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

MoP Shakes up healing, Lodur’s thoughts

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Well folks, it’s been a while, since I posted. Life has been quite busy for this little shaman. Things are calming down so you’ll see me posting more often (hopefully!). The past week was BlizzCon 2011, a fine time for everyone who got to go. For those of your readers I got to meet, it was an absolute pleasure! Shaking hands with readers is always fun, and sharing a drink with them is even better. Possibly one of the most exciting bits of news was the announcement of the new Mists of Pandaria! Not only will we finally get to play as our kung-fu pandas that we’ve been waiting for since the days of WC3, but it will bring with it a new class, the Monk.

The Monk class is an important addition to the World of Warcraft game for many reasons. Chief among them it is a hybrid class capable of filling all roles in the holy trinity of MMORPG; Tanking, DPS and Healing. This marks the third class capable of all three roles, with the other two being Druids (OP!) and Paladins.  The monk class promotes active playing. It’s a twitch class, and will be in all of it’s roles. While in DPS there is no auto attack, so you will constantly be hitting buttons. In tanking that will still be the same, and in healing well that’s where things get interesting.

Healing for a monk is not just about playing green bar whack-a-mole. The healing monk will be an incredibly active monk. Weaving into close combat to keep their orbs charged and then running around the raid/group to place healing statues or cast effects. It makes use of the monks base abilities of tumbling  and generally being a high mobility class while making you do things like deal damage or do other non-specific healing things to generate healing power. Well, that sounds pretty familiar to me, I mean this is exactly the type of healing I was talking about in March of 2010 here on the site!

It will not be your grandfather’s healing, or at least that’s the idea behind it. Since we’re still in an alpha phase, things will likely change. I personally hope they won’t. I revel in the idea of an active healer. I love the idea of being a hybrid and having to do different things in my role as a healer. I really think that it’s about time that something like this was brought into the world of warcraft as well, if for no other reason than the fact that other games are doing this as well.

T.E.R.A Online will promote active healing. Healing classes there will not just have to do multiple things besides healing in combat, they will actually have to actively target their spells for them to heal. No more just clicking an interface and a key, you will have to duck dive dip and dodge while healing, and target the right person too!  Healers in SWTOR will be healers with teeth, capable of not only healing those around them but fulfilling other roles as well. The Smuggler combat medic smacks of a billy bad-ass that runs around with wookies and will make sure you don’t die… for a price.

The point is, that the future of healing classes in games is moving away from the tried and true method of select unit frame, select spell, and to see the adoption of this in WoW in the next expansion speaks volumes to me of the IP’s survive-ability. The willingness to adapt to the market is important, and to me is exciting.

I play a healer in every game I play that allow it. I love healing, it is my passion in gaming outside of story. I’ve been healing a long time though, so anything that mixes up the normal click and click method of healing to me is exciting. Making me throw punches to charge up my healing? I’m OK with that. Making me have to run around and place my healing wards to actually heal things? I’m OK with that too. Don’t get me wrong, I love healing on my shaman, it’s always a lot of fun for me, but something like this has me seriously considering the possibility of switching to a monk to heal. It depends greatly on execution and how it feels being a healer in the expansion with the class, but I can honestly say I haven’t been this excited in a long time. I can certainly tell you that the vast majority of my play time when I get my beta access to MoP will be playing with the monk healing style to see how I like it.

So, what do you think? Does the idea of monk healing excite you? Do you think it’s silly and hate it? Do you bring PANDAMONIUM!?

Good News Healers: No Change to Healing Model Going into Mists

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I couldn’t remember if this was addressed at all during the Q&A’s. During the Hilton after party, I managed to track down GC for a few photo op’s with my guild and I just had to ask him to make sure:

Me: Is there going to be any change in the healing models going from Cataclysm into Mists of Pandaria?

GC: Nope! No major changes!

Sweet! No new real learning curve. This should make life easy for all of us during the expansion transition. The big significance is that we’ll be starting off with the ol’ small heal, medium heal, and big heal model again. Like Firelands, as we progress through harder content and as our gear and stats continue to improve, we’ll eventually end up with a slightly smaller tool kit at our disposal.

Vegas Highlights and Pre-BlizzCon

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Good news! I survived Sin City! It was my first time (ever) to Vegas. I learned how to play Craps. It ended up only being a 20 dollar lesson (I was up to 90 and I shoulda cashed out, whoops). Had a really awesome time though. There were all these people on the streets handing me these trading cards. I think its some kinda new game of sorts. I really wanted to watch some shows but I didn’t have time for that. Ended up walking the length of the strip and checking out the different outdoorsy things (Bellagio fountain show and the pirate show in front of Mirage). I may also have been prepositioned by a young lady as I was heading back to my room. Alas, I turned her down.

I’ll have some pictures up later.

We arrived in Anaheim a day early. After settling in, we hustled over to the Hilton. And who’d I run into? The VP and marketing guys for Bungie (Yeah, Halo)! We started talking (and the guy bought me a drink, real nice of him, thanks Jack Black)! Looks like they’ll have a booth in the area. Will need to check that out.

BlizzCon starts tomorrow Friday. The big WoW Insider party’s tonight and I’ll be there mingling. If you plan to buy me a drink, better make sure I can handle it. My tolerance isn’t quite there sadly :(.

My panels of interest:

– Class Talent system
– Dungeons and raids
– 4.3 raid and Deathwing
– Warcraft Future Features

Which panels are you anticipating the most?

If you’re in the area and you want to say hi, just go ahead and add me to Twitter @Matticus and shoot me a message. Enjoy the con!

Patch 4.3 eh?

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I am currently blogging with this song playing in the background.

Anyway, a whole plethora of patch 4.3 stuff about to debut soon. I’m on the PTR again (Anasterian, Matticus, Alliance side) so if you’re bored or want a place to hang out, feel free to look me up.

Patch 4.3 in general

First thing I did when I logged in was look for the Transmog guy. Converted the tier 12 level stuff I was wearing into the Avatar set. The short hand term for Transmogrifying is now apparently known as ‘Mogging. You can find the Ethereals providing this service in the outer ring of the Cathedral Square. 100 gold for me to drop individual cloth items into void storage. Interesting gold sink. Remember to Mog your stuff first before dumping it into storage.

mog

Favourite character ever. Kupo!

Patch 4.3 healing

I feel for the Resto Druids but healing output was a little high. This’ll probably be the first on the list of Druid changes anyway. Didn’t see the glyph change coming though. We’ll have a few weeks to see how that plays out. Resto Shamans and Holy Paladins received a major amount of changes.

Resto Druid

    • Wild Growth healing value has been reduced by 20%.
    • Glyph of Wild Growth now also increases the cooldown on Wild Growth by 2 seconds.

I can feel every non-Druid healer just pumping their fists. Anyone else have the feeling that there might be more on the way?

Holy Paladins

    • Divine Plea now grants a charge of Holy Power.
    • Holy Radiance has been revamped – Imbues a friendly target with radiant energy, healing that target and all party or raid members within 10 yards for 50 to 61 and another 683 every 1 sec for 3 sec and grants a charge of Holy Power. 40 yd range, 40% of base mana, 3 sec cast
    • Seal of Insight no longer restores the paladin’s mana.
    • Clarity of Purpose now also affects Holy Radiance.
    • Infusion of Light now also affects Holy Radiance.
    • Judgements of the Pure now also increases your mana regeneration from Spirit while in combat by 10/20/30%.
    • Light of Dawn now heals up to 6 targets, up from 5.
    • Paragon of Virtue now reduces the cooldown of Divine Protection by 15/30 sec, up from 10/20 sec.
    • Speed of Light no longer reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance.
    • Tower of Radiance got an extra effect – In addition, casting Holy Radiance will always generate one charge of Holy Power.
    • Glyph of Light of Dawn now lowers the number of targets to 4, instead of increasing targets to 6, but increases healing by 25%.

Holy Priests

    • Divine Hymn now heals up to 5 targets, up from 3. Maximum of 20 heals, up from 12.
    • Atonement will now account for the target enemy’s combat reach when calculating proper range, enabling it to be used on large creatures such as Ragnaros and Ala’kir.
    • State of Mind has been replaced with Heavenly Voice Increases the healing done by your Divine Hymn spell by 50/100%, and reduces the cooldown by 2.5/5 minutes.
    • Glyph of Circle of Healing now also increases the mana cost of Circle of Healing by 20%.

While I was hoping for another cooldown, I’m cool with a really buffed Divine Hymn. FIVE TARGETS!? Yeesh! Liking the new Heavenly Voice talent. Had to figure out how to retalent a little. I came up with something like this:

43-spec

But I suppose I should find room for Lightwell with that tier 13 set bonus. Perhaps I’ll axe a point from Surge of Light. I wonder if I need to rethink the Circle of Healing glyph.

Resto Shaman

    • Ancestral Healing got an extra effect – heals you cast increase allies’ maximum health by 10% of the amount healed, up to a maximum of 10% of their health.
    • Cleansing Waters – The heal effect can only occur once every 6 seconds.
    • Riptide healing effect has been increased by 50%, from 3725 to 5585.
    • Wind Shear now has a 25 sec cooldown, up from 6 sec.

Won’t be able to count on Resto Shaman interrupts on demand anymore. This looks like it will cripple PvP shamans (and they mentioned it in their explanations post). But a numbers buff to Riptide and the extra effect to Ancestral Healing looks real cool.  Have a feeling that this is a better change for 10 man raiding shamans.

Tier 13

Love it! I may not Mog this at all! Helm itself looks pretty stellar. I believe the female Priests have only half of the mask covering their face.

End Time instance

I really hope they’re not done here yet. It seems a little undertuned. We killed one of the bosses in there and Jaina’s Staff dropped. Looks like this place will be dropping 378 items. Nice way to reset the gear floor and get players caught up. I’m going to do a little more runs in there but it just didn’t do anything for me. The instance is still incomplete but so I’m looking for more stuff.

So, how’re you feeling on the changes, the tier, and the new instances?

Firelands Nerf, a day later: Lodur’s thoughts

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When we first received news of the incoming nerf, I was already on edge. I hate nerfs. I made it a point to help push my raid teams through boss fights before nerfs. Kael’thas died the night before he was nerfed into the ground. Sadly though, I didn’t get to accomplish this goal with firelands. This isn’t for lack of trying mind you. For the last several weeks I’ve been working with the guild trying to sure up lines and push through the content. I’ve been a busy shaman, to say the least.

So, the day of the great nerf has come and gone, and in the aftermath we’re left looking at what was done. Conquest mounted up and dove into firelands yesterday, and toppled every single boss, save Raggy, in just about an hour and a half. Seriously. Raid started at 9pm est, by 10:30pm we were already looking at Rag. This includes a few breaks to make roster adjustments to get in some new recruits. That’s just insane. We had the numbers, but you have to actually do the content to appreciate exactly how much the nerf bat hit firelands. I’ll be honest at the end of the night, I was quite a bit saddened by it.

Nothing is quite as demoralizing as walking into a raid and just breathing on bosses and having them fall over. While this seems like a bit of an exaggeration, I assure you that’s how it felt. Sure you can still die to mechanics if you don’t know what you’re doing, but it just felt weak compared to a day before. I sat at my computer afterwards and I was just kindda looking at the computer screen and my character. Things have changed, certainly in Cataclysm, but sometimes you just have to sit back and look at it. I mean really look at it.

In ICC, when things were getting “nerfed” we had the option of actually turning the buff off and going about the content as originally intended. It was something that I know my group utilized. We allowed the buff for farm content but turned it off if we had a progression boss or a new recruit we were trying to break in. The point is that we had the option to utilize it or not. I thought it was a fantastic way to go about it. Giving your players the choice as to whether or not they want to get a sweeping buff that helped topple content. After all, as a player I value nothing higher than choice. Choice of what bosses to do, in what order, choice of spec and gear, and honestly choice on whether or not to deal with buffed / nerfed content.

So after the raid and again this morning I’m sitting here wondering why Firelands didn’t get a similar style of handling the nerf. The flat reduction in boss health, boss damage and add health was fairly substantial. Substantial enough that each boss kill felt a bit hollow to me. I would have loved to have had the option to turn the nerf on or off, but as it stood looking at the last boss at an hour and a half into the raid was just a bit much. Mana was not an issue, not even close, I don’t think I used my Mana Tide Totem more than twice the entire night. Healing was such a non issue that for a good chunk of the night we were running 5 healers on a 25 man raid, and even then I spent more time throwing lightning bolts than having to heal. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to stop raiding or anything like that. I’m eagerly waiting for patch 4.3 and the next raid tier. I just felt very contemplative over this nerf.

So a day later what do you think about it?  How did it affect your raid?