Let the Bodies Hit the Floor

General 4 comments.

Last night we must have fought the Headless Horseman some forty times within an hour.  Perhaps more — I lost count due to all of the characters that we rotated in and some had two summons as opposed to just the one.  While we saw The Horseman’s Blade twice and a handful of Hallowed Helms, there wasn’t a single Sinister Squashling nor The Horseman’s Reins.  Balaa — who coincidentally came up with the title for this post — was very disappointed.

Hopefully he’ll be more excited to learn that both the Hallowed Helm and Sinister Squashling can be acquired by Trick or Treating!

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Pimpin’ the UI: “Echoes of Doom” Edition

General, Raiding 6 comments.

Like many people, Patch 3.0.2 introduced a number of changes to my user interface.  Rather than completely overhaul everything, I instead chose to modify my existing UI, replacing those addons that no longer functioned with similar and updated ones.  The results are as follows:

• Bartender4 — This addon allows me to rearrange my bars at whim, including which are visible, what their sizes are, how many rows and columns I want, and even if they disappear during combat.
• Buffalo — I stumbled across this addon via Eye for an Eye in “New Hotness.”  These new buff and debuffs bars are wonderful, especially since I was having difficulty interacting with the default ones displayed with X-Perl.  It’s very customizable, which appealed to me a lot.
• Clique — I’d heard a lot about this addon and I’m starting to like it.  I’ve effectively reduced the number of bars visible in my user interface by binding a number of abilities and talents.  It’s especially helpful in reducing the amount of movement associated with clicking as a healer.
• eePanels2 — This is easily my favorite skinning addon.  It allows you to create customizable panels that can be skinned with different designs.  This allowed the grey decorated bar along the bottom of my screen, which looks much more visually appealing than the black bars you often see in images and movies.
• flagRSP2 — flagRSP2 is a roleplaying addon maintained by a fellow Feathermooner.  Players are able to describe their characters’ appearance and set a roleplaying status that indicates both experience and whether or not they’re looking to roleplay with others.  You can also display custom titles and even other names, which is very appealing to some roleplayers.
• FuBar 3.5 — I learned of FuBar from BigRedKitty over a year ago and I’ve been enarmored with it since.  FuBar generates easily skinned bars that can display all sorts of information by downloading further addons.  I currently use ExperienceFu, FactionsFu, DurabilityFu, FriendsFu, GuildFu, MoneyFu, BagsFu, Micro MenuFu, ClockFu, and AmmoFu on my hunter.
• Hat Trick — I downloaded this addon strictly for aesthetic purposes.  It generates a check box on your character screen that allows you to select if the character’s cloak and helm are visible.  While I claim that I like this addon for roleplaying purposes, I really just didn’t like seeing either most of the time regardless!
• ScrollingCombatText — As the name implies, this generates scrolling combat text including healing done and received, damage done and received, buffs received, and more.  I’m leaning towards downloading Parrot as an alternative in the near future due to many people’s recommendations.
• simpleMinimap — simpleMinimap is an addon that modifies the minimap within World of Warcraft.  This allowed me to have a circular minimap as opposed to the normally rectangular one in addition to deciding what information I want displayed on it.  In particular, I love that it displays coordinates.
• X-Perl UnitFrames — For nearly three years I stubbornly clung to an outdated version of CT Raid Assist for my raid frames while using Perl Class to display my group.  However, Patch 3.0.2 destroyed that addon and I was stuck seeking new raid frames.  I don’t like any of the alternatives and X-Perl is set up in a way that mimics my old CTRA.  The only thing I can’t get to work is having the buffs I want — Power Word: Fortitude, Divine Spirit, Shadow Protection, Power Word: Shield, Renew, and Soulstone — appear on the raid frames.  I’ve been told that this feature doesn’t seem to be working currently and I’m crossing my fingers that it’ll be changed.

Not downloaded as of yet are raid appropriate addons such as Deadly Boss Mods and Omen Threat Meter.  While I can typically get away with not having these as a healer, the latter has become a bit more important since I elected to respec as Discipline.  Knowing which damage class is nearing the tanks on the threat meter would help me determine to whom to apply a Pain Suppression.  Either way, I’ll have both up and running in time for Friday’s night raid.

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Single-Target Priestly Healing in “Echoes of Doom”

Priest, Raiding 9 comments.

Friday night the fine people of the Drunken Badgers decided it was time to return to Black Temple and get our progression on.  In prior weeks, we managed to get to get up to Teron Gorefiend, but had never progressed beyond that point.  As many other people have noted, Patch 3.0.2 changed everything.  We trounced Teron Gorefiend.  We ganked Gurtogg Bloodboil.  We mauled Mother Shahraz.  We ran into a little bit of problems with the Council of the Illidari, but it was still impressive for a raid full of people who had never even seen the fights, much less participated in them.

While I might lament how our sense of accomplishment has been minimized by the nerfs applied in “Echoes of Doom,” it really wasn’t that that made the evening so unenjoyable.  It was more how ineffective I was as a healer.

As I’ve noted many times before, I’m a Spirit-obsessed priestaphiliac.  While many other healing priests gleefully opted to learn the forty-one point talent Circle of Healing, I clung tenaciously to my Improved Divine Spirit, lavishly sharing my Spirit bounty with friends, party members, and fellow raiders alike.   It meant that I not only brought my healing prowess to a raid but also some added utility that the other Holy priests were unable to do.  Despite lacking a group heal that was capable of being used on the raid, I was often near the top of the healing meters or even the top healer.  It ascertained that I was in fact a viable and contributing member of the raid.

Patch 3.0.2 has changed all that — especially in regards to Circle of Healing, which now heals the five people within range who have the lowest health.  I decided to stick with a variation of my 23/38/0 build that allowed me to remain mana efficient with decent heals while retaining my beloved Improved Divine Spirit; the two other Holy priests in our raid went a full sixty-one points into the Holy tree.  The disparity between our performance was so ridiculously enormous that I found myself disappointed by the changes.  Between two Circle of Healing priests and a Restoration shaman with Chain Heal, single-target healers such as people with my build or Holy paladins just couldn’t contribute in the raid.  By the time we managed to get a single heal off, some three so-called brain heals had managed to top off everyone who needed a heal.

I had effectively become superfluous.

I think what disappoints me most is not that I wasn’t beneficial to the raid, but how I felt that our priests were being pigeonholed into using a single spell for most of the instance.  While I’ve jokingly made derisive comments in the past regarding healers that only spam Circle of Healing¹, it seems like this is the only spell of use for the Holy priest.  And this saddens me because I love healing as a priest so much because I have so many spells within my arsenal, ranging from single-target healing, group healing, a preemptive heal, a spell that prevents damage, and more.  I was proud that I had a variety of spells at my disposal and knew which ones to use at the right time for the most effective and beneficial results.

Honestly, I chose to heal as a priest because pre-expansion I had grown tired of casting only one or two spells on both my Holy paladin and Restoration shaman.

While intellectually I realize that these talents are intended for upwards to level 80 instances and that I will be acquiring ten more talent points within the upcoming months, it still pains me that for the remaining weeks until the Wrath of the Lich King expansion a single target Holy healing priest who chooses to pick up the Improved Divine Spirit buff will be unable to contribute effectively or efficiently in a raid.  And I refuse to pick up a single talent so that I can mindlessly spam that heal and feel like I’m contributing.  So, rather than mope or decry how Blizzard has ruined me personally², I decided to take an entirely different approach.

Perky priestess Csilla Kovács — who has become my priestly pride and joy, standing well above my bevvy of other priests³ — has forsaken her Holy ways and gone Discipline!  And I’m loving it!

I’ve long wanted to try raiding as a Discipline priest, but had chosen not to because I was typically relied on heavily by my raid leaders to bring unadulterated healing power.  However, Discipline has found further utility in raids due to a number of changes made to the tree and the new talents that have appeared there since “Echoes of Doom.”  I’ve chosen a 59/2/0 Discipline build that lets me pick the talents that I think would make an effective single-target healer while bringing a lot of utility to the raid.  This build will morph into a 59/12/0 Discipline build once Csilla reaches the new level cap.

There are a couple of things of note with my new build.  The current lack of Holy Specialization means that my critical effect chance with Holy spells is pretty low at the moment, especially for what seems like a very crit-heavy tree.  By not having Divine Fury, the vast majority of my heals are currently ponderous and slow, but that is easily rectified with both Borrowed Time and the vast amount of Haste that I’ve collected on other pieces in the past.  In fact, I was amazed when Borrowed Time and a proc on the Scarab of the Infinite Cycle⁴ allowed me to cast a Greater Heal in under 1.5 seconds.  With Divine Fury, I could very well be casting Greater Heals in under a second!

The build focuses on single target healing prowess with added utility, especially with Power Infusion and Pain Suppression.  The goal isn’t to get the large heals of the Holy tree⁵, but rather reduce the amount of healing that is required.  This is accomplished by making heavy use of Power Word: Shield and talents such as Divine Aegis and Grace.  The build also has a very different emphasis for gearing.  In the past I would select gear, gems, and enchants that increased both my Bonus Healing and my Spirit; instead, I’ll be stacking for Bonus Healing, Intellect, and Haste — a combination of stats that will supposedly be very common in Wrath of the Lich King where much of the gear appears to be Haste-heavy.  The lack of Spiritual Guidance and the changes done to Improved Divine Spirit that grant a flat increase to Spell Power as oppposed to a number based on a percentage of the player’s Spirit stat means that Spirit is significantly less important to me now.

At the moment, I’m trying to decide if it would be best to select gems with the Critical Strike Rating such as the Potent Pyrestone or Intellect like the Luminous Pyrestone.  While five Critical Strike Rating is near 0.23% crit, five Intellect is both a little over 0.06% crit and 75 mana.  Though I will have less mana regen due to the reduction of Spirit on my gear, Rapture seems to be very effective in keeping my mana pool mostly full.  Furthermore, as a human Discipline priest I have both The Human Spirit⁶ and Enlightenment, both of which are likely to increase my Spirit so that I still have some semblence of Spirit-based mana regeneration.  As a result, I’m not sure if I really need to increase my mana pool further.

Oh, and Penance is a simply amazing spell!  I was using this both in grouping with people and on the battlefield and it’s just an incredibly versatile spell.  If I chose to use a Power Word: Shield prior to casting Penance, I was able to quickly top off a player or strike my enemies.  It’s the priestly version of the paladin spell Holy Shock, but so much more fun!  Plus each hit of the channeled spell has the opportunity to give a Grace buff, which means that in two seconds a Dicipline priest could both reduce the damage taken by his target by 3% while increasing the healing she does by 6%.  Some basic theorycrafting shows that this spell may have both a higher Health Per Mana and Health Per Second than the staple priestly healing spell Greater Heal.

Discipline truly is love.

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Seriously, What Are the Odds?

General 6 comments.

A few weeks ago while blithely working my way towards 10,000 Honorable Kills, I stumbled across a human paladin in a Warsong Gulch match.  We meshed really well together and managed to win a number of consecutive matches.  We even roleplayed a bit during those fights, which intrigued me; I’ve always found other roleplayers rather endearing.  When we learned that we were both from the same server, we decided to group up and queue together with the intent of smashing our opponents and winning many matches.

We did exactly that.

Since then, we’ve grouped up together every once in a while eager to return to the battlefield and frolic through the buckets of blood and entrails left behind in our wake.  That had been the extent of our relationship within World of Warcraft: one of us would log in, see the other, and an invitation would promptly go out to smash some Horde face.  A good time was had by all — except perhaps the Horde, who don’t seem to like us too much.  We didn’t talk much other than what strategy was best and who was going to carry the flag where.

He contacted me randomly this afternoon.  Not to ask if I was interested in queuing up for the Battlegrounds but because he has news.  Disturbingly awesome news of the kind that makes people scratch their heads and wonder just how small this world really is.

You see, earlier this week he managed to join a raid with some people from <The Remnants>.  The core people of this guild were originally in <Hand of Havoc>, a former raiding powerhouse that splintered into a number of raids following the release of The Burning Crusade.  I know many of the people from both guilds, having raided for some time with one and interacted socially with members of the other.

After the raid — which managed a full clear of Black Temple in a little over three hours! — he got to talking with one of those individuals that I know socially.  She was the former guild leader of <Hand of Havoc> after her husband stepped down to form the other raiding guild.  They spoke and had fun and then decided to befriend each other on the social networking site Facebook.  While I don’t frequent the site all too much¹, I had managed to work up enough effort to friend this unknown mutual friend quite some time ago.  Imagine my battle buddy’s surprise when he noticed that they had a mutual friend.

I bet you can see where this is going.

So my battlefield friend, the one with whom I’d randomly paired up some weeks ago and spent some many glorious hours brutalizing our opponents, had me as a friend on Facebook.  However, we’d never exchanged any sort of information before.  We’d never even brought up Facebook.  And, equally stupefied as I would be in his situation, he looked at my information and learned that not only were we listed as friends on Facebook, but that we actually knew each other — we’d gone to high school together!  He’d been one year behind me in school and we hung out with the same circle of friends!

I’m just floored right now.  Really, what are the odds of stumbling into one another in an online game after over five years without any sort of communication?  And, further, having him be the person that I’d been interacting with for almost a month now?

It really is a small world!

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Reflections on “Echoes of Doom” and PvP

Player versus Player 2 comments.

• Every human paladin had suddenly adopted the Goku/Vegeta hairstyles favored by the sin’dorei males.  What this says about human paladins, I don’t know.
• Unfortunately, this has resulted in a few occasions where enemy has been confused with ally and vice versa — sometimes with hilarious results.
• Warriors seem to be overwhelmingly attached to their Whirlwind buttons.  Can they use any other abilities or did the patch somehow remove them?
• While every Alliance hunter seems to possess one of the new corehound pets, very few of the Horde do.  I don’t know whether I should be pleased or disappointed.
• Speaking of hunters, please make sure to bring your pets onto the battlefield with you.  I saw hunters exclaim that they’d forgotten their animal companions no less than five times this afternoon.

• I can break 300,000 in healing easily in any and every Battleground, but 500,000 seems to escape me.  I don’t think there’s an achievement for it and I really don’t care if there is, but it’s driving me crazy to hit 490,000 over and over yet never break 500,000.
• 100,000 Honorable Kills for 100000 Honorable Kills¹ seems crazy, but I’ve already run into four people who have this, including one on the Feathermoon US roleplaying server.
• I’ve yet to hit 25000 Honorable Kills, but I’m 1,000 Honorable Kills closer after this morning.
• Other than priests, just who didn’t get a knockback this last patch?  Not only do I need to contend with spell interruptions, but now there are knockbacks?  Bah!
• Every Man for Himself has negated the need to carry my Insignia of the Alliance.  This is a welcome change because not only do I have a free trinket slot now, but I also find myself using it more.
• I do, however, miss the previous incarnation of Perception and find my finger spasmodically twitching to use this ability when I hear a stealthed opponent.
• Being unable to join a Battleground because I get the “Transfer Aborted: instance not found” error is irksome, especially when the people in my group manage to get into the same Battleground that suddenly doesn’t exist.

• I still hate the current incarnation of Alterac Valley and wistfully reflect back on the days of yore when it was entirely different — but nowhere else do I get to heal so many people against so many enemies!
• I would be unstoppable in the Batlegrounds if I could somehow get my hands on a Glyph of Spirit of Redemption.  I want that damned glyph!
• Listening to the unwashed masses in Trade, I’ve learned that this patch has singularly destroyed PvP as we know it, revitalized PvP, resulted in creating far too many overpowered classes², and has ruined the game.  As always, I’m tempted to leave the Trade channel, but then I wouldn’t get to enjoy seeing people recommend to jump off of the Aldor Terrace for the Going Down? achievement.³
• As a hint, jumping from the Scyers’ Terrace to the ground below appears to be exactly 65 yards.  You need to fall to the ground and not the ramp or overpass.
• Regardless of the changes made, Alliance still can’t agree on a single battle plan in any Battleground.  The world as we know it is not over.

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