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Every story, article, column, piece, and so forth on World of Matticus ever published.

Ardent Defender Overrides Guardian Spirit

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I want a Paladin tank. One of my tanks will be retiring from the game soonly and I’m hoping to start shopping around. So if there’s any free agent Alliance Prot Paladins looking for a raiding guild, get in touch with me.

Some intriguing information coming out of Honor’s Code lately.

The Hammer has reported (via Modus) that the Paladin’s tank saving ability, Argent Defender, activates first over Guardian Spirit. Ardent Defender has priority. Raid leaders then are going to have to reconsider and re-order which save to activate if they’re working on progression bosses. Paladin saves will need to be factored in first.

It’s a great read for all healers as we gain a sneak peek into the future. Our play is tied directly to our tanks so its good to keep up with that stuff.

Again, free agent Protection/Holy (dual off spec) Paladins looking for a raiding guild are players I’d love to speak to. Check out the Conquest guild site. We’re presently raiding 9 hours a week, but I will be adding an extra day just after the Independence Day weekend.

Any free agent Balance (DPS) Druids are also encouraged to apply.

Why Emblem Changes are Great

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Let’s cut to the chase.

Badges of Heroism and Valor are going to be phased out. Every raid instance and 5 man dungeon is going to be dropping Conquest emblems.

I like this change from a raid leader perspective! Here’s why:

Raising the floor – The minimum standard is being raised. During Burning Crusade, many guilds were either starting on Karazhan, Gruul’s Lair or Magtheridon. Other guilds were wrapping up in Mount Hyjal, Black Temple and Sunwell. There weren’t a lot of guilds working on SSC and TK. But this change will help shrink the gear gap between upper end guilds and lower end guilds. The minimum gear standard is going to go up.

Less time spent gearing – Are you a skilled player? Your gear just doesn’t show it right? Good, then this is another change. I’ve met many “skilled” players who wanted to apply to Conquest. Unfortunately, their gear level did not meet the minimum requirements to enter Ulduar. I’ve had to turn them away. Now those same players can come back and reapply. Since gear won’t be as big of an issue, they can demonstrate their skills in a raid environment. The fact that gear sucks won’t be much of an excuse.

Reduces the links in the progression chain – Currently, the order of operations in which players go through to get loot is:

  • Heroics/Badge gear
  • Naxx/OS/VoA
  • Eye of Eternity
  • Ulduar

Similarly, let’s look at the projected badge drops.

  • Emblem of Heroism
  • Emblem of Valor
  • Emblem of Conquest
  • Emblem of Triumph

What’s essentially going to happen is that the game will be reset so that Conquest badges are going to be at the bottom of the ladder. Who knows what the Triumph gear will be. Right now it takes players a lot of time investment to work their way up from zero to hero.

People have a reason to do stuff again – Hard time finding healers for Naxx or DPS for an instance? Fear not. Trade chat will rev up again and you won’t have to spend hours trying to find a player to fill that spot. From my perspective, once my Priest hit a threshold in gear, I never went back to Naxx. The badges meant nothing to me. I didn’t need the items anymore. I had no reason to go back into Naxx. I know other players feel the same way. Why participate in an activity when there’s no reward for the time invested? Now there is. Conquest badges give players an incentive to head back in. That’s a bonus to everyone. Epic gems, right? With Triumph badges dropping from heroic daily quests, I think they’re going to raise the cost of new Triumph level items. I remember some of the stuff we got from Sunwell vendors. That was over 100 badges for several of the items.

Alts – This makes it really easy to gear up alts now. I’ve got a Ret Paladin and an Elemental Shaman that I like to mess around on from time to time. This will help hasten the rate at which I can join Ulduar pickup groups or other raiding alliances.

Yes, I am very much in favor of this change.

Patch 3.2 in Brief

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So I’m a little long-winded. My typical posts run somewhere in the 2000 word range, with the longest of them hitting a staggering 4000 words. As a personal challenge, I am going to provide a little commentary on multiple aspects of Patch 3.2 . . . in two sentences or less. Patch changes are listed in descending order according to the very scientific standard of my personal interest in them.

Coliseum Raid Instance

Five bosses is far too few for a new raid dungeon, regardless of how many times we can play through it in a week. Also, if Blizzard thinks I’m going to be satisfied fighting a Jormungar that looks like every other big worm just because it drops Tier 9, they are fooling themselves.

Normal and Heroic Versions for both 10 and 25 players

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I really don’t enjoy killing the same boss repeatedly–regardless of the “extras” in hardmode–in the same week. I used to really, really hate the 3-day reset on Zul Aman for that reason.

New Druid Art

I applaud any and all new artwork in game, including the pink kitty. Now, if I can have one of these forms, I might just go feral myself.

Resto Tier 9 Bonuses

Lackluster compared to Tier 8. HoT ticks that can crit will have less impact than a small front-end instant heal on Rejuvenation.

Three Flavors of Tier 9

They had better not be Rum Raisin, Licorice, and Bubble Gum. In all seriousness, the designers need to take care that the color mix doesn’t make us all look like clowns.

Lifebloom Nerf

Wait, didn’t they realize that the Bloom is nearly 100% overheal anyway? This spell’s now awkward mechanics and situational use have already minimized its place in my rotation, and I’m quite sure that we don’t need it at all as things stand.

New Resto Idol

This will be the new must-have Resto druid accessory, more stylish even than a pair of Manolo Blahniks.

Changes to Mp5 allocation

It’s about time! Even in BC this stat was too “expensive” for its value.

Upgrades to Profession Bonuses

These are all fantastic and I applaud them, but I had really wanted a new alchemist stone. I just really like the idea of manufacturing my own Pet Rock of Uber.

Epic Gems Available

There goes all my hard earned flask money! Seriously, did we even need these?

Reuseable Flask of the North

Why haven’t they thought of this before?

New Moonkin Idol

Probably not as good as the Resto idol since Moonfire is a low-priority spell.

New Heirloom Item

With this stacking bonus, my baby priest will be leveled up to . . . 40 in no time, before I forget her again.

Streamlined Emblem System

Golf claps. The system as it was could be pretty awkward, and at this point in progression it’s appropriate to use emblem gear to facilitate a reroll.

New Pets

I want a baby raptor, especially if he makes a cute squeaky noise.

More Argent Tournament Dailies

I wish I didn’t have to have exalted reputations to unlock them. Dailies are a nice thing to do on alts, and I’ll be stuck doing them on Syd–I just can’t really see myself getting the Argent Dawn/Crusade rep a second time.

More Argent Tournament Mounts

The dailies didn’t hold enough of my interest for me to buy even one of the mounts yet, so I’m indifferent. I still have two pets to go as well.

More Tasks For My Argent Tournament Squire

I love how Averna calls him her pet boy. I humiliate mine by making him carry the Gnomeregan flag, and I can’t wait to make him fetch my dry cleaning.

Changes to Mounts and Mount Prices

I am extremely puzzled by anyone who opposes these much needed quality-of-life changes. To them, I will only say that every generation, as it ages, always claims that when they were young, things were “much better” because they had to work “much harder”–It’s annoying when Gramps says it, and it’s annoying when you post it on the forums.

Venomhide Ravasaur for the Horde

That’s just ducky, but why doesn’t Blizz let everyone get both this mount and the Winterspring Frostsaber? I have never understood the resistance to cross-faction mounts.

Changes to Shield Block on Items

This is not a genuine fix to warriors and paladins, and is barely a bandaid. I still foresee a day of reckoning ahead for tank balance.

New Battleground

Funny, I still haven’t managed to visit Strand of the Ancients yet . . .

Koralon the Flame Watcher: New VoA Boss

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Here’s a first look at the new VoA boss.

This what ultimately VoA is going to look like. We have an Earth boss, a Storm (air) boss, and now a Fire boss. I wonder where the Water boss is going to be situated.

Boss abilities

Not sure if there’s official names for them. That video was shot from the perspective of a Warrior (Arms I think).

First ability is the assorted flame patches that drop around. Stand out of the fires.

Second ability is the flame whirl like thing he does where he spins around and unleashes fire in every direction.

Expect this boss to drop tier 9 level loot.

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I’m still downloading the 1.15 GB file right now for the PTR patch. I should be suiting up and ready to go within the next several hours.

Resto Shaman Tier 9 and More!

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By now I’m sure you’ve all heard about the tier 9 sets that have been released. Unlike Tier 7 and 8, instead of having two different levels of gear, there are three levels.

Conquest (ilevel 232)

Triumph (ilevel 245)

Heroic Triumph (ilevel 258)

This is kind of nifty. It adds more opportunity for raiders of all levels to gain tier set pieces. There is no artwork for it yet, but you can click the link and check the stats. The big thing here is the set bonuses.

Instant cast
Increases the healing done by your Riptide spell by 20%.
Instant cast
Increases the critical strike chance of your Chain Heal spell by 5%.

These might not seem like a lot, but these are quite nice as it stands. Lets take a look at the 2 Piece. Riptide already seems to have received a little buff in it’s healing come the patch but lets use the value of the Rank 4 Riptide and according to the 3.2 talent sheet, the current rank 1 Riptide

The spell has two parts we’ll make the assumption that the set bonus affects both parts. The spell initially hits for 1604 to 1736, a 20% increase on that 1925 to 2083 on the front end. After the initial heal it places a heal over time for 1670. With the set bonus that HoT becomes 2004 over 15 seconds. While that might not seem like a lot consider a couple things. First it’s an instant heal and HoT for Shamans, never a bad thing. The new ranks for the spell haven’t been released yet (that I can find, if you see them please link them to me) so you can imagine those numbers will be higher. Secondly combine the 2 piece with Glyph of Riptide which increases the duration of the HoT by 6 seconds (or with these numbers should be another 800 healing if my math is right) and 2 piece Tier 8 , which lowers the CD of Riptide by a second and you have an instant heal that places a 21 second HoT on your target, and it only has a 5 second cool down. I can see that being extremely useful. Oh, and it still buffs chain heal on the target by 25%.
Let’s take a look at the 4 piece bonus now. Increasing the critical strike change of Chain Heal by 5% might not seem like a lot either, but you have to keep in mind a couple things. Before raid buffs I’m packing close to 27 % crit, maybe more depending on what pieces I am wearing. I suspect the vast majority of the Shaman Healing community falls between 25% and 30% before buffs (cursory glace at armory seems to support that theory) in a raid environment you can already get close to 40% crit. Adding another 5% to that is just insane, it will definitely increase our throughput quite a bit. It will also work hand in hand with changes to Improved Water Shield which now procs off of chain heal without consuming an orb. This will do wonders for our mana regeneration along with our healing throughput.

The newest item I’m probably most excited about though so far is not the Tier 9 set (while it is nice) but we have a new Totem. The Totem of Calming Tides is, quite simply put sexy. When you cast Chain Heal you have a chance to gain 234 spell power for 15 seconds. That is just nice any way you slice it. Combine that with the increased crit chance and the fact we’ll most likely be packing enough haste to have 2 second or sub 2 second chain heals and I suspect more often then not we’ll have the buff. There is no information on proc percentages yet, but it’s still very early in the PTR.  It should also be noted that this so far does not just affect your chain heal spell power, but your overall spellpower, meaning when it procs Earth Shield, Riptide, our various Healing Waves and even Healing Stream Totem will gain a benefit. Personally I can’t wait to get my grubby little Shaman fingers on this one.

Along with the Tier Sets we were provided information for Badge Goggles andBadge Shoulders. While they are pretty good I just find myself hard pressed to get excited about them. Maybe after the models are released for Horde / Alliance.

The new totem and the Tier set fits very nicely with the talent and spell changes for Shamans in the coming patch, you can read my initial thoughts on them Here.

For those who don’t remember here they are again.

  • Call of Air – Simultaneously places up to 4 totems specified in the Totem Bar. Can call different totems that Call of Fire or Call of Water.
  • Call of Water – Simultaneously places up to 4 totems specified in the Totem Bar. Can call different totems that Call of Fire.
  • Call of Fire – Simultaneously places up to 4 totems specified in the Totem Bar.
  • Totemic Call has been renamed to Call of Earth -     Returns your totems to the earth, giving you 25% of the mana required to cast each totem destroyed by Call of Earth.
  • Tidal Waves has been changed to -     When you cast Chain Heal or Riptide, you have a 100% chance to lower the cast time of your Healing Wave spell by 30% and increase the critical effect chance of your Lesser Healing Wave spell by 25%, until two such spells have been cast. In addition, your Healing Wave gains an additional 4/8/12/16/20% of your bonus healing effects and your Lesser Healing Wave gains an additional 2/4/6/8/10% of your bonus healing effects.
  • Nature’s Guardian now give you a 100% chance to increase your maximum health by 15% for 10 sec instead of 50% chance to heal for 10% of your total health. Cooldown increased from 8 second to 30 second.
  • Mana Tide Totem now has 10% of the caster’s health. (Up from 5 health)
  • Nature’s Swiftness now has a 2 min cooldown. (Down from 3 min)
  • Improved Water Shield no longer consumes a Water Shield Orb when you gain a critical effect from your spells, now also has a 10/20/30% chance to proc from Chain Heal.
  • Ancestral Healing now reduces your target’s physical damage taken by 3/7/10% instead of increasing its armor by 8/16/25%.

Looking at those and looking at the set bonus I’m definitely starting to get excited. I’ll report more on it after I get some time in on the PTR, Lodur is transferred over on the PvE server for the PTR and will be getting some play time tonight after my raid and tomorrow for sure. I’ll update this when I get some more information on how the talents are working and how it feels in a raid environment, particularly hard modes.

What do you guys think of the Tier set and the Relic? Are you going to transfer over onto the PTR and try the new talents out? Are you looking forward to hard mode as a Shaman healer?

Until next time, Happy Healing.

Sig