Shaman Changes and Priest Preview Thoughts

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I am still shell shocked over some of these amazing Shaman changes. I have an Elemental Shaman myself which I like to play on. Terrible at it, but it’s fun all the same. As I’m big into healing, I’m keeping a really close eye on the different healing adjustments and features being added. There’s this thing I have about thinking in the future and visualizing what things will be like.

If you haven’t looked at Zorash’s analysis on Healing Council or Lodur’s assessment on WoW.com, do check them out as well.

Healing rain: At first glance, it looks like an extremely spiffy AoE healing spell. Click the spell, select an area, and watch it rain. The amount healed diminishes based on the number of targets within the area. It doesn’t appear to be a channeled spell. It’s more a heal over time effect. Does that mean it’s a fire-and-forget type spell? You get 2 seconds to cast it in any area within 30 yards. It last 10 seconds but it can be brought up again after. I suppose this means melee can afford to get drilled by Cleave or Whirlwind again. It’d also be pretty cool to have multiple Shamans in the raid casting Healing Rain in the same area. Makes me wonder if the effect is additive if the same place is targeted.

Spiritwalker’s Grace: On the fence on this one. I know caster Shamans are like turrets: They stay still in order to blast targets (hostile or friendly). 10 seconds where Shamans can move and cast without any interrupt penalties is a good thing. 2 minutes as a cooldown seems like a long time. I’d say maybe somewhere in the 60 second to 90 second range but I suppose that’s a question easily answered when we have an idea of what encounters will be like. The talent is supposed to allow Shamans a bit more leeway during movement heavy fights, not make it super easy, right?

The Priest changes are coming soon. I don’t think I’ll be around in the hour when they go up though.I hope they bring in Power Word: Barrier. I remember the devs saying they wanted to include something like that in the game but they couldn’t pull it off at the time. I was envisioning it as something similar to the Death Knight Anti Magic Zone (the bubble on the ground) but for all types of damage or something. I can see it being a talent in Discipline (since they’re removing all the stat increasing type talents anyway) or it being a max level spell.

With the announced Dispel changes, I’m also curious as to whether or not Mass Dispel will stay in the game. I can see them making the case to remove it to make the whole dispel mechanic mean something. On the other hand, it means we can’t strip Ice Blocks or Divine Shield.

Anyway, changes should be up in a few hours. For now, I have to go downtown. Maybe I’ll bring my Macbook and just chill in the library and wi-fi it up.

Changing of Dispel Mechanics

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These changes went up the other day and are altering the way us healers do things. I gotta admit, I am more the intrigued in how the system is being set up. Here’s the summary:

  • Druids will be able to dispel defensive magic, curses, and poison.
  • Paladins will be able to dispel defensive magic, diseases, and poison.
  • Priests will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and disease.
  • Shaman will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and curses.

This leads me to conclude that upcoming encounters in Cataclysm will revolve primarily around removing magic. Also, is anyone else a little confused about the way they’ve worded defensive magic and offensive magic? I’ve read it as all classes can remove magic debuffs on friendlies while Priests and Shamans can remove magic buffs on enemies. I did have to think about that one for a good minute to make sure I had it right.

How this affects raid utility and healing

* Protection and Retribution paladins will lose their current ability to dispel magic.
* All shaman will lose dispel disease and dispel poison in exchange for Restoration gaining dispel magic.
* Restoration shaman, Restoration druids, and Holy paladins will need to talent into their defensive magic dispels.
* Shadow priests won’t be able to remove disease in Shadowform.
* Mage, hunter, and warlock will retain their current dispel mechanics.
* Body and Soul remains the same, and basically any dispel mechanic not mentioned above is currently planned to remain as it is.
* When possible, we’d like to combine dispels into a single action. For example, the druid ability to dispel curses and poisons might be a single spell with a Restoration talent that also allows it to dispel magic. This part of the design isn’t finalized, however.

On encounters like Rotface, I’d usually ask a Prot Paladin to handle dispels since they’re the ones on the outside anyway (on 10 man at least). With this change, this means that I’ll need to assign a healer to take care of that. It shouldn’t be a significant problem at all. What it means is that the healing “bandwidth” is going to get a little clogged up more with extra dispels that need to be done.

To be honest though, I don’t foresee it being a serious issue. As a reflex healer, I’m already spending my GCDs on player dispelling anyway and on some fights, I like to have a fun competition on the dispel meters to see who can squeeze off the most and the fastest.

For example, you know that guy in Warsong Gulch who just sits around while the rest of the team is killing the opposing flag carrier but is just spamming the space around the carrier with right clicks and your jaw drops in amazement when they return the flag even though you could’ve sworn you got to it first?

Yeah, that’s me!

I’m also thinking that encounter mechanics will change so that poisons, diseases and curses won’t be as punishing to the raid unless you’re on hard modes. My expectation is that debuff mechanics will simply need to be healed through since if you don’t have the class composition to cleanse it, there isn’t much that can be done. With the pool of available dispellers narrowing, there is a greater emphasis on healing teams to contain at least 1 healing class of each type. Just having the classes alone aren’t enough since non-Priests will need to talent into the ability to dispel.

As for PvP, I’m not too sure what effect this change alone will have. It’s going to make things increasingly tougher, I would imagine. But let’s not forget the increased stamina change coming to all the classes. So for example, while that Rogue you’re engaging has all his poisons on you, I imagine it wouldn’t be as deadly at 85 as it would be right now in the game.

Don’t forget about the Cataclysm class information changes. They’re coming out with them tomorrow (at least for Shamans and Priests).

The thought process of Lodur

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Recently a comment on of my latest posts over at wow.com brought into question a bit of my integrity. Normally I do my best to ignore the bad comments but this one stuck with me a little bit. My last piece was talking about restoration shaman and haste. People seem to be under the impression that I didn’t like haste and was jumping on the band wagon to appease readers. Well as I’m certain most of you know I’m not really into the whole appeasement thing. It was questioned my “flopping” in stat priority, so I figured I’d take a few minutes and explain a little bit more how I view things like stats, spec and strategies.

First I don’t think there is a wrong way to do it. Not saying if you’re a healer and go afk because your HoTs are still active is ok, but rather everyone has their own style of game play. Some people love to tank heal, other people love to raid heal some float between these roles. Others still like the idea of being pure utility, not caring about topping the charts but rather lessening the burden of their fellow raid healers. The thing is all of this is valid, each is a unique way to play the game. We each play the game to have fun right? An easy way to do that is to find something you enjoy doing and making it yours.

I’ve seen healers stack Int above all else (recently) and still do fantastic jobs. I’ve seen players with more MP5 than I think even they knew what to do with but they still did fine. I saw a healer with SP coming out of every pore. I’ve seen healers and players doing all sorts of wacky things that work for them. But that’s the point it works for them. I acknowledge the fact that sometimes there are things more optimal to a situation, better ways of doing things based on the encounter alone. I accept that and I am not above admitting sometimes certain things are better than others in those situations. I like telling people different ways of doing things because it sparks creativity and offers an alternative way to do things that someone might not have thought about before. I like it even better when someone shows me something I hadn’t thought of before and I can say that I learned something from it.

So, there I am, in the middle. I try to see everything from the point of view of “how would this work?” rather than “oh that is just out right wrong! When it comes to things like stat priority my firm belief is that it will always be custom tailored to the role you choose and you as a player.

I mean we play in a game with a rather large population of players right? Eventually we’re going to run across something that might not be how we’re used to doing things but somehow works. Me I’d rather keep an open mind and take a look at it and try to understand how it works. I’d rather understand it rather than just dismiss it out of hand. Who knows I might learn something from one of those wacky situations. I know there’s been a few boss fights I heard of some strange way of doing it that worked, as well as the fact my guild routinely does things in a very odd fashion, but it works for us.

So what about you? In your travels have you encountered anything cool or odd that you didn’t expect to see but worked? Melee hunter? holy pally dps? Maybe some odd stat stacking?

That’s it for today, until next time Happy Healing!

 

Done!

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Alright, so you all may have noticed that I’ve been a little absent as of late.  Believe me, it’s no fault of my own.  I love to blog.  Throughout my tenure here, I’ve been able to start some great conversations.  Seems like everything is going fine, right?  Yeah, F*** that.

Everything’s all fine and dandy until you’re not allowed to write anything.  I wrote a post debating one of Matticus’s points (actually, I’ve done a couple counter-point posts).  Have you seen it?? No.  Why?  Well we have a system:

I write a post.  I edit the post.  I schedule the post according to the rules.  I’ve learned that this is when posts get “approved.”  Most of the time, totally fine, but this time, no.  Matt goes in and just stops the post , simply because he doesn’t like that it disagrees with his.  I thought I was supposed to be able to write what I wanted?  Yeah, it’s f***ing bull****.  Ask me to join your blog and then I can’t even debate you.  Just write my f***ing posts for me, then.

I ORIGINALLY was going to start my own blog.  That way, who gets to “approve” my posts?  Me.  I don’t have to get cutoff by some douchebag.  Seems like I had the right godd*** idea the whole time.  If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s poor management like that.  And I’m not the only one.

Call the cops because I’ve been robbed. Robbed of my right to be treated like a decent respectable blogger. I mean I put in my dues! I sweat and pour over my writing as much as everyone here! Why am *I* the one that get’s shafted? I hope your editors read this Matt and learn just how much of a jerk you really are!

I’m not supposed to put this up here, but you all read this blog, so you should know what happens.  Lodur, as you know, is now writing for WoW.com.  Know who’s NOT writing for WoW.com as much anymore?  Matt.  Guess who’s pissed!!  Matt.  Lodur has told me countless times how much he still loves writing for this blog, but you’ve seen him less and less, too.  My personal thought is that someone is holding a f***ing grudge cause they’re a little butt hurt.  Not our f***ing fault you’re a reject, Matt.

So, F*** the schedule, F*** the censoring, F*** this blog, and F*** you, Matt.

Yeah I said it.  /rant off

The Body and Soul Spec

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I’ll admit, I’ve always dismissed Body and Soul as an odd talent that had little to no use in raids. Players should be able to run out of anything dangerous on their own or with the aid of a boot speed enchant if they’re slow. As such, I’ve never really considered it at all.

But ever since that Power Word: Fail round table event held by the Raid Warning guys where Aliena, Derevka and myself chatted, I had to reconsider. Have I mentioned that they’re my personal favourite podcast crew to work with?

The spec

Here it is (14/57/0)

This is the one I’d use as it has many of the traditional elements of a Holy spec. You can shift your points around from Empowered Healing, Blessed Resilience, and Test of Faith accordingly based on your own preferences. Personally, I favor Blessed Resilience but that’s because I’m aware of what kind of an effect it has. You may prefer Test of Faith for the extra throughput (even though it is conditional). If you’re not a Flash Heal or Greater Heal type of player, you might opt for full points in Blessed Resilience and Test of Faith. Anyway, that discussion is for a separate post entirely (hopefully soon assuming Derevka has spare time at some point).

Why would you ever use Body and Soul?

For me, I’ve discovered that it has extra utility in progression fights. The talent a minor run speed increase for 4 seconds which is enough to give players a quick boost when running away. When learning fights for the first time, I often use this at specific times.

In an extremely high level raiding guild, I would argue that this talent is unnecessary. Players can easily handle movement fights and do not require the aid of extra sprint abilities to escape hostile spells. It’s just not necessary. Connections and computers are at peak efficiency resulting in near-zero lag. Situational awareness is so high that players will move without realizing that they had to move.

But not every guild is like that. Not every raid can perform like that. For me, I need to look at every possible edge I can utilize in an encounter. Nothing frustrates me more than a player who is unable to outrun a Sindragosa explosion, or a Necrotic Plague on Lich King or any number of other abilities because of technical problems. Doesn’t matter how good the player is as bad connectivity connections will almost always negate that. I can’t make everyone’s connection super awesome. I can’t magically snap my fingers and create 102 FPS conditions. The next best thing I can do is cast a spell that’ll make people run quicker and get them out of dangerous situations faster. I may not be able to account for lag, but I can at least function as a safety net and buy an extra second or two for that player and help them live when they otherwise would have been lost.

Just keep in mind that it might annoy your Discipline Priest. 

Anyway, it’s largely used on progression fights to help “smooth” things over until a fight “clicks”. You’re giving up potential throughput for increased (but selective) movement speed which comes in handy for heavy movement bosses. Plus it also makes the run back from wipes slightly quicker and I know I won’t be last back! Go ahead and give it a shot. Let me know what you think.