Cataclysm Priest Changes - Disc Talents

Yesterday I thought it would be about time for me to check out the cataclysm priest changes. Unlike some people I don't throw myself on every crumble of a rumour that is given to us by various pages claiming to have the inside information. The reason is simple, I know it will change. And if I see glimpses of a pony and don't get it I'll be sad. Better not to have any hopes. I have been sneak peaking some though, it is hard to miss. And now I thought I'd take another glimpse at what they've said they'll give us, maybe.

Remember that everything can and probably will be changed before we actually get our hands on Cataclysm, but looking at the changes they've got so far will at least give us a general idea of where they want to take us healing priests. And I must say, I am intrigued. I'll look at discipline changes first off. I'll stick to the actual talent changes and leave tier jumps and non-changed talents. If you want a more thorough look at -all- the changes you can see them here.

The Changed Talents

Twin Disciplines: " Increases the damage and healing done by your instant spells and the damage absorbed by your Power Word: Shield by 1/2/3/4/5%
Twin Disciplines has been changed to include shield absorbs as well. Not much to say about that, a straight and slight buff. But as we will see further down it will be welcome.

Improved Inner Fire: Increases the effect of your Inner Fire spell by 15/30/45%.
They've removed the extra stack gains which could be interpreted as it simply won't have stacks anymore in Cataclysm. I really hope so, I didn't really see the point of a buff with stacks like some sort of Water Shield wannabe... In a raid setting it rarely happens that I lose the stack anyway, since it isn't removed by spells. And since it happens so rarely I often don't notice it is gone before some time. Forgetting it isn't the end of the world either, but unnecessary of course.

Focused Power: Reduces the cast time of your Mind Control spell by 0.3/0.5 seconds, and your Mass Dispel cast time is reduced by 0.5/1.0 seconds.
The reduction to Mass Dispel cast time is still there, but the extra damage and healing as been replaced by a reduced cast time to Mind Control. This means this talent has gone even more over to the pvp side, not even sure it'll be worth grabbing for a pve-priest as it looks.

Inner Focus: Cooldown lowered to 1.5 minutes.
Wow, halved the cooldown? About time if you ask me. Inner Focus is far from any overpowered talent and it won't be with the new cooldown either. How often do you need your next cast to be free? You either want all the casts to be cheaper (like clearcasting shamans), don't have control over it (like clearcasting druids) or you'll save it for the big bombas. Usually only if you're about to throw something really expensive (like Divine Hymn) or are really, really oom. These two things don't happen often in a fight, but with the lowered cooldown we might want to use it with the occasional PoH too.

Soul Warding: Reduces the cooldown of your Power Word: Shield ability by 1/2/3 seconds, and reduces the mana cost or your Power Word: Shield by 5/10/15%.
This talent has gone from a one point talent to a three-point talent. I don't really have a problem with that since Soul Warding was a really powerful talent and the bread and butter of any disc priest talent spec (and still will be). But besides of that change, there is also a small but possibly very significant nerf here. The talent now reduces the cooldown on PWS with 4 seconds. The new talent will only lower it by 3 seconds. That means there will be a 1 second cooldown to take in mind, which might not be noticed at all since it's within the global cooldown anyway. We'll notice.

Focused Will: After taking a critical hit you gain the Focused Will effect, reducing all damage taken by 2/3/4% and increasing healing effects on you by 3/4/5%. Stacks up to 3 times. Lasts 8 seconds.
The extra 3% crit chance to spells has been removed. But they've put it elsewhere (look further down for Penitence) so it's not a big nerf.

Grace: Your Flash Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance spells bless the target with Grace, increasing all healing received from the Priest by 2/4%. This effect will stack up to 3 times. Effect lasts 15 seconds. Grace can only be active on one target at a time.
Yet again a small but significant nerf. Today it gives 3% extra healing received from the priest, and it will be increased to 4%. That's a total of 12% instead of 9%, so that's a nice little buff.

Borrowed Time: Grants 5/10/15/20/25% spell haste for your next spell after casting Power Word: Shield, and increases the amount absorbed by your Power Word: Shield equal to 4/8/12/16/20% of your spell power.
Huge nerf inc. Like I said up there, the little extra absorbtion the shield will get through the Twin Disciplines will be welcome, because over here it is getting a major nerf. Currently Borrowed Time increases absorbtion by 40% total, that will as we can see change to 20%. It is clear where Blizzard is going with this, they don't want disc priests to rely as much on shields as they do today. Also considering the major jump in stats that'll probably come with cataclysm (as with every new expansion), 40% of a Cata-Priest spellpower pool might simply just be too much. I did see some blue post a long time ago where they said they were hoping that disc wouldn't be all about shield spamming. Unfortunately that is basically what it has come to, and these changes are welcome -if- they give us other proper tools to substitute our awesome shields.

The New Talents

Silent Resolve has been replaced by Penitence that: Increases the critical effect chance of your Smite and Penance spells by 5/10/15%.
I for one won't miss Silent Resolve at all. Healing threat really isn't an issue at all, and even if we start dpsing (as we soon will see more about) I strongly doubt threat will ever be a problem. PvP Disc might be grumpy about the removed dispel protection. This talent also shows the first step towards what seems to become a real smite-priest. I usually level as smite-priest but I never thought I'd see them in serious raid contexts. I'll say more about that further down. 15% crit to Penance is awesome anyway and in great synergy with talents such as Divine Aegis. It is interesting since I often see people say that crit is a nearly gemmable stat as disc, it is that good. And then we get a talent that is an answer to our crit prayers.

Meditation has been replaced by Atonement that: When you deal damage with Smite, you instantly heal a nearby low-health friendly target within 40 yards equal to 15/30/45% of the damage dealt.
First I had to rub my eyes and pinch myself. Am I seeing right? A talent that buffs smite? And makes it heal? Freaky. And cool! The removal of Meditation made me sad panda, but since I get the feeling that Blizzard want to do something completely new with the whole mana regen business I suppose this had to go out the window. I'm not sure what they're up to, but I hope it will be good.

Absolution has been replaced by Evangelism that: When you cast Smite you gain Evangelism, increasing the damage done by your Smite, Holy Fire, Holy Nova and Penance spells by 2/4% and reducing the mana cost of those spells by 3/6% for 15 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.
Yet again with the smite! Now it's starting to become really interesting. Blizzard seriously want us to become pewpew-priests? I like it! Priests aren't the only class to have become these quasi-heal-dps talents that mixes dps skills with healing skills. It seems all healing specs will have this kind of synergy effects going on, and it will be really interesting to see how this works out.

Mental Strength has been replaced by Archangel that: Consumes your Evangelism effects, instantly restoring 3% of your total mana and increasing your healing done by 3% for each stack. Also allows you to channel Penance while moving. Lasts 18 seconds.
Ok, stop the presses. Channel Penance while moving? I can see any PvPer who doesn't play disc priest frown in anger right now. The only drawback of disc priesting was that you had to stand still for less than 1,5 seconds to channel your Penance (and that you automatically turn to face your target when you do so, annoying!). With Archangel this has been removed. This does mean however that you have to smite regularly while healing, or else there won't be any Evangelism stacks to consume. This means, yet again, that Smite won't just be a fun spell to throw now and then but a serious part of a disc priests healing rotation. I have to quote myself here and say "it will be really interesting to see how this works out."

Power Word: Barrier: Summons a holy barrier on the target location that absorbs 293 damage done to party or raid members within it each time they take damage. While within the barrier, spellcasting will not be interrupted by damage. The barrier lasts for 15 seconds or until it absorbs 1955 damage. 13383 Mana 40 yd range 0.5 sec cast 3 min cooldown.
We were promised this in already with Wotlk, but now it seems we might actually get it (that's what we thought last time too though). The numbers are (hopefully) completely off of course. Nearly 14k mana for a barrier that absorbs 2k damage? No I don't think so. That would make it, without a doubt, -the- worst spell in the game. Other than that it'll probably work like and closely resemble the DK Anti-Magic Zone, with the difference that the Barrier absorbs physical damage too.

Summary
So these are the changes to the disc tree so far. Like I have said, it seems like the focus has been put on making dpsing part of our standard healing rotation, on the expense of less shielding. Overall the changes look really interesting and it will probably make disc healing to something completely else than it is today, which is what happened between bc-wotlk too. I thought I'd give a more full conclusion on the way healing seems to be going after tomorrow, when we have looked at the holy changes too. I can give you a heads up however and say that disc looks alot more promising than holy, and if I had to choose one over the other from what I've seen so far I'd definitely go with Disc. But, anything can still happen!

Oh and PS, if you didn't notice I changed the design on the page some :P Hope it's a little easier on the eye when reading!

Stalker: Call of Pripyat

I'm going to do something a little different here and not talk about WoW! Instead, I thought I'd say some things about the game Stalker: Call of Pripyat which is the third game in the Stalker series. The reason is simple, Love is playing it for the third time and I asked him what he liked so much about it (and if there is something he doesn't like). In case you didn't know, the entire Stalker series is about survivors living in the contaminated area that emerged with the Chernobyl accident. Well calling them survivors isn't really the right word, they're there by their own choice to profit from the fact that this area is completely lawless. Because of the heavy radiation alot of funny stuff is going on with mutations and anomalies, and well some people like that stuff, because anomalies can both spawn evil and good. Call of Pripyat is divided into three zones. When you start out you've only got a shitty gun and a flash light, which definitely isn't going to help you much against the "zombies" (people with fried brains) and mutated animal life.

This is one of CoP really strong sides. When you start out you really get the feeling to be a looser in a really hostile world and you will have to fight to survive. Realism is heavy in CoP, with everything from degrading gear, friendly and hostile npcs interacting to the need for food and it does it very well. Every encounter with a rabid mutadog that doesn't end in death feels like a victory, without the game being too punishing. It's you against the crazy world, and it's only your courage and bravado that stands between you and glory (and shitloads of money). When entering a dark cave you don't know what will be in the other end, and it can seriously be just about anything.

Also, if you've played the first game Shadow of Chernobyl, you'll be happy to know that CoP isn't anywhere close to being as buggy as SoC was. In SoC the bugs where more of a rule than an exception. And no game is completely without bugs of course, but CoP really has only the healthy, normal amount of bugs. None that bother gameplay too much.

You soon encounter other humans (that haven't had their brains fried yet) with whom you can trade and feel some connection to reality. Because although everything in CoP (and the other Stalker games) is so far out, you still feel like it could be real. Out there somewhere people are eating Popcorn while watching Karate Kid, but right here you are fighting an invisible Bloodsucker. In that way it is similar to Fallout.

Unfortunately, the game quickly turns a little too rewarding. And I don't mean "too good" but that it gives you too much of everything. About half way through the second zone you'll have your hands on most of the really heavy artillery (rocket launchers and mecha suits anyone?) and not even the rabid mutadogs or creepy Bloodsuckers pose much of a threat then. The vulnerability and feeling of having to fight for your survival disappears as your inventory is filled with heavy weapons and heavy armors. A characters has to become better and better of course, so that you don't feel stagnation, but in CoP this happens a little too fast. Preferrably one should never feel too good, there should always be a feeling that there are somethings you still dread to take on. But towards the end you don't do your choices based in difficulty anymore, but based on lazyness. You don't choose your fight style because you'll die if you go about another way, but because it's the fastest way to get rid of the pest that just some hours ago made you run away screaming.

Also, unlike the previous games, there are no factions to rep with. That makes you feel cut off from the other humans in the zone and like a one man army. That doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, but if you don't feel like you need the people around you you're eventually mostly just annoyed by their presence. When you should feel like they're part of a haven in a dangerous world.

The third zone is a model of the real Pripyat itself, the neighboring city of Chernobyl that was quickly evacuated when news of the catastrophe was spread. People probably didn't realize the magnitude of the catastrophe back then because the citizens of Pripyat were told they'd be able to return in a couple of days and therefore left everything laying and standing as it was. This has turned Pripyat into a modern day museum, or ghost town rather. A complete city, totally empty of human life, but as if it was left yesterday (except for the fact that vegetation has crept into the buildings).

SPOILER ALERT!
Unfortunately, the game doesn't offer much to do in this zone. The area is huge and you can wander around and look at stuff, and maybe that is the entire reason for it, but that feels a little too empty. Some emptiness is good for the immersion but here it feels unfinished. There are no side quests and only a few main quests to do. Since the previous zones have thrown anomalies and mutants in your face every now and then you enter Pripyat with the sense that it is a little too quite. Something is about to happen. After about 10 minutes of sneaking around, looking around your shoulder and keeping your senses peaked for anything, anything at all, you realize that no. This place is just damn empty.
END SPOILER ALERT!

CoP offers alot of potential and the inital half of the game is also really well made. It could've stayed that way but the player quickly overpowers the game, without the game throwing in more challenge. Getting hold of enough money to buy everything you'll ever want and need isn't as difficult as it should be and you go from feeling like Sarah Connor hunted by Terminator to quoting "Hasta la vista, baby" to every hostile encounter. The thrill of exploration and victory disappears too fast.

So far one could get the feel that CoP has more bad than good features, but the good things about it are good enough to warrant at least one playthrough (or three). The game doesn't actually ever turn bad, it just turns too easy (just cranking the difficulty setting to max seems like a haphazard solution) and that removes its most important components - immersion and the feeling of success through hard work.

Scary stuff

I'm extremely easy to scare. I jump and scream whenever Love enters the room if I don't expect him to, and he always says something like "am I that ugly?". I think it's my dads fault, he scared the living daylights out of me when I was little and was running to the bathroom in the middle of the night. He had hid behind a bookcase and jumped out on me and I nearly died, or well so it felt anyway. But eventhough I'm so easy to scare, I love scary stuff. I love scary movies and I love scary games. One of my favorite games ever is the first Resident Evil game. I have never played it myself though, I wouldn't dare to! I always forced someone else to play it for me so I could watch from a safe distance. I tried Silent Hill once and only got to the broken stroller in the alley before I had to quit. When looking at scary movies I always hide behind my hands so I don't have to see any of the scary stuff. I probably just see about 30% of scary movies because I mostly keep my eyes closed.
Maybe I told you before but when I started my very first char on WoW I decided it had to be an undead. I thought that if I played a zombie myself, the undead monsters wouldn't seem as creepy! I soon realized though that WoW really isn't a scary game. Or is it?
There has been some times when I jumped when playing WoW, believe it not. And I don't speak of PvP, because that is more about stress than fright really. Sometimes I mistake a stealthed mob for a rogue though, and that can be quite panicky. The zombies didn't scare me when I started playing actually, but some other things have. It definitely doesn't happen often, but in a game like WoW you're all the less prepared for it when it does happen.

I remember the first time we did Ulduar. Our guild usually tries every boss without reading tacs beforehand, and if they turn out to be too difficult we'll read up on it. So we had just killed the Iron Council and were heading towards Kologarn. I had no idea there would be a boss named Kologarn, I had no idea of anything about Ulduar that first time. I was running ahead for some reason and up the stairs and saw the rift and thought I'd go check it out and ran into the room... BAM! A huge scary ass monstergiant comes out of nowhere, covering my entire screen and waving his arms around. I was sure I fainted a little. I kid you not, Kologarn jumping up on me like that made me nearly shit myself.
And the first time I did AQ, I wrote about this too but I don't think I made myself clear enough about my first encounter with Fankriss the humongous earwig. I -hate- earwigs. They crawl into my apartment when I keep the window open late at night (like now come to think of it :/ ), and then I find them tucked up in the most horrible places (not in my bed yet though). And I was happily running along killing stuff in AQ when I run into this HUGE MADDAFAKKA EARWIG staring me right in the eye with his ickiness and like I wrote last time I just wanted to run away screaming like a little girl.

I can imagine the feeling of some people who have spider or snake phobias... Fortunately I have none of those (only the completely sane zombie phobia, I mean who wouldn't be afraid of something that is after your brain?).

Have you ever been scared in WoW?

Are you childish?

Ok, so that's a rhetorical question, but I'll still say that "Yes, I am". Or maybe rather "yes, it happens". I like to see myself as a mature, logical person (although Love says otherwise), but I do nerdrage from time to time (as you might have noticed) or just plain act childish when someone/thing annoys me.

Today for example, I was playing my hundredandfifth paladin and doing a quest in Duskwood for killing Plague Spreaders. You have to kill 20 and there are about 20 around, so if anyone else has the quest you have to compete for the spawns. Or of course cooperate. And I usually try to cooperate. If I'm about to kill some mob for a special quest and see someone come running to do the same thing I invite them so they can get the kill. I expect people to do the same for me, and usually they do actually. But back to the Plague Spreaders. I was happily killing along when a warrior and druid, most likely teamed, come up to me and start saying odd words. Words like "widge" and "wooper". Words that don't mean anything to me, and to no dictionary either, but maybe they're some sort of slang, what do I know. I do know however that they're on the same quest and the fight for spawns begins. Because of the odd words, which I decided to interpret as profanities, I started really busting my ass off to snatch mobs from them. I did so even when I was long finished with my own quest! Snatching a mob from them and receiving another nonsense word as thanks really... made me happy. Yes I admit it, I was really childish stealing their mobs and it was all just to annoy them.

And sometimes (and embarrassingly enough I love to do it) I let people that I don't really like die in instances. I've even done it to Love once, and he hated me for it, with all right! It is an extremely immature thing to do, unless the person has done something like it to you, or some other horrible thing. But I sometimes do it just because the person annoys me, which is just wrong.

And everytime someone I know rolls another alt and then expects to be taken to different raids to get gear for it I think "heck no, I aint gonna boost your alt. Gear it yourself first". And who am I to talk anyway, with a million alts? In my defense I do try to gear them somewhat properly before going to raids, I don't like to not be able to at least pull my own weight. But I know I can have this really illogical, immature attitude to peoples alts sometimes, which is really bad since I'm the one with the most alts...

It has alot to do with what the other person/s does of course. My point is probably that it is extremely easy to go from a mature, nice person to immature douche just because someone else is acting like an immature douche. Trying to keep your cool or just shrug something off when someone is nerdraging around you is damn hard. For instance the other day when Love was doing Naxx for the weekly his reminder addon that tells anyone who's missed a buff, whispered another druid about mark of the wild. Since Love himself plays a druid the other druid was really annoyed and said something like "wtf dude, buff that shit yourself yada yada". But the addon is automated, it whispers anyone who can cast the buff if it is missing. Love tried first to explain this but got another angry reply and then decided to become douche himself and simply said "well cry more".

Another favorite is the raid leader that yells at everyone because one person does a mistake. "Are you all fucking retarded!?" because someone failed at something. Does it really improve peoples playskills? I'm not so sure.

There is rarely a reason to fly off our handles about things in WoW, and yet we do it. But why do we do it? Maybe it makes us feel better, like telling the other guy that "you're not going to be allowed to douche around alone like that. I can be douchy too". Maybe it is about power? By stealing their mobs I had complete power over their playing, and it made me feel good, because I wanted to punish them, or something. By letting people die in instances I tell them that "if you don't behave I will punish you, I have the power to do so". OBEY (the crab)! Maybe even the verbal insults actually are about this power-displaying thingy. "I call you noob and that will make you feel bad, I have the power to make you feel bad".

But does our childish behavior actually make anything better? Do we honestly believe that throwing a tirade of profanities in the face of some guy will make him come around and say "well yeah dude, when you put it that way I realize I was wrong".

Maybe we should be more careful about our aggressivity. I'm not saying we should remove it entirely, I'm still happy I annoyed those silly questers by stealing their mobs ^^. But there are definitely moments when it is better for us to bite our tongues rather than pour our hate onto the keyboard. Not let the douches rub us the wrong way. Count to ten?

How to! Warrior Tank - Level 77-78

Wohei! We're not far from the big 80 now! I haven't been able to refrain myself from doing the daily fishing, and sometimes even the daily cooking if it didn't suck too much. I've actually never done those dailies before! And although I very rarely do dailies overall (I've done quite some on my jc for tokens and that's about it), I just love to get that goodie bag reward from fishing. It can earn you nice amounts of money, which is quite handy when you're all alone on a server like that. I've never had a proper fisher before, and the reason is simple. It is so god dang boring to skill fishing. But they have made one huge change to fishing that really makes all the difference - you can now fish in any water with any skill. Before you go all crazy about how that makes it sound way too easy, they've made it so that if you're the wrong skill level you'll mostly just fish up gray crap. But it's ok. As long as I don't have to travel to some far away place just to skill my fishing to a proper level before I can even try to fish in my own questing area. Skilling fishing is probably the profession that takes the longest. Mining comes up close second, but that is extra sucky since you have to run around for it. When fishing you can actually do other stuff meanwhile, like playing elements. Or while waiting for a group.

EDIT 9/6: Unless you happen to have a main on the same server as your little tank, level 77 is the level to start thinking about repping with the proper factions. In a tanks case that would be Sons of Hodir (shoulder enchant) and the Argent Crusade (head enchant). Nowadays there are two ways to rep with any Northrend faction that gives head enchants, and that is either the old fashioned way by questing with them to Friendly (you get quests for them at the Argent Vanguard, just north of Dalaran), buy the tabard and gain rep through instancing or buy rep with emblems of triumph. The latter gives rather fast and easy rep, but you need those triumph for other things so only use it if you're really lazy. With Sons of Hodir you have to go about things a little differently. You can either do a really long quest chain to become friendly with them and then do dailies/turn in Relics of Ulduar until you get exalted, or you can buy rep with emblems of triumph (since I hate dailies I'll definitely do the latter once I have all my triumph gear). The quest chain starts in K3 in Stormpeaks, and you need a flying mount to be able to do it.

Talents
I finished up my Armored to the Teeth now, and so could you!
Instances
Woot, you'll never guess it, but we have two new instances to tank in.

Gundrak
First of all, there are at least two nice quests for Gundrak, which can be obtained in a camp in the far north-east corner of Zul'drak. One of those quests give a nice tank ring as reward. It is less good than the tank ring that drops from the last boss Galdarah however, but maybe your other ring isn't as good.

- The first room with all the snakes is probably the worst designed room in the game. Those snakes seriously drop the fps on my game, if I keep V toggled. Drop some thunder claps to kill them off before you toggle V back on.-The first boss does a nasty poison nova, but there isn't much you can do about it. Your healer has to handle that. If you're lucky your healer won't be retarded and run off in a far end corner to heal. The first boss spawns snake-adds that -will- go for the healer. They are really easy to grab off him and have the dps aoe down if the healer is close to you so you can just thunder clap them. They're nearly impossible to get off if he isn't. I suggest you ask the healer to stand next to you when healing. There is no reason he shouldn't since the boss doesn't cleave or anything.
-The second boss switches between two different forms. Actually most bosses in Gundrak do this, but this boss is the only one that aggro resets when doing it. Start of with a taunt at each switch to make sure the boss doesn't run away somewhere else.
-The rhinos just before the last boss will silence you, so do your shouts and claps as fast as possible. And try to make sure the healer isn't dumb enough to stand too close to them. The silence has about a 15 yard range so there is no reason for him to be silenced (I've wiped because a healer did this).
-In heroic mode there is an extra boss just after the third one (Moo'rabi). But not in normal. Alot of people like to skip him anyway, but you need to kill him for the instance achi, and another achi.
Like I mentioned there is a really nice tank ring drop from the last boss - Gal'darah's Signet.
Halls of Stone
Since they made Culling of Stratholme less sucky, this usually is voted "most horrible instance" by players. It's not because it's particularly difficult, but because it wastes time unecessarily (Like CoS did). It's not that shabby at low levels though, I actually think it's rather fun to tank.
-It's easy to overpull in HoS, so be careful about your pullings.
-The Theurgist dwarves are casters, and the Elementalists summon elemental adds (that aren't much to worry about though). This means however that to position a dwarf group you'll probably have to charge and shield bash (silence) the Theurgist.
-The Maiden of Sorrow puts black areas on the floor. Don't stand in them as they do continous damage. When she casts her Shock of Sorrow you might want to step into it just before to make sure you're taken out of the shock at once. Since you're the tank she'll hit you out of the shock at once anyway, so it doesn't matter if you miss this (it's actually more of a point for a healer or dps). (She drops a nice dps back that is way better than the crap ass back I've got now. But I've always had some dps need on it so far. I'm just no lucky with backs. And speaking of backs, Love had a tank in Nexus yesterday who got superior achi from switching his back, all his other gear was ilvl 245+).
-Don't forget to take the quest from Brann, it awards a nice pair of shoulders. Don't worry if you miss it a couple of times, until you engage the last boss you can still take it.
- The last boss, Sjonnir, summons adds that will go for your healer again. Try to pick em up if you can. He will also do an aoe, and especially the last one might be worth popping a cooldown or two for. You can just move away from it too though, he will stand still.

Sjonnir drops a nice tank neck, Amulet of Wills.