News and Opinion

General news and opinion about WoW.

The Post Patch Post Raid Synopsis

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Any of you who’s guilds were crazy enough to raid on a potentially unstable patch server with unfamiliar spells minus the luxury of completely functional boss timers, raise your hand.

Don’t worry, I’m with you on that one too.

But, I’ll see your instability and raise you short handedness.

Yes, I was insane enough to try raiding short handed. We started off with 15 at the designated time, but players were still wrapping up patches, addons, glyphs and reforging.

It felt like the crew we had today was operating at something like 70% strength. Of course, it was completely understandable.

We were getting our collective butts handed to us by heroic Marrowgar. While yes, we were short two, I felt that a kill was within reach. I knew Marrowgar’s abilities had not changed. It was a matter of being re-familiarized with the encounter and with our new found skills.

A number of players wondered why I wanted to push hard. We could have downgraded from Marrowgar hard mode. We could’ve called it an early night and give people additional time to get accustomed to the new changes. I don’t know what it was, but I felt driven. I didn’t want to give up. I didn’t want to leave until Marrowgar was taken down. I guess one could say I wasn’t willing to tolerate failure. But that wasn’t it. Another part of me sought validation that this was something we could still do. That come Cataclysm, the grit and determination of taking down bosses will still be present.

You know what I mean?

I wanted to see if that spark was still there. If there is one thing that terrifies me as a GM, it is complacency. It is a nightmare of any progression based guild leader. We don’t want people who feel unmotivated or who decide to give up after a few wimpy attempts. I’m not saying its going to happen, but what if we hit a point in Cataclysm where we’re working on a boss and there are no strategies or videos to pick apart? Will we tough it out or call it an early night and wait for some other guild to draw up the plays? That’s not something sits well with me.

During the Canadian winters, I would always carve my own path in the fresh blanket of snow instead of stepping on trails made by others. That’s a mindset I carry when it comes to my projects and work (as you may have guessed).

We’re something like 23rd overall on Ner’zhul with our recently acquired ICC 25 drakes and finish at 11/12 HM. My desire is to enter the top 15.

We did manage to secure Marrowgar in the end and then placed a few shots on Deathwhisper hard mode before it was decided to call it early. I think we gathered enough information on our classes and rotations. We had a better idea of what was working and what wasn’t (like ret paladins).

Something I need to remind myself is to take a step back and realize that not every player devours patch notes as much as I do. Most of the players in the guild are just as passionate and thirsty for knowledge as I am. But not everyone has the time or the desire, I suppose. I want more players in the guild with the former as opposed to the latter. Sadly, desire to learn and improve aren’t traits I can instill in people.

All things considered, it wasn’t a complete waste of a night. We got 1 boss down and we know what our weaknesses and strengths are. We also learned:

  • Mages and Warlocks are ridiculously awesome
  • Unglyphed hunters do no DPS
  • Neither do pet-less hunters
  • Atonement is really effective but it requires support from the rest of the healing time
  • Ret paladins got sucker punched
  • So did DPS death knights
  • Overall raid healing shot up which means damage taken must have increased
  • Discipline priests are the Energizer bunnies of healers (They just keep going…)
  • Holy priests (without access to Archangel) just burn through mana insanely fast

Healing Roundups and We Got Our Drakes!

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Not quite sure where to go or what to read? Feeling overwhelmed? Yeah, I feel the same way too. Don’t worry though. I’ve got all the healing related stuff right here for you to brush up on. Next few weeks will be exciting with all the new systems.

Druids

Lissanna’s restoration healing guide (Restokin)

Keeva’s restoration 4.0 guide (Tree Bark Jacket)

Paladins

What Holy Paladins need to know for 4.0.1 (Kurn’s Corner)

Priests

WoW Insider: SG’s Reforging, gemming and GCD tactics for 4.0.1 priests (WoW Insider)

4.0 Survival Guide – Holy & Disc Specs, Glyphs and more (Tales of a Priest)

Discipline 4.0.1 guide (Malevica)

Shamans

Resto Shaman’s Guide to 4.0.1 (Life in Group 5)

Augments

Gem conversions for 4.0.1 (Revive & Rejuvenate)

Addons

No Stock UI has a nice compilation of addons that healers and raiders will find useful. Bonus: Updated for 4.0.1.

Beru’s Addon List

Don’t hesitate to suggest other resources that you think other healers might find informational.

And bloggers, you have my express permission to plug your own stuff.

Unrelated

25-drakesr

We scored our ICC 25 drakes last night!

And one of my hunters accidentally cast a buff which automatically knocked him off his mount. Extremely comical moment, actually. My timing was pretty good.

I originally planned on healing the entire encounter with three healers, but the current raid composition didn’t allow for it. Instead, we used our previous 4 healing setup. It consisted of a holy priest (me), discipline priest, holy paladin and shaman.

The first clutch moment of the night occurred during the defile phase. Valks were inbound. I was busy stacking the raid with Renews before I realized I lost all mobility.

“Matt’s picked up.”

I looked up at the second valk, and noticed it zeroing in on the other discipline priest.

“Ann’s picked up.”

At this point, I was thinking to myself it couldn’t possibly get any worse. Two healers out of four locked out?

“Rykga picked up.”

Crap. There goes our holy paladin. Wait, that’s three healers! I barked out for an immediate use of defensive cooldowns. Barkskin and other such skills were used while the DPS desperately muscled to get us free as quickly as possible (and to their credit, they did).

After something like 25+ attempts over the past few weeks, we were able to secure our drakes. Only took us something like 5 sets of Vile Spirits. Did it with 3 Boomkins. That helped immensely.

Still recruiting for Cataclysm. May not have any immediate openings now, but if you’re looking for a raiding guild, look me up.

Reminder: Updated Dispel Mechanics

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Just wanted to post a quick reminder of the dispel changes. Every healing class has the capability to remove harmful magic effects from friendly targets. You may have to talent into it somewhere, but it is possible.

In encounters going forward, any highly important buffs that need to be removed will come in the form of magic. Other negative debuffs will annoy the raid or make life a little more difficult, but they will not get to the point where the encounter becomes literally impossible to do.

For example, if Lich King were to become a Cataclysm encounter, Necrotic Plague would be a magical ability so that any healing class could remove it.

Druids

Remove Corruption – Removes a curse and a poison (Removing magic requires the Nature’s Cure talent).

Paladins

Cleanse – Removes a disease and a poison (Removing magic requires the Sacred Cleansing talent).

Note: Protection and retribution paladins cannot cleanse remove magic.

Priests

Dispel Magic – Removes 2 harmful spells from allies or 2 buff spells from enemies.
Cure Disease – Removes a disease.

Note: Shadow priests cannot remove diseases in Shadowform but can still dispel. No change to Body and Soul. It will still remove a poison if you Cure Disease yourself only (Won’t work on others).

Shamans

Purge – Removes 2 buff spells from enemies.
Cleanse Spirit – Removes a curse (Removing magic requires the Improved Cleanse Spirit talent)

Note: Disease and poison removal abilities have been removed. Yes, that includes the totems.

Mages, warriors, hunters and warlocks (Fel Hunter) have no changes to their dispel mechanics.

Actually, come to think of it, Necrotic Plague is still going to be a disease in post 4.0.1. That means the only way to remove it is by having a priest or a holy paladin in the raid.

Oh dear.

Hopefully, it’ll be hot fixed so that it becomes a magic effect or something. Unless they don’t expect anyone to raid past 4.0.1. Right?

Updated Flexible Raid Lockout System

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**Forgive the slight grammatical errors. I wrote it in a hurry and overlooked the “it’s” that I had written incorrectly. Thanks to those who pointed it out.**

Up until today, the new 10/25 raid lockout method has been met with praise and condemnation. Most of us have believed that if you started a 25man, you could stick with that 25, or downgrade to 10 on the same lockout. It was thought that you could not “re-upgrade” to 25man. Until now.

As posted on MMO-Champion today, Bashiok wrote a Blue Post about the new system that we’ll see VERY soon.  As in, 4.0.1 soon. In terms of current raiding, this new system will only be in place for ICC and Ruby Sanctum but will persist through all of Cataclysm. The post itself took a couple times for me to digest it, so I’m going to attempt to break it down for you. (Key word: attempt)

Its Purpose

The purpose of this new “Flexible Raid Lockout System”, as opposed to trapping people into raid IDs or limiting their raid potential, seems to allow a more fluid movement through a typical raid week. Before this system, you’d step into a raid, and as soon as you killed the first boss, you were locked to that ID. The raid could sit dead mid-way through, and you’d be stuck. You couldn’t really progress unless you found people from that raid or people that weren’t saved yet. Except for guilds, it would be really hard to continue.

Its Mechanic

Each raid, rather than being designated an entire lockout, has a lockout for each encounter in it, regardless of raid size (10 or 25). For Icecrown Citadel, this means 12 “lockouts”. As Bashiok said, they want raiders to have the “opportunity to defeat each encounter once a week.” You are locked out of each individual encounter as you down a boss. A couple things to keep in mind:

  • You cannot enter a different raid where bosses that you’ve defeated are still alive.

What does this mean? Let’s say you’ve killed Marrowgar, Deathwhisper and Gunship in your raid on Wednesday night. On Thursday, you cannot join a raid of either size that still hasn’t defeated Gunship. From what it seems, that raid would have to defeat Gunship before you joined in.

  • Upon entering a new or different raid, you’re not saved to their “list” until you down a boss. Getting saved to a more progressed raid will lockout all bosses until that point.

In using the example above, if you’ve killed Marrowgar, Deathwhisper and Gunship, and join a different raid that has the first four bosses, as well as Rotface & Festergut killed, you won’t be saved until you down any of the other bosses alive. If you defeat Putricide with them, your raid breakdown will now say that you’ve defeated Saurfang, Festergut, and Rotface as well (even though you didn’t ACTUALLY kill them).

  • You can switch between 10- and 25-player raids along the way. The above stipulations still apply.

You can kill the first quarter on 10-man, join a 25-man to kill the 2nd quarter, then finish out the rest on 10-man. We once thought that once we downgraded to 10, we couldn’t upgrade to 25. This obviously is not the case anymore.

Heroic / Hardmode

Heroic Mode or “Hardmode” seems to work on a very strict lockout system, where once you’re in, you’re in. I’ll try to bullet-point how this works:

  • If you down a boss on Heroic (in any size), you can only continue to raid Heroic with that specific raid. You cannot change raid sizes and continue on Heroic.
  • If you down a boss on Heroic and join a different non-Heroic raid, that raid cannot upgrade to Heroic with you in it.
  • You cannot join someone’s else’s raid if they’re already defeated a boss on Heroic.
  • If you down a boss on Heroic, then the rest of the raid clears the rest without you, you can still join another non-heroic raid that already has your same bosses down.

The one problem I have with this is not being able to join a raid with Heroic bosses already down. If my guild starts Heroic ICC without me because I have to work on the first raid night, then it seems like I can’t join the raid mid-run. Is this intended to make it harder and “more Heroic”? Or is this maybe an oversight or misreading of the mechanic?

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I do like that you can continue to raid if your normal group can’t, but the restrictions on Heroic seem just an ounce too tight. Overall, this really will allow people to raid 25s if they want or can, and doesn’t penalize people for only being able to do 10mans. It in fact let’s them join in on a more progressed 25-man raid that may need an extra body. With it being a little less restrictive than we all thought, I’m really looking forward to seeing this new “lockout system” play out. What do you think? Interesting mechanic? Or too confusing?

Priests: Inner Fire vs Inner Will

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We’re gaining a new self buff in the expansion. In addition to Inner Fire, we’re gaining a new one called Inner Will.

So the question is, which self buff should be used?

More power?

You can’t ever go wrong with having increased spellpower from Inner Fire. That’s an extra 1080 spellpower that you otherwise wouldn’t have had. I consider if the de facto self buff to use in most cases. The extra armor buff isn’t going to hurt either. Probably the default buff to use once our regeneration hits a point where we’re not struggling for mana as much. If I’m leveling, then I’ll definitely be using this for extra fire power.

More speed?

Inner Will reduces the mana cost of your instant spells by 15% and it increases your run speed. I’ve noticed myself resorting to using Inner Will more often in some of the dungeons I do and leaning towards a heavier spell usage involving Renew, Power Word: Shield and Prayer of Mending. This sounds like its going to be the armor buff of choice for Renew Priests if the viability is still there. Anything involving lots of running? Yeah, I’m going to toggle this on as well.

Don’t forget about Inner Sanctum. I wouldn’t spec into it normally. But if you find yourself using Inner Will more than Inner Fire just to run around faster, then it might be a worthwhile investment. I don’t know if I find the 6% spelldamage reduction side of it useful. I guess it will come down to hard mode specific fights where it would be needed to help with survivability. 6% feels a bit low to me. I mean if they were going to combine it with Spell Warding, shouldn’t it be upped to 10% instead? Of course, I’m probably forgetting the fact that we have a massive health pool.

Yes, I’m positive there are going to be encounters where that 6% is going to make or break you. Anyway, when you’re leveling, go with Inner Fire. When you’re doing dungeons or raids, use the one that’s going to benefit you the most.