News and Opinion

General news and opinion about WoW.

BREAKING: Priest Racials Removed

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“In an upcoming build all Priest racials have been retired, except the following:

Desperate Prayer – This is now the 11-point talent in Holy, Holy Nova is now a base ability. Cooldown also reduced to 30 seconds.

Devouring Plague – Now a base ability. Cooldown reduced to 30 seconds, mana cost greatly reduced.

Symbol of Hope – Now a base ability. Now restores 5% base mana every 2 seconds for 8 seconds to your party. Renamed “Hymn of Hope.”
While this change does reduce the “uniqueness” of different Priests, we feel game balance as a whole will benefit.

Note: These new “racials” are not racials, they are trainable to all Priests.”

Source: Blizzard Forums Blue Post 
Thanks to Ravageclaw for letting me know. Expect this news to filter out to the big sites momentarily (I’ve alerted them).

Thoughts? Initial reactions? I’m going to reserve judgement for the time being.

Deciding Who Gets to Pick IDS

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Candle

Image courtesy of alexkalina

When Priests get to the upper echelon of raiding, they’re going to eventually run into one extremely important question. It’s pointless to have more than one Priest pick up Improved Divine Spirit. Joveta did an excellent feature showcasing the differences between the two specs. I’m not here to regurgitate what she illustrated. I’m here to help you decide which lucky monkey gets to go IDS.

The Supremes is a raiding Guild with 3 Priests, 4 Mages, and a handful of Resto Druids. It also has miscellaneous DPS.

Raid times:

  • Tuesday, 4 hours, farm content
  • Thursday, 4 hours, farm content
  • Sunday, 7 hours, progression content

Let’s assume you’ve got 3 Priests:

  • Steve McQueen: Always shows up, never missed a raid, sports 2350 healing
  • Stevie Wonder: Can only commit to 2 of the 3 raiding days, sports 2100+ healing
  • Steve Harvey: Able to only come on the last raiding day that Wonder isn’t able to attend, sports 2100 healing

Optimizing for Time

When you’re deep into raiding, it’s either CoH or IDS. You don’t need more than one IDS. From this perspective, you want to pick the most stable Priest who is able to come every day. This will ensure that every raid you go into has the IDS buff. This is the best bet since raids will go that much quicker. Just look at Joveta’s post for all the numbers. Go with Steve McQueen for guaranteed IDS.

Optimizing for Performance

On the other hand, one would argue that farm content doesn’t necessarily need IDS at all. By making Steve McQueen pickup IDS, his healing output does get slightly diminished. Another solution is to make Steve Harvey go IDS. This ensures that progression night raids will have the buff. If you really want to pick things up, you can ask Stevie Wonder and Steve Harvey to grab IDS. This way, you don’t handcuff Steve McQueen’s all star performance.

Picking out volunteers for IDS is never easy. I’ve rarely ever encountered an individual who wanted to do IDS. I myself had to respec IDS because our Priest corps is no longer as stable as it once was. One of them took off for college, the other’s having computer issues. I’m the current lynchpin Priest and I swallowed an extremely bitter pill in order to pick up IDS knowing that our floater Priests can stay IDS.

Anyway, there’s many ways to pick out who should get IDS. If you happen to have a Priest who wants the job, by all means let ’em have at it! If not, I highly suggest coin tossing as an alternative. I hear dice rolling is an excellent choice as well. Now dart throwing is a revolutionary way to make decisions as is bottle spinning…

What’s up with the Euro Beta?

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A quick glance at the Beta EU English forums shows a lot of pissed off players (to mildly put it). Statements ranging from discrimination to broken servers to unplayability. Our EU friends have one server while NA enjoys 3 beta servers. They’re virtually pleading for either queues or a second server since performance no longer seems playable.

Even on the NA servers, I’ve started to feel the crunch. There didn’t used to be a whole lot of players before hand. I suppose they’re trying to stress test the hardware.

My guess is that older beta players have done what they could or feel like they no longer wish to spend time on the beta knowing their efforts will be undone. In fact, I feel the same way. My Priest is only 73. Between raiding on live, blogging, and school it’s nearly impossible for me to level up. As a result, I’ve made a few premades to try out the various level 80 instances like Naxx which I liveblogged earlier.

I know that some of the worlds best Guilds reside over in Europe. It would make major sense for them to be given access to the beta and get a chance on a stable server to raid on. Like it or not, they’ll be the first ones in there before the average raider like myself. Feedback can’t be given on an unstable server.

So to any Euro beta players:

  • Are the conditions as bad as it’s being made out to be?
  • How is Blizzard’s response thus far?
  • What can be done to help alleviate the problems?

PvE to PvP? Bring ’em on!

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No doubt you’re aware of Blizzard’s can opening, jaw dropping, eye popping PvE to PvP transfer availability announcement.

What did my blogleagues think of it?

Personally, I’m rather stoked. I’ve leveled mostly on PvP servers my entire life. It’ll be refreshing to have some new victims players around.

So come on my PvP friends! Let’s give our PvE transferees the welcome that they so wonderfully deserve!