And the Wheel keeps turning: PvP and Chakras

Nothing seems to divide Holy Priests like Chakras. I know people who have quit their Priests all together over them, Priests who have gone Disc or Shadow because of them as well as plenty of Priests who have stuck with Holy but tend to pick their Chakra and stick with it regardless of their circumstances. My focus today is PvP but a lot of what applies here can also be used whilst dungeoning and raiding.

First of all, know your “enemy”!

and

Now I deliberately didn’t include the third Chakra and the reason for that is simple. Chastise is our default ability if we aren’t in a Chakra at all. So lets say I’m in Serenity and I have been for a while, all I need to do to throw a disorient on that pesky Holy Paladin over there is leave Chakra state, cast Chastise and then re-enter Serenity immediately incurring no real penalty (ok Chastise hits for less but…..).

/cancelaura Chakra: Serenity
/cancelaura Chakra: Sanctuary
/cast [target=mouseover, harm, nodead] Holy Word: Chastise; Holy Word: Chastise

You do need to hit the macro twice to get the disorient but it leaves whichever of the two Chakra states you’re in and then will stun either your mouse over target if you have one or your actual target if you don’t. I’d definitely recommend using a macro because in hectic pvp combat the last thing you want to be doing is trying to right click off the right buff whilst the person you want to disorient is trying to smash your face in with an axe.

So with the basics covered, what I do use and why? Well my general rule of thumb sees Serenity as my go to Chakra for most things pvp related. I’m a great fan of casting on the move (you can tell I was a Resto Druid in a former life can’t you) and given that in most pvp, standing still just makes you an easier target, you can’t beat instant cast abilities. Being able to dance through and behind your enemies throwing out heals can make a huge difference on your time to live and that of your team-mates.

Also if you’re left alone, Serenity is definitely where it’s at. That instant heal can and will save your life over and over again.

However, especially in the two 40 mans, Sanctuary has it’s place:

Isle of Conquest

• On entering the boss room to take down the opposing boss I switch because with his leap, every little bit of aoe healing counts. 
• If we’re winning by attrition and camping the graveyard, i.e. everyone is grouped up in one place with lots of people taking damage, I switch.

Alterac Valley

• End bosses are an obvious choice for Sanctuary, especially if you’re forced into pulling with towers up.
• Any huge face offs on the road, i.e. by Iceblood graveyard or between Stonehearth and Stormpike, using Sanctuary is a potential option. It depends whether you’re just championing one person, i.e. a warrior/deathknight or trying to keep the masses alive.

As for Arenas, given that I only ever play 2 v 2, I tend to switch between Serenity, no Chakra at all for the disorient and then using Chakra: Chastise if I need to nuke.

Basically before you make a decision on which Chakra to use, consider the following:

1. Are you sticking with the vast majority of the team or are you off either solo or with a handful of others. Then consider Sanctuary for the former and Serenity for the latter.
2. How many opponents are there? Lets say for example that you and a rogue are attacking the Farm in Arathi Basin. There is just one defender but you know that this team have been fairly good at communicating thus far. Do you stick in your healing Chakra or do you switch to Chastise for the extra bit of oomph? After all, the faster they die, the quicker you can tag.
3. Is anyone focusing you? Serenity all the way then.

TL,DR

• Macro cancelling Chakra and disorient early and often. The more CC you can provide, the less healing you need to do. Consider things like Chastise – > Mindcontrol for defending the Lumber Mill in Arathi Basin or in 2 v 2s. Not only is it annoying, it’s also effective, especially if you follow it up by parking the person next to you and then fearing them. 
• Serenity normally beats Sanctuary unless the opposing team is kindly focusing on aoeing down your team at roughly the same rate, you aren’t taking huge amounts of damage yourself and you don’t like anyone else in the team enough to focus them with lots of single target heals.
• Chakra: Chastise has it’s place. I use it in scenarios, 5 man groups in which people don’t stand in bad and the tank actually uses cooldowns and for nuking demolishers in Strand of the Ancients. It can also be handy in one v ones against certain classes (i.e the ones which don’t currently hit very hard themselves) as long as you’re ready to swap back to defensive mode Serenity the second they get a mate. The other thing to consider is how many healers are on your team. If I end up in a healer heavy side and no one has the gear/spec set up, I’ll use Chastise for dps, especially to help kill flag carriers whilst the others heal. My Dps isn’t awesome but I’ve never come bottom yet although in random battlegrounds that’s perhaps not surprising.

Above all, don’t be afraid to play around with them. Also I have it on good authority that chastise the disorient is cheating (rich coming from a Paladin :p) so use it often!

Redemption Blues

When the MoP changes to the talents were released, I had one huge issue, Spirit of Redemption becoming baseline for Holy. Experience has taught me that it’s a buggy piece of rubbish and it’s good to see that despite it being in the game so long, Blizzard still haven’t managed to fix those bugs.

I died in Eye of the Storm just as the game ended and turned up in a graveyard. When I first checked I didn’t even have a corpse although luckily that spawned once the two minute timer at the end of the game finished, unfortunately though it was quite a run. Ok, I could have waited until the timer on Spirit of Redemption ran out but Mr Harpy wants points and thus time was of the essence (although now knowing what I know, I’ll definitely be waiting).

So that’s achievements I got late because self sacrifice to help kill bosses through the use of Spirit of Redemption basically punishes you and now, having to corpse run across a zone because the game can’t identify the difference between a player and the zombie you become when Spirit of Redemption is active. Given the amount of times I die, even in PvP… I’d swap this for something else in a heart beat.

In short, don’t leave a battleground whilst a Spirit of Redemption because who knows where you’ll end up! I got lucky. My corpse was in the air, as I had entered the battleground on a flying mount but was still close enough to the ground to be reachable.

The three reasons why I love the Tillers

I admit to being a little dubious when Blizzard first raised the idea of farms in WoW, but a month into the expansion I find myself exalted with the Tillers and more importantly glad I farmed their rep. Quite often the best pleasures in life are simple ones and in many ways you can’t get simpler than planting vegetables and tilling the land, which in a roundabout way brings me to my all time favourite Tiller items.

Gin-Ji Knife Set

This wonderful set makes your character don a chefs hat and start chopping as if you’re in the final minutes of a closely fought Iron Chef battle. You swiftly reduce your kill to a pile of blood red guts such is your enthusiasm. There is a 20 minute cooldown because we can’t have it all, but given that you can use this little beauty on the fallen corpses of your enemies it’s well worth every penny not to mention the bag space it consumes. It’s not usable on anyone who releases fast but those who hang around hoping their mates will kill you… well they could be in for a surprise. A word of warning though, anyone who has been through the “mincer” is likely to spend the rest of the battleground stuck to you like glue (or hiding in a corner shaking).

Goats

I’ve always been fond of goats, in fact I think gnomes and goats have a lot in common as demonstrated in the picture below (the arm belongs to Mr Harpy).

Now I finally have a mount which correctly reflects the state of my bags.

I.e. weighed down with everything apart from the kitchen sink.

Scarecrow

The cocky crow is a wonderful touch, it’s just a shame the scarecrow doesn’t come to life, asking about getting a brain or even better given the time of year set out to get it’s own braiiiiinsss by chasing passers-by because everyone secretly knows that scarecrows or tattiebogles as they call them around here are actually very creepy.

So what are you waiting for, if you’re not exalted go go go and if you are exalted and you haven’t bought your julienne set… shame on you!

Miscellaneous Monday

Today is my first day at my new job so I’m slightly terrified and rather distracted, thus this is a miscellanea of the various things I’ve been working on in the last few weeks.

Warcraft

In WoW, I’m steadily crossing things off my to do list. I’m finally exalted with the Netherwing, Puppy dog people, the Darkmoon Faire and the Timbermaw. The gold is pouring in nicely, certainly enough for purchasing all shinies come MoP and in fact, if the expansion hit tomorrow I could live with my current progress. I’ve even got a rough plan of what I’m going to do once Pandaria opens up.

I also got Navispammed!

New additions to my reading list

• Pretty Fly for a Draenei - A transmogrification blog full of looks for Draenei.
• Confessions of a Grown Up Gamer
• The WoW in the Details
• Vault of Light
• Why, because it’s Rare!

Competitions

You have until friday to enter Neri’s August  transmogrification contest. The theme this month is Faction Pride so go go go!

Other games

Botanticula

I got sucked into this by Eva from Image Heavy who did a blog post highlighting just how beautiful this game is. Then I played their free demo on the website and fell head over heels. There is even Jack O’Lanterns….

I still have no idea what I’m meant to be doing but there is something therapeutic about running around clicking on leaves.

I also got a new phone and have managed to get pulled into the dangerous world of game apps. Who would have thought that breeding dragons or running a virtual bakery could be such fun.

After watching the Olympic show jumping, I really want to get back into riding but need to wait until our move is complete before finding a suitable stables, therefore I’m also playing MyHorse (my user name is Erinys if anyone else is playing).

Random Stuff on the Internet

As my new job involves a 20 minute daily bus journey and I can’t read on the bus, I’ve also been looking around for audio books. One of my new favourite things is now Libri Vox which proves free audio books of things which are in the public domain. It’s a bit hit and miss as to whether you like the voice of the person reading each book, but so far I’ve listened to Washington Irving’s the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and I’m currently putting Charles Dicken’s Little Dorrit on my phone which at a whopping 70 hours should last a while.

I’ve also been playing with my old friend, Wordle again. There is something addictive about it and I love the fact that both flowers and carrots made it in.

Outside games

I’ve been taking a bit of an advantage of the weather to sunbathe and generally relax.

If Haribo made Dragons..

They’d look like this:

So I’ve finally got around to finishing up my Netherwing reputation, it’s only taken me the better part of three expansions but I got there in the end. Pre-account wide mounts I wasn’t particularly interested in the jelly dragons because I didn’t see any of my characters ever using them. The idea of everything being shared changed my mind slightly because I can see my little Gnomish warrior flying about on one.

Despite doing it very slowly, I think the Netherwing grind is the perfect example of how non dungeon related reputation should work.

You start with a quest chain which introduces you to the faction and sets the scene. We learn about these poor mistreated dragons who are falling from the sky exhausted and progress from there. The chain then cumulates in what was a fairly tough group encounter, the demise of  Zuluhed the Whacked. I seem to remember helping an awful lot of people kill him in one of those little rooms off his courtyard.

Once you hit neutral, you have dailies to contend with but with each new level of reputation reached, you get more dailies to complete. There is also a good mix of quests from the Booterang which always makes me smile to the Deadliest Trap ever laid as well as one off quests mixed in. For example you have to make your own booterang before you can start throwing it at lazy peons which is a wonderful touch. Most importantly though I love the fact that you can supplement your daily rep gain by farming eggs as well as doing dailies. I wish all reputations followed the same pattern, offering you a choice of dailies or the ability to farm a specific item or a combination of both.

You also get disguises, okay it only works in a couple of specific zones in Shadowmoon Valley but disguises are always good. Then there are the trinkets which summon a whelping to fight with you, despite their bag space consumption, things like this are always useful to have.

Finally, hitting exalted isn’t the end. You get to have a meeting with the big bad guy, in this particular case Illidan who of course sees straight through our Orc disguise and is less than impressed. (Fascinating how when these bad guys project themselves places, they are always bigger than when you meet them face to face).

Although he does a great line in name calling,

This might become my go to response next time someone tries to explain away the fact that they ignored the healer/flag or anything else of crucial importance in PvP.

You get rescued by a Dragon pretending to be  Goblin which wraps up his “interest” in any Netherwing eggs you happen to find lying around nicely and flown off to bond with a sweetie coloured drake. The fact that you can then buy the other five drakes you didn’t pick is just icing on the lollipop.

It might be a reputation grind but it’s well paced enough to distract you with it’s various quests, items and rewards.

In which I attempt to get organised #2

Inspired by the amazingly organised Godmother, I’m attempting to prepare as best I can for MoP. However I’ve just acquired a full time job which at least for the beginning will require a fairly horrible commute leaving little time outside weekends for WoW. On top of that, in order to lose the commute we need to move which will eat into my weekends as well. In a terribly selfish sense, I’m actually starting to hope that MoP doesn’t launch until things are a bit less frantic here. Also if anyone can recommend any good audio books… I’d be very grateful. I’m going to be spending quite a bit of time sitting on a bus to and from work and I can’t read on public transport. Thirty seconds in and I’m nauseous, any longer and being physically sick is a real issue.

Everything in red has already been ticked off but I swear this list gets longer and longer all by itself. 

Dulcamara

1. Reach lv 75 so I can have a Shivarra.

2. Level Jewelcrafting

Ellora

1. Finish the Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms

2. Finish the Loremaster of Kalimdor

3. Level Inscriptions

4. Finish levelling Enchanting

Erinys

1. Collect the last few pets she needs to hit 125. It’s possible that the individual pet achievements will be disappearing come MoP and I’d like to have the Brilliant Kaliri to go with my Arrokoa disguise.  

2. Finish up the last 10k I need for exalted with the Netherwing.

3. Find the last 12 mounts I need for the mountain of mounts achievement.

• 6 Nether Wings
• Green Proto Drake
• Swift Burgundy Wolf  (Argent Tournament).
• Epic Flying Machine
• Get the Darkmoon Faire strider mount.

4. Read “Sunwell – The Fall of Quel’Thalas”, “The Last Guardian” and “The Lich King Triumphant”, the last three books I need for the “Well Read” achievement.

5. Complete Silverpine and the Southern Barrens quest chains from the Horde perspective again.

6. Get an Oracle egg every three days until one of them hatches a mount.

7. Exalted with the Ebon Blade

8. Exalted with the Oracles

Lylobean

1. Finish up all the Argent Tournament achievements.

2. Get the Darkmoon Bear mount. Done.

3. Level Cooking and Fishing to the cap.

Sproutling

1. Level Archaeology to the cap.

2. Level Cooking and Fishing to the cap.

3. Pick up the Nesingwary Brush Burner wand for future transmogrification fun.

4. Get the last pet that I’m missing from the Darkmoon Faire (the tonk).

5. Exalted with the Frenzyheart

6. Acquire Pebble. Only six more dailies to go

Sprouts

This character was created with one aim in mind, reaching a high enough level to save Spot before the bombs start to fall on Theramore.

1. Save Spot! Given that the Theramore guards are guaranteed to not like a Goblin sneaking in and stealing their dog, I’m not 100 percent what level I’ll need to be. I’ll start trying around the 45 mark.

2. Grab a diseased hawk.

Teasel

1. Finish up all the Fireland Dailies/quest chains

2. Get exalted with the Timbermaw

3. Get her onto the Oracle egg stage of those quests. The more eggs I get per week, the higher my mount chance has to be.

Twiceshy

1. Hit a high enough level to tame Chromaggus.

2. Pick up a Brain Bug too. Either the one with the brain showing or this one.

3. Find and tame Zaricotl.

4. Get exalted with the Thorium Brotherhood (10 k rep to go)

5. Level Blacksmithing

Calantha

1. Finish farming the Oshu’gun Crystal Powder I need (in the region of 300ish) to grab the two Halaa mounts. I already have the tokens you get from pvp, it’s just the grind I’ve been putting off.

Snowflower

I also want to get ready for my Monk who I’ll be levelling along side since Mr Harpy since he wants to be a fotm reroller! Although I must admit levelling my beta monk has been a lot of fun so far.

1. Double check I’ve got all the heirlooms I could possibly need for both dps and healing specs.

2. 4 big bags for my inventory plus a couple of the bank.

3. Decide on professions and get any mats to level them lined up.

4. Decide on race, Panda versus Gnome versus Nightelf.

General non-character specific stuff.

1. Think of names for all my non combat pets. So far on the Beta I’ve named the following which leaves me with quite a few to go.

• Orange Tabby =  Boris (after an old book of Peter and the Wolf I found. In it the cat was both orange and called Boris).
• Feline Familiar = Pyewacket
• Wind Rider Cub = George
• Sinister Squashling = Ichabod (for obvious reasons).
• Darkmoon Faire Balloon = Cecy (after Ray Bradbury’s short story “the April Witch”).

That only leaves me with 140 names to come up with between now and MoP.

2. Fill the bank with as much gold as possible.

3. Run Karazhan every reset on as many characters as possible until Attuman gets stick of seeing me and hands over his horse.

4. Make sure every character has the largest bags possible.

That turned out to be a bigger list then I expected. Hopefully this will work out better than my Pre-Cataclysm to do list where I managed to tick off a grand total of three things.

BETA: New glyphs for healing Priests

The latest crop of healing Priest glyphs have finally made it onto the beta and can be purchased from everyone’s favourite oversized Tauren in the Temple of the Jade Serpent.

I have to say I’m not impressed. I wish I was, I really do but they’re either massively situational (i.e. require you to be dead!), have huge cooldowns (confessions) or take away what little control we already have over a spell (Lightspring).

Without further ado…

The biggest issue I’ve ever had with Lightwell was the control aspect, I fully admit I’m a complete control freak and I like to have full control over my healing arsenal. With Lightwell as it currently stands, I can yell, scream, bitch, name call and generally persuade people to click it. I remember my first raiding recap post at the start of Cataclysm where I talked about this:

The added icing on the cake was tonight my Lightwell provided over 2 million healing. Now that’s something I never expected to see.

In my experience, proper raiders will click on it to stay alive because they’ve already figured out that dead, they can’t top the damage meter. If I’m playing with afkers, muppets and the sort of people who show up to lev 70 battlegrounds wearing the gear they got at lev 1, well then at least I can use it.

So where does the glyph fit in? Well right now and much to my surprise I might add, Lightspring is providing exactly the same amount of healing as Lightwell (albeit when you’re below 50 percent health and only every 5 seconds). Lightspring also isn’t clickable at all so in certain environments like LFR where other healers attempt to use all your charges when out of combat to boost their own healing on the meter and the dps are mostly concentrating on standing in bad stuff it might have a place. Everywhere else, I’m erring towards no. In 5 mans, I know at least one fifth of the group (me) will use the unglyphed version which is good enough for me. In PvP (talking battlegrounds), I’d hate the idea of the undergeared squishy waste of space player on 10 percent health who has contributed virtually nothing “stealing” the charge I was rather hoping for when I’m being beaten up.

When I consider the fights where historically I’ve got the most out of Lightwell, it’s been ones where multiple people get hit at once and can all click for healing there and then. The fact that you can click the Lightwell whilst stunned or otherwise cc’d also adds to it’s unglyphed appeal. Lightspring is specifically designed to work against that with it’s lack of interaction, 5 second cooldown and 50 percent health minimum. Obviously we don’t know enough about encounter design yet but I really don’t see me using this glyph.

That said, I’m glad Blizzard have added it. Options are always good and whilst it’s not my particular cup of tea, I’m sure there will be some Priests who like it or who find a niche for it.

What I would love to see changed however is the visual. Right now Lightwell and Lightspring look indentical and that could lead to all sorts of confusion as people try and click on the Lightspring and whine that the Lightwell didn’t heal them automatically. Lightwell has looked exactly the same since it was introduced in vanilla so it’s about time it got a face lift. This might be asking a bit much but I’d love a Lightwell that looked something like this:

On a considerably smaller scale of course and with added sparkles.

Now onto the minor glyphs.

Despite the fact that you have to do my least favourite thing in the entire game to get any use of out of this particular glyph, I am tempted. I just wish there was an added side effect like perhaps when an enemy dies near you whilst you have this glyph equipped a tiny shadow of a val’kyr flies away from the corpse. Just something to make it fun and usable in situations where you rarely if ever die.

I have to admit I had high hopes for this, with a 30 minute cooldown surely it would force embarrassing secrets from the lips of our guildmates and friends. I imagined myself as a smaller cuter Gnome version of Interrogator Vishas bouncing about demanding to know their “naughty secrets”.

I suppose it depends what you call embarrassing.

Perhaps if I was a Troll this could be perceived as the sort of scandalous secret I want to keep to myself but as a Gnome… it sounds perfectly normal to me.

Unfortunately I know exactly what Tauren tastes like because I accidentally took a bite out of one once! As you can see from these screenshots, in this beta build you can force yourself to confess too.

The two minors I can see me using but right now, I’m struggling to think of a use for Lightspring.

Account-wide achievements and an end to blank slates.

Some graphical glitches are creepier than the rest. Not sure whether it’s her lack of eyes or the fact that her entire body seems have been dipped in plaster of Paris. Either way, I know I’d be running in the opposite direction.

Account-wide achievements seem to be semi working in the current Beta build and more than ever I find my feelings on the subject are mixed. When I wrote my original post on the topic, I was torn between liking and disliking but now, I think I’m definitely coming down on the side of dislike.

Pets I’m okay with. It was a necessary evil to get the most of the Pet Battle system, that makes sense. Asking people to level pets individually on a character by character basis would be frustrating and annoying. Everything else, I’m not so comfortable with.

Based on shots like this one, it looks like if you have an achievement somewhere on your account, you will get any relevant  titles and mounts handed out on all characters once they reach the level required to use them.

Perhaps I’m a special snowflake but part of the reason I love rolling new characters every so often is that they are blank slates (just like the Student of Chi-ji). You start completely afresh with nothing but come MoP without purchasing a new account, that won’t be true. Instead of trying to pick a first companion pet that I feel suits the character, I’ll have well over a hundred to pick from. The same goes for mounts, already by the time a new character hits lv 80, it will have it’s pick of over a 100 creatures to ride.

Now I’ve swapped mains once or twice across the last seven years so I should be in seventh heaven. My two characters who are Hands of A’dal sit unplayed, my main pet and mount collector who also happens to have a variety of PvE titles as well as the bulk of my achievements is currently the wrong faction. My Hyacinth Macaw and Horseman’s Reins sit on Druids 1 and 3, neither of which get much playtime these days. Finally, my achievements will reflect me, the player yet still I find the whole concept uncomfortable.  It’s not because I’m afraid of being stalked, although I believe that these changes will make it a whole lot easier for people to track down other gamers because suddenly your achievements will be one unique fingerprint across all your characters. Hiding on alts, re-naming and server transferring won’t be the safety net they were before. Of course in the case of bad behaviour, that’s a good thing. Way back before server transfers were an option, my old GM said one night that, “all we have in WoW is our reputation” and perhaps account-wide achievements is one way to help bring back that sense of accountability. Yet, I still don’t like it.

All my characters who are high enough level to reach AV are exalted and that’s a rite of passage for me. Just as is saving my <Make Love, not Warcraft> achievement for the stunned corpse of someone I really enjoyed ganking. Inheriting those moments from others takes away some of the fun from achieving achievements in the first place.  Of course, it’s probable that you’ll still get the achievement, your new one just taking over from the inherited one but it’s not the same. It’s like the difference between blank notebooks and half filled jotters or buying new clothes versus getting your brother’s cast-offs.

Then there is content. I repeat content on my alts just because there is a blank space in my achievement list. I explore places I know like the back of my hand, flying over old familiar hidey holes, taking screenshots and thinking about all the memories they gave me. I do old favourite quests and farm rep with people who already love me on four other characters. I get out into the world because my achievements aren’t currently shareable and I know plenty others who do the same. Even when there is no new content available, when the game seems stagnant (like now), there is plenty of things to do if you treat all your characters like separate individuals. This change alters that. When your play time is perhaps limited by outside factors and achievements are shared, it makes sense to only do certain things once. Why for example should I run Ulduar again because I’ve got all the titles and both mounts already. If there is nothing I want for transmogrification, there is no reason for me to set foot in there again. No one is ever going to farm the Firelands dailies twice (or at least if they do, that gives a whole new definition to masochism). All these areas which on all the servers I play on  (mainly medium to high pop) are currently buzzing with the latest crop of alts will fall silent.

Now this is all fine and dandy, if Blizzard keep new content flowing at a rate where we don’t get stuck for things to do but if they don’t? I can’t help but feel that making achievements account-wide makes the world smaller. I’m one pet off completing the Darkmoon Faire collection, once I’ve grabbed that this week why go back (unless they add new stuff). Don’t get me wrong, I do quite enjoy the games, especially hitting toy Hoggers over the head with a mallet and punting my Gnome out of the cannon but if I don’t need the tickets because my pets and mounts are about to become shared across all my characters.. then it diminishes my need to visit whole chunks of the game. So, we’ll get the new shiny expansion with lots of things to do but then what happens when we come to level the second character through it and the third? When we already have all the achievements to show before a character even leaves the start zone? Doesn’t that take away from the experience.

I know there are benefits and that I will probably benefit more than most. I have been playing a long time and have switched raiding character more than once for my guild and yet, I still dislike the idea. Although I can see one silver lining in the whole concept. Sunday sees the start of everyone’s favourite holiday “Children’s Week”. The week where everyone manages to get annoyed, whether it’s pvpers ranting at achievement hunting under-geared idiots ruining their battlegrounds or everyone else complaining about being targeted by a never ending succession of evil ganking scum whilst trying to get their achievements done. Now if Blizzard intend all achievements and mounts to be shared, well then hopefully by next year, everyone who wants a purple drake will have one on one character or another and Children’s week will be a peaceful and relaxing occasion without the shrieking and whining of previous years. We can but dream!

BETA: Spectral Guise

I want to like this ability, I really do but I’m struggling to find anything positive at all to say about it. Regardless of whether you consider it in the light of PvP or PvE it has several obvious flaws.

White hits count towards the three hits. Thus fast hitting classes like rogues break you out far too fast.

You can’t cast anything whilst invisible nor can you interact with anything, including your lightwell.

You might as well announce your disappearing act with a fanfare of trumpets, some fireworks and a troop of cheerleaders. Subtle it isn’t. Not only is there an audible ”whoosh”, you also fade to black before vanishing then there is a slight delay in which the enemy de-targets you before the “clone” appears. Which brings me to my next point.

This is my Gnome in all her awesome lv 87 glory:

This is my Spectral Guise:

Feel free to play spot the differences. I would imagine that by the time we’re one month into the expansion, everyone who isn’t a bot will recognise exactly what you’re doing and how to counter it. Also regardless of the health you’re at when you cast Spectral Guise, the clone spawns with a 100 percent which is another give away.

At the moment, any damage you (the real you, not the pale imitation) takes breaks the illusion. So you need to be careful about when you use it. Any dots on you before hand and it’s a no no even if said dots are absorbed by your shield. If you get caught by any AoE effects whilst trying to sneak off, same deal.

As Spectral Guise does break on damage to you and doesn’t clear snares, my biggest headache whilst duelling was the preparation I needed to get the most out of it.

cc -> dispel -> racial (if the snares weren’t magic) -> Spectral Guise

As the most I gained was 30 yards and since everyone else has at least one way of getting back to you, it barely bought me any time at all. I would have been arguably better just using fear and then spam healing myself.

In mass PvP, I can imagine myself using it pro-actively, for example sneaking into an enemy group using it and then fearing to break them up. Other than that, the best use I can think of is using it to cancel spells enemy casters/bosses are using on you.

So what about PvE, if I’m in a dungeon with a bad tank, I already have fade (which I can talent to remove snares) as well as either void tendrils or glyphable fear.

One other possible use (besides using it to cancel one spell cast on you every 30 seconds), would be on encounters like the new Huntsman in the Scarlet Monastery. The kind of fights where you get an arrow over your head and a pack of animals which can’t be taunted set on you for a set duration. If the arrow copies to your “clone” that is. I still need to test this as when I tried the Scarlet Monastery earlier, the boss insisted on targeting my party member rather than me. Of course if Mists brings us another Faction Champions type encounter, then yes, this spell will have a niche but until then, it’s rather lacklustre.

As an lv 87 Priest who has quested through both new zones as well as run the new dungeon as Holy, I can’t think of a single occasion where I “needed” Spectral Guise or even one where it would have been my go to solution. Given that it’s our only new non-talented ability this expansion, I feel that’s rather sad.

I would like to see a couple of quick fixes implemented to make it more desirable.

1. Make it require only yellow hits to break or make it last for a percentage of your health pool.
2.  Have it work a bit like vanish in that any damage the real you incurs whilst it’s active doesn’t break the effect. That way AoE and dots wouldn’t be so much of an issue. Either that or fix it to work with absorbs so that any absorbed damage doesn’t make you reappear.
3. I’d also like it to copy my character, exact same health/mana and health percentage please.

Edit: On top of all this, Darkener left a great comment about his/her idea for a Spectral Guise glyph.

“Glyph of Spectral Guise:Your Spectral Guise spell can be cast while stunned, immobilized, polymorphed, feared, charmed, disoriented, Sapped or mind controlled (under the effect of any CC).”

I have to say I love this idea. Of course it would rely on Blizzard fixing Spectral Guise so that the “sneaky” you doesn’t take damage whilst invisible but it would make a big difference in PvP. Since most of the glyphs these days are trade offs, perhaps a small increase to the cooldown would be required but I could live with that if I got a decent “Save me!” spell out of it.

Finally I have one last issue with it. As it’s not true stealth, mini-pets stick by your side and give the game away. In an expansion based around mini-pet battles, this is bad. I want to have my new companions out in PvP.

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.