Disc PvP Testing

While there's nothing better than popping that Icon of the Silver Crescent and dotting a mounted opponent up in Alterac Valley with Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric touch to get that Sickly Gazelle Achievement (In Alterac Valley, kill an enemy in the Field of Strife before they dismount), for the undergeared (i.e. low resilience/hp a la PvE gear), Disc PvP healing can also serve up a decent helping of fun.

To give a frame of reference, I was running around in various Battlegrounds this weekend using a 51/10/0 spec on my ~1000 Spellpower, 178 (or sometimes less) resilience, 8k hp/mana baby raid face melter. Instead of melting faces, we were (literally) channeling the Light into our teammates and trying desperately to avoid getting gibbed. In some cases, we were forcibly shoving the Light into opponents with some pretty righteous fire. All in good fun, of course.

With the above spec, we primarily relied on the tried and true instant cast abilities to save lives: Prayer of Mending, Renew, and Power Word: Shield. However, a couple of new talents completely changed the old Disc PvP playstyle. The most amazing spell in our new repertoire is the 51 point Discipline talent Penance (16% base mana, 2 second channel, 30 yd range): Launches a volley of holy light at the target, causing 288 Holy damage to an enemy, or 1484 to 1676 healing to an ally every 1 sec for 2 sec. Now, at first glance, it doesn't sound so amazing. Drawbacks? Yep, right here: a) It's channeled so you have to stand in place, b) being channeled you could possibly get counterspelled and school locked, c) channeled means you have to face the target and d) there's a cooldown of 8 seconds with 2/2 Aspiration (Rank 2) Reduces the cooldown of your Inner Focus, Power Infusion, Pain Suppression and Penance spells by 20% which really is 6 seconds if Penance is fully cast.

But, enough about drawbacks, lets talk about the advantages of using Penance:

Firstly, it can be used as an offensive weapon. Need to apply some more damage to finish off the opponent? Penance them! Every other aspect below also applies to the offensive usage of this spell.

Secondly, Penance is cheap. For a mere ~460 or so mana, at 1000 spellpower, each of the 3 ticks heals for approximately 1500. That's around 4500 healing for less than cost of a Flash Heal (18% mana). This means that if you have to break the channeling after the second tick of Penance, you will still heal as much as a Flash Heal, for less mana, and for less time spent casting (first tick is at time zero, second tick is at 1 second).

Thirdly, the initial tick of Penance is instant. The moment you start channeling, that first tick shoots out and while the range is only 30 yards (most other heals have a max range of 40 yards), travel time isn't so bad. It's not as slow as Pyroblast and the twirly lights are pretty. With latency, its entirely possible to get off two ticks, break the channeling, and still avoid counterspell. Basically, it looks like a holy version of Arcane Barrage, which if you've participated in BGs lately, have probably been subjected to, ad nauseum.

Fourthly, all ticks can crit. This means that with some luck, you're looking at some pretty amazing burst healing.

Fifthly, it synergizes well with Grace (Rank 2): Your Flash Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance spells have a 100% chance to bless the target with Grace, reducing damage done to the target by 1% and increases all healing received from the Priest by 2%. This effect will stack up to 3 times. Effect lasts 8 sec. The 3 ticks of Penance count as 3 heals, applying (very quickly) a 3% damage reduction and a bonus 6% healing.

Lastly, being a channeled spell, you can heal around objects if the subject of your healing moves out of your line of sight. This is akin to a Warlock's Drain Life, which, if you start the channeled spell when the target is in line of sight and they move out of your line of sight, the channeling will continue to function. This is very helpful as in BG's, there's a good chance that your teammates won't be mindful of line of sight healing issues. In addition, if you're are playing with a teammate that is communicating well with you, they can pop in and out of line of sight, so that you can protect yourself from counterspell while still casting large heals.

Ok, so Penance is great, what else? Well, check out the new 46 point talent: Borrowed Time (Rank 5, 5 point talent): Grants 25% spell haste for your next spell after casting Power Word: Shield, and increases the amount absorbed by your Power Word: Shield equal to 40% of your spell power. While the second part is easily quantified (1000 spellpower = 400 extra damage absorbed) and works well with Reflective Shield, the first part (spell haste) can bring about some pretty fun stuff. With this 25% spell haste and no other passive haste or other haste buffs, Flash Heal becomes a 1.125 second heal, Talented Greater Heal becomes a 1.875 second cast and Mind Control (*cackle*) becomes a 2.25 sec means of humiliation. The cool thing about the haste ability is that it can stack with Power Infusion. This next spell becomes 45% faster, or as they would say on Spaceballs: "They've gone to plaid!" Mind Control. check. 1.65 second cast. check. The important thing to realize with the Borrowed Time haste effect is that any spell, even instant, will consume the buff. So, when planning out healing rotations or combinations, be sure to avoid casting any instants right after a shield if you want the benefit of the haste effect.

As nice as the haste effect is, Borrowed Time and Penance both synergize well with yet another talent: Rapture (Rank 4): Causes you to gain up to 2% 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. Any form of mana refund to bolster the efficiency of the Priest class is a phenomenal thing and this talent is a very nice complement to the efficiency of the above talents.

I definitely had a lot of fun with this spec and I urge people to give a whirl. Healing becomes quite effective with all of the new talents in the Discipline tree and with 5/5 Divine Fury, if you want to go offensive you can, with a Penance, Holy Fire, Mind Blast, Smite chain for some Light guided beat down.

Pv... E? Undergeared Shadow Priest Raid Gear Concerns

First of all, big apologies to my 1 reader out there for not updating as much last week. Things just got... busy.

With that weight off of my shoulders, I'd like to talk a little about the Priest and what I've been doing with her (sounds dirty, but trust me it's not). We'll get to arena and BG's soon enough, but really, the meat of my past week's Priestly endeavors has been raiding. In this time period we have attended and saved ourselves to every raid in TBC except BT and Sunwell, where an extremely undergeared Priest, no matter how skillfully played, will have issues justifying her presence. We've gone from blues and greens to nearly all epics, a few blues (need the Scryer's Bloodgem for the hit rating) and one green (why are there no good offhand drops?!). We've gone from 600 spellpower to over 1000 spellpower and we still have less than 3 days of /played time at level 70.

Throughout all of the raids and heroics, the goal has been to find a decent PvE guild with some strong leadership and a mature atmosphere, because, as I've (and many others) seen before, a good fit guild can make playing the game that much more enjoyable, even to the point that, signing on to talk to friends and jump around in the major cities (I miss Ironforge square jumping), is something to look forward to. I've definitely found a few guilds on Kel'Thuzad I could cross off my list and a few to look into further. There were even a few where I found myself stepping into a leadership role in their raids, because of the inexperience of the leadership, no matter how good intentioned they were. Hopefully, we'll find ourselves a new home soon, because talking in a private chat channel is much less enjoyable than in /g chat... and typing /6 is a pain due to little Asian hands. I expect to have arthritis in a few years.

I digress. In the world of beginner Shadow Priest raiding, I've been taking as much epic gear as possible, going as far as crafting the entire Frozen Shadoweave set and getting some Bracers of Nimble Thought made for me. I've contemplated making the BT haste shoulders, but I haven't seen the pattern on the AH recently. Aside from all of the gear crafting, the confusing aspect to all of this raiding and PvE gearing is the synergy between the gear and the talents. See, with the changes to the Shadow tree and game mechanics, obtaining mana at 70 is a different task. Specifically, the restriction of one potion/fight and the change to Vampiric Touch providing the Replenishment buff instead of mana returned based on damage dealt, mana for the undergeared Shadow Priest is pretty dicey, especially if you're as undergeared as I am. Furthermore, the stats allocation on typical gear also doesn't help.

To preface the explanation, lets define the two means of passive mana regen other than Shadowfiend and Dispersion:

Meditation (rank 3): Allows 30% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting. (Discipline tree)

Improved Spirit Tap (rank 2): Your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death critical strikes increase your total Spirit by 10%. For the duration, your mana will regenerate at a 20% rate while casting. Lasts 8 sec (Shadow tree)

Notice: Both talents run off of Spirit to determine the amount of passive mana regen.

Obviously, before we go any further, I realize that with WotLK, spirit will be itemized better, but we're playing in the here and now, so it's a valid current issue.

Now, lets look at the issue. When analyzing non raid gear, each piece can generally be categorized based off of various characteristics: DPS and Healing. Traditional 'DPS' gear has Stamina, Intellect, Spellpower and Crit. This type of gear is supported through the various crit talents such as Improved Spirit Tap and the other +crit rating (Mind Melt) and +crit damage (Shadow Power) talents. With the change to dots now being able to crit, crit rating is definitely desired. Conversely, traditional 'Healer' gear has Stamina, Intellect, Spirit and Spellpower. Interestingly, this gear is also supported through Shadow talents such as Improved Spirit Tap and Twisted Faith (Increases your spell power by 10% of your total Spirit, and your damage done by your Mind Flay and Mind Blast is increased by 10% if your target is afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain).

Big deal right? Well, yes, this is a pretty big deal to the beginning Shadow raider, because virtually no gear outside of raid gear has both spirit and crit and we need both. Here's why: When trying to overcome my mana issues, I could spec two ways: either 13/0/48 for Meditation or 5/0/56 to max out the damage talents. If I go with the first spec, I could gear for spirit and be fine on mana, enjoying a 30% regen rate, but my damage becomes gimped, especially concerning Mind Melt and Shadow Power as I am not able to max out both talents. In addition, 3/5 Twisted Faith means less damage overall on the two most spammable spells in my arsenal. With Pain and Suffering keeping Shadow Word: Pain up indefinitely, giving away extra guaranteed damage seems counter productive. With the second spec (how I usually spec for Raiding), I do gain Dispersion for mana regen (basically a second pot) but the reliance on crit is much more extreme. If I don't get crits on Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death, I am completely reliant on cooldowns for longevity. But, if I do crit, I need enough spirit so that my regen is worthwhile!

So, what's the right way to gear/spec for the beginning raider? Well, if your group is competent and you're clearing farmable content, definitely go with the 5/0/56 spec and hope for Mind Blast/Death crits. There's a good chance your group is going to burn down the boss fast enough as it is, so your mana issues won't become apparent. If your group is just starting the raid scene and fights are taking much longer than they probably should, Meditation and Spirit gear may be much more beneficial, especially if you're multi tasking to cover your raid weaknesses (shielding, dispelling)

So, how did I do this week? Well, aside from at least 8 upgrades: Head, Neck, Chest, MH, Gloves, Pants, Boots, Trinket, we managed to break into the top 5 on a Hyjal boss. How? Well, as much as I'd like to preen about my undeniable skill, I'd actually have to give credit to all those 'raiders' who evidently love to stand in the fire.

Evidently, PvE is hard.

/scoff

Deep Resto Thoughts

My druid has been specced Deep Resto (14/0/47) for quite some time and the spec has been quite good to me through Battlegrounds and in the Arena... when both aren't lagging all to hell... which, by the by, Kel'Thuzad has been plagued with since the latest patch. Blizzard, get your collective heads out of your asses and lets get this stuff working!

On the flip side, I've been getting much more sleep than usual.

Back to the build. The above build is complemented by the Rejuvenation and Healing Touch glyphs and the strength of the build has been primarily through stacking hots to serve as a buffer for consistent or impending burst damage, and spamming Regrowth and Healing Touch (1.5 second cast) when trying to heal through the burst when it comes. One of the more favorable aspects of this build is the synergy between Imp. Regrowth, Living Seed and Nature's Grace. My Regrowth has around a 60% chance to crit, which means many 1 second Healing Touches, 1 second Cyclones, or 1.3 second Regrowths.

The important concept to note here is that Lifebloom spam is no longer the 'go to' ability that it once was. Pre-3.0, my Lifeblooms would tick for 230+ healing per application, where post 3.0, we're looking at ~185 healing per application. This healing gap and the mana cost gap has made prioritizing stacking Lifebloom from scratch only necessary in the situations where there's no other choice. Often, with the burst found in BGs/Arenas, applying a Lifebloom/Rejuv to buy you time to further bomb Healing Touches/Regrowths is the correct call. In the arenas, casting these heals (OMG they have cast times) can be quite difficult as Resto Druids are a key target due to their vulnerabilities, but the other key talent for this build makes melee match ups much more favorable.

Improved Tree of Life.

This 3 point talent is amazing in that with it, you can tank a Ret Paladin indefinitely and Rogues become much more manageable. One of the amazing aspects of ToL is that a) you can heal while in this form, b) you have a very high armor value and c) shifting out of ToL doesn't eat your GCD. All of these make surviving that much easier so that healing teammates is a possibility, instead of a dream.

If you're looking for survivability with some effective healing through the gamut of PvP environments, I believe Deep Resto is hard to beat... as long as you have a pillar to hide behind.

Moving! Shadow Priest: 3 hours /played at 70

We've moved! Well.. my characters have, at least. As of this morning, both of my active 70s are now on Kel'Thuzad. Archimonde wasn't a bad server at all, but the PvP population was pretty tiny and I missed the sheer amount of activity that one gets with a larger server, a la my first PvP server: Mannoroth. I haven't decided on the new names, as I always create a lvl 1 char with the to-be-transferred character's name on the new server to give myself the opportunity to rename if needed, but I'll update the links to the right once I do make that decision. I'll probably stick to Moochu (Druid) and Ruckuz (Priest). Point of note: Ruckuz was my Mage's name, hence the blog title.

I (and my friends who also transferred over) are now actively looking for a guild that is planning on completing 10 man content, some 25 man content, and doesn't mind PvPers clogging up their ranks. If anyone has any recommendations, please feel free to comment!

Anyways...

About a week ago, I hit 70 on my Priest, marking it as my 5th 70. For those keeping track, that's (in order): Rogue, Warrior(first to 60), Druid, Mage, Priest. If I could multibox, I'd have a pretty solid 5v5 team. Of course that'd be on paper; multi tasking on one character is bad enough.

With the arrival of the big seven-oh, there was much splurging on following purchases (all craftable items crafted):

• Epic Flying Mount + Skill
• Bringer of Death (LOL): +40 spellpower enchant
• Rep Satin Helm: Powerful Earthstorm Diamond, Runed Living Ruby
• Rep Satin Chest: +15 Resilience Chest, 3x Runed Living Ruby
• Frozen Shadowweave Shoulders: Honored Scryer Enchant, 2x Runed Living Ruby
• Frozen Shadowweave Boots: Boar's Speed, Runed Living Ruby, Steady Talasite
• Battlecast Pants: Runic Spellthread
• Unyielding Girdle: Steady Talasite, Solid Star
• Bracers of Nimble Thought: +15 Spellpower
• Level 69 Cloak of the Sorcerer: +20 Spell Penetration
• Scryer Rep Items for Scryer's Bloodgem
• Medallion of the Horde with +20 Resilience

Total cost? ~9k gold. Might as well spend it before inflation sets in, right?

So, with some ridiculously bad gear,~9k health buffed, ~130 Resilience and 675 Spellpower, we headed to the Arenas.

Oh, and lest I forget to mention, in the mad rush to buy buy buy, I neglected to train my level 70 spells. So, that means no Mass Dispel, no Prayer of Mending, no blah blah blah... Pro, right?

I can't say that going 8-3 in the 1500 2v2 bracket justifies me as amazing, because lets face it, I'm not. BUT, it's the 1500s, and the fact that we were beating full S2/S3 players and winning games we shouldn't have won (hai Lock/Dru, wtf were you doing?) says something: my near full brutal rogue buddy shouldn't be in the 1500s. There's something hilarious about Shadow Word: Death'ing someone for pitiful amounts of damage only to realize that you just broke a sheep doing so, or realizing that you have Shadowfiend while you're drinking behind a pillar. Again, very very Pro.

The theory behind acquiring this gear as opposed to running instances to obtain rep to buy the entire rep satin set and getting the Unyielding set to max out resilience/stam, is that while the rep satin set does have survivability, it has next to no spellpower. While I could have possibly tanked that full S3 rogue for a few seconds longer with some more resilience, sub 500 spellpower is largely a joke. At least with a couple hundred spellpower more, my attacks would actually be reasonably threatening.

Did it work?

Well, our sample size of games (11) is relatively meager, but my damage definitely helped my teammate nuke down one target, even if I was slated to die shortly before/after. Since he outgears pretty much anyone we're fighting, a 1v1 situation usually turned out in our favor, especially if I was able to get a dot on the second target after blind was used. As such, I definitely think it was the right thing to do. BG's is a similar story. With the crazy damage being spread about now, any clothie's life expectancy is zilch and putting out some dots to help swing a battle is about the only good I can do. My next goal, as I slowly acquire Honor and Arena points (to help with leveling), is to give Disc healing a shot and to do a write up on deep Resto impressions in BG's in the arena. More to come!

3.Whoa! Burst and Druids

We've been spending the last couple of days catching up on the overflowing RSS feeder (caused in part by a very relaxing long weekend) trying to glean some insight as to the current viability in 3.0.

Or, as i like to call it: 3.Whoa!

Since talk about 'teh PvPz' here, and hopefully people reading this are keeping up with PvP news, I'm sure that everyone has heard that burst damage is out of control. And it is. It is honest to God, flat out, way the hell out of control.

With the advent of the OMGadins and the Cya-Muti-laters, self preservation tactics have never been more important. The reason for this is requirement is that any two melee, especially if it includes any of the two aforementioned, can nuke me in the span of a full Kidney Shot or a Hammer of Justice. In fact, a high end PvE geared Mutilate Rogue 100-0'd me while my trinket and Barkskin were down. Thankfully I caught the EOTS rez timer as it was ticking out and came back for round 2. Sadly, the second verse was same as the first. Amusingly, the only clean escape that I managed to eek out last night was in an AB, getting gang banged by a Warrior and a Ret Paladin, when my Warrior buddy managed to successfully peel both melee off of me and even so, I was at 30% with the MS debuff, Barkskin up and at least Lifebloom and an NS'd Regrowth ticking.

Wait, Natures Swiftness'd Regrowth? Why not Healing Touch?

Glyph of Healing Touch: Decreases the cast time of Healing Touch by 1.5 sec., the mana cost by 25%, and the amount healed by 50%.

With the appropriate Resto Talent (Naturalist) and the Glyph, Healing Touch can be brought down to a 1 second cast time for around a 2k heal with around 1k spellpower for around 460 or so mana. Ok, big deal, right? Well, actually it's a pretty big deal, especially for a level 70 Restokin; lack of Swiftmend. See, one of the biggest problems with RestoDruid PvP is that if you are ever put in to a bad position where hots won't be enough to save someone, especially with the much more expensive Lifebloom, the only other option is to expose your nature tree. This is usually to the tune of a) 1.5 seconds for a Cyclone, which means you have to get close, hope it isnt resisted and hope their trinket is down or b) 1.8 seconds for a Regrowth. Notably, both options open up the Nature school to lockout. Of course, not getting into this kind of situation would be best, but, in such cases, it's infinitely easier to pump out a quick 1 second Healing Touch while avoiding interrupts. Even with Pummel/Kick off GCD, its very difficult to stop such a fast cast when latency is taken into consideration. You may not even have to juke the cast! If you have Nature's Grace proc'd, that's a half second cast time.

I can't say whether or not it's going to be viable or even mana efficient in the long run for the arena, but, it's incredibly fun in BG's to have a cast time that short. The one thing it does do poorly is it removed the viability of NS Healing Touch. Gone are the days of a clutch crit NS Healing Touch for 9k. However, little forward thinking will be able to mitigate a significant portion of the incoming burst.

All said and done, last night's BG experience was quite fun as both Boomkin (58/0/3) and as Restokin (31/0/30). I have yet to try a full resto tree build synergizing Living Seed and Imp Regrowth, but I'll be honest, it doesn't really have the allure (or disruption/escape) exhibited by the old 8/11/42 build. Without the WotLK spirit itemization or Dreamstate, I just don't know how long a deep resto Druid with PvP gear will be able to go without going oom fighting the burst.