PvP Practices

Official 3.2 Patchnotes for Shamans

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Ok so yesterday I posted what the Devs were saying, but now they are officially up on the forums. Lets see what shamans have cooking for the patch and PTR

Shaman

  • A customizable totem bar will now be available for shaman allowing the storing of 4 different totems. These totems can be placed on the ground at once in one global cooldown for the combined mana cost of all 4 totems.
  • All Shocks now have a default range of 25 yards, up from 20 yards.
  • Base health increased by approximately 7% to correct for shamans having lower health than other classes.
  • Chain Heal: Jump distance increased to 10 yards. In addition, the amount of healing now decreases by 40% as it jumps to each new target, instead of 50%.
  • Ghost Wolf: Can now be learned at level 16. While in this form, snaring effects may not bring the shaman below base normal run speed.
  • Talents
    • Enhancement
      • Shamanistic Rage: Cooldown is now 1 minute, down from 2 minutes. Successful melee attacks now have a chance to generate mana equal to 15% of the shaman’s attack power, down from 30%.
    • Restoration
      • Ancestral Healing: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target’s armor.
      • Cure Poison and Cure Disease: Combined into a single spell, Cure Toxins.
      • Earth Shield: Dispel effects will now remove charges of Earth Shield rather than the entire aura.
      • Healing Way: Redesigned. Rather than providing a chance of increasing Healing Wave spells on a friendly target, this talent now innately increases the effectiveness of the shaman’s Healing Wave by 8/16/25%.
      • Mana Tide Totem: Totem health now equal to 10% of the shaman’s health.
      • Nature’s Guardian: Redesigned. Now has a fixed 100% proc rate, has a 30-second internal cooldown and increases the shaman’s maximum health by 3/6/9/12/15% for 10 seconds.
      • Nature’s Swiftness: Cooldown is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
      • Tidal Waves: No longer reduces the cast time of Lesser Healing Wave by 30%. It instead now provides +25% critical strike chance to Lesser Healing Wave, along with the previous 30% cast time benefit to Healing Wave.

Lodur’s thoughts:

Oh my! We knew about the totem bars, and we knew an increase in health was comming. 7% increase will be very nice for our survivability in PvE as well as PvP

Nature’s swiftness – We already knew about but it’s nice to see it in print

Ancestral Healing – Great googly moogly thats awesome. I have to say reducing incomming damage by 10% that’s just amazing! And it scales ridiculously well with content. I mean Disc priests used to only get 3% from grace.  This change has made me excited (I hope this one stays! think of this with chain heal!)

Cure Toxins: With us having Cleanse spirit this change is kindda meh for restoration Shamans, but really awesome for odd PvP specs.

Earth Shield: More of a PvP buff but still pretty slick.

Healing Way: This is very handy. The change to this talent will let you roll your Healing Wave around a bit and I’m certain more people will use it now as a result. Maybe not much more, but a bit.

Nature’s Guardian: Also more of a PvP fix, but I’ve seen some Shaman pick it up for progression fights, which isn’t a half bad idea. The change to it could see more use esepecially in hard mode fights with lots of raid wide damage.

Tidal Waves: A lot of Shaman I’ve been talking to haven’t taken a shinning to this one yet. Personally I think it’s a great thing. The extra crit will let you get Ancestral Healing out there and its a fast heal to begin with. I like this change.

Improved Water Shield: 30% change to be triggered by Chain Heal is nice. Not losing an orb is even better. There have been too many hectic fights where you forget or just can’t spare the GCD to toss Water Shield back up. This takes care of that and lets you keep it up a bit longer, which will help your overall mana regen.

Chain Heal: We new the increase in range as well as the lower number on the healing reduction, but seeing it there is a comfort for sure

I can’t wait to test these out!

*edit*

I forgot to mention the replenishment nerf.

Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target’s maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).

Also at the same time MP5 gear will be getting… more MP5

I do <3 me some MP5

Who wants to do some hard modes? What do you guys think so far?

I’ll update this post as needed, but until then, Happy Healing,

Sig

  • Improved Water Shield: This talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.

    • 10 Tips for the New Discipline Priest

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    Last week, I surveyed the Plus Heal forums (Priest regiment) for any quick advice they’d like to offer for any Priests that had just turned Discipline (like me). This is what they came up with:

    The Tips

    Remember the four Ps, and use them! Penance, Power Word: Shield, Pain Suppression, and Power Infusion.

    – Joveta

    It’s not your job to top the healing charts; you’re there to prevent crisis moments.

    – Wistoovern

    Play to your strengths; don’t be afraid to chain cast. If it’s truly warranted, you are at your strongest. Penance does not consume Borrowed Time yet still benefits from it

    – Arcady

    Your job is about damage mitigation, and speed healing.

    – Melchizedeck

    Power Word: Shield does so many things for you. If you’re not keeping that up consistently on your tank, you might be missing out on some emergency opportunities!

    – Kitts

    During fights that you know involve AoE damage, I’ve found it very helpful to use my spare time to toss PW:S on the DPS. They end up being protected if they get hit by something, and you really get to abuse Borrowed Time.

    – Juzaba

    As far as the AoE damage is concerned, I’ve found that PW:S on myself plus a Holy Nova followed immediately by a nice Prayer of Healing really did wonders for everyone’s health box.

    – Seriah

    You benefit more from MP5 than spirit. It goes against everything you have learned as a holy priest, but because you chain cast there is no chance to cheat the five second rule with Clearcasting (you don’t even get this) and Inner Focus.

    – Takka

    With the threat generation being made easier for tanks, any tank crying about the bubble should scare you and make you think twice about healing them in a group or raid.

    – Beanne

    You can also use Renew & PoM without consuming Borrowed Time, if you still want to save it for a Flash or Greater Heal.

    – dunia

    I turned Discipline for the weekend and had a lot of fun with it PvPing. It took me a while to get used to it at first, but I really freakin’ enjoyed it! I hope these tips from the more experienced Discipline Priests will benefit you as it did for me. I’ll definitely be tapping their minds in the future for more advice.

    Don’t forget to read more about Discipline healing from guest writer Seriah that went up earlier!

    Defending Your Faction Leaders with Guardian Spirit

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    Aylii pointed this out to me the other day. I thought it was hilarious. It was located in the Bug Report forum.

    We were trying to kill the faction leaders tonight, even though they are level 83 and we are 70 we managed to fight are way threw it.

    Anyway we were on the bloodelf faction leader and many horde priest were in the room non-flagged.
    When we got the boss low they would cast Guardian Spirit on the boss and pretty much he would get healed to full or half health. We brought his health down to 1% at least 4 times only having him be healed to full. It only takes 1 hit and trying to get 40 people to stop damage that quickly is tough. So after about 1hr 30min doing that we wiped out all the rest of the flagged horde left in the room and left.

    This should not be allowed to work on faction leaders. It is way overpowered and it’s impossible to kill them if the other faction’s priest cast this spell on the boss.

    I’m looking for a nurf to this spell on faction leaders only. Any blue want to comment?

    Source: Bug Report Forum (World of Warcraft)

    Price of Level 80 PvP Gear and Priestly PvP Goodness [Screenshots!]

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    Relatively slow day today. I’m busy hard at working trying to answer all of the wonderful questions I’ve received in regards to Priests, healing, roles, raiding, gear, mana regen and so forth. I will pack all of this information in an easy to consume format and also produce a TLDR version of it as well. The most anticipated blog post by Matt will arrive on Sunday. 😀

    For the mean time, I decided to take a break inside Strand of the Ancients (the new BG). Hopefully I can answer a few pre-emptive questions with some screenshots below.

    honor-80 bonus-honor

    The (tentative) price of Honor gear at level 80. Also displays my raid pimping goodness. As you can see, I’ve ran the 25 mans more than the 10s (Valor is the 25 badge vs the Heroism which is the 10s). Note the amount of honor on the second shot. I believe that takes into account bonus honor from BGs and me killing other players and healing and all that stuff. Also note my pro Killing Blowness. Megan ain’t got nothing on me!

     

    honor-door WoWScrnShot_100308_114719

    Top: Honor vendors are no longer instanced.

    Bottom: shows Horde armada offloading troops. Also shows a valiant Matticus attempting to hold off said invaders. With a Holy Fire.

    WoWScrnShot_100308_113635the-line-1 

    Top: Me sitting in a passenger seat attempting to overheal a mage because I’m a moron for not de-selecting and activating the auto-self cast. Bottom left health bar shows the health of the vehicle. Contains 3 seats (shown on the far right of the shot). Has 6 speaker setup, all terrain capabilities, GPS tracking, and sports 30 miles to the gallon. ABS needs some work. No iPod support.

    Bottom: Screenshot shows the gates being breached. We’re trying to stop the Horde offense from breaking in. We have to hold out for a minute.

    the-line-2 the-line-3

    My ancestor, King Matticidus once said the following:

    “Give them nothing! But take from them… everything!”

    And take from them we did. We held them to a draw. I suspect more honor would be gained if one side won both Offense and Defensive roles.

    Be a World of Warcraft God in 5 Steps

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    wow-god

    You’ve got the game. You’ve done the raids. You’ve finished the PVPing. For some reason, and you can’t quite place it, there’s still a hole within you. It feels as if though there is something missing. You were a hardcore gamer before. In Counter-Strike you’d consistently dominate with the AWP in your hand. In Warcraft 3, dominating the opposition was nearly effortless especially with multiple tournament wins and top place finishes.

    Not only that, you actually beat Tetris.

    You’ve mastered shooters. You’re renowned in RTS games. Now you’ve set your eye on the MMO world. How does one “conquer” World of Warcraft?

    Raid. Raid a lot.

    The best gear in the game can only be acquired by tackling the hardest bosses in raiding instances. Until you’ve taken down Illidan and Archie (and now Kil’Jaden), you’re just a small pup. Get the best gear you can possibly get!

    PvP Endlessly

    What good are all those shiny weapons going to do if you can’t actually use them? It’s one thing for your opponents to make a note of the firepower you’re packing. It’s something else entirely when you go up to them and cleave them in half. Furthermore, a strong push to the 2000+ rating is almost a must. Non-stop BGs and Arenas are your ticket to be the Unstoppable Force.

    Post often to forums

    Forum trolling is an acquired skill. Some people just grow up having the innate ability to cause an uproar. The point here is to make your presence known and felt. A real gaming God is not content with just be a one man wrecking crew. Their name has to be known in households worldwide. The only way to do that is with constant posting. Reply to other threads, answer other questions, or start some discussion of your own.

    Have insane amounts of gold

    Like it or not, the WoW economy is one of the central pillars that drive this game. Gold makes the world go round. Without money, you can’t buy the supplies you need. Yes, although WoW Gods don’t need trivial things, armor and weapons could use some buffing and shining every so often. Although some players would be willing to do it for free, the merchants in the cities need to make a living somehow.

    “Contribute” to Trade chat

    It’s not enough to own the forums. You have to own trade chat! Start making references to bad movies! Make fun of Canada! Go ahead and randomly insert support for some political candidate! Get people to react to you! I saw this one guy in trade chat who said that “heals can’t crit” and I observed in amused amazement as the entire channel went off in an uproar for a good 45 minutes citing every resource base in the game that “yes, heals can in fact crit”.