Writer’s Block December 11, 2009

So, as you all should know Patch 3.3 hit this week! I planned to do a post or two beforehand, or even afterwords/the day of but I’ve just been so distracted by all the new shiny toys this patch has had to offer. One of the biggest changes I’ve made so far is that, my priest is now Shadow and Holy dualspec’d! I’ve loved discipline since level 30, always will enjoy that spec and everything it has to offer. I used to be discipline pve spec’d with a pvp offspec. The reason for this change is that I’ve decided to get back into raiding for this content. I really want to see what Icecrown Citadel has to offer in terms of raiding and a guild I thought I’d really enjoy(and so far do) being a part of is full on discipline priests. I looked around and wasn’t too fond of any other guilds on my realm and so I’m now a proud member of the guild <Casual> of spirestone.  A few notes about my new specs; Shadow is a lot more fun than I thought it would be, this patch buffed them and I really enjoy the dps output I can do. Although I feel it’s a bit low, my gear isn’t exactly the best either, I did manage to do 5.1k in vault last night though! As for holy, oh boy. At first, I didn’t want to get rid of my pvp spec, and I even healed some random heroics in my pvp spec as most people have been overgeared for these places and it proved not to be an issue with some minor points not in the pve talents. Anyway, after I finished up my holy talent tree I queued for a random heroic and got into H-ToC, this instance was…pretty easy to heal so I thought I did okay for being new to the spec. After that I got into H-PoS(Pit of Saron) – now here was a true test of how well I understood holy and the different healing aspects. We wiped once on Forgemaster Garfrost, but that one wipe was all it took for me to get the mechanics of my healing down a lot more than they had been. All in all, I enjoy this change of pace and at the same time miss my penance button.

Now, my thoughts on the new looking for group system. I’m somewhat neutral on this. As I do have alts, the emblem / fast finding dungeons is blessing for that, getting all your alts geared will be easy now. But on the other hand, as a raider it’s a bit annoying that people can get so geared while you may have worked for equal level gear twice as hard. I’m sure my opinion on this won’t do anything about it since blizzard has done this before, but I’m voicing it nonetheless! When I first went shadow, I tried to do random heroics to get a better feel of how to dps and what not. The queues would take 5+ minutes just to get into a dungeon. If I queue as a healer+dps, I always get in nearly instantly as a healer. Now I’m curious, and of you tank or healers have a dps offspec and ever get into random heroics as that offspec? I know I won’t unless I uncheck the healing assignment…Overall this addition is really nice, can finally do low level instances again!

On a side note, I’m excited to try the kalu’ak fishing derby! First one is tomorrow >:3 –wishmeluck!-

Now for a little project I’ve had in mind. I want to do a weekly Hunter Pet Review sort of piece based on my own opinions and experience with each pet type. I will be choosing the pet to review at random until they are all finished, so no biased order will be done. Now, I will be using three sections, Leveling, 80PvE, and 80Pvp. Leveling will be done with a lower level hunter to get a view on how each pet helps the leveling process, I thought this would be better than having a geared 80 leveling level 75 pets. And the 80 portions will be on my already 80 orc hunter. It will be sad that I can’t keep every pet I get to test, but I will be giving them names of their own and a place in my hunter’s hearts forever. (: Stay tuned for this coming soon (probably ..next week sometime) Oh and in terms of the title of this post, I meant it as this patch was blocking me from writing =P.

Patch 3.3 (Priest Review) December 4, 2009

As you may know by now, Patch 3.3 has been on the PTR for quite some time now. I’ve dabbled on this phase of testing on various classes pvping, as well as trying the new instances and quest lines. With a rumor going around about this patch coming to live next week I’d like to go over a few things about the priest changes from my own experiences. My review won’t be too statistical or anything of that nature, just my own opinions that you may or may not agree with. (INC WALL OF TEXT)

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 3.3.0
Classes: General

• Spell Mana Costs: These costs have been reduced for almost all lower level spell ranks. In general, if a spell decreased in cost with a higher level rank in patch 3.2.0, that spell now has the decreased cost at all ranks. In addition, spells learned before level 20 with reduced cast times and/or durations have even further reduced mana costs, proportionate to their reduction in cast time or damage.

Priests

• Divine Hymn: The cooldown on this spell has been reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes.
• Power Word: Shield: This spell can now be cast on non-raid/party friendly targets.
• Talents:Shadow;;
• Improved Devouring Plague: This spell now deals 10/20/30% of its total periodic effect instantly, up from 5/10/15%.
• Mind Flay: The range of this ability has been increased to 30 yards, up from 20.
• Shadowform: This talent also now causes Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch to benefit from haste. Both the period length and the duration of these spells will be reduced by haste. In addition, the mana cost has been reduced from 32% to 13% of base mana.
• Vampiric Embrace: This talent now provides a 30-minute buff that cannot be dispelled, instead of a target debuff and only generates healing for single-target shadow damage spells.

• Pet
• Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

User Interface
Buffs and Debuffs: This is a new section added to Interface Options.

• New option – Castable Debuffs: Enabling this will cause only debuffs you have cast on an enemy target to appear.
• New option – Consolidate Buffs: Enabling this adds a buff consolidation box near the mini-map. Very short term buffs (e.g. Replenishment) and very long term buffs (e.g. Prayer of Fortitude) are filtered into the buff box. The icons are stacked here, but they can still be seen by moving the mouse cursor over the buff box. Long term buffs will move out of the box when they are about to expire. Buffs such as important procs (e.g. Art of War, Maelstrom Weapon), cooldowns (e.g. Bloodlust / Heroism, Combustion) or limited in range (e.g. totems and paladin auras) are always displayed.

Professions
Enchanting

• Enchant Weapon – Black Magic: This enchantment now sometimes increases haste rating for the caster rather than inflicting the caster’s target with a damage-over-time effect. It is also now triggered by landing any harmful spell rather than inflicting damage with a spell.

Items

Priests

• Glyph of Mind Flay: This glyph now increases the damage done by Mind Flay by 10% when the target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain: The periodic damage ticks of Shadow Word: Pain now restore 1% of the priest’s base mana with this glyph.
• Glyph of Shadow: While in Shadowform, this glyph causes non-periodic spell critical strikes to increase spell power by 30%, up from 10%, of the priest’s total spirit for 10 seconds.

Bug Fixes
Priests

• Glyph of Power Word: Shield: The heal caused by this glyph will now correctly use the casting priest’s critical strike chance instead of the target’s.
• Inspiration: The tooltip now correctly indicates that it also functions with Prayer of Mending.
• Levitate: This spell can now activate trinkets that can trigger from casting a helpful spell.
• Mass Dispel: Some trinkets which were not triggered properly by this spell will now work correctly when Mass Dispel is cast.
• Mind Flay: The rank 1 tooltip has been corrected to indicate the accurate damage and snare effect. In addition, this ability will now work correctly with [target=focus] and [target=mouseover] macros.
• Prayer of Mending: Inspiration and Divine Aegis can no longer be incorrectly triggered by this spell for priests who do not have those talents.
• Silence: Updated tooltip to include the functionality that this ability also interrupts spellcasting on NPCs.
• Spirit Tap: This talent can no longer be triggered by the death of the priest’s Jewelcrafter Stone Statues.

Classes:General (Update)

-Spell mana costs being reduced seems to be trying to bring back Downranking for healers. At least from what I’ve heard. I am somewhat neutral on this myself. I’ve never been a big fan of downranking, and in WOTLK it seems that sometimes as a healer I have too much mana to spare. Although on healing intensive fights i’m sure this change may prove it’s worth. So, disregard this crossed out text. The downranking is still terrible, -should make sure to test everything i post about…

Priests:
-The Divine Hymn cooldown change is nothing but nice, I don’t even have to say it =p.  Power Word: Shield being cast on non party/raid members will take some getting used too. I can’t think of many circumstances that this would be useful, only in world pvp/questing as you may see someone in danger, and as a disc priest your shields would really be helpful here.
-Seems that shadow got buffed this time around. With Improved Devouring Plague doing more damage, the range of Mind Flay being increased, Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch benefiting from haste, and Vampiric Embrace becoming a self buff rather than using up a rotation slot is all very nice for the dps priest. I’ve only been shadow for a short period of my 80 career but I must say, it is a nice change of pace from healing. Gogo Spriests, these buffs make me want to try out the spec again :p.
-Shadowfiend not dying as easily sounds nice, although I’ve never had too much trouble with this as I shield mine when I need his mana gaining. ^^

User Interface:
-Being able to see only your debuffs on the target will be nice for shadow priests as well as other classes that need to manage things such as warlocks dots and death knights diseases. Consolidate Buffs, hmm, this addition seems to be more of a matter of preference than a necessity. I personally don’t like this option and won’t be using. I’d prefer to know what buffs I have rather than just the number. In raids, I don’t have time to mouse over this box and see what I may be missing.

Professions:
-Black Magic’s buff is way too obvious of a good thing. I’m sure this will be the mandatory enchant for shadow priests as well as a viable pvp enchant. I’ve used this on the ptr and well I really like it ^_^, the animation is also really neat, looks like the Unholy Weapon enchant from pre-tbc. Although, it’s always had this animation. -_-”

Items:
More buffs to shadow priests via glyphs! All three sound nice, no need to repeat them. :3

In general and at a glance, this patch looks like a good one for priests. At least, in my eyes it does. I didn’t think shadow priests were in need of such buffs but then again, I myself don’t play as shadow too often so correct me if I’m wrong =p. Oh and another note, the raptor hatchling pets will no longer drop from their rare spawn correspondents but from nests, I hope these are either as rare or fairly close to the spawned mobs as I camped those for hours. D:

Enjoy the changes!

Overpopulation. /QQ December 1, 2009

Yesterday I got a new desktop for an early ‘Christmas’ gift. Now it’s nothing special just a standard pc, but runs wow a lot better than my laptop has. I couldn’t even enjoy wow because of how low my laptop would keep the fps at. Anyway, this blog isn’t about computer issues! With my newly found system I have begun to think about trying to join a raiding guild again. I’ve raided since the start of ‘Wotlk’ and quit during Ulduar times as I hated putting up with 5~fps within a raid as demanding as Ulduar could be for a healer. Anyway, after pondering around the Spirestone Forum (the realm I play on…) I’ve found a few guilds that sparked my interest. I won’t name any names here as I don’t want to start any drama, (as if anyone reads this =P) but better safe than sorry.

At first i thought, “Well there’s quite a few options here, let’s narrow it down a bit.” I started to dig around websites and whisper some leaders for more information about their guilds, raid times, rules etc. Every post seemed to be recruiting healers. “That works, I hate dpsing on my priest, and don’t have a spec for it!” Little did I know, priests aren’t what anyone is recruiting these days. After reading the forums threads, and pages on the guilds websites. Most (and the guild I really wanted to join…) would end up saying… FULL ON DISC PRIESTS. Now this is rather discouraging, as I don’t really enjoy healing as holy spec and prefer to use other classes for dps. Hopefully I can find a new home for my priest. D: