I call shenanigans

I feel slightly nit picky about this but I’m disappointed in both Operation Free Gnomeregan and Zalazane’s Fall. Yes, I had fun and I love the flavour items you receive but…

Rawr

Firstly it’s all over in about twenty minutes. Now maybe I’ve just got high expectations but there is nothing epic about that. Taking the Alliance chain for example, we spent time checking how a spider tank work and then we attack Gnomeregan on foot… why not have dailies which involve taking spidertanks for test drives? I’m not the greatest fan of dailies but I feel this is one instance where they should have been used. A proper build up to the main event in which vehicles have to be tested, recruits have to be found, planes have to be built all over a period of time, say a week or two. Then and only then should we be attacking. Instead we get twenty minutes of new content and that’s it. You do it once per character and then forget all about it. This is the first new content since December and we breezed through it. If we hadn’t had to wait for the High Tinker to reappear, it would have taken even less time. I realise that they are working on an expansion which is quite possibly late but I was expecting more.

Then there is the fact that if your character is level 74 or below, you can’t take part in the fun stuff. Especially for little Trolls and Gnomes that doesn’t seem very fair. Since you get buffs to your health pool in all these types of events (the Battle for Undercity and the Battle for Light’s Hope being examples) why can’t low levels take part? Everyone’s health could be set to the same healthpool, say 100k regardless of level when they pick up the quest. Yes, lower levels would do less damage but mobs were falling over dead as soon as someone breathed on them today. Having a few low levels along for the ride would make zero different to anyone.

I’m also slightly grumpy about the  fact that you can’t use your Gnomeregan pride or Darkspear pride in battlegrounds. I can’t see the harm in being  a Infantry gnome whilst in Strand of the Ancients. People will be able to figure out very fast what class I am when they get a frostbolt in the face. I could be hidden behind a tree so they can’t see my character but they still know that they are being attacked by a mage so what harm can costumes possibly do? I pvp all the time as a Bloodelf using an Orb of Sin’dorei and yet I can’t use my gnome suit. Mr Harpy on the other hand is pleased that hordes of trolls wearing masks can’t pursue him across the field of Strife. He doesn’t like people using noggenfogger, deviate fish or any other disguises whilst in PvP. Actually I don’t think he likes people using them at all, regardless of location.

Having got Gnomeregan pride on two druids today and planning on getting Darkpear pride on another tomorrow, I’m also bad-tempered about the fact that you lose the debuff on shapeshifting. Ghostcrawler said the other day that they don’t balance around duels yet that was basically why druids lost the ability to shapeshift with things like noggenfogger in the first place. Surely at this point in the game, they could reverse that decision.

All in all, I preferred the Horde event. That may have had something to do with the amazing tropical storm taking place over the Echo Isles when I was doing the quests though. Took me back to watching lightning flash down over purple skies in the Bahamas.

The ending possibly played a part too. Narrowly escaping being blown up was hardly the conclusion I wanted for my little gnome. Where is the triumphal procession into the lost city of the Gnomes, where is the standing on that evil Mekgineer Thermaplugg’s corpse (again) and most importantly where is my brag bot?

Wintergrasp Blues

I’m really beginning to loathe Wintergrasp, not because it has vehicles in it, or because it’s on a timer but because of the imbalance.

My server is high population but the Horde definitely outnumber the Alliance, possibly by as many as three to one. Of the Alliance, although there are still plenty of us, most people just aren’t interested in Wintergrasp by this point in the game. At the start when people actually wanted stuff of the various bosses, the win/loss ratio was roughly 50/50 but over time, we seem to win maybe once a day if we’re lucky.

Which means that games even at peak times tend to be in the region of 60 Alliance versus 120 Horde. Tenacity does absolutely nothing when 10 people are beating up on you and the extra damage portion just doesn’t pack a hard enough punch, although 23k starfires are nice when they land on undergeared trolls with offensively named pets.

So there we are, bravely battling on in an attempt to get my Mage her shoulders, when completely ignoring the numbers, people start whining about how the Alliance suck and it’s so easy for the Horde. Of course it’s easy when you completely outnumber the opposition. Arathi Basin is easy when there is 6 of them and 15 of you.

Implementing a one to one ratio surely wouldn’t be too hard and might even make them more money as people transfer faction to ensure they get games. Tenacity as it stacks should shorten cc duration, possibly even making you immune to cc completely if it reaches really high numbers. For the purpose of taking workshops and the like, people with tenacity should count as more than one person (some sort of scaling perhaps dependent on how many of each side are in-game), otherwise you just can’t take nodes if the numbers are heavily skewed. Vehicle health needs to scale better as well, because otherwise you just can’t keep them alive long enough to knock anything down.

However, ignoring that, I have to admit being worried about Cataclysm and Tol Barad. We need a number balancing system or a form of tenacity which works, otherwise it’s going to be impossible for us to compete and I don’t think I can take another few years of Horde making Alliance characters so they can crow about how much we all suck because they win when they have double the numbers.

Grumbles

Out of all the Paladin tanks that my little Mage has seen through the Looking for Group tool, 98 percent have been allergic to Righteous Fury. They don’t buff it at the start and when it’s absence is pointed out and they put it on, they don’t rebuff it when it falls off. Of course, when they lose aggro, it’s not their fault even if it’s the healer who overtook them in threat.  To say I find it frustrating is an understatement and what was perhaps more understandable in the lower levels by lv 64 has just become a huge annoyance.

Then there are the tanks who show up with resurrection sickness (seen a few of these), the ones who can’t hold aggro on one mob but still insist on hitting the sheep at least once and those that stand with their backs to half the mobs all the time and then blame the healer for their squishiness. Oh and people who use taunt every time it’s off cooldown like clockwork, even though the mob they taunt is looking firmly at them. In fact the favoured pulling technique of several tanks I’ve encountered has gone something like this. Run at mobs, white hit them a few times and then use taunt, so the only threat they have is the damage from the white hits.

Taunt 30 yd range Instant 8 sec cooldown

Requires Defensive Stance Taunts the target to attack you, but has no effect if the target is already attacking you.

Of course when someone gets aggro 3 seconds later, it takes them a while to respond. In all the instances we have done, the tanks (I use the term loosely) have caused more issues than everyone else combined. They have also been more obnoxious than anyone one else.

Am I alone in not feeling comfortable pointing out the mistakes of strangers? I know if I were tanking on a paladin and not using righteous fury,  I would want to someone to say something but experience has taught me that most people either explode into abuse or leave group, when someone says something negative about their play style. Therein lies the issue, especially when you have such high queue times as two dpsers. Do you say nothing and just tone down your dps appropriately? Do you just dps full out and hope that through the use of novas and high dps you can just kill stuff regardless of a bad tank? Or do you risk Mr Bad Tank having a hissy fit half way through the instance and leaving?

If nothing else, I’ve ended up with a massive admiration for people who manage to level mainly through the Looking for Group tool. Every second instance I’ve done, I’ve left feeling distinctly grumpy.

Strength and Honour

These Orcs have a new trick and it isn’t very honourable at all.

Basically you can “exploit” the gates of Stormwind in a rather annoying fashion if you have a specific item. These two Champions of the Horde spent the night popping out to one shot low levels and harass any duellers who might be PvP enabled. If they were doing it in the normal method, i.e. not underground or through walls fair enough. We have a PvP solution to that, but what are you meant to do against exploiters who keep pinging world defence and generally being a pest but vanish through a solid wall when you try and fight back?

We reported them to a GM but got the usual “wait time is unavailable” response. In the meantime they were still killing passer-bys and those undergeared but brave types who were looking to respond to the “Stormwind is under attack” message being spammed at us.

Are you meant to ignore them or take the law into your own hands and “exploit” too because they are griefing others? It is rather frustrating to be forced between ignoring the opposing faction on your doorstep (especially on a PvP server) or having to bend the rules to get to them.

I’m hoping (eternal optimist that’s me), that Cataclysm and flying mounts in Azeroth will finally fix all these little glitches that litter the landscape. Obviously it could just make the issue worse, with people slow falling into little hidey holes right, left and centre but in a multi player game which involves competitive play, issues like this need fixing straight away.

Fair Play

This weekend is an Arathi Basin weekend and sadly there is a new trend in town.

In  each of the games I’ve played, at least one person has tried to cheat. What do you do when you’re playing a team game with strangers and not all of them are playing by the rules?

Sure, I’m competitive to the point of being slightly crazy but I loathe cheating (apart from when I’m playing Mr Harpy at Chess. What can I say, he’s better at it than me and besides cheating at Chess requires skill). Winning fairly is far more fun than winning because some “enterprising” mage has four bases tagged before the other team make it out of the gate. But just as the Horde team are helpless in the face of those tactics so are the rest of the Alliance team. We can’t stop people escaping early and  we can’t stop them tagging up half the map.

So when the gates finally open, what can we do? Absolutely nothing. Standing around and letting the Horde win would let down the rest of your team, besides it goes against every fibre of my being. Instead, we end up defending nodes won in dubious circumstances, after all, what other choice do we have. Each victory feels hollow but we can’t do anything about it. You enter each new game thinking “this one will be different”, but it never is. In one game I played this afternoon, by the time the gates opened legitimately I was one of only three people still trapped behind them. Yep, that’s a level playing field if ever I saw one.

What are Blizzard doing about this? Nothing it seems. This exploit has existed for years but for some reason it’s got really popular today. I know the Horde in my Battlegroup aren’t particularly adverse to cheating themselves, they were rather bad with flag runners grabbing rides in choppers before that bug got fixed but I don’t want to win like this. I want a proper fight, not one where the enemy don’t see the point in fighting properly because you have a major head start. Right now, cheaters are ruining the game for the Horde and for the Alliance who don’t want victory handed to them on a tainted plate. One or two people (in most cases) spoiling games for 28-9 others and yet reporting them doesn’t seem to make a difference.

So come on Blizzard, stop playing with ideas like RealID and fix the PvP system please. It’s stuff like this that stops you handing out decent items for people just doing their best in random battlegrounds. Cheating on a scale like this needs stopping and stopping fast. At this rate, the vast majority of Alliance will forget how to properly play AB without a cheat code so when it does get fixed, our win rate will plummet (got to get my priorities straight).

Imagine a rated Battleground Arathi Basin in which the Alliance team has four nodes tagged before the gates open and is waiting by the Horde entrance with a bunch of CC heavy classes… Something needs done and soon. Personally I’d like to see all honour, all items earnt by honour, all arena points and all arena related items removed from people who cheat in PvP. There is no way you tag the Blacksmith by accident before the game starts, there is no way you downloaded a bot program by accident nor are you jumping a corner because you think there might be rainbow fairies hiding in your pocket. Not only are these cheats gaining things they don’t deserve, they are griefing other people and that’s something that needs taken very seriously in a multi player game.

Ah well, only another 200 or so wins to exalted then I’m never going to set foot in Arathi Basin ever again. Although no doubt by the time I’m exalted, the random battleground finder will stop picking Strand of the Ancients for me and start giving me Arathi Basin instead.

Pets are people too!

I’ve been thinking about resurrecting my hunter for a while now. She got to 80 sometime last year, did a few instances including alt runs of ToC and then ground to a halt.

Whilst my server was ever so slowly patching itself, I ended up in the dark and dangerous world of the WoW forums. Driven by dreams of huntering again I flicked through several pages of hunter related information until I ended up on the Healing forum. Skimming the list of post titles, I found  a rather heated thread discussing the rights and wrongs of healing hunter’s pets. Naturally with my head full of hunter stuff, I couldn’t resist having a peak.

The general gist of the arguments contained within went like this:

• My UI doesn’t show pets and I don’t see why it should!
• It’s the Hunter’s responsibility to look after his or her pet and they have the tools to do the job.
• The Hunter is just plain bad if their pet needs healing.
• I don’t have the mana to waste on pets
• Hunter’s don’t need their pets to DPS.

Going through each point one by one, I noticed a couple of things that I found odd.

My UI doesn’t show pets and I don’t see why it should!

Given that several people pushing this argument admit to using Grid, I find this hard to believe. It takes a matter of seconds to set Grid up to show pets in 5, 10 and 25 person modes. I would imagine this is true for all non-standard party frames.

As for why should your UI show pets, well pets are part of the group. Your interface should always provide an accurate representation of that group. What if at some point Blizzard adds a debuff on some future raid content that can blow people up and targets pets as well as players? Adding pets now means if for any reason you NEED to keep one alive you can easily.

I’ve been in several situations where a hunter and his pet have ended up saving the day. Tank dcs in a 5 man, pet takes up the slack and holds boss until either the tank comes back or the boss dies. Having the pet show on my unit frames made healing him so much easier than having to manually change target would have been, given that the rest of the group needed healing too. Lousy tanks in 10 mans, mobs eating me as a healer. Sympathetic and attentive hunter notices and pulls mob off me and onto his pet. So showing pets can be a good thing. However I can’t think of a single situation where me having the pet bars showing has ever been a bad thing. After all, I don’t have to heal Whiskers the Wolf if I don’t want to.

Healing pets in PvP, especially small scale stuff can be great too because whilst they are trying to bash Cobweb the spider over the head, they aren’t hitting me.

It’s the Hunter’s responsibility to look after his or her pet and they have the tools to do the job.

Of course it’s their responsibility to a degree. I expect everyone to do their best to stay alive and kill the boss. Now in the case of pet classes that also included keeping their best friend safe and well. Mend pet should be used in hairy situations, no one is denying that. To let your pet die without using it would be stupid. However at the end of the day, we as healers also have responsibility for all those little green bars. Throwing a shield out or a rejuvenation will not make or break your mana supply, but it may make the difference between Tybalt the cat contributing all the way to the bad guy’s death or not. Without his contribution the boss will always die slower, which is a bad thing.

The Hunter is just plain bad if their pet needs healing.

Perhaps, two weeks of Ahune have shown me there are some truly terrible hunters out there. My healing Priest has out dpsed every single one I’ve been partied with so far. However there are lots of fights with large amounts of party or raid wide damage. Even with talents to lessen magical damage and the like, I can imagine a lot of content where “mend pet“  might not be enough. Obviously a hunter has more than just mend pet in his arsenal, a ferocity pet could come with Bloodthirsty for example but again, a chance to heal for 5 percent of the pet’s total health isn’t too hot if the animal is taking lots of damage.

If throwing a heal in the direction of the pet doesn’t leave you out of mana, what harm can it possibly do? There are plenty of threads complaining about how boring 5 mans in particular are for healers who are geared, well why not do a spot of extra curriculum pet healing to spice things up.

I can’t spare the mana!

This one I tend to be more sympathetic towards but it depends on one simple question. Why not? If you don’t have the mana because the rest of the group are playing badly and you’re healing full out, fine. The same is true if you’re undergeared and struggling to keep the players alive. However if you’re oom because you’re spamming smite or another dps spell, then perhaps putting a few heals in the direction of the pet first would make more sense. If nothing else, it may make the hunter like you a bit more.

Hunter’s don’t need their pet to DPS.

True they don’t but given that the whole idea is usually to kill the mobs as fast as possibly, every little helps as the supermarket chain says.  Let us consider the Beast Mastery Hunter. Now I know that it’s a lot less popular in this expansion than it was in the previous one, but you still see plenty of BM hunters, especially in 5 mans. There is a talent midway down BM called Ferocious Inspiration, it’s a fairly simple talent but one I would expect all BM hunters to pick up. Amongst other things, it gives a flat 3 percent damage increase to all party and/or raid members who stay in a 100 yard range of the pet. By allowing Chompy the Devilsaur to die because you aren’t willing to alter your UI, not only do you cut the hunter’s dps, you effect that of the whole group. To me, that goes against the whole principle of running instances in the first place. You should all be working together to make the run as smooth as possible. Allowing a source of DPS to die, hinders that.

In conclusion, I think the arguments put forth are for the most part ridiculous. I’m not suggesting putting a pet at the top of your mental priority list, after all that would be pointless but surely there is a spot somewhere in there. My list goes something like this:

1. Tank
2. Healer
3. The nice, sensible dpsers who don’t stand in the fire too much and don’t make nasty comments about the rest of the group
4. Hopeless the crab
5. Any remaining obnoxious dpsers

Obviously I’m not advocating the blanket healing of all pets, but they should at least be a consideration and they should most definitely make it onto your interface. The sooner we learn good habits the easier it is to stick to them. Who knows, perhaps in Cataclysm BM will become the hunter spec again giving you added reasons to keep those pets alive. Perhaps raids will require every last drop of dps and pets will become a lot more important to all hunters, regardless of spec. I’m not denying some hunters can try your patience as they attempt to murder their pet every 5 seconds, but it’s easy to ignore them (although I wish Azeroth had a version of the RSPCA so we could confiscate pets from bad hunters only returning them when they learnt the art of animal protection) and / or point out why letting Fluffles the crocolisk run around on aggressive is a bad idea.

Yes, this post probably stems in part from the fact that I feel dreadful whenever a pet dies in a group I’m healing. Especially when it’s erstwhile owner can’t even be bothered to think up a name for him or her. The fact that I may at some point be venturing back into 5 mans with my adored pets has nothing to do with it at all (honest!).

TLDR: Pets are people too! Make friends with your neighbourhood hunters and heal their pets.

Cataclysm? That’s just another word for Disaster right

I have to admit, I’m worried already. Not about the “lol smite” direction of the Priest class or by the removal of the Path of the Titans but by the way raiding seems to be going.

I didn’t like the idea of only being able to run an instance on 10 man or 25 man when it was announced. I like the ability to help out friends by running 10 man Onyxia even though I’ve already killed her on 25 man and I believe that removing that ability come Cataclysm takes a way a bit of the “multi-player” aspect. Now it seems to firmly put the emphasis on alts, which is fine if like me you have lots of them, but I know plenty of raiders who only have one character. Oddly enough, it’s nearly always a rogue (they must be a strangely addictive class).

Then comes the news that you will be able to divide 25 mans into up to 3 10 mans. No no no no. The potential for chaos this could cause is worse than the zombie plague of 08. To illustrate my point, let me tell you a story.

Back when Ulduar was cutting edge content, we were working on Freya plus three. Now for some reason people just kept doing all sorts of stupid things, not controlling their aoe, standing in beams, hugging the person exploding and the like. The raid got more and more mutinous. Half the team kept whining that we were obviously undergeared and that we should just kill one add, kill her and move on. The other half were determined to keep going and since the officers were in the latter group, we eventually succeeded.

Now had that been Cataclysm, no doubt the officer led group would been clamouring to divide the raid and conquer. Sure, we would have got that kill a lot faster but it’s hardly fair on those that get left out. There is always the risk that whoever is making the groups cherry picks the best players (which makes sense if you want first kills) but that can destroy the harmony of the guild as a whole. No one likes feeling left out.

I still have a bad taste in my mouth remembering Karazhan and trying to divide the guild equally into two teams each week. In fact I have at least four separate screenshots of people accusing me of bias and generally being a bitch because of their perceptions of the team I put them in. The thought of doing it on the fly, in the middle of a raid where people are already frustrated and pissed off is a nightmare.

When you couple that with the words of Ghostcrawler himself..

Remember that in LK the 10s were specifically designed to be easier (with a couple of exceptions where we messed up) and many players ran them with the loot they earned from their 25s, further exacerbating the problem. Given the complexities of some encounters, realistically it’s probably not possible for every single battle to be of exactly the same difficulty in both 10 and 25, but we have a lot of room to bring them closer together.

and my heart sinks even further. It’s likely that some content will be harder on 10 man and some on 25 man. Now if you’re pushing for server firsts or even just to beat the guild closest to you on the progression list, taking the path of least resistance is the way to do it. For the sake of argument lets go with the first two bosses being easier on 25 man, you clear them and then the third boss is considerably easier if done on 10 man. So you divide the team up into three, getting over the logistical problems like turning two tanks in your 25 man into 6 tanks for three ten mans and dividing seven healers into little pieces. Now A and B manage to kill the boss no problem, but C struggles. Drama ensues. Someone gquits after having a screaming row with three officers and comes back two days later after their tantrum wears off.

To further add to the drama, lets assume that the guild closest to you on the progression list is a 10 man only guild. They are behind because they don’t have the luxury to scale up to tackle the first two fights which are easier on 25 man. Because they are behind, a couple of their crucial players apply to a guild they perceive as being better. So much for a level playing field.

On top of that, I don’t believe that content which is “not equal” should generate the same rewards. Obviously the problem here lies in the fact that whichever is easiest will probably come on a boss by boss basis, but the hardest stuff should always yield the best reward. Otherwise it’s like handing out gold medals to everyone who enters a race even if they come 15th (a primary school I briefly attended did just that –  my father almost had a fit when he discovered the kid who crossed the finishing line about 4 minutes after I did, got the same reward).

Yes, I’m horribly cynical but I swear I didn’t start out this way. Being an officer in two raiding guilds over the last 5 years has shown me all sorts of depressing things the dregs of humanity will do for gear. Raiding for a lot of people is about loot, how fast you can obtain said loot, what sort of loot it is and so on. I’ve experienced guild life from the most casual to the server first level and the people in those guilds behaved very similarly to each other, whether we were talking Naxx or AQ40.

I suppose I don’t like the idea that Blizzard are trying to sell a level playing field, when it’s obvious that there will be a myriad of pitfalls for raiding guilds to fall into.

Personally I prefer 25 man raiding. 10 people is family and friends around a barbecue on a Saturday night. It doesn’t feel epic or exciting to me. I like my raids to be as multi-player as possible. However, I realise and accept that not everyone thinks like me but I don’t believe that Blizzard’s solution will keep many people happy in the long run.

25 mans assuming you have secure leadership, could potentially still have the upper hand because they will be able to always take the fastest path to first kills. That won’t make 10 man guilds who have been sold a promise of equality happy for long. 10 mans could possibly work out as being more challenging that 25 mans across the board, that would force people like me who want a challenge to move to a format I don’t particularly enjoy. Not sure how long that would sustain my interest. Are there enough raid leaders and competent tanks for a massive shift to 10 mans? My guess would be no, but selfishly if push comes to shove, I have a pet raidleader who also doubles as a pet tank.

Yes, it’s still the alpha and a lot could happen between now and Cataclysm going live, but I have to admit I’m losing excitement on a day by day basis. Yes, we coped with shrinking raid size in the Burning Crusade, we coped with running ToC four times per character in one reset and I’m sure we’ll cope what ever happens in Cataclysm but…..

Anger Management

I’m currently trying to level a warrior. She is now level 33 and I’ve learnt several things so far.

Nest and her red mittens of DOOM!

• Warriors make you angry. Which is ironic really since my first 33 levels have been punctuated by my computer telling me:

NOT. ENOUGH. RAGE.

It seems that my rage bar works in direct proportion to my tiny little gnomish avatar’s. When I’m a seething ball of hate ready to throw my keyboard through the window, Nest can’t hit anything because she doesn’t have enough rage. Although on the odd moment when I’m not ready to smash the computer, she still doesn’t have enough rage. Luckily she’s over-geared and does stupid damage with her white hits, assuming of course she can stay with her target which brings me to my next point:

• Warriors are hard to play. Or at least I think they are but I might just suck (haven’t decided yet). At least I can rend stuff whilst moving which makes me a cut above some warriors at least.

This whole stance lark is frustrating, it’s a bit like dropping Moonkin to heal and realising you have no mana. You switch stance only to hear the three most annoying words in the English language which are:

NOT. ENOUGH. RAGE.

Three little words which you’ll hear a lot whilst levelling. So it’s tempting not to switch stance but in PvP you have to. Otherwise you’re playing with one hand tied behind your back. Playing arms, well that’s no interrupts and no intercept without switching stance. So you have to dance stance otherwise that evil little mage can just run away from you giggling. No one runs away from Nest.. no one.

Then there are the sheer number of keybinds and macros I’m having to use. Yes, I keybind all my abilities on all my characters but I seem to have a lot more things to remember to use on the warrior. Macros to make charge and intercept share one key, macros to make shield bash and pummel share one button. Macros which I consider almost essential for game play yet the vast majority of macros my other characters use improve gameplay but aren’t crucial.

Even if Nest never reaches 80, I have considerably more respect for the people who play warriors all the time. This experience, whilst often frustrating reinforces my feelings about alts and at least experiencing other classes for a while. Playing Nest has helped me understand warriors and how to counter them better on my other characters too. So its a win win situation really. Although I still need more rage.

Cataclysm: first thoughts on the Priest changes

Have to say I’m disappointed.

Leap of Faith (level 85): Pull a party or raid member to your location. Leap of Faith (or “Life Grip”) is intended to give priests a tool to help rescue fellow players who have pulled aggro, are being focused on in PvP, or just can’t seem to get out of the fire in time. Instant. 30-yard range. 45-second cooldown.

So Priests are back to being the gimmick healer. Have they really thought this through? Tank gets a lead on threat and then the Priests start playing ping pong with him so the boss spends the fight wandering slowly after him. Unless they make being lifegripped drop aggro, you could abuse it in so many situations.

Personally I dislike idea of this spell on so many levels, 1. I hate other people moving my character. Being deathgripped in PvP really pisses me off and being pulled around by my own side could be equally annoying. 2. In a raid environment, I choose not to play with people who can’t get out of fires. I don’t see why Priests for their end-game spell get a crutch for weak players, it’s hardly exciting nor does it bring anything to my gameplay other than a chance to exploit bosses and really annoy which ever melee who is currently topping the damage metre and spamming it in raidchat every two seconds. Not to mention if I don’t rescue the moron rogue who gets tolerated only because he’s related to the GM, I’ll be the one getting bitched at.

This can not go live, there are so many griefers playing WoW at the moment. Imagine battlegrounds, you’re tagging a node in Arathi Basin and the priest yanks you away half way through. Defending a tower in AV and some Priest just pulls you out. Thats before you even consider the cliff jumping priest who pulls you off whilst levitating. Lifegrip could kill more people than Deathgrip in the average battleground. That PuG raid annoying you? Lifegrip the tank to the caster group and watch with interest as the big angry dragon cleaves half the raid.

Inner Will (level 83): Increases movement speed by 12% and reduces the mana cost of instant-cast spells by 10%. This buff will be exclusive with Inner Fire, meaning you can’t have both up at once. Inner Fire provides a spell power and Armor buff; Inner Will should be useful on a more situational basis.

12 percent is nothing. Most melee classes run faster than that, so you will still be caught in PvP. Does it stack with run speed on boots? My guess is not. I’ve never had a problem running away from bad things in the past so my mana would have to be pretty horrific for me to lose the spell power bonus of inner fire for this. Plus in PvP, I’m not willing to lose the armour of Inner Fire for a a marginal run speed that hamstring etc will completely negate anyway.

Heal (available at level 16): While priests already have a spell called Heal, the existing version becomes obsolete at higher levels, which is something we intend to change in Cataclysm. Introduced at a low level, the “new” Heal spell will functionally work much like a down-ranked Greater Heal did in the past, adding more granularity to your direct-healing arsenal. If you need to heal someone a moderate amount and efficiency is an issue (making Flash Heal the incorrect spell for the job), then Heal is what you want to use. Heal is intended to be the priest’s go-to direct-healing spell unless they need something bigger (Greater Heal) or faster (Flash Heal). We will be following a similar philosophy with all the healing classes.

Getting Heal was a fairly obvious change, given the mana efficiency discussions. Useful but hardly exciting.

All HoTs and DoTs will benefit from Haste and Crit innately. Hasted HoTs and DoTs will not have a shorter duration, just a shorter period in between ticks (meaning they will gain extra ticks to fill in the duration as appropriate).

Makes renew more fun and will probably mean I kill things faster in PvP/grinding.

We want to make Holy a little bit more interesting to play. One new talent will push the Holy priest into an improved healing state when he or she casts Prayer of Healing, Heal, or Renew three times in a row. The empowered state varies depending on the heals cast.

Are they playing the same class? Holy is already I would argue the most interesting healer to play. We have a large and diverse toolbox and plenty of options available at any time. Add in the procs and cooldowns we already have to manage.

The idea behind the Holy “cast three in a row” talent (it’s called “Chakra”) is that we’ve always positioned Holy as a versatile healer. This talent lets you shift into different modes. If you need to be a tank healer, cast three single target heals and your single-target healing is now better. Cast three area heals, and you can be a temporarily specialized group healer. We’re going to try to play this mechanic up with a cool UI to try to get that “I’m almost in the zone” feel. We’ll let it apply to as many types of spells as we can, perhaps even Smite for those times when nobody’s taking damage.

The idea of Blizzard coming up with a “cool” UI is enough to make me run for the hills. I thought we were going to have mana problems so having to cast prayer of healing three times before I can even start being efficient seems a little crazy to me. Then there is the balance problem, if by casting three heals in a row Holy Priests can go from being on par with the best Tank healers to being on par with the best raid healers that could cause issues down the line, especially since we bring all the gimmicks. Although with dual specs why can’t disc be the tank healing spec and holy the raid healing one. It would save a lot of work on everyone’s part in the long run. It basically sounds like we are getting the Holyform they said they would never implement but without the cool golden graphic.

I rolled a priest back in Vanilla to actually be a shadowpriest but back then I could only get a raid spot if I healed. I’ve been healing ever since and that’s what annoys me the most about this bucket of garbage. I want to heal, not pull idiots away from dragons or pits of fire. I don’t need movement speed, I have reactions. I could get out of fire on a druid when treeform hamstrung you. Since everyone doesn’t have movement speed, fights will be designed around you having enough time to move without any movement enhancing ability. I feel the whole “chakra” system is limited in its design. I dislike the idea of having to ramp up to speed, especially since no other healer will have that limitation. Then what happens if you need to throw a few single target heals on yourself during a fight, possibly because the other priest (you know the one you’re beating on the healing metre) just pulled you into a fire. You lose a chunk of throughput which from what Blizzard has told us so far about mana can only be a bad thing.
Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Discipline

• Healing
• Meditation
• Absorption

Absorption: Improves the strength of shields such as Power Word: Shield, Divine Aegis, and Power Word: Barrier.

Holy

• Healing
• Meditation
• Radiance

Radiance: Your direct heals add a small heal-over-time component to the target.

Discipline is to be expected. Holy is hardly exciting either, the important words here I suspect being “small”.

No mention of Lightwell, I just hope that doesn’t mean it going to be a “lolwell” for yet another expansion. The powerword: Barrier could be fun if it manages to make it to live this time around. Although:

“The closest analogue to PW:B is the DK Anti-Magic Zone, but it has some important differences, such as a way to counter it in PvP (since it absorbs all damage, not just magical damage).”

could potentially make it useless in PvP, depending on what the counter is.

I suppose I was actually hoping for a couple of useful spells or at least spells which currently aren’t up to par (Lightwell) being  improved. Although, now I think of it… drop lightwell, lifegrip melee to lightwell… point, glare. Finally I can bring my raid albeit one every 45 seconds to the Lightwell. Yay.

The whole notes without my whining can be found here.

The Alt Dilemma

Right now, I’ve never felt closer to quitting this game. Every day I’m amazed at how many selfish ignorant people there are. I’m truly saddened by the dregs of humanity that choose to play WoW right now.

I do Forge of Souls this morning to help the Gnomeling start his Quel’delar chain. Everyone says Hi except the ret paladin. The first thing he says is to insult the warrior tank by implying I’m going to have my work cut out healing him. No they didn’t know each other.  At the end of the run, I politely say thanks for the easy run and get accused of sarcasm by three people…. it was an easy run, no one died or even came close to it and I hardly had to heal.

Do Warsong Gulch as a random battleground and have to listen to people bitching about the gear of others. Putting everyone down, spamming damage metres and calling those at the bottom names. I’ve never seen WSG taken so seriously. Watch as half the team reports the other half afk. We won, but was I glad to see the back of those people.

Then I swop to my druid, just hit 80 yesterday. Done some other battlegrounds with her and managed absolutely fine, in fact was close to the top on dps no problem. But this is what I’m confronted with this morning:

Now had it come from some awesomely geared Gladiator type, maybe. But coming from someone whose PvP gear is worse than my Priest…. no way. I’m sick and tired of ignorant little losers bitching and whining at others. I could understand it more if my health was sub 20k, but its not. There was a Mage there with less than 15k, did this righteous little prick have a go at him too?

Not sure whether I have the profanity filter on or not, but I’m guessing those *****s are meant to say whore. Normally I’d block out the charmer’s name, but he was the final straw so I’m leaving it up there. After all, we shouldn’t say things we aren’t willing for the world to see should we.

So from this morning’s encounters I’ve learnt new players or new characters aren’t allowed to do dungeons for gear nor PvP. So what exactly are people meant to do? Sure I get annoyed with people doing battlegrounds or dungeons with res sickness or 10k health but I don’t whisper them abuse about it. In the end I judge people on their performance, do they focus on objectives for example, not their gear.

I’m beginning to think I’m just too nice to play WoW. On my main I get accused of being an elitist jerk and on my alt, I’m basically bullied by elitist jerks or rather wannabe elitist jerks because really they have neither the gear or the achievements to be one (hey, maybe I can get the hang of being a total bitch to strangers after all).

Right now I don’t know whether to laugh, rage or cry.