Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

I haven’t had any time to really get on this week.  It has been crazy at work and by the time I get home I don’t even want to look at a computer.  I have been keeping up reading the Cataclysm forums on my blackberry when I have a moment.  I have all but stopped reading the other forums, they just bug me.  Too much whining and crying about silly things.  Not that the Cataclysm forum doesn’t have its share of trolls, but there is a lot of interesting discussion going on all the time.  I like this phase of the expansion with all the speculation and wish lists, and the like

I’m pretty excited about Cataclysm for quite a few reasons.  A very significant amount of the game is going to be changing and that is exciting.  We got revamps of existing systems, additions of new systems, new graphics, and new races!  I’ve mentioned it before I think but I do plan to make a Worgen.  I am going to go with a Warrior which will mean I’ll have the 3 basic archetypes covered now with a Priest, a Mage and a Warrior   I am purchasing all the heirlooms I can for him so he’ll have a bit of an advantage in the field anyways I dunno I might even have enough time to make him a set of 22 slot bags if I remember to go make cloth every time

Since I had been thinking about alts I decided it was time for that page to make a come back.  So I’ve added the Alts Page back into the system with a list of my current alts.  In other site news stay tuned for an update to My UI section still.  Also I have a write-up in the works for my thoughts on Disc Priests in Cataclysm.

After the day I had there was just no energy left over for WoW.  I got on but just couldn’t make up my mind what I wanted to do with my low energy levels.  Then I see Inien (grats btw) get his sewer rat!  He was just doing the fishing daily and got it by pure luck.  I had been hoping that would happen to me too but for some reason I have a feeling the game is going to make me work for it   I’m closing in on the 100 pet mark and that Rat would help out on that

So out of pure jealousy I fished for a little over a half an our in the sewer before bed.  I didn’t have the energy for anything else anyways.  Fishing is pretty relaxing for the most part (not RL fishing though).  Of course all that fishing did not yield me a rat, just a lot of bones, carp and vials.    Hopefully this isn’t like Mr Pinchy whom I never actually caught during BC and only got afterward even though the amount I used to fish during BC was at least 5 to 10 times more

What I should have done is updated my addons.  I noticed I’m getting pretty far behind in versions.  I still do mine by hands now, I haven’t wanted to trust any of the new applications.  I really miss wowace, I hate that they got merged into curse   I plan to update my UI section as I do this update because I know it is out of date.  I’ll try and do that tonight

It is funny what you can find on your hard drive when cleaning up.  In my documents folder I happened across the PDF of my original WoW CE, the Expansions, and the creation of my original account.  Yes I am a pack rat, but you already know that you’ve seen my bank!

Then I moved onto my Pictures folder and found I had a bunch of old WoW screenshots.  The date on the files say June 5th 1999, but I don’t think WoW would have been this far along with EQ was first starting so I’m going to assume they are from later than that.  Certainly probably early beta or alpha.  I uploaded them all my my flickr account and created a set for them.  I really should upload all the screenshots I have in my WoW folder, they do go back to 2004.  It is funny because my original screenshots in PDF because that is what the Mac client initially defaulted too

Then of course I found my old stuff on Rotgrip  This was a running joke in my old guild FEST for a while.  In fact that was my nick name Rotgrip.  This was because I was wearing Rotgrip for a  long time while raiding.  I never got an upgrade for many many moons.  I strangely can’t remember what I replaced it with.  I believe it was some shoulders from AQ40 Yes I have the T2 helmet, Benediction and Rotgrip!

Anyways that was my trip down memory lane.  Look for me to upload the rest of my screenshots in my archive soon.  I think that would be a neat thing to have around.

Finally got around to signing up for the Premium account over at wowhead.com this morning.  I did so not because I care about the extra’s but just to support the site.  Being in IT I know what it takes to do things right, and wowhead does so many things right.  The dedication of that team deserves some acknowledgment I think.  If you use wowhead I encourage you, please upgrade to their premium site and support them!

My endorsement of wowhead is completely of my own opinion.  I would never ask a reader to do something I didn’t do myself so check out my wowhead profile and you can see I indeed am supporting wowhead!

Just saw the 3.2 Patch notes from the PTR on MMO Champion.  Man they hit Priests a few times with the nerf bat, especially Disc Priests!  I’m not sure if the Inspiration is a buff or not.  I’m going to guess it would be for anyone but the tank maybe not.

• Prayer of Healing: The percentage of spell power this spell gains in healing (per target) has been reduced from 80.7% to 52.6%.

I guess Prayer of Healing was too powerful. This will reduce the over all healing of the glyph as well.  People have been saying PoH was too powerful, I guess they got there wish

• Penance: Cooldown increased to 12 seconds, up from 10 seconds.

This really really stinks.  I don’t get it, they decided not to nerf the glyph that let us have the lower cool down, now they increase the base cool down so now you HAVE to have the glyph just to get it back to where it was before the glyph existed.  I hope this change does not go through.

• Inspiration: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target’s armor.

I’ve never looked at hard numbers on the current Inspiration version.  Right now it increases your targets armor from items by 25%, so I’m not sure what hat equates out to actual mitigation.  However on anyone but the tank this would be a buff because very few other classes have armor.  So you crit heal a mage being beat on and they take 10% less physical damage.

The changes to PoH and Penance are disapointing enough to override any positive from Inspiration for me.  Especially Penance which is my favorite spell.  I hope there are some more undocumented positives or 3.2 is going to be a sad Patch for the Priest class.  I would say the first change is probably a PvE change while the other two are PvP related.

• Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target’s maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).

I noticed this tidbit too which was basically a small nerf to Replenishment, but would effect me I’m sure.  You basically get .25% less now.

I was entertaining my son yesterday and I turned on the iPod tuned to my play list and song “The Great Kodo” starts playing. I’ve talked about this song before on my blog way back when I first found it. This was made back when Tauren were not aloud to ride anything but Kodo. Even though they look rediculous on anything else, Blizzard eventually caved in to the whiners and yet another bit of uniqueness in WoW was snuffed out. If you’re anything like me this song will make you want to get a Kodo, and it sticks quite well in your mind Alliance finally can get one from the October fest event but it is a random drop. I managed to not get one last year

The video is put together by Brandon M. Dennis of Oxhorn Brand Movies. He also is part of a site called WeGame.com which is dedicated to machinima movies.

Anyways I wanted to share the video again linked from Youtube:

Also if you want to download the song I managed to find the MP3 some where on the authors site a long time ago. Here is a link to the file The Great Kodo.

Well it has been many years since the first time I stepped into Naxxramas.  It was a different game back then and a different raid.  On Friday and Saturday I did a full run of Naxx with a PUG group.  Nothing special, but good competent people, who didn’t even use vent (yay).

It was a partial guild run, I think 6 of them were from the same guild, we were mostly plate with 5 Paladins, 2 Deathknights, 2 Warlocks and Me.  We had 3 healers which was the disappointing part of it.  I still enjoyed the run though I don’t really need anything from Naxx 10 aside from some pants upgrade would be fine.

We finished off a lot of bosses many PUGS I had tried before could not.  So as you’ll notice I finally got some achievements.  After many years of wonder I finally got to see the end of Naxx as well.  Though the end is slightly different, than then of course.  The fight with Sapphiron went well, we killed him first try.  It was pretty neat, and with my frost resist gear and the pally aura, I didn’t have to worry much about anything but everyone else.

Of course the final boss eluded me though we just couldn’t kill him.  We gave him one more try last night, after 3 wipes many of us had to go to bed.  Basically we didn’t have enough DPS.  In both the case of last night and the previous 2 nights we only had 2 people who could touch 2k DPS so it was not stellar.  Basically once the adds come out we couldn’t down him fast enough before the adds got too buff and started killing everyone.

To me this is another case where too many healers hurt the raid, even if we had somewhat low DPS if we had one less healer we may have been fine. Dual spec would have come in handy here because I would have just pushed shadow and helped out.  So sadly I did not get to kill him.  I hope before Uldar comes out I can get in the tail end of a Naxx raid and take him down I just don’t have the time or the energy to even be doing what I did this weekend

Speaking of 3.1 looks like we were winding down on the changes.  The last few patches have been small incremental changes.  The Priests are whining because they increased the cooldown of Divine Hymn to 10 minutes from 6 and doubled the mana costs.  Many people don’t recognize how truely awesome it is now.   I don’t really care much about the increase in cooldown, it is sort of an emergency spell anyways, and well I would almost certainly be coupling the spell with Inner Focus so who cares about the mana cost

Ok unless they nerf it our level 80 spell finally got useful!  Given all the other classes got really awesome spells, and ours well was so lame I was really hoping for something like this.  First of all it is now a Heal, not a horrible poor mans CC/heal.

Divine Hymn – 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 1 to 6 every 2 sec for 8 sec, and increases healing done to them by 15% for 8 sec. Maximum of 12 heals. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell. 35% of base mana, 40 yd range, Channeled, 6 min cooldown

I didn’t have access to a bunch of people to fully test it, I’m sure someone will though soon.  I did play with it and found out yes it can crit, and yes it has an awesome spell coefficient.  In my tests it was ticking for 8500 on the first tick then each additional one was about 9600 (because it increases healing by 15%), with crits of 14k.   Even more awesome is if you happen to have Grace on  a target (if your Disc) you’ll have even more healing   The other thing to note is at least according to the spell tool type the range is 40 yards.  Given the way the spell is cast I’m assuming it is a 40 yard circle around you.

What I haven’t been able to test is if the smart heal evaluates each tick or not.  I’m assuming it does, as this would make the most sense.  It would also make this spell very awesome, usable, and would be the reason for the 6 minute cooldown.  This would mean Blizzard succeeded in creating a new unique heal for this expansion and I thank them!!!

Hymn of Hope – You recite a Holy hymn, restoring hope to those in despair. Restores 3% mana to 3 nearby low mana friendly party or raid targets every 2 sec for 8 sec, and increases their total maximum mana by 20% for 8 sec. Maximum of 12 mana restores. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell. 40 yd range, Channeled, 6 min cooldown

Hymn of Hope on the other hand is a bit weird, it is applying nearly the same idea as Divine Hymn, works raid wide, only effects 3 targets, also assuming it switches each tick if necessary.  The weird part is the mana increase, it increases your maximum mana by 20%, and you actually get that mana, it is not just empty space. So in my case I got like 4K mana, but in the end it takes it away, so I guess if you had no mana to begin with, things are horrible you cast this people are going to have mana for immediate use.  Only after the 8 seconds that extra mana is removed.  Again it seems like an emergency mana spell for everyone else, you’ll be too busy channeling it to use it

I dunno how useful Hymn of Hope will be, but I look forward to having Divine Hymn.  I occasionally actually use Hymn of Hope now, so maybe I’ll continue to at least use it as much as I do now.  I like the Hymn idea though, kind of a unique Priest ability idea and I hope they continue with it.

I got on today and continued to clean up my inventory and eventually went over to the ZG troll island to turn in some of those coins. Inien went out there to try and turn in one of the armor pieces he got but it turns out he didn’t have enough rep to do that.  We popped back to Dalaran and had been talking about mounts and stuff and happen to stop by the mount vendor.  I didn’t realize there was a mount you bought with Heroic Badges, Inien remembered it being a bear but it was a woolly mammoth.  We were talking about the other mounts and achievements and Inien bought the bear just to see if there was an achievement, and I ended up buying it too just cause he did

After that I headed off to the Basin to get a new Egg, I forgot to do that last time I was on.  While I was there of course I did my dailies.  Eventually I headed off to do my Sons of Hodir dailies as well.

The first one I usually do is the kill the wild proto drake one.  I just ignore everything and just try to kill it as fast as I can.  I start out with a Shield/PoM/Renew which  helps   Of course by the time he dies he has me over a weird spot on the mountain.  I am always ready with Levitate because often you hit the mountain and  when it lets go of you down you slide

Of course if you have been following the PTR you know there was another patch yesterday, a small one.  Not a lot of huge changes on the Priest side.  They put back Hymn of Hope though (Yay?) and also change Psychic Horror making it a new ability that disarms as well as horrifies your foe.  I’m sure PvP shadow Priests will be happy about that one.  Of course they saw fit to squeeze a nerf for me in the patch by changing Stoneform.  It now only removes bleeds/poison/disease but does not provide immunity for its (very short) duration.  I have a hard time understanding how this was so incredibly necessary but all I ever use it for is PvE to remove bleed/poison.  The immunity did still help in PvE though in certain situations because a mobs behavior changes when you are immune.

I think they have been making too many changes for the sake of their silly E-Sport.

Wowhead finally has PTR talent calcs on their site, I hate using MMO’s, great info annoying calculator

I was looking at things and if we went live right now I would probably go with a Disc build looking like this.  And a Dual Spec shadow build looking like this.