Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

I managed to get on yesterday only long enough to run a quick random.  I was totally worn out from being up till midnight the previous day after being called by work.  It was an interesting run actually.  We had a bear tank that had the highest GS rating I’ve ever seen, and over 60K HP.  He made a mad dash through that instance and we completed it faster than I thought possible.  He skipped the first boss which never even occurred to me They brought down Mr Drake ride immediately too, I was impressed

Things have been very interesting since the announcements about the upcoming raid changes to Cataclysm.  So much whining it is unbelievable, actually I think it is believable because the vocal community is a bunch of whiners   I wonder if Blizzard predicted this or not?  I’m guessing they must have assumed a certain amount of vocal disagreement.  Some of my favorite arguments are:

• It will destroy my guild
• No one will ever do 25 mans anymore
• Why even include 25 mans
• Blizzard is just catering to casuals

The funny thing is the last time they change raids they said the same things.  Just like they said Cataclysm will be the death of WoW, and all previous expansion were going to do that as well   Anyways the most interesting part is everything Blizzard is changing is save guilds if anything.  Lets you do the content you want, with the people you want.  You don’t feel forced into trying to make 25 mans work, and if you have the people for 25 mans you can do it, and gear more people up faster.  I don’t see the issue, and find it funny people can’t see it benefits everyone casual or elitist

As I mentioned before my favorite part is first that you can do the raids you like, I prefer 10mans over 25 by a HUGE margin.  The 25s are just not fun for me, I don’t care how good the gear is.  Second I kind of like the shared lockouts myself.  You don’t feel compelled to have to do both to try and get extra badges.  People will have time for their alts now   It is obvious they had to do that if they were going to make the gear the same.  The other thing that kept coming to mind is that they intended to try and make the difficulty of 10 and 25 man as close as possible.  So the elitist shouldn’t complain they are catering to casuals because they want it to be equal.  Obviously getting 25 people in sync is still always going to be harder than 10, so they are doing a few things to help with extra badges/gear.

Things are really getting exciting with Cataclysm now as this new information comes out almost daily.  Come on Blizzard, I want more!

I was very excited to read the new proposed raiding changes for Cataclysm.  As someone who really enjoys a good 10man raid, and really doesn’t for 25 man it is good news!  The problem I have with 25 mans is it marginalizes my contribution to the overall victory.  I can see the effect of my healing when I am one of 2 or 3, but not when I’m one of 5 or 6.  I also hate all the slowness that comes when dealing with 25 people over 10.  Having 10 is much more manageable and is always more fun to me.  For me anyways it has never bothered me that the gear was slightly lower in level. I still wouldn’t care either way, what I like most about it is they are not making people feel like they have to do 25 anymore.

If they make it to where you can do the 10 or 25 bosses depending on what you have on an encounter basis, that will be even nicer for certain guilds.  I’ve recently been able to participate in some guild 10 mans and had a lot of fun.  Yesterday I joined in the end of a 25, and well didn’t.    I applaud Blizzards decision to go in this direction and look forward to these changes in Cataclysm!

Hey guys!  Yes I still live   Though I’ve been on a bit of a WoW break (first in 5 years) I still have been keeping up with the news.  Looks like Cataclysm stuff is coming in slowly now, but at least it is something.  I find it funny here we are in March already, and I recall people in November saying we’d be in the expansion by now   Maybe it will be here by Christmas!

So first we had the stat change discussion, pretty boring nothing to exciting there.  But yesterday we had the post on mastery!  Now that was exciting and very interesting in deed.  One of the most interesting things is when they gave examples, they used the Priest class which seemed like a first for me!

Holy Priest
For each talent point spent in the Holy tree, the priest also gets:

• Healing – Improves your healing by X%.

• Meditation – Improves your mana regeneration from Spirit in combat. This would likely replace the existing Meditation talent from the Discipline tree, which many Holy priests consider to be a “must-have.” Regeneration will also probably be determined by whether you are in or out of combat, and not the “five-second rule.

• Radiance – Adds a heal-over-time effect to direct heals, such as Flash Heal. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.

Discipline Priest
For each talent point spent in the Discipline tree, the priest also gets:

• Healing – Improves your healing by X%.

• Meditation – Improves your mana regeneration from Spirit in combat. This would likely replace the existing Meditation talent.

• Absorption – Improves the amount of damage absorbed by spells such as Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.

They describe later on in the post you only get the bonus from the tree you spend like 50 points in.  I guess part of it is still up in the air.  The interesting thing about the two healing trees is that Disc gets a static healing buff just like holy.  Though that doesn’t mean they are going to be the same.  We have never got much generic healing bonus in the past though that has always been a complaint of many Disc whiners.  I like the Disc Mastery talent, truly what our tree is suppose to excel at.  Though I found the Holy one slightly amusing, a HOT to every heal spell sounds neat, but HOTs were never Holy’s specialty, I mean really Priests have only one HOT   I guess “More Healing” wouldn’t have been very exciting though

The blues in the thread (Eyonix and Ghostcrawler) stressed that we do not have the whole picture yet and there is more to come that will bring it all together.  Interesting they will not be back filling with Mastery stat, it will only be on the new gear we get in Cataclysm. Suppose to be more news to come soon hopefully.  This kind of stuff is what gets me jazzed about the game again.  Here is an interesting quote from Eyonix:

I’ve never been more excited about this game with what’s to come (and I’ve been playing for over 8-years), than I am now. I cannot wait to share more information with you, and I can’t wait for you to experience it first hand.

Of course Eyonix used to post this kind of stuff in the Priest forum about Priest changes that never turned out to be what the community wanted, or expected and was ultimately a let down.  Though I guess we will wait and see what else is in store for us.

I must admit even though I’m on a break, cataclysm has me as excited for the game as I was over 5 years ago before WoW came out

Cataclysm, the 3rd Word of Warcraft expansion is on its way.  When it will be here exactly no one can say, but most accounts put it early second quarter of next year.  There is a lot of exciting things in this expansion.  Most information we know came out of Blizzcon, and very little of it was class specific.  We know there will be great changes to the old world as the cataclysm causes widespread destruction in Azeroth.  We know that they are getting rid of some stats, like Spellpower (now based off int), Defense, Armor Penetration and MP5 (regen from spirit only).  We know they are redoing the talent system, removing percent based talents, and adding in talent mastery which has a new stat attributed to it.  Finally we know they are adding a new character customization system called Path of the Titans, which will be sort of like AA’s in EQ but not grindy, more on a time based progression.

Above here you will see my current spec.  I’d like to go over a few of my hopes for Discipline in Cataclysm and what changes we might expect.  First, I love Discipline as you all know.  After floundering for years on Disc, they finally settled on it being a Healing tree, with a focus on damage prevention/mitigation instead of more healing.  Holy does fine on the healing end, and to have two trees for healing, they really need to be different ways of doing the same job.  I think they hit the nail on the head with 3.0.  We have had what you might say a few setbacks in some of the changes, but none of them have been devastating to me, I still enjoy the spec.  So for Cataclysm I hope we can progress even more forward with the prevention/mitigation with the spec.

There are two new mechanics to the redesign of the talent system.  One is the removal of percentage based talents, which will be something you get automatically as you add points in a tree.  The other is the idea of Mastery, which is something your spec is meant to be good at.  They are adding a stat that allows your Mastery ability to increase.  This stat will be cool because you could have a piece of gear that might be good for a healer or DPS, that has this stat and it will do something different for whomever is wearing it.  They also said they were going to split up talents that too many things stacked together, an example of this right now is probably Renewed Hope, it is both a talent that gives extra crit to spells on people with weakened soul, and makes it so your raid gets 3% less damage for 20 seconds when you cast PW:Shield.  I imagine those will be split.

Of the talents that will be removed or altered in Disc I imagine it will be Twin Discipline, Meditation, Improved PW:Shield, Mental Agility, Mental Strength, Enlightenment, and Focused Power.  I’m curious about Twin Discipline and Mental Agility, because while they are straight percentage talents, they are very specific to Instant spells.  I’m hoping that Disc maintains its larger mana pool over Holy with Mental Strength which would be built into the tree.  The changes to spell power and Mental Strength would finally make Disc scale a bit better which is the main complaint of the Disc haters.

Now as they remove talents and they said they wanted to add more fun, interesting talents to replace them.  Also the splitting of the talents up will help as well.  This should let you create more interesting custom builds.  One of the ideas that came from Blizzard that got a lot of people excited was Power Word: Barrier.   I know a lot of people want this idea to just go away, but given the upcoming changes I think this is the perfect time to add a new iconic, deep Disc spell.  I think the original idea for PW:Barrier was was a spell that through a PW:Shield on everyone.  I wanted something different, then eventually we got Soul Warding which made that moot anyways.  Now what I wanted from PW:Barrier was some giant bubble shield.  What I later settled on the best idea was to have a huge bubble you placed on the ground that would dampen AOE effects.  After finally experiencing EoE pictured in the above screenshot is similar to something I’d like for Disc.  So the spell would have a radical similar to Mass dispel that let you place the shield, it would remain in that location for a fixed time and say reduce all AOE effects to everyone in the bubble by 75%.  You could even have the bubble shrink out of existence like it does in EoE.  Put an appropriate cooldown, and mana cost on it and we would have a fun interesting spell that would give a new mechanic for raid leaders to play with

If I could have them rethink any existing talent in Disc I would go with Grace.  My main problem with Grace is that it is not controllable at all by me.  If I am tank healing but need to save someone quick with Penance, which is awesome for that I have to remove grace from my tank and then get it back on when I can again. I would prefer Grace to be just a single target buff that we can place on one person of our choosing.  Plus I always had a problem with the duration, so having a longer duration on that buff would be great as well.  The reason being is it only gets applied with a few spells, I like to use all my spells not just the they put on Grace. That simple change would please me greatly.

I have a lot more to add about Disc in Cataclysm, but I believe I will save it for another post.  I think for me it is just key that they continue to stick with the current themes of Disc.  I want to keep my larger mana pool, extra speed (haste,pi,fast heals), and damage absorption/mitigation.

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.

I know Holy DPS is never going to be a full fledged damage spec like Shadow.  However I would like to start a campaign to maybe have a bit more flavor added to it for those of us that like it.  I think given the redesign of the talent system with the added Mastery system, now is the time to bring this up.  They will likely be pulling a lot of talents out that will just become automatic and free up some space in the trees.  This should open up space for some more interesting options that they were talking about they wanted.

I think what turned me off on Shadow was after I geared for it and really started using it was that it wasn’t flashy enough.  Just like I couldn’t take Affliction on my Warlock, Shadow is just the same.  When I decided to give up on Shadow I realized that I would be giving up ever seriously DPSing on my Priest.  Back in the BC days I would actually occasionally DPS as Holy, most people thought I was crazy, but at that time with a lot of drinking I could come close to what other classes/specs could do if not beat them.  Now unfortunately it just isn’t possible with Holy to do this.  I am comfortable using it just as my questing/leveling spec though and since I have Dual spec all is good

They kept modifying the Smite glyph over time which means they must know some of us like to use Holy.  They finally got it right with that Glyph too.  The change last patch to Holy Nova glyph making it do more damage as well was a welcome change.  I don’t have a defining 3rd glyph that goes well with Holy DPS, I would hope for a Holy Fire glyph that does something interesting

If I could dream a little larger even I would like to see a new Holy DPS spell.  This is super unlikely since Shadow wouldn’t be able to use it, but I said it was a Dream   I really enjoyed Chastise before they took it away.  It was a cool spell while it lasted during its very short life.  It was really fun on Deathwing for PvP especially when it had the interrupt on it.  I finally didn’t feel completely powerless to stop casting   Even with a 30 second cooldown it was a fun spell.  Having that spell make a come back would totally rock.

Well these are my pipe dreams on the Holy DPS front.  If you agree with anything I’m saying hear help me spread the word Maybe someone at Blizzard will hear and at least have it in the back of their minds for the upcoming changes!

So I’m sure many of you have read the rumors about the next expansion of WoW.  This reminds me a lot of when we started closing on the last Blizzcon and we found out some info on it.  I think the difference between the two is the sheer scale of what people are talking about with Cataclysm.  In fact the only way I’d almost believe this could be true is if that mystery next-gen MMO Blizzard has been working on is in fact WoW.  Redesigning practically the entire original game, AND introducing two new playable races along with a bunch of new class/race combos sounds like more than Blizzard could accomplish in the normal 2 year expansion time frame.  Only if they have been devoting all those people they have been hiring might I believe it is possible.

I guess the big thing is there seems to be enough credible information out there on it.  MMO-Champion posted quite a bit of it and even created a forum devoted to it to discuss.  There appears to be quite a bit of in game clues that might lead you to believe that something is coming.  Plus I read yesterday that someone said the name was trademarked which also happened with WOTLK before we knew anything about it.

So I can believe that a new expansion is coming, I can believe that it is named Cataclysm.  Whether it actually has a rebuild of the entire old world in it is what I have a hard time with.  I hope we find out Friday!  I will be watching from the video feed at home