Generic WoW

v3.1
Now this is more like it.

Priest T9 Healing 2P Bonus – Increases the healing done by your Prayer of Mending spell by 20%.
Priest T9 Healing 4P Bonus – Increases the shield from your Divine Aegis and the instant healing from your Empowered Renew by 10%.

The two piece bonus I will now dub the anti-nerf.  A very nice increase to PoH if taken out of context, a counter to the proposed spell power coefficient nerf to PoH in 3.2 if taken in context.

A great set bonus for both healing specs.

The four piece bonus is ho-hum.  I assume, “Increases the shield from your Divine Aegis” means DA will now shield for 30%+3%=33% of healing not 30%+10%=40% of healing.  The latter would be nice for Discipline.

A fairly useless set bonus for both healing specs.

I supposed the T8 4 piece set bonus of extra spell power after casting PW:S was an unexpected treat and far from the norm of set bonuses.

Gobble gobble.

Posted in Priest

v3.1

Well I finally did it.  I’ve been preparing for about six months and I finally took the plunge.  I tanked a PUG!

I’m currently raiding a couple of nights a week (mostly) and the rest of my time i’m mainly working on alts.  Moowall is my 72 warrior who I have been enjoying leveling as protection spec no end.  He has recently made it to Northrend for the finally push.  I had forgotten how much slower 70-80 is compared to the earlier levels, even with rested xp and heirloom shoulders…

Anyway I recently bought dual-spec and played a while as Arms.  It was fun for a change but a bit slower than prot (maybe I was doing it wrong).  Sure it killed things a little quicker, but there was more downtime eating/bandaging. I will definitely have to give it another run to DPS @ 80.

So I moved back to protection and smashing things really hard with a shield.  One of the beauties of prot is the sheer volume of stuns you output.  50% chance of stun on Revenge, Concussion blow every 30s, Shockwave every 15s.  Casters especially have it bad with Shield Bash and Spell Reflection making it extremely hard to get off more than a single spell, if any.

The other thing i’ve been enjoying about Moowall is being a jeweler.  Its easy to level and quite fun and every stack of Cobalt is like a Christmas present waiting to be opened.  Plus I make some reasonable money selling the by-products of leveling it (cut gems).

So was was grinding away driving a catapult around the beach in Borean Tundra blowing things up when LFG lights up a request for a tank for Utgarde Keep.  OMG! Hard core! Utgarde Keep!  I umm and ahh for about 3 seconds then think, “Fuck it!” and send a tell saying im interested.  Before I know it i’m getting a summon and trying to remember the stuff i’ve read about threat generation and pulling in instances.

You see I’ve never, ever tanked anything more complicated than a group quest.   So off we go.  I mark, because its easy to do and it instills confidence   I don’t have Heroic Throw yet so i’m pulling by charging.  Frost mage dies every second pull and almost dies once or twice more except for good healing and my keyboard frenzy.

Now I know what that ratter-tat-tat noice is in the background when I hear tanks on vent.  Its them mashing their key for Heroic Strike.  As some more famous tank said it sounds like a woodpecker attacking my keyboard.

We kill the final boss more easily than i expected.  I even managed to run out of Smashes and its all over faster than I remember.  I guess we had good DPS.   Threat didn’t seem to be an issue at any stage although I only know because other than the trigger happy frost happy mage no one pulled agro.  I know he got agro as he was casting Frostbolt before I pulled a few times.

I had Omen up but never saw it.  I was spamming everything, but especially Thunder Clap and Shockwave to try and generate Aoe threat.  I guess it was working because towards the end the DPS were feeling comfortable enough to start doing AoE after a couple of single target casts.  I must read-up on how-to-tank again, now it might actually happen.

The scariest bit?  The second boss when I say, “ok we’ll burn the mage then the warrior, ok?” and the healer goes, “whatever you say, you’re the tank”.  I almost ran screaming from the keyboard right then and there… OMG i’m the tank!

Posted in Jewelcrafting, Warrior

v3.1

This post has been rolling around in the back of my head for a while and has really crystallised the recently with regular raiding in Ulduar.

As long time readers know i’m a big fan of Discipline spec priests and I have been blogging about them a lot in the last six months.  Conversely I have only recently started raiding as Holy spec. I had put off writing this post for a while as I was hoping it was a case of ‘oh shiny’ rather than a longer term trend, but here goes.

Holy priests are more effective than Discipline priests in Ulduar.

I have to clarify this a bit.  I mean in Ulduar 25 I find myself to be far more effective in Holy spec than in Discipline spec.  In most fights having another Holy spec priest is more useful than having even one Discipline priest.

This is nothing to do with, “L2P Disc you noob” or similar as I am quite experienced with Discipline.  I’ve been raiding regular as Disc since just after the start of Wrath. If anything I am inexperienced with Holy priest.

There are a number of key ability match-ups that really make a difference between Discipline and Holy in 25 man raids:

Circle of Healing > Prayer of Healing

In most of the Ulduar fights, both bosses and trash, there is a lot of AoE damage. Sure you can group melee together and other tactics to help reduce the difference, but it still doesn’t close the gap.  Discipline can cast a fast PoH on a group and they do reduce raid damage by 3%, but its just not in the same league as a quick CoH + Serendipitous PoH.

Glyphed Guardian Spirit > Pain Suppression

This was a surprising match-up for me coming from Discipline.  Glyphed Guardian Spirit is significantly more useful than Pain Suppression.  Cast pretty much on cool down it helps Holy keep up with Discipline single target healing.  It is excellent insurance during any situation where one of the tanks is getting hammered, and because its available every 60 seconds it moves from being purely a ’save’ to a spell cast as a normal part of the healing ‘rotation’.

Penance and Power Word: Shield are awesome spells, but they only effect a single target per cast. You can argue (and I have previously) that Discipline are better single target healers, but they are not special enough in this field to out weight their disadvantages in dealing with heavy AoE damage.

Rarely is a Disc+Holy priest significantly more effective at keeping the tank alive than a dual Holy priest combination.

I find myself specing like this:

• Razorscale – Disc
• XT-002 – Disc
• Ignis – Disc
• IC – either
• Kologarn – Holy
• umm, the rest – Holy.  All the keeprrs have significant AoE damage in their fights as does Auriaya.

Ulduar 10 does not display the same split in effectiveness in my experience and I find both specs about as effective.  Partially this is because the heavy AoE is concentrated in only two groups, instead of five, and the quantity of it is slightly less.

This is my opinion and arguable, but it was something unexpected to me coming from a heavy Discipline bias.

What do you think?

Posted in Priest

Breaking news is that as of version 3.4 users will no longer have to manually quest.  The current questing system will be replaced by the following process:

1. User navigates to a yellow exclamation mark on the map and accepts the quest from the quest giver
2. User then optionally completes quest as currently implemented or clicks the “Begin quest” button associated with the quest
3. Clicking Begin Quest displays a hour glass timer for a period of time, variable by quest, after which the user is prompted with the quest completion dialog to receive their reward.

Quest mobs will be randomly, instantly slain in the appropriate area and quest items previously requiring collection will random spawn and de-spawn.

WoW developers are on the record as having said, “this questing thing is just too challenging so we wanted to make it easier for the casual player”.

…

…

…

Yes its a joke post, but this isn’t.

Gobble gobble.

Posted in Blogging

Breaking news is that as of version 3.4 users will no longer have to manually quest.  The current questing system will be replaced by the following process:

1. User navigates to a yellow exclamation mark on the map and accepts the quest from the quest giver
2. User then optionally completes quest as currently implemented or clicks the “Begin quest” button associated with the quest
3. Clicking Begin Quest displays a hour glass timer for a period of time, variable by quest, after which the user is prompted with the quest completion dialog to receive their reward.

Quest mobs will be randomly, instantly slain in the appropriate area and quest items previously requiring collection will random spawn and de-spawn.

WoW developers are on the record as having said, “this questing thing is just too challenging so we wanted to make it easier for the casual player”.

…

…

…

Yes its a joke post, but this isn’t.

Gobble gobble.

Posted in Blogging

v3.1

Like many of my posts this started of as a bit of research for my own interest and it just kinda grew into a blog post by itself.  I was wondering just what might be possible in 3.2 regarding gearing and how fast you could get raid-ready ™ using the altered emblem system in 3.2.  So here goes…

First of all a caveat.  I’m assuming that you can buy any of the current token gear using tokens gained from any of the current sources. i.e. the tokens that drop in heroics will be usable to buy the T8.5 gear.  I’m, also assuming that the token prices of this gear will remain the same.

• Conqueror’s Cowl of Sanctification (Crown of the Wayward Conqueror token – Head – 58 EoC)
• Frozen Tear of Elune (Neck – 19 EoC)
• Conqueror’s Robe of Sanctification (Breastplate of the Wayward Conqueror – Chest – 58 EoC)
• Sash of Potent Incantations (Waist – 28 EoC)
• Legwraps of the Master Conjurer (Legs – 39 EoC)
• Touch of the Occult (Hands – 28 EoC)

• Band of Channeled Magic (Finger – 25 EoV)
• Renewal of Life (Finger – 25 EoV)
• Cuffs of the Shadow Ascendant (Wrists – 60 EoV)
• Cloak of Kea Feathers (Back – 25 EoV)
• Valorous Shoulderpads of Faith (Mantle of the Lost Conqueror – Shoulders – 60 EoV)
• Slippers of the Holy Light (Feet – 40 EoV)

• The Egg of Mortal Essence (Trinket – 40 EoH)

Total 465 Emblems.  That’s a lot of bosses.  Of course you’ll get some gear for these slots while your getting the emblems, but that’s still a lot of emblems.   About 110 heroics or 30 Naxxramas clears in fact.

Note that you can’t buy weapons (other than BoA ones) or wands with emblems so far and there is also only one trinket listed.

Assuming you enchant and gem this appropriately then this will set you up to be well geared for Ulduar and probably ready for the new tier 9 raid instance.

For another take on this check out the Greedy Goblin, ThinkTank and Critical QQ.

Posted in Priest

v3.1

More on my current ‘project’, the proposed changes to gear tokens in 3.2.  Previously, after first learning of the change I wrote my knee jerk reaction to them.  My reaction was quite similar to a number of others if you read the comments in the wow.com link.

This change is pretty significant.  The first thing I noticed when coming to WoW is how gear-centric it is.  A large chunk of the game is all about getting better loot for whatever reason.  So any significant change to gearing concepts is going to have ramifications and attract the interest of many players.

Now i’ve had a bit more thought about it, and read a large number of other peoples opinions on it I thought I might write about it.

Firsly let me say I have no issue with other people having good gear.  I never see another player and have thoughts like, “that bastard doesn’t deserve that because…” Good gear for all I say!   However where it does effect me is my incentive to play.

Why am I playing WoW?  I enjoy the challenge of hard content, I like playing with friends and I like ‘advancing my toons’ along the journey towards the ultimate end point of WoW (whatever that may be).  Part of the journey is accumulating good gear to allow me to … what?  Get even better gear?  Get achievements? Continue raiding with friends?  So the question for is, is there still an incentive for me to raid for a some gear (less than before but still some (a lot?)) and achievements?

Some ideas/thoughts about this change:

• Reduces difficulty for anyone to raid at top tier as they can easily get some top tier gear.
• Reduces incentive to raid, even at the top tier, except for those interested in achievements.  i.e. gear incentive partially removed.
• The mere rumour of this change is causing issues within some raiding guilds as players start to divide along “I mainly raid for gear” and “I mainly raid for achievements” lines (I know many also raid for “the fun of it”, no change there).
• This change will give more players the gear to raid in the higher tier content.  It will not grant them the skill/experience to do so.  Despite its nerfs, Ulduar is harder than Naxx (so far).
• Many play to have fun and one way they have fun is by excelling at something.  Part of this excelling at something is having both the skill and the tools to do something well.  What happens when you level the playing field for gear?
• Does this emblems change significantly level the playing field?  There is only so much tier gear you can buy with emblems. (I can feel a, “How to gear your 80 with emblems” post coming on.)
• Is raiding with a reduced gear incentive like doing a RL job you enjoy but for little pay?  Probably not.
• I’ve put significant time into other games (e.g. Guildwars) where gear has very little effect on you ability to fulfil your role. In that game I did high end content for personal satisfaction and to play with friends.  So is the issue the change itself?  Am I resisting this change because its natural to resist change?
• If gear becomes less important why would I bother running heroics for emblems?  I’ve seen them all and ‘beaten’ them all.  I suppose I could go for the achievements.  Will this change become self defeating from the point-of-view of getting more people into heroics?
• Is there even a problem with getting enough players into heroics?  The must be if Blizzard says so I guess.  I’ve never really had an issue getting into them.
• Will epics you can purchase with tokens become socially less acceptable than epics won by good honest raiding?

Part of me is disappointed by the change.  Probably because there is a part of my toons identity which will die with this change.  Turkelife is a tier 8 geared toon.  She’s not some fresh 80 who just got off the quest train (<insert elitist sneer here>).  Her gear proclaims her as having done stuff, it has a kind of history or significance to it, to those that look at it.  I guess this must be similar to how some of the tier 6 raiders must have felt just about the time the started raiding in Wrath.  All the hundreds of hours of play time and skil l which was expressed in their tier 6 gear was about to be erased and forgotten by ‘the server’.  Hmm, I guess I’ll survive, but it will take a bit for the pain to fade.

So, on rethink, i’m ok with this change.   It is a significant change to the game, but experience tells me its not actually the end of the world. WoW where gear is less important, is still going to be worth playing.

Gobble gobble.

Edit: Honor’ Code has a similar thought process going on.

Posted in Blogging

v3.1

So I was reading the news on wow.com about patch 3.2 and thinking the new Crusaders’ Coliseum sounds interesting, although probably like a big Violet Hold, and has 5 , 10 and 25 man versions in both normal and heroic and stuff.  There’s a small fiddling to mana regen, mainly a small nerf to Replenishment, which probably won’t have much impact and there are some interesting changes to block value .  If the changes are as stated block based attacks such as Shield Slam are going to be insane.  I’m sure the first Shield Slam post patch will be pure pleasure.  But then there was the token changes.  They rocked my world (or at least hit my hot buttons).

From wow.com:

• Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.
• Both the 10 and 25 player instances of the Crusaders’ Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.
• The heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.

Does this strike anyone else as a bit over the top?  My first thought was that I could run a week of daily heroics and pick up my tier 8.5 head or chest.  A second week and that’s 2 piece T8.5.  Does this strike anyone else as a bit, ummm easy?!?

I don’t think this change has been given very thorough consideration.  The aim was to make heroics a bit more desirable for those that are over geared and it certainly has done that.  I can see pretty much any epic geared player facerolling their way through heroics like Nexus in 45 minutes and picking up more tokens than in a normal nights raiding.

In the process this will make tier 7, 7.5 and 8 gear pretty much irrelevant, rather than a stepping stone to T8.5.  Why bother purchasing these lower tiers (I realise you can’t buy T8 ATM) when you can go straight to T8.5?   This will probably flow on to the earlier raids.  Other than achievements or tourism value, why run Naxxramas or Vault of Acheron?  This will demote these raids to the status of the Burning Crusade raids where people just go for achievements or shits-and-giggles.

If this makes it live as it is will basically turn raids into arenas for seeking achievements and remove a significant incentive to raid for gear.  There will still be some good gear in there but there is a big part of the gear side of the raiding incentive removed.

I would have thought a conversion system would have worked a lot better.  Perhaps something like 5 EoH for 1 EoV, 5 EoV for 1 EoC,  etc.  Or even 3 for 1 or 10 for 1.

Or even standardise on EoH and increase the number of them dropped in higher end content and the number required to buy high end gear.  Kinda like an non-linear alternative currency.  Maybe they are going to do that? I.e. standardise on EoC and increase both the drop rate in high end raids and the cost of high end gear.

For me personally the only upside i’m seeing ATM is there will be a lot more raid geared people available for 25 man raiding.  Players will be half T8.5 geared before they even set foot in Ulduar any raid.  More geared raiders in to pool doesn’t of course mean more capable raiders in the pool…

This was written as a knee jerk reaction to reading about the change.  Perhaps i’ve missed something?  Am I completely wrong?

I hope so.

Posted in Blogging

v3.1

So I was reading the news on wow.com about patch 3.2 and thinking the new Crusaders’ Coliseum sounds interesting, although probably like a big Violet Hold, and has 5 , 10 and 25 man versions in both normal and heroic and stuff.  There’s a small fiddling to mana regen, mainly a small nerf to Replenishment, which probably won’t have much impact and there are some interesting changes to block value .  If the changes are as stated block based attacks such as Shield Slam are going to be insane.  I’m sure the first Shield Slam post patch will be pure pleasure.  But then there was the token changes.  They rocked my world (or at least hit my hot buttons).

From wow.com:

• Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.
• Both the 10 and 25 player instances of the Crusaders’ Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.
• The heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.

Does this strike anyone else as a bit over the top?  My first thought was that I could run a week of daily heroics and pick up my tier 8.5 head or chest.  A second week and that’s 2 piece T8.5.  Does this strike anyone else as a bit, ummm easy?!?

I don’t think this change has been given very thorough consideration.  The aim was to make heroics a bit more desirable for those that are over geared and it certainly has done that.  I can see pretty much any epic geared player facerolling their way through heroics like Nexus in 45 minutes and picking up more tokens than in a normal nights raiding.

In the process this will make tier 7, 7.5 and 8 gear pretty much irrelevant, rather than a stepping stone to T8.5.  Why bother purchasing these lower tiers (I realise you can’t buy T8 ATM) when you can go straight to T8.5?   This will probably flow on to the earlier raids.  Other than achievements or tourism value, why run Naxxramas or Vault of Acheron?  This will demote these raids to the status of the Burning Crusade raids where people just go for achievements or shits-and-giggles.

If this makes it live as it is will basically turn raids into arenas for seeking achievements and remove a significant incentive to raid for gear.  There will still be some good gear in there but there is a big part of the gear side of the raiding incentive removed.

I would have thought a conversion system would have worked a lot better.  Perhaps something like 5 EoH for 1 EoV, 5 EoV for 1 EoC,  etc.  Or even 3 for 1 or 10 for 1.

Or even standardise on EoH and increase the number of them dropped in higher end content and the number required to buy high end gear.  Kinda like an non-linear alternative currency.  Maybe they are going to do that? I.e. standardise on EoC and increase both the drop rate in high end raids and the cost of high end gear.

For me personally the only upside i’m seeing ATM is there will be a lot more raid geared people available for 25 man raiding.  Players will be half T8.5 geared before they even set foot in Ulduar any raid.  More geared raiders in to pool doesn’t of course mean more capable raiders in the pool…

This was written as a knee jerk reaction to reading about the change.  Perhaps i’ve missed something?  Am I completely wrong?

I hope so.

Posted in Blogging

v3.1

I’ve noticed a few people searching for stuff about tier 8 bonuses and ending up at my blog, so ever aiming to please I present you this. /emote does a drum roll

Discipline priests really got the good loving when it came to tier 8 gear set bonuses.  Although both flavours of healing priests get some use out of the +10% critical for Prayer of Healing the 4 piece bonus is very favourable to discipline priests.

For reference here are the set bonuses:

• 2 piece – Increases the critical heal chance of your Prayer of Healing by 10%
• 4 piece – Casting Power Word: Shield also grants you 250 spell power for 5s.

The 2 piece bonus is quite hard to quantify and would have relatively small value. PoH use also varies quite a bit between players.  Due to the effect of Divine Aegis this small value will be slightly larger for discipline priests.  Pulling a number from the air i’d say the 2 piece bonus maybe equivalent to 5 MP5.  This is my gut feeling and i’d love someone to do the maths with some reasonable assumptions and prove me wrong.

The 4 piece bonus would have greater value, at least for discipline.  Using my previous stat weights the MP5 equivalence of this bonus is:

1. Bonus spell power X spell power stat weighting value = 250SP * 0.6 = 150 MP5
2. Requires 4 pieces to get it so 150MP5 / 4 pieces = 37.5 MP5 per piece
3. Pluck an uptime out of the air, say 70% (for discipline) and you discover the 4 piece bonus is worth 37.5 MP5 x 70% = 26.25 MP5.

A value of 26.5 MP5 is quite significant and if you look at my discipline gear list for 3.1 you will see that this pushes tier 8.5 pieces up to being clearly best-in-slot for any of their slots, except gloves, and pushes the tier 8 pieces up to the top four ranks for all slots.  So if your a discipline priest 4 piece tier 8 (or 8.5) gear is very valuable to you.

The story for holy priests is quite different.  In most circumstances casting Power Word: Shield is a poor use of the global cool down for them.  For holy priests the uptime is going to be more like 5% or less and therefore the 4 piece tier 8 bonus has very little value for them.

If you are using a more throughput based stat weighting then the value of the 4 piece bonus is going to be even more than that I’ve stated above.

So, in summary, if you are a discipline priest the 2 piece bonus is nice and the 4 piece is freakin’ awesome!  If your a holy priest the 2 piece bonus is also nice, but the 4 piece bonus is pretty useless.

The turkey has spoken.   Gobble gobble.

Posted in Priest