Generic WoW

This is all speculation, so take it all with a grain of salt, but these are some ideas that have popped into my head from time to time (usually when I should be going to sleep).

For me the defining change to game play for the new WoW expansion is how they change the damage/healing dynamic.  These ideas are all based on players having large health pools and spending more time with some health loss.  From what i’ve read about the expansion raid tanks with health pools around 250-300k will normal and non-tanks will have about 40-50k health.  There will also be less one-shot/two-shot spike damage.  So here are a few thoughts.

Guardian Spirit going to be very powerful. +40% to healing is going to be very powerful when healers are struggling to maintain health levels rather than fighting to top someone off.  It will allow healing teams to potentially run a tanks health pool down more than they normally would and then power heal during Guardian Spirit.  They will be doing this because healing per mana will be the defining healing relationship rather than the healing per second one that exists in Wrath.  +40% healing will be a big boost to healing per mana.

50% healing when GS triggers could be a 150k heal!  Letting tanks die for this huge heal could be a viable, although somewhat risky, strategy.  It would allow healers to take a break and regen some mana plus effectively deliver a heal with a huge healing per mana ratio.

Druids are going to be even more over powered.  Druids are already close to the most powerful healers in game.  The main reason they aren’t more OP is many of their HoT ticks land when the target is at full health.  If raiders spend lots of their time with less than 100% health then druids healing is going to increase significantly.

I suspect holy pallies will me similarly advantaged although it depends on what happens with mana regen.

Smart heals are going to be less useful.  They are awesome now as they heal those that are damaged and ignore those on full health.  If everyone is damaged then their usefulness is decreased.  I’m not saying they are going to be useless, but they are less advantaged than they are currently.

Discipline priests, from what i’ve seen to date, are going to be disadvantaged in such an environment.  Our heals are relatively small and our shields will be less useful when there is less spike damage.  I realise the game designers have said they want to give Disc priests options other than shield spamming, but i’m yet to see this in the changes made to date.  Sadly, if I even continue playing WoW post Cataclysm, I’ll almost certainly be moving from a priest main to my druid.

Anyway some ideas.  Feel free comment and tell me what you think.

Gobble gobble.

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v3.3.5

Me too!

Silly idea Blizzard.  I’m going to continue not using the forums.

Those outraged should consider the risk they take using websites such as Facebook, on which they expose real information about themselves by choice.

Official game forums are always a pointless place to post unless your really, really desperate IMHO. Perhaps if you need technical help or something they are useful, otherwise in-game strategy information and similar are much better hosted on a third-party website where there is no misplaced expectation that game makers will contribute to the conversation.

People seem to mistakenly think they are there for two-way communication between the game makers and their customers.  They are actually just a tool for giving the impression that the game makers/managers are in some way responsive to their customers.

Perhaps a bit harsh I know, but its my experience over the last twenty years of using them.

Gobble gobble.

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v3.3.5

Well I have to admit I haven’t been playing my  priest much of late.  The guild I was in for much of Wrath officially stopped raiding a couple of months back and it, combined with burn out, was a nice chance to try something different.  Enter the druid.

Firstly let me say trees healing is fun but quite over-powered.  Cat DPS is the best so far and more fun than Arms ‘proc-based’ DPS and Shadow’s DoT lead priority list.  Bear tanking is a dull as can be   After warrior tanking  the bears 1 button tanking in heroics (Swipe+Maul bound to my mouse wheel) is almost inane.

Anyway thats not why i’m posting.  A couple of interesting things I have learned recently while in the process of gearing my druid and I thought I might share them with you.

Gear Score really does suck!

Probably one of the worst new fashions in WoW to date.  As a priest in a stable raiding guild I was like “whatever” when people posted about GS before, but now i’m back to pugging, a lot, I hates it!

1) For example I sneak into an ICC25 run as cat dps and as we start pulling trash someone comments about the cat being the lowest GS in the raid.  Lowest as in i’m about 5.1k GS.  Not awesomely geared, but no a fresh 80 or anything.  I of course ignore it.   Anyway after the first few trash pulls I say in raid, “Cats not doing to bad DPS eh?”.  I’m about 4th DPS on Skada, although AoE DPS with Swipe isn’t exactly rocket science.

So what happens..?

Kick!

I whisper the raid leader asking why I got kicked.  To be honest I was about ready to punch him/her, but whatever.  They reply, “GS too low”.  I say “I was top 5 DPS!” and all they can reply is “Sorry”.  I mean really?!?

2) Another time someone is looking for a druid healer for ICC10 going for 6/12 and they want 5.3 GS minimum.  I whisper for an invite and link my Plague Wing achievement.  I have 5.1k GS at this point.  No dice. GS to low.  I reply, “Your loss” and do the daily.

About 45 minutes later, after i’ve done a couple of instances and the same person is still trying to get a healer (any type now).   I whisper and the conversation goes like this.

“I’m still here”

“Wut?”

“I’ll heal ICC10″

[pause]

“Sorry yur GS to low”

So the raid leader would rather waste lets say an hour of  nine peoples time for the sake of 200 GS?  That is just silly.

3) Last example.  ICC 10 pug.  Nice people half from a casual guild.  We do Festerface and Rotface before it gets too late, but two things stick in my mind.

One, the almost entirely item level 264 geared hunter, who was a lovely person, pulls 4k to 6k DPS on boss fights.  I bet her GS was about 5.7k.  It was almost bigger than her DPS!

Two, the 251/264 geared resto shaman I two healed with managed 38% of the healing compared to my 55% in my pitiful 5.1k GS outfit.

Tress are OP, but seriously, the worlds gone crazy.

Thats not even including the “LFM ICC10 doing 11/12 5.8 GS min” people.  If I had 5.8k GS, why would I be running ICC10?  Frost emblems for Primordial Saronites I guess?

ToGC is harder than ICC

Serious.  ICC with the 25% nerf is regularly pugged at least half way by a huge number of people.  I’ve been in two (of two) ToGC pugs recently that haven’t even killed Northrend Beasts.  Conversations regularly run like this.

Someone says, “Can I get might instead of wisdom”

Random, non-paladin replies, “Lets just go its only ToC”

I say “ToGC”

Random replies, “whatever”.

We wipe on beasts.  About 2 to 3 people die to Gormok’s flames.  Half the rest die within the first couple of breaths attacks by the worms. Two more attempts, one of which we make it to Icehowl and every single time he charges at elast one person gets hit.   Rinse, repeat, disband.

These are raids with 10+ nearly fully 264 geared players.  Sure there is a handful of undergeared players, but most are way over geared for the content.

Ruby Sanctum

*thumbs up*

Love the fights.  Not as hard as some of the heroic ICC, but it will be demoralising random pugs at least for some time yet.

Anyway hope all you priests out there are still having fun.

Gobble gobble.

Filed under: Druid, Priest

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