BETA: Weaving the Mist – healing from a Monk’s perspective (lv 11 to 45)

First of all, I’m not going to cover levels 1 through 10 because Tzufit has already done  a great job of doing that, which can be found here. Secondly this is going to concentrate a bit more on PvPish things because well, I’m a ganker at heart.

So you rolled a Monk, reached lv 10 and picked Mistweaver, well congratulations!

From picking up your specialisation, you get access to your first heal, Soothing Mists. From levels 10 to through to dinging 18 this is it, the extent of your healing toolbox.

It is a great spell for a couple of reasons, first of all, the mana cost is not upfront. You only pay for what you use. Over the course of eight seconds, you can potentially (if you choose not to interrupt it) get with my meagre haste levels, nine ticks of Soothing Mists. However I find myself rarely going full channel with this. In PvP related activities, grabbing the first two ticks and then moving is great as a way of keeping health pumping in but making it hard for your opponent to interrupt you.

Secondly, each pulse without overhealing counts as a possible generation of chi (it seems bugged in the current Beta build providing a 100 percent chance).  This combined with point 1, means that you can cast a tick or two on the tank, stopping when they reach full health, wait a bit for them to take a hit or six and then recast it again, ensuring you maximise both your mana usage and your chances of gaining chi. This is not, in my opinion a spell you want to have overheal on because it’s just not necessary.

At lv 18, we get Chi Wave.

This is a quite a contentious spell and whilst I agree it does have a few negatives, I like it. Yes, it’s targeting could definitely do with being a bit smarter, less critters and mobs on the other side of walls please. That said, I’ve had a lot of fun with it and because it will go you -> the thing you’re fighting -> you etc etc, I find it to be a great PvP and grinding tool plus it’s definitely contributed to my success in 1 v 1s.

In my dungeon experience , especially those that Mr Harpy and I two manned, it worked really well (apart from the odd bounce through solid walls). I could build chi either through the careful use of Soothing Mists or through clobbering stuff (in Serpent Stance or switching to Tiger if I thought mana would be an issue at some point) and fire this off every 8 seconds. I love having two resource systems for healing, in the same vein as Paladins with Holy Power but would like to see more Chi based abilities at low levels to help people get in the habit of using it earlier on.

Our next heal pops up at lv 26. Now this isn’t Mistweaver specific but I decided to include it here because it’s still useful in both PvE and PvP environments.

Because it’s available to all Monks, there is of course an energy version which differs slightly to this one (40 energy cost/heals you for 313 and causes 120 percent of the amount healed as damage). I see it as a mini version of Desperate Prayer with a really short cooldown which also provides a smack in the face to whatever is currently trying to kill you. It does suffer from a similar issue to Chi Wave, in that it’s choice of targets isn’t exactly smart. Make sure there aren’t any critters between you and the boss …. but I’ve found in the vast majority of dungeons I’ve run so far, this is enough to keep myself alive. Again, overhealing doesn’t translate into damage so make sure you’re aware of your own health before using it.

Now we hit a bit of a healing drought, having to wait until level 34 for our next heal.

I believe there is talk of making this require a target rather than it functioning as a smart heal and I think that’s probably the right line for Blizzard to take. Right now it’s awesome and certainly from a random battleground perspective, it would increase your chances of being healed by monks with zero situational awareness but I feel that since it fits into the “flash heal” type category and can already become instant cast whilst providing chi that leaving it the option to remain as a smart heal is a step too far.

That said though, I tend to only use it whilst channelling Soothing Mists so that I can double dip into my chances of getting chi so wouldn’t miss that utility. As a PvP tool, the fact that when you’re channelling Soothing Mists, the only impediment to it’s instant castiness is your reaction time means that it’s wonderful. Burst healing and instant casts are king in the PvP world and as Monks all our abilities seem to be based around that principle.

The last heal we gain in the this bracket is my all time favourite.

An infectious renew which lasts for almost double it’s cooldown meaning that you could technically have them spread over quite a few people in a battleground or a dungeon even at this level and without Uplift.

Going from left to right, 3 and 4 are the timers relating to Renewing Mists. 4 is the duration of the mists itself and 3 shows the number of potential jumps remaining plus a timer in which those jumps must be made.

So far, I love our toolbox. That fact that everything is either instant cast (renewing mists, expel harm and chi wave) or can be instant cast depending on how you use it (soothing mists and surging mists), means that we’re really well set in PvP for quick and effective healing on the move. So that’s the healing abilities covered, now lets look at utility and what that brings to the table.

At level 18 we gain Resurrection. This isn’t particularly exciting just a necessary part of levelling a healer these days.

I do find the PvP implications of the second half interesting though, Night Elf monks shadowmelding to drop combat behind well-placed pillars and then pulling off sub 5 second resses perhaps.

Level 20 brings Detox, another staple of playing a healer.

Apart from the Bleed effects, this is a fairly standard spell. The bleeds do make it a bit more interesting though and I’m interested in seeing if it allows Monks to “cheese” spells like Grievous Wound and Grievous Whirl. It also means that not only will we be stealing Feral Druid gear for our offspecs but that we can pretty much negate them in PvP too.

At 28, we get our very own hamstring.

I found that this plus roll provided some rather satisfying results against melee classes, especially since we can remove poisons and bleeds into the bargain.

The Monk kick requires either Tiger Stance or Ox stance but I feel it’s worth including here because any decent Mistweaver who PvPs is going to have to get into the habit of switching stance to use it, just as Resto Druids currently have to go catform to interrupt spellcasting.

We get it at lv 32 and regardless of whether you intend playing a Monk or not, you might want to play close attention to the tooltip.

In short, when you’re playing a Monk, make sure you’re facing them when you interrupt for added insult to injury. When you’re not playing a Monk but you’ve got one in your face, try and keep your back to them when you feel you have to use cast times. I must admit as a healing Priest, it’s spells like this that make me sad that all my cast time shadow spells have been taken away because if they catch me casting, I’m still going to take a five second silence regardless of whether I’m dpsing or healing.

Finally, there is Paralysis.

In PvP, the duration is eight seconds from behind and four from the front.

We learn this at lv 44 and again it’s baseline for the class. Unfortunately you can’t win, don’t turn your back on a Monk and you risk being locked out of all your spells for five seconds, turn your back and you could find yourself incapacitated longer.

In PvP at any rate, given that most of our useful utility requires melee range, I think it’s going to be an interesting game of chase (at lower levels anyway). Allowing pesky melee to catch you every so often just you can get the most of your incapacitates and disables whilst chasing down other healers and casters yourself to interrupt them, all the while punctuating your utility moves with as much instant or near to instant healing as possible. I don’t know about you, but I love to dance….

There are a few things I’d like to see improved/changed, perhaps most importantly another way of spending Chi that isn’t just doing melee dps (by lv 44, we still only have Chi Wave as a healing spell which relies on it). That said, I think I definitely do more than decent dps in both a PvP and PvE environment (testing PvP is a little hard at the moment since Battlegrounds haven’t worked since a patch or two ago) by generating chi through healing/clobber and spending it on mostly melee dps.

I’d like the “smart” aspect of Chi Wave and of Expel Harm to get a lot smarter. Please prioritise stuff we’re already in combat with and don’t go for yellow mobs/critters over red ones.

All in all though, I haven’t lost a duel yet at any level, even against the other two specs of Monk. This is mostly because of Expel Harm and Chi Wave with the odd melee hit thrown in for good measure. I’ve also managed to 2 man a lot of the lower level dungeons, including Razorfen Kraul which was far too easy for two Monks (healing and tank) to saunter through randomly pulling stuff through walls and not stopping runners. The cynic in me expects things to change quite a bit between now and live but the naughty little Gnome with an eye on MoP PvP secretly hopes they won’t.

I would definitely recommend if you have the time and the Beta access, levelling a Monk from scratch rather than just grabbing a premade. It’s a bit like building a house of cards, starting from the bottom is always best. Learning each ability as you get it and figuring out how best to interlace it with others makes getting to grips with a new class easier than trying to sort out forty abilities all at once. This is particularly true of the Monk class as quite a few abilities do work best when used in tandem with others (as an example see Soothing Mists and Surging Mists).

Right now, I think Blizzard are sending mixed signals with the Monk class. Are we meant to be in melee hitting stuff between casting just like my Paladin used to have to in the old judgement days? or are we meant to be pure healers just standing around at the back? I know that even at this point, we have two clear ways of generating chi, one to potentially appeal to both groups but the most effective way seems to be a combination of those methods. Personally I enjoy being in melee range using spare chi to dps but I know it’s a play style not to everyone’s tastes but also groups don’t always seem to like it either.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a screenshot of one of the battlegrounds I did manage to do on the Beta. Eighteen Monks in Warsong Gulch was a fairly hilarious experience (there was a Mage and a Warlock making up the numbers).

BETA: Thoughts on PvPing as a Healing Priest in MoP.

Disclaimers and stuff: First Beta build and everything is likely to change between now and live. Blizzard have admitted that the Priest Class still is a work in progress and things are missing/being switched around.

Crowd Control

Fear is back as baseline and Holy still has access to Chastise (the disorient).

Our other cc options can be found on Tier 1 of the new talent trees and they are:

• Dominate Mind. 30 second cooldown. (appears to replace our current Mind Control) and is usable on all but mechanical targets.
• Pysfiend. 45 second cooldown. Summons a Pysfiend that stands in place. The Pysfiend casts a Psychic Scream on a nearby enemy within 30 yards every 1.5 seconds, preferring targets which attack the Priest. Psychic Scream causes enemies to flee for 30 seconds, damage caused may interrupt the effect. (Given that Fear is back as a baseline, this may change. Due to diminishing returns, it’s unlikely to be my preferred choice in PvP).
• Void Tendrils. 30 second cooldown. Summons shadowy tendrils out of the ground, rooting all targets within 8 yards for 20 seconds. Killing the tendril will cancel the effect. (Wonder if the Freya root macro could be re-used  for tendril killing).

Damage Prevention

First of all, it looks like that staple of Disc PvP, Focused Will is gone for good. Disc does however hang on to both Pain Suppression and Power Word: Barrier.

Other options available to us will include:

Glyph of Inner Sanctum: Spell damage taken is reduced by 6% while within Inner Fire, and the movement speed bonus of your Inner Will is increased by 6%.

This is basically our current talent in the Disc tree swapped to a glyph.

Talent: Phantasm (tier 2) – Any time you Fade you remove all movement impairing effects from yourself and your movement speed will be unimpaired for 3 seconds. In addition to this, you are no longer targettable by ranged attacks for its duration.

This combines a reworking of the current PvP set bonus with an old shadow talent of the same name with some new goodies.

If the “duration” means Fade and it keeps the same cooldown/duration it currently has, that could be 10 seconds out of every 30 that ranged spells just can’t hit you. Ever the optimist, but I’m not sure I see this going live as is.

At the moment, the other choices on tier 2 are purely movement speed related and since a boost to movement speed is no use unless you first clear snares, I’m erring towards this as my PvP pick.

Spectral Guise looks as if it’s making a come back as our lv 87 ability.

Instant cast, 30 second cooldown. Your shadow blurs into the darkness, leaving behind your true form. As a shadow you are invisible but remain in combat. Lasts six seconds or until your true form is hit by 3 direct attacks.

I’m currently  undecided on this one. If those “3 direct” hits include white damage, I’d say this is a fairly useless party trick. If not then it has possibilities. I’d like it to work like this,

/cast Spectral Guise. Then working on the same sort of principle as the Highborne Soul Mirror,  my shadowy self splits off  from my “real” body. Whoever is currently using me as a punching bag, keeps hitting the “fake” me whilst the real me gets to wander off, re-appearing a few yards away.

Dispels.

Instead of having an offensive and defensive dispel and a remove disease, we now have one defensive dispel which removes both magic and disease effects from a target and an offensive dispel. (This was my preferred solution when I discussed dispels a few weeks back although I’m still not convinced that adding a cooldown to dispels makes their use  any more intelligent than when we could spam them willy-nilly.).

Purify (new spell) – 8 second cooldown, removes all magic effects and diseases  from one friendly target. Is only available to Holy and Disc.

Glyph of Purify: heals your target X% upon successful removal of debuffs.

Dispel Magic – now has an 8 second cooldown and removes one buff from an enemy.

Glyph of Dispel Magic: Your Dispel Magic spell also damages your target for 0 Holy damage when you successfully dispel a magical effect.

Glyph of Leap of Faith: Your Leap of Faith spell now also clears all movement impairing effects from your target.

Mass Dispel is still with us and since it appears to be an option for Symbiosis, it seems as if it’s going to stay that way.

Offensive Magic.

According to the spell lists, Holy and Disc are losing access to most of the Shadow magic abilities (mindblast and mindspike). I have to admit, I’m  not particularly happy about this as I’ve always preferred using my shadow school when fighting melee, that way if I do get kicked, I’m not locked out of my heals.

We still have Shadow word: Death to annoy Mages though.

Glyph of Holy Fire: Your Holy Fire spell is now instant. Having another instant is always good in PvP and this might combine nicely with Atonement.

Atonement is also meant to be making an return as a glyph but hasn’t put in an appearance yet.

Cooldowns.

Disc has Pain Suppression, Power Word: Barrier and Hymn of Hope (even if we don’t know how that’s going to work just yet, however given that according to the data-miners, Symbiosis may give Disc Priests Tranquillity, I’d put money on the fact that it’s not going to be a heal).

Holy has Divine Hymn (on a 3 minute cooldown), Lightwell (which now has 15 charges as baseline) and Guardian Spirit (which hasn’t changed).

Talents offer us a few more possibilities.

Desperate Prayer is still available as a talent but it’s currently a choice between that, Voidshift and the new version of Angelic Bulwark.

Voidshift has now shifted itself to tier 4 of the talent tree. “You swap health percentage with the current friendly target. After this effect ends, whoever has the lowest health is automatically healed for 25 percent of their total health”. This has a 3 minute cooldown.

Tier 6 of the talent tree offers Vow of Unity. “Can not be cast on Tank specialized players”. 15 second duration, 2 minute cooldown, all healing on both targets is shared, and a portion will travel in both directions as well. The small print means this is rather lacklustre in PvE. I’d like to play around with it and binding heal as Holy. However since quite a few battlegrounds revolve around flags and flag carriers are often tank specced, I’m not as excited as I was before they added the caveat.

Other Useful Things.

Inner Focus is still Disc only and Strength of Soul (that crucial PvP talent) now appears to be a glyph.

It seems like Reflective Shield is also becoming a glyph. This makes me happy because I’ve beaten lots of people in 1 v 1s that I would otherwise have lost without it.

Other Priestly Beta Links: (will add to this as I find them)

• Corgi Island.
• Stories of O.
• MMO Champion Priest Forums.
• The EU Battlenet Forums.
• Plus Heal

I’m sure there is loads of things I’m missing but on the whole, so far I’m excited about PvP in Mists.

Dead as a Doornail: On World PvP

Looking back at my time in Azeroth, many of my stand-out memories involve World PvP. The ebb and flow of old school Southshore / Tarren Mill battles. Advancing one minute, running for my life pursued by a pack of deathguards, three blinking mages, two shamans and an angry warrior the next. Aoeing the deathguards and then sitting down to drink and being ambushed by the obligatory rogue skulking behind enemy lines. Attacking Crossroads and being flattened by the always awesome Sergra Darkthorn (who should definitely be the next War Chief). Retreating back to Ratchet or hiding, shadowmelded and praying that the aoeing mage won’t come any closer.

So it will come as no surprise to learn that one of the things which stood out the most to me in the avalanche of MoP data we’ve just been handed was this:

With some of the changes it’s pretty enticing to get out into the world and mix it up. 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’ve flown over some pretty intense looking outdoor battles, and I can’t help myself as I jump in and work toward increasing my cap for the week.

(taken from here).

and this:

With world PvP, what we’re trying to accomplish is identifying what will naturally emerge with world PvP and then have the game support that better. In the past, I feel our attempts to create an area for world PvP haven’t been particularly successful, at least from the standpoint of them actually feeling like world PvP. Wintergrasp was a neat zone, and it was cool for the first time to go knock down a fortress with a tank, and Tol Barad was…alright, in that it gave players things to do as far as going out there in huge numbers and taking over these bases, but it didn’t really feel like world PvP. Really, what it felt like was a big battleground, and as you saw, kind of over time, it became more and more like an instanced battleground, because that’s the direction things take when you have a natural push for objectives. 

World PvP is kind of best when it happens on its own, when the conditions of the game naturally encourage the PvP to happen. What we’re hoping to do is identify places where that naturally happens, and then give players a bonus for winning those areas–the conquest point cap will be raised. An example is, back in the day with vanilla wow, we would have done something along the lines of ‘oh hey, if you take over Southshore or Tarren Mill, we’ll give you an increase to your conquest point cap for the week.’ It gives you a reason to engage in world PvP without being really heavy-handed. Instead of ‘ok this is the only way to get your awesome armor,’ it’s ‘hey, taking over Southshore is fun.’

(taken from here).

Ignoring the fact that I am one of those few people who does like Tol Barad, I got really hopefully and excited when I first read these two posts. Thinking it over in my head, however I hit a bit of snag which brought me back to earth with a bang.

Every single server I have characters on is heavily skewed in favour of one or the other faction. Take the server I currently call home, the Horde are an endangered species. We’re lucky if peak time provides 15 of them in Tol Barad. Without some sort of artificial system in place, they will always be on the losing end of spontaneous world PvP, which makes it less attractive for them to get off their flying mounts and participate. It also makes transferring to a realm which either has a more balanced population or one in which your faction of choice has the higher numbers more attractive, especially if you take PvP seriously. This has a knock on effect, as more of the weaker faction transfer out, the issue then gets worse and worse for those left behind (on both sides).

World PvP in which you hugely outnumber your opponents or are vastly outnumbered is not particularly interesting or exciting for either side, especially if you’re on the smaller team. Attempting to balance the teams is of course one way around this issue but that comes with it’s own set of problems. Artificial constraints, whether in the shape of balanced numbers, instancing in the zone and so on is also a direct contradiction of this statement “World PvP is kind of best when it happens on its own” and neither does it contribute to the “fun” element. I find the most frustrating factor about Tol Barad right now is that I rarely get to play with the people I want to play with because we can’t ever get in together. So if Blizzard wants pure World PvP, the opposing factions congregating  somewhere and slaughtering each other for kicks, then they can’t have artificial limits but somehow they need to balance populations better. Otherwise on servers like mine (in fact all of the three servers I play on), then this is never going to work.

I remember Wintergrasp on Kazzak EU as Alliance before balancing was introduced. Our half a raid group going up against a veritable horde of Horde. If you could get a demolisher within spitting distance of the Keep it was a good day (to die repeatedly), not to mention my fond memories of being graveyard camped by two full raids. Managing to kill the cocky mage who strayed too far from his healers was considered a success in the face of such overwhelming odds. I have to admit the masochist in me actually had fun but the vast majority of people, well they just stopped participating. The rewards just weren’t good enough to inspire people to try. Which is another aspect of the issue, the second you add a reward, however insignificant, it changes the game. Back when I was first introduced to the joys of World PvP, the honour system hadn’t been introduced. We killed each other because we could and because it was fun. Like-minded people were drawn both to certain locations and to each other. Then the honour system and it’s rewards were added and suddenly people who had no interest in pre-patch World PvP were all clambering over each other to join in. Fast forward to now and rewards (whether it’s in the shape of an increased conquest cap or anything else) means that people who aren’t necessarily into World PvP without rewards will participate, further screwing the smaller faction.

Is it time to start merging servers so we can all have a balanced and happy MoP, full of boisterous and spontaneous world pvp? I don’t know but if Blizzard intend making good on this, on servers like mine something needs to change. Otherwise it’s going to be as much fun as taking the towers in the Bone Wastes is at the moment. If you actually see a Horde, you have to blink to make sure you’re not hallucinating and then, once you’ve proved they’re real, you end up letting them go because endangered species need nurturing not pounding to a messy pulp.

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.

MoP and Resilience: It’s give with one hand, take with the other.

I read the Dev’s Watercooler post on the planned stat changes for MoP with interest, in particular the part pertaining to resilience.

• We are renaming this stat to “Defense (PvP)” or possibly “PvP Defense.” All players will have 30% base Defense, the same way all characters have some base Stamina.

This is a good thing. Right now the gulf between those with PvP gear and those without is too big. Even if you PvP en route to 85 so you have honor to spend once you ding, plus you invest in some of the craftable gear, you will fall over dead as soon as someone in 403 or higher gear glares in your direction. Can’t say I’m hugely taken with the name though, what’s wrong with “resilience”, it’s got a good solid sound to it.

It might also help levelling in pvp, if players start out with it. Although I wonder it’s just something which we’ll learn at a certain level, possibly somewhere between 80 and 85. So that’s the giving over and done with, now on to the taking.

• PvP gear will have Defense on it, as well as a new stat, “Power (PvP).” Power increases the damage you do to other players as well as the healing you do to other players in PvP situations.

By providing a damage bonus, they’re negating at least a part of the 30 percent innate damage reduction, i.e. taking away what they just gave. I understand why they’re doing it, after all without it, PvE with it’s higher item level would more attractive for certain classes but this potentially could also increase the gap between the haves and the have nots. The haves will have high innate damage from their high level gear, a further 20/30 percent damage bonus to that high damage and a high damage reduction. Whilst Mr “I have just entered PvP” will have weak damage, no damage bonus and only have base damage reduction. It’s not an issue at the start of the expansion but once we’re a season or two in, I wonder if we’ll be seeing the same issues that exist at the moment. If they stick to the same model we currently have, i.e. a crafted set, a basic honor set and then two tiers of conquest point sets, then a few seasons into the expansion, the person in the crafted set will still get blown up very quickly by players in the top end conquest one.

Obviously we don’t know how exactly how it’s going to work yet but one solution would be that regardless of set (whether it’s crafted, bought with honor or conquest points), the damage reduction component should work out the same. With the benefits of higher item level stuff being more damage, more healing, more health, more pvp power. That way, at least Mr Brand New PvPer will be heal-able and a lot less squishy.

• PvP gear will be lower in item level than PvE gear of an equivalent tier, however the Power and Defense stats will make sure that PvP gear is more powerful in PvP (both offensively and defensively) than PvE gear. In our budgeting system, the PvP stats will be free rather than causing other stats, such as Strength or haste, to be smaller as a result of including Power or Defense.

This I see more as a clarification than a change. At the moment resilience costs us a chunk of our PvP item budget meaning that if we could compare a 403 pvp piece with a equivalent pve one, there would be a noticeable difference in stats once resilience is removed from the equation.

This should also hopefully stop certain classes using large quantities of PvE gear in random battlegrounds.

One potential pitfall though is that currently, stamina and armour are very linear stat to your item level. A helm of x item level, regardless of whether it’s a dungeon drop or a reward from PvP has the same amount of stamina and armour. Unless they are weighted differently in MoP, there is a risk that you’ll drop health and armour when you put on your PvP gear.

• The goal of this change is to make it easier for a PvP player to participate in PvE, or for a PvE player to get started in PvP. Currently, we feel it is too large a barrier to go from one to the other, and the result has been that we see more and more players choosing to focus exclusively on only PvP or PvE. In earlier expansions, it was more feasible to use PvE gear in Arenas or Battlegrounds until you acquired the more useful PvP gear. The same was true of being able to use your PvP gear in a dungeon or raid until you acquired something better.

I have my doubts about this. Yes, it was hard for brand new 85s to enter PvP but with the justice points to honor and vice versa conversions, I don’t think it was difficult gearing up for entry PvE or PvP once you had a foothold on the other. Sure, unless you had kind friends it’s not the sort of gear which lets you straight into raiding hardmodes but it’s more than enough for starting out with heroic 5 mans and then building up to raiding. Which let’s face it, is all this change will allow anyway. Due to the lower item level of PvP gear, you won’t be farming that and waltzing into heroic modes and nor should you. Yes, I’m sure (prejudice of the player base allowing) it will suffice in 5 mans and probably LFR but that’s it.

All in all, I’m fairly positive about the changes although without actual figures to play around with, it’s hard to do anything other than surmise. However, given how bad PvP currently is for the people attempting to break into it, I’m going to look on the positive side and say MoP can’t possibly be worse.

E is for Emotes!

I was flicking through my blog reader yesterday, toying between the idea of replying to people or doing some actual work when I read a line of Navimie’s that caught my attention.

Namely this one:

“And those people in arenas who laugh at you and spit on you.  Why must you do that? “

First of all, I have to hold my hand up and admit that I am an emoter and I’ve also been known to be rude to people in battleground chat (however that’s a post for another day). In short, I’m a PvP hooligan who needs hitting with a handbag. I don’t however spit, tell people they stink or use any of what I class as the nastier emotes but that’s not an excuse. So what turns a nice well-brought up young lady into an emote spammer in PvP?

Tactics.

It annoys people and annoyed people often make mistakes. I pvp to win, sure I often have fun regardless of whether we win or not but victory is the icing on the cake (and who doesn’t like icing, especially if it’s laced with maple syrup!). I’ve lost count of the number of scenarios where we’ve come out on top in situations where we were outgunned due to tactical emoting on our part.

Back in vanilla, I farmed rank on a couple of characters but all apart from one were healers and we soon discovered that if my teammates and my husband (who played dps) used emotes as a sort of vocal taunt, other dpsers would stick to them like glue letting my healers bounce around doing whatever they felt like. We won games because people were trying to kill a well-geared warrior over me and then making lv 1s to whisper him comments like this:

Right, so you identified the problem but you still kept hitting the person in plate? This guy’s rage kept him from selecting the correct target even though I was only standing 20 feet away in plain sight. Although I do like the fact that he bothered to put a smile at the end of it, not sure if that was to sweeten the blow or to try and make it more insulting.

As a well-geared healer, I’ve used it in flag games to keep certain dpsers off the lesser geared healer/flag carrier. Not only does it mean we expend less mana as healing my 5000 resilience Gnome is a lot easier than healing someone in quest greens but it splits the attacker’s focus because whilst say Mr over-geared warrior desperately wants to smack my face in, his friends are usually hitting something else. Not only does “emote rage” push people into making bad target choices, it can also lead them to make simple mistakes because they’re focusing too hard on the wrong thing. By emoting in flag games like Arathi Basin you can lead the defenders away from the flag allowing your stealthed team-mate to tag without having to waste time killing everyone.

Yes, it doesn’t work on everyone but it works on enough people to be worth while. I’m not saying that everyone who /spits is trying to be tactical because I’m pretty sure a lot of them are just obnoxious angry people trying to express their rage within the limits of the game. For example my healers get spat on a lot by bad dpsers who don’t seem to have their interrupts key-bound (these I suspect are the same people who make furious threads all over the PvP forums about immortal healers, including those pesky Resto Druids!). Which leads me to my next point.

People who emote at you often can’t take it back. Picture the scene, the blacksmith in Arath Basin. My cute little Gnome running around clapping her hands in glee as Lady and Cleo chase each other about. Then suddenly the peace is shattered as a war party of marauding Horde come charging up, led by a spit spamming warrior. After a few minutes of my chat log being filled with /spit, I decided enough is enough and had a word with Mr Harpy. Surprise surprise, after a few deaths to the tune of a gnome rogue singing the chicken song the warrior actually afked.

If you don’t like it, you have a couple of options.

First of all, the ignore function does work on the opposing faction.

Next if you go to your chat settings.

You can stop emotes from turning up in your chat window. This stops all emotes from showing up but if one has sound, you’ll still heard it, you just won’t see it.

To access this, you right click on your General tab on the chat window. Go down to settings and you should see something identical to the screenshot, then all you have to do is deselect emotes.

Then to get rid of emotes with sound, i.e. /chicken and /flee all you have to do is go to Options -> Sound

and deselect Emote Sounds.

Do both of these and you’ll never be bothered with emotes ever again in PvP. You’ll never see your own side’s either but I suppose you could just turn them off before entering arena/battleground and then switch them back on again when you finish pvping for the day.

Whilst I fully admit I don’t like being spat on I’d never turn off emotes because occasionally you get ones which make it all worthwhile. I’ve been saluted with respect after some particular hard fought games as well being hugged, kissed and cuddled by opponents.

This was a particularly strange rogue who I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to or had any interaction with but who spent the better part of 5 minutes hanging out at the Blacksmith flirting with my Night Elf Priest. It’s little things like that, which make up for all soggy handkerchiefs of Orc, Undead and Goblin spit.

As for my emote of choice?

If you haven’t ever heard a female gnome call someone a /chicken go try it now, it’s both annoying and cute. I also like telling people to /flee or just yelling it myself whilst I run away from people. Although oddly enough I never used to be an emoter, I can’t imagine my Night Elf Priest ever resorting to such coarse tactics so it must be a direct result of playing a Gnome…. 

Now that’s an excuse which is bound to stand up in court.

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.

Suppressing the Pain – A look at levelling a Priest through PvP (Part 3)

Same disclaimer as the previous two parts (which can be found here and here).

What this isn’t.

This isn’t a guide to PvPing at 85 although some of it may be useful to Priests at 85. In fact it isn’t really a guide at all, more of a practical look at making levelling through PvP less painful.

UI/Raid frames/Key binds

Whilst I’m not going to tell anyone else what to use, as it’s a very personal thing, I will say this: take the time to mentally (or on paper) map out where you are going to put each important spell right from the start. Also try and keep key binds similar from character to character. For example all my dispel type spells, (dispel magic, purge, spellsteal etc) live on the “R” key. Another example would be my expensive fast heals, which all live on “G”. That way, it’s easier to remember your bindings in the heat of the moment.

Glyphs

We now get our first set of glyphs at lv 25, then again at 50 and finally at 75.

Prime

Available at 25, we have the following:

• Penance: Reduces the cooldown of Penance by 2 seconds.
• Power Word: Shield: Your PW: Shield also heals the target for 2o percent of the absorption amount. (Shields are currently “bugged” in that shielding people doesn’t put you in combat, allowing you to take advantage of your out of combat regen whilst saving lives).
• Flash Heal: Increases the critical effect chance of your flash heal on targets below 25 percent health by 10 percent.
• Renew: Increases the amount healed by your Renew by 10 percent.

As Disc, it’s a fairly easy choice. Penance is your bread and butter spell, used for everything from interrupting people trying to ninja flags to healing others, so being able to cast it more frequently is a good thing. As Holy it’s bit a more lacklustre. Personally I would take a flat 10 percent bigger renew over a chance that my flash heal will crit if I’m healing someone below 25 percent health.

At 50,

As Disc, my second Prime glyph would be Power Word: Shield. However the following have also become available:

• Lightwell: Increases the total number of charges by 5.
• Prayer of Healing: Your prayer of healing spell also heals an additional 20 percent of it’s initial heal over 6 seconds.

Again as Holy it’s a slightly harder choice to make as  Power Word: Shield and Prayer of Healing are valid options, albeit somewhat lacklustre. If you intend taking Body and Soul and I imagine everyone levelling as Holy through PvP does, then the shield glyph gives you a bit more bang for your buck (as Mr Harpy’s Canadian relatives would say). If like me, you love Alterac Valley, then Prayer of Healing is useful, especially in games which end up coming down to resources, which happens quite often in the levelling brackets. Bottom line, if you’re combining dungeons with your PvP, I’d go for Prayer of Healing but if I was just running battleground after battleground, I would consider the shield one, however I think it’s one of the situations where 99 percent of the time, you’ll wish you had the other one.

By the time you reach 75, these two are added into the mix.

• Guardian Spirit: Reduces the cooldown of your Guardian Spirit by 30 seconds
• Power Word: Barrier: Increases the healing received whilst under the barrier by 10 percent

Finally, we have an obvious choice for Holy. Guardian Spirit is literally a life saver, being able to cast it more frequently is awesome. Because it’s not dispel-able, in mass PvP, dps often back off allowing you to take advantage of the healing buff Guardian Spirit provides so whether it procs or not, it’s a great spell to use in PvP. For Disc, my third Prime glyph choice would be one of the following, either Renew

Major

• Inner Fire: Increases the armor gained from Inner Fire by 50 percent.
• Smite: Your smite spell inflicts an additional 20 percent damage against targets afflicted by Holy Fire.
• Divine Accuracy: Increases your chance to hit with Smite and Holy Fire by 18 percent.
• Psychic Scream: Targets of your Psychic Scream spell now tremble in place instead of fleeing in fear, but the cooldown of Psychic Scream is increased by 3 seconds.
• Reduces the cooldown of Fade by 9 seconds

For both specs, I’d take Inner Fire here. The biggest issue, particularly at low levels are physicals, hunters/rogues/warriors so more armour is always welcome.

At lv 50, our choices include the above plus

• Desperation: Allows Pain Suppression and Guardian Spirit to be cast whilst stunned.
• Dispel Magic: Your dispel magic spells also heals the target for 3 percent of it’s maximum health when you successfully dispel something.

For Disc, I’d go for Desperation every time. It’s saved my life more times than I care to count.

As Holy things are slightly more complex, whereas Disc gets access to Pain Suppression at lv 49, Holy can’t reach Guardian Spirit until lv 69, so there is no point taking Desperation at lv 50. So personally, I’d go for Dispel Magic at this point. Yes, it’s not hugely exciting  but it’s another instant and instants in PvP against opponents with half a brain are king.

At lv 75, we now have access to:

• Circle of Healing: Your circle of healing spell now heals one additional target
• Fearward: Reduces the cooldown and duration of Fearward by 60 seconds
• Holy Nova: Reduces the global cooldown of your Holy Nova by 0.5 seconds
• Mass Dispel: Reduces the cast time of your Mass Dispel by 1 second
• Prayer of Mending: The first charge of your Prayer of Mending spell heals for an additional 60 percent

Yet again, an easy choice for Disc, Mass Dispel is a key ability at later level PvP. Being able to swiftly remove those bubbles and iceblocks can make all the difference as to whether you get a quick kill or not. As Holy, I would swap Prayer of Mending with Dispel Magic (at lv 68) and then pick up Mass Dispel as my final Major glyph.

Minor

The choice at lv 25 is far from stellar. Personally I would take Fortitude until lv 34, when I would switch it with Levitate. Being able to leap happily off the LM or down to the GM without the fear of suddenly realising you’re out of light feathers seconds before you go splat in front of a crowd of Horde/Alliance is priceless.

At 50, I’d take back Fortitude, although with the grace period after every death in a battleground where buffs are free, it’s more for the quality of life aspect outside battlegrounds, especially if you’re running dungeons.

At 75, I’d pick up glyph of shadowfiend (recieve 5 percent of your maximum mana if your shadowfiend dies from damage).

Dispels

First set up your unit frames to show Unstable Affliction as a debuff in it’s own right. That way, it will always be the top debuff to show and then you can make informed decisions as to whether it’s worth risking the silence + damage to yourself to dispel.

Things you really want to dispel!

• Paladins with wings. Whenever you encounter a Paladin past the Avenging Wrath level it’s worth doing a bit of pre-emptive dispelling to make sure it doesn’t take too many spell rotates to get rid of those wings. The burst is just too high to want to heal through. Keep yourself pre-shielded as well.
• Shamans in ghostwolf. If they are running away, particularly if they have a flag clamped in their sticky paws. Plus half of them don’t seem to realise it’s dispel-able so watching them pop up, stand still for a second and then recast repeatedly is good for some amusement.
• Poor unfortunates encased in ice.
• CC from people helping you.
• Your vehicles in SotA. Get those snares off a.s.a.p. That’s an example of one situation where I would say it’s better to eat a silence from Unstable Affliction rather than let a vehicle crawl to it’s death slowed by one Mage.

Targetting

Switch on enemy nameplates. This lets you see enemies even when you don’t have a line of sight on them. Crucial for spotting people hiding behind houses trying to tag nodes and other such sneaky behaviour. To find it, go to Options (hit ESC) -> Keybinding and then scroll down the list until you come across this:

Add a keybinding if there isn’t one already there and get used to switching it on.

I also recommend Tidy Plates, an addon which allows you to show CC with timers on the name plates, as well as turning them class coloured for easy identification. For example, if I’m PvPing with a rogue, I’d be able to see his kidney shot ticking down so I could time my fear to land just before or just after his stun finishes, rather than wasting or overlapping cc.

Final Points

Don’t be one of those Priests I keep running into who insist on using heal/greater heal when fighting people with kicks. Prioritise instants and then your faster casts in those situations, particularly if you’ve got melee/mages or shamans beating up on you.

If you put a talent point in something, looking at Lightwell here, use it. My heart breaks a little bit every time I’m defending a flag carrier along side a Holy Priest and I have to ask them if they took Lightwell because 100 percent of the time so far, they did but they haven’t bothered putting one down.

Accept that especially at low levels, you will die a LOT.

Above all, remember PvP should be fun and when all else fails, throw someone off the Lumber Mill cliff. It’s guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

Low level PvP and Priests – Suppressing the Pain (part 2)

Same disclaimer as part 1.

What this isn’t.

This isn’t a guide to PvPing at 85 although some of it may be useful to Priests at 85. In fact it isn’t really a guide at all, more of a practical look at making levelling through PvP less painful.

Drinks and other methods of regenerating mana.

Low level drinks really haven’t scaled well so your best option for AB and WSG (once you hit lv 25) are the rations you buy from their respective quartermasters. From lv 55 onwards, you can do the same for Alterac Valley.

Alliance gets their WSG water from Illiyana Moonblaze and their AB water from Samuel Hawke. The Horde should visit Kelm Hargunth and the awesomely named Rutherford Twing respectively.

As these are counted as food, you can still and should drink your ordinary water for an extra boost at the same time. Holidays and other such festivals are also good for drinks, think bobbing apples from Hallows End and Festival Dumplings. Unfortunately these tend to be limited to the duration of the festival but are usable in any battleground.

You also want to keep an eye out for the chests with the green leaf on top as shown below. These restore 10 percent of your health and mana every second for 10 seconds but attacking or being attacked will cancel the buff so in order to make sure you get the most out of it, be aware of your surroundings. Fear plus line of sight can be really useful.

In WSG, they always spawn in the houses below the graveyards (handy for camping the opposing faction) and are on a relatively swift timer. In EoTS and AB, they have a chance to spawn at any of the bases (along with the movement speed buff and the berserker buff). In EoTS, they appear inside the towers and in AB most are fairly obvious apart from the one at the Farm which spawns inside the house.

Buffs

Rumsey Rum Black Label, (provides 15 stamina for 15 minutes, doesn’t last after death) the preferred tipple of twinks everywhere is worth picking up if you have a high enough level character to enter the Old Hillsbrad instance (I think it requires lv 67). You shouldn’t need to kill anything, just ride straight out of the entrance to Southshore and go into the Pub, where you can buy the rum from Barkeep Kelly for 2 silver each. The only limit to how much you can pick up is your bag space and they stack in 10s.

Gear

Basic overview of Stats

Stamina is king, especially at lower levels since certain classes (glares at rogues and hunters) seem to spend their whole lives looking for people they can oneshot, the higher your health pool, the less appealing target you make.

Resilience. Damage prevention is always good, however below lv 70 there aren’t that many options. The PvP shoulder heirlooms provide some, as does the BoA PvP trinket. Once you hit Outlands though and socketed gear, your options do increase dramatically.

Next up, the bigger your heals, the better. More intellect gives you more spell power and works well alongside the Discipline specialisations, Enlightenment in particular. Regen is less important because you can and should drink out of combat as well as pick up the green buffs whenever you see one. Plus, given the bursty nature of low level PvP, combat periods do tend to be fairly short.

Spell hit/penetration. As healing Priests, you will be doing a fair bit of offensive work, dispelling, fearing and mindcontrolling in particular, so try and pick up some hit/penetration as soon as possible. Hit is a lot easier than spell pen to obtain at low levels (below 60) but from 20 onwards you can use the WSG trinket (rune of perfection) for a bit of spell penetration. Once you get dispel magic, remember to remove buffs like mark of the wild/blessing of Kings as soon as possible.

Gear

There are some really nice blue dungeon quest items hidden away and since Blizzard have made things so much simpler by popping all the quests in the dungeon entrance, it’s little effort for the rewards. I tend to focus more on dungeons when I’m in the bottom level of the bracket but it adds a change of pace, especially if you hit a losing streak.

Purchasable with Honor.

If you aren’t Human, your first honor purchase (unless you have an inherited BoA one) should be an Insignia of the Alliance/Horde. Bought from Sergeant Major Clate (Alliance) and First Sergeant Hola’mahi (Horde) in Stormwind and Orgrimmar respectively (It’s on page 3 of their wares). Costing only 55 honor, it should only take you a couple of games to earn the honor for it.  The 5 minute cooldown is a pain, but it’s the best you can get at until level 70. At level 70 you should immediately update it for a 2 minute one.

Alliance

At lv 18 you want to visit Illiyana Moonblaze (she’s hiding at my cursor), the Silverwing Supply Officer in Ashenvale. She offers a range of goodies which include a blue ring, staff and cloak. These can be upgraded (for more honor) every 10 levels until you hit lv 60. You might even want to consider the agi/stam necklace, especially when lv 28 because of it’s high stamina. There are also epic bracers which become available at lv 40.

Unfortunately you have to go back at lv 20 for the trinket, but since trinkets at these levels are hard to come by, it’s worth making the trek even if you aren’t questing in Kalimdor.

At lv 28, check out the goods offered by the Arathi Basin quartermaster. It’s the same deal as with WSG, every 10 levels you can upgrade the items. The quartermaster can be found at the Refuge Pointe in Arathi Basin, near the flight master. These include boots (with movement speed) and a belt, plus another trinket.

Horde

The Horde equilivent for WSG is Kelm Hargunth, the Warsong Offensive Supply Officer who can be found just south of the Morshan Rampants in the Barrens. For AB, you need to visit Rutherford Twing, who lives out the back of Hammerfall in the Arathi Highlands.

Both

At 60 I would recommend the full Grand Marshal PvP set. I was still wearing some pieces of mine when I hit 70, it’s definitely worth it, if like me, you are unlucky with dungeon drops or lacking on heirlooms.

At 70, again I would recommend buying the full PvP set plus accessories if you can afford it. Not only does it come with a lot of sockets for stat customisation but it gives resilience which is crucial in these brackets, especially as burst dps increases.

As soon as you hit lv 70 or so, you want to start checking the AH for Cataclysm greens and BoE blues. The lowest level you can equip this stuff is lv 77 but the more you have by then, the better. You can also enter Black Rock Caverns at lv 77 even though it doesn’t appear in the dungeon finder until lv 80 so if you have friends or guildmates who can run you through, great.

Random items which are worth buying with spare honor.

The Alliance Battle standard/Horde Battle standard. These are basically totems which increase you and your party’s health by 15 percent as long as they stay within a 45 yard radius of the standard. They cost 500 honor and should be one of your first purchases as soon as you’ve bought your PvP trinket plus any lv 18 blues than are upgrades. Whilst they are killable with AoE, they have 1500 health which in the low level brackets is about as much as most of the players. At higher levels you just need to get more creative with your placement if you want it to survive.

Pugnacious Priest has a great guide to hiding your battle standard but the basic rule of thumb is try and put it off to one side. Don’t stand next to it unless you want whoever is attacking you to kill it without having to think.

The Stormpike/Frostwolf Battle Standard. Same principle as above only this one increases damage not health by 10 percent. This one is less useful as it’s only usable in AV but if you’re alone and the other battle standard is on cooldown, it’s a nice 2 minute trinket.

Part 3 coming later this week.

Suppressing the Pain – the Hallows End edition (part 1b)

The same disclaimers and such apply to this as to part 1 (which can be found here).

Hallows End brings us one or two news tricks to treat ourselves with whilst levelling. Okay, none of this is actually Priest or levelling specific but it’s useful nonetheless.

First up, Ogre masks. Bringing a whole new meaning to fierce, these also give you a nice little stamina buff which stacks with fortitude and with Rumsey Rum. Unfortunately they don’t last after death, but since you buy them in stacks of five, it’s definitely worth it. At lv 20, they provide 150 health to give an indication.

Rawr

Secondly, magic brooms. You can’t cast them on the move but they are instant cast. Ideal for a quick getaway in a battleground. Gives you a slight head start against anyone on a normal mount. Plus they also look amazing and if your levelling gear should happen to include any pointy witchy hats, well that’s just icing on the pumpkin cupcake. I received mine in my crudely wrapped gift but you can also buy them for 150 tricky treats from the candy and toy vendors.

Thirdly, Bobbing Apples which provide 3 percent of your health and mana over 25 seconds. Drinks really haven’t scaled well, especially in lower level brackets so these are manna from heaven.  Every Inn has a bucket of apples in it, so get dunking. The fact that these also heal you is just an added bonus. They stack in 20s and you can just keep “bobbing” for them. You just need to wait a few seconds between each “bob”.

Edit: Not so sure about these atm, because I couldn’t get them to work at all in Tol Barad. Need to do a spot more testing.

Edit 2: Worked fine in the lv 20-24 battlegrounds, so not sure what was up in Tol Barad.

Finally, the Wickerman buff. Again, it doesn’t last after death but 10 percent increased reputation is especially good in Arathi Basin and WSG if you should be aiming for exalted. The 10 percent experience gain isn’t to be sneezed at either.

Happy Hallows End!