Moving!

I've decided to move my blog from blogspot to Wordpress. It's just a lot easier to use and it also appears to be a more popular site. So all 0 of you out there that read my blog, make sure to update your links to:http://strangemelt.wordpress.com/ !

Will discipline fly for groups?

Penance seems to be the talk of the day amongst priests. On paper, it's a 2 second cast, healing 2K x 3, and can crit on any or all of the heals. The two big drawbacks being that a) it's channeled, meaning the mana cost is front-loaded and it's also subject to interrupt, and b) it's at the very bottom of the Discipline tree.

To be honest, the channeled/front-loaded mana bit isn't too big a deal for me, since I hate cast-canceling anyway and it's no easier to interrupt than a GHeal. Plus the new push-back rules mean you'll always get something out of it. The problem I see is that you're choosing the Path of the Shielder instead of the Path of the Healer.

Discipline pretty much forces you into a style that leans heavily on PW:S, since your heals just won't have the "oomph" that a holy priest does. So, your fallback becomes "shield to prevent, then heal the rest." Many people claim that this requires a more anticipatory style, but I disagree. I think you can react to someone get aggro fairly quickly. Even as holy, I'm as likely as not to toss a PW:S on a DPS taking damage. The problem comes when you toss it on a feral or warrior tank -- they don't like taking less damage due to how it effects their rage. If I'm forced to keep an eye on rage bars before deciding what spell to cast, then I don't think it's worth the effort.

And the healing meters won't take mitigation into account at all, so if you're Pugging or running with a guild that puts a heavy emphasis on recount numbers, you're going to have a lot of explaining to do.

But all that notwithstanding, I'm eager to try something a little different. In a 5-man, no one cares what your healing numbers look like -- you either live or you die -- so I think the instances on the way to 80 might be a good place to do some experimenting in the discipline tree.

Too cool for school

When I last left my mage, he had finished most of the Zangermarsh quests and was getting ready to start on Terrokar Forest with a full load of rested XP and the new patch. Mob killing was the typical FrBx3, FN, FrBx2 with a rest every 3 or 4 mobs to drink.

Well, the patch is here and Frost is a whole 'nother world. I'm running a pure frost spec and I feel so OP that it's crazy. The key talents I feel are making the difference are Improved Water Elemental, Fingers of Frost, and Brain Freeze, but there's plenty of support talents that really set Frost on a lofty pedestal.

It's pretty easy to see why Imp WE is great, but it's more than the extended duration - when he's out, I regen mana fast enough that I can cast non-stop without running out of mana. And that's a lot, since my new rotation is a lot closer to FrB, FrB, FrB, Fireblast, dead mob. That's because there's usually a Brain Freeze in there somewhere that lets me toss an instant-cast, 0 mana cost Fireball into the mix. I didn't think it would be that great, but it procs a lot. I would say once every mob or two is pretty typical. Added to the extra slowing of Chilled to the Bone and extra damage from Fingers of Frost and I rarely cast Frost Nova anymore, especially since you can just stand there with Ice Barrier on and let it auto-FN anyone who breaks it.

To give an example, I did the quest The Shadow Tomb last night. If you recall, it involves a 3-wing mini-dungeon where there's an object at the end of each wing you need to retrieve. To further complicate things, there's also an NPC you have to rescue as part of an escort quest that generally starts as the respawns start popping. Oh, did I mention that the mobs run when low on health? This quest was very painful on both my shadow priest and my rogue.

In contrast, this was a walk in the park for my frost mage. I was able to kill about four in a row without stopping with my WE out. Stop for one drink, then finish the room. Repeat twice and start the escort. The only thing even close to dicey was when I had a double respawn in the central chamber coupled with a caster from a side chamber (3 mobs total). Had NPC on one, sheeped the other, cold snapped and popped the WE on the third and it was cake. I think I cast Frost Nova only once the whole time I was in there.

I love my mage!

Less pew-pew, more stabbity, stabbity?

Yes, I secretly have a rogue alt. It's nice to get up close and personal on occasion. So if any of you out there do the same, Shadowpanther has a nice set up gear lists and talent builds for rogues in 3.02. I haven't tested any of it yet, but I'd say it's a nice place to get started!

Hurry up and wait!

So with the 3.02 patch pretty certain to be coming on October 14th, I've begun strategizing the best way to finish the push to 70 on my mage, who just hit 63 last night. As I mentioned before, 3.02 brings the reduced XP to level, so I'm trying to determine the best way to optimize my play to get the most benefit out of the changes.

Rested XP - this is a no-brainer, but it's more than just not playing until the patch hits. As soon as it hits, the clock to WotLK starts ticking again, so I don't want to be stuck sub-70 on release date. My current plan is to play just enough to keep my rested XP bar completely full at 1-1/2 levels (or 30 bars, for those of you on the original interface). So I've been jumping on for a few hours, doing a few quests, and then hopping off once I've used about 6 bars' worth. Actually, I'm using a Fubar addon called RestFu, which tells me how much longer I can rest before filling up, so I'm getting it to about 2-3 days before quitting a session.

Quest Turn-ins - One of my guildies suggested getting my entire quest log full of completed quests so that they can be turned in all at once once the patch. I'm using a leveling mod which leads me on the optimal patch of turn-ins, so it's a little tricky to do this since so many are chained. But with only a few days left anyway, I'm starting doing this as much as I can (I currently have about 6 completed quests in Zangermarsh ready to turn in).

That's about the only things I can think of to do other than the typical things (buy buff pots, keep gear upgraded, etc.). My big fear is that even with the leveling speed increase that I won't make it to 70 by launch. So if anyone has any other ideas, please leave a comment -- anything that can speed the journey is welcome!

I'm baaaaack...

Well, despite my best efforts, a mere week was all I could stay away.

There's just not enough alternatives out there in the ether to hold my interest. And I finally decided that a lot of the problem was me QQ'ing about my priest. I'm bummed about priests, I think they got nothing interesting in the expansion, and they nerfed my favorite spell, Prayer of Mending. Call me pessimistic, but nothing anyone says will convince me otherwise, so I'm parking my priest (except when needed for guild instance healing) and I'll either confirm or deny my suspicions on my own when the expansion comes out (although 3.02 may be sufficient to make that judgement). If it turns out I over-reacted, so be it. Otherwise, it'll be time to look for another main!

In the meantime, I'm leveling up a shaman. Of all the other healing classes, it seems like the best fit for my style of play. Plus as I mentioned before, Spirit Link looks very interesting! I've flip-flopped 3 or 4 times between elemental and enchancement, and I've settled on enhancement. With some help from guildies (and the AH), I think I've finally gotten into the swing of things.

And just in time, too, because with the leveling speed increase of the 3.02 build expected to be coming in just under two weeks, it's time to park my mage and build up that rested XP!

Fighting the Ennui

Ennui: just about everyone's got it in one form or the other. The Brewfest helped a bit, but now that I've got my pony kegs (the only thing I was really interested in this time), I'm having a hard time even getting excited about BRD runs for the kodo. I've been doing dailies for gold, but those feel too much like work. Instance groups are next to impossible to form and they're also hard to get excited about. Before, even if I didn't "need" the run, I could always say "hey, at least I'm getting a shot at a nice drop" or "at least this is getting me rep and/or badges". But now those items will likely soon get replaced, I've gotten all the badge gear I need, and the rep will be useless (anyone still grinding Argent Dawn rep? I thought not.). We continue to try and form 25-man raids, but the attendance for those is pathetic.

My solutions for the last few weeks has been leveling a new alt (mage), which I've enjoyed a lot, but now that I've hit 60 and dropped back to normal leveling speed, I'm finding it a grind again. Maybe it's the slower speed, maybe it's the fact that these quests and areas are more familiar to me, but running around killing orcs, boars and whatever has been mind-numbing lately.

My second attempt at repelling the boredom came with a brand new pally alt. That was very fun due to my unfamiliarity with the Draenei starting area quests, but once I hit Darkshore, it was back to SSDD. It doesn't help any that I suck at playing melee classes, so the quests can be frustrating at times.

So, I'm just about resigned to just waiting it out. I'll build up my rested XP on my mage and play him when I get a decent amount. I'll sign in for raids, note that they are canceled and then log off. I may try and learn to play my pally better, but that can be frustrating. At the end of the day, I'm paying money to have fun, not to work -- unless something changes, I think I'll coast my way to WotLK and then see if the spark is back.

I doubt anyone's actually reading this blog, but if you are, I'm temporarily signing off.

A nice reward for "saving the world"

Despite it's general classification, I think most people would agree that roleplaying is not a very key element for most WoW players. Sure, there's RP realms, but I know very few (okay, zero) people that play on them. This isn't specific to Wow, most MMORPGS have a lot more MMO than RPG in them.

So, it's nice when you find a nice little touch of roleplay written into the game. It's extra nice when your actions have an effect on the game other than littering the ground with corpses. For example, I just like the way the NPCs talk to you on the Island once you've gotten exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive (e.g., "we never could have done this without you, Cailee"). It's meaningless from a game stats perspective, but still nice to hear.

But I hit a fantastic example of this that I'd never seen before today on one of my low-level alts. It's a quest in Bloodmyst that only draenei can get. It's one of those "only you can save us" quests, but instead of a "thanks -- here's some gold/gear," after you turn it in, there's more. First, you get the "All hail" zone yell like you get when you kill VanCleef, but it doesn't end there. Next, you walk outside the turn-in building and there's a bunch of soldiers kneeling to you as you come out. At the bottom of the path there's about a dozen of so people clapping and cheering for you. And these aren't random NPCs -- these are quest-givers and other NPCs you've met for the past 20 levels while you were questing. You can even chat with some of them and they have some nice little comments. Finally, no less than Prophet Velen waits at the bottom to greet and reward you. You complete this quest around level 20, and it's pretty much your last quest on the zone, so it provides a nice send-off to the great, big world.

So if you're leveling a draenei alt, I highly recommend you give Ending their World a shot. It's listed as a two-person group quest and it also involves escorting a fairly aggro-happy NPC, but on the plus side, he's pretty tough. I did it solo with a ret pally and spend most fights healing him (poorly, I might add) and meleeing. If you fail the first time, the respawns are slow enough that it makes it easier if you try again. Also, you can die and run back and he'll often still be alive. It took me two shots, but frankly, the difficulty makes finishing it that much more satisfying. The quest rewards are pretty good and you also get a one-of-a-kind tabard, but don't do it for that -- do it for the feeling you get seeing all those NPCs cheering you on and the Big Kahuna telling you that you saved us all, but your destiny lies in Outland: it's the best feeling I've ever gotten out of quest!

Outland, here I come!

I finally hit 58 on my mage alt the other day and as planned, jumped through the portal to pick up a few choice items (such as ever-popular Staff of the Twin Worlds) and then went back to Plaguelands. A few more quest turn-ins (being a mage really helps with the running back and forth from Stormwind to PL) and I hit 60!

I considered leveling a bit more in Azeroth just to make my initial OL quests easier, but I couldn't wait and jumped in immediately. I was shocked at how easy those initial quests were. The last character I sent through the portal was my rogue, and I remember he didn't exactly struggle, but they weren't a cakewalk, either. And it was much, much easier than on my shadowpriest, but that was a loooong time ago (in WOW terms) and also my first character, but nevertheless, it just renewed my commitment to the wonderfulness that is the frost mage.

I also forgot how much fun it is to turn 60! First, you get your shiny new epic land mount (a swift white mechanostrider in my case), and then your first OL quests start the flow of uber-powered greens (in comparison to your Azeroth gear anyway). It's so much fun when almost every quest reward is an upgrade, and so far I've been lucky enough to avoid the dreaded clown-suit! (see pic at the top -- not too shabby, if I do say so myself!)

On another note, since authenticators are back in stock, I picked one up. I'm not normally that paranoid, but we've had several people in our guild get hacked multiple times, and I'm not the most careful browser in the world, so better safe than sorry.

Naptime in Outland?

So, considering that today's big news is that date of the next expansion has finally been announced (Nov 13th, for those of you that were under a rock), you may be wondering why this post is all about Outland. Well, it boils down to the question: Outland, land of adventure or land of napping?

Let me back up a bit: I've been leveling a mage (quite enjoyably, I might add) and with the increased experience gain for levels 1-60, he's been tearing up the leveling path. I just turned 58 last night (seems like only yesterday I was running around in STV!) and now I'm eligible to jump through the portal. In the past, my approach with alts has been to jump through at 58, grab a few uber-powerful quest greens, and then return to Azeroth to wreak havok on the Plaguelands for a few levels. Then at 60, I'd make the permanent jump to Outland and begin the long, slow grind to 70 at "normal" leveling speed (although after 70 levels of turbo-leveling, it feels more like a crawl).

But release 3.0.2, which is promised prior to Wrath, will put the zip in the 60-70 journey as well. So that got me thinking: would it be faster to park my mage for a few weeks, build up rested XP, and then when 3.0.2 drops, come roaring out of the gate like a maniac, powered by the delicious combo of increased leveling speed + rested XP? The downside is that I wait.... and wait.... and wait..... and then either 3.0.2 drops a mere week or so before wrath, or even worse, something goes wrong and the leveling speed increase is deferred until the actual LK release!

So, I think I think the best plan is to blast on up to 60 and then just play it safe and keep leveling without a break, and hold out hope that 3.0.2 (with new and improved turbo-leveling!) arrives sooner rather than later! So, see you soon in Outland!

Frost Mages - Very cool

The graphic to the left comes from Sons of the Storm, makers of some really nice art. I found it particularly nice because it captures the power of the gnome mage, allowing him look like a formadable adversary instead of a lawn ornament, without completely losing the wow graphics style (aka, the "cartoon feel"). It's very apropos of where I am with mages right now (my current alt is at 54). Mages are becoming for me everything that I want in a character.

They can provide buffs (I'm talking about "drive-by buffs" here -- the kind you toss on a complete stranger before saddling up and riding off). Don't ask me why, but I love random buffing. I always felt like I was missing something when I would play my rogue, get a buff, and just have to be satisfied with returning a "ty".

They are powerful, but more imporantly, they feel powerful. You see that windup and release of a bolt of pure fire/frost and it impacts with authority. Shadowpriests and locks might do more damage, but DoTs and silly string assaults just aren't very visceral.

They are extremely hard to kill (only talking PvE here - I have no experience with PvP). I'm die-hard frost, and although I've flirted with fire, frost is just so forgiving of my lackadasical leveling style that it's a better fit for me. For example, I had what was supposed to be a single-mob pull go bad. I got an add, then another add. Two of them were frost resistant, so that made frost nova only about 50% reliable. However, a polymorph and a water elemental summon made this trivial (ok, I did run around like a crazy person, but I never lost any significant health). And I didn't even have to burn my Cold Snap CD.

Teleports, which I thought were just a gimmick, are very useful for leveling. I pop from continent to continent and rarely have to burn my hearth. And it's fun to open portals, too.

My disclaimers are many:

• I've had a brief flirtation with fire and no time at all with arcane, but I'm happy enough with frost that I don't see any reason to switch while I'm still leveling
• I don't PvP ('nuff said)
• I have no experience with AoE - I'm using frostbite, so all my combats are pretty much single target.
  
• I haven't grouped at all. Old world leveling is pretty much a solo affair, so we'll see how I feel once I get to Outland and start doing instances (assuming I make it before WotLK!).

The irony of all this that my very first char in WoW was a mage that I never got the hang of and eventually deleted. So anyway, my new plan for WotLK (for today, at least) is: keep my preist healing, use my mage for dps, try and learn how to play my rogue better (melee has always been problematic for me). I'm strongly considering switching my main to my mage, but I want to max level him before I make that decision (and I guess I'll need to think of a new name for the blog!).

Decisions, indecisions...

This post was originally intended to be about how the latest priest changes had thrown me into a state of indecision since they were encouraging, especially regarding Shadowpriests. But Blizzard has kindly removed that problem by swinging the nerf bat once again. The blog "A Dwarf Priest" said it best, I think: "I almost feel that there are two competing teams of devs: one that wants to oppress shadow priests, and the other that wants them to function as well as other DPS classes. "

Who will win? I can't say, but I'm guessing that at the end of the day, the more traditional DPS casters (i.e., mages), will remain top of the heap due to the fact that DPS is all they bring to the table, while the priest can always switch specs and heal (whether they want to or not).

FWIW, the latest calculations at EJ show Shadowpriests dropping from 3rd place in raid DPS (behind arcane spam mages and fire mages but ahead of all Shamans, even enhancement) to a dismal 9th (behind all mages, balance druids and most shamans).

If this holds up (and with the announcement regarding the impending patch, it may), this helps me to eliminate Shadow as my spec of choice for LK (hmmm... maybe I should rename my blog? But mages can melt things, right?). But despite a few nerfs, I'm still holding out hope that discipline will be viable for PVE healing, which I would love to see.

Update 9/12: It's been less than 24 hours since this post, and in that time Blizz has provided a significant set of major buffs for all priest specs, and then turned around and re-nerfed them all. Things are in flux so much right now that it's hard to make any real choices until the next patch.

Bonding in WoW?

In one of my previous posts, I mentioned that the type of healing that involves transferring damage wasn't really supported in World of Warcraft.

Well, it's time for me to eat my words. Wrath of the Lich King adds a new spell, called Spirit Link (the icon appears at the upper left of this post). Here's what it does:

You link the friendly target with up to two nearby friendly targets, causing 50% of any damage taken to be distributed to the linked targets. If any target takes a blow greater than 30% of their health, or shared damage would reduce a target's health below 20%, the link is broken. A member of the link moving beyond 100 yards will also break the link. You can only have one link active at a time.

This is a canonical example of bonding, where friendly targets are linked and damage shared among them. Of particular interest is that this is a Shaman spell, and the Shaman's main heal is Chain Heal, which reads:

Heals the friendly target for 826 to 942, then jumps to heal additional nearby targets. If cast on a party member, the heal will only jump to other party members. Each jump reduces the effectiveness of the heal by 50%. Heals 3 total targets.

See what's going on here? Spirit Link links 3 targets together to share damage among them and then Chain Heal lets you heal three targets in one fell swoop. Nice, huh?

Now I just need to go level me a shammy...

I'm not the only one!

I found some great stuff about re-rolling at voodoo ventures. Considering my current delimma, it's very serendipitous. (And if you look closely, you can find clues to the direction I'm leaning).

Heading to the Dark Side

At the urging of some fellow shadow priests, I decided to make the change to Shadow to see how I liked it. I used a typical cookie-cutter build, except I took Silence because I hate seeing a mob trying to heal and not being able to do anything about it.

My gear is subpar, being a mish-mash of my standard healing garb, some off-spec gear from Kara, some cheap badge gear, and some old blue quest rewards that I never picked up. Since this is an experiment, I didn't bother with enchants or any expensive gems. Still, I was able to pretty easily hit the spell hit target, and Wow-heroes shows me as ready for Mags/Gruuls.

With new spec in hand and wondering what to try, I got a tell from a guildie asking if I wanted to try out my new SP on Kara! I eagerly agreed and was summarily summoned to the hallway leading to Prince! Talk about a coming out party. Sadly, I still didn't have my keybinds down and managed to suicide early in the prince fight by casting SW:D while Enfeebled. But the practice on the trash was good -- the challenge was learning whether it was worth it to cast SW:P or not.

Since that run, I've done a couple of heroics and a circuit of all the SSO dailies. I must say, although I enjoy it a lot, it just doesn't have the oomph, that my mage does. Other than finishing off a runner with the occasional SW:D, I feel like I'm helping, but I don't feel like I'm really doing any serious damage.

So, the jury is still out. With a rogue in waiting, and a mage closing in on Outland, I'm fairly well stocked in the DPS department, so I guess I'm going to wait a bit more.

OMG heal me!

Healers. Love 'em, hate 'em, you gotta have 'em. I've always enjoyed playing a healer. I'm not sure why, but I think it's the same reason I always enjoyed being the GM in PnP RPGs -- I like the long view. I like to be able to get in there and smash face as much as the next guy, but as a healer, I feel like I have an overview of the entire raid.

But enough about me - A little background on healing is in order. For anyone with any significant healing experience, this will be old hat, but I found it helpful to take a step back.

There are 3 main roles in MMORPG groups involving PvE combat:

1. people that kill things (DPS),
2. people that soak damage (Tanks),
3. people that keep others alive (healers).

In an ideal situation, everyone would be DPS in order to kill things faster. But the monsters fight back, so we need some heavily protected people to absorb the damage so the killers can keep killing. But sometimes, the monsters foil our plans by either hitting the tanks harder than they can handle, or simply damaging (either directly or via the environment) people other than our tanks. This is where the healers come in. They prevent or undo the damage that is done, so the tanks can keep tanking and the dps can keep dpsing.

Healing can be further broken down into three types:

1. Replacing lost health
2. Mitigating damage
3. Transferring damage

Replacing lost health is the most common and straightforward style of healing. It involves direct heals, HoTs, and AoE healing. Basically, someone's health bar goes down the healer uses a spell to make it go back up. Knowing the characteristics of the targets is important in order to cast appropriate-sized heals.

Mitigating damage involves casting spells that prevent or lessen damage. This might be as simple as a magical shield that absorbs/prevents damage or as complex as a buff that increases an opponent's miss percentage or caps the damage per attack. This type of healing requires more knowledge of the source of the damage as well as it's target.

Transferring damage involves moving damage to different targets (and often mitigating it in the process). A healer of this type often ends up with duties not directly related to healing -- usually managing the energy source of those skills as well as some level of direct healing.

Ok, so what's the problem? Well, the problem is that WoW tends to push healers towards #1, punishes and/or limits healers that use #2, and doesn't provide any options for #3 that I'm aware of.

The problem with #2 revolves around the threat mechanic. Ironically, preventing damage, normally a good thing, is generally a problem for 2/3 of the tank classes (druids and warriors). Taking damage generates rage, and rage is how they fuel their abilities. If you prevent that damage, you can limit their ability to tank effectively, but if you allow them to take the damage and then heal it back, it's not an issue. (This is less of a problem at higher level content, but most tanks will continue to object to shielding even when rage capped due to their past experiences). This leaves healers with only one way to heal, and it gets boring fast. Even worse, it means that the majority of healing needs to be reactive -- it consists of just watching green bars (the proverbial whack-a-mole healer), so not only is it boring, it means that different raid instances just aren't that different. The closest thing to being proactive is to throw on a HoT and then have a heal constantly "in the pipe," ready to drop once that damage hits.

So here I am, bored of whack-a-mole, with no alternatives available to my level 70 MH/BT-ready priest. It's a little frustrating. So my alternatives are either to abandon my priest or find another way to play her. Due to all the effort I've been in, I'm leaning towards the latter, but it still means there will be some re-equipping, but of course, the expansion means everyone will be re-equipping.

Getting started

Welcome to my WoW blog. I started this blog because I decided my guildies would likely get sick of reading my ruminations and soul searching surrounding my play style in general and the priest class specifically. I really don't expect anyone to read this -- it's more of a place for me to record my thoughts and also to track my progress. If anyone gets anything out of it, more power to them!

For those who may not be familiar with the blog title reference, it's a tribute to the 1964 Stanley Kubrik classic Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. I highly recommend it.

A little background: I'm a raid healer (priest class) in a casual WoW raiding guild. I have a long history as a healer in MMORPGs, but lately I've become increasingly dissatisfied with my raid role. I've been trying to pin it down, and I think I'm beginning to get to the crux of the matter, but I'm not there yet (maybe next post!). With the Wrath of the Lich King expansion on the horizon, I'm deciding whether to a) soldier on as a holy priest, b) change gears to shadow, c) switch classes completely, or d) something else (like maybe discipline?). As you can tell by my blog title, I'm leaning towards shadow, but I'm not going to commit totally at this point.