Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

Well it has been a week now since 3.1 went live and I’d like to pass on my impressions of the patch.  First off this patch had a lot of controversy in it.  There were some pretty significant class nerfs, one of the biggest being the mana regen changes, and across the board nerfs to nearly anything that gives a healer mana.  This was also a patch for class buffs too, there were more class changes in this patch than we have seen in a single patch in a long time.  Of course one of the most anticipated and widely debated feature of 3.1 was Dual Spec.  I myself was one of the people against it from the very beginning believing it would have a complete negative effect on the game.  Of course the main feature of 3.1 was Ulduar the latest raid content which was suppose to be on order of magnitude more difficult than Naxx.  The surprise for me in this patch was the Argent Tournament.    I never played at all with it on the PTR, or even any attention to it.  For some reason the name kept making me think it had something to do with the arena

Ulduar

As I mentioned Blizzard intended this dungeon to be much harder than Naxx. The gear dropped in the 10 man is a higher ilevel than dropped in Naxx25.  The instance is massive, I mean it feels like the most massive thing I’ve been involved in WoW ever.  I had the opportunity to go attempt a few bosses with a guild I have occasionally raided with.  There are definitely a lot of gear checks in the initial fights.  You cannot fake your way through this instance.  The first fight is truely epic, done on vehicles much to the dismay of many forum posters.  I found the vehicle combat in the first part a very epic battle and though we had some rough times with it I enjoyed it.

If you read the forums there are too schools of thought right now.  It is either Ulduar is too easy and Blizzard has failed, or it is Ulduar is too hard and Blizzard has failed.  As Inien put it in response to my conversation about this last night, it sounds like Blizzard succeeded, and I would totally agree.  The problem with the argument Ulduar is too easy is it’s being made by people who have not completed the content, but are mad because the top tier guilds (who were testing it on the PTR) had managed to complete the raid instance in normal mode after a couple of days.  The people who complain it is too hard for the most part are not remotely geared to be in their in the first place, and want to PUG it too boot.  I’m not saying people will not PUG Ulduar, people try on Doomhammer right now, but it won’t go really well till the fights are more fleshed out.  Plus the top tier guilds still have many hard modes to get through before the content is totally defeated

I think Blizzard has done an excellent job with what I’ve seen of Ulduar so far and look forward to seeing more.  The soundtrack, the fights, the environment, they are all awesome.

Dual Spec

I truly believed that Dual Spec was a bad idea.  I’m still not convinced it isn’t actually but I have found the ability to be quite refreshing.  In the process of gearing and specing for shadow I have come to appreciate shadow priests more.  They are certainly more involved to play than my mage.  So now when I’m in a group with a horrible shadow priest I understand what the deal is, and when I’m with an awesome one I know how truly awesome they really are.

So far my main complaint about Dual spec for me would be it keeps loosing its mind and I have to put back my talents again.  I’ve basically had more than 4 free “respecs” because of it flubbing up.  On the forum the biggest complaint is when you switch it drains all your mana.  People feel that it is unfair that mana users have to wait for their mana but melee don’t as usually when they switch they don’t have any rage/runic power and well energy returns quickly.  I think the complaint is mostly unwarranted because this is true all the time.  A rogue can fight endlessly, but I’ve always had to wait on mana.

My final verdict on this feature is not in.  Will it destroy the fabric of the game?  I think it might be too early to say it won’t

Argent Tournament

As I mentioned I did not pay much attention to Argent Tournament on the PTR.  I’m kind of glad I didn’t because it ended up being a pleasant surprise once 3.1 went live.  I have enjoyed all aspects of the event.  Though there is some gear in this event as rewards, it isn’t what excites me.  It is just fun to be involved with.  The quests are some times silly but fun, the music in the area is superb, and the mounted combat is fun and engaging.

I got to the second tier of quests yesterday and got to experience more of the mounted combat with a AI opponent.  I had a little trouble at first but eventually picked up some of the techniques and figured out how the npc was beating me   Either way I totally enjoyed it!  It is also neat how you get to represent your city and get involved with all of that.  I understand there are some title rewards as well.

As rewards go for it I’m most interested in picking up the new pets they added, exalted with the faction, and at the very least the IF title   This event is much like the Isle of Quel’Danas as it is a phased event.  I don’t know if it is just two phases or more I haven’t bothered to research it ( I like surprises!).  I know I’ve been helping to build something    If you haven’t headed out to check out the Argent Tournament, make sure you do I’m sure you will enjoy yourself as much as I have!

Priest Changes

I can’t speak to Holy, or even Shadow (yet) but I can speak to Discipline.  The changes in this patch have been exceptional.  First I like to address the regen nerf.  I don’t know how you are all feeling about it now but for me I like it.  Really I haven’t had to worry about mana for so long it is almost refreshing to need to.  Plus it turns out it hasn’t been that bad for me.  Certainly one of my biggest worries was to be without replenishment as they suggested would make things harder.  While I don’t think I’ve raided without it (easily available), I have grouped without it and solo’d.  Thankfully  I haven’t really found myself with any significant mana problems.  This was a relief to me most certainly.

If I look at Rapture it certainly is a shadow of its former self.  I haven’t done a lot of healing since the patch so I don’t know if I haven’t given it much of a chance, but the numbers from it are pretty low.

For me Soul Warding is certainly highlight of the Disc changes.  Though we did not get our group shield, this is as close to it as you can get.  I love not being hindered by that 4 second cool down anymore.  It is as good as I imagined it would be   Of course some folks are crying foul on the forums claiming we are over powered now because it is apparently useful to spam shields on certain fights.  Ghostcrawler backed us up sorta saying:

“Power Word: Shield is a really useful tool for Disc priests in particular. We want them using it. However, its utility is balanced by a high cost. If we get to the point where they are spamming it constantly to the exclusion of other spells and without it ever being a decision, that suggests mana regen is still too high.”

I think my biggest disappointment was when they made the first pass everything was great, they took the 3% damage reduction from grace, made it raid wide attached it to renewed hope.  Then they increased grace to 9% healing and made it last a little longer.  I thought how awesome is that! Then shortly before the final patch they changed grace so it only effects 1 target.  So if you cast on someone else it removes it from the previous person.  This is a horrible mechanic and I complained about it immediately.  If they wanted it to be single target fine, but give me a buff I can put on someone then.  Eventually others realized how bad it was too but nothing has been done about it, except they say they may address the mechanic in the future.  To protest I have only 1 point in grace.

One of the other major changes which effected all priests were the Hymn changes. Divine Hymn was changed from a mostly worthless PvP oriented spell, to a pretty amazing PvE oriented super emergency heal.  It is on a long cast time, with huge mana requirements but can heal a hell of a lot to the right people at the right time.  Hymn of Hope was removed the game, then added back, but the mechanic was made similar to Divine Hymn, and IMHO not as good.

Over all despite the changes good ad bad I feel more powerful than I did before the patch.  This was a good patch for Priests!

Conclusion

Yes 3.1 has a lot to offer you.  I nearly forgot to mention the additional boss in the Vault of Archavon who people also say is too hard   My experience with him is he owns us every time.  Hopefully I get him down one of these days.

This has been an exceptional patch I believe.  I’ve been playing MMO’s for a long time and you get more free content in WoW than any other MMO.   I don’t think a lot of people really appreciate that.  They were not around in the olden days when free content patches were something you may have dreamed of

Well as usual Patch day had its share of issues.  It took much longer than anticipated in order to get the servers up (as usual) and once they were up they were fairly unstable (as usual), but those of us who expect the issues are not disappointed

In between crashes I did manage to get on and buy my signet upgrade, and buy dual spec.  I even managed to get the second spec configured, but I haven’t done my glyphs yet.  I was saddened to find out that the Penance Glyph is one of the dropped ones   I managed to go around and get the rest of my badge DPS gear, and after that was done I was only 3 short from getting the badge mount

It was a while before the server was stable so it was really time for bed by the time it was.  I stayed up though to do my first Fishing Daily! The first one sent you after a sucker fish to discover its secret which happens to be it turns you invisible.  You really have to pay attention to because after you fish it you only have 60 seconds before it disappears.

I also had to do the cooking daily and after completed that I debated about the chef hat.  It looks awesome, and well I am a big cook.  I had the tokens for it too, but still wasn’t sure.  Then I thought well I should buy it now so it is documented I had the tokens to buy it on the day it was available.   Well the damn server registered the date for that achievement for the 15th instead of the 14th, curse them!  Anyways I got the achievement and the nifty hat.  I only need to aquire one more cooking recipe to have all the cooking achievements

I had a lot of addons that were still quite broken.  I’m hoping that the sites will have some fixes tomorrow so that perhaps I will be able to truely get some play time in.  I’m hoping to try to get in a 10 man Uldar group this weekend.  During the rest of the week I will probably try to test out my new Disc abilities and practice being shadow

Hope everyone else had a wonderful patch day!  It is possible on some smaller population servers you may not have had any issues at all!

Inien and I decided it was time to stop putting off some old business we had to attend to since before wrath.  We were intending on getting the two quested pets from BRS, and our Jenkins title

This required us to blow up a low level instance which is one of our favorite pass times   We managed to tear through the mobs and get the quests done in no time

We picked up the mother’s milk quest too where you get poisoned and take it back to the quest giver to “milk” you hehe  Unfortunately I popped stone form on an accident and removed it and when we got to do Jenkins we thought the random webbing would be annoying.  So we ran back in after the achievement

The achievement was fun though! I nearly killed myself though not paying attention after I had like 50 of them on me they eventually start to hurt   We did the achievement no problem of course!  That nets me another useful title for all sorts of occasions

It looks like the servers are going to be down long enough for the patch tomorrow and it is generally accepted that the patch will be then.  I’m going to go with the mmo-champion 95% chance   So hope everyone is ready for some pain and suffering tomorrow that comes with patch day

Didn’t have much time on tonight but wanted to get a few things done.  I logged on and noticed it was cloth day again, man it just seemed like I did that   Still waiting on 3.1 to finish out my tailoring, I need to make Inien a bunch of the new herb bags anyways.  Then I’ll start decking myself and Inien out with 22 slot bags.

After completing my cloth run I went over to do some more questing in Zul’drak.  I’m really lagging about finishing out all of my WOTLK quests.  I’m actually quite embarrassed I haven’t got around to do it yet!  I still need to finish off a bit in Zul’Drak, Storm Peaks, and Icecrown.

I noticed the daily was VH which was short enough for me to be able to do before bed.  I had been in the LFG and got invited to a group just about the time Inien got out of his OS run.  I got him invited as we actually needed an extra DPS.  Everyone was pretty pro though we did wipe on the stupid water guy on the second spawn which means we got to start over   Everyone was running around like mad men, and when he rematerialized he ran over and crit me for over 18k, right through my shield!   I still have no idea how I the lowly Priest who had barely needed to even heal the very good DK tank, with all the DPS the mages and warlock were doing got agro WITH silent resolve but whatever…

I’ve been going back in forth in my mind about dual spec actually going back on the idea of doing it or not.  I still think I will as I would like to be able to speak with more authority on the non-healing issues of Priest.  Shadow Priests also look like they are more interesting damage dealers as like Priests they have more “tools” and don’t just cast one or two spells over and over.  I’m going to completely break with what I read though and go for something like this spec. I want to see if I can really go without meditation, especially with the improvements made to the Shadow Fiend, and the Shadow Priest reduced cool down.

People say Mediation is mandatory, that doesn’t seem quite right to me since only a few DPS specs even have access to such a talent, and there are so many more interesting talents I would rather try.  Maybe I’ll eat my words, but I want to try a go without it and see.  Maybe all the Spirit Tap talents and the improved fiend can offset the mandatoriness   I’m sure I’ll be called a Noob though if someone looks at my spec.  In general though my specs are never mainstream.  I raided with a Holy spec featuring Searing Light and Surge of Light (when it had no healing benefit).  I kind of doubt you’ll be seeing a lot of Disc Priests sporting this spec either

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

Or are you?

I yet again didn’t get on in time enough to do an instance (and I’m really itching to heal) but I did continue my preparation for 3.1.  I’m sure I’m not the only one too.  Of course the main focus of my preparation has been to create  a set of gear ideal for my upcoming Shadow mode.  I’ve been doing a lot of reading about Shadow Priests as well.  Like I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never been one ever, and from my play on the test server they are more complex than the two buttons I use on my mage

I started off evaluating my gear from the shadow priest sticky over on the priest forum.  The good thing I found was a lot of what I had would work great.  A few items were not ideal but certainly good until I acquire something else, my head for instance.  My weapon seemed very much out of place but luckily there was a crafted alternative. The Titansteel Guardian was suggested as the pre-raid alternative for the SP main hand.  I was intending on buying the DPS badge offhand so this will go good with that.

When I got on today I went to AH and looked up what the Titansteel Guardian was going for, and that was about 900g.  But I knew we had some BS in the guild and asked to see if anyone could make it hoping the mats would be cheaper   Thankfully someone could and they were.  I have tons of Frozen orbs so it was really just the cost of the Titansteel.  I think over all it was just 550g in mats to make and one of Sydnie’s alts made it for me (Thanks again!).

I copied over the most recent Laneer to the test server to check out some things, mostly trade skill stuff but I’ve got some things I could play with on the SP too like my Illustration of the Dragon Soul. I need to test out the new fishing daily too!  I want to buy a few of the badge items though and see how it goes with my current collected DPS gear.

I know, I know for someone who was totally against the idea of Dual Spec I sure am going through a lot of trouble for it   I figure though there is no reason to deny it, we are getting it.  I know it WILL change everything but there is no reason for it not to benefit me.  I see the opportunities it will bring, and will allow me to enjoy more of the game with less time wasted.  I don’t have much play time as it is, if I concentrate everything on Laneer then I should be better off

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.

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.

I was messing around on the PTR this morning while eating breakfast before work.  I setup my dual spec to be a shadow build, to go with my Disc healing build.  I decided to go try out, my heart was set to Zul’Drak so I was smacking down bad trolls.  I was amazed at how much damage I could do spec that way and I don’t even know what I’m doing.

I’m going to have to read a little on spell rotations and such because you end up with a lot more abilities as shadow than you have other wise.  The mobs were only 76 so they died a little too quick to get a real idea of my DPS.  I guess I could have tried a dummy while I was in IF   I was doing about 1200-1500 on these mobs without even knowing what I’m doing.  It makes me wonder how I come I run into so many terrible shadow priests in groups

The shadow build should definetely make my questing/grinding go much smoother!  So I’m getting kind of OK with dual spec now, though I still don’t know what the long term ramifications of this will be in the future.

Hopefully the server gets a little more stable and I can attempt to do some healing and see how the regen and rapture changes effect my mana management.  I was always careful, and had very low over healing so I’m going to guess I’ll do better than some with the changes.

Two really nifty changes applied to the PTR this evening.

• Grace doesn’t reduce damage dealt to the target anymore but now increases the healing received from the Priest by 3% (Up from 2%)

• Renewed Hope now also give you a 100% chance to reduce all damage taken by 3% for 20 sec to all friendly party and raid targets when you Power Word: Shield a friendly target.

At first I was like WHAT! They nerfed the damage reduction from Grace again (they did it during beta).  Then I read the next line, Renewed Hope changed, now it actually gives us Renewed Hope!  I think that is a way awesome change to the talent.  I hope this one sticks, can’t wait to try it.  Sounds really nifty and way better than the weak sauce it was.  Definetely very Disc appropriate AND powerful enough for the slot it is in the tier.  Of course Grace applying more healing, and lasting a little longer now is also a good thing.

Update!

Wow it is even cooler than I read on MMO.  It retained the 4% crit for Flash/GHeal/Penance on a weakened soul target, in addition to the new raid/group buff of 3% less damage.

Also I confirmed that you get the mana back from Rapture even if the shield dissipates after the 30 seconds without absorbing everything as well.  This is pretty good then, and people should stop complaining.  With the Int I have it basically makes my PW:Shield cost 35 mana. So we should still be able to do some nifty healing and be effecient!  Of course all is subject to change without notice yada yada.