Discipline’s Tier 10 4-piece Joke

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Haha!  Hey!  Hey!  I got a great one for ya! 

“What do you call a 5% buff to Power Word: Shield?”

“Insignificant.”

Wait!  I got another one!

“Name something fun, interesting, and awesome that gets replaced by something as mundane as a bowl of rocks?”

“The Priest Tier 10 4-piece Set Bonus.”

Let’s bring everyone up to speed.  Not all priests are at a place where they can experience, or even look forward to the set bonuses of the current tier.  The current Tier 10 4-piece is as follows:

Your Circle of Healing and Penance spells have a 20% chance to cause your next Flash Heal cast within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.

Avalonna at talesofapriest.com has a great write-up of how beneficial this was to Holy Priests.  Now, I have very little knowledge of Holy, since I’m primarily (and almost solely) Discipline.

From a Discipline standpoint, this was amazing as a tank healer, or even a Discipline raid healer.  Follow me on this one, as it’s my first attempt at something resembling theory-crafting.  I apologize in advance if my numbers are off a little bit.

The “Math”

Penance is 16% of your base mana.  You get 3 pulses of healing.  I can crit all 3 for ~14k.  Flash Heal is 18% of your base mana.  With Glyph of Flash Heal and Improved Flash Heal, it’s less.  I can crit and get about ~9k (with a 3-stack of Grace).  Penance is relatively cheap, and heals more than Flash Heal.

With full raid buffs and the Borrowed Time proc, my Flash Heal cast is ~1 second.  With Glyph of Penance, the cooldown is down to 8 seconds (thanks to the lovely Penance nerf we had a while back).  So, you’re telling me I have a chance to reset an 8 second cooldown with a 1 second cast?  Yes, please! 

Not to mention that Avalonna also points out in her post that this Flash Heal! proc doesn’t have an internal cooldown.  It’s possible that you can have a string of Flash Heal -> Penance -> Flash Heal -> Penance -> etc. etc.  Even without worrying about Grace, this becomes pretty powerful. 

The Fun

When I was first looking at the likelihood of getting my Tier 10 set, I was salivating at the mouth for a cool and interesting 4-piece bonus.  Look at what we’ve had in the past:

Tier 7 – Reduces Greater Heal cost by 5%. (Discipline doesn’t really utilize this in most circumstances.)

Tier 8 – Casting PW:Shield grants 250 spellpower for 5 seconds. (Obviously useful for Discipline.  Kinda “meh” for Holy.)

Tier 9 – Increases Divine Aegis and the initial hit of Empowered Renew by 10%. (Blizzard gets the idea to involve both specs.  Still, marginal increase.)

So finally, we get a Tier bonus that’s interesting, challenging to work with, and it gets tossed under the bus.  If it was deemed overpowered, a simple fix would be to either shorten the window needed to cast the Flash Heal, or reduce the chance for it to proc to less than 20%.  I feel that completely redesigning it was a bad move on Blizzard’s case.  People need to understand that this game is organic.  I personally enjoy having to tweak my playstyle a bit to get more “oomph” out of my healing.  The Tier 7 set had me speccing into Divine Fury and utilizing a Borrowed Time-hasted Greater Heal for a while.

The Replacement

Our incoming Tier 10 4-piece set:

This bonus now increases the effectiveness of the caster’s Power Word: Shield and Renew spells by 5%.

Sorry, I just gagged a little while reading it again.  Blizzard has gone the “easy route” and just given us a static stat increase.  As far as Discipline goes, it’s a sad one at that.  Thanks to math from Zusterke, I’m able to whip out some numbers for you.

Let’s say you have 3000 spellpower, raid-buffed or not.  Your glyphed Power Word: Shield will total 8,813 (as of right now).  At 3200 spellpower, it’s 9,177. 

With this new “buff”, those numbers change to 9,254 and 9,636, respectively.  You’re looking at a 441 and 459 jump.  Even at 4000 spellpower, you’re only increasing your shield by 532 points of absorption.  With how bosses and mobs hit, this is hardly worth even considering. 

Even if you’re able to keep up PW:S on the raid the WHOLE time, you’re preventing only ~11,500 extra damage every 15 seconds. 

Hence, this bonus is far from worth it to me.  Dawn Moore wrote up on WoW.com her initial thoughts on the changes.  She writes:

“Still, the buff is exceptionally good. The only problem with it is that so many priests who turned their back on the tier gear for other badge items (such as shadow’s tier gear) with better itemization are now going to be screaming bloody murder.”

I disagree with the phrases “buff is exceptionally good”, “only problem”, and….well, hell, I disagree with her.  I really don’t know any Priests that I game with or interact with in the blog/twitter communities that were against the original set bonus.  If anything, those that were on the fence about the bonus were quick fans once they actually acquired the bonus.  This news of “4-piece hatred” came out of nowhere, as far as I’m concerned. 

Then again, I’m just one person.  It looks like I’ll be going the route of dropped loot, crafted pieces, and off-set badge gear.  This particular Priest isn’t too thrilled about the change.

Other Thoughts:

Lilitharien from Divine Aegis

Bati from Holy Nova NOW!

Miss Medicina’s “To Bonus or Not to Bonus”

How do you feel about it? How does this affect your gearing strategy as you make your way through the content?

Email: elder.thespius@gmail.com | Twitter: @Thespius

 

It Came From the P.U.G.! Good Surprises.

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For those who might not know yet, my gluttony for abuse knows no bounds. As a result I find myself in a rather large number of P.U.G. groups. At the end of the day I bring you, my readers, the stories of my travels in the random grouping of Azerothian adventure in It Came From The P.U.G.!

Last night something awesome happened, something I completely didn’t expect. I’ve never been an achievement monger. I’ve never gone out of the way to try to get them and as a result I’m missing just a few from getting my Red Protodrake. I queued up for my daily random and waltzed into Azjol-Nerub. Oddly enough the LFD system had queued up multiple healers for one group. A quick laugh and a decision of who was going to DPS and who was going to heal and we were on our way. We blow through the first boss and make our way down to the second boss when the druid of the group doesn’t even ask if I need the achievement for Hadonox (which I did), but just goes for it anyways. We complete Hadronox Denied and my achievement pops up. I say thank you and the druid makes a comment about how he saw I needed it so he just went for it.

That right there absolutely floored me. I didn’t ask for the achievement, I didn’t have to beg or cajole. The just did it because they saw I needed it and wanted to help. The entire group was excited I got the achievement and we came together at that moment, five complete strangers. Moments like that truly show off how amazing the community of gamers can be!

This is also the same way I earned the Less-rabi achievement. Someone just saw I needed it and went for it making sure to hit each interrupt.

With all the horror stories in pick up groups (my own tales included!) it is often times hard to keep sight on the good that you come across. Those times where something honestly nice and unexpected happens. This past week has been very cool on that front each night for my dailies.

Two nights ago my queue found me in Oculus. Two of the party members just freshly dinged 80 and happened to find their way into my group. One of the members was complaining about carrying fresh 80s and I piped up. It was actually really fun, and watching a fresh 80 warrior tank and a fresh 80 warlock having a blast in an instance most people hate was refreshing. They both got some good upgrades and the run was fast and smooth. We spent the entire time just talking and having a blast. It was just a fun healthy run. And at the end of the day that is why we play the game right? To have fun. Most of my runs this week have been like that. Lots of conversation, friendly and enjoyable. I’m very pleased by this and hope I get to see this more often. No one telling someone they hate them or how they fail at life, but rather just getting along and having a good time together.

So what about you? How have your P.U.G.s been this week? Anything fun or exciting happen? Any good news from the LFD system?

That is it for today, until next time Happy Healing!

Advice on Blogging Safely Without Fear of a Gkick

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I sensed a disturbance in the force. As if millions of unsatisfied WoW bloggers cried out in terror before being silenced.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t as dramatic but I wanted to offer up some advice to both bloggers and guildmasters about guild stuff that gets blogged. I’ve been on both sides of the coin and I’d gladly share my experiences with those that are a little nervous about coming out to their guild that they’re a closet blogger.

So in this post, I want to expand on a few aspects of blogging about your guild.

  • What spawned this post
  • The guild master’s perspective on the blogger
  • The blogger’s perspective versus the guild
  • Why blogging is good for the application
  • The negative side effects
  • My personal limits
  • How to “out” yourself

A quick background

There was a question on Twitter asked a few nights ago regarding the revealing of your blog to your guild. It eventually turned into this post by anea. I responded that I had no problem with it and that I encouraged it. After a bit more reading and research, I came across a rather disappointing story of a blogger who got the boot over their blog Whoops, factual error. I misread. He didn’t actually get canned. He left of his own accord. Larisa detailed her own thoughts regarding the situation. The folks at Hots & Dots listed their stance on it too.

As a guild master

I go out of my way to remind the bloggers in my guild that they are free to write about whatever they wish, but have some tact. If it’s a problem with myself, a situation, conflicts, or policy issues, that it be brought up with myself or an officer first to see if it can be resolved. After that, they’re free to blog their experiences and what not free of reprisal. It’s not fair to me if I am told that there is no problem only to find out minutes later on their blog that they got treated poorly or had some really bad experience somewhere. It becomes even worse if it’s something that I could have fixed.

Again, I stress that I would never gkick anyone over their comments on their blog. I might be a little hurt but it comes with the territory. I’ll gladly remove players for attitude reasons or what not, but their blog is their territory. It is their personal haven for their thoughts. I don’t exactly pay these guys unless it’s in epics. I would never dream of with holding Holy Paladin loot for the Bossy Pally (especially now that she’s our only one).

Besides, have bloggers in your guild can be a positive thing. They’re ambassadors of your guild to the public and to potential applicants. Bloggers can offer an idea of what raiding or day-to-day guild life is like. This helps applicants reach a better conclusion on whether or not your guild is a good fit for them.

Note: I mentioned this in Anea’s post, but I am most likely the exception as opposed to the norm. Guild masters have take a variety of stances and perspectives when it comes to stuff like this. Some will embrace it and others will feel threatened by it. Not every person is willing to have guild business on the internet and will view it as a private and internal affair. I guess you could say I lead one of the rare few blogger-safe guilds in existence!

As a blogger

In previous guilds, I’ve been just a raider who blogged. So I definitely get that whole feeling of wariness and caution. But you know, I figured I didn’t have much to lose. I knew I was a fairly decent Priest and that raiding guilds love Priests. If I was going to get booted for having a published opinion, then I didn’t want to be in that guild anyway.

The trick though is to write without being utterly spiteful. Don’t come out with guns blazing when you face a problem. Write about it with a sense of style. Write it calmly. Write your drama posts as you would an objective news reporter: The facts. Add your opinion, your feelings, your thoughts afterward.

My blog has always been my personal outlet when I was frustrated with different aspects, proud of various achievements, or if I simply wanted to get my thoughts organized somewhere.

It can also act as a thermometer.

When you notice your blog starts to have more negative posts about your guild, it’s time to re-evaluate the guild you’re in. In the past, I’ve read blog posts centered around dissatisfaction with certain policies or actions. Then I think to myself, “Man, that player and that guild certainly did not make a good fit”.

The story of the bossy pally and how she conquered

I’m going to pick on the bossy pally here just because I’m her GM.

Ophelie was not the first blogger to apply to the guild. A while ago, there was a hunter by the name of Amava who applied. You may remember that hunter blogger from a long time ago. But I knew the name, I knew the blog, and I already made up my mind to pick him up. I only skimmed his application. If memory serves, he actually did list his blog in it. Amava has since retired from blogging and is now a social and casual player.

Now the bossy pally on the other hand, did not. She merely mentioned that she had a blog without listing her URL. When I saw that, my eyes narrowed, my knuckles cracked, and my brain turned full tilt.

Here was a supposed blogger who applied without listing their URL.

First, the thought on my mind was that came up was “Why?”.

Why would anyone withhold their blog URL and from me of all people?

Maybe they’re shy. Maybe they’re a little intimidated that what content they have on their blog isn’t good enough. Are they embarrassed? But why be embarrassed? There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Unless you have a terrible blog layout with really bad eye gouging colors and the inability to type properly, I’ll definitely give applicants that chance.

But, I will absolutely deny an applicant if I find their blog aesthetically vomit worthy. Comic Sans MS?! Fuchsia (I hope I spelled that color right)?! Really obnoxious ads that obscure everything?! Not in Matt’s guild!

Regardless, I was determined to find her blog. I’ll walk you through what I was thinking.

How does showcasing your blog help your application?

  • Demonstrates your knowledge: I want to know what you know. If it’s about raiding? Great. Class knowledge and posts? Perfect. Even if your blog has nothing to do with the game, I’ll still hunt it down anyway because it offers me an insight into your personality. I have this theory that when it comes to writing, people unconsciously imprint a part of their soul or essence into their work. It offers a glimmer or a window into what makes that person who they are. Thankfully, when I saw her blog, I was satisfied with what I saw. Here was a person who was young and new to the world of blogging but had a solid grasp of their class. Her blog layout? Passed with flying colors.

How might showcasing your blog work against you?

  • Content censorship: I think this is something that bloggers wrestle with internally. There is a political aspect to this. “If I write about this, will the leadership get mad? If they get mad, does that jeopardize my status in the guild?” Bloggers, especially those new to the guild or who aren’t as “established” in their organization tend to be a little cautious. No one wants to piss off their boss intentionally. No one wants to screw up their raid spot or have that epic drop accidentally mislooted. As a result, you’re not quite as free as you think you are because you’re subconsciously trying to put up a positive image of not rocking the boat.

Writing about guildies and my limits

Unless my guildies already blog, I’ll never list them by name. It’s more of a protective measure. Every day, I get various tells and emails and such. Most are positive and some aren’t. The last thing I want to have happen is for that sort of publicity spillover to the rest of my guild when that flak is undeserved and unnecessary. I’m a little paranoid about it, I’ll admit. It might be unjustified even so.

All the same, it allows me to blog about certain… finer, humorous moments in the guild without opening them up for exposure. I would never shy away from writing about the positive outcomes. At the same time, while I may be reluctant to write about the negative experiences, I won’t be afraid to dish that out either. If someone in the guild epically failed and took 18.63 seconds to shake of the Pact of the Darkfallen on Blood Queen, I’ll write about it but withhold their name. The primary purpose of the blog has always been to teach and to get you readers to think. Readers can learn from my successes. But they can just as easily learn from my failures. As long as someone out there is getting some kind of value from what they’re reading, then our job here is done.

Be careful about the dirty laundry you decide to air. It could very well come back and bite you in the ass.

Again, you have to remember to be tactful about how you come across. This is the internet. It’s a little difficult to convey tone. Saying “You moron!” like House is vastly different saying “You moron!” in a playfully, teasing manner.

Various ways  to “out” yourself

  • Forum post: Create a simple forum post announcing your blog’s URL and what it’s about. Solicit some advice and feedback about what they like, didn’t like, and what they’d want to read more about.
  • Stealth: Insert it in your forum signature. See how long it takes for people to notice.
  • Announce in guild chat: Maybe log on late or early when there’s a few people around. Subtly leak it to the players that are online. Say that you’re working on a little WoW project.
  • Scavenger hunt: Just say that you have a blog. Leave no URL. Leave no clues. Leave no other indications. Make them work for it and lose sleep until they find it.

So how has Ophelie turned out so far? In about 2-3 months, she’s come a long way. When she was first in the guild, she had a tough time speaking at all or saying hi. Now she actually speaks and has even taken the initiative to lead a 10 man.

Lastly, I’m not saying you have to out yourself. That’s your personal move. You shouldn’t be afraid to though.

Let this be a warning! No applicant’s blog will ever be safe from the super blog stalker! Of course, you could just also not say anything and I wouldn’t have a clue (unless I recognized your name like I did with Amava’s).

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Ugh, I’m losing my touch. I look at this post and it seems like I’m all over the place. I suppose that’s just blogger rust. The formatting looks weird! Where’s my coherency? Where’d my flow go? I’ve lost my blogging mojo! Sigh! But whatever, I want to get this post out.

Cataclysm Stat Changes: Yes!

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Between the removal of mp5 as a form of mana regeneration, many of the changes announced at Blizzcon have been explained in more detail by Eyonix.

The best change for me?

Raid buffs will no longer boost Spirit, so you shouldn’t find yourself unexpectedly over the Hit cap because of buffs.

If I read that right, does that mean no more Divine Spirit for Priests? If so, we’ll hopefully get another ability to compensate.

More importantly? A 33% reduction in candles used! Hooray!

More health

Anyway, there’s a lot of reading to do in between the lines. For example, if you check out the second post about changes to existing gear? You’ll notice there are some common qualities among the various roles:

If you are a melee DPS class, druid tank, or hunter, expect to see:

  • A lot more Stamina. Bear-form Stamina scaling will be lowered as a result.
  • Strength if you wear plate. Agility if you wear mail or leather.
  • Existing Attack Power becomes Agility and Stamina.Armor Penetration becomes Haste or Crit.
  • No Intellect on melee gear. Hunters won’t need Intellect since they will no longer use mana. Shaman and Retribution paladins will get mana and spell damage in other ways.

If you are a DPS caster, expect to see:

  • A lot more Stamina.
  • All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
  • No Spirit. You won’t miss Spirit, though, because you won’t need it for DPS or mana regen.

If you are a healer, expect to see:

  • A lot more Stamina.
  • All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
  • Spirit instead of MP5. You’ll probably be happy with Spirit, though, because mana regen is going to matter more than it does currently. Healing paladins and shaman will benefit more from Spirit than they do currently.

This is Blizzard’s way of increasing the challenge of healing without having to resort to having stuff hit way harder and relying solely on reaction time. I did triage healing before during Vanilla, and it was quite the experience (it’s also something I want to write more about later on).

But notice how everyone is getting a lot more stamina. Health pool gaps between plate and other armor wearing classes are being narrowed. For healing, this removes a strategic component. An example is that on a fight like Blood Queen, if a Priest, a Mage, and a Paladin have the Pact of the Dark Fallen debuff, the Priest and the Mage would typically be prioritized first. Their gear doesn’t have as much stamina as the Paladin does. Since all classes will have similar amounts of health, we don’t have to spend that split second to prioritize the cloth wearers first.

I’m fairly certain that our healing spells won’t be scaling as high. We won’t be seeing as much players with full health in raid fights. Healing will revolve much more around priority, priority, and priority (more on that later).

Spell Power on weapons

One exception is that caster weapons will still have Spell Power. This allows us to make weapons proportionately more powerful for casters in the same way they are for melee classes.

I love that change.

Questions to ask

  • Is Divine Spirit actually going to be removed or is it just the spirit component of the various stat increasing raid buffs?
  • What happens to Inner Fire? Does it simply provide a boost to Intellect with Spell Power being removed?

Cross Guild Training and Experience

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First of all, a well played hockey game by team USA and team Canada. I had a sinking feeling in my heart before the puck dropped that this would not be an ordinary game and it wouldn’t be quite the clean sweep as I hoped it would be. When we scored those two goals, the pub I was at erupted into a huge roar of cheers, high fives and back slaps.

When that tying goal was scored with 24 seconds left, I guarantee you the entire country skipped a heartbeat. What an absolutely thrilling game though.

Team USA has nothing to be upset about. They beat the Canadians last week and came close to doing so again during the gold medal game. I truly expect that their generation of players will evolve into a dominating force in the next world competition (by Sochi).

The Holland (Heineken) House had massive lineups during the Friday game. That game didn’t start until 630, but the place was full and had lineups starting at 230 that afternoon. Of course, if you were the bearer of a Netherlands passport, you could bypass the line and enter in for free (resulting in someone else getting kicked out).

I had a friend who works at the games downtown, and he told me that there were lineups at pubs and bars at 8 AM. Either they were full early or they weren’t quite open yet. It was difficult to tell which pubs were already full and which ones were yet to open. Today was the first time in my whole life where I thought the city of Vancouver could actually run out of alcohol.

That same friend got a picture with Cheryl Bernard. Lucky guy.

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Alright, down to business. When I got home from the various celebrations, it was fairly late. The 10 man guild ICC run was already well underway and I had no desire to flex the GM muscle to get myself a spot. The healers in there wanted to get some extra time working on some of the progression bosses in there for 25 anyway.

In any event, I was asked by a player in a different guild if I was interested in healing a 10 man Icecrown for them.

On heroic mode.

Naturally my interest was piqued. I hadn’t gotten to Lich King 10 yet at all so even getting a look at some of the new boss abilities first hand alone would be beneficial. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to check it out and get my cooldown for the week used.

“How do you want to handle loot?”

“I’ll take whatever your guys don’t need. As far as I’m concerned, I’m a guest and I’ll be satisfied with badges and taking notes.”

Compelling reasons to cross train with a different guild

Existing player chemistry. It’s not quite the same as pugging as you’re raiding with a different organized group of players. Most pickup groups don’t have that level of precision or familiarity with players. The night before, I jumped into a pug Freya 10 man hard mode (Knock, Knock, Knock on Wood) and while the players in both that group and the ICC 10 man group were of roughly even quality, it was the chemistry that was notable. These guys had played with each other for a long time and all of a sudden, I became the new guy in their group who had a short time to pick up on their methods.

Quality. Generally speaking, raider quality is above average. But that varies greatly from guild to guild. It’s different running with an already established guild on the server compared to running with a guild that was formed two weeks ago. Only you can be the judge of that. At least you can rest assured that players won’t flake out after the first four bosses in ICC are dead (Usually).

Fresh perspectives. I can tell you that watching videos, reading strategies, and whispering people for ideas doesn’t always work. There are communication barriers, misunderstandings, and the like. When that happens, the next best thing is to simply witness how it is done first hand. For me, that’s when things often click and a light bulb goes off.

Obviously, it’s way more ideal to keep raiding with your own crew. Sometimes it isn’t always possible. Gold medal games and closing ceremonies get in the way. Sadly, the only way to get known is to camp trade and join any groups at first opportunity. I usually do this if I know I won’t be around during a scheduled run. At the end of a successful run, I’ll usually exchange contacts with the leader of the group in case we need each other again. If the run wasn’t so successful, then at least I know who not to go with the next time I’m prowling trade chat. I’ve amassed quite a few contacts this way and it helps build up the networking.

After the night was over, I scored myself a nice set of kills and achievements. The hard modes that I thought were hard were challenging, but not quite beyond reach as I had first imagined.

Or maybe I simply just got carried.