rejuv is instantly reapplied and Swiftmended. Unfortunately, Shadowflame's weaknesses of a) being a short range cone aoe and b) having a 10 second cooldown, limits the 'I need burst right now!' options. A Conflag'd Shadowflame also does less damage than a Conflag'd Immolate.

Overly reliant on pet for survivability
While Soul Link is an incredible concept, that of a shared health pool between the Warlock and the Demon pet, it becomes a liability if the pet does not scale with the Warlock's own personal survivability. Granted, the Felhunter (predominant PvP pet) is an amazing offensive and defensive support tool with Devour Magic and Spell Lock, it pales in comparison to both the Death Knight and Hunter pets when it comes to self survivability through Huddle or Lick Your Wounds. However, regardless of the pet's inherent survivability, neither the DK or Hunter are reliant on the pet for survival. Their survivability is inherent in their gear and their class abilities/Talents. For the DK/Hunter, the pet essentially becomes a bonus, not a requirement, as it allows the DK/Hunter to keep players in combat with no direct disadvantages if the pet was allowed to die.

Unfortunately, well played teams can focus down a Warlock's demon pet in seconds. In fact, common strategies are to ignore/sap the Warlock at the start of a match and train the pet. Often, a single cc on the healer, who is spamming heals to keep the pet up, is usually enough to get a pet kill and force the requisite Fel Domination. As we all know, a Warlock who's used Fel Dom is a Warlock that typically must play defensive and ensure the survival of his pet, lest his team is able create a window for him to summon another after the second pet is killed. Yes, Health Funnel is a good ability, but as a channeled ability, forces the Warlock to stop DPS to ensure his own survival; often moving into LOS of his opponents to get the channel.

Movement buff is reliant on map obstacles to succeed in mitigation of damage.
Unlike other casters, Warlocks have the only positional based movement ability: Demonic Teleport. Unfortunately, Demonic Teleport has a pretty short range and is currently bugged on Ring of Valor. Due to this short range, Warlocks essentially must play a positional game and often cannot overextend their position against certain classes/comps as an overextension (outranging Demonic Teleport means no escaping a Bladestorm) essentially means taking alot of unnecessary damage.

Possible Solution(s)
The inherent problem is that Warlocks, if given even a minor buff could explode in viability. Their gameplay, especially for Affliction Warlocks, is so wildly different from every other class that their damage potential could be through the roof if their tanking abilities improve drastically. With that in mind, here are a couple of possible ways to give Warlocks a little bit of a push:

1) Balance Out Armors: Demon Armor should be the go to Armor for PvP Warlocks and Fel Armor should be PvE based. Remove Spellhit from Talents and add it to Fel Armor, removing the 2% health/5 sec. Keep the Spelldamage from Spirit trait. Demon Armor should provide the current Voidwalker Sacrifice Ability to any pet that the Warlock chooses to use; putting a damage shield around the Warlock while doing a certain amount of damage to the pet. It may be prudent to remove the '30% increased Healing done to the Warlock' aspect of Demon Armor.

2) Pet Death Interactions: Build in a new talent that is linked to a PvP specific ability such as Demon Armor to dissuade pet killing. Something such as Improved Demon Armor would grant the Warlock additional Armor or damage mitigation for a certain number of seconds after their pet is killed. Conversely, build new talents that encourage the Warlock to sacrifice their pet for various effects such as an undispellable vulnerability to the Warlock's spells or cooldown resets or escape options.

3) Utilize Demonic Teleport: Give the Warlock more option with Demonic Teleport. Some ideas are possibly to give the Warlock the option, on a 1 minute cooldown, to sacrifice their Demonic Teleport Beacon for a few seconds of snare immunity and applying a cooldown to teleport beacon placement. Another idea could be to give the Warlock the option, on a reasonable cooldown, to sacrifice their Demonic Teleport Beacon for a new pet, while also applying a cooldown to the teleport beacon's placement.

Regardless what the solution is, balancing out Warlocks is tricky because their class design is so capable of focusing on bringing down multiple targets at once. However, if Blizzard's design is to make the Warlock pet's survival mandatory for success, then at the very least give the Warlock some abilities that allow creativity with pet management.

Average Priest hits 2k in 2v2 - A Story and a Thought

2009-05-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

For me, Season 5 was all about figuring out how to play the Priest and getting the macros/binds down as it was my first season piloting the class. Theoretically, I understood the class and the gameplay, but my execution of the class was beyond terrible. As I've been playing a Druid for the better part of a year and a half, I tried to play the Priest like a Druid and constantly found myself in hot water. The key misunderstanding was that I thought Priests needed to position defensively (aka Druid-esque) as opposed to positioning offensively. As such, I don't think I was able to maintain a 1700 rating as either DK/Priest or Warlock/Priest.

Season 6 gave Priests a little bit of a bump, but more than the increased efficiency to PW: Shield and a lower cooldown on a now self castable Penance, the biggest change to Priest viability was the overall lowering of burst damage and the nerfing of Paladins' mobile healing options. With those two big changes, Priests weren't getting gibbed in seconds any more while their partners would now be able to pressure opposing DPS.

With this extra time to live, average Priests have recently had the option to play offensive with Dispels, Mana Burns and added DPS, instead of frantically spamming heals in survival mode. This has resulted in Priest representation skyrocketing past their numbers in Season 5. I use the term 'average Priest' because top Priests with top teammates could always make time in Season 5 to play offensive while average Priests struggled to stay alive. Top coordination and gear can create openings for that Burn or Holy Fire.

Me? I'm an average Priest and the Season 6 changes have helped me in an overwhelming manner to overcome the feeling of 'OMG I'm gonna die!' and have given me options in my gameplay. My Ret Paladin buddy and I started our team at zero rating and for the first week, ground up to around 1500. In retrospect, this was a huge error in judgement as it only allotted us ~200 Arena Points for the first week. Even though we hit 1900 in the second week of play, the points gained didn't allow us to buy our Tier 1 Furious weapons until week 3. We'll have to remember this for Season 7. By week 4, we had hit 2k and did it in less than 150 games.

Overall, I believe Ret/Priest is quite a powerful composition. Double defensive dispels, chainable CC and ridiculous burst offers a pretty workable solution to many of the other comps on the way to 2k, but it wasn't until ~1900 that we had to play fast. Playing fast meant that it was necessary for my Pally buddy to Hand of Freedom/Dispel me instantly out of Kidney Shot or Hammer of Justice and necessary for me to instantly Dispel Fears, Sheeps, Divine Shield, Innervate, etc. Prior to 1900, we could play sloppily and the comp strengths would help us out of the various situations.

The need to play fast is due to the fact that teams at around 1900 start to play quickly as well. Opponents at this rating level generally know what they're doing and are often using every GCD to their advantage, trying to push for a little extra momentum that can force a defensive cooldown that can eventually lead to a kill. By playing quickly, you can either force the momentum in your favor, remove random factors, or force the opponents to waste their offensive cooldowns.

Here's a few examples: There were a few times where I didn't dispel the opposing Priest's Shadow Protection fast enough and that resulted in a random failed Psychic Scream and a loss. One or two Holy Paladins swapped auras to Shadow Protection Aura as I ran towards them, which led to resisted Fears. Warriors know how to intervene and reset fights and Druids start learning how to pre-hot, kite and Bear Form to avoid burns.

Throughout the grind to 2k, I started wondering how we could speed up our gameplay and one of the revelations I've come up with is this: DPS often expects healers to perform instantly: instant dispels, instant buffs, instant CC's, making sure Tremor Totem is down, Shock/Ground/Shock combos, Cyclones, prehots, etc. Often, the expectation is that the DPS shouldn't have to ask for these types of supporting actions; the healers should automatically be performing these actions. However, we healers should expect the same kind of support from our DPS. If I didn't have to ask for HoFreedom, Dispels, Intervenes, Fears, focus Pummels/Kicks/Mind Freezes, etc. our gameplay would be much, much faster.

Granted, certain defensive cooldowns should be coordinated, but is it unreasonable to ask our DPS to have the same level of global awareness as us?

I don't think so.

Arena Priest 2's Update

2009-05-16T16:15:00.001-07:00

Hello, 2k!

I've missed you so much.

3.1 PvP Lifebloom Change - Not So Bad?

2009-05-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

Awhile ago, when the 3.1 Lifebloom changes were announced, I wrote this post which highlighted why the change was terrible, horrible, no good, very bad change to both PvE and PvP Resto Druids. While it is still technically a nerf, I feel that it's time to come clean, admit my mistake and explain why I actually like the change.

I'd even call it a buff.

Typical Druid PvE Player Base: "Gasp!"

For PvP, of course.

Typical Druid PvE Player Base: *collective sigh of relief*

If you don't PvP, feel free to keep picketing BlizzHQ on that dirty Lifebloom nerf while I extoll the virtues of this wonderful change.

To understand why the Lifebloom change was a buff, let's talk about Arena gameplay from a design perspective. In previous seasons, around Season 3 and 4, Blizzard started seeing the effects of Resilience, mana regen, and crowd control. These seasons were dominated by Druids and Priests being paired up with Warriors, Warlocks and Rogues and interestingly enough, survivability was at such a high point that matches often lasted an incredibly long time. Back then, my buddy and I played Warlock/Druid and some nights, after spending 90 minutes on 2 matches, we were both mentally and physically exhausted from what amounted to the WoW equivalent of chess. People complained, QQ'd, and whined about the over calculated-ness of Arena PvP.

Blizzard took notes and in Season 5, changed their design philosophy 180 degrees to the point that no matches took longer than a few minutes. This change was brought about through intense burst damage on the part of many DPS classes. Naturally, complaints came about again, albeit far faster this time and Blizz tweaked the offending classes. Arcane Mages, Survival Hunters, Ret Paladins, Destruction Warlocks and others got their burst DPS lowered over the course of several patches and hotfixes. I emphasized the word hotfix because it's quite impressive that Blizzard is now willing to make on the fly changes to improve the quality of life in the Arena instead of waiting for the next patch.

Where are we right now? Well, we're 3 weeks into Season 6 and burst damage, which still quite strong when executed by a coordinated pair, is, for the most part, (reasonably) healable with the help of cooldowns, peels and pillars. Granted, some class comps such as Rogue/Mage are still incredibly strong against certain healers, but that's just the way some class matchups happen to fall.

So, how does that impact Lifebloom? Well, when burst damage becomes (reasonably) healable, damage can be (reasonably) anticipated. When damage can be anticipated, one can roll a specific number of Lifeblooms to match the anticipated incoming damage. If the periodic healing is needed, the Druid can elect to keep the stack rolling. If burst healing is needed, just let the stack bloom. 14k crit blooms aren't unheard of and they go a LONG way against double DPS opponents in 2's. Interestingly, Nature's Splendor, a talent many PvP Druids take is both a benefit and a hindrance. On one hand, it increases the duration of Lifebloom, meaning it takes longer to bloom when you need it to, and on the other hand, it increases the duration of Insect Swarm, a huge DPS ability that many Resto Druids are glyphing for. However, the masses tend to agree that the positives outweigh the negatives and as survivability goes up throughout S6, the periodic healing of Lifebloom will increase in efficiency; thus spending 1 talent point on Nature's Splendor is justified.

While this aspect of the Lifebloom change is good, the Tree of Life change also helps the gameplay of Resto Druids. For those not in the know, ToL now grants the mana cost reduction to HoTs regardless if the Druid is in ToL form or not and the cost to shift into ToL is no longer crazy expensive. This opens up gameplay options for PvP Druids who essentially need to use Balance spells to either set up for a kill or keep someone alive. As such, casting Lifebloom in caster form is no longer prohibitively expensive.

As I look to the future of PvP Resto Druids, the upcoming drinking change (more mana/drink tick) and the Innervate buff will, in my opinion, put Druids back up on top.

Things are definitely looking up for the crafty shape shifters.

As an aside, I finally got tired of having most of my screen blocked by some weirdly proportioned Man Cow. Therefore, my Man Cow is now a Girl Cow.

My eyes are much happier.

3.1 Arena Changes and a Brief Update

2009-05-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

Ahoy there, loyal readers! The lack of posting isn't because of a lack of time, nor disinterest, but in fact, it is the result of quite the opposite. I've been too busy playing WoW and enjoying RL because 3.1 has allowed me to take full advantage of the best of both worlds.

Would I care to explain why 3.1 has changed the status quo (of being a digital zombie)?

Sure thing!

With the advent of 3.1, Blizzard has completely changed the Arena rewards system. Now, starting at reasonable ratings, players can buy il232 Furious Gladiator gear with Arena points and/or Honor. In addition, Ulduar 25 equivalent il232 weapons available at a mere 1850 rating. These tier 1 Furious Gladiator weapons are not only slower than their PvE counterparts, but are itemized towards PvP, lacking many of the PvE characteristics of Hit, Expertise and Haste. This is a godsend for those PvPers who have previously spent countless hours raiding for weapons as previous seasons did not grant PvPers access to such high quality and PvP specific items.

Simply put, there is little incentive for many PvPers to grind Ulduar since Ulduar 25 drops are il226 while Furious PvP gear is of il232. For a pretty good list of reasons, check out Serennia's article on World of Ming, who talks about this very same topic.

What do I think about all these PvP gear changes?

I think the changes are phenomenal. It encourages players to remain active in PvP, it doesn't give ridiculous benefits to players who are in top PvE guilds, and provides a somewhat balanceable 'expected gear' notion to the table. This means that because the disincentive of wearing PvE gear, developers can expect that most players will wear Furious Gladiator gear, giving the developers a more consistent data set to aid in future class and ability balancing. As it is, Season6 is probably one of the most balanced seasons ever and we can only hope this trend continues.

On top of all of these changes, Blizzard has once again changed the arena rating system. The new system starts teams off a 0 rating instead of 1500, but grants ~47 points for a win with no points taken away for a loss until the team hits 1500 rating. For the casual players, this allows players to steadily improve as they learn about their team composition and develop some semblance of synergy/coherence prior to becoming eligible to lose points. Psychologically, I can see this as a benefit for casual players as they are encouraged to play more without fear of losing. Starting at 1500 and then losing 200 points in 10 games to get points for the week as a casual team is pretty demoralizing and it seems as though Blizzard agrees.

Time wise, the key point of this change is that many PvPers suddenly have an option when it comes to attending raids instead of being forced to raid for hours for a chance at a weapon drop. Like many other PvPers I've cleared my calendar of raids and have started PvPing full time. Naturally, it is far easier to coordinate 2-5 people being online through texting or IMing so that we can grab a few Arena matches here and there. The side benefit of all this is that, now, it's not so much of a big deal to go and get some RL stuff done during prime evening hours because your PvP buddies can get online either at a pre-arranged time or through a simple text message.

So, as of right now, my Priest is paired up with a buddy's Ret Paladin and we've grinded our way to the mid 1900's in 2's. I haven't started playing 3's yet with anyone, but hope to do that soon. Our 5's team is in the low 1800's and the amusing aspect of the 5v5 bracket is that there is a complete dichotomy of teams that we encounter. We either fight poorly geared and poorly skilled players for 2-3 points per win, or we fight Gladiator's for double digit losses. In fact, just last night, we went 19-0 for 2-3 points a win, and then lost 29 points to a Glad team in 3 losses.

My Druid is paired up with a buddy's Warlock and it's like Season 3 all over again, when we ground up to 2k and nabbed our Vengeful Gladiator's Shoulders. Unfortunately, the class comp is about all that has remained the same as the gameplay is incredibly different these days. We play far more aggressively and my Warlock buddy is far squishier. Any pet that he chooses to bring out is promptly 2 shotted and at times we've resorted to bringing out the Imp just so that it could phase and provide Soul Link without getting obliterated. I believe that the comp does have a strong future as the popularity of War/Druid is rising and Lock/Druid generally had equal to favorable matchups against War/Dru if the pet could be kept alive.

The only aspect of this new season that utterly sucks is having to re-grind for all of the Furious Gladiator offset pieces. 300k+ Honor will make any BG enthusiast want to gouge their eyes out.

... It may be time to pop my Asian Racial and grind ridiculous amounts of honor.

A Few Tips for [School of Hard Knocks]

2009-05-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

Many of my guildies are having trouble with this achievement as they are not PvP'ers and hardly know Arathi Basin from Alterac Valley. Me? Well, lets just say I'm 4 for 4 on my attempts. It was faster for me to complete than going through the orphan quest chain to get the pet.

That being said, these quests can be maddeningly difficult if you don't know how to approach each requirement. For those not in the 'know', here are the for requirements:

Capture the flag in Eye of the Storm

Assault a flag in Arathi Basin

Assault a tower in Alterac Valley

Return a fallen flag in Warsong Gulch

Understandably, the best means is to grab a team and go for the gold, but let's go through each one and identify other ways to get them done.

Capture the flag in Eye of the Storm
The obvious way to get this done is to wait in the middle of EotS and click like mad when the flag respawns. Unfortunately, this is pretty fruitless as with the onslaught of fellow badge hunters plaguing Battlegrounds right now trying to get this requirement done. Your entire team AND the entire OPPOSING team is likely sitting in the middle waiting to click. The alternative to this middle-of the map stupidity is to gank the flag carrier. Usually, flag carriers run solo, so if you can nab him/her en route to their tower, you can usually grab the flag unfettered.

Another old school strategy is to run with a buddy who has one of those huge mammoth mounts. He rides up to the flag and stands on top of it while you stand inside his mount and grab the flag. Most players aren't savvy enough to find you through the mammoth so you can usually get away with the grab. This also works well in AB.

Assault a flag in Arathi Basin
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to capture the flag in AB, but, one of the best ways of accomplishing this to veer from the beaten path. Yes, you could race to LM or GM or Stables and get that cap before anyone else, but if the opposing faction has the same idea, there will generally be people there vying for that cap. If you're alone or faster than the rest, consider yourself lucky (Yes, luck does have a part in all of this). An alternative to the race mentality is to try for the 'back cap'. Most pug BG's tend to have a herd mentality. As such, an effective strategy is to watch a huge pack of opponents leave a node and swoop in behind them. An effective tool for this strategy is some means of slow falling. Whether it's the spell Slow Fall or Levitate, chain chugging Noggenfogger Elixirs for the slow fall ability or using the Sha'tari Skyguard rep cape or Engineering cape tinker, dropping into the Blacksmith from Lumber Mill or dropping into the Gold Mine from the road above can take opponents by surprise. Similarily, stealthing or invisibility abilities or effects can accomplish the same goal. When going the stealth route, there are two important reminders to keep in mind: 1) While you may be stealthed, your orphan is not and 2) You cannot bring your orphan out while you are in combat. Make sure that you come out of stealth by summoning your orphan and then clicking on the flag.

Assault a tower in Alterac Valley
Sadly, the best method here is to race. However, instead of racing for the first two and closest towers, race for the final two towers. The Horde towers are easily assaultable as they provide cover to those within. However, the Alliance towers may or may not have spots where you can stand and cap without interruption. If you are trying for a tower that does not have such 'free cap' spots, make sure you are not the first one to aggro the archers. It is often better to be the second target so that you can go in and cap freely. If you are the first one into the tower and you have some way of losing aggro, you can be sneaky and wait till your teammate starts capping, at which point, you Vanish/Feign Death/etc. and let him get all the arrows while you quickly cap the tower. Sometimes, someone else just has to take one for the team, no?

Return a fallen flag in Warsong Gulch
This is probably one of the easiest purely because your typical player thinks of this as a 2 part process: 1) Kill flag carrier and 2) Grab flag. In actuality, it's just 1) Grab flag. When working for this requirement, it's important to stay mobile and stand on top of the flag carrier. If you have a PvP trinket, use it whenever a crowd controlling effect moves you away from the flag carrier. If you don't have a PvP trinket, go to Hellfire Peninsula, complete the daily quest and get a free 5 min cooldown PvP trinket. Why stay on top of the flag carrier? Well, chances are, someone else is going to kill the target with huge nukes while you spam instants and stay in close range. It's important that once that kill is about to happen, you spam click the area where the flag carrier is. Click early if you have to.

Additionally, it may be prudent to spec into a real PvP spec or at least one that has access to crowd control. Most WSG's have at least one healer per team and the healers are usually running with the flag carrier. If this is the case, use your crowd controlling abilities on the healers. If you have a ranged crowd control ability, make a focus macro such as /cast [target=focus] Crowd Control Ability. Then as the flag carrier and his pocket healer run up, target the healer, right click their portrait and set them as your focus or target them and type /focus. Then as your team is taking the flag carrier down, mash your macro if you see the target getting low on health. This will ensure that the flag carrier dies and you get a shot at grabbing the flag. Wyvern Sting, Scattershot, Psychic Horror, Silence, Improved Counterspell, POM Polymorph, Nature's Swiftness Cyclone, Deathcoil, Blind, Strangulate, Gnaw, Pet Charge, Repentence, Hammer of Justice, Avenger's Shield, blah blah blah.. the list goes on and on.

The most important thing is to keep positive and keep trying. Who knows? You might even enjoy slumming it in the BG's with the PvPers.

First (and Last?) Substantial Step into Ulduar

2009-05-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

This past Friday, a few friends and I picked up 2 PUG tanks and headed into Ulduar Normal. We started with 2 healers, 3 melee, and 3 casters. Of the 10 characters, 2 were alts.

How far did we get?

8 bosses down before sleep demands were too insistent to be ignored.

We eventually traded our Warlock buddy for a third healer after the first 4 bosses. Kologarn was just a bit too bursty for just 2 healers to manage. I think we 9 manned Ignis, 8 manned Auriaya (2 died on the pull), and pretty much 1 shot every boss except Freya and Thorim (bad healing assignments).

The funny part of this is that aside from one of the tanks (the alt of a raider in a more progressed guild), none of the rest of us had seen any of these bosses beyond Deconstructor. As such, our pre pull pep talks consisted of "Well, wowhead says ..."

I think part of the success in this impromptu run was due to the fact that nearly all of the boss mechanics we saw have been experienced in other encounters or were easily understandable to allow for quick adaptations. Because of this, Ulduar seemed kind of old. Not old in the sense of "I can't believe I'm still grinding Karazhan for badges", but old in the sense of "I've seen this before." or "What's the gimmick this time?"

I mention in the title of this post that this might be my last serious step into Ulduar, mainly because of this feeling that Ulduar is already 'old'. I've learned alot of boss mechanics in my time spent in Azeroth and in other games, and sadly, they don't wow me any more (pardon the pun). Bosses don't feel like epic battles anymore, because in my mind, they've all been translated into brief sets of instructions like: Control the adds, Run the gauntlet, Don't stand in the lightning. Anything that can be distilled down to it's essence becomes less special.

In a way, I don't quite mind this shift in attitude towards raiding. Does it bother me that I won't have access to the top PvE gear in the game? A little bit. But to be honest, it's a relief, because now I can get to bed before 1 AM on raid nights.

And being awake during the day is truly a good thing.

Out Of PvP Blogs

2009-04-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

It's always interesting for me to hear another's' take on PvP, as tales of getting chain ganked and stories of getting 2 shot are often told with vile revulsion and bitter complaints. Me, I like to bathe in the [Tears of Epic QQ], but eventually even that get's pretty old and worn out. As such, it's quite rare to find a well written blog that contains some positive reflections on WoW PvP.

Sadly, Out Of Mana, shut down yesterday and the number of PvP friendly blogs with wit and tasteful potty language has been reduced by one. Megan has been on my blogroll for quite some time and I wish her the best, because it seems as though she's taken a step back from tunnelvisioning WoW to see what she could be missing out there in the world of RL.

... and the world can always use less tunnelvisioning

Raid Healing: Empowered Renew is Garbage.

2009-04-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

An anonymous reader recently asked:

I'd like to hear more about empowered renew. I was not using it
much pre 3.1, but was thinking the upfront instant heal would make it a bit more
exciting.

To address the request a bit better than just saying "Renew is now just a heal over time (hot) to buffer Tank damage and Empowered Renew is a poor way to spend 3 talent points", lets first look at how the non-Empowered Renew is best used and then see why Empowered Renew isn't as empowering as it seems.

Usage of non-Empowered Renew:

Renew has been predominantly used a pre-hot to keep up on someone taking consistent damage (ie: Tank) or on someone who's about to take damage. The limitations of the spell are such that it a) costs a decent chunk of mana b) requires a long period of time to apply the full healing and c) limits the amount of time one can stay oo5SR if they use it as a pre-hot on multiple teammates. Understandably, Renew becomes less efficient if it doesn't provide it's full healing.

Of course, you knew that already.

So where does Renew fit?

Unfortunately, the answer is: Pretty much only on the Tanks.

The reality of raid healing in many raids is that hots on non-Tanks never tick to full because healers would rather spend mana to top someone off 'now' with additional heals than watch a raider's health bar slowly tick to full over the next 10 seconds. I like to call it 'Healer Anxiety'. Healer Anxiety is a huge issue because it has the potential to waste a raid's mana, through massive overheal and unfortunately, the easy entry level WotLK content has largely encouraged healers to play 'whack-a-mole' in order to boost their healing meters as their healing assignments are usually at zero risk of dying.

Unfortunately, the current raid content is different from pre 3.1 as raid damage comes fast and plentiful, and spending 4.5 seconds and over 1k mana over 3 GCDs to Renew 3 raid targets as a pre-hot becomes largely irrelevant because your next few casts contain Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing, the Resto Shamans are bombing Chain Heal after Chain Heal and the Resto Druids are mashing Wild Growth, Nourish and pre-hotting with a faster ticking and far more efficient Lifebloom.

The bottom line is that Renew just doesn't cut it for both mana conservation nor raid healing because it takes too long to apply its full effect across multiple targets and the value of the healing ticks that it provides is woefully small in comparison to the amount of incoming damage the raid is receiving; Ulduar raid damage is nothing to sneeze at.

What about Empowered Renew?

Empowered Renew grants a bit more oomph in each of Renew's ticks but more importantly, it turns Renew from a proactive spell to a reactive spell. Understandably, players are now encouraged to use it after teammates have already taken damage. This is good, right?

Not really.

The main problem with turning Renew into a reactive spell is that it's initial heal doesn't heal enough for the investment of 3 talent points. Effectively, those 3 talent points generate an initial instant heal for a bit more than 1k. While this initial heal is an okay buffer heal so that the rest of the ticks can bring the target towards full health, the ironic aspect of Empowered Renew is that when used reactively on multiple targets, the ticks have even less time to apply effective healing before Healing Anxiety sets in.

As an example, let's compare a Priest that proactively Renews 2 targets before a raid damage occurs and a Priest that reactively uses Empowered Renew. Let's arbitrarily say that the proactive Priest gets 3 ticks from both Renews before Healing Anxiety kicks in and all of the raid damage is caught up. Essentially, by taking Empowered Renew, the Priest is trading a normal Renew tick for the initial heal and subsequent ticks being a bit stronger. This is okay because this is a bit more healing than the proactive Priest would provide on his first Renew. However, if the reactive Priest casts a second Empowered Renew a GCD after applying the first Empowered Renew, the second target actually loses a tick of healing, if compared to a proactive Renew, because there will be less time allotted for the second Empowered Renew to tick before Healing Anxiety kicks in.

In addition, the proactive Priest can provide further healing while the reactive Priest is casting his Empowered Renews.

Ostensibly, the best utilization of Empowered Renew as a raid heal would be to ignore the initial heal and use Empowered Renew as a proactive hot because of the stronger tick. But, the big question for players looking to maximize their builds then becomes, "Is it worth it to spend 3 talent points to get 15% more of your bonus healing effects on a hot that's unlikely to fully tick out?"

For me, that answer is No.

Amusingly, I don't even take Improved Renew for the very same reason.

Ulduar Holy Priest First Impressions

2009-04-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

Last night was the guild's first foray into Ulduar as a 25 man team. Unfortunately, we've been hit pretty hard by attrition and by people leaving for another guild experience. Understandably, bringing in our top 25 wasn't in the cards, and in some cases, the level of attentiveness and inexperience was painfully evident.

That being said, I'm happy that Uld25 is not a pushover instance for the majority of guilds. I don't necessarily like chain wiping, but I like the fact that there's a bit of a challenge involved and people have to pay attention. It truly separates out the good players from the terrible. Will the vast majority of the average guilds kill Yoggy before Icecrown Citadel comes out? Time will only tell.

For our Uld25 jaunt, I walked into the raid as a Deep Holy spec. I ended up speccing 18/53/0, skipping Imp Fort (another Priest had it) on the Disc Tree and making sure I picked up 3/3 Mental Agility. On the Holy side, I went all the way down to Guardian Angel and made sure I picked up Divine Providence, Serendipity, Holy Concentration, Surge of Light, Holy Reach and Healing Prayers. I skipped Test of Faith and Improved Renew. I'm sure you can fill in the rest of the talents.

To be clear, the goal of this spec was to maximize raid healing and ensuring that my spells didn't run me dry in seconds flat. The main issue with this spec is that Guardian Angel is the 51 point talent, thus forcing the player to either choose between the 'Get Out Of Jail Free Card' or Mental Strength. I'll highlight mana issues later on after I get through the performance of the spec.

As for Gear, I replaced as much of my high Crit/no Spirit gear with my low Crit/high Spirit gear as possible. It was rough realizing that much of my gear was optimized for Disc and the fact that I've been relying on Mental Strength to bump my mana pool up for Replenishment abuse. The goal of replacing non-Spirit gear with my old Spirit heavy pieces was to try to maximize my passive regen from Holy Concentration procs. I believe that even with swapping out 5 pieces of Disc gear, I still had ~25% unbuffed Holy Crit. Not bad, but not great either.

Glyph-wise, I rolled with Glyphs of Guardian Spirit, Flash Heal, and Circle of Healing.

So how did the spec play?

Really, really well for the 2 bosses the raid encountered: Deconstructor & Razorscale.

The nature of the spec is to spam instant spells, but also to keep up a Serendipity stack. What this means is that between Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending and using Surge of Light Procs to raid heal (I was not assigned to Tank heal), Flash Heal was liberally used to set up for some huge Greater Heals or Prayer of Healings. I found that I didn't utilize PW: Shield as much, thus allowing the Disc Priest to freely shield whomever they needed to. Sadly, Renew seems to be a very situational heal, unlike the 'go to' nature of Rejuvenation for a Resto Druid. and was cut out of the build prior to go time. My testing showed that Empowered Renew was pretty poor and as such I didn't rely on it at all.

Serendipity seems to be one of the hidden gems of 3.1, as it allowed me to send out 1.7 second cast time Prayer of Healings/Greater Heals with virtually no substantial amounts of haste gear. Prayer of Healing, when used with Holy Reach, Divine Providence and Healing Prayers, ends up being reasonable in cost with a huge radius. As long as people were grouped up intelligently (melee with melee, casters with casters) and positioned with their groups, I could always hit everyone in the group.

Mana wise, the build was reasonably okay. My only gripe is that aforementioned trade off between Guardian Angel and Divine Providence for Mental Strength as this build could definitely benefit more from Replenishment. Unsurprisingly, the throughput of this spec is enormous. Circle of Healing is nearly aways able to proc a Surge of Light for that quick spot heal (aka getting hit twice by Frostfire Bolts from Razorscale) and a easily refreshable Serendipity 3 stack can be huge for that emergency single target or AOE heal. In those situations where I needed to just sit and spam Flash Heal, I could sustain it reasonably well. I did run the risk of running oom earlier than I expected, however, those situations were usually caused by people not paying attention to the Light/Gravity Bombs or players who liked to grab aggro before the tanks during the add phase of Razorscale.

Adjustments: In my mind, there are 2 reasonably good Holy raid healing specs. The first is the one I showed with Guardian Angel. The second is a 24/47/0 build that grabs 4/5 Mental Strength and sacrifices 5/5 Divine Providence and Guardian Angel. The benefit of the first spec (GA), is that with the Glyph of Guardian Angel, you can either save a Tank or save the Raid, by allowing more healers to focus on the Raid instead of the Tank. 10k critical Flash Heals are amazing and go a long way towards shifting healing responsibilities on the fly. If the GA target doesn't die, you get to do it again one minute later.

The second spec gives up a lower cooldown to Prayer of Mending and Cheaper AOE heals for more mana. 4/5 Mental Strength is 12% more mana, so for someone with, say... 17k mana, you're looking at a gain of ~2k mana. That 2k Mana is approximately 25more MP5 from Replenishment, which definitely helps in this day and age of lowered oo5SR regen. In addition to those perks, this second spec also benefits from more mana returned from Shadowfiend as well as from Hymn of Hope such that mana should be less of an overall issue than with the GA spec. This spec could even Glyph for Prayer of Healing and further improve the strength of its AOE heals.

Which one do I prefer? I really like the fluidity of the GA spec over the Mental Strength spec. This is mostly because I really like Guardian Angel. I'm not entirely sure of the gemming strategy for Deep Holy, but I suspect that I'll aim for ~30% Crit unbuffed and ensure that I have a good amount of spirit in every slot. I'll keep testing and tweaking and praying that Blizz will lower Guardian Angel to the 41 point talent slot. that would be amazingly awesome.

3.1 Healing Priest PvE and PvP Talent and Glyph Analysis

2009-04-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

I did this a while ago for the Druid so here we go again for the Priest. As before, this is primarily on changes that affect healing Priests and the changes are taken directly from the patch notes. If there are any undocumented changes, please let me know.

Warning: This post is EXTREMELY long. Consider yourself warned.

Blue Comments are for PvE
Red Comments are for PvP
Green Comments are for both PvE and PvP

General:

Mana Regeneration: The amount of mana regeneration derived from intellect and spirit has been reduced by 40%; however, talents that allow for mana regeneration while in combat have been increased. As a result, in-combat regeneration for classes with those talents will stay the same, while out-of-combat regeneration will be lower.
PvE: Nerf. Sneaking in Oo5SR mana regen through crafty usage of clear casting, stop casting and Inner Focus was a skill, however, as you usually can’t get out of combat in a raid boss fight, more concern will be given to managing mana than pre 3.1.
PvP: Negligible. If you’re a healer and your out of combat, you’re drinking.

Abolish Disease: Now cleanses a disease every 3 seconds, down from 5. Duration reduced from 20 seconds down to 12 seconds.
PvE: Buff. Having to wait 5 seconds to dispel a disease sucks, especially if you’re pre-abolishing an anticipated disease a la Heigan from Naxx. 3 second ticks are much better
PvP: Buff. Same deal, especially if you’re fighting a DK with dispel resistance.

Devouring Plague: This spell now has a new icon.
Icon looks 10x more badass.

Divine Hymn: Redesigned: You recite a Holy hymn, summoning the power of the Divine to assist you in your time of need. Heals 3 nearby lowest-health friendly party or raid targets for 4960-5208 every 2 seconds for 8 seconds, and increases healing done to them by 15% for 8 seconds. Maximum of 12 heals. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell. Cooldown increased to 6 minutes, up from 5.
PvE: Buff. An 8 second channeled smart heal is amazing. Yes, the CD is long, but it can easily make/break a fight gone bad. Keep in mind that you should probably PW: S yourself to prevent pushback, and if you’re deep Disc specced, to proc Borrowed Time, thus shortening the channel.
PvP: Nerf. Divine Hymn as an incapacitate was amazing when dealing with fear immune opponents or opponents that were Mana Burn-able as it didn’t immediately break on damage like Gouge or Sap. It was pretty much the only ability guaranteed to allow one to get distance on a Feral Druid during Berserk.

Divine Spirit: Now trainable at level 31.
Thank you, Blizzard.

Holy Nova: Mana cost reduced approximately 20%
PvE: Negligible. It’s still party only and relatively weak when compared to the new Prayer of Healing, and as such, usually not a go to spell for raids.
PvP: Buff: Mostly used to pull stealthed classes out or as a spammable self heal while getting trained. 20% reduction in cost is a step in the right direction.

Improved Holy Concentration: Removed
PvE: Negligible: Incredibly fast Greater Heals were nice, and thankfully, they’ve been rolled into Serendipity, only now, they’re controllable instead of completely random.
PvP: Negligible: Who specced deep Holy for serious PvP?

Hymn of Hope: Redesigned: You recite a Holy hymn, restoring hope fto those in despair. Restores 3% mana to 3 nearby low mana friendly party or raid targets every 2 seconds for 8 seconds, and temporarily increases their total maximum mana by 20% for 8 seconds. After the effect expires, the mana is lost. Maximum of 12 mana restorations. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell. Cooldown increased to 6 minutes, up from 5.
PvE and PvP: Buff… sorta: The old Hymn of Hope was pretty bad because the amount of mana regenerated was terrible, topping out at a few thousand mana, to only the Priest and their party. This new version is much better in that it’s ‘smart’, through its automatic selection of nearby raid members who have low mana, however, after the total max mana buff ends, you lose the bonus mana and you’re left with the same crappy mana return that you would have gotten from the old Hymn of Hope. The best way to utilize this would be to bomb heals as fast as possible to uze up the bonus mana before you’re relegated to OOM status again. In addition, those players that you affect with HoH should also recognize the bonus mana and start nuking hard, spending the additional mana before they lose it. It could be feasible for several Arcane Mages and several Priests (Shadow or Healing) to stand together and chain HoH and nukes… hrm…

Psychic Horror: Now affected by Mental Agility, Inner Focus, Shadow Reach, Shadow Focus, and Shadow Affinity
As expected.

Prayer of Healing: This spell now heals the target's party, rather than being limited to just your direct party.
PvE: Buff: This is now a huge, cooldown-less, version of the old (early TBC) Circle of Healing. It’s still limited by party mechanics but as long as parties are created semi-intelligently, it can definitely help with AoE healing.
PvP: Negligible. Who casts PoH in PvP?

Shadowfiend: Health scaling increased. Now receives 30% of the master's spellpower. Mana return increased to 5%, up from 4%. The Shadowfiend now returns mana when its melee attacks land, rather than when it deals damage. No longer has a 75% reduced chance to be hit by m3lee, ranged and spells. Movement speed normalized to player movement speeds. Tooltip revised. New Shadowfiend ability, Shadowcrawl, teleports the Shadowfiend to an enemy target and increases its damage done by 15% for 5 seconds.
PvE: Semi-Nerf: The removal of the 75% avoidance really hurts the Shadowfiend as it pretty much dies to anything and everything. Great, it has more HP, but if a boss uses an AoE attack, it’s pretty much toast anyways. If you’re fighting a boss that doesn’t have AoE’s or random splash damage, then the increase in man a return is very helpful, so that aspect could be considered a minor buff.
PvP: Nerf. The loss of avoidance means that the Shadowfiend is incredibly crowd controllable. Snare it, root it, fear it, whatever. Great, it gives mana back on hit instead of damage, but how can it hit anything when it’s affected by every debuff in the game?

Discipline:

Divine Aegis: Divine Aegis effects will now stack, however the amount absorbed cannot exceed 125*level (of the target). It will also now take into account total healing includeing overhealing.
PvE and PvP: Buff: Stacking DA is huge. A level 80 can get a maximum stack of 10,000 damage absorbed through DA alone. I can imagine why Rapture was nerfed to no longer work on DA procs. With the de-cluttering of the Disc tree and overall increase to survivability, more PvP Disc’s will be able to take DA instead of committing points on efficiency talents. There are initial reports of 'rolling' DA's where additional DA procs become additive across multiple Disc Priests. If this is true, then we have a very powerful scaling mechanic.

Improved Divine Spirit: This talent has been removed
Baselined. Awesome.

Improved Flash Heal: New Talent: Reduces the mana cost of your Flash Heal by 5/10/15% and increases the critical effect chance of your Flash Heal by 4/7/10% on friendly targets at or below 50% health.
PvE and PvP: Buff: This talent, combined with the Glyph of Flash Heal makes Flash Heal incredibly efficient and a very quick 'save me' ability when Penance is down. PvE Disc Priests will likely have very high crit rates and an extra 10% crit will go a long way towards Divine Aegis procs.

Grace: This talent no longer decreases damage done to the target, but the duration has increased to 15 seconds and the healing bonus has increased from 2% to 3%. This effect now cannot be applied to more than 1 target at a time.
PvE and PvP: Nerf: The damage reduction ability was quite nice, and its sad to see it go, especially since a single Penance could apply a 3 stack very quickly. The healing bonus buff was rather nice, but now that it can't be applied to multiple targets, Disc Priests shouldn't count on it staying on their primary target.

Improved Power Word: Fortitude: Now also increases your total stamina by 2/4%
PvE and PvP: Negligible: While a bit more stam is always nice, only 1 Priest in the raid needs this talent. The 2 talent points needed to fill this talent is most likely better allocated elsewhere for both PvE and PvP.

Meditation and Improved Power Word: Shield: Have changed locations with each other.
Sure.

Meditation: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting.
PvE and PvP: Negligible: This, combined with the overall nerf to mana regen ensures that the in combat regen stays the same.

Mental Agility: Reduced to 3 points (4/7/10%), down from 5.
PvE and PvP: Buff: Bloat reduction is always good

Soul Warding: New Talent: Reduces the cooldown of your Power Word: Shield ability by 4 seconds, and reduces the mana cost of your Power Word: Shield by 30%.
PvE and PvP: Buff: Cheap shields and quick cooldown means that Power Word: Shield can be passed out like candy. This is also likely the other reason why Rapture got nerfed to hell.

Penance: Damage increased approximately 30%. This spell can now be cast on yourself.
PvE and PvP: Buff: The fact that it is now selfcast is huge. Quick self healing for a huge amount allows for the Priest to get back to healing other targets as fast as possible. The damage buff is very nice as well for PvP'ers after a Holy Fire/Smite/Mindblast chain. Keep in mind that since Penance is channeled, it benefits from Borrowed Time, but doesn't consume it.

Power Infusion: This effect now has a new spell effect.
Sure

Renewed Hope: This talent also now allows you to proc the Renewed Hope buff on all party/raid members every time you cast Power Word: Shield, reducing damage taken by 3%. Lasts 20 seconds.
PvE and PvP: Buff: It's a pretty minor buff, but it encourages players to use PW: S alot more than people have been using it.

Unbreakable Will: Increased from 3/6/9/12/15% to 6/12/18/24/30%
PvE: Negligible. CC's in PvE? Right.
PvP: Huge Buff: This stacks with stun reduction metas for nearly half duration stuns, silences and fears.

Holy:

Body and Soul: New Talent: 2–point talent. When you cast Power Word: Shield, you increase the targets movement speed by 30/60% for 4 seconds and you have a 50/100% chance when you cast Abolish Disease on yourself to also cleanse 1 poison effect in addition to diseases.
PvE: Negligible: There's rarely a need to self cleanse a poison in PvE and the movement speed increase, while nice, isn't necessary to fight bosses.
PvP: Buff: This talent opens up the Holy tree for some interesting specs that allow for faster movement and more burst damage from Searing Light. Flag carrying in WSG was never more enjoyable.

Circle of Healing: Healing increased by approximately 40%
PvE and PvP: Buff: 40% more ez healz? Okay!

Holy Concentration: Redesigned: Mana regeneration is increased by 16/32/50% for 8 seconds after you critically heal with Flash Heal, Greater heal, Binding Heal or Renew.
PvE: Nerf: Free heals could be abused to stay oo5SR. This talent will never regenerate as much mana as a free Greater Heal. It could be said that the increased mana regen could be very frequent if the Priest uses alot of casted heals, however, healing as a Holy Priest ends up being very instant dominated unless someone is about to die.
PvP: Nerf: PvP gear has less spirit on it than PvE gear, thus rendering this talent even less attractive.

Empowered Renew: New Talent: Your Renew spell gains an additional 5/10/15% of your bonus healing effects, and your Renew will instantly heal the target for 5/10/15% of the total periodic effect.
PvE and PvP: Buff: Somewhat like a reverse Lifebloom, this new talent allows Holy Priests to compete somewhat with other raid healers when Circle of Healing is down and a bunch of people need a small heal to top them off. With the nerf to Plague Strike, a super strong heal over time is very nice for PvP.

Serendipity: Redesigned: When you heal with Binding Heal or Flash Heal, the cast time of your next Greater heal or Prayer of Healing spell is reduced by 4//8/12%. Stacks up to 3 times. Lasts 20 seconds.
PvE: Buff: Casted spells aren't frequent go to spells for a Holy Priest unless someone is about to die. In this case, being able to bomb a superfast Greater Heal is very nice for when it's needed.
PvP: Buff: Holy PvP Priests cast alot of Flash Heals, which can help them keep teammates up with big Greater Heals.

Test of Faith: No longer increases critical effect chance of your heals, but healing done on targets lower than 50% is increased from 2/4/6% to 4/8/12%.
PvE: Nerf: The value of crit increases when someone's in danger of dying, especially if it can proc instant Flash Heals from Surge of Light and Holy Concentration.
PvP: It's unlikely that anyone would get this talent as it is very situational, but the loss of crit does hurt the efficiency of an already inefficient spec.

Glyphs:

Glyph of Penance: Reduces the cooldown of Penance by 2 seconds.
PvE and PvP: Buff: Amazing glyph. With the nerf to Rapture, getting more mileage out of Penance (Disc Priest's most efficient heal) is absolutely needed.

Glyph of Guardian Spirit: If your Guardian Spirit lasts its entire duration without being triggered, the cooldown is reset to 1 min.
PvE and PvP: Amazing glyph. A 1 minute cooldown is amazing when one considers the 40% bonus healing effect allows healers to redirect their attention elsewhere. This ability also greatly improves a Holy Priest's efficiency as they won't have to heal as much to do the same amount of work.

Glyph of Pain Suppression: Allows Pain Suppression to be cast while stunned.
PvE: Negligible: When do players get stunned for any substantial amount of time in PvE?
PvP: Negligible: With 30% stun duration reduction and pre-buffing, a Priest shouldn't need to expect to be stunned that much that they have to get this glyph.

Glyph of Hymn of Hope: Your Hymn of Hope lasts an additional 2 seconds.
PvE and PvP: An extra 3% mana? For a Major Glyph? On an ability with a 6 min cooldown? No thanks.

3.1 Discipline Priest - Hai Thurr Mister Crit

2009-04-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

So, has everyone had a chance to give 3.1 a shot? Ulduar achievements anyone?

I had my own list of things to test and try with 3.1 coming, and was finally able to do some good BG testing late night after I had sorted out my specs. No, I haven't had an opportunity to try out Ulduar, but with the rate of content release, I'm sure I'll have a ton of opportunities to try my hand at the new raid.

First things first, after dealing with the unstable server for a bit (Kel'thuzad is a notoriously old server, and as such, frequently has server related issues), I was able to try out the new dual spec feature. Seriously? 3 thumbs up. This is a definite improvement and the implementation of it is fantastic. I, like many others, didn't quite appreciate having to scrounge around for glyphs, and at some point, I wished I was still an inscriptor so that I could make a killing on selling glyphs. It honestly would have been like Black Tuesday (when Arena Season 3 hit and Arena Season 1 epic gear was purchasable via honor) with profits easily in the thousands. I've recently spent about 16k gold on a Nobles Deck and another Kirin Tor Ring, so witnessing money making opportunities that I can't exploit make me a sad panda.

Ah well, such is life.

For my Priest, I selected a Disc PvE spec and a Holy PvP spec. My ultimate plan, assuming I keep raiding with the Priest since the guild is top heavy with Druids, is to have 1 PvE and 1 PvP spec. If I decide to switch to the Druid for raiding, I'll probably go with two PvP specs on the Priest, likely having both a Disc spec and Holy spec or two Disc specs but for different brackets. It's all up in the air as of right now, so we'll see where this all goes when the guild settles down and people start staking their raid spots through committment and participation.

The Discipline PvE spec is a pretty tried and true 58/13/0 spec and one thing I noticed is that a lot of the bloat that was inherent to the Disc Tree was lessened through the paring down of several talents and moving various key talents around as well. I noticed that a majority of the points were spent on both low level talents and high level talents with a few here and there in the middle. I believe that the reduction in talent points necessary to max out Mental Agility and Enlightenment as well as the removal of Divine Spirit and it's improved versions have helped immensely to that end. However, after fleshing out my spec, I had a random talent point just hanging around so I just threw it somewhere and called it done.

*shrug*

One of the new changes to Disc is the stacking of Divine Aegis bubbles. If I read the patch notes correctly, DA bubbles can stack up to 10k (125 x level) in damage mitigation. This value is determined by total healing, not just effective healing (overheal counts, too!). This alone puts a huge emphasis on Crit and Spellpower and, in my opinion, devalues Haste. With my Crit gear on, my Priest is looking at an over 33% Holy Crit rate, which, with a flasked Spellpower value of well over 2500 leads to some very big and very frequent crits. It's not uncommon to get 3 crit Penance ticks in a row or back to back crit Greater Heals.

In fact, it seems as though Blizzard is encouraging the use of Crit across all healer types as the go-to stat along with the obvious (Spellpower). Living Seed (Druid) and Ancestral Awakening (Shaman) both got the similar treatment as well in 3.1, with their additional healing mechanisms taking the gross healing into consideration instead of just the net healing amount. Even the Priest Holy tree received a nudge towards Crit with it's change to Holy Concentration, which allows for a 50% boost in Spirit based mana regen following a crit heal. Unfortunately, I'm not entirely sold on gemming/gearing for Crit for a PvE based Holy build. We'll do some more research at a later time on that.

The reason why this is interesting is because the opposite is very much true for PvP. With the release of the new Wintergrasp rewards, specifically, the new trinkets (Platinum Discs/Titan-Forged Runes for 25 WG marks each), Haste has been the golden stat for pulling out some crazy throughput to overcome class weaknesses. For example, Priests stack haste for fast Mana Burns, quick Holy Fire/Mind Blast swaps and to lower the GCD to get casts off in an emergency. Frost Mages are in the same boat as they frequently sport huge amounts of haste to overcome the cast times of Frostbolt and as a side benefit, the possibility of a double Shatter off of 1 freeze effect.

Is this emphasis on Crit for PvE and Haste for PvP a good thing across all of the healers? Possibly, however, I'd really like Blizzard's Developers to look at the relationship between Crit, Spirit, Intellect and mana regen across all of the healing classes if they are truly going down this path, because as of right now, there is an inequality in the gearing strategy because Paladins and Shamans have their regen tied to Crit + MP5, whereas Priests and Druids have their regen primarily tied to Spirit; Dreamstate Druids also function off of Intellect, Disc Priests have the now nerfed Rapture and Holy Priests have Holy Concentration.

All that being said, I've greatly enjoyed testing these new talents and adjusted talent trees out quite a bit and now that 3.1 is out, my plan is to look at how the changes have affected the various specs for both Priests and Druids and their performance. Now that I have a Feral set, I'll be able to start talking to that as well, but probably from a PvP perspective because my guild is so melee heavy that it'd take a miracle for me to obtain a spot on the DPS side of the house.

So, stay tuned. Next up is likely some stuff about Resto Druids...at least until I can get my grubby paws on a Glyph of Guardian Spirit and actually decide on a Holy PvP spec.

Edit: Holy cow. Y'all must have been bored while waiting for the servers to come up. I saw a near 500% increase in traffic yesterday, most of it looking for 3.1 Druid stuff. Good lord.

It Ain't Easy Being Green... or Red

2009-04-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

In the past couple of months the WoW blogging community has lost two prolific bloggers to World of RL: Resto4Life and BigRedKitty and while this post isn't a tear filled sappy ode to either, I'd like to give a nod to the two for helping establish part of the online community.

I can't say that either of the two were the reason why I started my blog, but I do highly respect what they've been able to create and maintain for such a long period. Any serious blogger will tell you that it's incredibly difficult to continuously post relevant articles that are well written and well researched. It's definitely a labor of love for someone to make graphics, record videos, do theorycrafting math, et al, just for the sake of their blog readers.

Personally, I don't think I'm ready to jump into that level of commitment with this blog as I'm too incredibly lazy to create graphics or record videos, but I'll use my grade school honed grammar skills and the blogspot spellchecker to make sure everything is quite readable, because at the very least, it still hurts my eyes to read a bunch of crappily written drivel (It's why I don't read the official WoW forums).

So, /cheers to Phaelia and Mr. Howell and all the other bloggers who have come and gone who helped establish a pretty incredible online community.

Saving Grace

2009-04-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

I've been playing the Priest more and more and enjoying the versatility that the class brings as compared to the Druid. I'm still rocking the cow every now and then, but I think it's more for sentimental reasons than actual enjoyment. I am probably still going to go after that "What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been" meta achievement on the Druid since I've already slaved away for Elder and The Love Fool titles, but that's more of a matter of time than anything else.

I digress.

As I'm going through and learning the in's and out's of PvP with this class, the absolute hardest thing I find is managing my global cooldowns while paying attention to my positioning AND making sure I'm understanding the flow of the match. I find that my GCD can't come back up fast enough and I'm either always missing some key ability, out of position, or just a fraction of a second too slow.

To that end, I've made a few macros that have saved me from going crazy. If there's anything that's saved me a few seconds it's macroing important defensive abilities to auto target myself or my partner. It's to the point that I have all of my Character macro's filled up and I'm starting to edge into the General Macro slots. I've even pulled my Shadow macros (Silence, Focus Silence) to ensure that I have enough slots.

It's really helped a ton.

Don't know where to get good macros? www.arenajunkies.com and www.elitistjerks.com are two good resources. There are also a ton of 'how to make a macro' guides on the WoW forums... if you can stand them.

3 other quick points:

1: Beating DK/Paladin is so satisfying
2: Get a mod like Spell Alerter or Miks or Power Auras and make a big ass warning show up whenever Divine Shield has been used. It's great for popping bubbles wherever you go!
3: Anyone else's raiding guild going through a slow time? 3.1 can't get here fast enough imo.

Finally!

2009-04-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

My Priest has a Torch of Holy Fire now.

All I can say is: "About damn time."

Killing totems just got alot easier than swinging an excruciatingly slow staff.

(No, this is not an April Fool's joke)

Discipline Priest: 3.1 Rapture Thoughts

2009-03-30T08:00:00.001-07:00

Raise your hand if you've ever played a Disc Priest.

Keep those hands raised if you've ever played a Disc Priest in a WotLK raid.

Good!

Now, keep those hands up if you've ever run oom as a Disc Priest in a WotLK raid.

What? None of you?

Frankly, I'm not surprised.

As Disc, as long as I'm throwing around shields and landing some big crits without much overheal, I'm hard pressed to drop below half mana, even if I'm using every GCD for Penance, Flash Heal, PW:S, and Prayer of Mending. It sounds crazy to say this, but I really have to play incredibly poorly to run out of mana: Not watching incoming heals, using PW:S on targets unlikely to take damage, not using casted heals... the list goes on and on. But since I do pay reasonable attention to what I'm doing, mana isn't ever an issue.

All thanks to Rapture.

Current Rapture (5/5): Causes you to gain up to 0.5/1.0/1.5/2/0/2.5% of your maximum mana each time you heal with Greater Heal, Flash Heal or Penance, or damage is absorbed by your Power Word: Shield or Divine Aegis. Increasing the amount healed or Absorbed increases the Mana gained.

Don't get too used to this version of Rapture, because it's about to be completely overhauled.

Future Rapture (3/3): When your Power Word: Shield is completely absorbed or dispelled, you are instantly energized with 1.5/2.0/2.5% of your total mana and you have a 33/66/100% chance to energize your shielded target with 2% total mana, 8 rage, 16 energy, or 32 runic power. This effect cannot occur more than once every 12 seconds.

Yeah, that's a pretty phenomenally huge nerf.

So why is it a nerf? Let's list the reasons

No more mana regen on casted heals
No more mana regen on Divine Aegis procs
Mana regen limited to 2.5% every 12 seconds

So, how does a Priest gain mana from the new Rapture? Two ways: 1) Refreshing a PW:S on yourself will 'dispel' the first PW:S, thus giving you mana back, and 2) Absorb incoming damage with a PW:S. Of course, since it's pretty hard to anticipate random damage, this would naturally lead to alot of self targeted shielding for no reason but to hope for some mana return.

Essentially, to be able to gain mana with the new Rapture, one must have a mana pool large enough so that 2.5% of the mana pool's value is greater than the cost of the PW:S. According to Elitist Jerks, one needs to have a mana pool > 21000 to have free self PW:S with all of the cost reduction talents. 21000 mana is pretty easy to get to while raid buffed, but even if one has 25k+ mana, are the mana gains from PW:S worth it? Honestly? Not really. Without Rapture working on Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Penance or Divine Aegis, the mana return is reasonably negligible and this talent may not even be worth the 3 talent points.

But what about its ability to give resources to others? Rage users who are rage starved, aren't getting hit, and as such, wouldn't have their PW:S fully absorbed. The rest of the resource users could feasibly benefit from this boost, but 2% mana, 16 energy, and 32 runic power isn't going to make or break a fight, even if that player gets multiple PW:S throughout the encounter. It's really a nice side effect to not dying.

So, what do I think about the new Rapture? I think it will be a great mechanism for PvP, due to the amount of active dispelling that occurs, but I think that for the purposes of PvE, the 3.1 version is absolute rubbish. It doesn't synergize with the Discipline tree and it encourages bad play: constant self application of PW:S for marginal mana gains. It's obvious that Disc needs some mana regen tweakage since they currently never run out of mana, but a complete gutting of this talent isn't the answer.

Of course, this means that Disc and Holy will soon have the same mana efficiency... which could prove to be interesting as some Deep Holy PvP specs could begin to shine.

Learning Curves

2009-03-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

First of all, apologies for the lack of updates. We're not going away a la Resto4Life. We're just a little lacking with post topics that don't cause our readers to retch from the QQ that oozes from my written words after I continuously fight DK/Lock/Pally teams in 3's as a Resto Druid. Since the game and the players seem to be holding their collective breaths for 3.1, there is this almost palpable pseudo-apathy among the seasoned raiders and arena junkies alike that 'things will be better soon'. Even if it might be remotely similar to joining a cult, I'd like to put myself into that perpetually hopeful state with everyone else and pray for some beneficial changes to the classes I enjoy playing. I hear the juice is quite good, too.

I've been playing with my Priest more and becoming reasonably proficient, or so I thought. A previous Gladiator friend of a friend and I have been talking, theorycrafting, and generally shooting the proverbial shit, when I managed to convince him to try 2's with me on his Ret Paladin. He's a 2400+ player on his Priest that he doesn't play anymore, so I figured I could learn something from him. If anything, the random misogynistic comments that come out of him when something crazy happens always lighten things up.

Even if we didn't do so great, (about even in the 18-1900's) I definitely learned alot from that outing because nothing makes you play better than someone screaming at you, "Why are you standing there?" or "Fear! Fear now!" or "Holy cow, you're so bad!" At least I know now what I'm doing wrong. While I consider myself a reasonably good player, he's definitely a few steps up and one thing that struck me is his explanation of the difference between Gladiators and non-Glad's:

The difference is that there is no thinking at the higher levels. If you don't Freedom the Kidney or Mass Dispel the bubble, as an automatic reaction, you lose. If you have to think about it, you lose.

You know, in retrospect, it's really not that far fetched. How many raiders can do Sarth3D in their sleep now? Probably a ton. What about the Heigan Dance? Probably completable with your eyes closed. Regardless of the activity at hand, it's really a matter of conditioning and strategery.

So, back to 3.1. Let's hope it comes soon and brings a more balanced Season 6. Otherwise, I'm going to pop my Asian racial and finish up leveling the Mage so I can graduate myself from a broken class to a Kalgan approved class. (Kalgan plays a Mage)

3.1 Resto Druid Tree of Life Change

2009-03-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

And suddenly, through the rain soaked skies, a brilliant golden crack split the malevolent clouds and a column of fiery light struck the cold and soaking Druid and the voice of angels spoke:

The Tree of Life talent currently grants bonus healing to group members and reduces the cost of your hots in tree form. We would like to change the talent to say "Reduces the mana cost of all your hots and also lets you go into tree form, which grants bonus healing." In other words, you
would not need to be in ToL to get the cheaper hots (in PvE or PvP) so long as you had the Tol talent. In PvP, you could still use tree form when you wanted to be more tanky but your efficiency would not be so bad when in caster form

Well, it probably didn't happen in such a melodramatic manner, but the devs just (if they follow through with this) gave us a damn nice buff.

This buff, while nice for PvE, is mainly a PvP buff. Why? Well, coming out of Tree form as a PvE Resto Druid is rarely called for and I can only think of just a few times in my WotLK raiding experience where I've intentionally come out of ToL in the middle of a fight: Once was when I was screwing around and trying to see how much kitty damage I could do while specced/geared for resto. The other time was when I cycloned a mind controlled teammate on KT so our DPS could keep working on KT instead of having to spend time cc'ing.

The reason why this buff is mainly a PvP buff is because PvP Resto Druid success comes from the versatility found in the Druid's various forms: Crowd control in Caster/Moonkin form, healing in Tree/Caster form, tanking melee in Tree/Bear form, and escape in Cat and Travel forms...all of which cost mana. Simply put, allowing the Druid to save mana by casting cheaper heals caster means that the Druid can spend more mana utilizing their versatility without being forced to sit in Dried Broccoli form, desperately trying to win the mana war. Stupid Druid tricks are what put Druids in the top spot back in TBC, and this change will give Druids a little bit of a nudge towards the top PvP healer spot, currently occupied by OPaladins.

Unfortunately, this change won't push us nearly as far in 3v3 and 5v5 as it will in 2v2. However, there is always the hope that Blizzard will do something to improve Druid throughput to help us counter burst damage.

Until then, lets hope that the devs are listening and the Lifebloom nerf gets reverted!

Consumable Content. Mark of Obsolete?

2009-03-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

The very first of the modern MMO's that I've played (Legend of the Red Dragon and Tradewars 2002 don't count) was City of Heroes (CoH). CoH's content was what I call consumable content: once you had hit level 50 and received the very best Enhancements (aka Gear), There wasn't much real reason to redo content because it didn't give you any better advantage over anyone else or over any encounter in the game. As such, the developers suggested that you roll a new character and enjoy the game from a different perspective. For many PvP'ers and PvE'ers, this act of rerolling was a reasonably quick and fun activity, especially with the ability to powerlevel by using high level characters to repeatedly farm instanced quests for quick XP. Before some bugs were ironed out, it only took a few hours to get a brand new max level character. As reference, I only had 10 max level characters whereas some friends had 40+.

When I quit CoH and moved to WoW, one of the big revelations was WoW's emphasis on the amount of content available after I hit max level. There was, for the average gamer, a myriad of activities one could do to improve their gear, such that one could feasibly never run out of things to do...unless you were a Grand Marshal/High Warlord in a Naxx guild with maxxed -everything-, which wasn't that common. My days of having a stable of high level characters to choose to play was over because I became time limited. Not playing my main character would put me behind in Honor in the old PvP ranking system as well as losing out on potential raid spots in tradechat pugs. For the first time, I encountered the opposite of consumable content: repeatable content. This was content that, if repeated, would give me benefits. I wanted to run BWL multiple times for Tier 2 drops. I wanted to run ZG for Reputation for my enchants. I wanted to do BG's for hours on end because I needed Honor.

When TBC came out, some of that repeatable content became consumed content and going back to BWL became a ludicrous concept for any reason other than nostalgia. Why? There was no incentive to redo the old level 60 content because there were no positive gains possible with the old content. However, one smart thing that was implemented with TBC was the revolutionary badge system, represented by the infamous Badge of Justice (BoJ) as a reward for killing bosses found in Heroic 5 mans. There were certain pieces of gear that one could buy for varying amounts of BoJ's, many of which were top level items at the time.

As TBC progressed, more and more 'badge items' were added to the list of rewards, some of which cost an obscene number of BoJ's. However, these items were somewhat on par with the then current top end raid drops. In addition, Blizzard made some tweaks and included the badges as a side reward for killing raid bosses. Even with this tweak, Heroic 5 man runs remained firmly entrenched in the repeatable content column as both new 70's and seasoned raiders could benefit from the gear. Karazhan, the introductory level 70 raid, experienced unprecedented popularity as it was, as raiders put it, 'an easy 22 badges', even over a year and a half after the release of TBC.

When WotLK (LK) came out, all of the old TBC raids became consumed content and this time, Blizzard introduced two levels of badges with two independent sets of gear, each purchasable only with their respective badge. One badge was achievable through heroic 5 mans and 10 man raids, and the other was a reward for 25 man raids. Initially, it would be assumed that the 25 man badges would be hard to get by people who were not in a large enough guild to accomplish that content (and therefor out of reach by the general population), but as more and more people attempted the 25 man content, they found that the initial assumption was completely false. 25 man raids were easy enough for the average gamer to accomplish and obtain rewards from. In the worst case scenario, one could do the 25 man Vault of Archaevon raid every week and have at least 1 piece of il213 gear by now. Unfortunately, while one can trade down a 25 man badge (Emblem of Valor) for a 10 man badge (Emblem of Heroism), in a 1:1 ratio, the opposite is not true.

So where do we stand now? Well, 3.1 will bring us a third badge, the Emblem of Conquest, with its own item list, all with a higher item level than the current available gear. In terms of repeatable and consumable content, for many raiders, much of the 10 man content has already become filed under the 'consumed' column. There's simply little reason to run a Main through Naxx10 anymore as most raiders will already have mostly 25 man stuff by now, unless it's for fun or due to obligation.

To make a few predictions, I see no reason for non beginner raiders to continue with Naxx10 once 3.1 comes out. Uld10 gear will be better itemized and have greater item levels and the Emblem of Heroism badge rewards will be relatively obsolete, if not so already. Additionally, once Uld25 becomes reasonably clearable by the average raiding guild, Naxx25 will then become obsolete. I also forsee people who have come late to the LK raiding scene or alts as possibly having a rough time gearing up appropriately to tackle Uld10/25. To compare, in TBC, latecomers or rerollers could run a billion heroics/Kara and get ~T5/6 gear and remain reasonably competitive. A little 'brute force-esque', but still effective.

The big question is: has Blizzard shifted their design philosphy away from repeatablility and closer to a consumable state on purpose or is this just an oversight? From the availability of the Bind on Account items, the fact that many of those Bind on Account items grant bonus xp, and my overwhelming urge to level my old Mage, I'd have to say that we have, indeed, moved to a consumer culture.

...but is that a good thing?

PS: Another Blue post regarding the difficulty of Ulduar:

It is not a huge leap up in difficulty from Naxx, but it is a step up.

Ulduar Designed to be Easy Mode?

2009-03-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

Like many people out there in Internetland, I get several news feeds, but, one of my favorites is one that sends me Blue posts from Blizzard developers. Buried within one of the posts over the weekend was this juicy little tidbit:

Now Naxx was designed to be easy, and Ulduar isn't going to be alot
harder. Hard modes on the bosses though are designed to be very hard.

Really?

*wince*

I'll be honest here. I really, reallly, really hoped that this next tier of raiding would actually bring out some challenges. Specifically, I wished that Ulduar would have encounters that would force individual players to get better or encounters that really punish players who have developed bad habits, because the last 9 months have been nothing but an AOE faceroll fest.

I had a pretty good discussion with a raider friend last night with regards to the concept of Progression raiding and WoW's history. The interesting part of this conversation is that this friend jumped into WoW right as TBC was ending, so the only raiding that raider friend had experienced was what I consider the bastardized version of WoW raiding: AOEing mobs down, no focus fire on adds, no CC's, and no penalties for plain being in the wrong place or doing the wrong thing.

The closest comparison, when trying to explain pre-Boss nerf TBC and Classic raiding, was to say, "It's was like doing a Heroic 5 man a few days after hitting 80. You have to CC, you have watch your mana, and you have to pray everyone does their role properly", and even then, I don't think my description conveyed the gut sense of what I was trying to get across because even now, in the first tier of LK raiding, no one uses cc in Heroics. First tier! We're not even at the equivalent of SSC/TK/ZA yet!

So what am I really trying to get at?

Upon reading that above quote, I felt like Blizzard was sucking all the uniqueness out of being a raider. Yes, I realize that millions of people play this game and millions of people raid every day so being a raider isn't unique in the sense of actually being one of a kind. However, in past years, clearing middle tier raid content started to separate the wheat from the chaff. Having the guild organization and the dedication to complete such content was special and was reasonably unique. It meant you were above being a UBRS/Kara guild, and those of us who have been around that long, know the drudgery of never moving up.

The drudgery of being in blues did do something positive though, it forced people to become more social. Small groups of friends created small guild alliances to raid high level content, people went out of their way to get to know others so that they could get raid invites if a more organized guild had openings in the runs, and being in a guild was a pretty big goal for everyone. Right now, on most servers, you can pug everything. You don't have to know anyone. You don't have to have many contacts. You don't have to be in a guild.

I often proclaimed in TBC, when I ran a guild, that "the real challenge to raiding didn't have anything to do with raiding". The real challenge was organizing 30+ people to move in the same direction instead of like 30 retarded lemmings, each following no one off a cliff. I found through trial and error that one way to bring people together is to have a group goal. Something people can get excited about. Raid bosses tend to bring that out in people, especially if they can't win the encounter through faceroll, because motivated players will take it upon their selves to work as a group to 'solve' the issues as to why they're not succeeding.

I may be jumping the gun in a big way here, but when a developer says that the new content won't be much harder, I see a lost opportunity for guild unity and more of a 'gravy train for epics' for a bunch of strangers.

Is there a PvP bent to this? You know me. Of course there is.

When PvE content becomes too easy, two things happen: 1) casual players avoid PvP. If its easier to get phat lewtz from pugging Naxx, they'll do it. 2) Since everyone is an End Game Raider, PvP burst damage becomes much harder to manage and PvP specific gear becomes much harder to itemize. Imagine that you're back in the second week of Season 3 and every Rogue you fight has Warglaives. That's what it's been like to fight vs many teams earlier this season.

I can't say I agree with this decision to tune Ulduar so that it "isn't going to be alot harder", but we'll see just how much of that ends up being true.

(I Want You) Body and Soul

2009-03-11T07:00:00.000-07:00

In the latest patch to the PTR, Blizzard introduced a new talent deep in the Holy tree that may or may not make a pretty significant impact with Season 6. Will it see the light of day on the Live realms in it's current form? No one really knows, but let's take a look at it anyways.

Body and Soul: *New Talent* When you cast Power Word: Shield, you increase the target's movement speed by 30/60% for 4 seconds, and you have a 50% chance when you cast Abolish Disease on yourself to also cleanse 1 poison effect in addition to diseases.

I've got to say that just from first impressions; this new talent looks pretty darn fun. I've always been a huge fan of mobility and have personally loved playing classes with superior movement based talents. I loved using Intervene on my Warrior to catch a target, I loved playing a Fire spec back in TBC on my Mage for Blazing Speed, and I still enjoy form kiting with my Druid, even though Blizzard has almost gutted it for deep Resto players due to the prohibitive mana cost tied to switching forms.

The only class that I've played at max level that doesn't have any movement abilities has been the Priest, and to be completely honest, I've hated not being able to move more than a snail's pace once a Warrior or a Rogue got a hold of me. Suffice to say, it was such a shock to me that the playstyles were so different from my Druid that I went and dropped 4k gold to level up Engineering for Nitro Boosts ... which later got nerfed from a 5 second boost to a 2 second boost... /wrist.

When Season 5 dropped, one of my more favored specs for the Priest was the Focused Will/Blessed Resilience spec purely for the defensive capabilities. People just couldn't burst me down, even though I had sub 600 Resilience. However, the problem with that spec is that while the personal survivability was through the roof, my mana efficiency and team healing strength was abysmally low. Once Priests got their Resilience upwards of 800-900, Penance specs began to dominate as the efficiency of Penance, the utility of Borrowed Time and Mana regen of Rapture superceded the need to have Blessed Resilience or Lightwell.

This brings us to Season 6, the impending changes and how this new talent will work into the fray. Two of the biggest changes to the Discipline tree are the changes to Penance, where it becomes self castable and Rapture, which will now only return mana off of PW:Shield mechanics. The Penance change is most definitely a huge buff, as deep Discipline Priests will be able to instantly heal themselves for 3-6k before a Kick/Pummel comes their way, instead of having to try to cast a heal. With the new Glyph of Penance reducing the cooldown of Penance by another 2 seconds, it will be quite difficult to force a Discipline Priest to actually cast a heal between Penances due to the large number of instants they have at their disposal.

As for the Rapture change, unless the Priest is focused, Rapture will now only give 2.5% mana every 12-14 seconds. With a 16000 mana pool, that's about 400 mana returned. If the Priest is focused, look for 800 mana every 12-14 seconds, but that mana probably won't last very long if they're getting pressured. This is a far cry from nearly free Penances and super cheap Greater Heals.

When looking at class interactions, we can see that other classes are getting changed as well. Viper Sting got a huge nerf, now only stripping 400 mana from the target. Wyvern Sting is becoming a bad Repentance like ability, with a shorter duration and a future cc breaking dot. Unfortunately Crippling, Wound and Mind Numbing Poison are still very strong against a Priest, but every class needs weaknesses, no?

Ok, so back to Body and Soul. In looking at each aspect of the talent, the movement increase will be very beneficial for classes that cannot kite very well and for melee classes that constantly get kited around. Priests, Warlocks, Death Knights and Shamans will all benefit from the mini-Sprint effect. Keep in mind that due to the Weakened Soul debuff the shield target receives, this little speed boost can only happen every 12-14 seconds. Regardless, 4 seconds is quite a long time and having it up every 4 out of 12 seconds means that alot more ground can be covered.

The other aspect of the ability is the 50% RNG poison removal upon initial Abolish Disease cast, which, to be honest, is kinda 'blah'. The Hunter poisons have been nerfed; so really, the only other poisons to be afraid of are Wound, Mind Numbing and Crippling. If you thought RNG dispels were bad when you try to remove Freedom or BoP or DS, this may be even more frustrating as not only is it just the removal of one poison, but the 50% success rate may be multiplicative with any dispel resistance. Simply trying to pull off Crippling from a Rogue with 3/3 Vile Poisons may end up at a 11.5% chance of success if Wound and Mind Numbing are also on the target. (50% chance to cleanse x 33% chance to pick Crippling x 70% chance of success = ~11.5% chance of removing a specific poison.)

Spamming Abolish Disease is prohibitively expensive, even with Absolution and Mental Agility, and when one considers the ridiculous ease of reapplying poisons, it simply becomes impossible to keep poisons off while maintaining a reasonable mana pool.

So, what do I think about the talent? It's definitely pretty cool because it gives certain classes options that they may not have had before. Unfortunately, the specs that are tied to it (PI/BaS or Deep Holy) are pretty strange and offer little to no mana longevity. This is definitely a concern, as Resilience and HP pools can only go up from this season. Combine this with Blizzard tuning burst damage, and there is an almost certain expectation for slower matches in the coming seasons. I can see this working well in a burst comp with hard to kill teammates that might need a little bit more juice for faster swaps, but that will only last until opponents figure out that all they have to do is pressure the Priest's teammates and then play defensive while keeping the Priest in combat.

One thing's for sure, I can't wait to give it a whirl.

3.1 Lifebloom Change in PvP

2009-03-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

Currently on the 3.1 PTR is a change that I hope will never see the light of day on Live:

Lifebloom now lets the Druid regain half of the cost of the spell when Lifebloom completes its duration or is dispelled.

Here's the other part that isn't explained in the 'patch' notes

The mana cost of Lifebloom has doubled and the final bloom healing value will scale depending on the number of stacks at the point of expiriation or dispel.

Let's get this straight once and for all. If this change holds true, this is a huge nerf for both PvE and PvP.

This is NOT a buff for PvP. I do not care if you have a different opinion. I do not care if you hate me or if you think i'm stupid.

Why this is a huge nerf:

You cannot predict when the 'bloom' aspect of a Lifebloom is needed in PvP (or PvE for that matter). If it blooms when we need it to, great! If it blooms when we're at full health, that's just a big ol' waste of mana. The bloom is a side-benefit of the actual heal over time. The only times the bloom has ever been beneficial in PvP, aside from the random beneficial blooms, is if the Druid was being spam dispelled, if the Druid outgeared that season's damage and could afford to not be topped off while conserving mana or if the Druid was in a cc chain and could not refresh Lifebloom. Betting on RNG to give you a bloom when you need it and then touting it as a PvP buff is just plain bad.
Our mana pools in PvP gear are tiny. Mine in full Hateful/Deadly doesn't even break 14k. Applying 3 Lifeblooms to protect against the initial burst of a stealthed class will cost us almost 3000 mana with this change. If I want to do that for me and a partner in 2v2, that's HALF of my mana pool. Compare that to the strength and mana cost of 1 Renew. Yeaaah. Also, before the naysayers claim that the bloom helps a ton, may I remind you that letting that 3 stack bloom is a BAD thing because we will have to waste 3 gcd's reapplying that protective measure. If we're under pressure, we need those GCD's for other abilities. We cannot afford wasting 3+ seconds in those periods of emergency.
As a Druid, we don't have the natural caster form defensive statistics of a Paladin or a Shaman and we don't have the long duration damage prevention abilities of a Priest. The only thing we can do is pre-hot. Since Rejuv/Regrowth don't tick fast enough when we're in trouble, we have to use Lifebloom. And since Lifebloom has such a short duration before the bloom hits, we have to keep casting to essentially provide the same potential mitigation as a Power Word: Shield/Prayer of Mending.
The only way to cut the cost of Lifebloom and to provide damage mitigation is to sit in Tree of Life Form and soak damage. We can't play offensive in ToL, as shifting back into ToL costs additional GCD's and mana, further limiting our possibilities.

It's obvious that Blizzard thinks that rolling Lifebloom on 3 Tanks while WildGrowthing the Raid is incredibly powerful. I agree. It is. However, rolling Lifeblooms is a skill, and not something that should be penalized. It takes far more concentration to accurately roll Lifeblooms on several players while doing everything else that one has to do.

Do I have a solution? Not really. All of my ideas either make Lifebloom very strong or very weak. I think that overall, the Resto Druid talent dynamics and itemization should promote a tertiary statistic (either crit or haste), because as of right now, neither of those stats are worth a damn. We get ridiculous amounts of crit from the Improved Regrowth talent and with Nature's Grace and Gift of the Earthmother, have on demand haste. Once that tertiary statistic is fleshed out, then Lifebloom's interaction with that stat can be altered to either promote or discourage rolling of hots, hopefully without eating a billion GCD's.

Replenishment Classes in 3.1 and its PvP Impacts

2009-02-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

When 3.1 lands, there will be 5 class/spec combinations that will be able to provide the Replenishment buff:

Retribution Paladin: Judgements of the Wise (Tier 7) 3 points
Shadow Priest: Vampiric Touch (Tier 9) 1 point
Survival Hunter: Hunting Party (Tier 10) 3 points (with a 3 point pre-talent)
Frost Mage: Enduring Winter (Tier 9) 3 points
Destruction Warlock: Improved Soul Leech (Tier 8) 2 points (with a 3 point pre-talent)

The interesting thing here is that not only are all the talents pretty far down the tree, but they're all on the right most tree of each class. Coincidence? Maaaaybe? Bueller?

In addition to that oh-so-helpful observation, of the five classes, two of them, the Paladin and the Priest, are hybrid classes. What does this mean? Well, hybrid classes have talent trees tailored to a specific role, so that if someone chooses to spec for a specific role, they are pigeonholed into a specific tree. In comparison, pure dps classes have 3 trees dedicated to the same thing: doing damage. As such, the Warlock, Hunter, and Mage may have to play a spec they don't particularly like or are competent with, just to provide the buff. For raiders, c'est la vie. If you want your raid spot, you'll spec how we want you to spec. For PvP'ers, if the game continues to slow down like it has been, your spec may put you at a severe disadvantage. More on that later.

Ok, so lets look at the Replenishment talents and pick each one apart.

Judgements of the Wise: Ret Pallies are notoriously mana dependent and often have tiny mana pools. 5-6k is normal and that's about half of what an Enhancement Shaman (the closest comparison) have. As such, to provide a means for sustained DPS, Judgements of the Wise was introduced to give Rets a means to restore their own mana pool through Judgements. Blizzard gave similar mechanics to Ferals and Enhancements as they are the other two melee mana users. From both a PvE and a PvP standpoint, Judgements will always be a part of a Ret's dps rotation as a means to maintain mana and to deal damage and as such, Replenishment will be present whenever a Ret Pally deals damage.

Vampiric Touch: Shadow Priests have 3 dots to keep up: Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch. This gives them sustained damage in both PvP and PvE. Casting Mindblast between VT applications, is a no-brainer as both abilities have cooldowns. Because of this, Replenishment will be in effect whenever a Shadow Priest deals damage.

Hunting Party: Survival Hunters crit quite a bit, but like all mana users, become limited when they run dry. Hunters get sad when they have to swap to Aspect of the Viper because it kills their dps. As such, Thrill of the Hunt is a pretty useful talent, returning mana on crits. This leads to Hunting Party, which increases agility in 3.1 by 3%, thus helping to increase the crit rate even further. It's not really a mandatory talent, per se, but there's no real harm in getting the additional agility. Thus, Replenishment will naturally be in effect when a Survival Hunter deals damage.

Frost Mage: A sizeable portion of Frost Mage damage comes from their pet and additional pet duration only helps dps in PvE. Getting that Shatter combo off in PvP and having a little bit more leeway to time it to get more effect out of it is always helpful. Also, since Frost Mages predominantly cast Frostbolt, Replenishment will naturally be in effect.

As you can see from the above 4 classes, 2 of them, if they choose to spec for DPS will naturally generate Replenishment just through their natural rotations. The other two, if they choose to spec a certain way, will also benefit from the talents associated with Replenishment.

Now, lets take a look at our last class.

Destruction Warlock: Destros are still Warlocks, last I checked, and as such, have an infinite mana pool from Life Tap. With a healer around, they also have an infinite health pool. So, the question is, why would a Destro Warlock spend 5 talent points to get a paltry amount of hp regen and mana regen when they have an infinite amount of both? This is incredibly bizzare, that of the 5 Replenishment giving talents, all but one actually increases dps in a quantifiable amount. True, one could say that the mana regen from Improved Soul Leech means that the Destro won't need to Life Tap as much, but, 2% mana return on a 30% proc rate? With a 20k mana pool, that's a 400 mana proc. I don't know. It doesn't sound that fantastic to me. If there are any Warlocks out there that could confirm for me, that'd be great.

PvP Impact: So, what's the impact on PvP? Well, Rets and SPriests are naturally going to benefit from Replenishment as the triggers are part of their natural rotations. Survival Hunters are ridiculous right now with triple CC (Wyvern, Scatter, Freezing) and retarded damage (LnL/Explosive) so having Replenishment with the most popular PvP spec is just gravy to keep up the DPS. With the nerf to Arcane's burst, more and more Mages are going back to Frost. I'm not entirely sure if they'll pick up Enduring Winter, but there's a good chance since they're already taking Water Elemental (assuming the talents stay linked). Mage mana is already pretty strong as it is with Drinking/Gem/Evocate.

Which brings us back to the poor Warlock, yet again. Destro is a pretty terrible spec right now for PvP as the two strong specs are Haunt/SL and Meta. It's expected that every Lock spec will have SL, so to get Replenishment and SL means giving up pretty much every decent Affliction talent. The strength of Locks is their ability to rotate fear while doing damage to multiple targets. No other class can do that and this is why Affliction is the favored spec for PvP. In addition, the benefit of covering up dots with Unstable Affliction means that dot effects will tick to full, giving Locks more time to either layer more dots and fears. It's a vicious cycle, indeed, but if relegated to straight casting, a la Destruction, Warlocks will suffer the same issues Mages deal with, but without their Kalgan-armor and anti Melee abilities.

Comp wise, even more top teams (read: RMP and any Surv Hunter comp) will have access to Replenishment, allowing for variations in gemming. Ret Cleave comps are still very strong as well. What does this all mean? Well, the lowly Lock comps (RLD/WLD) are going to be at a mana disadvantage unless they run something like Shadowplay or the old drain style comps (Hunter/Lock/Dru).

Blizzard, where's the parity?!

Preliminary Resto Druid 3.1 Changes (PvE and PvP)

2009-02-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

I wish I could analyze everything about every class and every spec, but since I can't here are my thoughts about Resto Druids and the proposed changes that are coming in 3.1 that will affect them. I plan on doing a look at other class' changes and their effects on PvP Restos as well as a 'Bwuh?!' look at some of the more ludicrous changes sometime in the near future. There may be a Priest post as well, but I'm not entirely sure about that since I haven't focused on my Priest in a while.

I'll try to keep this updated as more notes come up, and you'll notice that non Resto impacting abilities will be listed in a smaller font. Keep in mind that this analysis is for both PvE AND PvP, so while you may never swap to Cat form in PvE, you can bet that PvP Restos are using Maim.

Here's the list:

All

Faerie Fire now decreases armor by 5% (Previously decreased armor by a set amount) This is a pretty minor change for both PvE and PvP. For PvE, your raid should have a non Resto Druid providing this debuff. Coming out of Tree form to FF is pretty mana intensive. For PvP, FF is usually used to either cover other debuffs to prevent them from being easily dispelled or to prevent Rogue/Druid restealthing. The armor reduction is pretty minor and won't likely be the reason a game is won.

Glyphs

Glyph of Rebirth - Players resurrected by Rebirth are returned to life with 100% health. (Old: Increases the amount of health on a character brought back to life via Rebirth by 100%) PvE: It's hard to conceive of someone using this as a Major Glyph and Rebirth'd players usually get bombed with heals the moment they come up anyways so I can't see this glyph becoming more popular. PvP: Rebirth isn't usable in the Arenas.
Glyph of Starfall - Reduces the cooldown of Starfall by 90 sec. (Old: Increases the duration of Starfall by 2 sec.)
Glyph of Berserk *new* - Increases the duration of Berserk by 5 sec.
Glyph of Wild Growth *new* - Wild Growth now affects up to 6 targets. PvE: Same as the Glyph of Circle of Healing. This will likely be a very popular Glyph, especially if raid healing becomes more strenuous in Ulduar. PvP: Great for when they implement 6v6 arenas (/sarcasm)
Glyph of Nourish *new* - Your Nourish heals an additional 6% for each of your heal of time effects present on the target. PvE: Stronger than the T7 4p set bonus, which if stacked, would give an additional 11%, leading to some really strong bomb heals. It's likely that the T8 set will have a different 4p set bonus from the T7, so this could see a lot more popularity over the Glyph of Regrowth, especially considering the Improved Regrowth/Nature's Bounty change below. PvP: I don't see this being a go-to glyph for PvP simply because there are others that increase our efficiency without exposing our Nature tree to lockout.
Glyph of Savage Roar *new* - Your Savage Roar ability grants an additional 6% bonus damage done
Glyph of Typhoon *new* - Reduces the cooldown of your Typhoon spell by 3 sec.
Glyph of Barkskin *new* - Reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by melee attacks by 1 to 0% while Barkskin is active. PvE: Probably won't be used in PvE. PvP: Probably won't be used in PvP either. Restos typically pre-hot when they sense a swap coming over, so while it's unlikely that they'll be gibbed anyways, there's a good chance that this glyph won't be needed.

Balance

Owlkin Frenzy (Tier 8) now procs off physical melee and ranged attacks. (Previously was triggered by all attacks)

Feral

Savage Roar changed to increase physical damage done by 30%. (Previously increased attack power by 40%)
Maim now stuns the target instead of incapacitate. PvE: Probably never used by raiding Restos. PvP: Definitely a nerf. By making it a stun, it will likely share DR with other stuns, will allow Mages and Paladins to use abilities to get out of it and be affected by talents that reduce stun duration.
*New Spell* Savage Defense, 1 rank, level 40 - Each time you deal a melee critical strike, you gain Savage Defense, reducing the damage taken from the next physical attack that strikes you by 25% of your attack power. PvE: Probably will never be a factor. PvP: Also, won't be much of a factor as Resto AP is quite low, but if you happen to Maul in Bear form while you are tanking damage, it might show up.
Survival of the Fittest (Tier 6) now increases your armor contribution from cloth and leather items in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 11/22/33%. (Previously was 22/44/66%) PvE: Never seen a PvE Resto spec this far down the Feral tree. PvP: there are some successful hybrid Feral/Resto's out there and this would be a nerf for those who chose to play that spec.
Predatory Strikes (Tier 4) now includes Moonkin Form in its effect
*New Talent* Primal Gore, Tier 10, 1 point talent - Grants the periodic damage from your Rake Lacerate and Rip abilities the ability to critical hit. (Holy Shit! Ferals just got a huge buff in PvP!)

Restoration

Abolish Poison now ticks every 3 secs. for 12 secs. (Previously ticked every 2 secs. for 8 secs.) PvE: I have kind of mixed thoughts about this as its nice to be able to pre-Abolish more people or have a greater window to heal when expecting alot of Poisons, but the longer delay allows the poison a better chance to apply its effect for a longer period of time. PvP: I'd classify this as a nerf as the myriad of poisons (Wound, Crippling, Mind Numbing, Wyvern) that you want to remove, you want gone right now and an extra second on the dispel is pretty huge. It is pretty nice that it will now last to the end of a CS > KS, but I have a feeling that Abolish/Cure macros will come back.
Replenish (Tier 9) renamed Revitalize. Sure.
Improved Regrowth (Tier 6) renamed Nature's Bounty. Increases the critical effect chance of your Regrowth and Nourish spells by 5/10/15/20/25%. (Previously increased just Regrowth crit by 10/20/30/40/50%) PvE: 50% crit was pretty overpowered as it was guaranteed to proc Nature's Grace. This change should allow Restos to value crit a little bit more to keep the Nature's Grace procs rolling in. Combined with the new Glyph of Nourish and the T7 4p set bonus, we could see some pretty scary huge Nourishes. PvP: Mixed. A 2 second cast for Regrowth was always really hard to cast, with juking, Nature's Focus, and pushback. However, there have been some teams that have allowed me to chain cast Regrowths (thus proccing Living Seed) on my teammates from behind a pillar, thus saving them. I expect that better teams won't let me do this. I also like to proc a crit Regrowth for Living Seed if I'm starting a match in ToL and waiting for a Rogue to start on me and as such, I'm pretty mixed about this.
Intensity (Tier 3) now allows 17/33/50% of mana regeneration to continue while casting. (Previously 10/20/30%) Blues have been talking about the nerf to the base mana regen and this is the change to regen while casting to keep the 'while casting' mana regen the same as it is now. There are a whole bunch of unknowns as to whether or not MP5 will be more valuable than Spirit/Intellect with the upcoming changes, but we'll see what the numbers are later.
Improved Mark of the Wild (Tier 1) now also increases all of your total attributes by 1/2%. Cool. Free stats.
*New Talent* Improved Barkskin, Tier 10, 2 point talent - Increases the damage reduction granted by your Barkskin Spell by 5/10%, and increases resistance to dispel mechanics by 30/60% while under the effects of Barkskin. PvE: Not applicable. PvP: This makes Barkskin very much like a self cast only mini Pain Suppression, except that it lasts longer and has a much shorter cooldown. I expect the damage reduction bonus to be additive to the existing Barkskin reduction of 20%. This should give us better survivability on swaps against offensive dispellers.
Tree of Life: You can now use Nature's Grasp and Thorns while within this form. Cool. I hate blowing mana to form swap back to ToL vs. melee trains.
Living Seed: This talent now accounts for your ineffective healing, rather than effective. There are two ways to interpret this wording. The first interpretation makes this change seem like a nerf, making the Seed value based off of the overhealing amount rather than actual heal amount. If this is truly the case, I'm sad because it encourages massive overhealing to get a decent sized Seed. Remember, its 30% of the (over)heal amount. The other interpretation is that this new version of the talent counts all healing, then its a massive buff, but sadly, I don't think that this is the case unless they missed the word 'just' between 'than' and 'effective'.

PS: Plague Strike got nerfed: No more HoT removal effect. Cry those tears, DK's and enjoy getting Cycloned now that we have a spare 12978391873974 GCD's to CC instead of reapplying our HoTs.

Just Play

2009-02-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

Finally, I'm in non blue gear, and while Archaevon still won't drop any Deadly junk for me, my teams have started creeping up into the range where I could spend arena points to start buying the Deadly Glad stuff. I'll still wait for after Tuesday Vault runs before spending points. I can't help being a cheap Asian! I recently made the decision to go with the 4p Kodohide set bonus, instead of using 2p Kodohide and 2p Wyrmhide (Resto/Boomkin respectively), for the 2 seconds off the Swiftmend cooldown. Truly, it's a huge deal because Swiftmend is one of the only things that keeps me alive for a little longer vs Plague Strike and Blood Plague.

Screw you, Deathknights, and the demonic Hearthglen pony you rode in on.

Anyways... on to a more serious topic.

One of the interesting dynamics that I've seen in my years of PvPing across various games and MMO's are the various attitudes and approaches people take when stepping into the realm of competitive PvP. The reasons (and excuses) for why people don't want to seriously commit themselves to PvP are legion. Some people just abhor the thought of PvP (we call them Carebears), but for a good portion of the gaming community, the desire to PvP is there, but biggest barrier to actual participation is in their heads.

Now, some reasons are kooky-crazy and some are definitely reasonable, but before I continue, keep in mind that regardless of what you think of their reason, it's really your opinion vs. theirs. Got that? Good. Also remember that although someone has a reason and an opinion backing it, it doesn't mean that they're immune to being made fun of. Being made fun of just means that someone likes you enough to say something. (Keep telling yourself that)

So what have I seen while gaming? Well, I had this one friend in college who wouldn't play until he had memorized the entire Tekken move list and practiced until he was 'ready'. Of course, watching him get countered over and over while trying to mash out a 14 hit combo chain was even funnier. Another friend once spent his entire weekend practicing Super Smash Brothers only to get ganged up 3v1 style for a straight hour by 3 Donkey Kong's carrying him to his death on every map. We laughed in his face for wasting a weekend. Both friends had their reasons, no matter how twisted they were.

Bringing this to WoW, the most common reason to not PvP I've heard is "I don't have any gear." In some ways, I can understand that sentiment, but I do respectfully disagree, which will be explained in a little bit.

The important thing to reiterate here is that whatever reason is given, that reason is completely 100% legit, though some may be outlandish enough to illicit mockery. As far as I'm concerned, however, in interpreting all of the various reasons on why 'now isn't a good time', the distilled summary of it all is that it's all about the feel... and if someone doesn't feel right about it, there's a good chance they won't have a good time or even learn anything about the experience.

So, why do I disagree with the lack of gear reason? Because my opinion is that there's more to WoW PvP than just gear. I'd argue that gear really doesn't matter if you're just starting out because of a few key aspects of PvP that need to be developed if you want to eventually be successful, gear or no gear:

Synergy. Every successful team out there (WoW or otherwise) has a well developed synergy. Their members understand their roles and strategies. Sadly, synergy doesn't drop from a raid boss, so spending time is really the only way to accomplish this.
Strategy. Just like synergy, establishing and refining a set of strategies for each of your expected opponents is very important. While some teams have published their strategies as guides, actual execution of some of those strategies takes time. Spend your time getting that Blind/Sap/Fear combo off now when you're in the lower brackets!
Dealing with the jitters. I always get nervous before my first match of the night, and I'm sure that it's the same for many first time PvPers. For some, even the thought of Arenas cause anxiety. Best way to get over those cold sweats and nervous tics? Play more games!
Getting over that loser feeling. It sucks to lose, but you can also get over that loser feeling with more games played. You'll eventually learn that it's not that big of a deal to lose... presuming that you learn from the losses so you eventually stop losing.

All that being said, if you or a loved one has reservations about jumping into the Arena, that's fine. But if you do become a little bit more daring, make a team and jump in head first. You might find yourself learning things about the game that you didn't realize before.

Or you might find the bottom of the pool's shallow end.

Either way, you'll definitely learn something.

This Is How I Want to Play! My Dream BG Fix

2009-02-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

Over the course of the weekend, a certain Hunter, from some random backwater server, happened to be in the same BG's that I was in. Everyone here knows the type: argumentative, loud and generally mean spirited. I'm alot like that guy, but since I play to win, my commentary is usually either a) directions to other random pug players to do something strategically (no, cancelling your subscription is not strategy) or b) sarcastically lamenting the fact that the people who are playing with me need to learn how to play the various BG's.

I'll let y'all know right now that I'm not the kindest of BG participants and I have harsh criticism for people who really make grievous errors like to the Rogues who watch me get steamrolled, only to come out of Stealth after I die, to attack my attacker. I do report players who swear up a storm and are general eThugs in BG's, but knowing that karma can be a bitch, I don't swear or give anyone any opportunities to leverage any actionable behavior because of my slip ups.

So, anyways, this Hunter responds very negatively with everything I'm saying, and to be clear, my /bg chat was mostly comprised of (In SotA) "Alliance is pushing Green!", "Protect the Graveyards!", and the ever wonderful "Get off the beach and up to Yellow!". I'd personally think that these directions are helpful, especially if there are people who aren't looking at the minimap to see the flow of the match. In fact, communication of this type is critical for BG's as it gives people an idea on how to respond or take initiative.

His loudest and most frequent comment is:

Look! Another know it all. Let people play how they want to
play and STFU!

Which only got me into an ePissing match with him, which, to save your collective sanities, will not be printed here.

Naturally, this got me into thinking. Theoretically, Mr. Hunter is right. People CAN do whatever the hell they want to do in a BG. They can repeatedly drown themselves in the water by Stables for 20 minutes straight if they wanted to. However, functionally, to do something contrary to the goals of the bg weakens everybody's chances of attaining better rewards.

Pinning your chances of success to someone who doesn't care, doesn't want to win, and/or doesn't know how to complete objectives to increase their own chances of success is a dreadfully bad investment of time, and as such, is the reason why so many top PvPers just AFK BG's.

Sooooooo... What can game designers do to enforce collective movement towards a goal.

Here's my idea:

Build into the game, the ability to detect combat in a 40 yd radius for each person.
Give each person an Activity Rating (AR).
Grant Honor based off of AR. No AR = no honor.
AR is calculated through active participation, but with various boundaries: Each additional person pursuing the same 'node', up to a determined value, which is different for each node for each BG, grants additional AR. This encourages group effort. Each person beyond the set value lowers the rating, thus discouraging zerging or turtling. The game will grant AR if it detects offensive abilities being used as well as if heals/buffs are being distributed. One heal every 30 seconds = little to no AR. Buffing people who need buffs count towards AR if people are in combat. Long duration buffs do not count (Fortitude, Wisdom, etc). The game will grant bonus AR if the combat is within 40 yards of a capturable node. The game will also grant no AR if it detects combat within 40 yds from the player and that player is not participating in combat.
(Optional) Keep a tally of average AR for the past 5 BG's of each type. If it is of a certain value or higher in a specific BG, grant a small multipler bonus on subsequent BG's of that type until the 5 game average drops below the threshold. If it is of a certain value or lower, grant a multiplier penalty on subsequent BG's until the value is brought past the threshold.
(Optional) Each person below a certain threshold in a BG will grant a bonus AR multiplier to people who are above that threshold. This is designed to give those who are dealing with AFK'ers on their team an incentive to keep playing

For AB:

Set all capturable nodes to have a clickable 'capture' flag and an AR value of 5 players/faction. The ownership of the node depends on how far the slider (a la EotS) is to either the Alliance or Horde side. If there is no combat going on nearby, the clickable 'capture' flag's ownership slowly reverts to neutral over time .
If there is no combat nearby, a player may actively channel (click) to move the ownership to their faction's side. Players may move while channeling (think Fire Festival dance poles) up to 40 yards from the flag, but must refresh the channel every several seconds. This will contribute to their AR. Each additional person channeling will dilute the AR. Beyond 3 people, the channel effect will not grant AR to anyone, encouraging people to move to another node.
If there is combat going on nearby, ownership of the node is calculated as it currently is in EotS (proximity instead of channeling)

For EOTS:

Set all capturable towers to have a clickable 'capture' flag and an AR value of 5 players/faction. The ownership of the node depends on how far the slider (a la EotS) is to either the Alliance or Horde side. If there is no combat going on nearby, the clickable 'capture' flag's ownership slowly reverts to neutral over time .
If there is no combat nearby, a player may actively channel (click) to move the ownership to their faction's side. Players may move while channeling (think Fire Festival dance poles) up to 40 yards from the flag, but must refresh the channel every several seconds. This will contribute to their AR. Each additional person channeling will dilute the AR. Beyond 3 people, the channel effect will not grant AR to anyone, encouraging people to move to another node.
If there is combat going on nearby, ownership of the node is calculated as it currently is in EotS (proximity instead of channeling)
The Flag is a mobile node with an AR limit of 3 players/faction, regardless of combat status.

For WSG

Each Flag is a mobile node with an AR limit of 5 players/faction

For SotA

Each Demolisher is a mobile node with an AR limit of 3 players/faction
Passengers on a Demolisher must be actively participating or will not obtain AR.
Each Graveyard is a node for the Defending team with with an AR limit of 5 players.

For AV

Each Tower has an AR limit of 5 players/faction
Each Opposing tower burned grants a bonus AR multiplier
Each Graveyard has an AR limit of 5 players/faction

So, thoughts? Comments?

Mana Regen Changes

2009-02-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

I could strangle the Blizzard dev who came up with this gem of an idea.

Both hands. Thumbs on the windpipe.

I could care less about the actual mechanic change, but I'm definitively not happy about the Hill Politician-esque flip flopping from Blizzard.

Flip flopping?

Let me explain.

The core idea behind the change is the notion that Healing is too easy.

Forget about the details of what Blizzard wants Healers to multitask: managing mana, picking the right heals to use at the right time or usage of cooldowns and understand that from Blizzard's point of view, current Healing methodologies are all about mashing your most effective heal over and over until you win. And they're completely right. Why do they see it as such a mindless task? Because they created this monster.

Yep. Blizzard created this situation over the course of the 6 months.

Really? What did they do?

Removal of Downranking. Downranking was the single most complicated healer skill out there because it by itself created decision making. If you have no clue what downranking was, to explain briefly: casters could elect to use a lower rank of a spell to create a smaller effect at a reduced mana cost, often with a faster cast time. If someone needed a small heal but didnt want to blow a ton of mana for alot of overheal, a healer could use a midrank heal instead of a max rank heal. Overhealing meters (for non-Druids) actually meant something because it showed mana efficiency and skill, especially on bosses where damage was predictable and burst damage was not expected.
3.0 TBC Boss Nerf. With the release of 3.0, a few of major things happened. The first was the sweeping nerf to all of TBC's 25 man raid bosses. This change allowed less progressed guilds (who were ridiculously undergeared) access to high level content and complete it due to lowered boss HP totals. When a fight is made trivial due to a much shorter encounter duration, healing gets sloppy. Healers were encouraged to dump their mana whenever they wanted because the fights would invariably end before they could run dry. The mentality of blowing your mana pool became a bad habit and with the natural ePeen measuring contests a la Healing Meters, bad healers with no concept of resource management were often regarded as 'good healers'. This was made all the worse by the next point.
3.0 WotLK AoE Healing Talents/Glyphs. WotLK talent trees and glyphs brought out alot of new and interesting abilities and skill synergies for healing classes at the end of TBC's run. Some skills such as Wild Growth were so overpowered that they were eventually nerfed, but for several months, they were allowed to exist in an overpowered state. Much like the previous point, this created 'good healers' out of bad healers simply because they could repeatedly press an iwin button and be rewarded for it. I remember running a post boss nerf pug Hyjal on my Resto Druid, who was both geared and specced for PvP (no Wild Growth), and was made fun of by a Druid in blues/epics because we had just about tied in healing done. I like to think that my witty response of "Because pressing one button means you have skill, right?" shut him up, but in reality, it didn't. I distinctly remember being pissed off at how skill-less healing had become.
3.0 Replenishment. This one actually took a while to become abused, because for a long time people didn't understand the actual impact, but I'd be lying if it wasn't being ridiculously abused by healers today. By stacking Intellect, a caster can expect to get a constant 300 mp5, just for having a raid buffed 24,000 mana pool. If this doesn't scream "cast to your heart's content because mana isn't an issue", then I dont know what would. Understandably, casters are doing just that. The crazy/cool thing is that by stacking Intellect, Spirit based healers are improving their Spirit based regen and all healers are adding a bit of Crit, which seems to proc efficiency or throughput for every healing class. There is NO penalty for stacking Int because everything is healable with just 1900-2000 Spellpower.

So there we have it. The culprits behind why healing is so incredibly easy these days.

So why am I not happy?

Because Blizzard has lured many innocent players into their van with promises of sweet sweet candy and easy gear, only to dash their dreams of being the next raid savior with the classic bait and switch pedastery. I don't quite care about the established and skilled healers, but when looking at the average population out there, healing is about to get a bit more difficult. Healers who have minimal gems, poor enchants, and take gear without any direction/focus are going to get a rude awakening. Same for those who run with guilds who have players who want to raid with their spec, even if swapping to a Replenishment spec would benefit the entire group.

The final questions are: why should healers have something else to think about just to do their job effectively and why should there be yet another barrier to a role that is already suffering from a dearth of active participants?

It's hard enough to even find enough healers anyways

Back to our Roots

2009-02-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

I ground out some 2's as Druid/Lock last night with my old S3 2's partner (we pushed our way up to shoulders way back then) and aside from being completely unprepared against a bad DK/Priest (screw you, Plague Strike) and one silly UI induced loss vs Feral/Ret, we did reasonably well. Of course, this is considering that a) we were in the 1600's and b) Mr. Warlock is still wearing Brutal gear.

We stopped due to time constraints, but probably would have stuck to the grind if RL didn't expect us to be up early the next day. I blame waiting for control of WG and actually getting a Vault team together with all this Valentine's Day BS for killing my evening.

Also, screw you, Archaevon, for dropping everything but Druid gear every damn week.

C'est la vie.

There's something about playing through the 1600's that's just fun. There's a few things you can expect to happen below 1700:

CC chains never happen. If you some how got Psychic Screamed into a Blind into a Sap, they got lucky.
Kicks/Pummels always miss. Fake casting is not needed. I think I hardcasted a non Nature's Grace'd Regrowth in a DK's face, with pushback, and never got Strangulated.
Positioning always puts them into bad situations. Out in the open, easy to CC.
Cooldowns used at the wrong times. Divine Shielding the first Fear against a Warlock, when you and buddy are both at 100% is always the wrong move.

Case in point, last night's second match was against a DK/Pally team and aside from some random strikes and auto attacks, my Lock and I kept both opponents perpetually cc'd. We basically stood in the middle of the Blade's Edge Bridge and spammed CC, while spreading damage. If that DK wasn't sitting in a Fear, he was Cycloned or Rooted. Unstable Affliction over Entangling Roots is so awesome. Poor dude had less damage done than the Felhunter. The funny part was that whenever my partner was pressured, he'd jump off the bridge, watch the DK and the Pally jump off after him and then Demonic Portal back up to the top.

Lemmings comes to mind.

Sadly, I'm stuck grinding honor again for the Deadly Ring now. I really don't even want to think about the amount of honor I'm going to have to grind to get the Battlemaster's Trinket, the upgraded Medallion and the Deadly junk to replace my Hannibal-Lecter-look-alike-trash (Titanforged Leather Helm of Dominance).

So Mad

2009-02-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

"Damn, Chu! So mad! Someone steal your rice?"

For the past two nights (guild 25 man self flagellation sessions are on Mon, Tues, Fri), we've been in Naxx and for the past two nights, my buddies have been ragging on me because I've been raging up a storm in our private chat channel.

Let's just say, I expect more from some people, and we'll leave it at that.

On the plus side, the guild got Naxx25 down to a 4 hour run and I got my little cowpaws on Damnation. Finally, I can dump that Titansteel Guardian for some much needed Intellect and Spirit for both PvE and PvP. It's tough healing in Arenas with an itty bitty mana pool.

In the world of Arenas, we stopped early last week so I could grind honor for 2 off set pieces (WTF 100k honor!?!) and finally, my Druid is out of that crappy crafted shiz. I'm looking forward to some more PvP this week and I hope I can entertain y'all with some stories from the floor.

The only thing I know is that I run away (like a scared little girl) with much more grace as a Druid than as a Priest.

The Return!

2009-02-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

Big incoming changes to WoW Arena (aka: World of Burstcraft), or as I like to say:

Suck it, all of you one-button-wonder Arcane Mages and Mutilate Rogues! Suck it long. Suck it hard.

Of course, this means the return of the Druid because Blizz is tuning down burst damage and I couldn't be happier. The Priest class just didn't feel right in my hands, with its inability to break any snares or even move when melee was on top of me. Fluid Druid shifting with short cooldown snares/cc's just feels more effective at dealing with melee. In addition, Warstomp has saved me far more times than Will of the Forsaken, although with the nerf to burst, I can definitely foresee more Warlocks entering into the picture.

What else needs to happen? Well, I don't have a crystal ball, but,

Hunters and Paladins, better get your knee pads, 'cause you're next!

Now, all Blizz needs too do is revert the Lifebloom change of 3.0 and/or fix Plague Strike/Blood Plague. Removing a 3 stack of Lifebloom with no bloom effect is retarded, especially if the ability that does it is in a class' normal damage rotation. This is akin to the retardedness of when Arcane Shot did dispel effects and thankfully that abomination went away.

So yeah. I'm playing the Druid more.

WTB weapon that isn't the Titansteel Guardian.

3.1 Preview Thoughts.

2009-02-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

These preview notes made me laugh. To the masses, these 'highlights' can probably give cause for celebration, but in reality, to many who understand their class roles well enough to see through the smokescreen, many of these changes are quite lackluster.

The biggest prize in these notes for Priests is the self cast Penance. Unfortunately, selfcast Penance is far more of a PvP buff than a PvE buff. Yes, PvE'rs, if you are in a bad situation where you have to heal yourself right now, Penance can solve that issue. However, the bigger issue in that situation is letting yourself get that low. Positioning and communication can usually prevent that bad situation from even happening and even if it does, Binding Heal is often a better self heal since you know that the tank is also taking damage.

Discipline is definitely getting a huge boost with Power Word: Barrier, aka AOE PW: Shield. Talent synergy-wise, I hope that Rapture works on PW: B. That could be some sick mana regen on a fight like Thaddius, Malygos or Sarth with Drakes up. If Blizz ever gets around to fixing Reflective Shield and linked it to PW: B along with Borrowed Time/Improved PW: Shield, that would be class changing. Chances are, it won't synergize with any other talents a la Divine Aegis. But that's okay, too.

Looking at the possible utility of PW: B from a PvP perspective, it seems like a 3's and 5's tool, especially with quick dps teams where burst prevention is often worth more than healing. PW: B's performance will probably be lackluster in 2's, but we'll see what the details of the spell are before we make that final judgement. I do foresee that the mana cost will be extremely high, as it should have the same final outcome as a Prayer of Healing or two since PoH is spammable.

It's about time that DS became baseline. Having to waste talent points on that BS was a joke.

One thing I am quite amused about with the other changes is that Prayer of Healing will be changed to behave just like the old CoH because it will be Group Based with no cooldown. With enough Haste, Holy Priests could viably just spam AOE heals, which would, again, defeat the intentions behind whole CoH nerf. The silly thing about the PoH change is that Blizz recently said that they wanted to eventually get rid of the Groups within a Raid and this change to PoH essentially forces additional group shifting. Think: healing melee on Sapphiron would make it easier if they're all in the same group. Same thing with KT's Ice Tombs. If anyone ever comes up with an 'on the fly group switching' tool to rapidly switch holy priests around to groups that need aoe healing, the game will have reached a new low.

On the Holy end of things, the Serendipity change is kinda 'meh' as Holy Priests don't really cast Greater Heals anymore because of the glyphed Flash Heal efficiency. Of course, if there's something really wrong and you happen to have several seconds to cast a gHeal, I could see it work. Maybe Uludar will bring back bomb healing, but I see this talent change as just fluff. If there is a ton more healing to be done in future instances this could be a class changer as well, but one thing's for sure, we're going to need numbers to truly determine their end value.

As these are preliminary notes, I'm not holding my breath, but unless 3.1 raiding brings alot more AOE and raid damage, I probably won't be impressed.

But, I am happy that I will soon be able to cast Thorns while in Tree of Life form!

Yeah.

On Achievements and The Underpowered Duo

2009-02-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

A few quick points and thoughts regarding them before getting into some PvP discussion.

My Druid is now known as Elder Moochu. I figured the since the title had some sort of Asian flair and the fact that I didn't celebrate the Lunar New Year this year, that I had to, at the very least, show a bit of recognition towards my heritage.
The guild has finally achieved a full guild clear of Naxx25, complete with guild screenshot! (We sat on the throne instead of hanging by KT's little black corpse/ball) This is a good thing, as it gets people excited about Sapph/KT drops so they show up and bring their 'A' game. I get excited when I know that we have a solid group stepping into a boss fight because I know it's not going to take us forever to finish the content. Remember doing 2 day Kara clears at the start of TBC? Yeaaaaah.
My Priest's PvE gear is almost done, with a Ring, Trinket and Boots to go. I find myself working more and more on the Druid's gear lately, but that's because of reasons below.
Warlocks are 9th on the SK100 list. Druids are dead last. What's the SK100? Well, it's a list of the top 100 arena players in the world by adding up each player's ratings across all three brackets. It's easy to see which classes are currently favored/overpowered through this list.

Fun Stuff...

As for PvP, I've started collecting gear for the Druid that I recently leveled to 80. I initially wanted to go Feral, but Resto keeps luring us back into the fold, even with it's crappy forced play style. What's this crappy forced play style you ask? Here you go:

Due to the increased burst damage, low survivability and the nerf to Lifebloom as the 'go to' spell for survival, sitting in Tree Form and spamming hots on everyone is essential for survival. In addition, due to this decreased life expectancy, Gems/Enchants are focused towards Stamina/Resilience, and as such, Druids end up with tiny mana pools and will easily go oom if they are forced to spam casted heals (Regrowth, Nourish, Healing Touch). The finesse and mobility of the class is largely lost due to exorbitant shifting costs and the movement of Feral Charge further down the Feral talent tree. Lastly, leaving tree form to CC only opens one up to a massive, usually game ending, swap.

TL;DR: PvP Resto = Tree form + flinging green shit everywhere while going oom in 30 seconds.

Yes, it sucks. It sucks badly, but you know what? I still enjoy it.

Why?

Well, due to the superior amount of CC available, there are rare opportunities, even being so incredibly under geared, to completely outplay people.

We must have looked silly a few nights ago, my Warlock buddy and me, showing up in the Arena with our Brutal Gladiator gear on, representing our gimp classes. Combined, we probably couldn't have pulled off 2300 Spellpower and 900 Resilience and I sincerely hope that someone got a chuckle out of watching us hump pillars with our Vengeful Gladiator shoulders. Little do they know, mine are socketed with 2 Solid Dragon's Eyes.

There IS something to be said about having 21k+ unbuffed hp.

Yet, even with all of our gear and class issues against us, we actually won some games we had no business winning. Double Rogue, Warrior/RestoShaman, Priest/Lock wearing PvE gear all succumbed to our level 70 gear and we came out of those fights with puzzled looks on our faces. Naturally, we got destroyed by anyone wearing any semblance of gear or having half of a brain, but winning games against such a gear and class differential was incredibly invigorating.

I think I know my lock buddy pretty well and it's safe to say that we're definitely looking forward to some more games in the future ... and if burst damage gets nerfed, it's only going to make the push even easier.

I've already started raiding on the Druid to get me some PvP gear.
(^LOL)

Grr...

2009-01-30T02:00:00.000-08:00

Why is there no epic crafted spellpower sword or dagger?

Because of this, my 'I have a family so I can't do Naxx' Warlock PvP buddy (who I plan to do 2's with on my Druid) has to run Heroic Occulus for a shot at a decent ilvl 200 weapon.

I hate Heroic Occulus with a severe passion.

Hate

Hate

Hate

Circle of Healing vs Wild Growth

2009-01-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

Circle of Healing (CoH) and Wild Growth (WG) were two spells recently nerfed with the onset of 3.0.8. Everyone remotely close to the raiding scene knows this by now and there have been tons of posts from people both denouncing and praising the devs for their actions against these two cross party healing spells. After healing with WG last night in a 25 Naxx raid on my Druid, I have come to the conclusion that the nerf to CoH was very justified, while the nerf to WG was completely wrong and didn't resolve anything.

Why?

It's all about proactive healing vs reactive healing.

See, when looking at the styles of healing out there, the Holy Priest is a great reactive healer. Damage gets done, they heal it. They can be a bit more proactive with some renews and shields, but really, that's not their forte. Their forte is super strong single target heals that proc efficiency (Surge of Light, Holy Concentration) with some awesomely strong raid/party heals (CoH, Binding Heal, Prayer of Mending, Holy Nova, Prayer of Healing)

Contrast that with a Resto Druid. While their reactive heals (Regrowth, Healing Touch, Nourish) can be very efficient and strong (Glyphed Regrowth/Touch), their retinue is mainly made up of efficient heal over time (HOT) effects. Healing multiple people takes alot of time with these tools through either stacking HOTs on people or chain spamming Regrowth/Touch. As such, the Resto Druid is an amazing proactive healer, being able to place upwards of 3 HOTs on several people, buffering their health pools, especially if it is expected that they'll be taking damage.

Herein lies the problem. By nerfing CoH and WG with a 6 second cooldown, they've essentially turned CoH into a situational heal to be used when multiple people have all taken damage, and they need a 2k+ heal to help them out. You can use it for 2 people, but if it doesn't heal for enough, you'll still have to single target heal, thus ruining your efficiency and speed and time lounging about outside of the 5SR. However, the same is not true for WG. Since WG's front loaded heal is much smaller than CoH, WG can essentially be used as an AOE preheal HOT effect. Since it's duration (7 seconds) is longer than its cooldown (6 seconds), up to 10 people could have the WG effect on them at any time, depending on the game AI with determining who gets WG. A perfect example of this is on the Loatheb fight where a Resto Druid will use WG right before 3 seconds till the Necrotic Aura wears off so that WG can be used again during the healing window. Even if only 1 person needed a heal.

Does this sound like any other heal? Yep. That would be Prayer of Mending (PRoM). With both PRoM, and now WG, you target someone that needs (or will need) a heal soon and if it bounces/applies to another target that needs heals, great! If not, no worries, 'cause you got it covered.

So why is this bad? Sounds great right? Well, it basically makes WG a mandatory cast every 6 seconds on an encounter that has splash damage. Or when 2 people are going to get damaged. Which is just about every encounter. With CoH, timing the usage of CoH became much more important with the addition of the cooldown. If you used CoH on some trivial damage and then a Whirlwind or a Shadowbolt Volley came through the raid, you'd probably be kicking yourself and mashing the CoH button, hoping it would come up faster. With WG, it doesn't really matter. When that damage comes, you already have hots ticking and will have more ticking shortly.

Because of this discrepancy in utility, I believe that the nerf to WG was unjustified as it still pigeonholes WG as a mandatory staple of the healing rotation; it's not a conditional heal like CoH. The fix doesn't solve the mindless spam of WG, we just do it every 6 seconds now. However, try as I might, I can't think of any fixes to either version of WG that would balance it. Proactive heals/buffs (Divine Aegis, Sacred Shield, Living Seed) should never be guaranteed if they're going to effect multiple people.

If anything, make it work like the Death Knight's Pestilence, allowing HOTs a chance to spread from target to target.

That'd be cool.

Green Grass

2009-01-26T08:00:00.000-08:00

The old saying goes, "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence." and for those who have genetically inhibited higher thought functions, this particular saying is used to identify people who aren't satisfied with their own situation; they think others have it better.

I've used the short form of this saying, "The grass is always greener..." in reference to several situations in WoW, and here's that short list of grievances where I'd call out some major QQ.

Alliance always win BG's. I bet that if I rerolled Alliance, I'd win!
I can't break out of the 1700's because I'm a (insert race here). If I were a (insert other race here), I'd be rated over 2k!
My guild sucks! I bet that if I joined another guild, I'd get that weapon off of 25KT next week!

Just a few points of note, to set the record straight:

If you're solo queueing for BG's, thank the stars if you have a 50% win rate, regardless of your faction. There are idiots abound on both sides of the faction coin.
If you can't break the 1700's because you don't have a specific racial ability, your skill may be lacking far more than your racial abilities.
If you think that joining another guild will let you have instant access to top gear without putting in a massive amount of effort to get in the good graces of your new eFamily, think again.

Usually, I'm the guy who calls people out for excessive QQ'ing (aka, being a whiny bitch), but, last night I had a major bout of QQ. My Priest's 2's partner (a DK) and I went 1-6 earlier that day and due to the new match up system, ran in to 1900+ teams all day. We ended up only 17 points down from where we started, which means all of our losses were single digit losses, BUT, its the losses that hurt. Why? Because every dps/healer team we fought had a Paladin as the healer.

The ability to crank out insane heals from using PvE gear and gem for mana instead of stam/resil all because they wear plate and because they can go immune is just beyond my partner and I's skills to cope. The additional fact that they can spec for an additional instant ranged cc (Repentance) that's not on DR with their primary CC (HoJ) is just ridiculous. My clothy butt has to manage mana, pre-heal myself with several instants to just survive a single Kidney Shot and tank damage because I have no way to remove snares.

See? I've started QQing again.

I toyed around with a level 7 Paladin and killed exactly one Springpaw Cub before I logged off that Blood Elf Goku twin and back onto the Priest.

In this case, the grass is definitely greener. If Holy Paladins were grass, they'd actually be so effing lush, smell so crisp, and be so god damned green that Kermit the Frog could drape his naked butt all over it like some sick Muppet porn and no one would notice anything. It's like the dev's poured Scott's Turf Builder all over the Paladins and created the perfect healing class for today's sick burst and low survivability environment.

But, I digress.

I'm going to stick with the Priest and the Druid (talk about another gimp healing PvP class) for now because I can't level another character to 80.

It would literally kill me.

At least until my Asian Power Leveling Racial Ability comes off of its 6 month cooldown.

Impact of Circle of Healing's New Cooldown

2009-01-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

One of the intended changes implemented in 3.0.8 was the introduction of a 6 second cooldown in Circle of Healing (CoH). While the topic of whether or not this nerf was justified when talking about a Holy Priest's role and function is completely overplayed, the bottom line is that the change is in and we have to deal with it.

A couple of nights ago, I ran some Naxx25 with the guild while specced CoH Holy and had a very different experience than I normally do. To highlight the differences, let me first pain a picture of my previous healing experience in a 25 man raid environment as CoH Holy.

Pre 3.0.8, a.k.a. EZ Street
Before Tuesday, raid healing for me primarily consisted of bouncing Prayer of Mending (PRoM), Flash Healing here and there, and firing off a CoH or two. Raid statistics generally saw my healing as an equal usage of PRoM, Flash of Light and CoH with Renew at a distant second. As a point of note, Flash Heal usage was often a result of Surge of Light procs. In fact, due to my reasonable Holy Crit rate (>20% base Holy Crit) in combination with the Glyph of CoH, I would often be surprised if I didn't get a Surge of Light proc after a couple of CoHs. Our strategy for burst healing in situations where more than two people were taking damage was to CoH two to three times and then use the Surge proc to instant Flash Heal the person needing the most healing. Most of the time, I gamed the Five Second Rule (5SR) with Surge procs to maximize our regen. Actual CoH spam, where a Priest only used CoH and eschewed usage of other healing spells wasn't common unless the raid was in a very dire situation.

They key point here is that due to Surge of Light procs and the relative efficiency of two to three CoHs chained together to keep the overall raid health in the green, I often had ample opportunity to sit back and regen mana. Very few fights saw me popping Shadowfiend. Incredibly rare situations called for both Fiend and a Mana Potion.

Post 3.0.8 Observations
After this Tuesday's patch, raid healing during my Naxx25 guild run became a much more frenetic responsibility where the downtime created by the six second CoH cooldown was being filled by harried applications of instant casts and Flash Heals. I found myself having to anticipate damage by applying Renews and bubbles on people who were liable to take splash damage, Flash Healing people who had taken significant damage and popping CoH and PRoM at nearly every cooldown to hopefully proc Surge of Light, which could then be saved to possibly counter burst damage.

They key point here is that due to decrease in quick applying and sustained raid healing, it took the healing crew longer to top everyone off to a safe level. This increase in time spent healing resulted in a decrease in time spent out of the 5SR, thus limiting regen and putting a strain on my mana pool. At various points in the run, I found myself focused more on the raid frames, playing whack-a-mole with Flash Heal and Renew, than on the environment. This usually results in a dangerous situation, as not recognizing a bad situation because having healing tunnel vision often results in one's untimely death. No, I didn't stand in the fire, but I almost missed a Thaddius Polarity Shift.

Adapting
I believe that the biggest adaptation isn't going to come from the healing crew, but from the Raid members understanding that raid healing just got much more time consuming. Not panicking and watching one's own back with a finger on the Healthstone, Health Potion, or defensive cooldown may be appropriately prudent.

From the healing crew perspective, an adaptation that should be realized, is that the notion that 'everyone needs to be constantly topped off as soon as they take damage' will not be possible anymore aside from some extreme raid stacking. In correlation with that, healers should begin to realize that it's okay to let a Renew/Lifebloom tick to full to top someone off if that target isn't in mortal peril.

I found it very helpful that Grid, my raid frame mod, displayed incoming heals so that my single target spot heals were not overlapping (and thus overhealing) someone else's heals. However, the best part was that due to my configuration of Grid, I could see who had Renew, Rejuv, or Lifebloom already on them. This would consequently save me some mana as I would let them tick to full instead of spot healing, and nab myself a GCD or two of mana regen.

Overall Impressions
I realize that CoH was grossly overpowered. It was. There's no argument. However, the healing playstyle of a Holy Priest was far more fun with a spammable cross party AoE heal. I enjoyed it because of its ability to put out some incredible raw healing numbers and because I liked using various tricks to stay out of the 5SR. There's something enjoyable about abusing Spirit based mana regen. I understand that the change to CoH was to give Priests a triage-esque decision when dealing with raid damage. However, due to other healers' inability to let any damage go unhealed (especially when are HoTs on that target), Priests have been reduced to playing whack-a-mole with Flash Heal, PRoM, and PW: Shield in between CoH applications.

The bottom line is that I find this new means of coping with raid damage mentally tiring. Competing with other spot healers to see who has the fastest reactions isn't my 'thing' as a Holy Priest. If I wanted to spot heal, I would have gone Disc. At least then, I'd have some crazy Haste, awesome mitigation and insane mana efficiency. I can't say that I'm unhappy, but, I'm certainly not ecstatic about the changes.

Long Boomkin Weekend Recap and a Gank Story.

2009-01-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

I love long weekends. A big heartfelt 'Thank you!" goes out to all of the various activists, rabblerousers and notable individuals who have given us the chance to sleep in for an extra day. It's greatly appreciated. God knows I could always use more sleep.

For a while now, my Priest has been essentially at a gear impasse. everything is 'good enough' and really all that we're lacking is Arena practice and experience. In my approach to the game , gear is secondary to the experience. I do like having some nice gear because of the ePeen factor, but as long as I'm able to be competitive, I'm having fun. I'm not obsessive compulsive with gear as some people are, and as such, I save myself alot of headaches in the realm of PvE. Amusingly, I've been incredibly lucky with my PuG loot dice, winning various 'best in slot' items that work in line with my personal gearing strategy.

Getting back to PvP, however, I desperately need the experience. I feel, that as a new player to this class, I'm behind in my understanding of the class and that I need a few hundred games under my belt to really being to fully understand all of the little nuances. I'm not worried about the ratings, but in my case, the best solution to this issue is to take the Asian way out, and just grind Arenas. The root of the problem, however, is scheduling. It's tough, with work and life, to make sure we get in games, and lately, I've been finding a lot of dead time. While I could go PvE or grind BG's during that time, I'd rather just log.

Enter the Druid.

This past weekend, when I wasn't doing Arenas with the Priest, I was levelling my Druid. Readers who have read my first posts will know that I had, in TBC, successfully piloted a Druid to reasonably high ratings, but that due to gameplay homogenization for Restoration spec'd Druids post 3.0, I had decided to swap mains to a Priest. Do I regret the swap? Not at all. But, being bored leads me to do crazy things and when I asked people how long they thought I would take to get to 80, a friend guesstimated that it would take me 2 weeks to get form 71 to 80.

Of course, this guesstimation amounted to a serious affront against me and my heritage, so I popped my Asian Leveling Racial Ability (6 month cool down) and less than a week later, I'm 11 bars from 80, with 7 BoE epics lined up and ready to roll. If I had chosen to stay in all weekend and not go out to dinner with a friend and not sleep in, I would have hit 80 before the server resets, but, even with my racial active, that would have been quite extreme. I plan on PvPing as Feral, but it will be a side project to the Priest, so expect a few posts here and there about our experiences as a downsy looking kitty.

Anyways, I promised a Gank Story, so let me draw y'all story of a level 78 Boomkin stepping foot into Icecrown.

Those of you who have done the initial quest chains in Icecrown know that Icecrown is one of those zones that utilizes the new phasing tech, implemented with Lich King. What this means, is that depending on your progress on the main quest chain in that particular section of the zone, that particular section will look different to you than it does to others at different points on that quest chain. This also means that players on different parts of the chain will not be able to see each other. You can only see people, in those phased areas, that are at the same point in the quest chain. This is important later.

Well, as it was, I was level 78 at that point and spec'd deep into the Balance tree, and even with my full Brutal/Guardian's PvP gear, I could pump out some pretty crazy damage, especially with some Eclipse procs. 7k Starfire crits at that level with that old gear wasn't out of the question. Several Alliance, who tried to gank me while leveling, quickly found out that a Boomkin with full resilience gear is generally a bad target to pick on. This group of unfortunate individuals (who clearly need a hug), includes a level 80 Warlock, who decided to gank me while I started on the very first quest at the Argent camp in Icecrown.

I knew something was up when this level 80 Human Female Warlock stood nearby waiting for something as I engaged a mob 2 levels higher than me. A Deathcoil and a Fear later, with a full row of dots, the mob and a Felguard on me, I was at half health, vainly trying to apply dots to her while spamming my glyphed Holy Touch (love it!). A second fear sealed the deal and I found myself flying back in ghost form. Extremely. Pissed. Off.

Seldom known Druid fact #1: The thing about Druid dots that most people don't realize is that they're just as strong as Warlock dots. I just don't have as many. But, on their own, they can chew someone up if given enough time.

Well, this particular Warlock decided that he was safe in the Argent Crusade camp. Unfortunately, when you start off with any faction, you start off at Neutral. AND, if you're doing the very first quest in that zone, indicated by the fact that I can see you in this phased section of Icecrown, you too, are Neutral. No protection from the guards, hunnybuns.

Rezzing quickly, I managed to catch this lock at half health (from my dots) and while I ate a couple of fears, she went down like the ganking trash that she was. Equipping my PvP trinket turned out to be a good decision because this one was a Fear spammer. Judging from the strength of her dots, she had shit gear, too. I don't have a clue why she tried to summon a Felhunter mid fight, but that cost her. Cyclone into Starfire sealed the deal.

The next kill was quite a bit faster as I was able to Pounce her into a Wrath, which crit, proccing Eclipse, Nature's Grace and the Brutal 4p set bonus (1.5 seconds off your next Starfire), leading to a massive 6k 1 second Starfire to her ugly face. Having the stars align for such ridiculousness is always fun.

Seldom known Druid fact #2: Typhoon dismounts.

Kill number 3 came as she was able to mount up on her gryphon and flit about as I chased her in Swift Flight Form. This little cat and mouse chasing bullshit went on for quite some time, until I got a clear shot at her, catching her in a Typhoon, thus knocking her off her mount and down to the ground, where she took a little bit of falling damage. I chased her with dots and Moonfire spam for a while longer, eventually scoring some honor from her broken and lifeless body.

Kill number 4 came as she once again mounted up and flew to a ledge away from the camp, presumably to eat/drink. Why she dismounted I would never know, but I Typhooned her Fear (saw it coming) and as she ran, she ran clear off the cliff and cratered into the snow below. I guess my presence just has that effect on some people.

I followed this particular Warlock after she rezzed again, and while I didn't get a clear shot at her with Typhoon to send her cratering, I did /laugh and /spit on her while she ate and drank at the Krasus' Landing.

Yep.

I chased an 80 Warlock all the way back to Dalaran.

Our Warlock friend begged us to stop camping that ganking trash on grounds that it might reduce the Warlock population because Warlocks are so weak in PvP right now, but unlike him, I like to teach lessons to would be 'look at me I'm so cool' gankers.

Just 'cause I can.

Spec vs Gear vs Comp vs Metagame: PvP Healing Priests

2009-01-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

For many classes, there is no correlation between gear and spec in the Arenas. If you're a Warrior, you're looking at a Bladestorm spec or Titan's Grip. If you're a Mage, you're primary two spec choices are likely Deep Arcane Barrage or Deep Freeze Frost. However, for Priests, the spec used is often directly related to the level of gear they have. In addition, bracket and team comp can also add consideration when deciding on spec.

What a headache, right?

No kidding!

Before I get into the detailed explanation, if you are looking for the TL;DR version, here you go:

Those that have very little personal survivability and don't expect their teammates to take much damage should spec Focused Will/Blessed Resilience.
Those that have issues surviving but expect that their teammates may share in the damage fest should spec either Pain Suppression/Spirit of Redemption or Guardian Angel/Spirit of Redemption.
Those that don't expect to take that much damage should look into Penance.

For those who have the iron stomachs to read further, here we go! (Warning! This isht be looooooong)

To elaborate on the TL;DR version, lets look at the 3 different factors and their effects to determine wether the Priest has no chance of survival, a poor chance of survival or a decent of survival. Notice, there's no good or excellent chance. That's because Priests have never had that luxury. Yes, I'm bitter like that. The 3 factors that affect survival are are Gear, Comp and Metagame.

Use the super-complicated-yet-accurate-to-the-nanometer analytical scale below as you analyze the 3 factors.

No Chance <--> Poor <--> Decent

Gear
The simplest indicator of survivability is gear. The fact remains that if you're wearing all PvE gear or you're in leveling gear (aka: BAD PvE gear), your survivability will be non existant. With that said, we'll assume that the minimum attainable gear will be the full Frostsavage Set. If you need help figuring out how to gear up, check out my previous post. The survivability benchmark that has been thrown about has been somewhere in the 750-800 resilience range. At that level, you should be able to endure the initial CS > KS from a rogue with a Bubble up.

Rate yourself:

If you have the minimum attainable PvP gear set, you pretty much still have no chance for survival, but the marginal resilience will help you against splash damage if you can get peels. Mark yourself on the left side of the scale.
If you have more gear than the minimum set, but are under 750-800 resilience, your survivability is poor, but you should be able to take a couple of hits. Mark yourself in the middle of the scale.
If you are over 800 resilience, you've got decent survivability. Mark yourself on the right side of the scale.

Comp
Comp or Composition, refers to your team and in correlation, your bracket. However, in this section, we're looking at our team, not our opponents. What we're specifically looking for is your teammate's survivability and survival skills. There's a huge difference when playing with a tunnel visioning Rogue wearing no resilience and a Death Knight who knows how and when to use LOS.

Rate your teammates:

If you are playing with classes that have been branded as 'hard to kill' (Death Knights, Warriors who know how to LOS/reflect, etc) or teammates who are wearing a lot of PvP gear (800+ resilience) and/or classes that have personal immunity type effects, your teammates get a decent survivability rating. Unfortunately, that makes you a much juicier target, lowering your survivability. Move your rating to the left or keep your rating the same if you feel that you won't always be the primary target.
If you are playing with easy to kill teammates (Warlocks, Shamans, another Priest) or teammates wearing very little PvP gear or don't have immunity type effects, your teammates get a poor survivability rating, which will increase your survivability... sometimes. Keep your rating the same or move it to the right if you feel very confident about your kiting and peeling skills.
If you are playing with a Paladin who knows how to apply Blessing of Protection, your survivability increases. Move your rating to the right.

Metagame
Metagame refers to the types of teams you're expecting to face. Back in S3 and S4, playing in the upper brackets, one could expect many many Warrior/Druid teams and as such, Priest/Mage teams did well, if they could get to that bracket. In today's environment, there are many many comps out there as the top tier comps have yet to be defined (exception: DK/Paladin).

Rate your expected opponents (the metagame):

You expect a lot of Rogue teams and your teammate does not have have a physical peel a la Kidney, Hamstring, Scattershot, Blessing of Protection, etc and/or you expect a lot of all DPS/high burst/multiple melee teams. This lowers your survivability as Rogues are often your bane. Pure magic peels aren't as reliable in that first 30 seconds of a match due to Cloak of Shadows, Vanish, Prep, and the possibility of a teammate dispel. Move your rating to the left
You expect a lot of Rogue teams and your teammate has a physical peel and/or you expect a lot of drain teams. This will likely increase your survivability as your teammate can peel for you and the incoming damage is less bursty. Move your rating to the right.

So how did you do? Ignoring gear for a moment, common compositions in this current environment such as Rogue/Priest, Ret Paladin/Priest, and Rogue/Mage/Priest often place the Priest on the far right of the scale, whereas teams such as Warlock/Priest and 4DPS/Priest often shift the Priest to the far left or middle of the scale. Using those comps as guidelines and understanding your Battlegroup's environment, your placement on the scale should be fairly accurate. How does this translate into spec?

Well, currently, there are 3 popular specs out there which, lo and behold, somewhat translate into the various degree of life expectancy.

Focused Will/Blessed Resilience/Lightwell/Spirit of Redemption: This build focuses on personal survivability at the cost everything else. Blessed Resilience and Focused Will help you stay afloat and combined with Lightwell (which you can used while stunned), one can generally stay alive with some reasonable peels and LOS. The downside to this build is that it has no uber 'save me!' abilities such as Pain Suppression or Guardian Angel, heals are anemic and the mana efficiency of this build is in the gutter. You won't have the longevity to win out long drawn out drain style matches, but against high dps teams, where you don't have to worry about your teammate getting bursted, this is a winner. Spirit of Redemption can offer some late heals (which, with the soon to be fixed glyph, can lead to 45 second+ Angel heals) if and when you get brought down. This build is pretty must restricted to 37/34/0.

Pain Suppression/Spirit of Redemption or Guardian Angel/Spirit of Redemption: These specs are largely interchangeable in my view as they offer increased healing output/damage prevention output while giving up either Focused Will or Blessed Resilience. The Pain Suppression build is more mana efficient whereas the Guardian Angel build has more healing output at the cost of mana efficiency. With the uber 'save me!' abilities, these specs are generally used if the Priest wants the post death healing of Spirit of Redemption in conjunction with increased healing/damage prevention as teammates are expected to take some serious damage. Common builds are 50/21/0 and 14/57.

Penance: This deep Discipline spec utilizes Penance and gives up the option to get Spirit of Redemption. This spec is very mana efficient as Penance has a very high healing per mana ratio, especially if the Priest takes Rapture. In addition, Penance offers huge burst healing, even if it is only allowed to tick twice before cancelling, to avoid interruption. Unfortunately, self heals for this spec are fairly weak, and the Priest using this spec generally utilizes either superior pressure, team peels, and/or superior gear to avoid or withstand incoming damage. This spec still have a 'save me!' ability in the form of Pain Suppression and typically, with high resilience Priests, Pain Suppression offers more bang for the buck than Blessed Resilience as non-crit damage becomes a greater issue. Common builds are 60/11/0 or the myriad of 5x/y/0 where y does not exceed 20. (Oh noes! Algebra!)

Summary:
So, looking at the various characteristics of the builds, it becomes clear that the builds can correlate reasonably well to the three positions on the scale.

Those that have very little personal survivability and don't expect their teammates to take much damage should spec Focused Will/Blessed Resilience. This correlates to people who found themselves on the far left of the scale.
Those that have issues surviving but expect that their teammates may share in the damage fest should spec either Pain Suppression/Spirit of Redemption or Guardian Angel/Spirit of Redemption. This correlates to people who found themselves in the middle of the scale.
Those that don't expect to take that much damage should look into Penance. This is for those people who found themselves on the right side of the scale.

Hopefully this little analysis has helped determine where you stand with your spec. It's not 100% accurate, but it should give some insight as to the various factors that go into deciding a spec. Keep in mind that top players will likely not find this of much use as their coordination and communication can often supercede comp mismatches or gear inadequacies, thus allowing them to utilize a spec that would get mid level or beginner players killed.

As always, try stuff out and see what works for you.

Gone Hoggin...

2009-01-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

For a mere 15k gold (average price, give or take some depending on server pricing), you can own your very own eHarley: the Mechano-Hog or a Mekgineer's Chopper. By the numbers, these fantasy world cycles are essentially Engineering specific ground mounts, and they're BoE so anyone can have one. Another mount. Big deal, right?

Ah, but it's oh so much more than that.

See, unless Blizz changes these cycles, they're actually vehicles. Not a mounts.

Vehicles =/= Mounts.

The difference?

For one thing, a vehicle has Hit Points. So when you jump off a cliff or fall off Dalaran (who would do such a thing?!) the vehicle takes damage, not you. If you've ever jumped off a cliff while riding your mount, you'll notice that your faithful steed disappears upon impact if you've fallen a great distance. You'll also notice that you're probably dead and running back in spirit form.

Secondly, its nearly impossible to target the player driving the vehicle.

Thirdly, the vehicle is immune to almost all cc's and snares. Frost Nova, Sap, Crippling Poison, Hamstring all fail on this amazing piece of equipment.

Lastly, it can be used in the Arena.

By now, the little gears in your head should probably be whirring faster and faster, with the thought process going something like this:

"So basically, its a mount that I can use in the arena, will protect me from many forms of cc/snares, will protect me from damage until it's HP is reduced to zero, and it lets me kite people until I choose to get off and fight?"

Yeah, basically.

In one of our matches this weekend on the RoL map, the combat went like this:

I started this match on my Hawg and waited in the starting cubby for the go ahead to come out. As we only saw a Priest, we assumed Rogue/Priest and shortly after mounting up, I got Sapped. In response, I simply drove off. Mr. Rogue then tried to Cheap Shot me (still driving), Sprint to catch up (driving in circles around the Tomb at this point), Vanish and Cheap Shot again, (still driving). At this point, I got feared by the Priest and the Rogue was trying to get to me while being Chains of Ice'd by my DK buddy. Fear wore off and I drove all the way back to my starting cubby. The rogue, at this point, burned Prep to Vanish once again, to peel my DK buddy off his Priest, which in turn got me to come out to start healing. The opposing Priest was able to get a bit of distance from the DK as I couldn't dispel Crippling while he could dispel Chains of Ice and the Rogue turned to try to pressure me. Instead of using Sprint again, he popped Nitro Boosts... which saw me popping Nitro Boosts as well. I think I did 2 laps around the Tomb before he Stealthed and caught me (I should have used SW:Pain to tag him, but by then, his Priest was dead and he was quickly Death Gripped into a couple of RNG Death and Decay glyph fears.

The MVP for our run to Deadly boots?

Hog.

IIIII'm Fifty!

2009-01-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

Molly Shannon used to do this skit on SNL where she played a middle aged woman who would proclaim at various intervals "IIIII'm fifty!" while jumping around, doing splits, lunges and showing a lot of moose knuckle. Yeah, you probably tuned out that crazy amount of knuckle-age as did I, but a recent viewing of a Youtube clip made me do a deja vu shudder.

/Shudder

Anyways, this is post number fifty since I started the blog, and while fifty posts may not be anything phenomenal, seeing as though we have some hyper prolific writers out there with more posts in a single day than I'll generate in a week, to me, it seems like somewhat of a milestone. If only Blizzard gave out Proto Drakes for this literary Achievement...

I'd like to thank our readers for commenting on our posts, as they often give us more inspiration and insight to the various topics I post about. I've tried to keep the quality of writing up, and at the same time, tried to add a little bit of humor here and there. Hopefully, it's working, because I've enjoyed the challenge.

There have been some thoughts about trying harder to become a WoW blog for the masses, a la BRK or World of Matticus, and for a while I did try to get on people's blogrolls via commenting and such. At the same time there were also some thoughts about getting a co/guest writer to help broaden the scope of what I like to post about. However, I truly think that our style of writing is a bit different from the other mainstream WoW blogs out and that many of the people reading and posting commentary on those blogs wouldn't enjoy our content. I also like being in control of what's posted under our header, so for the forseeable future, its just you, me and my sultry words of bromance.

All that being said, thanks, again, for swinging by!

Chu has earned the Achievement [50 Posts]!

Fun PvP moment in AV

2009-01-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

Everyone has those days in a BG or a raid/heroic where someone does something amazingly smart, silly, stupid or just plain awesome and that action evokes a response; a laugh, a chuckle, or tirades over vent about why only bad players run to the wrong polarity on Thaddius. Every now and then, there's a scene that combines all four that just makes you stop and reflect on what just happened. This is one such event, and while I can't do it justice with my storytelling, I'll certainly try my best.

Location: Alterac Valley
Alterac Valley (AV) for Horde is often a fruitless endeavor that rarely ever succeeds without some strong defense at Frostwolf Relief Hut due to the layout of the stronghold and the lack of a Bridge of Death or other similar defensible passages. One such passage where the Alliance often has their last stand, is the deep channel pathway right before Stormpike Graveyard that the Horde, in their collective mental retardation, love to pile into, only to get stymied long enough for the Alliance Offense to casually take all 4 Horde towers and kill Drek'thar.

One of the more interesting terrain points is found while running up the slope to Stormpike. One can veer left and find themselves standing on a cliff overlooking Stormpike Graveyard (SP GY). The cool thing about this place is that there's no easy way for the Alliance to get into melee range, if you are standing up there and they're standing by the GY flag. If you're a ranged dps class or healer, you can essentially free cast, drink, and free cast again. ad infinitum.

At least until someone figures out what you're up to and decides to try to stop you.

In this particular AV, the Horde were, once again, completely jock-blocked at SP. I was up on the cliff overlooking SP, working my way towards 1 million healing done in a BG when I spot a Warlock also on the cliff stacking dots on anything that got into range. The thing about where he was positioning himself was that he wasn't standing far back and hiding behind the terrain, but he was right up against the edge of the cliff aggressively dotting. This was helpful against Warriors as they would Charge/Intercept him and then fall off the cliff since he was right up to the edge. I think he was Haunt specced and he managed to keep himself alive pretty well, primarily though the various HP restoring spells and his use of Demonic Circle, which was placed away from the action. Several times, he would jump down, pop an instant Howl and then 'port back up.

Cool.

I like playing with someone who understands using the terrain to their advantage.

I started focusing heals into this Lock and the Alliance began to notice that this particular agent of slow nasty death was burning through their defenses and not dying. Several Warriors and Rogues managed to get up to the cliff, where they were subsequently and unceremoniously Mind Controlled back down to ground level.

Then it happened. A little Gnome Frost Mage managed to get up on to the cliff and started working us over with snares and Shatters while an Arcane Mage pelted us with Barrages at the bottom of the cliff. After barely surviving back to back Improved Counterspells, I resolved to throw the offending midget off the cliff and into the ravenous masses of Horde. The moment my Mind Control hit, the Mind Controlled Gnome got Death Gripped by an Alliance Death Knight from max distance, creating this nice pretty flying Gnome effect. At the apex of his flight, fireworks appeared from the base of the cliff... in the form of Barrage + PoM Pyro, slamming into the flying Mage. Yep. The Alliance Arcane Mage that was working us over with mindless Barrage Spam, 2 shotted our little Frost assailant.

We /cheer'd him and he /cheer'd us, and naturally, as it usually goes with Horde, we went on to lose AV.

Gearing Up - a Pseudo Guide for new PvP Priests

2009-01-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

For the release of LK, the only real sources for post leveling PvE gear were Heroics and Raids. For raiders and non PvPers, this was an ideal situation, as badge gear was readily attainable and the gear requirements for the entry raids were not prohibitive. As mentioned in a prior post, if you make it easy enough, people will consume the content, en masse.

Unfortunately, for PvPers, the PvE-speed-badge/easy-raid-grind PvP equivalent, aka “Welfare (PvP) Epic Honor Grind” didn’t happen. What was the Welfare Epic grind that was so prevalent in Season 3 and 4 of Burning Crusade? That grind was when new 70’s would dive into a weekly Kara for badges for their cloak and trinket and PvP like mad for S2 gear and still be fairly well off in terms of PvP viability.

So why didn’t it happen? Well, due to various factors, it wasn’t quite repeatable here at the start of LK. Sure, one could sit in BG’s for days grinding honor for the buyable honor gear set (Savage Gladiator), but people for the most part didn’t. Why? It sucks. Which part? All of it. Becaaaauuusseee:

1) The honor based PvP gear is both exceedingly expensive as an honor purchase and still semi equivalent to the (cheap) crafted PvP set.
2) The honor gear, for some classes, is terrible for starter PvP. Equivalent Heroic instance and raid drops are often better until acquisition of top end PvP gear is possible. Sometimes even Deadly gear is eschewed for high end raid gear.
3) The current honor cap is 75k. This means you can usually only buy 1 piece of gear at a time, because each piece now costs over 35k honor/piece.
3a) The off set pieces (neck, back, bracer, belt, boot, ring) for both the Hateful and Deadly PvP sets all require a great deal of Honor, and one doesn’t want to be caught in the situation where they have just purchased a piece of Savage gear only to be forced to grind honor for a few days when the reach a milestone rating and get the privilege to buy a piece of Deadly gear.

Those reasons were enough for many people to not grind for PvP gear. To reiterate point 2, for some of the classes out there, the attainable PvP gear out there is a strict downgrade as their survivability and arena function doesn’t change whether or not they have 200 or 400 resilience, due to the resilience cap being upwards of 1200.

However, the flip side of this is that for other classes, Resilience and Stamina is everything to their survival and function in the arena. Sadly, the Priest is one of those classes and just looking at the possible avenues to getting gearing up for PvP, one can definitely start feeling overwhelmed very quickly.

To that end, this is somewhat of a guide for those who want to gear up quickly for PvP and are playing a class that has limited survivability such as a Priest. Each point, while listed by number is equally important. Just following a couple points of the list, while ignoring other points will not get you very far. Let’s reiterate the key point: This is for classes that have limited survivability. Classes with outs such as Iceblock, Vanish, Divine Shield, should move along.

1. Honor grind. Recognize that some pieces of PvP gear will require you to spend massive amounts of honor to obtain them. These are the Hateful and Deadly offset pieces (neck, back, bracer, belt, boot, ring). If you know you can hit the rating requirements for Deadly, don’t buy the Hateful gear. Hateful would only be a waste of your time. The only caveat is the scenario where you need some Hateful gear to be able to reach the Deadly ratings. This is more likely to occur towards the end of the season. If you plan on wearing 2 resilience rings, grab the Hateful ring first.

2. Craft. Craft as much PvP gear as possible. While Brutal Gladiator gear is reasonable for pieces that aren’t craftable, it will often have less Stamina and less Resilience than the new craftables, not to mention the new stuff will likely have more spellpower/strength/agility, etc. More resilience will allow you to use a playstyle more coherent with your final gear later down the road.

3. Wintergrasp. Wintergrasp is not only a huge source of easy honor, (I think I’ve only ever seen 1 successful defense, so it’s guaranteed honor if you’re on Offense) but it’s also a good source of PvP gear. Besides the fact that Wintergrasp Marks will soon be able to be used for some reasonable helms and boots, control of the zone allows you access to another raid instance: the Vault of Archavon. Vault (as it’s known) is basically 4 trash pulls and then an absurdly easy boss. The boss has a chance to drop both PvE and PvP gear, of Glove, Leg and Chest variety; Vault 10 drops Hateful/Heroic gear, Vault 25 drops Deadly/Valorous gear. You definitely want to run both every week. No question about it. However, many people run it incorrectly and in turn, screw themselves out of gear.

To run it optimally, make a 10 man raid (grab friends if you can) that contain 1 of each class, regardless of spec. To fill the spots, just spam /2 chat in a major city with something that reads like this “LFM 10 man Vault 1 of each class” and I guarantee that you will have people whispering you for spots. Why? Because people are greedy… And because the boss doesn’t drop tokens for gear like every other raid. It drops the actual piece of gear that’s restricted to a specific class. For example, on one raid, the Heroic Mooncloth Gloves of Faith (Priest T7.10) may drop and if you don’t have a Priest on hand, you’ve just wasted a piece of gear. Conversely, since you’re also as greedy as the next guy and you’ve constructed the raid with just one of each class, if any of your class’ gear drops, its all you, baybee. Just remember: 1 MT, 1 OT (often a melee plate DPS, not necessarily tank specced), 2 healers and 6 DPS.

This raid composition strategy is possible for 25 mans, but a little less so due to the number of available people at any given point.

4. PvE. Bwuh? Yep. To PvP, you’ve GOT to PvE. This is probably one of the biggest gripes I have with the current environment, but easily accessible raid instances have some of the best weapons out there. Titansteel Guardian/Prison Manifest have nothing on the Staff of Restraint from OS 25. Yet, many of these raids take minutes to run. Minutes. Not hours. In addition, just by PvEing, you can load up on badges, Badges of Heroism (Heroic/10 man badges) and Badges of Valor (25 man). For the Beginner, Naxx 10 gives 6 badges for the two easy wings, OS 10 gives 4 badges per clear, Vault 10 gives 1 and the daily Heroic dungeon is at minimum 5 badges. The same is true for the 25 man badges, sans the daily Heroic dungeon. At the least you should be getting 11 badges a week of both types. The kicker is that these badges aren’t just to buy PvE gear. For 30 Badges of Heroism you can buy the Savage Gladiator shoulders or gloves. For 45 badges, you’re looking at the Helm, Chest or Legs. The same applies to Badges of Valor and Hateful Gladiator gear. However, consider weekly Vault drops prior to gear purchases.

There you go, that's how I've gotten to around 800 Resilience in a few weeks. It could have been faster, but, I imagine S5 will be long enough, so it shouldn't matter at all... Unless, of course, you're damn impatient, like me.

Did Blizzard Screw up? Malygos 10 Commentary

2008-12-31T08:00:00.000-08:00

This is not a boast post, but at this point in the game, a month and a half after the release of WotLK, I, a casual raider and PvP enthusiast have completed 5/6 of the game's possible raids. With PuGs. I suppose that you could say that I haven't taken down 25 Naxx fully because I don't care to spend hours upon hours of playing 'lets wipe' with a rotating roster of PuGhhhhs, but really, Naxx 25 is so much easier than Naxx 10, just by virtue of having more DPS. The only hard part is herding the cats to actually start the pulls.

...And of course making sure that the cats aren't brain dead zombie kitties who like to stand in the fire helps as well.

Again, not a boast post, but really, the question is, "What now?"

I'll be blunt here, and please do tell me if my reasoning is flawed.

Blizzard, from a long term financial point of view, did themselves a disservice with the introductory raids and because of this, probably cost them more long term subscribers.

The rationale is as such: Aside from Malygos 25 and OS with drakes up, all of the bosses in the introductory raids are easy execution fights. There are no high level gear checks and as such, there are no extreme DPS or Healer fights. Malygos 10 is somewhat of a gear check, but not entirely. At my current gear point, which is all Naxx 10 stuff with some 25 man stuff, I can easily heal through all of the content. As long as I have competent teammates, there is no overwhelming urge for gear so that I can 'save the raid'. Perhaps for other people, getting all super uber gear is the most important factor, but for me, the casual raider, this is enough.

As a healer, I'm probably seeing this effective cap phenomenon in a different light than most other roles, as my results are largely unmeasurable as compared to the 'damage taken' or the 'damage per second' statistics. However, if history is of any indicator and the stories of Raid participation declining after completing content is true, I'm probably not the only one to feel like there's not much more to shoot for. Ulduar coming out soon? I expect to be able to PuG that, too, on day one because healing Naxx 25 was a joke and if there's content that requires more than half my mana pool in a 25 man raid, I'll be surprisingly amused.

Here's the kicker: If I wasn't a PvPer at heart, I'd probably have quit by now out of sheer boredom, because jumping between the beams on top of Org bank is only fun for the first hundred thousand times. Not Horde? Ever square jump in Ironforge? Yeah, same thing. If I can feel this way, I'm sure there are many others who feel the same.

Scarily enough, this is the closest I've ever come to completing all available content, and it's not a good feeling. Keep in mind that I'm not a hard core raider, nor ever aspire to be, and nearly all of my raid experiences have been with PuGs. If I'm this apathetic about continuing to do completed content when it's not a challenge, I can't even begin to understand what the hardcore raiders are experiencing.

Although I'm all for discrediting Blizzard with their mistakes, I do have to commend them for the Malygos fight. It's incredibly fun and its one of the few fights that really highlights each and every class out there such that a 10 man raid with one of every class would actually do very well. Well, except for Warlocks, but I guess a healthstone is better than nothing. Sorry, Warlocks.

Simply, Malygos is a tank and spank DPS race. It is NOT a healer fight as people have claimed. Yes, there is a lot of damage to be healed in Phase 1 and 2, but its entirely predictable, unless Malygos eats a spark. Guild can't do Gluth? Forget about Malygos (besides that whole key issue). Vortex, for all its vaunted claims of being hard to heal through is only hard if people don't pre-heal with hots. Don't have a Priest and a Druid? Maybe it's time to recruit. Sorry, Pallies.

So if the fight isn't about healing, then what's the difficulty? Well, The key part of this fight is that DPS needs to be very high. 2.5k + DPS is probably the minimum that you want to be able to put out for this fight. That value isn't astronomical by any means, but the only reason why I give this number is because that's what our average DPS was we had an okay buffer for the Enrage timer.

Do you need all epiczzzz for this fight? I used to think so, from all the smack that was thrown about, but the answer is an emphatic "No!" The gear assumption was the amusing thing about my Malygos 10 PuG a few days ago. There were a few blues on most of our raid except for a few characters that had obviously (gear wise) completed this content and I initially thought were were headed to Fail City (population: Us). However, much like nearly every other LK raid boss, its all in the execution.

Our first attempt as a PuG? Phase 3 and we figured out the drakes a bit too slowly. Two more silly wipes in Phase 1 due to DK power spark mismanagement and the fourth pull was all she wrote. We even lost a healer towards the end of phase 2 (not me) and managed to pull out the W.

Anyways, Happy New Years, everyone, and don't do anything that vaguely sounds like a Sons of Hodir daily quest all by your lonesome!

We're Back! First week of Arena

2008-12-23T20:00:00.000-08:00

Apologies to our readers, work has taken me to far and distant lands and away from my most popular diversion. That being said, I'm back now, and in time for the Holiday Season. Even though I don't bring in the ho's like Santa (oh stop it, Mrs. Claus!), I'm still committed to bringing raunchy stories and dirty experiences from the PvP floor.

Ok, no raunch.

In the few days that I've been able to log in some serious game time, I've not only ground massive amounts of honor, but also spent both Badges of Heroism and Badges of Valor on mediocre gear. It somewhat feels like re-rolling a character only to hit max level at the start of a season where all you can afford is the Season 1 Honor gear because you didn't save up 5k Arena Points at the end of last season for Season 2 gear. Yes, I know I couldn't have saved up Arena Points as they were all wiped the instant I hit 71, but this awkward transitory phase where no one has any arena gear is quite... amusing. Deadly gear, being a tad out of reach right now is that dangling carrot. I'll get there, but first, I need some way to live for more than 15 seconds!

Last night, out of sheer need for Arena Points, my DK buddy and I got a few 2's games in, and we went 8-0 (there were already 2 games played on that team) for the Achievement [Just the Two of Us: 1550]. Granted, its nothing to brag about because many of the teams just didn't have any gear or any strategy, but we capped off the 2's streak with a 2-0 'streak' in 3's, giving us the [Hot Streak] Achievement. Yay! Crowd goes wild! Well, not really, but it was kinda cool to flaunt that in /g chat. Honestly? 1550 is a joke. Go grab someone, focus fire and grab an easy achievement if you're a badge whore.

/g chat went something like this:

DKbuddy has earned the achievement [Just the Two of Us: 1550]
Rukuz has earned the achievement [Just the Two of Us: 1550]
[Rukuz][Guild]: Just the two of us, we can make it if we try,
[Rukuz][Guild]: Just the two of us, you and I.
[Guildy1][Guild]: LOL!

I plan on copying some more extensive lyrics from Will Smith's tear wrenching hit when we hit 1750 and getting some lyrics down when we get the [Three's Company] Achievement in 3's.

To touch more upon the environment, if you're a raider or just a heroic runner, the Hateful PvP gear can be a good filler for some of your pieces. In addition to being a gear gap closer, for those raiders who have already experienced much of what LK has to offer us in both 10 and 25 mans, which I presume is a pretty sizeable portion of the playerbase as there are PUGS for everything except Heroic Malygos on my server, it's something else to do.

So, if it's so easy to focus fire someone down, how did I stay alive? Well, aside from having ~600 Resilience from some crafted and gladiator gear, it all came down to spec and glyphs. For these fights (2's and 3's) I specced Borrowed Time/Spirit of Redemption (50/21/0) with the Spirit of Redemption (SoR), Dispel Magic and Holy Nova glyphs. The name of the game was personal survival while providing some additional utility and trying to save some mana wherever possible.

Besides the funky things you can do with Borrowed Time's haste bonus, such as casting instants very quickly with the reduced GCD and pushing out some incredibly fast Flash/Greater Heals, the real winners for many of the matches were the Holy Nova glyph and the SoR glyph.

With the Holy Nova glyph: Your Holy Nova spell heals for an additional 40%, but deals 40% less damage, the time spent between your instants (PW: Shield, Mending, Renew) while running from some angsty melee class is filled with the spamming of either Dispel Magic or Holy Nova. Why Holy Nova? Well, sadly, it's the only other self heal that you can cast while on the run. With the Borrowed Time haste buff, the instant heal for ~1800-2100 every 1.2 seconds were enough to keep me alive by a hair in many of the games. Honestly? It's better than trying to cast a Flash Heal through a) Mind Numbing Poison (screw you Deadly Brew) or b) the threat of getting Counterspelled. Give the glyph a try. You won't be disappointed! (But you will run out of mana super quickly. C'est la vie)

Taking a different approach, the SoR glyph straight up won us some games through dumb luck. Flat out won. Why? Well, the glyph itself: All heals cast while Spirit of Redemption is active have a 20% chance to increase the remaining duration of Spirit of Redemption by 4 sec, is ridiculously powerful if you just 'get lucky'. With a few procs of this glyph, I've turned a bad situation into a reasonable one. There's no denying the power of an unkillable healer spamming Flash Heal with the odd Prayer of Mending for 45+ seconds. I think I healed more as an Angel in some of the fights. Sad but true. But hey, I'll take the 'W'. As they say, "Better lucky than good!"

I'm looking forward to continuing to use this spec in future PvP or even trying a deep Holy spec again. One thing's for certain, there's going to be much more honor grinding in the future.

Give the spec a try, and keep in mind the immortal words of the Fresh Prince:

"But yo push come to shove

You was conceived in love"

Amen, brotha.

10 Man Naxx down

2008-12-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

Not that it's some sort of extreme accomplishment, but 10 man Naxx = completed.

We also, as a guild, took on 25 man Archaevon with just 20 people, most of them fresh 80's in blues with just 3 healers. Archaevon enraged on the first attempt, hitting all of us with a warstomp that instagibbed the entire raid. We were 8 seconds from enrage on the second and final attempt.

I don't mind the (essentially) free loot, but seriously, shouldnt there be -some- hard bosses in the first tier of raiding? I haven't done Malygos, yet, but I can't imagine it to be that much more difficult than anything else I've seen. Maybe it will be hard with the nerfed CoH. Magtheridon and Gruul, even in their current fixed state, are harder than Vault/Naxx. Hell, even Nightbane is harder.

Honestly? I'm looking forward to Arena Season 5. Playing a Priest should be quite difficult in this world of uber melee, no resilience and sick nasty burst.

All the pretty trinkets

2008-12-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

No ganking stories today as the past few days have been full of just trying to clean up our computer from the viruses obtained accidentally from a wow-heroes (the gear comparison site) advertisement. We accidentally clicked on an ad and it was all downhill from there. Please use protection.

Anyways, we're all cleaned up now and have been continuing to gear ourselves up. We realize that this gear that we're acquiring is equivalent to the Kara gear we started off with at the onset of TBC, albiet acquired much more quickly than a couple of years ago, so we're not really worried about putting in an excessive amount of effort to 'get the best of the best'. We've been focusing on obtaining healing gear and to that end have gotten our paws on some reasonable upgrades from various heroics and raids, both 10 and 25 man. Of the gear that we've been able to obtain, a couple stand out, both trinkets.

Egg of Mortal Essence is the 40 Badge of Heroism trinket and while the bonus 98 spellpower is exceedingly nice, the Haste effect is truly the shining star. With it's high chance to proc, you can almost guarantee that it will proc in the first few seconds of a fight. This amount of haste (approx 15%) will drop a Flash Heal (and your GCD) to 1.275s and a talented Greater Heal to 2.125s. Naturally, if it's proc rate is that dependable there are a couple of things you can do: Cast low cost spells prior to a pull to force a proc and count out the 45s internal cooldown to mesh up with other cast reduction spells or other haste effects.

Badge of the Infiltrator is the second trinket that I'm currently using and while it's green and unassuming, the trinket is an excellent example of a highly desired raiding statistic: Intellect. For those out of the loop, Intellect (Int) drives the size of the mana pool as well as a bit of crit. When looking at the current amount of raid healing that is necessary and the specific average amount of healing needed per raid member, a large mana pool is a must. This is especially true if a raid starts moving towards bringing less healers and more dps to power through some encounters as was the case back at the end of TBC. In addition, one cannot ignore the synergy between a large mana pool and Replenishment (the mana return buff from Shadow Priests/Ret Pally/Survival Hunters), making a large mana pool highly desireable. Toss in Shadowfiend's effect and it suddenly becomes obvious why many a casting raider are going with marginally smaller Spellpower totals in favor for stacking other statistics such as Int, Crit and Haste. This is also why I'll probably be going back to my War Mace of Unrequited Love for tonight's raid over my Titansteel Guardian.

It's all about the mana, baybee.

Well, not really, but we'll get to that in a later post.

How to be an A-Hole

2008-12-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

Mind Control someone off of the turtle ferrys when you're in deep water.

Bonus points if you put a snare on them.

Healing Heroics and Naxx

2008-12-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

On the day that I hit 80, I was invited to dps a Heroic Nexus run and miraculously won the epic caster mace drop off of Keristraza, edging out a guildy healy Priest. I don't know how I did it because my rolls are usually epic fails. Fast foward a week later, after getting back from vacation, I drop about 4k gold to craft some healing gear, among which are: Titansteel Guardian, Moonshroud Robe and Moonshroud Gloves. Amusingly, I didn't even get a chance to use the War Mace of Unrequited Love and it got vendored amazingly quickly.

Hey, 82 additional +healing is pretty darn sexy. That and the extra Stamina will help for PvP.

Healing a Heroic GunDrak last night, it dawned upon me, while corpse running, that I actually have to try. Also, as a Priest, I don't have Swiftmend and Nature's Swiftness to cover my ass if I didn't happen to anticipate needing a big heal omgrightnow. Since that long corpse run, we've made the adjustment and actually thinking about prehealing and burst anticipation has been enjoyable. It's like Arenas. But not. I dunno. Does that make sense? Whatever. As a reference, healing heroics in TBC as a Resto Druid was a joke because we knew all of the fights inside and out and because of the sheer overpoweredness of Lifebloom/Rejuv/Swiftmend. I had no clue how the fights went in GunDrak, but we powered through regardless. If all else fails, just brute force it, amirite?

Overall, it only took... *ahem* a... few... wipes for me to get my healing bearings on straight and after that, we did fairly well. No drop upgrades but we'll greedily take those badges. We want that hot egg trinket for 40 badges, and we want it ASAP!

Anyways, I got invited to another guild's Heroic Naxx (25 man) run and the following exchange took place after clearing the Spider Wing (all paraphrased):

Raider1: Recount: Total Healing
Raider1: 1. Rukuz: 4600000
Raider1: 2. OtherHealer1: 4100000
Raider1: 3. OtherHealer2: ....
PallyHealer1: There is NO way he did 4 million healing
Raider2: Why not? My Recount says he did 4 mil
PallyHealer1: nono, for that last fight, there's no way he did 4 million
Raider2: Well, of course not. It says Total Healing
PallyHealer1: ... oh
PallyHealer1: but still, how could he have done 4 million?
PallyHealer2: It's probably all overhealing
PallyHealer2: Anyone have Overhealing meters?
Raider1: Recount: Total Overhealing
Raider1: 1. PallyHealer1: 2000000
Raider1: 2. PallyHealer2: 1900000
...
Raider1: 4. HolyPriest2: 1700000
...
Raider1: 6. Rukuz: 1000000

I took my headset off at that point and with my hands off of the keyboard (to prevent any accidental activation of my mic) laughed out loud. Now, I completely understand that healing meters aren't a good measurement of .. anything.. but seeing the indignation of the Paladins in the chat when they saw that they were not at the top of the healing meters and that that my overhealing was among the lowest was just pure awesome.

I think people assume that Circle of Healing Priests just mash their CoH button with impunity, and, truthfully, that's very likely the case and is probably what is drawing all of the dev attention to CoH and Wild Growth. However, instead of mashing CoH, I worked on multitasking by keeping my glyphed Renew on the tanks, bouncing Prayer of Mending whenever I could and dispelling Cripple from the melee. I'm still getting used to all the different heals for the different situations and I need to relocate that Binding Heal button. It definitely would have saved me from burning GCD's and mana on 2 Flash Heals. Oh well, live and learn (or die and learn, too).

Honestly? Naxx wasn't hard by any means and I'm totally not boasting about my experience in there, because I'm sure there will be much more Naxx to come (KZ2.0). But, I can boast about my rolling abilities, because I won the Robes of Mutation off of Noth. Which was awesome, because I had JUST crafted my Moonshroud Robe.

/eyetwitch

Working the Dalaran Street Corner and a Gank Win

2008-12-02T08:00:00.000-08:00

Ding!

ty, ty.

We hit 80 last week prior to our week long vacation to the land of Schnitzel and Bratwurst and haven't set foot in Azeroth until last night. After jumping around in Dalaran looking for something to do, I finally bit the bullet and specced deep holy to get my Heroics grind on. Unsurprisingly, its much easier to get groups as a healer than as a Shadow Priest. We've already healed our first Heroic (Violet Hold), using our silly crafted gear and didn't have much trouble. Of course, since we've been playing as Shadow and been away from the game for so long, remembering what we had hotkeyed to various powers was definitely a trip. It was definitely different from rolling Lifeblooms as a Druid to trying to get out of the 5SR with Greater heals.

As for right now, we intend on whoring ourselves out for rep, gear and class/binding familiarity for PvP purposes, which are really the important things to consider as I see some fun times ahead trying to learn how to heal as a Priest. Yeah, we said it. Whoring. Use me and abuse me, but as long as I get my badges and rep as fast as possible so I don't have to do it again, I'm ok with it.

I'd like to share some experiences with Lake Wintergrasp, but sadly, I've only participated in one so far and it was quite... confusing, to say the least. I'll tackle that in a bit when I get a few LWG's under our (now buckled!) belt.

However, for today, I'd like to share a Gank Win while I was feverishly working on my last half bubble of xp to hit 80.

Triple Threat becomes Triple Death.

We were on our last half bubble of xp, trying to do anything that would give us xp in Icecrown. One of those dailies is very frustrating as a clothy single target dps machine (I was leveling as Shadow): That's Abominable. It's the one where you kill Abominations to get some chilled body part (appendix, goiter, whatever) so that you can make your own explodable Abomination pet to kill a bunch of Undead. Well, I had already died once because I had overaggro'd and the Abomination pet not only didn't kill everything, but exploded next to me, sending me flying into a new pack of Undead. Which. Can't. Be. Feared.

splat

At this point, I'm ready for level 80, sick and tired of grinding quests and what should happen, but a trio of Alliance lands near me and starts killing stuff for their quests. Warrior, Ret Pally and Enhancement Shaman. None of them are favorable matchups.

No biggie, I'll just kill a few abomina... oh... the Warrior is running over to me.

I lay into him with a couple of dots after his murderous intent becomes clear, but, without a trinket and without any Resilience, I'm pretty much mincemeat. I did try to get back as fast as possible since my dots and omgfutileswd took him to 30%, but he had gotten healed to full from either the Pally or the Shaman buddy he was teamed with.

I manage to rez, fly away and heal/mana up, and am about to leave the area to find some other quest hub to get our elusive half bubble when we see a Horde Ret Pally hovering over them. A quick whisper and an /invite has the Blood Elf laying the smack down into the Enhancement Shaman while I'm dotting up the Warrior.

Warrior goes down (yay!) but the two hybrids rip my impromptu teammate apart, even with my heals. I notice that the Space Goat Paladin has used Divine Shield and seeing them heal each other makes me turn tail, mount and get away.

whew!

Teammate and I lament about the burst dps people can output these days and while we're chatting and hovering on flying mounts, I notice that the Alliance Trio has moved over to an elevated plateau area and are ranged pulling Frost Wyrms. Melee hybrids ranged pulling means that their tiny manapools are running low and with the amount of damage they've taken (each at around half life with no mana) they're prime targets for a vengeance gank. Oh, and (only now do I notice) the Grand Marshal Warrior is also at half health, presumably because he rezzed and flew over as soon as possible.

No mana means no heals and I charged in and quickly laid waste to the Enhancement Shaman who had a couple of Wyrms on him. I turned to the Ret Pally and while I interrupted his Holy Light with a Psychic Scream and Deathed him for the kill, saw the Warrior trying to run away.

Except we were on an elevated ledge without anywhere to go, unless he wanted to crater.

He got the charge off (sigh) and as my dots were eating him up, he was able to get an Intercept off to bring me into Execute range.

eek!

Dispersion saved the day and as I sat there, a purple ball of glowing vengeance, the dots got him close enough that a Shadow Word: Death (button was being frantically mashed so that it would go off immediately after Dispersion wore off) finished him off.

And that's how a clothy ganks 3 melee.

Ganking Fail

2008-11-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

So, here we are, a couple of days before a nice long vacation with no WoW, but prospects of many fine German beers and we're at 79.25. Just a smidgen more of grinding to 80 and we're there.

In the past few days, we've been dutifully grinding through the remainder of Dragonblight and into the Grizzly Hills. For those of you who have done the Saurfang the Younger quest chain in Dragonblight, I've got to say, that scripted event was amazing and incredibly fun. I spent most of it trying to get the biggest crits possible to boost my Statistics (you know, that alternate tab to Achievements...). I think I'm up to 29k for a trinketed Mind Blast crit.

Hot.

The other half of the event was spent chiding my Shaman questing buddy (with whom we duo'd through all of the quests in Grizzly Hills) for not being a real Shaman like Thrall. I mean, look at Thrall, wearing his 'looks like level 40 gear' and telling the spirits what to do. He doesn't just ask them to clear the plague, he commands them to clear the area. Thrall's essentially the Chuck Norris of WoW.

When Thrall Earth Shocks you in the middle of a cast, you don't just get interrupted, you get disconnected.
TwentyFiveNovember was actually the second guild to clear all of WotLK content. Thrall was the first.
There actually 3 difficulty levels in WoW: Normal, Heroic and Thrall.
Thrall puts the 'laughter' in 'gnomeslaughter'

One of our conversations, while watching Thrall and Sylvanas mow through the Scourge, went something like this:

Thrall: Spirits of the Air, help us blah blah blah!
Me: See? Thrall is the man! Why can't you command your spirits better! I'm ditching you to duo with Thrall.
ShamanBuddy casts Fire Elemental Totem
ShamanBuddy: Spirit of Fire.. uh.. do stuff.
ShamanBuddy pokes Fire Elemental
ShamanBuddy: I think he's broken =(

Good times.

The other fun part of leveling has been dealing with Gankers. Ganking is an integral part of leveling on a PvP server and for the most part the ganking has been minimal. In addition to the minimal ganking, the gankers who have tried assert their egos have been terrible. Two such encounters stick out in my mind:

Encounter 1: I'm level 74 and finishing up the Murloc Quests in Northern Borean Tundra. As I'm starting to run across the water (Levitate ftw), a 72 Death Knight follows me into the water.

Hrm.. not good. I have no idea how to deal with a Death Knight and being in all PvE gear with no trinket means I'm kinda squishy. Maybe if I dive underwater, my Undead-ness of being able to sit underwater for 10 mins will deter him.

Mr. DK dives into the water and starts beating on me.

Figures. I swear, DK's are the new Huntards. Every little kid has one and wants to show off his big epeen.

I get a couple of dots on him, and try to hard cast a Vampiric Touch.

Strangulate. Um. I guess that's a silence effect because I'm now frantically mashing buttons to try to cast something but no glowy hands. Just a little Undead girl getting her face caved in by a big nasty runeblade. =(

Remembering that Dispersion can be used while silenced, we turn into a misty ball of purple stuff to mitigate the damage for a bit, pop out of Dispersion, and Psychic Scream Mr. DK to the surface of the water. Cool! Distance is good! A new set of dots get reapplied and we swim deeper. Poor Mr. DK finally gets out of the fear, feels a bruised ego and tries to swim down to exact vengeance but the Mindflay snare effect keeps him away for long enough to get the kill.

cheer!

I shift out of Shadowform and start to heal myself and Mr. DK decides that he should now turn into a ghoul and try to finish me off

Ruh, roh.

Shackle. /lol

Heal to full, pop a mana pot, shift back into Shadowform and proceed to rip that ghoul a new one.

We ran around a bit later completely unhindered by him as he meekly avoided any confrontation.

Bet you feel kinda silly there, Mr. No Gear DK, ganking kiddies who won't fight back. Sorry I made you keyboard turn to dive down after me into the water. That camera down button probably doesn't get used alot does it?

Scenario 2: I'm at level 78 and finishing up the quest chain in the Iron Dwarf area of South Eastern Grizzly Hills and as I finish a quest objective, I get Corruption'd. Spinning around, I get Curse of Agony'd and see a 76 Human Warlock charging up a Fear.

Crud, no trinket equipped

I counter by slamming my instant dots on him as fast as possible and Will of the Forsaken the first Fear. We love WotF.

Deathcoil into Fear #2 stops any chance of retaliation and by the time I'm out of the second Fear, I'm at 30%.

The good news is that I'm sporting the Glyph of Dispel Magic, which heals the target every time I dispel something off of the target (must be friendly to get the heal). The better news is that Mr. Haunt Warlock didn't put up Unstable Affliction. Good job, Stupid.

I mash Dispel Magic and *poof* there go all of his dots and debuffs.

This is pretty much the turning point as my trinket powered dots eat him alive while restoring hp via Vampiric Embrace as he frantically decides that now is the time to Drain Life some health back. Sorry, Buddy, that weak-ass drain isn't gonna help you now.

With me back at full health, he goes down pretty quickly and as I'm drinking, he must have been REALLY angry at his failed gank that he immediately rezzes and dots me up again.

Dispel. Dispel. Dispel.

Sorry, buddy, but this isn't a Battleground and your pet doesn't rez with you. With no Soul Link and a half full hp bar, he went down in a flurry of shadow magic and pointed laughter.

I corpse camped him for 3 more kills after that, until he went AFK, each time getting a lucky Blackout proc as he tried to ride away on his little pony ground mount as I landed next to him on my epic flyer.

Mr. Lock with only 12k hp at level 76, why would you pick on someone who can fly? Do you feel like an idiot? I'll bet you do after I flew alongside you across the entire zone spamming my /lol macro.

Tonight's goal? 80. I already have my full Frostsavage set crafted and ready to go. Wintergrasp, lets ROLL!