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.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Friday, December 12, 2008
10 Man Naxx down
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
All the pretty trinkets
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.
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.
Monday, December 8, 2008
How to be an A-Hole
Mind Control someone off of the turtle ferrys when you're in deep water.
Bonus points if you put a snare on them.
Bonus points if you put a snare on them.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Healing Heroics and Naxx
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
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
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