Cherry Mana Tea: My reflex reaction on MoP so far.

I have to admit I’m rather excited by the flood of MoP information flowing out of fan sites right now.

My highlights would have to include:

• An 11th character slot has been added. I would of course prefer it to be 12, 13 or 50 but I’ll settle for 11.
• The visual look of the zones. I can’t wait to get out there exploring and of course stopping every two seconds to take another screenshot. 
• You can name all your pets, and they will be shared across all characters (taken from here). Time to get thinking of names! My Feline Familiar is definitely getting named Pyewacket but as for the rest, I really don’t have a clue.
• Heroic Scholomance. 
• The glyph changes, I mean who doesn’t want to ride a druid? I’m also secretly hoping for one which makes Priests glow gold and glittery.
• “By accomplishing some of the outdoor PvP quests and objectives I can actually raise my weekly Conquest cap, which means I can build my PvP set that much faster.” I’m a sucker for world PvP objectives, I even tried to have fun with the “Lol sand” in Silithus. Hopefully this will inspire the opposing faction to join in too.
• “building my historical library with the Lorewalker faction“. (Taken from here).
• The Monk ability names. As someone addicted to drinking all sorts of tea, how can I not play a class with abilities called “Cherry Mana Tea” and “Jasmine Force Tea”.

There are a few little doubts dancing around at the back of my mind though.

In addition, most titles from achievements will be BoA–your alts can wear titles once they reach the minimum level needed to kill the boss/acquire the achievement. However, realm-first titles will probably not be BoA (taken from here).

Whilst it’s entirely possible that at the moment this will only effect titles gained in MoP, I’m still slightly uncomfortable with the idea of my legion of alts running around with titles they didn’t earn. I think requiring the minimum level is a nice touch but still I dislike the idea.

Unlike PVP, your Pet Battles stats will only show you how many games you’ve won. Information on losses will not be available.

This seems like a bit of a cop out to me. Yes, I hate losing with a passion but I believe it’s good for you. It pushes to do better like nothing else on earth and at the end of the day, WoW is a competitive game. Even if you don’t PvP, guilds tend to measure their progress against other guilds and the challenge modes are most definitely a form of competition. Why then should the pet battles not measure losses?

My biggest issue however is the female Pandaren (Pictures borrowed from MMO Champion). I know from reading other people’s thoughts I’m in a bit of a minority here but their faces make me a sad panda. When I was a little girl I played with Sylvanian Families and I can’t escape thinking that  the Female Pandarens belong there, not in a world inhabited by the likes of Sylvanas and the Worgen. I’m fine with the body size and shape but the faces (at least the ones we’ve seen) are too cutesy and too cartoony. I was under the impression that the Pandaren were a homage to the concept of Drunken Fist not Kissyfur (which by the way is what I’m calling my Panda).

That said, I will probably play a female Monk because I prefer to play smaller characters, hence my current gnome fascination. I just hope there are some meaner looking faces available.

Negatives aside, I’m so done with Cataclysm. Bring on Mists please, I have 10 000 waterfalls to take pictures of.

Banishing the Dispel Blues – Rough thoughts on Dispels in MoP

One of the many things being altered for the Mists of Pandaria is defensive dispelling.

All the defensive dispels, (Dispel Magic, Cleanse, Purify Spirit and Nature’s Cure) now have an eight second cooldown. The tooltips have also been changed to read:

(Priest’s Dispel Magic)

Dispels magic on the target, removing all harmful spells from yourself or 1 beneficial spell from an enemy (costs 3 percent of base mana). 

Now I know Mists isn’t even in Beta yet and so nothing is written in stone but I have four potential issues with this.

1. Mass Dispel
2. Unstable Affliction and other forms of Dispel protection
3. Offensive Dispels having no cooldown.
4. Priests and the fact that it seems we’ll only be able to remove magic come Mists.

So up first is Mass Dispel. Now Ghostcrawler said (it’s at 11.38).

“Dispels are just too frequent. They are supposed to be decisions, but they aren’t. We don’t think the answer is to give everyone dispel protection. We think the answer is to make dispels harder.”

Ignoring the fact that I think Blizzard are making the same mistake they made with the cooldowns on Circle of Healing and Wild Growth, I’m not sure how Mass Dispel fits into this brave new world.

Yes, it has a far heavier mana cost than Dispel Magic as well as a cast time (1.5 seconds and we don’t know if the glyph reducing that cast time will survive into MoP) but the tooltip still reads as follows:

Dispels magic in a 15 yard radius, removing 1 harmful spells from each friendly target and 1 beneficial spells from each enemy target.  Affects a maximum of 10 friendly targets and 10 enemy targets.  This dispel is potent enough to remove Magic effects that are normally undispellable.

The mana cost hasn’t currently been increased either. So we can only cast 1 dispel every eight seconds but whilst we’re waiting for Dispel Magic to come off cooldown, we could technically spam Mass Dispel to our hearts content? Don’t get me wrong, as a Priest, I’d hate to lose it but I feel it’s out of place in their design philosophy without some change. Now obviously 38 percent of base mana is a lot compared to 3 percent but then if you use it when its needed most and strip off say 10 harmful spells off 10 different people as well as say five or six off enemy players, then it’s mana well spent.

Given the cooldown going on all the other dispels, I would imagine we’re never going to see the like of Lucifron again, where you had to dispel virtually the entire raid fast, so with a heavy heart I find myself wondering if Mass Dispel needs a radical makeover. Should it be similar to Warrior’s Shattering Throw?

Throws your weapon at the enemy causing 12 damage (based on attack power), reducing the armor on the target by 20% for 10 sec or removing any invulnerabilities.

A button that purely removes invulnerabilities on a long cooldown? (Shattering Throw has a five minute cooldown after all). I’d prefer a shorter cooldown but I suspect it will gain one, either that or the mana cost will have to increase to the point that it’s painful to cast unless you absolutely have to.

Up next, the bane of my life, Unstable Affliction. I’ve hated it ever since it was introduced. It’s the only player debuff I have to add manually to my raid frames so I can track it’s subversive progress across my team-mates.

However according to the Warlock MoP talent calculator there it is, lying there like blood engorged tick, smirking at us.

In addition, if the Unstable Affliction is dispelled it will cause 4198 damage to the dispeller and silence them for 4 sec.

In a world where dispels have a cooldown to prevent them being spammed willy-nilly, I believe that the silence component of  Unstable Affliction has no place. The circumstances which led to it’s introduction have been removed and thus, it too should finally be laid to rest. Given that dispels will now remove all enemy spells from a target, Unstable Affliction nullifies dispelling completely because there is no way of playing or gambling around it. You either have to try and heal your way through it or you eat a four second silence. Neither of those are appealing options in PvP and I would argue neither does it make “dispels harder”, it just makes PvPing as a healer that bit more frustrating.

It’s Shadowpriestly counterpart Sin and Punishment seems absent from the spell list but I could see it turning up as a glyph and I feel that it too should be obsolete if these changes go into effect. Punishing healers for dispelling when there is already a cooldown in place doesn’t make for exciting, fun or interactive game play.

Third, if dispelling is meant to be harder, why don’t things like Purge and Spellsteal have cooldowns. As a Priest, it looks like Mass Dispel not withstanding I’m going to have choose between stripping off your Fortitude and dispelling myself or a team mate every eight seconds. Why should other classes get to strip me of my buffs without making any trade offs.

Purges the enemy target, removing 1 beneficial Magic effect.

and

Steals a beneficial magic effect from the target.  This effect lasts a maximum of 2 min.

Yes, they cost more mana than the defensive dispels but they’ve got no cooldown and can be overpowered against certain classes.

Now I found a thread where people were talking about purge being removed all together but I haven’t managed to find any blue posts saying that. Personally I think it should be redesigned rather than removed but it definitely needs a cooldown to stop it being mindlessly spammed.

Finally, Cure Disease is one of the abilities which has been missing from the Priest MoP Talent tree since the beginning. Without it, Priests will be the only healing class who can remove only 1 debuff, magic (don’t yet know what Monks will be able to do but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more than just one).

• Resto Druids get Magic, Curses and Poisons
• Resto Shamans get Magic and Curses (as well as access to Purge)
• Holy Paladins get Diseases, Magic and Poisons
• Holy and Disc Priests get Magic.

Holy even loses the ability to remove poisons from themselves through the Body and Soul talent because whilst it’s being made available to everyone through the new talent trees, the poison removal aspect has been removed. This coupled with the fact that Priests will only bring Stamina in terms of buffs, could mean that we’re the less attractive choice for PvE. Yes, we have lots of cool gimmicky utility but that tends only to shine on certain fights.

Now this might be an oversight and I really hope it is because I’d miss cure disease in PvP.

What I think should happen is this, Cure Disease and Dispel Magic should be squished together as one spell just like every other healer. The offensive dispel aspect of Dispel Magic should be removed from that spell and would become a spell in it’s own right, sharing whatever cooldown is imposed on purge/spellsteal. That way, Priests would be making the same choices as all the other healing classes when it comes to dispels. I think it’s wrong that as things stand we have to choose between offensively dispelling  or defensively dispelling, especially when the only other healing class with both offensive and defensive dispels doesn’t have to comprise.

Part of me would like to keep Cure Disease and Dispel Magic, the way they are now as separate spells just both with eight second cooldowns but I feel that would diminish what Blizzard are trying to do. Having three different dispel buttons (if the lack of cure disease is an oversight) all with different cooldowns or in the cast of Mass Dispel no cooldown at all, means that dispelling becomes less of process you have to think about. It also helps negate the impact of my old favourite Unstable Affliction because, I could lessen the damage coming into a team-mate being hit by say a Lock, Mage and Deathknight without having to remove any magic.

I’ve got my fingers crossed that the forthcoming press tour will cover dispels in more detail but I still can’t shake the feeling we’ve seen this before. I dispel a lot in PvP right now, I strip people of their buffs because it makes sense but once they’re naked, I stop. Right now I might pre-emptively strip a paladin so when they pop wings, I’ve got less to take off to stop them hurting me. I don’t spam it mindlessly, I dispel appropriately but once it has a cooldown it limits how smartly I can use it. What’s likely to happen is that everyone will just dispel every eight seconds and the gap between good healers and bad healers will narrow even further.

Here’s to hoping we get to dig the grave of Unstable Affliction sooner rather than later (my shovel is ready and waiting).

On Levelling and my Love Affair with Kreug Oathbreaker

This post was inspired by two things, Tzufit’s wonderful post about Outlands as well as my own recent experiences levelling my rogue.

(The italics belong to C.P Cavafy, taken from his poem Ithaka)

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,

Levelling, you either love it or hate it. We all have to do it and yes, it’s a means to an end but isn’t Warcraft more than just the end-game, more than just the Dragon Soul? When I first started playing reaching 60 was the last thing on my mind, in fact reaching 40 for a mount seemed unlikely. Then I started to fall in love with the landscapes, the lush jungles of STV blurring into the icy reaches of Winterspring. Each quest was a breadcrumb that led me deeper and deeper into the forests of Silverpine, Ashenvale and Elwynn. Like Little Red Riding Hood, I strayed from the path time and time again but my experience was richer for it. Sure, the wolf got me more times than I care to remember but each time I resurrected determined to get stronger and better at the game.

Fast forward to now and everyone seems to be racing to hit 85. Heirlooms, shortened levels, experience from PvP, RAF and guild experience mean that unless you deliberately go out of your way to smell the flowers, you’re 85 before you know it. My Rogue will have taken four days of play from 1 to 85 but since I’ve spent quite a few hours hanging out online not doing things which give experience, I imagine she could have been there a lot faster. If memory serves me correctly, it used to take about seven to nine days to level from 1 to 60 in classic (on average). Given that the game has got bigger, not smaller in terms of content, that seems wrong to me.

full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

Or where have all the elites gone?

Kreug Oathbreaker, my husband and I, we had a thing. A happy little ménage à trois in which he provided the benchmark for each of the pairs we levelled. Could we kill him at 71 with a ret paladin and a (bad) hunter? Yes, it took a few tries but with traps and stuns and my poor pet taking turns at tanking we could. What about with a destruction warlock and disc priest? Turns out they needed another level before the blueberry was up to the task but again, we managed. Now, he’s a sorry excuse for a mob, a shadow of his former self. My rogue solo’d him without a care in the world, in fact because he’s stun-able I took an impressive 3k of damage across the entire fight.

I suppose my issue here is not that it now takes less time to gain more levels but that I feel that too much has been sacrificed in the process. I accept that taking weeks to level would put new players off as well as frustrate those just wanting to try out a new class at 85. I don’t however see why the elites and group quests needed a nerf. They were always optional and now even more so because we need less experience per level. If you couldn’t find enough people in the zone who were on the quest or didn’t have friends/guildmates to come, you weren’t stuck. Your levelling experience wouldn’t just abruptly end there, you were free to move on something you could complete by yourself.

The elite quests provided an extra frisson of excitement, especially those free roaming ones. Running into Stitches for the first time was an experience everyone should have. Not only was he an argument for staying off the road in the first place, the chance of bumping into him made the zone an interesting place. I liked that feeling of nervous anticipation pre-cataclysm Duskwood gave me, it’s creepiness intensified whenever you heard the yelling start. Now he’s safely phased so no innocent questers will be accidentally flattened whilst he rampages around Darkshire and that’s a loss to all of us. Once you’ve completed the quest chain, no more Stitches ever. You can’t roam through Duskwood lying in wait for him to settle old scores, collecting his femurs as trophies.

I got to Outlands vaguely hopeful that all my old friends would be untouched by Blizzard’s incredible nerfing shrink ray but no, they too were all pale reflections of their former selves. I know the Fel Reaver is untouched but given how open Hellfire is, it’s rather hard not to see him coming.

Then there is the inconsistency, I can solo Durn, this massive monster of mob, this son of a raid boss but I still need a group to take on Brokentoe even though he looks exactly the same as Banthar, a mob I killed by sneezing on five minutes previously. I also noticed on a quick trip to Netherstorm that most of the elites there are still elites. Is that because most people just go straight from Blade’s Edge to Northrend now or is that a bit too cynical?

May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

One of the things which hooked me into WoW in the first place was the challenge of levelling. I still remember the feeling of satisfaction we had when we killed King Mukla the first time with just two people. Yes, it required a fair amount of kiting and one or two attempts but we’d seen five man groups wipe on the giant ape before. Now, all the bumps in the road have been ironed out.   Making levelling easier is one thing but these changes have a couple of knock on effects.

Firstly, they eradicate part of the need for social interaction whilst levelling. In the past I got to know a lot of new guild-mates by helping them with their alts, it was a great way of striking up conversations outside raiding. It was also a way of meeting new people, all of you standing there staring at some massive elite. I made quite a few friends through Fozruk in particular, either by asking for help tracking him down or just getting people to help me kill him. Now, talking just slows you down in the mad race to see who can pull him fastest because you know it’s easy and you don’t want to share experience.

Secondly because the levels whiz past so fast, learning your abilities properly can be hard. You’ve barely had time to keybind one before you’ve got the next. I always see levelling a new character as a house of cards. Each ability or spell I learn is a new card and I carefully add them to those that came before, building upon them. Spells interlinking with each other as I figure out which order I should use them, in any given situation. Take my rogue, she’s combat with a few pvpish talents thrown into the mix and so I want to be able to treat mobs a bit like players as a sort of practise run without ego getting in the way but they don’t have enough health for it to work. I get a fraction of the way through my planned moves and the mob is dead at my feet. In the end, I have to resort to pvp to practice against live target dummies (a cruel choice of words perhaps but then rogue versus most people especially in the lv 75 to 79 bracket could be classed as cruel, especially when the rogue is wearing cataclysm loot).

We’re taught spells in a spaced out fashion, I imagine so as not to overwhelm people but I keep seeing people (in pvp and sub 85 dungeons) who don’t use key abilities for their spec/roll and when you ask why (in the politest possible way), you get answers like “Oh is that what that does?” or “I haven’t done my training since lv 15″. Surely something is wrong if questing is so easy you don’t need to do your training and you can kill easily without using abilities your choice of spec is supposedly built around.

I also want to touch on the gap between those with heirlooms and those without. It is a massive chasm and quest rewards do not come close to bridging it. This is seen in particular in low level PvP, where without heirlooms, rogues are drawn to you like angry pointy teethed moths to a flame. I think this disparity is part of the issue and if heirlooms were either removed from the equation or all players were given access to them, then balancing the levelling game would be far easier.

Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

One of the things I regret most about my WoW play time was my journey to 85. We stayed up all night to level along with most of my then guild and hit 85 sometime in the afternoon. By the time I hit Uldum, I was existing on chocolate and cherry coke, I wasn’t reading quest text (which is really unlike me) and I wanted to kill Harrison Jones (although that would probably have happened anyway). I don’t really remember Twilight Highlands at all nor do I remember the actual yay I’m 85, now I can go to bed moment. Possibly because there wasn’t one and I had to start running instances to gear up for raiding. Looking back at my blog posts, I know that 10 days into the expansion, we were sitting at 8 bosses down already but it’s all a high speed blur. If I could do it again, I’d have gone slower even if it was just by a day or two.

I can’t help feeling that this levelling lark creates a false sense of expectation. You aren’t supposed to sleepwalk to 85 (even though I did) and then learn to play your class at the expense of other people (didn’t do that though). Battlegrounds, dungeons, LFR, guild applications, you see it all the time. People who have put zero effort in to a character, expecting to be able to muddle through, the way they did on the road from 1 to 85. The problem is, they can’t and that causes friction, tension and a good deal of flaming. People who walk into 85 random battlegrounds still in their questing gear or heirlooms and wonder why the rest of their team aren’t pleased to see them. People who try tanking heroics in PvP gear and wonder why their healers are struggling and/or angry.  People who think that doing less dps than the healer is acceptable. Challenge free levelling creates a whole set of issues of it’s own, ones which do have a negative effect on the game. I fully accept that people should be free to play anyway they want to, apart from the areas where their desires/wishes cross into other people’s. Sure, doing a quest in Elwynn shouldn’t be on par with a Heroic raid instance but mobs shouldn’t ever be one shot-able either.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

The road to 85 should be marvellous, after all there are some beautiful zones and amazing, heart-wrenching quests waiting to be explored.

I just wish when they made the levels smaller, they left the elites alone. Little challenges sparkling like pearls in amidst the easy quests so the brave or arrogant could confront them at will and perhaps learn more in those fraught minutes than in all the rest of the journey.

Here’s to levelling in the Mists, may the experience be “full of adventure, full of discovery.”

The resolutions – One month in.

Well so far so good, I haven’t managed to out right break any yet.

In-game

The alt levelling, encouraged by the 2012 in 2012 project is coming on a pace. Much to my surprise I’ve fallen in love with what was meant as a sort of joke “lets see Gilneas” character, my Worgen Hunter. If I could go back to the beginning, I probably wouldn’t have picked Twiceshy as a name but I hate Gilneas so much that going back to the start just isn’t an option.

Playing her and my Mage, Ellora the would be Loremaster has really opened to my eyes to the revamped quest chains and I take back some of the things I said about hating them all. I just finished Southern Barrens today and Goblins.. I hope you’re proud of yourselves, you hateful Dwarf killers. I will wreck vengeance upon you in battlegrounds for ever more, especially you Goblin Hunters with pet monkeys.

Having discovered Raimondas the Insane through Twitter, I’ve also decided that I’m going to spice up my 2012 in 2012 by pushing for the Insane on one character, probably my Dwarf Warlock (she looks slightly mad already). That will also give me a reason to level my Rogue, which I need as other than pickpocketing junk from unsuspecting NPCs, I hate playing Rogues.

Havisham the Shadow Priest has escaped Gilneas (Yay!) and I’m never ever levelling another Worgen from scratch again. I really hope the Panda experience isn’t quite as painful as Gilneas.

The hks too are adding up, Sprout has managed to slaughter five thousand Horde this month, give or take a few (obviously by slaughter I mean stand behind the guy with the big sword, healing him as he kills stuff). She is now 10k off her target of 50 000, which if I keep up the good work, means she will hit the target in two months time.

As for the Seapony, this coming Darkmoon Faire, I’m going to find a nice spot to fish and stay there until I find one.

Blog-related

So far so good for the two posts per week and I still have a bunch which are either close to finished or at least started. I just need to add pictures and a few final words to them.

The My Characters page is still a work in progress but at least now it has some pictures in it.

The commenting on other people’s blogs is still a bit piecemeal, I started great but it’s definitely tailed off towards the end of the month. I also have a bunch of new blogs that I’ve only recently discovered and never commented on, so I need to fix that.

In General

The cook one new thing a week is going great. I’m finally working through all my cookery books and making the things I’d marked as “must try”. In fact I’ve got to the stage of making a list on Sunday of what I want to cook for the week and going shopping and buying only those ingredients. I barely recognise myself.

I’m slightly behind on the Good Reads challenge, however work is lightening up so that should fix itself.

The working out is better but not good enough. Once it starts getting lighter earlier, I want to go running and I need to start swimming again.

All in all, though I’m happy with the way that January went.

No man is an island – so does your random battleground win/loss ratio reflect on you

No man is an island entire of itself; every man 
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

John Donne

When I run out of blogs to read and twitter is quiet, I run off to the Battlenet PvP forums looking for excitement. It’s a bit like eating squeezy cheese straight from the tube, you know it’s wrong but it feels so right, so many prospective irate PvPers to troll (not that I do of course) and sometimes hidden amongst the dross, you find fascinating threads. Now I was flicking through the usual standard topics, “nerf this and that”, “remove AV/IoC/SotA all together” and “ban healers from PvP” when I spotted a thread entitled “Bad win/lose ratio = bad player?” My immediate gut reaction before I even started reading the thread was no, of course not. As John Donne wrote all those years ago, “No man is an island”. In WSG/Gilneas/Twin Peaks you are 1 / 10th of the team, moving up to 1 /40th in AV/IoC. Your level of play can’t make or break the game, can it?

Well, if the answer doesn’t lie in our own personal contribution to the game, what other factors could influence the ratio?

• Class balance. There are a plethora of threads complaining about the lack of healers in random battlegrounds, attributing loss after loss to not having any. Do you have a flag carrier in WSG/Twin Peaks. Now having carried plenty of flags myself as well as healed a wide variety of non-tank classes to successful flag caps, I admit to not being convinced about this one.
• Average item level of both teams. If one team is full of resilience and the other is wearing quest greens, it should be obvious who is going to win.
• The number of afkers/botters.
• Are there are any premade groups within either team? For example quite often I’ve seen multiple groups of two or three within the same AB/EotS team.

Is it possible then, that across a sample of 500 plus battlegrounds, you could get unlucky with your  team 70 percent of the time? The cynic in me thinks no, it’s not possible. I know it’s easy to talk as fairly well geared Disc Priest with around 4600 resilience, after all my groups always have at least one healer but then I’ve won plenty of games in which on paper at least we had the weaker team. Less healers, a lower item level, no tank class to carry the flag and yet because we were objective focused, we won.

I’ve been playing a lot of Isle of Conquest this weekend, primarily to avoid Twin Peaks which seems to be my random battleground’s default setting. It’s certainly been an eye opening experience. Every game there has been a vocal minority yelling that the Alliance always lose IoC and so I decided to keep an eye them. What exactly were they bringing to the game? Well in the case of most of them, absolutely nothing. They’d go docks sure but as soon as it was tagged, they would ride off to sit outside the Horde Keep. They wouldn’t help defend the glaives, they wouldn’t go and tag the Refinery and they didn’t use the catapults to enter the Keep. They just sat there on their mounts calling the rest of us names.

Now compare that to what Mr Harpy does in IoC. First of all he runs off to the Workshop because slowing down their tagging is essential. The Workshop is the closest node to the bases and so the longer it takes the Horde to tag it, the better. It’s amazing how long a small rogue can survive spamming fan of knives at the flag. Then on ressing in our base, he heads out to slow and kill the demolishers underneath our Keep guns. Yes, he dies a lot more than the “Alliance suck, I’m going Horde” brigade sitting outside the Horde Keep doing nothing but he also has an excellent win ratio.

On my latest Priest, who has something in the realm of 630 games played, I have a 74 ish percent win/loss ratio. That’s from either queuing solo or with Mr Harpy, certainly no proper premades involved. Now, I’d to like to say that’s just because I’m awesome but I can’t really, at least not with a straight face. I am however obsessed with objectives. I defend nodes, solo if necessary. I try and keep the flag carrier alive even if they are a resilience-less mage with 115k health. I communicate, giving locations and numbers of the opposing team. That’s partly why I love the Lumber Mill in Arathi Basin so much, not only do I have a cliff to throw people off but I also have a bird’s eye view of most of the map. The only flag I don’t have direct sight on is the Gold Mine but the aid of mindvision that’s not insurmountable either.

So, in conclusion, I’m still not convinced it’s as black and white as many of the posters in that thread would have you believe. Outside factors do play a part, there are some games that no matter how positive you try and be, you know it’s odds on a loss within a few minutes. No one has a 100 percent win record and everyone at some time or another gets stuck with the 99k health deathknights, the bot mages and the three rogues who never unstealth during the entire game. However, if your win/loss ratio is below 45 percent across a large enough sample of games (let’s say 300 plus), ask yourself the following questions and think hard about your answers.

1. Are you one of the masses falling over themselves to leave a node, desperate to ensure they won’t be left in defence?
2. If by some unfortunate accident, you find yourself defending, do you ask for help before the node gets tagged, after or not at all?
3. Are you willing to die repeatedly to interrupt flagging?
4. If flag games do you try and return your flag, defend your flag carrier or have a nice one v one with the bot in a shady corner of the map?
5. Other than to call your team-mates names, do you converse in battleground chat?

If your answers come out something like this:

1. yes, 2. not at all, 3. no, 4. one v one all the way mate. 5. talk to people… in an MMORPG.. why would I do that?

Then yes, your win/loss ratio is quite possibly at least 60 percent your fault. It doesn’t take many objective focused people to win games but equally it doesn’t take many afk zergers to lose them.

Made to be broken

Not a particularly great start to the new year, taking six days to write my first post. However there are a few mitigating circumstances. The angry Gnome bought me a box set of George RR Martin’s books and I’m finding them a bit addictive to say the least. I have to keep reading to make sure my favourites survive. Not sure if I’m cheering for the House of Stark because we’re introduced to them first or because they remind me of my own family. On top of these distractions, work has been busy, we’re already understaffed and for some reason everyone else has decided to be ill this week.

Anyway onto the Resolutions, which no doubt I will have broke by the time February drifts in.

In-Game

• Get back into raiding for MoP. Certainly not hardcore as I never want to spend six nights a week glued to my computer when new content is released again but a few nights a week with like-minded people.
• Reach 85 on a bunch of alts, most notably my Worgen Shadow Priest, Havisham (yes, she totally has a mouldy wedding cake hidden in the attic) and my Mage, Ellora who I intend completing Loremaster (again) on. I’ve been really dismissive of the revamped Azeroth in the past, questing for ten minutes and then running off to PvP so for once I’m going to level a character purely through questing. Also I love this idea of  J D Kenada’s over at Amateur Azerothian which should help motivate me to rescue some of the characters I have sprinkled around Azeroth, abandoned at various levels.
• Get Erinys to 100 000 hks and the Sprout to 50 000k.
• Fish up a sea pony. I must be the only person left in Azeroth who doesn’t have one, however my fishing tolerance is low, really low. At the moment, I seem to manage ten or so casts before going to do a few battlegrounds.

Blog Related

• Get around to doing something with the My Characters page.
• Attempt to write two posts a week as a minimum. Not to mention use the contents of my drafts folder, so what if some of them are ranty. I’m obviously a ranty person.
• Comment on a lot more blogs belonging to other people. I read so many, but because I read them piecemeal, I tend to think, “Oh, I’ll go back and comment on that when I’ve got the time”, then I get distracted and never do.

In General

• Cook at least one new thing per week.
• Work out at least four days a  week. When I wasn’t playing WoW this time last year, I was so good, working out five or six days a week. Need to get back into a routine.
• Keep up with my Good Reads 2012 reading challenge.

This list probably should be a good deal longer but breaking a few seems better than breaking a lot.

Proof of Alliance favouritism – The Green Winter Clothes Scandal!

As a tailor, I like having as many recipes as I can lay my little gnomish mitts on. So during Winter Veil, I knew I had to acquire the Green Winter clothes on my Gnome Priest. From previous years, I knew that you could buy the opposing faction’s recipe from their cities so off I went. However, it was only after a quick trip to Thunderbluff to buy said recipe, I got around to looking at WoWhead.

Imagine my surprise, when I discovered that the Alliance could safely buy the Green Winter clothes pattern in the neutral city of Shattrah as well as Orgrimmar, Thunderbluff and the Undercity, sold by this enterprising Goblin:

Can be found loitering outside the Aldor bank.

The Horde on the other hand, have to journey to either Stormwind (crawling with Alliance), Ironforge (crawling with angry Lumpyless Alliance) or that Draenei dump that’s in the middle of nowhere to buy the Red Winter clothes recipe.

 

Updated Holy and Disc spells by Spec: MoP

Class abilities are shared by all three specs. The other two columns are spec dependent.

Information comes from here.

This is the updated version which includes most of the missing abilities from the previous one. Spells with * by their names are new additions.

Level	Class	Holy	Disc
1	Smite
3	Shadow Word:Pain
5	Power Word: Shield
7	Flash Heal
9	Inner Fire
10		Chastise	Penance
18	Resurrection	Holy Fire	Holy Fire
22	Power Word: Fortitude
26	Dispel Magic	Renew
28		Heal	Spirit Shell*
30		Spirit of Redemption (passive)
32	Shadow Word: Death	Holy Concentration (passive)	Rapture (passive)
34	Levitate	Greater Heal	Greater Heal
36		Lightwell	Inner Focus
38	Mind Control
42	Mind Vision
44			Evangelism (passive)
45			Grace (passive)
46		Prayer of Healing	Holy Nova
48		Binding Heal
50	Mysticism (passive)	Circle of Healing
54	Fear Ward
56		Chakra
58			Pain Suppression
64	Shadowfiend
66			Hymn of Hope
68		Prayer of Mending	Prayer of Mending
70		Guardian Spirit	Power Word: Barrier
72	Mass Dispel
74		Revelations (passive)
76	Mind Sear
78		Divine Hymn	Train of Thought (passive)
80	Inner Will	Mastery	Mastery
84	Leap of Faith
87	Spectral Guise*

Mind Spike and Mind Blast have both turned up in the spell lists but as Shadow only. Not particularly happy about the PvP implications of that.

Going to be interesting to see how Holy Nova turns out now that it’s Discipline only and is Disc’s version of Prayer of Healing.

As far as I can tell, the only spells still missing are cure disease and shadow protection. However if we’re still going to get some form of disease removal I can see it being baked into the magic one, especially if they’re going to have cooldowns.

Amazed that Mass Dispel is still on the list. Really thought with the prospective changes to dispel mechanics it would have been the first thing out of the door. Glad that it’s staying around though, can’t have paladins and mages thinking they are safe in their pesky bubbles/ice-cubes.

The level 87 spell sounds interesting but possibly from a more PvP perspective than a raiding one, although I’m sure there will be uses for it in both spheres of the game.

Spectral Guise: Your Shadow blurs into the darkness, leaving your true form behind. As a shadow you are invisible, but remain in combat. Lasts 6 seconds or until until your true form is hit by 3 direct attacks. 30 second cool down.

Hopefully you’re a moving shadow, so sneaking off whilst someone is hitting you will be an option. Would be handy for getting a brief respite from bad tanking in 5 mans / LFR. If it does allow movement, Nightelf Priests might be able to have fun with it and Shadowmeld. If it allows you to carry on as normal whilst a shadow, i.e. healing away for those 6 seconds/3 hits, I like the concept a lot.

Spirit Shell, the new Disc ability sounds interesting too.

Creates an absorption shield on the target for 3864 damage lasting 8 sec. If the shield is untouched and expires, the target is healed for 80% of the amount.

Although it comes with a 3 second cast time.

I think we have to remember though, that in the case of quite a few spells, Holy Nova springs to mind, that the tooltips are odds on guaranteed to change.

 

Holy and Disc Priest Spells in MoP – by spec

Class abilities are shared by all three specs. The other two columns are spec dependent.

Information comes from here.

Updated version of this table can be found here.

Level	Class	Holy	Disc
1	Smite
3	Shadow Word:Pain
5	Power Word: Shield
7	Flash Heal
9	Inner Fire
10		Chastise	Penance
18	Resurrection	Holy Fire	Holy Fire
22	Power Word: Fortitude
26	Dispel Magic	Renew
28		Heal
30		Spirit of Redemption (passive)
32	Shadow Word: Death	Holy Concentration (passive)	Rapture (passive)
34	Levitate	Greater Heal	Greater Heal
36		Lightwell	Inner Focus
38	Mind Control
42	Mind Vision
44			Evangelism (passive)
45			Grace (passive)
48		Binding Heal
50	Mysticism (passive)	Circle of Healing
56		Chakra
58			Pain Suppression
64	Shadowfiend
66			Hymn of Hope
68		Prayer of Mending	Prayer of Mending
70		Guardian Spirit	Power Word: Barrier
74		Revelations (passive)
76	Mind Sear
78		Divine Hymn	Train of Thought (passive)
80	Inner Will	Mastery	Mastery
84	Leap of Faith

First thoughts

Mana concerns. As we can see from the table, Disc will have rapture, Hymn of Hope (albeit as dubious as ever) and shadowfiend as methods of getting mana back. Holy has Holy Concentration and Shadowfiend. Will the two different methods come close to balancing out?

Complete lack of Shadow dps spells. Both Mind Spike and Mind Blast seem have to vanished completely. I can’t even find them in the Shadow specific section. Not at all happy at this for PvP, I really don’t like having to use my healing school for dps. Fingers crossed that this is an oversight.

Also surprised that Disc loses so many of our current heals: Binding, Heal, Divine Hymn and Renew. Not surprised that Holy keeps Lightwell and Spirit of Redemption though. Time to bring back the cancel aura macro for the times when I’d rather be really dead than slightly dead and spat on.

There are some implications for the new talents too. For example on row three of the talents, one of the options is Archangel which requires either Shadowform or Evangelism meaning, on that row, Holy only has two options. Although based on the description Divine Star > all on that row.

However since both Holy Nova and Prayer of Healing are conspicuous by their absence, hopefully there will be lots more changes between now and Mists going live. I could imagine Prayer of Healing being Holy only and Holy Nova being Disc based on what the developers have been saying.

All in all, roll on the beta please.

In Praise of Holy Nova

My heart sank a little when I read this part of the Q & A.

Q: Is the priest spell Holy Nova going to be changed to make it useful in mop, as there is no need to even have it on you action bars as it is atm.

A: We’ve talked about it. Its possible we may make Holy Nova Discipline only and interact with Evangelism in some way.

Yes, in a pure PvE environment, the uses for Holy Nova might be few and far between, but the game is more than that. Across the board, Holy Nova does have useful applications.

• Destroying pesky snake traps in one spell rotation.
• Unearthing stealths before they get the jump on you, saving yourself from having to do large quantities of healing.
• Preventing people tagging nodes in AB, AV, Isle of Conquest and Gilneas.

Part of the reason why I keep coming back to my various Priests, is the fact that our toolbox is overflowing with spells for every occasion. Holy Nova is unique within that, as an albeit weak instant AoE heal which also deals damage. Technically Mind Sear can replicate that list, however it comes with more conditionals. You need ideally a friendly target to cast it on, although an enemy will do in a pinch but quite often if you’re the one trying to stop them tagging, it’s because you’re alone. Not to mention with Holy Nova, whilst you’re spamming it you are basically keeping an extra hot on yourself, one that can “tick” every 1.5 seconds and can’t be dispelled, stolen or purged.

Then of course there is Holy Nova’s rich and varied history to be considered. The spell which carried so many Priests through their Benediction chain deserves better than to be dumped or forgotten. From it’s days as our 31 point talent (when barely anyone took it) to becoming an 11 point talent (it replaced Holy Fire when that became baseline) to finally becoming a Priest ability, I’d hate to see it sidelined even more.

So I’m dedicating this weekend to Holy Nova. Join me, fellow Priests in throwing sparkly confetti in the faces of everything from critters to kobolds, goblins to Garrosh, Arthas to Z’kral and everything in between. If you don’t happen to have a Priest, feel free to suggest things you’d like to see being nova’d in the comments and I’ll try and oblige (need more action shots for IntPiPoMo).

Other thoughts on the Q & A

The Monk healer will also involve a lot of non-targeted healing. Anything can change, but I’d like to say you could heal as a Monk competitively without ever having to target a friendly player.

Mixed thoughts on this one. Part of what I like about healing is the decisions you have to make quickly, who to heal, what spell to use and so on. The idea of basically being a healing stream totem with more oomph that doesn’t have to pick targets seems as if Blizzard are taking the idea of smart heals a bit too far.

Our current plan for Mists is for Intellect to no longer directly increase the size of player mana pools. We intend for our mana-based DPS and Tank classes to be entirely self-reliant regardless of mana pool, so the gameplay impact for those players will be nil. For healers, Spirit will remain as the pure regen stat, and healers after multiple tiers of raid progression will clearly have far more mana at their disposal, but there will be more of an inherent tradeoff between regen and throughput stats. A healer with amazing regen will have amazing regen because of a choice to focus their stats in that direction.

Sounds good on paper. Having some healers chasing spirit whilst others could just stack intellect was never going to work. However my main concern as a Priest is that will we have access to the same quantities of spirit as the other healing classes. Sharing gear with 2 other classes who don’t have any use for spirit will potentially cause the same problems it has through Cataclysm for Priests.

In 5.0 we want dispels to have a cooldown and duration more like Spellsteal but get all buffs or debuffs at once to make them more tactical.

I’m in favour of this too, as a Priest and a Druid, certain classes, shamans in particular are a bit too annoying in mass PvP. Keep your mitts off my hots and shields please. I’m curious whether the same “rules” will apply to defensive dispelling and if so what will happen to spells like Unstable Affliction, after all there is no need for dispel protection if people can only remove your dots every X number of seconds anyway.

So its possible we may get a new model for Lightwell that is “taller” and make it less of an issue to see it and click it.

Not sure turning it into a gigantic fountain of golden light will fix Lightwell’s issues. People either make the effort to click it or they don’t. Sometimes, bigger is not better.

You shouldn’t be killing healers just because you burst them down and keep them interrupted, but because you cause them to have to use mana inefficiently.

Yay!

So far, I’m fairly happy with their prospective changes.