To All New Guilds Entering Hyjal

Welcome to hell.

If you ever by some miraculous chance get to Archimonde, please check to make sure you have your tears. Every time you enter the instance when you die, check to make sure you have your tears.

Seriously.

Or else I will tear your head off if you are in my raid.

That’s already happened tonight.

Twice.

I am quite angry.

Our raid leader of all people Blori, forgot to check his tears and got cratered on the subsequent attempt.

Michael, one of our Elemental Shamans, didn’t have his tears either at that point.

But in his case, it was expected.

I hate you Hyjal.

I hate you very much.

Going Priestly in Patch 2.4: Things Adam Holisky of WoW Insider Forgot to Mention

priest-forgot 
Photo courtesy of Carey Tilden

A couple of days ago, WoW Insider had a quick summary article on Priests and what they can look to expect in 2.4. Although Adam Holisky was able to nail some of updates that were made to the Priests, there were a few things that he might have glazed over. But don’t worry! Matticu^ will save the day!

The Technical

  • The amount of players that can be Mass Dispelled has dOubled. Unfortunately, I don’t believe the radius has improved in size any. At least during phase 2 of the Zul’Jin fight, you’ll only need one Priest to Mass Dispel now.
  • Power Infusion: Perhaps this is the one change that could very well fly under the radar. Discipline Priests are still considered a rarity in raids. Unfortunately, it can’t be stacked with other haste-like effects (IE, Heroism) but with the proper coordination, I do think it can be chained one after the other for longer periods of heavy fire power. Is it possible to PI a mage, then pop Heroism, then blow Icy Veins or some such? To my Knowledge, there are no drawbacks or debuffs. Lucky mage that would be, I think.
  • Silent Resolve: Nice. It now affects more spells. Too bad most Priests I know don’t spec into Silent Resolve. Why? Because real PvE Priests know how to manage their aggro. If you’re PvPing, I totally understand.
  • Kirk broke this news first courtesy of an email he received. Now I may be Asian but my math skills are T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E. He’s calculated that with the rigt talent points in the Disc tree (namely, Enlightenment) there is a potential for 33% mana regen to continue in combat.
  • I notice I don’t have to drink as often during raids. Before, I topped out at around 296 MP5 while casting with consumables. Now I hit about 340ish with full ‘onsumables.

The Gearical

  • When (and I do mean when, because I know everyone’s going to want to hit exalted) you manage to grind your way up, there’s a nice neck piece just waiting for you. It’s the Shattered Sun Pendant of Restoration. It goes for a c0ol 23g. The only stats it has is Stamina. So you don’t get Int or Spirit. It’s also got some healing on it. For some reason, I smell Holy PaladiN trinket, but I could be wrong. Anyway, it has a chance on heal to proc a different effect depending on whether you are Ald0r or Scryer. The Aldor proc is known as Light’s Salvation which increases healing done by 220 over 10 seconds. The Scryer proc is known as Arcane Surge which instantly heals a target for 618 – 682 (Source comments: WoWDB, WoWHead, WoWWiki). This item is listed as level 115 which is supposed to be on par with Shining Chain of the Afterworld. I’m going to assume that there is a hidden coldown of some sort, but I have yet to find out what it is. I won’t be replacing Lord Sanguinar’s Claim, that’s for sure.
  • Finally there is now a purchasable blue 1H for freshman 70 Priests to use. You won’t have to rely on the auction house to pick up the Essence Focuser. For a nominal fee of four daily quest rewards (43g), you can have K’iru’s Presage.
  • Vial of the Sunwell. Obtainable in Heroic Magisters Terrace. It’s got nice MP5 on it, and it’s a guaranteed 2000 heal every 2 minutes. I’m not too sure about this one, to be quite honest.
  • Start saving up or pumping out Primal Mooncloth. You’ll need it for both the Robe of Eternal Light and Hands of Eternal Light. They require 20 Primal Mooncloh and 18 Primal Mooncloth respectively in order to craft. The items are bind on pickup. Sweet deal for the lucky Sunwell Raiders.

The Face Melters

  • With the changes made to haste, I think Shadow Priests are going to take a good hard look at that as a stat to invest in since it alters global cooldowns. Hey! Shadow Priests! Is haste changes good or bad? Educate me so I can educate everyone else! I don’t have an idea!

No doubt I’ll have forgotten a few important other important things. Suffice it to say, this latest patch does have a few things all of us varsity Priests or otherwise can look forward to. Any other substantial, earth shattering changes that raiding Holy Priests might stand to be aware of?

SRETCARAHCNEETHGIETSOPEHTNITIDIHI?ELZZUPEHTEVLOSUNAC

2.4 Quick Hits

Here’s a few of my initial thoughts and impressions:

  • Omen: I like the way it looks, but I can’t seem to get it to function for me. Maybe it’s because I’m a healer. But I don’t get any bars of any sort.
  • WoWAce Updater makes my life easier for dealing with addons
  • Sunwell Island is an absolute mess. It’s amazing that my server’s hit 50%. Wait, is that part timed or is it just the unlocking of the last 3 raid bosses?
  • The quickest way to Mt Hyjal is to go to the World’s End Tavern in Lower City and talk to Zephyr who teleports you there directly. Although I do believe a certain amount of rep is required.
  • The badge vendor is available during phase 3, from what I heard.
  • Chat window appears to be buggy. No matter how many times I try, Guild Chat does not stay in one window. It appears in two. So does /say, /party and all the others. I tried disabling Prat but that seems to do nothing.
  • Need help with the new daily quests? Look no further than Siha’s guides.
  • Having an extra tier token drop is really nice.
  • 10 gold per boss kill is nice.
  • As are the 2 badges per boss. All of a sudden, getting 150 badges doesn’t seem so difficult anymore.
  • Primal Nether is going at a rate between 60 – 90 gold and there are no vortexes on the auction house as of yet.
  • There are always people who don’t read patch notes and resort to asking in trade, general, or guild chat incessantly about things that are blatantly stated in patch notes. I want to shoot these people.
  • Magister’s Terrace appears to be the first anti-Paladin tank instance.
  • My Ret Paladin got some decent upgrades without having to do anything.
  • Going to set up a Pickup Group for Mag’s Lair on Saturday consisting of mostly Guildies and their alts. Hopefully we can one shot "Bagtheridon".
  • Recount keeps asking me if I want to reset data every time I enter a new area.
  • Came quite close to lashing out at a Guild mate. A friend said in Guild Chat that "raiding on patch days are a pain". Somehow, that earlier Guildie took it as a sign that there wasn’t going to be a raid today and decides to AFK AV. He comes back and is dismayed to find that there is a raid and no one told him about it and proceeds to lash out at said friend because he seems to think it was their fault. I never had respect for the guy in the first place. His rank is that of a Backup Raider, not a starter. So he has no right to complain even if he doesn’t get.
  • I seem to have installed a new UI addon which has my name in yellow on the bottom left with yellow bars on a black background, and a black bar on the bottom right with an icon of a white sleepy alien-like thing. In the middle, I have another similarly striped black bar which has my name and functions as a targetting bracket. I don’t know what this addon is and it’s impeding my chat boxes. I can’t seem to right click or find the icon for it anywhere near the minimap and I have no idea what it’s called. Does anyone have an idea?

Now There’s a Real LFM Message

Matt’s note: Not WoW Related. Can mark as read.

I had just finished class and was on my way home. I’m waiting at one of the university bus loops and I see an ad taped to the glass pane on the bus shelter. I told a friend of mine to take a picture of it and send it to me later. You can’t say he hasn’t attracted interest though. It looks like he’s got at least 3 takers. I wonder if this method actually works.