Things I Learned: Elemental Invasion

1) Howling Blast will attract Many Elementals.  Many Elementals will kick my ass.
2) The Archbishop is a useless git who doesn’t heal or ANYTHING.
3) Solt stood in fire as DPS.  lol.  It does indeed hurt and will indeed kill you.
5) Solt stood in fire as tank.  lol some more.  …oh shit I’m tanking what is this halp.  :(
6) …Howling Blast still attacts Many Elementals and Many Elementals still kick my ass.
7) Popping Pillar of Ice means that either the boss will drop Bad on me, or the boss will move.  Sigh. 
8) HOOOOWWWWWLLLING BLAAAS-FUCK!
9) The run from the graveyard into SW is actually kind of annoying.

More on the Leveling Tank

I’m going to quote liberally from Tam’s post here.  I think Tam said it all better than I can to begin with, but I’m going to chime in anyway.  Because I have nothing else good to post.  :P

I’m not putting on my Dumbing It Down For the Casuals hat, or getting elitist about the virtues of things being hard, but overgearing everything – as one currently does what with heirlooms and the ability shift associated with tacking 20 more levels onto the end of a game – does make you incredibly complacent. …The sad thing is, I suspect I could get quite a long way without really knowing all that much about tanking.

The other day I remember thinking a tank was rather squishy, inspected him at the end of the run and realised he was nowhere near def-cap and wearing just about the worst itemized set of ungemmed blues and purples I had ever seen. I know skill is not about gear but wearing the right gear, even if it’s not the best gear, is some kind of indicator.

…Heirlooms compensate a bit at this level but I have no idea from what dank hole of ineptitude the average pre-80 Northrend tank has crawled. And it’s all such banal failure as well – stupid things like massively over-pulling, not controlling the mobs at all, getting knocked back into other mobs, pulling when I’m on a mana break. I resent these wipes because they’re completely unnecessary.

The difference is, I suppose, that nobody is geared enough to compensate, so we’re expected to play like we know what the hell we’re doing. And I can’t work out if it’s laziness, a genuine failure to adapt from running heroics at 80 in ICC gear, or the fact that nobody has really had to learn how to do their bloody job because they could previously rely on rolling over stuff with heirlooms and AoE!lol.

That’s it, in a nutshell.  That is why I am not healing pugs on my druid right now.  I step into a pug and am effectively slapped in the face with failure more often than not, from tanks who have LOLed through Outlands.  That in an of itself is not a terrible thing–every one of us gets a rude awakening now and again and have to tighten up your skills (see: me, tanking heroics on my warrior).  I love helping people.  If you’re clueless but nice, I’ll do everything I can to make your life easier.  But so many of these fresh into Northrend tanks are outwardly hostile for reasons that escape me. 

 This game is an MMO.  That means there’s OTHER PEOPLE playing with you.  That means that maybe, maybe, you should extend some small amount of effort in playing with the OTHER PEOPLE so that you don’t make the entire experience SUCK.  Why the fuck should you need a GUIDE to tell you that you should not pull while your healer is drinking?  Or that if you die when you pull two groups, you should only pull one?  Common sense, anybody?  Consideration?  Situational awareness?  Bueller?

How about not doing a job you don’t have adequete gear for?  I leveled as a tank, on multiple toons.  One of them even treated it as her secondary spec  (see: druid).  There is tanking gear out there.  There are greens of the Champion.  There is, in other words, no real excuse for being a paladin and tanking with SP leather.  AND pulling while I’m drinking.  AND standing in the bosses Casting of Supreme Ouch.  I’ve tanked UK when undergeared, it was no fucking joke when Wrath came out and is probably no fucking joke even now. 

Go suck it up in the DPS queue until you have the gear, okay?  Skill comes with practice, but it’s much easier to learn when you’re not at high risk of dying.  Tanking is gear dependent.  Please stop trying to escape this fact at the cost of others.  Or in the very least…say something in the start and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be surprised.

Friday Flowchart

Amber’s Thoughtful Overview Of Proposed Priest Changes

I know I said I didn’t care about Cata changes that much but this is a convenient post.  I still plan on doing Twilight Sparkly Party–it got derailed by a work project yesterday, and I just don’t have the heart for it today.

New Priest Spells 

Heal (available at level 16): While priests already have a spell called Heal, the existing version becomes obsolete at higher levels, which is something we intend to change in Cataclysm. Introduced at a low level, the “new” Heal spell will functionally work much like a down-ranked Greater Heal did in the past, adding more granularity (WoW: expanding your vocabulary) to your direct-healing arsenal. If you need to heal someone a moderate amount and efficiency is an issue (making Flash Heal the incorrect spell for the job), then Heal is what you want to use. Heal is intended to be the priest’s go-to direct-healing spell unless they need something bigger (Greater Heal) or faster (Flash Heal). We will be following a similar philosophy with all the healing classes. 

OH MY GOD I WILL HAVE THREE DIRECT HEALS?  I GET TO IGNORE TWO OF THEM TO ALMOST EXCLUSELY SPAM ONE NOW INSTEAD OF JUST IGNORING ONE?!

Mind Spike (level 81): Deals Shadowfrost damage and puts a debuff on the target that improves subsequent Mind Spike damage. The intent of Mind Spike is to fill a niche missing in Shadow DPS, though it may be occasionally useful for healers as well. Mind Spike provides a quick nuke to use in situations where the priest doesn’t have time to set up the normal rotation, such as when adds are dying too fast or you have to swap targets a lot. Spamming Mind Spike will do about as much damage as casting Mind Flay on a target afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain. The idea behind the debuff is that when you cast Mind Spike, we expect you to cast a lot of them; we don’t intend you to fit it into an already full Shadow rotation. It also provides Shadow with a spell to cast when locked out of the Shadow school. (School lockouts will no longer affect both schools for multi-school spells.) 1.5-second cast. 30-yard range. No cooldown. 

This one actually sounds pretty cool.  I used to just flail and Mind Flay stuff in that sort of situation.

Inner Will (level 83): Increases movement speed by 12% and reduces the mana cost of instant-cast spells by 10%. This buff will be exclusive with Inner Fire, meaning you can’t have both up at once. Inner Fire provides a spell power and Armor buff; Inner Will should be useful on a more situational basis. 

Flail and cast bubble/renew time?

Leap of Faith (level 85): Pull a party or raid member to your location. Leap of Faith (or “Life Grip”) is intended to give priests a tool to help rescue fellow players who have pulled aggro (IF HE HAS AGGRO I DON’T WANT HIM NEAR ME!), are being focused on in PvP, or just can’t seem to get out of the fire in time. Instant. 30-yard range. 45-second cooldown. 

Ways to abuse “Life Grip”:
Yank the DPS INTO the fire.
Yank the overpulling tank back to you.  Bonus points if he is tanking something that cleaves and this drags said mob through other people resulting in much death.
Yank some easily movement impaired class  to you for no reason other than to fuck up their DPS.
Yank the melee to you after they blow their cooldowns.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics 

In addition to introducing new spells, we’re planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you’re familiar with. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we intend for each spec.

• All HoTs and DoTs will benefit from Haste and Crit innately. Hasted HoTs and DoTs will not have a shorter duration, just a shorter period in between ticks (meaning they will gain extra ticks to fill in the duration as appropriate). 
  I will have some…really awesome…renew…crits?
  
• We want to bring back Shadow Word: Death as an “execute” — something you do when the target is at 25% health. 
  But is it still something I kill myself with when I’m not paying attention?
  
• While we want to keep the priest’s role as a well-rounded healer, we also want to make sure the class is a viable tank healer, which is something priests moved away from a little in Wrath of the Lich King. Greater Heal will probably be the tank-healing spell of choice, though we’ve also discussed giving Discipline a second shield so that they have a small shield to cast on lots of different targets, and a big, more expensive shield to cast on a tank or anyone else taking a ton of damage. 
  I must have missed the memo where I was supposed to drift away from being a viable tank healer.  …wait, what?  Greater Heal?  YOU WANT ME TO USE GREATER HEAL?  WHAT IS THIS I DON’T EVEN.  My brain, it is–ooh, moar bubbles?
  
• Divine Spirit and Prayer of Spirit will be removed from the game. As Spirit will be the primary mana-regeneration stat, we don’t want it to vary as much between solo, small group, and raid play. Blessing of Kings and Mark of the Wild will not boost Spirit either.
  I’m curious to see if they replace it with anything.  It would feel weird to just be missing a buff.
  
• Mana will be a bigger consideration for all healers. We aren’t trying to make healing more painful; we’re trying to make it more fun. When the cost of a spell isn’t an issue, then casting the right spell for the job is less of an issue because you might as well just use your most powerful spell all of the time. We are, however, getting rid of the five-second rule, because we don’t want to encourage standing around doing nothing. We’re also going to cut back on the benefits of buffs such as Replenishment so priests (and all healers) don’t feel as penalized when those buffs aren’t available.
  Ironically I hate huntering without replen even more than I hate healing without replen.  Not feeling as crippled without it will be nice, but I’m mildly concerned about how they’ll balance this. 
  Wait, I’m making acutal thoughtful commentary.  FUCK.  NOT ALLOWED.

New Talents and Talent Changes

• We want to improve Discipline’s single-target healing capacity. One key is to make sure shielding isn’t always a more attractive option than healing. 
  Well, you know, there’s that whole “weakened soul” thing?  Strangely enough I do HEAL between bubbles already.  So that I can get soap bubbles up.  I am…confused by this statement, though if you want to give me more thoroughput go right on ahead.
  
• We want to improve Holy for PvP healing. One way to do this is to make sure that Heal’s throughput is similar between both specs. 
  I saw “PvP” and “holy” didn’t even read this part.
  
• We want to improve Shadow for short fights and reduce its susceptibility to school lockouts. 
  Yes please, reduce our short fight fail.  *remembers above*  By giving us one button to mindlessly spam.
  
• Discipline will finally be getting Power Word: Barrier as a talented ability. Think of it like a group Power Word: Shield. 
  LIES.  THE BARRIER IS A LIE.  I WIL BELIEVE IT WHEN I SEE IT YOU COCK TEASING WHORES.
  
• We want to make Holy a little bit more interesting to play. One new talent will push the Holy priest into an improved healing state when he or she casts Prayer of Healing, Heal, or Renew three times in a row. The empowered state varies depending on the heals cast. 
  blah blah Holy blah
  
• Since the Shadow tree has a lot of passive damage-boosting abilities — something we’re trying to avoid in Cataclysm — we will need to replace several of the tree’s talents. One idea is to play off of the new Shadow Orbs mechanic (see Mastery section below), possibly allowing you to consume an orb to increase damage from Mind Blast or reduce Mind Spike’s cast time. 
  Insert all sorts of balls jokes here. 
  
• Misery will no longer affect spell Hit chance. We want players to be able to gear themselves around a Hit cap that isn’t variable depending on group composition.
  Because gear juggling is SOOOOO much better.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses 

Discipline 
Healing 
Meditation 
Absorption 

Holy 
Healing 
Meditation 
Radiance Wait why do they get to be shinier?

Shadow 
Spell damage 
Spell Crit 
Shadow Orbs Testicles!

Absorption: Improves the strength of shields such as Power Word: Shield, Divine Aegis, and Power Word: Barrier.  cake

Radiance: Your direct heals add a small heal-over-time component to the target. 

Shadow Orbs: Casting spells grants a chance for Shadow Orbs to be created that fly around you and increase your shadow damage. This will help lower-level characters feel more like “Shadow priests” before they obtain Shadowform. So they’ll feel more like shamans?

 

 

A few quick clarifications: 

Neither Inner Fire nor Inner Will has charges. The decision is on which armor you want up at the time. 

Preventing dot clipping is something we want to do in general. It obviously benefits Shadow priests just as much as warlocks. 

The idea behind Mind Spike is that you can’t always settle into your normal, and high-ramp up rotation. It’s also useful when you have to move or get school locked. 

The closest analogue to PW:B is the DK Anti-Magic Zone, but it has some important differences, such as a way to counter it in PvP (since it absorbs all damage, not just magical damage). 

The idea behind the Holy “cast three in a row” talent (it’s called “Chakra”) is that we’ve always positioned Holy as a versatile healer. This talent lets you shift into different modes. If you need to be a tank healer, cast three single target heals and your single-target healing is now better. Cast three area heals, and you can be a temporarily specialized group healer. We’re going to try to play this mechanic up with a cool UI to try to get that “I’m almost in the zone” feel. We’ll let it apply to as many types of spells as we can, perhaps even Smite for those times when nobody’s taking damage. 

We pulled Misery because we are pulling every group benefit that improves hit. It’s annoying to have to swap your gear in and out depending on who shows up for your group. In general we’re going to push even harder in Cataclysm for bringing people you like to play with, not bringing people who have awesome buffs. The answer to almost every question of “But why would they bring me?” should be “Because you know what the hell you’re doing.”
Well fuck, don’t invite me to a raid ever again then.  >.>

Flowchart Friday: Basic Raiding Strats

Brought to you by doing some Ulduar hardmodes, noting that the dps have approximately a billionty things that they have to do in every fight, while I go “HAHA, WHATEVER” and stand in the corner healing.

No, I have no idea how to play my class, please tell me more.

Josh wants to work on his DK’s gear, so I volunteered to tank for him-as a DPS, nothing beats having a tank buddy for insta-queues.  My paladin could still use some badge gear, as I do use her for Ulduar hard mode tanking.  

As always, I am…quite vocal while tanking.  Josh is treated to a slew of commentary, usually along the lines of “You know, I can hold the aggro on that caster over there just fine IF YOU DON’T FUCKING TOUCH IT YOU FUCKING MORON!” and “I guess the concept of waiting until I position the mobs is entirely foreign to you.”

In one particular Halls of Lightning run, I was pulling conservatively.  Not only do I tend to this out of habit, but the group had already proven that they couldn’t keep their trigger happy mitts off single mobs I was dragging.  

This does, however, often leave me faced with mana problems-I’m usually running around sans a piece of armor and using Seal of Wisdom.   This was the case in HoL, but things had gone mostly smoothly.  I say mostly because we did have some cases of Oh Look The Melee Died, but that was mostly the rogue not realizing that running out of The Bad was generally better for his health.

I would also like to note that the only time I had issues with aggro was when Josh ended up in Frost Presence.  Yet for some reason, as we’re clearing the trash to Loken, I get a whisper from the warlock.

“Did you know that Seal of Vengeance does more threat?”

I halted.  All sorts of surprise and sarcasm welled forth (“No shit?”), but I managed a polite, “I know, but I’m overgeared to the point where I have mana problems in old heroics, so  use Wisdom.”  And unable to help myself, I pointed out Vengeance is not the seal to use on trash, regardless.  Mobs don’t live long enough for the stacks to be really useful.

…so they oh so helpfully told me I should chain pull.

“Ah,” I said, “but I’ve learned I can’t always trust the DPS to behave in random heroics, making chain pulling difficult.”  I continue to boggle at how much some people struggle with the concept of letting the tank position mobs.

I got a non-committal response with a : \ face.

…then I whined to Josh that I was being told how to tank, and he initiated a vote-kick for the person.  /facepalm

I’m just wondering why the hell someone would feel compelled to try to tell me how to play when I’m not having any fucking problems.  The rogue died when all the slag mobs exploded?  Not due to threat on my part.  The DK and the rogue died on the lightning crackly boss because they can’t get out of the fucking way?  Not my problem.  I even generally held all the trash, so I’m not sure why this stranger on the internet felt compelled to tell me I was using the “wrong” seal when anyone who actually plays a fucking pally tank would know exactly why I was using Wisdom.

How about you don’t make an already timid tank second guess herself further by keeping your fucking mouth shut?

Thank you.

Oh by the way, did you know that you shouldn’t use fear in an instance?  It’s really annoying.

Just a little rant about holy paladining.

I think that when the WoW game designers are creating challenges for healing in new 5 man content, the thought process almost always goes towards “Yeah, let’s put in some AoE damage, that’ll do it!” Yeah, well as a holy paladin all I can say is SCREW YOU, Blizzard. I am disappointed in you, go sit in your corner. >(

This has been our weak point since the expansion started (and before then too, of course), though they have improved it a little bit over time, with letting overheals transfer through Beacon (yay, hax). But the fact that my freshly 80 resto druid with only a couple of T9 ilvl 232 pieces and a whole bunch of blues can keep a group up through heroic Pit of Saron just as easily (and maybe a little better) than my ICC geared holy paladin is just a big old slap in the face.

I joke about making Sophie’s choice when it comes to which of the dps will stay alive, but in all honesty it’s not fun. I don’t like having to make that call when I don’t feel that I should have to, because other healers don’t. I don’t like that I have to be able to throw heals at lightening speed to keep everyone alive, or the fact that you have to be geared to the teeth to even make that possible. I can’t even imagine how frustrating it is to be a newly 80 paladin trying to keep up! Actually, I kind of can because there was a point when heroics were HARD and I used to lose people to silly standing in things gimmicks much more frequently than I do now. One of my first healing experiences was wiping repeatedly in Gundrak because people stood in the poison. “But my holy priest can keep everyone up through that!” Well I am not a priest, so just do what you’re supposed to, ffs.

I realize that the game designers want to keep us in our nice little tank healing OMG BIG BALLS OF HOLY LIGHT niche, but it makes me angry that they don’t take that into consideration when designing encounters that aren’t raids, in content that is meant to be accessible by everyone. All three of the newest heroics are basically difficult because there are pulls where everyone is taking damage. Not such a big issue when you have chain heal, HoTs, CoH, or even shields, but when all you have is some Bacon, an instant cast on a cooldown, and a little heal with a cast time, it can be a big fat pain.

Just having people die is annoying. It’s even worse when people don’t understand that, so you get a lot of cries of “wtf, why didn’t you heal me through that?” and “you suck at healing!”. Yeah, well you suck at killing the boss fast enough to not get hit by the AoE, or at just plain getting out of the AoE. SO THERE.

Success in the Face of Failure

Brotherhood of Oblivion: failing where we should succeed, and suceeding where we should fail!

On Thursday night we had two potential recruits listening on vent.  This meant one thing for sure: the night was going to go to hell.

I hummed to myself and made some flower wreaths for the handbasket.

First of all, Tim, one of our intrepid DPSers, had himself a non-working OS because he’s just clever like that.  Cranky Tank mosied over across the street to fix it before raid time…and bricked the mother board.

Slick, my love.

So we’re down a tank, a DPS, and…our other tank, as Steve’s computer is drafted while they try to fix Tim’s.  This leaves us our tank with strength gems in his gear and Andy, who’s been retired from tanking for awhile.

Right, so, no continuing ICC25 for us!  14 manning Naxx25 for the weekly raid quest seems like a splendi…

…Hunt just pulled an extra spider pack and we wiped.  Okay.  Well, let’s recover from that and go on to Anub, shall we?

Anub is easy sauce, it should just be a matter of-

…did we all just die?  We all just fucking died!

Fail.

Well, Steve’s here now, let’s 15 man it, then.  We magically succeed this time, and reform into an ICC 10.  Steve wants to bring his warlock and the warlock wants to bring his shaman.  For some reason I say what the hell, and off we go.

To wipe on Marrowgar.

Well, fuck.  Okay.  So we regroup and stomp him into the ground, and then proceed to…wipe on Lady Deathwhisper after one of the tanks unexpectedly goes down to a Hulk.

(Me, mid raid: are those big green things wearing purple shorts?  Raid: Yes.  Me: …)

So we regroup again, down the Lich Bitch, and head to Gunship!  One of the tanks dies on the way because I paused to eat chocolate.  Mm, chocolate.  Okay, so, we get to gunship and…

…the warlock smears himself on the deck, because that’s what warlocks do.  The DPS left loses control of the adds on that ship, the tank goes down, and we…wipe on Gunship.

We wipe on the mother fucking boat!

This does lead to the amusing discovery that you don’t die if you’re in a cannon.  This comes in handy for when we make our-by this point required-wipe on Saurfang (at something like 4% even).  Yes, I ran the fuck away from the boss to hide in a cannon.  This was after yelling at the rogue and hunter for hiding in the cannons when they can get out of death some other way.  Bitches!  MY WAY TO CHEAT DEATH GTFO.

So after dying our way through farm content, will all sorts of insanity on vent, you’d think the recruits would be smart and run away, right?

…no, they went ahead and transferred.

I invited them in the middle of our third wipe in an all guild Heroic CoS.

Yes, we even failed at H CoS (did you know that if you do the gaunlet without talking to Arthas, talking to him makes more elites spawn?  Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaah don’t send your healer). 

I love my guild.  I don’t always know why, but I love them.

The Telephone Game

Does anyone remember the telephone game, or operator, or whatever the hell it was called?  One person whispered something in the ear of the person next to them, and so on, until by the time it got to the end it sounded nothing like the original?

That very much happens.   Person A says something to person B, who says something to person C (for Cranky Tank), who says something to person D (for…nothing, but it’s me) because well, he lives with person D and tells them everything sooner or later.  Person D flails and person A goes wait, what? 

…I was going somewhere with that, but I was interrupted by work and now have no idea.  Hmm.  Well, raiding with family is interesting, to be sure.  If you tell Josh something, it’ll get back to me sooner or later becuase…well, he’s my boyfriend, we just babble everything at each other.  We’ll keep things to ourselves if you tell us to, but if you don’t?  Pffft!  Now I’ve added my little sister to the mix, which is fun in and of itself.  She’s sweet, but definitely a loud, sometimes obnoxious teenager.  Oh, and a bit of a NubKnight still, to be sure.  She signs up for raids and shows up on time though-this puts her steps ahead of some people already!

The problem is that because she can be loud and obnoxious, she can be…well, annoying, and people won’t complain to me about it.  No, they complain to someone else.  By the time it filters back to me, though (which…it will!) it’s gone from “Damn, she talks too much sometimes” to “So-and-so hates your sister.” 

/facepalm

And people wonder why I’d rather just have them tell me this shit directly…

How Blizzard Ruined Shadow Priests

I have an evil evil plot in the works that I did not get to finish last night…TOMORROW, you shall behold my evil.  Until then, I’m just going to talk about how I am a silly magpie, and how Blizzard nearly ruined shadow priesting for me.

You see, I’m not really….girly.  But I do like things that are bright and shiny, so spells like penance and holy nova are Awesome Fun Toys.  In hindsight, paladins have some of the most disappointing spells EVER.  I mean, okay, Sacred Shield can be kind of shiny, but shouldn’t beacon be a BEACON?  You know?  A BEACON OF LIGHT?  A BRIGHT SHINING PILLAR OF LIGHT?

I’ll never forgive Blizzard for failing me in that regard, just as I’ll never forgive them for what they did to my favorite Shadow Priest toy right next to Mind Sear. 

THEY RUINED DISPERSION.  It used to be that you’d turn into a FUN LITTLE BALL OF DARKNESS!!!!!!  Now you’re just…er…more…dark?  What? 

NO, BLIZZARD.

UTTER FAIL.

I can’t be a bouncing ball of inky evilness now!  This has totally ruined the spell and thus ALMOST RUINED SHADOW PRIESTING for me.

Don’t you DARE mess with my mind sear, or I’m going to have to do something drastic like…GO HOLY for my second spec, and we don’t want THAT to happen ever again.

I AM PUTTING YOU ON NOTICE BLIZZARD.