Summer Holidays

I'm off on some holiday trips (I'll be scurrying between places) for the next few weeks and won't have much access to computers or internet during that time, unfortunately. I'll try to find internet somewhere and write something interesting when I can think of it, but I don't even have my WoW account active now until I come home again. I was going to write a post about the effectiviness on Demo Shout, but it has been proven tricky to put into test and so I have put it on hold until I can give it some real testing and show some interesting data.

So I'll just leave you with a tip for the summer, to keep you occupied until I come back again.
I suppose many of you that stumble onto this page, or visit it regularly, also read other blogs. Maybe other blogs about WoW. If so you'll probably have heard about this already, but I have to promote this just in case someone has missed this! Love told me about it after having read about it on some druid blog.

I am talking about elementsthegame.com. A free magicthegathering-clone on the internet. It's not as good as magic, but considering it's completely free and so extremely easy to access, it is completely awesome for killing time. Like when being on a flightpath, waiting around in a raid, waiting for a group, fishing... nearly anytime you're not actively pressing skills in WoW. There are alot of time sinks in WoW where you don't actually do much good, or fun. Games like Bejeweled have been good to fill these holes, and this game is another (but even better) way to do it. Or any other time of course (in case you're one of those rare people who don't play WoW). It is good and solid enough to give you a good amount of fun, so check it out. I love it so much I've already donated some money (which will award you a special card, other than that no cards are puchaseable for real money).

So have a really nice summer everyone! I'll try to get back here as often as possible, but I won't be home again until mid-july (where tons of work is waiting for me).

Traveller's Guide to Exotic Islands

Azeroth offers a fine variety of really interesting islands, that are rarely visited. It is time to take a look at some of these, more and less interesting, islands!

Ranazjar Isle
A really small island off the coast of Desolace, it doesn't look like much. And it really isn't. You could throw a stone across it so it doesn't offer much exploring or adventure. It does hold a mysterious statue however, part of some quest no doubt, that I guess very few people do today.

The lack of interesting nature and wildlife, and unwelcoming native nagas doesn't make Ranazjar Isle the best vacation island around.

But what is this? Some sort of statue on the other side of the island hints of a mystery.

Fray Isle
A little more interesting than Ranazjar Isle is without a doubt Fray Isle. If you've never played a warrior, or played a warrior and never done the berserker stance quest (it happens!), you wouldn't have much reason to go to this place. Located just outside of Ratchet, Fray Isle will soon turn into one of the most life bustling places in Azeroth. With the coming of Cataclysm Fray Island will play a central role to the new playabe race the Goblins. So if you want to catch a moment in peace on Fray Isle without one hundred newly created, crazy goblins running around your feet you should hurry over there and take a look.

Fray Isle from a distance.

An underwater tunnel with angry fishies. Wonder where it leads? For me to know, for you to find out! (hint: It doesn't really lead anywhere)

Wonder where this happy bunch of fighters will go when the Goblins infest the area? This is where warriors earn their Berserker Stance.

Alcaz Island
Nothing is as mysterious as Alcaz Island however. It is full of elite mobs and even an elite boss (?) in the shape of a Gnome (and gnome shaped things must die, right?)! His name is Dr Weavil (the reference is quite obvious) and the island is located just outside of Dustwallow Marsh. He is part of an AQ quest chain that is never done anymore, so he rarely gets a visit any longer. You get a quest to go there as lowbie alliance, but then you have to make sure not too wander too far into the island as you'll surely be quickly killed by the various elite Nagas, Dragons and Hydras that also inhabit the island.

Alcaz Island from a distance. Doesn't that look ominous? (Or maybe it's just bad graphic settings).

Level 60+ elite Hydras and Nagas inhabit the island. Not for the faint hearted!

Hmm, a big base camp hidden in the middle of the island?

Aha! Dr Weavil and Minion has been spotted. I didn't dare to attack them though...

A summoning circle with evil naga henchmen by a destroyed tower is a sure sign of... eh something evil.

So if you're ever having one of those nights where you just don't know what to do, I suggest you run over to Fray Isle and take a look or Alcaz Island and give Dr Weavil a spankin (from me).

Escort Quests and You

I thought I'd mention something about some of the most dreaded quests in the game - the escort quests. Most escort quests are, or at least used to be, horrible manifestations of tedious, slow walks and nearly impossible to manage suprise attacks. Fortunately Blizzard have fixed alot of escorts since the dawn of WoW, and now we even find some that are rather fun! Didn't expect that did ya? I'll list some good escort quests, some ok escort quests and an escort quests that for a long time was crowned the most horrible of all.

The Good Ones
On Bloodmyst Isle you get an escort quest to help demolitionist Legoso in his attempt to destroy the Vector Coil of the Blood Elves in the area, called Ending Their World. The Blood Elves that you encounter are elite, so it is no easy task. Fortunately, Legoso is a shaman. As you go low on hp he will actually heal you! I love that guy, we were some team running in there and bombing those silly Blood Elves. He had a really nice AI, healing me just when I needed it making the whole thing "soloable" (I had him after all), as a paladin anyway.

In Redridge Mountains you get a quest to kill Blackrock Champion, and when you venture into their area you will find Corporal Keeshan who needs your help to escape. The Champions (and other mobs in the area) might not be elite, but they're rather tough if you're about their level. Fortunately, Keeshan is one hell of a tank. Not only is he elite, he has Mocking Blow (taunt attack) as his standard attack, making it really hard to pull aggro from him. The only drawback is that he'll only tank one mob at a time, but considering he's a wounded captive trying to escape I'm quite glad he does even that.

The Ok Ones
A quest most people hate, but that I can't help but liking is the one were you escort the lost turtle Tooga through the Tanaris desert to his wife Torta. The bad things about it is that Tooga is extremely slow and you have to run a loooong way with him. The good things about the quest is that Tooga will follow you, not the other way around as is the usual business about escort quests. Tooga also has some rather funny things to say on your treck towards Torta, which definitely makes this quest worth doing at least once. They've even gotten one item each as an hommage to their awesomeness; Tooga's Lost Toenail and Torta's Oversized Choker.

I also enjoy the robot-chicken escorts that you can find in Hinterlands, Tanaris and Feralas. Although those quests (most notably the one in Hinterlands) were really, really long, some of them have been improved lately. Less mob encounters and less running. And best of all, if you do them all you get a robot chicken pet (which is sellable for nice money!). And honestly, who doesn't love that robot chicken?

The Horrible One
I can think of one really horrible escort quest, although there are many of course. There is a quest in Ashenvale to escort the druid Kerlonian Evershade to Maestra's Post. Kerlonian will follow you around, just like Tooga and this is lucky because there are two reasons this quest is so horrible. First of all, Kerlonian will fall asleep now and then, which means you have to wake him with a horn. But even worse, if you follow the road you'll be attacked by two packs of three mobs (not both packs at once though). Worst of all, Kerlonian dies -extremely- easily. He can take two, three blows and then he goes down. I doubt if there is any weaker escortee out there. It is nearly impossible to have him survive the attack because even if you greatly outlevel the quest, Kerlonian gets aggro first and is usually killed faster than you've got time to snatch aggro back. Only a really well timed aoe could save his ass... Or a pw: shield now that they've changed it to be castable on npc's. And when he dies, well you have to start all over again. A tip is to simply avoid the road all together and run through the woods instead, where the mobs are much more manageable. Or just leave his sorry ass behind and go do a fun quest instead.

Can you think of any escort quests you really like/dislike?

Cataclysm Druid Changes - Feral Talents

I thought since I've got one of the most dedicated druids close at hand, I'll ask him about his thoughts on the Cataclysm feral changes. Love has played various druid forms (see what I did there) ever since the game first was released, so few people could claim to have more practical experience than he! All the changes as they look today can be seen here.

The Changed Talents

Sharpened Claws: Increases the damage caused by your Claw, Rake, Mangle (Cat), Mangle (Bear), and Maul abilities by 10/20%.
The crit has been changed into pure damage, which is in line with Blizzard trying to make it harder for feral druids to reach different caps, in this case the crit cap. This change in itself is probably a nerf to the feral damage since Shred and Rip are two major non-white damage sources, that will no longer be buffed by this talent. The big upsides of this is easier itemization because we don't have to watch yet another cap and that Mangle (Cat) will now probably be more in line with the DPE (Damage Per Energy) of Shred, so Feral druids wont be as vulnerable to bad positioning (E.g. Koralon) as they are now.

Shredding Attacks: Reduces the energy cost of your Shred ability by 5/10 and the rage cost of your Lacerate ability by 1/2.
This could be interpreted as a straight nerf, since the talent currently reduces the energy cost by 9/18, but I heard that there might be a change in the base cost of Shred, so speculating now on what might happen would only serve to confuse. It's a change that I believe will only serve to even out the cost of Shred instead of, as it is now, give it an odd, but lower, energycost.

Predatory Instincts: Increases the damage done by your melee critical strikes by 3/7/10%
The only change in this talent is that it on live servers also reduces aoe-damage taken by 30%, and I have to go with the above hedging on this one as well. We know that health pools will be bigger, and that actually moving out of the goddamn fire will count for more in the upcoming expansion due to the lowered regen capabilities for healers, so they might not want us to suffer less than other classes. Might have some PvP implications as well, but meh. /care.

Brutal Impact: Increases the stun duration of your Bash and Pounce abilities by 0.5/1 seconds, and decreases the cooldown of Bash by 5/10 seconds.
This change is due to the fact that druids will get an actual, real kick mechanic. To make sure that Bear Form doesn't turn into pvp-gods with one trillion stuns up their sleeves, they're simply giving bash a longer cooldown. This used to be Bears only non-charge interrupt, and since this won't be the case any longer they have to make sure bears can't interrupt too often. This price is well worth it however, since you don't need to stun that often anyway, but being able to choose between an interrupt and a stun will make alot of things easier.

Predatory Strikes: Increases the critical strike chance of your Ravage by 25/50% at or above 90% health, and your finishing moves have a 10/20% chance per combo point to make your next Nature spell with a base casting time less than 10 seconds become an instant cast spell.
The attack power part that used to be on this talent will probably no longer be needed in any form because of the redesign of the class mechanics they're going to do in Cataclysm. This talent used to be a semi-bandaid talent to cover up for the failed and patched class mechanics that is feral druid today. This coupled with Improved Feral Charge (commented on further down) might make some crazy pvp-bursts, but this will probably not be too useful in pve since we have to worry about threat at the beginning of the fight. It might be useful in bossfights where you run away and then charge back, although it doesn't actually say for sure if it is your hp or your targets hp that has to be above 90%. It'll make all the difference.

Survival of the Fittest: Reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by melee attacks by 2/4/6%, and increases the contribution from cloth and leather items in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 11/22/33%.
If this came mid-expansion I'd call the removal of 6% stats a straight down nerf. I assume this in itself won't be a nerf though because druids will get a more normalized stat values in Cataclysm than they have today (like four times the normal amount of AP to make the same damage as rogues and warriors) and we won't need talents like these to make us on-par with other classes.

King if the Jungle: While using your Enrage ability in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form, your damage is increased by 5/10/15%, and your Tiger's Fury ability also instantly restores 20/40/60 energy.
Here they have simply removed the part which reduces mana costs on shapeshifting to cat or bear forms. They have in expansion after expansion and patch after patch made it easier and cheaper for us to shapeshift freely. I don't think they'll simply revert after all this time, but probably take the final step and just make the shapeshifting easy and cheap even without talents.

Primal Tenacity: Reduces the duration of fear effects by 10/20/30% and reduces all damage taken while stunned by 5/10/15% while in Cat Form.
The damage reduction while stunned is halved, and I think this is simply due to the changes made to players health pools. Blizzard don't want people to be able to be one-shot any longer, so they will probably remove or nerf many of the damage reduction talents and skills so that players won't turn into semi-raid bosses.

Infected Wounds: Your Shred, Maul, Ravage and Mangle attacks cause an Infected Wound in the target. The Infected Wound reduces the movement speed of the target by 25/50% and the attack speed by 10/20%. Lasts 12 seconds.
Not much to say here, it is now two talent points instead of three. This might be due to Blizzard wanting more druids to afford this talent. This kind of talent (e.g Vindication, Thunder Clap) also only costs 2 tp for other classes.

The New Talents

Improved Feral Charge: Increases your melee haste by 15/30% after you use Feral Charge (Bear) for 8 seconds, and Ravage will temporarily not require stealth for 3/6 seconds after you use Feral Charge (Cat).
The bear portion of this talent seems to be aimed mainly at giving bears a burstier threatgeneration compared to what we have now and -maybe- also give Cats (probably not, but the wording allows it) the option of using bear charge, switching to cat and enjoying a few seconds of machine-gun-clawing! Like I said, probably not, but one can hope ^^
Feral Charge (Cat) does not seem too useful for PvE purposes, but the synergy with Predatory Strikes in PvP might really make us dangerous.

Fury Swipes: When you auto-attack while in Cat Form or Bear Form, you have a 4/8/12% chance to gain an extra auto-attack on the same target. This effect cannot occur more than once every 6 seconds.
White attacks have been a rough 30% of our total damage for a good while, and increasing that passively is always nice! The actual damage increase from this talent in itself is actually fairly small, only a few auto-attacks per minute (if they decide to keep the 6 sec inner cd, which also ruins any synergy effects with for example BL). But a few extra white attacks goes a long way if they give us OOC clearcasts. It's a good talent, but at the moment it might be considered to be a bit on the weak side.

Endless Carnage: Increases the duration of your Rake by 3/6 seconds and your Savage Roar and Pulverize by 3/6 seconds.
This is massive. Rake is a very important damage skill for feral druids at the moment (due to them being able to crit and giving us Idol procs), and if they want Rake to play such an important role in the endgame, they will probably let it stay in the spotlight. The current Rake has a 9 second uptime, adding 6 seconds greatly lowers the energycost (albeit it being minimal to start with) and gives it a phenomenal DPE. Savage Roar is a very boring but also insanely (too) powerful skill, yet another bandaid for the feral mechanics, and giving it a solid 3/6 second buff regardless of the amount of talentpoints spent will make it a lot easier to keep it at 100% uptime. The buff to Pulverize is also by a significant amount, from 10 to 16 seconds. I'm not sure how that skill will play out, but a buff that big might make it mandatory even for dedicated bears.

Primal Madness: Tiger's Fury and Berserk also increases your maximum energy by 6/12 during its duration, and your Enrage and Berserk abilities instantly generates 0/12 Rage.
I can't say I'm all for this talent, since it actually encourages bad habits and poor planning. Make room for your energy, THEN pop TF. It might be useful for the situations where you pop Zerk only to be forced to move away from the boss. Very "if if if", but it might, maybe, perhaps, situationally be useful. Otherwise my feeling is that this is a /meh talent. The Bear part is solid, but weak, and might even be reduntant if rage generation is anything like the last two expansions. (Yes, rage normalization inc, but I can't comment on that before I know the details.)

Nom Nom Nom (Name not final): When you Ferocious Bite a target at or below 25% health, you have a 50/100% chance to instantly refresh the duration of your Rip on the target.
I gotta jump on the bandwagon with this one: Nom Nom Nom has to be the final name. Has To Be. I would play my druid for this reason alone! Anyway, 25% feels sort of weak, but they have stated that fights will be longer, and removing Rip out of the CP equation makes room for a whole lot of Bites, so this will be our Execute-like ability for that last push.

Pulverize: Requires Dire Bear Form. Deals 100% weapon damage plus additional 786 damage for each of your Lacerate applications on the target, and increases your melee critical strike chance by 2% for each Lacerate application consumed for 10 seconds.
It says "consumed", so my interpretation is that it will remove the stack of Lacerates and deal a good chunk of damage, and also increasing the critical strike chance of the bear for a good 16 (talented) seconds. If the single Pulverize manages to make up for the lost Lacerate ticks it will really make bear tanking a lot more interesting compared to what it is now (2 macro mashing), and also give bears a greater chance at single target Savage Defense procs. If this skill is properly balanced it can give bear tanking a whole new dimension of when to Pulverize and when to let the stacks be.

Summary
There are many "if's" at the moment, considering feral druid has been alot about making it work as the other classes -as good as possible- while at the same time make it work between specs -as good as possible-. This has lead to alot of compromizes and what feels like half-improvized fixes and talents. Blizzard say they intend to normalize stats, not only for druids, but for all classes. But this will probably have bigger implications for feral druids than any other class. Maybe now feral druids will be a class of its own, without having to rely on poor copies of other classes skills and stat mechanics and instead based on itself. This means, like I have written, that alot of talents that might look like nerfs today will work perfect for whatever the feral druid is going to become in Cataclysm. One has to remember that alot of the talents today are mere "fixes" to make us work properly, like some sort of abomination, and the "nerfs" are actually just a removal of something that we won't need any longer. At least that is what I hope. Overall the talents seem to be make the feral dpsing more forgiving and easier to sustain compared to how it is today, and that without haphazard bandaid-talents. But it will in the end most likely be very much like today, the changes will be made in the background, in the programming rather in the things that are affected by player skills. There won't be any technique altering skills for us to adapt to, and this is ok, because we really don't need more skills to keep track of.
Bear druids will get a much needed improvement in tank style, with some new skills to use for optimal tanking. Since bear tanking isn't especially exciting as it is today, this is very welcome.

Cataclysm Priest Changes - Holy Talents

Continuing from yesterday, let's look at the holy talents changes and maybe also draw some conclusions about the general direction that priest healing seems to be taking. Oh and I took this info from wowhead.com.

The Changed Talents

Searing Light: Increases the damage of your Smite, Holy Fire, Holy Nova and Penance spells by 4/8/12%.
(Very) Slight buff that increases damage by 2% overall, but over three talent points instead of two. But that is so boring a change that we move right on to the next one.

Empowered Healing: Your Greater Heal spell gains an additional 6/12/18/24/30% and your Flash Heal, Heal, and Binding Heal gain an additional 3/6/9/12/15% of your bonus healing effects.
Overall quite the nerf, as it lowers the percentual gain by 10% and 5% respectively. This is in line with the other "spell power gain"-talent changes we have seen though, and as I said yesterday this probably simply has to do with balancing stats.

Blessed Resilience: Critical hits made against you have a 20/40/60% chance to prevent you from being critically hit again for 6 seconds
A simple removal of the 3% extra healing. I must say I actually like that they're streamlining the talents again instead of these mini-extras they throw in to talents sometimes. Like "oh this talent isn't as good as it should be, oh well we'll just throw in a 3% extra healing there and it'll be just fine". Kinda random when you think about it.

Body and Soul: When you cast Power Word: Shield or Leap of Faith, you increase the targets's movement speed by 30/60% for 4 seconds, and you have a 50/100% chance when you cast Cure Disease on yourself to also cleanse 1 poison effect in addition to diseases.
I love this talent, although I haven't actually specced it myself. Let's say I respect the pve-priests who dare spec this talent, because with it comes the micro managing of knowing the exact time to use a shield properly. Giving someone 60% extra run speed without them being ready for it in a pve-setting can be disastrous (I imagine people running off the ledge on LK for instance). If we look closely we see one important change here. Instead of Abolish Disease, you now have to cast Cure Disease. This feels like a lame excuse to force every priest that talents this to place Cure Disease somewhere on the action bar. Ok, there are some other reasons to have Cure Disease ready, but honestly you -rarely- use that skill. The only occasion would be when you don't want abolish laying around on people so that you have more control over disease handling, like on LK phase 1. Oh and yeah, they added the new skill Leap of Faith to count for this as well.

Circle of Healing: Cooldown increased to 10 seconds.
Noes! A huge increase on the Circle of Healing cooldown. Was it really that good? Really? Yes it was good, but I mean I often feel that PoM is way better. Oh, maybe I shouldn't say that or they will nerf that too. I rarely spam CoH as it is, and maybe that is my bad. I usually feel that people are too spread out to benefit properly from it but ok... I admit it has its brilliant moments. I'll say now that I don't think the extra cooldown will make much difference in my healing, but I am quite sure I'll regret those words later on.

The New Talents

Holy Focus: Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting any Holy spell by 35/70%.
Although treated as a new talent, it's really a remake of Healing Focus. They've simply made it count for damaging holy spells as well, which is totally in line with healing priests becoming pewpewsmite-priests.

Divine Accuracy: Increases the chance to hit with your Smite, Holy Fire, Holy Nova and Penance spells by 10/20%.
To assure we poor priests don't have to worry about hit now that we're supposed to pewpew, we get 20% hit (!!) in two talents. That does sound kind of absurd but also shows how serious Blizzard are about this pewpew-business. And of course, this is totally awesome for any leveling priest, as the whole pewpew-thing will be. Smite-dps won't be a choice for the freaks anylonger!

Deliverance: When you heal with Binding Heal or Flash Heal, the cast time of your next Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing spell is reduced by 3/6/9%. Stacks up to 3 times. Lasts 20 seconds.
This does sound alot like Serendipity, doesn't it? It doesn't say what has happened to Serendipity, but by the looks of it it has been removed. Or rather, replaced by this copycat. There are some minor differences, but overall they do the same thing. Use your fast spells to lower the cast time of your slow spells.

Choir Leader: Your Divine Hymn also heals you for 10/20% of your total health during its duration, and the channel time of your Hymn of Hope is reduced by 10/20%.
Although extra healing to Divine Hymn is nice, reducing the channel time of it doesn't have to be. Blizzard doesn't seem to understand that healing stuff too fast can sometimes be a bad thing, because it will only lead to wasted overheals. Especially with a spell like Divine Hymn which has a rather massive healing output. I know alot of druids who complain about them having "too much" haste so that their Tranquillity is over too fast. I don't want to see this happen to Divine Hymn. Apparently they're changing the way haste works which means it won't actually lower the spell channeling but increase the amounts of ticks instead. This means haste can really be seen as a straight of increase of a spells damage/healing (instead of a hastened cast), and that's good of course.

Improved Holy Nova: Reduces the global cooldown of your Holy Nova spell by 0.25/0.5 sec., and increases its critical effect chance by 25/50%.
I realize this will probably be way too expensive to spam, but at least we'll be able to jump in on the "aoe-the-trash-to-bits"-fun! How I have longed. No but seriously, I am glad they're trying to make something decent out of this talent. How many priests out there uses Holy Nova seriously? Well I did Uldaman today and had a priest in the group who did rather good damage by just spamming Holy Nova. But that's about as useful as it is right now.

Chakra: When you use Prayer of Healing, Renew or Heal 3 times in a row you will enter a Chakra state empowering you for 20 seconds. You can only be in one Chakra state at a time.

• Prayer of Healing - Increases your area-of-effect healing by 2/4/6/8/10%, and reduces the cooldown of your Circle of Healing by .5/1/1.5/2/2.5 seconds.
• Renew - Increases the periodic haste effect of your Renew spell by 3/6/9/12/15% and reduces the global cooldown of your Renew spell by .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 seconds.
• Heal - Increases the critical effect chance of your Heal spell by 1/2/3/4/5%, and your Heal has a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to refresh the duration of your Renew on the target.
• Smite - Increase your total damage done by Shadow and Holy spells by 4/8/12%.

Starting at Rank 2 - Increases spell power by 10% of your total spirit. Rank 3 changes the talent to Spiritual Guidance - Increases spell power by 15/20/25% of your total spirit.
Here we have it, the huge change to holy healing. The TLDR version of this is that whatever you do will buff whatever you're doing. So if you're spamming hots your hots will become better, if you're spamming smites your dps will be increased and so on. I think Blizzard wants us to become more aware of what we're doing and do less of the mindless spamming. I encourage that, although I am not completely sure this will make us more mindful about our healing in the end. It still feels like we'll spam and chakra will be a bonus to our spamming. Making us more mindful about our casts would be synergies between spells, like using spell A buffs spell B instead of using spell A will buff spell A. But oh well, I won't be too pessimistic here, it'll probably be awesome. And also I see they're trying to get "Heal" back into the game. Boy I haven't used Heal since level... 20? This doesn't mean I don't like the idea of bringing it back. I like priest healing because of all the different heals, and I think I've complained about Heal and Lesser Heals uselessness before (I say so much I hardly remember what I've said and what I've only thought about). So bring it back, make it useful, I'll love it!

Thriving Light: Reduces the duration of Wound effects on you by 15/30%, and reduces the damage taken by bleed effects by 10/20%.
Pvp-talent, and that's all I'll say about that :P

Summary
Like I said yesterday, the changes to disc look more interesting than the changes to holy. Maybe it's a matter of personal taste so let me put it this way - the changes to disc actually look like changes while the changes to holy look like more about the same thing. It seems as if disc will be something rather different than it is today, while holy will continue its business.
I must say one thing though; why the heck haven't they changed Lightwell? I love that spell, but no one else does. I think I read somewhere that Blizzard intend to change healing and design fights in a way that will actually force dpsers to mind their health more than they have to today. Yes! Please please do! I don't want to hear another dpser say "where is my healing?" when a frigging Lightwell is standing right next to them. I realize that people don't like it today, it's not practical, so please change it so that it is extremely, and I mean -extremely-, easy to use. Ok I already nerdraged about this once, so I'll spare you this time.

It does seem like they want us to be more active in our healing. Chakra and throwing in dps skills in our healing rotation to max our healing output seems like they want the passive spamming of the same skills to be gone (I'm not looking in the holydins direction at all). And I welcome it, I really do. This will really separate the wheat from the chaff, as we say in sweden, when the best healing will be done by those that have the best presence of mind and environmental awareness (and maybe less about über gear that lets you spam no matter what). Holy does seem to take the same path however and disc seems alot more interesting as it is now, especially with all the pewpew that seems to become a part of their healing style. Chakra looks good, but not especially exciting. Like I said yesterday though, everything might still change over night for the better or worse. So keep your eyes pealed.