News and Opinion

General news and opinion about WoW.

Where’s the Drama? And MTG Goodness

by

Ever since Mike left WoW.com, the Guildwatch column was on a temporary hiatus. Today it came back into business and to the surprise (and vehement displeasure) of many, the drama section was removed!

Many readers are screaming to bring it back.

How come?

I’m curious as to why. Why do people care about the mishappenings and horrors that happen to other WoW players or guilds? Is it just sheer entertainment to read about some guy who got the Legendary bow intentionally looted to someone else? Or that this person saved everyone to raid but then gkicked the entire guild and stole the bank? Or that a top guild stole the raid ID of another lesser guild because they couldn’t do it? But then I stopped and thought further. There’s a reason why TMZ and Perez Hilton are so popular. There’s a reason why newspapers have celebrity gossip columns because people happen to find this stuff interesting! The Tiger Woods incident? Now the thing with Conan and NBC? Its all celebrity news and when interesting stuff happens to high profile people, its like whoa!

Personally, I do pay attention to the drama sections. Its nice to know at what length players will go to achieve some kind of goal. Its nice to know what those goals could be. As a GM, I pay close attention to the mistakes that other guilds and players make. Why? So that in the event something similar happens to me or my organization, I already have a response or plan of action in place. I’ll read a particular story and just get blown away the events. Then I’ll think to myself "Man, if I were the GM or if that were me in that person’s place, what would I have done? Would I have reacted the same way or would I have done something else?"

So, do you guys care about that stuff? What about it makes it so appealing for you?

A Drama blog

Now, if I were an aspiring WoW blogger looking to carve a niche for myself, I think WoW drama would be where its at. I’ve actually made plans and thoughts about starting another WoW blog that would just be nothing more than a place that links to certain drama threads or summarize different stories and events.

Do you know of any WoW blogs that center primarily on WoW drama? I sure as heck don’t. And there certainly seems to be a high demand for it.

Anyway, those plans were abandoned pretty quickly.

For one, I’d probably have to do it anonymously. I don’t imagine a lot of friends would be made going that route.

Two, there’s a lot of research and compilation that would need to be done. You gotta find a story first. Then you gotta gather the facts. You gotta figure out who is or isn’t legit, who’s telling the truth, and what’s actually going on. Lots of realm browsing to do, that’s for sure.

Three, its dependant on other guilds or people. You can’t really make stuff up. Thats kinda lame. I mean I suppose you could. A fictitious WoW drama blog? Probably more satire or creative writing than anything else.

Anyway, its not exactly a niche I’d want to get involved with. Too "hot", if you know what I mean. Plus I’m already involved with my blog, Plus Heal, NSUI, and WoW.com. I have to run a guild too. And there’s school.

If blogitus were real, I’d be chronically affected my desire to start blogs. My friends (real and online) would be unanimous in tying me down in order to make sure I don’t begin another blogging project. I simply don’t have the time for it. 

But the demand for WoW guild drama appears to be there. Classifieds won’t be there to satiate your appetite for it unfortunately.

Speaking of lack of time…

In an effort to curb my WoW time, I got back into playing Magic: The Gathering again. Oh man, I’m weak :(. I blame all my friends. They started getting involved with FNMs (Friday Night Magic tournaments) and pushed me to join them.

Damn you peer pressure.

Any MTG types out there that actively play? Wouldn’t mind chatting a bit. Also, if you play online with Magic Workstation, I’m up for a game if I have time.

I’ll be piloting this.

Red Deck Wins

4 Arid Mesa
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Teetering Peaks
12 Mountain
4 Goblin Guide
4 Plated Geopede
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Hell’s Thunder
4 Ball Lightning
4 Earthquake
4 Burst Lightning
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Quenchable Fire

SB

4 Goblin Ruinblaster
4 Dragon’s Claw
4 Magma Rift
3 Manabarbs

(Might run Punishing Fire in sideboard instead)

Two of my friends are running Valakut ramp, one is running Vampires, another two are using mono white soldiers or something. Managed to go 5-1 pre-sideboard against Valakut, but ugh, Valakut has some serious burst.

Anyway, now that I’ve effectively cemented myself as uber geek of the week, I’ll stop for now. Depending on how often I play, I just might set up a smaller scale MTG blog or something.

There I go with the blogitus again…

Looking at the Holy Priest Renew Spec

by

There is a discussion that has spawned on Plus Heal about the high use of Renew in T9 and T10 raids. Some players were asking about it and I felt it was enough to touch on and elaborate further about here.

What is it?

The Renew heavy spec: Take a look.

holy-renew-spec

It’s essentially a 14/57/0 Holy priest build but there are a few key talents that are missing. Almost all direct healing spells do not get talented. Talent staples such as Empowered Healing, Divine Fury, and Improved Healing are skipped over entirely. Instead, Blessed Resilience, Empowered Renew and Test of Faith are all taken and maxed out for amplified Renew… age.

Single target healing spells aren’t used much.

Flash Heal would mostly be used during Surge of Light procs (when they’re free). When looking at spell usages, it’ll be a mixture of Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending and lots of Renews until the cooldowns are available. Prayer of Healing is another option when strong AoE heals are needed.

For glyphs, it would consist largely of:

A case could be made to include glyph of Renew in lieu of Guardian Spirit but that’s assuming that cooldowns might not be needed. I don’t know, the ability to boost healing received every minute is like a reverse 2 minute DPS cooldown, you know?

You can expect a really high amount of overhealing to come from this style of play especially when you are paired with multiple Druids. The line of thinking here though is to sustain your raiders and "slow down" whatever damage ticks they are taking long enough for a Chain Heal, or a Holy Light to bring them back up to the green zone.

What are the benefits?

Master of Priestcrafting, Zusterke, points out that:

  • A glyphed Flash Heal costs roughly the same as Renew
  • Both spells can trigger Holy Concentration
  • An Empowered Renew can hit with an instant heal in the 2-3k range (Flash Heal takes 1.5s to produce a 5k-6k heal)
  • Renew is a HoT and still produces healing after it is applied
  • It doesn’t require a glyph (although the glyph is handy)

Where could I apply it?

In Icecrown, I can think of several instances where a heavy Renew style would be very beneficial. Against Lord Marrowgar, Bone Spike Graveyards can be cushioned quite easily. Lady Deathwhisper, jus about every player would benefit and those caught in death and decay have an extra second or two to bail out. On Saurfang, players suffering from Mark of the Champion would have some increased insurance.

In the Plagueworks when fighting Festergut, the gases that damage the entire raid can be mitigated with a whole bunch of Renews. Against Rotface, even though the healing is halved, those affected by the slime debuff when they have to run out could move a bit further before a dispel is necessary. It’s also great for stabilizing the raid after one of those Oozes explode. When engaging Professor Putricide, preemptively Renewing the raid just before a green ooze makes contact or on any number of other aspects of the fight can grant a slight edge.

To finalize

I’m going to give this a shot this week and see how it works out. It’s not quite the same as dropping shields all over the place, but you can see the similarity when it comes to "blanketing the raid".

Anyway, it’s a style and spec to consider so keep an open mind.

Disc Priest Tip: Professor Putricide

by

You know how on Professor Putricide, a player needs to inhale a potion and they turn into this Abomination thing which controls all the slimes, oozes and crap? In order for Abominations to do that, they run on something called Ooze energy (It’s basically like energy). The only way to get such Ooze energy is by (you guessed it) consuming Mutated Slimes nearby.

Actually, that’s not quite the only way.

You know that Discipline Priests have this talent called Rapture which feeds energy, rage, or mana back to the target if the shield wears off.

It turns out the Abomination works the same way.

In other words, if your Abomination needs a quick burst of energy, have a Disc Priest shield them and the Abom can just sit and chill in a slime pool for a second or two in order to trigger the effect before eating it for more energy.

putricide-shield

Note: This actually isn’t my parse. Someone sent this in anonymously.

As you can see, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t offer much. But it’s nice to have for an initial energy boost when starting out.

If Druids have that Revitalize talent, it also provides a really strong energy boost as well.

Conquest will be taking cracks at him later tonight once we take down Rotface on 25.

Shutout by Rotface

by

Last night, 3 Conquest ICC 10 teams dove in with the goal of reaching the new wing. All of us were successful even though we went at slightly different paces.

Gluth’s mini brothers, Precious and Stinky, represent a serious trash wakeup call. Getting a little better at handling it but I’m still suffering 2-3 casualties in the raid. The priority is to get the current dog tank topped up fast. That isn’t the problem as we don’t seem to be quick enough in reaching everyone else. My current thinking is to bubble spam soft targets like clothwearers (players with overall low health) before dropping the raid healing bombs. The chomp doesn’t kill us, its Stinky’s fart that seems to do it. When taking care of Precious, be careful with the zombies and don’t stand next to them when they get trapped or rooted in place.

Since most of the players had worked on Festergut on the raid night before, he fell over fairly easily within 1-2 shots as we knew what to expect and how to handle it.

Now Rotface completely stoned us. He stopped all the shots the various groups had taken on him. After multiple attempts, it had gotten to the point where groups were wrestling with the increased disease spawn time (the 30% mark or so) or had proximity issues with the uber big ooze. The Ooze explosions were easy to manage.

What’s going to haunt me over the weekend is the fact that my guys wiped on Rotface with 10k health left.

Rotface juts got nerfed, by the way.

On a side note, I have to share something. Spring semester started this week and I sometimes end up getting in classes with professors with intriguing accents. In math classes or stats, I end up getting the stereotypical Asian prof (from Hong Kong or Taiwan or something) who are difficult to understand. I was pleased to discover that this prof had an eastern European accent.

In other words, he sounds like Borat.

And this is a class on International Studies.

“This u-ni-vehr-sity cam-pus is velly’ nice. Be sure to read journal article by Robert Bates for next week, yes?”

Anyway, how are you guys tackling Festergut and Rotface thus far? Problems? Can’t wait for the Professor myself.

The Issue with Discipline Raid Healing

by

As Priests, we exist in two healing realms: Holy and Discipline.  Discipline and Holy.  I say that because one is not superior or inferior to its counterpart.  Each specialization has its own tree.  Each has its strengths and weaknesses.

We were told way back before Wrath of the Lich King that these two trees were going to serve different fundamental purposes: Tank-Healing or Raid-Healing.  Seems simple enough, right?  Once Discipline Priests got past the backlash of “Disc is PvP lol” malarkey, people started learning that Discipline Priests can actually function as Tank healers.  If all of our tools are used in concert with each other, we can be a damn good single-target healer.

Is Discipline, though, viable as a Raid-Healing spec?  That’s debatable.

As with most aspects of this game, everything is going to be viable as something other than it was intended, depending on the situation.  For Discipline, Loatheb is an awesome example.  Although our talents are angled towards single-target healing, a combination of PW:S, Prayer of Healing, Penance, and quick Flash Heals (all powered by Fungal Creep) make us a formidable Raid Healer in a short amount of time. 

Another example is Deathbringer Saurfang, the last boss in the first wing of Icecrown Citadel.  It seems widely accepted now that a Discipline Priest shielding the raid helps reduce the amount of Blood Power that Saurfang gets via Blood Link.  The sooner Saurfang’s energy reaches 100, the sooner a Mark of the Fallen Champion gets put on a random raid member.  Absorbs from PW:S, as well as Divine Aegis, reduce the amount of Blood Power he receives.  Thus, fewer Marks on the raid, which means you can obtain I’ve Gone and Made a Mess with ease.  Not to mention, you get the boss down faster and easier.

Beyond the Situational Awesomeness

I’ve seen a trend of Discipline Priests insisting that they only raid heal.  They seem to hate the idea of being locked onto one or two tanks and will choose to “bubble spam” the raid.  An occasional spell other than PW:S might be used, but it tends to be a one-button spam from players like this.

I have no problem with people trying something different or off the beaten path, just so long as they’re smart about it and demonstrate a mastery of their choice.  I’m sorry to say, but playing Whack-a-Mole with Weakened Soul hardly shows mastery.  In cases like Saurfang, it’s a conscious and strategic choice.  In other cases, it’s a waste of mana.

Power Word: Shield / Rapture – Through Borrowed Time, we’ve received a nice scaling talent as a Discipline Priest.  It’s a valuable spell to the Discipline Priest, but it’s not the only spell we have available.  Since Rapture returns mana to you (ideally equal to or greater than the cost of PW:S), it increases your longevity as a healer, making PW:S one of the front-runners in our arsenal.  Notice, though, that Rapture only triggers when a shield is “completely absorbed or dispelled.”  Yes, partial absorbs are better than no absorbs at all.  However, in quite a few cases, the raid won’t take damage for a while.  Any shields that are put up on raid members that aren’t even touched is a total sacrifice of that mana.  Let’s say your PW:S costs 666 mana (yes, mine does).  If you cast it consistently, and 10 of them don’t even get touched, you just threw away 6,660 mana.  How much damage did you prevent?  Zero.  If you’re casting PW:S consistently, Renewed Hope will be up the whole time.  Since it doesn’t stack, those 10 shields mitigated no extra damage.

Grace – This fun talent, at the start of WotLK, used to be allowed on more than one target at a time.  Once Blizzard thought that was a little bit overpowered and was steering Discipline away from it’s original intent, they restricted Grace to one target at a time.  As a single-target healer, Grace is a great tool to have (though I wish it could be on up to three targets for fights like Marrowgar and Goremaw).  As a raid healer, it’s a wasted three talent points.  I find it particularly hard to assist with raid healing without using either Flash Heal or Penance (or the occasional hasted Greater Heal – all three of which activate Grace).  In most cases, you’ll be snipe-healing multiple targets.  If not, you’ll use a couple heals to top someone off, then off to the next target.  Grace isn’t given the chance to shine.

Where To Go From Here

Spec – I currently rock out a 57/14/0 spec.  I’ve tried various versions of it, but this spec just seems to work really well with the way I play.  I like to use Renew to help pad the tanks, or throw some on the raid to help out.

Given what I wrote above about Grace, I would choose to sacrifice those points and put them elsewhere.  I threw together a 52/19/0 spec if I were to try to re-work myself into a raid-healing Discipline mode.  I also took the points out of Focused Will (sacrifice some crit) and switched Spell Warding to Divine Fury.  I topped out Divine Fury (taking one point from Inspiration), and grabbed all three points of Improved Healing.  The goal is to hopefully rotate Greater Heal more into your rotation and make it (and Penance) cheaper to cast.  You still get powerful shields and good utility, but it’s not the end of the world trying to keep Grace up. 

Spells – As I pointed out above, I’m not a big fan of the “bubble spam”.  Sure it may look good on World of Logs or the estimated “absorption meter”, but I think it’s impractical.  I’m not in a raid to top a meter, I’m there to keep the whole raid alive.  With the alternate spec I suggested above, sniping Flash Heals and Penances is a great way to keep the raid up, as long as you’re also utilizing Prayer of Mending, Renew, and Prayer of Healing as well. 

If you choose to keep a variation of the first spec, then keep in mind the benefit of keeping Grace on your primary target.  You’re not going to be the most amazing raid healer, but you can certainly help out:

Prayer of Mending – I always keep this bouncing.  There are addons available to let you know when your charges have run out.  I tend to cast mine whenever it’s up.

Renew – If you put the points into Improved Renew, you can help out the other raid healers with this one.

Prayer of Healing – Although a bit of a mana drain, it’s amazing when it crits and each member gets his/her own Divine Aegis shield.

Binding Heal – ?!?!?! you say? I use this spell when I just need to single target someone.  Yes, it heals me at the same time.  Higher mana cost, the self-heal may be worth it, and I can keep the Grace stack on the tank.  I’ve tried both ways, and using Binding Heal has seemed worth it to me.

So there you have it!  I’ve always felt that Priests are incredibly versatile healers.  I don’t enjoy one-button spams or anything proved to be “easy-mode casting”.  We have an amazing arsenal of spells available, and using all of them can make us unstoppable.  There’s no reason you can’t take the intricacies of our class and harness them to do what you need them to.

My point is that if you’re going to go off the beaten path, think about what you’re doing before you take that step.

How do you feel about Discipline raid healing?  What other tricks have you figured out over time?

**Image credited to the Elitist Jerks forums**

Email: Elder.Thespius@gmail.com | Twitter: @Thespius