I’ve had a hate hate relationship with minor glyphs ever since the start of MoP. Playing a Holy Priest didn’t exactly leave me with much choice outside the cosmetic and whilst I’ve nothing against cosmetic, when other classes have something useful to fill their slots it’s a little frustrating.
Sure things like being able to sprint over water and fall great distances safely are essentially niches but they take an existing useful spell and add something to it, making it more useful in certain situations with no negatives at all. Perhaps it’s easier for classes like the Rogue who despite having three specs has only one role but Priests have definitely suffered when it comes to fun minor glyphs which give you an edge over the cosmetic ones.
Confession is amusing for about 10 seconds, although if you could edit the confessions to suit the people you cast it on, it could have far more potential (although I can see why Blizzard would never ever allow this). I do like turning into a Val’kyr but wish it altered the spell somewhat, perhaps you stay “alive” for three quarters of the time the normal Spirit remains for but it allows you to cast smite too. Not having to die to get any use of the glyph would be even better though. There are 10 Priest minor glyphs, four of these are Shadow specific, 1 Disc and 1 Holy. Of the four non spec specific spells, 3 are straight up turn this spell effect into that one and the final one is confessions.
Which brings me to the Monk. Here we see a variety of minor glyphs, ones which completely alter spells giving you variety and extra options. Take the Windwalker glyph Blackout Kick:
| Use: Permanently teaches you this glyph. |
For situations where you don’t need to heal yourself, this is a great glyph. I admit my Monk currently rocks the completely cosmetic glyph of Crackling Tiger Lightning but my other 2 slots are filled with mostly practical glyphs and besides pretending I’m a Sith Monk is useful, honest. I fell in love with the glyph of Zen Flight the second I tried it out. Okay it’s not as fast as my mounts but you can cast it whilst falling, always handy especially when you’ve used crackling lightning to punt a mob off a cliff and had a slight accident whilst trying to loot it. You can cast your proper mount whilst smugly sitting on your cloud having not fallen to your death. You can mine on it four foot off the ground as well as complete pesky pick up quests under the noses of aggressive mobs. You can pose on it and chill out on it and perhaps most importantly you don’t need to die to use it.
In many regards I wish Blizzard would return to the three type model for glyphs. Major spell altering ones, which always do something nice to your abilities, lesser ones which like the Blackout Kick above offer you a situational choice and finally the minor glyphs, always cosmetic and always fun. At the moment it feels like discussing minor glyphs is comparing apples with oranges which is wrong because it should be apples with apples and the Priest ones shouldn’t be windfall, mushy and filled with maggots when compared to other classes with their shiny pink ladys and golden delicious.
Filed under: Random Musing, Ranting | Tagged: Glyph of Blurred Speed, Glyph of Confessions, Glyph of Crackling Tiger Lightning, Glyph of the Val'kyr, Glyph of Zen Flight, Minor Glyphs, Monk, Priest, Rogue, Warcraft, WoW |
The random musings and occasional whining of a Warcraft playing Harpy, with some lashings of priestly stuff thrown in.
Harpy's Nest Blog 
I’m showing my lack of Monkishness although I have one but what is allowing her to sit on that cloud in a lovely turquoise sphere? Whatever it is, I need to get that for mine, lol.
Zen flight. You need to have some sort of flying license for it unfortunately but it’s definitely one of my favourites.
I completely agree: to me this is lazy game design. Maybe we could come up with our own list of confessions….!
Sproutling confesses that she sometimes spits in pvp :(((
Could be far more fun.
Agree completely. It’s a little like they condensed things from prime/major/minor only in name; the three different categories are definitely still in effect.
Yep and it’s oh so frustrating when your chosen class/spec only gets confetti but other people get useful stuff. Although maybe that’s a glyph Priests do need: Glyph of Holy Confetti – surrounds the user in a constant sparkle of golden goodness which also acts as chaff to prevent certain spells hitting you.
Speaking as someone who just about manages to remember that glyphs even exist I don’t really know much about the variety available to each class. That said, I can see your point and agree that there should be some form of equality across the board – with all classes having a mixture of useful & cosmetic glyphs.
For me the new glyph system is a lot easier as when I do think about glyphs I feel less ‘pressure’. There’s no longer a case of most people of a class using glyph x, there’s more freedom. Plus, with the cosmetic nature of glyphs I can pick whatever knowing that I’m not putting ymself at a disadvantage by picking a crappy glyph.
If they fixed it so all the minor glyphs were purely cosmetic I would be just happy I think. It’s the inequality which annoys me at the moment.
The nasty surprise I had (and why I stopped using Zen Flight) was pretty early on – I had cast Zen Flight, started flying through Org because whee, and queue popped. Oh, ok. Go fight through the dungeon, leave the instance group, and then I plummeted to my death because I wasn’t expecting my zen cloud to no longer be present.
I’ve had a few of those accidents. Now I either park above water or high enough up that I can react in time or too low that falling won’t kill me. Although I do like to live dangerously.