BETA: Holy Priests two weeks in.

General Thoughts

I was bit upset at the thought of losing Mindblast and Mindspike but the glyph of Atonement alongside the reduced cast time on Smite has allayed my fears a lot. The healing part of Atonement also procs our Holy Mastery and whilst in Smite Chakra we’ve got decent punch, especially for questing/grinding. Having Evangelism as a passive of course helps too and instant Holy Fire through the glyph is awesome.

Mass Dispel has what you might call a prohibitive mana cost right now, taking 45,800 mana per cast. On my mana pool (128k because I’m a lv 86 Gnome), I can manage two before having to wait for my mana to recover.

In fact I’d say mana in general is a bit of an issue, not so much for questing/dungeoning but definitely in things of a PvP nature. However I lost a decent chunk of my regen purely from transferring to the Beta and haven’t reforged anything yet. On top of this, it’s early on in the Beta and the game is not balanced around lv 86. I will however be paying close attention as we move towards to 90.

Right now, the prognosis for PvP doesn’t look good. In part due to two things, regen and the self healing of dps classes. I’m a firm believer in the fact that in a 1 v 1, the worst player should lose and right now, I’m not seeing how I as a Holy Priest could beat many dpsers in a one v one because their self healing owns my smite every time.

I’m looking forward to getting our lv 87 spell to see how that mixes things up, plus right now both our lv 15 talent cc spells and fear share the same cooldown. Hopefully that’s an oversight and if it is, fixing it would probably help quite a bit. Also a combination of things which include levelling and losing a wand slot has reduced my resilience by 10 percent which hasn’t helped.

Spells:

The way in which we enter Chakra states has been changed.

Now it works more like the Mage Portal system and I’m not convinced I like it. Drop down menus are not ideal for swift changing on the run in my opinion and so I’ll probably pop them all on keybinds. However I do love the fact that you don’t have to cast any spell first, it’s just a case of picking the right Chakra. Also to swap to another Chakra, you just click the one you want so it’s definitely an upgrade in terms of user friendliness.

Divine Hymn is currently rather lacklustre compared to it’s live version. At 86, it’s healing for around 13k (in Chakra Sanctuary) but Beta is Beta and numbers can easily be adjusted. It still has the 3 minute cooldown and given that it’s Holy only, balancing it should be easy.

Talents:

Void Tendrils I love in principle but in practise I’m not so sure.

At lv 86 they have 33370 k health, they don’t inherit our resilience and since I’ve crit for higher myself whilst in Smite Chakra, you can imagine what most dpsers will do to them. I tried testing them in a series of duels yesterday but because fellow Alliance players can’t attack them at the moment even whilst dueling it’s a little hard to come to any concrete conclusions. So far the only snare removal which worked was Escape Artist and they are lasting the full 20 seconds against players but I imagine these are bugs which will be ironed out way before Mists goes live. For PvE though, especially the first sets of heroic dungeons with dodgy tanks, I imagine these could be very handy indeed. They are also great for questing, given that they only have a 30 second cooldown.

Void Shift is my new favourite toy and despite being a bit concerned about it’s griefing potential in PvP, I think it’s a solid tool with lots of useful applications.

As you can see from this screenshot, you don’t need other players to be in the vicinity to benefit from it. So far I’ve tested it with my Void Tendrils, Basil the Shadowfiend and as shown here my Lightwell. As illustrated here, the health swap count as a heal as does  the “then heal the lower health target by 25%” and therefore as Holy both proc our mastery (or at least it would have if I’d used it on something that can be healed).

You can make macros to use it quickly and efficiently too.

/target Lightwell
/cast Void Shift

Would be one example.

Edit: Unfortunately the next beta build “fixed” it so that Void Shift can only be cast on player party and raid members. Meaning that lightwell, tendrils, hunter’s pets, shadowfiends and the like are all out of the equation. You could still macro it to work with other players though.

All in all, I was really happy until I duelled people last night. I think we’ve still got a way to go but I’m really liking a few of the changes, including ones I thought I’d hate. I’d like to see Mind Control back as baseline and I still dislike Spirit of Redemption (also turning into an angel when you lose a duel but don’t die…… grr!) but other than that, considering how early a Beta phase it is, I’m feeling pretty positive.

I started out by trying Disc before switching back to my one and only love, Holy and I definitely think Holy is in the better place right now.

Mog Madness – Round 3 (Riding a Wave of Success).

Much to my surprise, I discovered that I’d managed to make it into round 3 of Mog Madness. Our task this week was to incorporate the Wavemender’s Mantle into an outfit for either a Shaman or a Hunter.

In the end I decided to dress up my Shaman as she was my main during the Black Temple period. After a close look at the shoulders I thought I’d start by finding something to contrast and work with their grey feathery edges. I went for the breastplate because not only does it match colour-wise but it’s polished metal surface adds a tactile contrast to the fluffy looking feathers adjoining it.

The “kilt” was an obvious choice to follow on with that concept. There are bronze feathers to tie into the shoulders as well as greys to match up with chestpiece.

The weapons presented a bit more of a challenge. I wanted them to reflect the fact that during the Black Temple, she was resto which limited me to choices I would have made back them, i.e. a main hand plus shield.

As the colour palette for the whole ensemble is fairly muted, I decided I would try and bring out the bright blue baubles on the shoulders. The mace does that fairly well I think, with both it’s glow and the fact that it’s bronze in colour. The shield was a slightly harder choice but in the end I went with it for two reasons. First of all, it’s over all colours do tie in with the rest of the outfit and secondly, I love shields with faces on them (hey, it’s as good a reason as any other!).

• Head: Mechanized Snow Goggles
• Chest: Knight’s Breastplate
• Shoulders: The Waverider’s Mantle
• Belt: Telaari Hunting Girdle
• Gloves: Spiritwalker’s Handwraps
• Legs: Lightning-Infused Leggings
• Main Hand: Maw of the Dragonlord
• Shield: Bulwark of Algalon

BETA: Mini Pets, Mounts and other Pretties

I’ve been completely blown away with the sheer beauty of Mists so far. So many waterfalls and fabulous little details to draw the eye.

On playing around with the new pet journal, I discovered a couple of interesting things.

First up, the Macabre Marionette is in the book, so it looks like we’re finally getting him as a proper pet rather than just for two days every year. No idea whether Blizzard have any way of knowing who has already done the quest or whether we’ll have to wait til November though. The coyote from Don Carlo’s hat and the Bloodsail Parrot are also there. Of course, it’s possible that Blizzard just added everything vaguely pet related to the list, but I’m going to stay optimistic here.

Secondly, you can scroll through the list seeing what delights are potently going to be available on us. A lot of stuff looks like it’s currently a place-holder (as it shares the same model as existing mini-pets) but a few are particularly interesting.

The shark which was briefly added to the Wrath beta for example (and that I’ve been after ever since).

I’m hoping this ghost goes live too, possibly as a rare pet which requires much lurking in graveyards or other haunted places.

I’m normally not into big mounts but the second I laid eyes on this, I started to covet it.

Just off the edge of that cliff, there is an island with lv 90 mobs on it. Nasty poachers who are beating up pretty dragons, killing their young and destroying eggs. I imagine that when the game goes live, that island will contain dailies to help us get reputation with these beauties. They come in a variety of colours and I’m really hoping that pink version is accessible.

I was definitely unsure on entering the Beta, in fact I feel I was fairly negative about the whole expansion. I wasn’t convinced that Pandarens belonged in Azeroth but now having played one for a bit as well managing to do a fair bit of exploring, I’m having to eat my words.