We Need More World-Events

In my line of work I often meet people (mostly teenagers) who share my love and enthusiasm for video games and we often end up both playing and talking a lot about them. The other day I got to hang out with a guy who was playing Runescape (among other things) and he told me a bit about it. It seems like a cool game in general although extremely grindy (apparently quests of the sort "kill 100 of these" are standard. Yes 100, that's no exaggeration) but one thing in particular stuck in my mind. He told me of an event that, if I understood correctly, happened pretty recently in-game as part of an update/expansion to the game. Players were asked to hand in buckets of sand (and possibly other things the kid didn't mention) and in the end an island (or possibly beach) emerged in the game that hadn't been there before - complete with new places to skill up different professions or techniques. Now if you happen to play Runescape and know I got that all wrong, what matters is that it got me thinking about inclusion in video games and that it is the one thing that really sets MMO's apart from your every day singleplayer game.

And they say WoW graphics are outdated (Runescape in 2007) - forums.zybez.net

It might sound weird to talk about inclusion when talking about video games, because in essence video games are all about inclusion. Their interactive nature naturally invites the player to feel included and feel like they affect what happen around them (more or less). But MMO's can provide inclusion on a different scale, one in which the individual (that is you) gets to truly feel like they are part of something bigger and like they made a difference in the world around them.

Looking at a game like World of Warcraft, Blizzard have always known the power of this and allowed players to feel included in every expansion they released. Instead of just telling players there was a new expansion coming, they allowed us to experience it and take part of it through special events in game. One of my favorites was the massive event that preluded the opening of Ahn'Qiraj. Back then I had just started playing and was far from a raider, so I had little understanding of what was going on other than that everyone, from a low level casual scrub like me to the hardcore raiders, regardless of faction, united to achieve a common goal. There was something to get for everyone, you didn't have to be part of a big guild or know a lot of people who played - you just needed to take part in the event. It just felt magical to be part of something as massive as that undertaking. The event included gathering a vast variety of items and hand them in, but everyone could chip in and that was the important part.

You had to be there - imagekb.com

And the events that lead up to Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King were similar huge folk festivals where everyone seemed to stop what they were doing and come together to achieve the same goal regardless of whether you were a pvp:er, raider or quester. My rose tinted goggles will allow me to ignore the fact that Blizzard obviously cleverly designed the events to entice these different groups to come together, but that is exacly what good game design should do.

I think this is different from multiplayer games in general, where you obviously also see a bunch of people work together (hopefully) for a common cause. Most importantly because these MMO events offer change - they allow the player to take place in changing the world that they live in rather than just repeating an action (like any multiplayer shooter for instance where the same goal is achieved or failed over and over without permanent change, similar to the seasonal events or pvp done in WoW.)

Party with the dead - wow-one.com

Could you implement something similar in a singleplayer game? Would we even want that? I am thinking both yes and no. On the one hand I always think it's interesting to see how you could develop new gaming experiences, on the other hand I feel like singleplayer and multiplayer games deliver very different gaming experiences and that's ok. Naturally there are things in multiplayer you can't do in singleplayer and vice versa and I doubt you could conjure the same feeling of scale in a singleplayer game as you could in a multiplayer, unless you somehow managed to hook up singleplayers making it a sort of inbetween like Dark Souls. Could you make multiplayer games other than MMOs adopt this idea? Could a game like Team Fortress 2 or CoD include this kind of gameplay? I am sure they could, in fact I would love to see it be done more often. Instead of just giving players a new map/arena/whatever, you could have an in-game event regarding it. Whether it would go down well or people prefer things to be as static and predictable as possible in these kind of settings I don't know - personally I would love a bit of gameplay diversity (which might be why I don't play those kind of games much).

And what kind of content should have these kind of world-events? Anything? Free stuff or pay for stuff? It worked in WoW to have everyone engage in a world-event that essentially preceded something that you still had to pay for to experience but I am not sure that works in any kind of game. But I am probably getting way ahead of myself here.

I haven't played enough other MMO's to know to which extent they incorporate this kind of gameplay, I can't recall anything like it in the few months I played Warhammer though. I do realize it is probably a huge undertaking for a game developer to try to achieve but the reward must surely be worth it. I can only speak for myself but all of the world-events I took part in in WoW, which was pretty much all of them from Vanilla to early MoP, became some of my fondest and best memories of the game.

My personal opinion is that the experience got watered down as WoW progressed, but it might also just be that every new world-event became less and less of a big thing for me. It was just another expansion with another world-event. I like to think that is not the case and I'm not that jaded, but rather that Blizzard included the players less and less. If I compare the level of player commitment required for the Ahn'Qiraj event with that of the Mists of Pandaria event... wait, did MoP even have an event? I can't remember it if it did. But Ahn'Qiraj wasn't even for an expansion, just another (or technically two) new raids. In Burning Crusade we got to work together to unlock the Sunwell Isle. I would've loved to see more events like that, that changed parts of the game, big or small. To me nothing else ever came close to making the world feel as alive, real and worthwhile as those all-player-including world-events ever did.

Disc Priest Q&A - MoP Edition

Q: So what is this?
A: Just a little Q&A to get some grip on what priest healing means in MoP. These are typical questions I've had and needed answers to, and I thought I'd compile a little list of information for anyone else curious about these things.

Q: What is this not?
A: This won't be a complete guide to everything priestly, nor will I sport any fancy spreadsheets on mana regen and gains from this or that stat. This will mainly aim at giving you a fairly straight answer, from my point of view. If you want more number crunching I suggest you check out these sites instead (to mention a few).

Elitist Jerks
MMO Melting Pot
Type H for Heals
Tales of a Priest

So let's get started!

Q: I'm totally confused, how has disc priest healing changed from Cata to MoP?
A: The good news are, not much. We've got some new spells, we've got some talents as baseline - but in essence, if you knew how to heal before MoP, you will know how to heal after MoP.

The thing to remember is that healing is always forced to change somewhat when going from the end of an expansion to the beginning of another. Regardless if you've been hardcore heroic raider or just strolled in LFR every now and then, your stats will change drastically when going through the leveling process from 85 to 90, most notably your stats will suddenly decline very quickly and you will probably notice that you're ooming quicker than you used to. Add to this that Blizzard decided to change our mana pools from int-based to fixed, meaning that you might have been collecting stats that are now a lot less valuable.

If you play a disc priest (and I dare say you are if you're interested in this post) you will find that all that juicy intellect you've been stacking is worth way less now, and all that spirit you've scorned suddenly is your new best friend. Until you've had the chance to remedy this by getting new gear, this change will be noticeable by the fact that you just don't have the mana and/or mana regen to go on healing (aka shield spamming) like we could at the end of Cata.

What does this mean? Remember how we were forced to heal in the beginning of the last expansion? If you don't, here is a quick rundown;

• Renew will be used a lot more than previous, even for raiding.
• Shield should yet again be considered more of an oh-shit-skill, and to get Rapture procs (less important until you've stacked a decent amount of spirit, I'll get to that further down).
• Back to Heal spamming, rather than Greater Heals
• Be pro-active, start healing before the damage is done - Renew, Heal and PoM can always be out there.
• Because Evangelism and Atonement are now baseline, if you hadn't specced them earlier you should now consider using them. If you had them in Cata, not much has changed. Try to keep up an Evangelism buff to pop for Archangel when shit hits the fan. This doesn't mean spam Smites, just the occasional Holy Fire is enough, since you have more mana efficient heals than your Atonement skills. Getting profficient at when and how to use your Atonement skills, will make a difference for harder fights.
• Our new skill, Spirit Shell, should be considered a preparation skill. If you know one or more people are going to take a lot of damage, you can "prepare" by throwing on some Spirit Shell shields in advance. A skill with very high potential in other words.

Here is a hobo-list of my estimations of the hpm of some of our skills. Remember that this is based on my specific stats and healing style, but they will at least give you an idea of which skills are mana-drainers and which are less so. I give no guarantees as to its correctness (especially regarding Holy Fire and Smite).


Shield - 4hpm (not taking Rapture into account)
Renew - 6,2hpm
PoH - 2hpm (per target)
Penance - 2hpm
Heal - 5,9hpm
Flash Heal - 3,2hpm
Greater Heal - 3,8hpm
PoM - 1,8hpm (per target, my healing style, not taking glyph into account)
Smite - 3,5hpm
Holy Fire - 1,5hpm (with dot)

Q: What talents should I choose?
A: I've got to hand it to Blizzard, talents have never been as much up to whatever you prefer than now, but there are definitely some talents that are more worth having than others - as always this does depend on what kind of content you're playing. This is the talent spec I choose for heroic instance healing, and I will discuss some of the talent choices;

Void Tendrils - I've found it quite useful to be able to root down any enemy that's attacking you. This might be mostly useful when doing dailies, but also occasionally in heroics, because if the tank doesn't get those adds off you, you want to make sure they hit you as little as possible. The other talents feel less useful in this regard.

Body & Soul - The choice here is really between B&S and Angelic Feather. For heroics I'd definitely recommend B&S, because Angelic Feather requires more cooperation from your team mates to actually do any good, and good luck with that in a pug. In raids however, Angelic Feather can turn out to be a good choice when properly incorporated in a tactic, and should be chosen whenever the raid group finds good use for it. As it is now I mostly use B&S to quickly move myself out of bad stuff, or if I know someone needs a little extra boost somewhere.

Mindbender - Early calculations showed that Mindbender was the best at overall mana return. It only has two drawbacks, one big and one minor. The minor one is that you have to remember to use it every cooldown to get the most out of it, the big one is that the Mindbender, being a pet, does live a life of its own and doesn't always do what you want it to - pretty much what we're already used to from the Shadowfiend. Since Mindbender replaces Shadowfiend you could argue that it's best to have the Shadowfiend and an additional option of mana return, personally I just think the other two choices are so unpractical that unless they change them or I end up in a fight that really works with those mechanics, I am sticking with my little Mindbender (and it is so cute too!)

Angelic Bulwark - This is not a talent where I will tell you one choice is better than the other, because I think AB and Desperate Prayer are pretty much equal in terms of usefulness. DP has the benefit of being an actual heal, AB on the other hand comes automatically after heavy damage which means you don't have to think about it (which might be useful right after a big aoe where you'll probably be busy doing other things). In the end it is really up to what you feel the most comfortable with, and I think personally I will swap between the two depending on fight.

Power Infusion - Out of our choices in this tier, I prefer Power Infusion, simply because of the freedom it gives me to choose whenever I want that extra output. Twisted Fate relies on targets being on a very low health to be useful, somewhere people will rarely be in heroics. In raids TF will probably be more useful, but unless I know the raid will be on very low health for a big portion of the fight I would still choose PI over TF. Divine Insight is more useful for holy than for us disc, and just doesn't provide enough troughput for me to want it over PI. If I knew I was focusing on tank healing, maybe - but probably not even then.

Cascade - All three of these choices are quite interesting and in terms of throughput they balance out ok. In terms of practical usefulness however, it's quite different. Cascade is probably your best choice for heroics. Halo will have you aggro mobs from all over the place since it is basically a 30 yard wide aoe. In my personal opinion, Halo is almost unusable in heroics but could prove to be quite the cooldown in raids depending on fight. Divine Star is too weak for heroics if you ask me, especially considering the very limited amount of targets. Yet again, it could prove to be quite useful for that little extra aoe healing in raids, depending on fight. Overall my recommendation is to use Cascade for heroic instance healing, and for raids choose among the other ones depending on what works for the fight at hand.

That being said, as Grimmtooth pointed out in the comments, Blizzard want us to swap around between skills like never before. This is something you should try and make the most out of, so don't hesitate to change to a different talent if you think it'll work better in a fight!

Q: What should I glyph?
A: Glyphs have a lot less impact on your healing now than they've ever had, but I still have some recommendations.

• Fade - Especially good for raiding, if you remember to use it.
• Inner Sanctum - That extra movement speed or spell damage reduction is handy in any situation.
• Holy Fire - Very useful if you want to sustain an Evangelism buff for oh-shit-moments.
• PW:Shield - Probably more useful in heroics, where you might want weaker shields for Rapture procs, and extra healing is more important (since there is no one else there to do it for you).

Occasionally useful;

• Penance - Whenever you know you're fighting something with a lot of running or knock-backing, this could come in handy.
• Levitate - If movement is crucial, this could be worth gold if used the right way.

Just as with talents however, changing between glyphs is something that Blizzard encourages, giving us a lot of possibilities to tailor ourselves for certain fights.

Q: What are our stat priorities now?
A: The biggest change, as already mentioned, is the one to intellect. Since it now "only" gives us spell power and crit, it is a lot less important than the go-to stat it was in Cata.

Initially, you're most important stat will without a doubt be spirit. Once you feel comfortable with your mana regen, for whatever content you're healing, you can focus on the other stats. Personally I feel like around 9000 combat regen works for me for heroics, try getting over 10k combat regen for raiding.

After spirit, mastery is our secondary stat that scales the best. This does not mean that mastery is better than haste and crit, this heavily depends on your healing style. For heroics, and probably initially in raiding, you will rely a lot less on absorbtion mechanics than you might later on. Because of this, mastery will probably be less valuable to us since it only affects our absorbs. Take a look at your own meters and find out how much of your healing is affected by mastery and work with that. Remember this includes the DA procs from any critted regular heal.

Haste doesn't affect your shield (or PoM, Cascade, Halo), but it does affect all your other heals and is therefor a potentially very useful secondary stat. Crit is a lot more valuable to us now than it was in the first half of Cata, this is nothing new but pretty much the same since they buffed the healing bonus from crits. For disc even more so because a crit means a Divine Aegis proc, but crit is still unreliable in that there is no guarantee but only a chance that you'll get something out of it.


This is further complicated by the fact that the more haste you have, the more valuable crit is, and the more crit you have, the more valuable mastery is.

Personally I am trying to find a balance between mastery and haste (with a slight favoritism towards haste). At the moment I am reforging crit into haste, while leaving mastery alone, meaning my own stats look like haste -> mastery -> crit. Looking around the interwebs you'll probably be recommended to go Spirit -> Mastery -> Haste/Crit, but I must repeat that there is no point to overstack mastery just for the sake of it.

Again - haste, mastery and crit are pretty much equal, and you must find a stat balance that suits your own healing style.

Where does intellect fit in all this? Int is, as mentioned, not the all-powerful stat it was back in Cata. It is still something we want, but not at the cost of every other stat. You can probably forget about the pure int-gems for now. The easy way to think about it is that int is about as valuable as the other secondary stats (except spirit, which is more valuable until you are comfortable with your regen). You don't want too little of it, but don't want to sacrifice too many other stats for it either. Try getting mastery, haste and crit to points that work for you (for instance go for the haste breakpoints) and fill out the rest with intellect.

Q: What should I gem and enchant?
A: Simple answer is to gem and enchant into the stats that you are looking for. Lists of proper gems and enchants can be found here.

It only got worse from here

Q: I've dinged 90, what gear should I get?
A: JP gear is now available without having to do daily quests, so I definitely suggest you start out there to fill out any gear you've gotten in normals while leveling. If you're lucky you won't need much to be able to do your first heroics, where you will probably get most of your gear. The next step is, unfortunately (depending on how you feel about it), to gather rep through dailies and buy VP gear. If you have a lot of money, you can always buy craftables. I could post a list, but other people have already done a much better job than I could ever do, and they deserve the attention - Here is a great list for gear to check out. Tobeume of Nonchalant Priest has written a nice list of gear that you can collect from heroics - check it out here.

I hope this sorted out things a bit. If you have any further questions don't hesitate to ask! All creds for the links go to the original authors, thanks a lot for the work you put in for us in the priest healing community!

All (mop)ped up

Since I'm on a train and bored, I thought I'd post my first ever post written on my phone. I have no idea how this will work or turn out, but here it goes.

See what I did there? I love word puns in blog titles, even bad ones. Seeing as we've had mop for a week now and most of us have had an opportunity to check it out, I thought it was about time I'd share some more of my thoughts on this fourth expansion.

At first...
I must admit I was quite overwhelmed. Eventhough my class hadn't changed much, the mere thought of those five levels that were looming ahead of me just didn't seem appealing at all. Like I mentioned in my last post, a lot of things had changed in my playing surroundings which meant this levelling experience was looking to be the loneliest and most tedious of them all. Fortunately, this turned out to not be half as horrible as I had worried for. For one I didn't get ganked even once, while my poor bf (who plays a rogue and so really gets to suit himself) got ganked somewhere around 20 times. I dint know what it is, but people tend to stay out of priests way when it comes to pvp, if only they knew what an easy target I would've been. I think it's karma.

Something I did end up having troubles with were the instances however. At first I thought it was due to my bad gear stats, having been disc in cata meant I had basically no spirit and so mana became a major issue for me. I quickly realized that my way of healing was to change as well, since I over used Shields like nothing had changed. With a new healing style, heavily reliant on renews and heals rather than Shields and greater heals, I am doing a lot better. After dinging 90 I really dreaded healing heroics, remembering all the problems I had had in normals and was extremely surprised to see that heroics turned out to be a lot easier to heal in general. I think this might be due to higher great vs dungeon difficulty compared to the lower levels, but in all honesty I must say the heroics are very simply tuned. Just thinking about how horrible some of the first cata heroics were, these are nothing in comparison and as soon a you get the boss mechanic I often have to do little more than keep up renews and the odd Shield here and there.

The Trouble I had in lower levels compelled me to spec shadow again. Part to make questing easier and part so I could dps in instances rather than heal. Shadow hadn't changed overly either so I grasped it fairly quickly and even in my healing gear (healing tier and trinkets most notably) I didn't shame myself on the damage meters. The changes they have made to shadow are great and have made that spec even more fun. In fact, eventhough shadow I'd still a lot about mind flat, I had so much fun dpsing I've decided to remove my holy spec in favour for a shadow one. At least for now.

So then...
I found so many things about mop I really enjoyed. Questing wasn't as bad, healing and dpsing was loads of fun and then I discovered pet battles. I knew I'd probably like pet battles, seeing as I'm a total Pokemon nerd. I didn't expect blizzard to manage to make something quite as fun as this, and I discover new things I like about it all the time. From the old warcraft tunes used as battle songs (genius!) to all the quirky little pet skills that you can discover. There are even things about pet battles I like better than in Pokemon, especially the fact that I can choose when, where and what to battle, rather than having random fights like in Pokemon that get annoying and frustrating so easily.

I didn't think I'd like the world bosses because I thought they'd be on a once a week spawn and thus very exclusive, turns out they're nothing like that. Instead they're massive slaughter fests where no one has a clue what's going on, which is totally to my liking.

But of course...
There is always something that clouds even the bluest sky eventually. When I found out and fully grasped what the whole daily quest rep grinding meant, I was not happy. I hate doing dailies, I've done maybe a handful of dailies (not counting profession dailies) in my 7 years of wow, for a reason. I thought they changed the concept back in wrath for a reason. They introduced the whole championing system because people strongly disliked the endless rep grind. Actually I don't mind if they return things to the way they were in BC where you got certain rep for doing certain instances, but not gaining any rep anywhere except for doing dailies makes me cranky dwarf. Eventhough the quests might be quick and easy, I can't feel but think that it is unjust as some classes and specs have a much easier time with quest farming than others. By allowing dungeons to give rep, any class gets it in the same time. Eventhough a healer might get dungeons more often than a dps, a dps could spend that extra tine waiting by doing rep dailies. Maybe I'm extra cranky because I'm l playing the only class capable I'd having two healing specs, and I don't want to have to use a dps spec against my will. Now I've decided to play shadow anyway but it's beside the point. Also, daily quest grinds are boring, no matter how you put it. I didn't mind doing one a day fire my cooking or jc token, but 20 or more per day? No thanks, I have other things I want to do with my time.

I'm hoping blizzard will realize their mistake and fix this because other than that I think they've done a great job with this expansion so far. Now all I've got left to check out is raiding, I'm quite far off ilvl wise yet and if I keep being this unlucky with rolls it might take a while, but I'll get there.

First Impressions of MoP - High & Low

We've finally got MoP guys. How does it feel? Do you enjoy it as much or as little as you expected? Well I doubt you would've paid for it if you didn't expect to have fun with it, but anyway. Let me tell you what I think of it.

Lowbie Pandaria
I had the choice of either nerding up my priest to max level as fast as possible or try out the new race and class. Since the former is what I normally do first, I decided for a different route this time, namely swapping between the two rather than just focusing on one. Said and done, I rolled a little Panda Monk, named by choosing random article on Wikipedia (quite handy that, this time it was a tiny island somewhere in the Pacific) and got to it.

At first the quests were pretty meh. By that I don't mean boring or disappointing, but not overly interesting or surprising either. Gather some of this, help some guy out with that, it was a lot like what we had seen already. In fact, when comparing to the Goblin starting zone I thought this was starting out a little bit slow. Obviously you will only enjoy the Pandaria zone, and the new Pandaren, to the fullest if you can swing with the whole Martial Arts and Kung Fu idea that they're all about. Fortunately, I am quite fond of that, and although I can understand and even somewhat agree with the critics who scream "Kung Fu Panda infringement!", I am actually liking the whole scenario.

It did start out slow, and up until level 9ish this post would probably have been more along the lines of "it's ok, but I expected more". But then something happened. Don't worry, this post is spoiler fairly free, unless you consider me saying that I had a blast a spoiler. Suddenly I started getting a couple of quests that were, to put it bluntly, awesomely good fun. Eventhough I am low level, they do require some skill to complete. For the first time since late BC I did not feel like my way was constructed with a newb player in mind. Doing and completing the quests actually made me feel like accomplishing something and I had a thrill doing them. Now I am not saying these quests were overly many, but they were there and they definitely upped the entire experience for me.

It's not just about the quests thought, I think Blizzard did a good job with most of the main-NPC. Some of them got pretty damn close to me feeling like I was playing with friends, and parting with them was a damn hard thing to do when I had to choose between going Alliance vs Horde. I really wanted to choose horde, I did, but unfortunately all my characters on that server are already alliance so having one little horde seemed like a bad idea. It was a choice that pained me however, and deep inside I probably deny regretting it.

I do like the Pandaren area, not as much as I did Northrend or Outlands, but it's still ok. It's beautiful and well designed. At one point a random NPC waves at me and asks me if I want to go listen in on one of the Pandaren telling stories for the kids. I think "sure, why not", run off my quest course and sit down among the kids. I get a song sung for me and a long scripted event telling me more about the lore surrouding the Pandarens. It has nothing to do with the quest I am on, but that's exactly why it makes the world feel alive and me feel special. I only wish there were more of these tidbits.

If I had to say anything bad about the Pandaren starting zone, it would probably be that the Pandaren are not half as peace loving and altruistic as their serene faces want to give impression of. A lot of the quests will have me do things I did not quite agree to, nothing that would compare to the Apothecary Society, but still out of the image I had about Pandarens.

85+ Pandaria
I barely even tried questing on release, for obvious reasons. Just trying to get the first couple of quests turned into a quest, with hundreds of people blocking the quest giver and 5-10 min lags. At one point hundreds of people were huddled together trying to find a quest giver that was actually 100 yards in another direction, but no one knew because we couldn't see what the heck was going on. I tried different things like /tar and binding my interaction button, it worked so-so. And even when I finally did get the quest, completing them seemed near impossible with glitchiness that had me pull my hair.

Trying to get into an instance did not prove to any easier. The first time I tried it I first got stuck in what easily was a 10 minute loading screen, only to disconnect. After a couple of tries however I did manage to get my first dungeon done. They're short and intense, quite simple on normal as to be expected and quite whacky. I am looking forward to see how they work in heroic (no, I have not got that far yet).

These issues were all to be expected, and eventhough even Blizzard should've (did) expected them I do not blame them or nerdrage on them for not making a smoother launch. This is what the launches have always been like, and since things vastly improved just half a day after launch I am still happy. Other issues like every quest area being swarmed with fellow players either tagging all your quest objectives or ganking (which has yet to happen to me fortunately) is something Blizzard can do less about. They have done a few things however, and I commend them for it. Most "boss" quest objectives can be shared, regardless of who gets the first blow, and most spawns have been cranked up extremely high, for better and for worse. I've been stuck a couple of times having to fight a flood of never ending mobs, but in essence, everything is like it usually is at the start of a new expansion.

I'm not sure what to think so far. I think my problems have less to do with the fact that the quests aren't that interesting yet (and I've only just dinged 86 so there is still a lot to come) and more to do with the fact that my gaming has changed a lot on a more personal level. Most of the people I used to play with have quit playing, or scattered off to other servers, and because of this this expansion is very different for me compared to other ones. Previous expansions I used to level together with a group of friends, people I've either known for a very long time in game, or actual IRL friends. At the end of the leveling, instancing and raiding with these people waited for me and I had that to look forward to. Eventhough I am in a really nice guild now, they can't remove the fact that I still don't know them that well and that I also overall have less time to play.

That has taken a lot of the fun out of the game, so much in fact that I seriously contemplated quitting just a couple of months ago. The guild I am in is the reason I haven't yet, as they have brought back a lot of the fun in the game for me. In the end it just means I will take things slower. Playing as disc is working ok, it's how I've tackled every expansion so far. It does require a lot of smiting (which isn't overly interesting), but I don't think it's that much slower than if I had gone shadow (or that is what I am telling myself at least).

On an ending note, MoP has turned out to be pretty much what I thought it would be, but with the little surprise here and there that upped the experience a notch. I am not throwing myself at it, but I am looking forward to exploring more of it and finding out more about the story surrounding the Pandas, slowly but steadily. All in all, woW is still the good old time killer it's always been.

Theramore and the World Event that wasn't

There have been so many posts on this matter already I doubt any of you can be spoiled about what the new Theramore event is about, but in case of you have been hiding in a closet the last week - spoiler alert.

Let me start off first however with telling you what this post is not. This is not a post complaining about the new scenario (maybe just a little), this is not a post about how I think this game is going downhill and so much about MoP could've been done better. Although I can see where people are coming from with those complaints, I do not agree. I still enjoy Wow a shitload, I'm really looking forward to MoP and I thought the scenario was fun - yes fun. What this post will be about is how bummed I am about the fact that MoP did not receive a proper world event, so there you have it. But let's take a look at the Theramore Scenario;

First we did a little of this, if you were horde.

And then a little of this, if you were alliance.

Like I mentioned, a lot has been said about the new Scenario all over the interblogs. Here are some posts I've read about it and that is probably still just a drop in the ocean;

Tree Heals Go Woosh - The Theramore Distaster
Forever a Noob - Theramore Scenario and Lack of Pre-launch Event
The Light's Wrath - Scenario Impressions
Variant Avatar - Theramores Fall as a Scenario Expansion Tie In
Blog of the Treant - Theramore No More
Drunkard's Regalia - Theramores Balls
Azerothian Life - Scenarios and Awesome Things
Scribblings on the Asylum Wall - Expectations
Typhoon Andrew - Theramore Down

So if that doesn't please your Scenario-reading appetite I don't know what will. Although not all of those posts are negative about the Scenario, the vast majority are. It ranges from issues with the whole concept to lore, and I can agree with a lot of things but overall I think the Scenario isn't that bad. Yeah, we don't know why the heck horde suddenly decides to bomb Theramore, but I must admit I haven't had complete track on why any of the bad guys did the evil things they did - and if you never played any of the Warcraft games or had friends explain it for you, you might wonder why Arthas wants to kill everyone or who the heck Sargeras is. Now, I love the lore in this game but I will not go out of my way (read: out of the game) to find out more about it. What I understand from quests and short cut scenes is all there is to it and in a lot of cases that isn't very much. This has never bothered me, I realize that in games with fantasy concepts people will have fantasy motivations. So Garrosh has suddenly decided that Alliance need to get a kick in the nuts - my first impression was that this was what WoW started out with, the fight between the factions. Isn't his actions just a roll back to whatever we were fighting over back then? I could be completely wrong, but for the moment it is what I am going with and it works for me. We undid the evil guys, Garrosh is bored and needs some action. Why not?

It's working ok, but it could've been so much more.

I enjoy the idea of a non-trinity area, and I think it is working ok. Don't get me wrong, there are still a lot of things about the Scenario I think could be even better. I agree that it is just basically a short questing area as it is now and the bosses are push-overs with totally uninteresting fight mechanics. I think the Scenario overall is a little too stumped, I don't really get involved in what is happening - I don't end up caring. I was kind of hoping of something along the lines of the Darrowshire questline, if anyone still remembers that from back in Classic. For those of you who don't, it was a sort of re-enactment of the Battle of Darrowshire (which the final quest is also called) where you help the now ghosted inhabitants of the once Darrowshire to defend themselves against the ghoul/plague invasion. It was a questline that ended in an epic battle that had a lot of feeling to it, but mostly because of the build up until then. This is exactly how I would have wanted Scenarios to be. I am hoping the Theramore Scenario is but a wiff of what the other scenarios will be like, because it has a lot of potential.

But let's get to the point of this post - whatever I think of the Theramore Scenario; if I don't get a world event before MoP I will be very disappointed. Incredibly even. The past World Events have been some of the most fun I've had in WoW and I still remember each and every one of them clearly.

The Opening of Ahn'Qiraj WE
Back in Classic, even the launch of a new raid instance warranted a World Event. The launch of Ahn'Qiraj was preceded by a world event so epic, they should write books about it. Called the "War Effort", it required every player on the entire server, regardless of level and faction, to chip in to be able to open the gates of AQ. Thousands of cloth, metal bars, ore, leather, bandages and basically anything you could craft had to be turn in. How about 800.000 Linen Bandages and 96.000 Peacebloom? That's just a fraction of what was needed. The factions had different goals which meant they had to work together to get there. A lot of the hand ins only required a low level character to gather, meaning anyone could help out. The guilds that were hoping to be first into the new raid obviously stood for the major contribution, having players who farmed for days to get the effort done, but the thing was that anyone could do it. Back then I was still a newb, running around on a level 40 something druid, and barely had a clue what was going on. I loved the idea of everyone having to work together to a common goal, and the final part where the actual gates opened had so many people gathered in the same place that the servers crashed continously - good fun and a mega-party. All the following quotes are taken from Wowpedia.

"The event evolved through different phases and included gathering of war supplies by both Alliance and Horde players, epic and hardcore quest chains for the elite guilds, and ultimately a ten hour long war at the Scarab Wall in southern Silithus."

I would kill a gnome for an event like this in any kind of MMO, what better way than to really feel like you're part of something bigger with other, real, live people in it? Have I ever done anything this cool outside of the gaming world? Nope (which might be sad). The only bad thing I can say about the AQ event was that anyone who wasn't in a high-end raiding guild didn't get to reap the fruits of the labor, but it was a small price to pay to be able to part of something so big.

Scourge Invasion
Another raid that got a WE was Naxxramas, in the Scourge Invasion. If you want a thorough explanation of what this event was all about, read here.

"During the Scourge Invasion, numerous high-level zones are under attack by one or two flying necropoli each"

"The necropoli are accompanied by Necrotic Shards, which are visible on the ground near each of the flying citadels. These shards are always surrounded by a large number of undead"

"Aside from the necropolis events outdoors, Scourge mobs will occasionally appear in Stormwind and Undercity. They spawn seemingly at random, causing city NPCs to yell for help"

"On November 10, 2008 the forces of the scourge attacked Stormwind Harbor and Orgrimmar's Valley of Honor every thirty minutes with actively hostile 72 elite Frost Wyrm Raptors and 71 elite Towering Horror abominations. "

This just goes on and on! See back in the day Blizzard actually took a lot of time and effort to make Azeroth seem like a place that was alive with change and things going on whether you were online or not. I'm not saying they're not trying to do that now, I'm saying they were better at it back then, and I am not normally a very nostalgic person.

Opening of the Dark Portal
In this event, preceding the release of the BC and as such the first proper expansion-release-world-event, Kruul was wandering around with a pack of demons wrecking havoc around Azeroth. It all culminated with a massive invasion force coming through the Dark Portal. Imagine another massive slaughterfest where people fought eachother as much as the enemies and you will have a pretty good picture of what was going on. It was hilarious, it was epic, I loved every second and I remember it like it was yesterday.

Scourge Invasion 2
Preceding the release of Wotlk, Azeroth was yet again attacked by the scourge in yet another epic World Event. Eventhough I am a massive fan of the AQ one, this is probably my favorite one yet. I like this one so much because it forced itself upon you. If you really wanted to you could pretty much ignore the previous world events and go about your playing like nothing was going on. This event however snuck into your gaming and made your part of it whether you wanted to or not, and in all honesty that is what I want a game like this to do to me. It started out simple with "suspicious crates" lying around. Many of you will remember this event by now. Soon people were starting to get sick, and eventually - BAM! - turn into zombies.

"Conspicuous Crates appear in the port city of Booty Bay, infecting players who touch them. "

"Plagued Roaches start to appear in capital cities (include Shattrath) and Booty Bay, spreading the Infection to any players who kill them"

"Groups of Plagued Residents begin to wander the lower level zones, attacking other mobs and players at random. "

"Low level quests Investigate the Scourge of Thunder Bluff and etc. added."

And so on, check here to see the full story

Now even if you had no clue about anything and never read any news about what was going on in WoW, you could not help but noticing that something was happening around you and to the game you were playing. Something big was on the move, and you and everyone else were going to be a part of it. This wasn't just a really fun WE that perfectly set up the coming expansion, it was also a really interesting psychological experiment. Some players went full heartedly into trying to infest as many of their fellow players as possible, while others tried to help instead. Blizzard made this into something you couldn't ignore which made it feel like something important, something that you had to care about, and I did.

Oh and this;

"Player avatars in the Forums become zombies. "

They even took it into the forums!

There have been many more WE events besides these three examples - we've got the fight for Sun's Reach in BC and a couple of smaller ones like Operation: Gnomeregan and Zalazanes Fall. Even our latest expansion Cata got a WE similar to the one before BC. So why can't this one get it? The World Events are normally server wide parties, the only time where everyone regardless of level and faction gathers to fight and play towards something bigger, the only time where we get to do something that is even more epic than fighting the bad guys in raid instances.

The only time when the game ever truly feels like it makes justice to the word Massive in MMO.

Not having one for MoP only gives me the impression that Blizzard don't even want to put in the time and effort into their own game anymore. I don't doubt they've outdone themselves in terms of awesome content - like I said I am really looking forward to MoP and think I will have loads of fun. But the WE is a very special part of a new expansion and quite simply, I think MoP deserved one.

Patch 5.0.4 Healing Priest - This and That

After a week abroad (I always seem to time my holidays with the release of new major patches) I come home to a completely revamped talent system (again), new skills everywhere and a sense of dread of having to relearn everything from the ground up (again). So what has this patch in store for us, and what should we think about the priest changes?

First things first, as far as changes go healing wise not much is different, so you can all take a deep breath of relief if you were as worried as me that healing would change as much as it did between Wrath and Cata. Admittedly we're "only" looking at the patch preceding the expansion so much can still change, but the way it looks now I am healing pretty much the same way I have the last couple of months. Holy looks and works pretty much exactly the way it has whereas discipline has been tweaked a little more towards the absorbtion style healing, which is very welcome in my book. Spirit Shell that was long said to be a Heal-version of shields has now turned into a cooldown which turns all your healing into absorbtion mechanics instead for 15 seconds. This is an awesome cooldown, that when used at the right time can cushion your raid just before a big hit - the way discipline used to do it back in Wrath.

Although healing looks and works about the same, things have changed of course. What the new talent system means, in essence, is that your spec of choice comes with preset skills suitable for that spec. Rather than making people play slightly different discipline or holy specs, they're throwing in all the good and/or necessary skills for that spec (like Train of Thought, Strength of Soul, Rapture for discipline). The choice comes in the new talent tree that works differently enough for me to not want to call it a talent tree really anymore (not in the way we know it anyway). Think Diablo 3 style - it will alter your pre-existing skills, or add a few new skills to change, or fit, your playstyle.

A perfect example is the choice between Mindbender and Power Word: Solace. On the one hand you have a mana return-skill that allows you to heal while gaining mana, but with a cooldown. On the other hand you have pretty much the opposite - a mana return-skill that requires you to dps to regain mana, but that can be used anytime. What you choose will not only depend on your playstyle, but probably also on the fight. A fight that requires heavy mana usage for short periods of the fight would probably work better with Solace, whereas a fight with steady mana usage throughout the fight will prefer Mindbender (I've chosen Mindbender for now).

The fact that you can change skill anytime simply by using a Dust of Disappearance and some clicking makes me think that Blizzard want us to swap playstyle within a spec more than ever before, and I am welcoming the idea.

Other changes of note include;

Hymn of Hope being holy priest exclusive. I've discussed this change before, somewhere, but essentially it makes total sense. With the 8 min cd it had for disc and shadow it didn't seem like it was something Blizzard really wanted us to use (it normally wasn't up for two consequitive tries for instance) but didn't really have the guts to remove either. They've finally made up their minds about this.

Rapture being based on spirit rather than intellect. I don't mind this change because hopefully this means that holy and discipline will move even closer stat wise, making it fully viable to swap between specs without gimping out too much on either one because of lack of a stat. As someone whos preferred discipline throughout Cata I've been intellect heavy and spirit weak, which gimped my holy healing somewhat. I've seen my Rapture procs half in mana return this patch. This means I will have to re-gear, but since I will do this anyway in MoP this isn't a problem at all.

Dispel now has an 8 sec cd. A change I do not mind, possibly to prevent the solo-dispeller syndrome we've seen in Cata, where a few healers are set to do all the dispelling throughout the fight (most notably on Spine).

Glyph of PoH has been changed. A lot of glyphs have been changed, but this one is one that strikes me the hardest because it has been completely removed and I really liked that glyph...

On the other hand we've finally gotten the Lightspring I have been nagging about since Wrath. It only heals people under 50% but I can still see it being a lot more useful during tense situations than the current Lightwell is, even in the click-friendliest of raids.

There are a ton of new glyphs that look potentially good - Will Glyph of Holy Nova finally bring Holy Nova properly into the game? Probably not. Glyph of Penance looks really interesting, allowing us to run while casting Penance but with the drawback of an added 20% mana cost, could be awesome in the right setting.

For the time being I've chosen
Glyph of PoM, Glyph of Lightspring and Glyph of Fade in my holy spec and
Glyph of Pom, Glyph of Inner Sanctum and Glyph of Fade in my disc spec.

All of which obviously is open to change at any point, a lot of things still need to be tested before anyone can say anything.

If you're curious about my talent choices (or whatever I should call them);
Void Tendrils, Body & Soul, Mindbender, Angelic Bulwark and Divine Insight in my holy spec.
Void Tendrils, Phantasm, Mindbender, Angelic Bulwark and Power Infusion in my disc spec.

My real struggle was between Twist of Fate, PI and Divine Insight as they all look very useful and good. I've chosen two differently to test them out, but I think they all come down to fight mechanics. ToF seems mostly useful for very intense healing fights, PI can come handy in any kind of fight and Divine Insight can come handy where you either want to throw a lot of shields on one target (disc) or need that extra push in aoe-healing (holy). Overall I am leaning towards PI being more useful because you can choose when you need that extra output (not to mention mana cost reduction), but on the other hand PI comes with a 2 min cd. A tough choice indeed.

I am looking forward to doing the first raid with the new skills, and even more to seeing how healing will change further in MoP. What do you think of the new changes?

A little bit of MoPing

It feels like MoP has been around the corner forever now. Everyone is just slouching around, waiting for it to come as a knight in shining armor and swipe us off our feet for another year of raiding/pvping/leveling alts or whatever floats your boat. Seriously, I think I have been eagerly anticipating MoP since the release of Dragon Soul, eventhough I am not entirely sure I even knew the name of the new expansion then. In the meantime, I am sure there are more than just me who have taken a little break from WoW (voluntarily or no) to explore other games for a little while. D3 has been a pretty obvious choice, in my case it often also ends up being Pokémon for some reason I am not sure about. I don't throw myself at every morsel of information about MoP however, maybe I have grown out of the childish anticipation and everything that comes with it, who knows. It's ok if I don't know everything about MoP before hand, if I just log on and noob around about it for the first couple of weeks. I've come to terms with that my continues WoW-playing most likely will be kept on a pretty casual level. But I hear things every now and then that will make me raise an eyebrow and that I think warrants a comment.

People want to have attunements again

Attunements is one of those things that perfectly seem to examplify something that you really don't like when you have to do it, and sort of miss when you don't have to do it. Here is what I think about attunements - there are good things and bad things about it. Before you call me captain obvious, let me explain. I recall the attunements back in Vanilla, for BWL and MC and whatnot, to be somewhat over the top. I bet everyone who had an awesome raiding guild back then remember them as being great, the rest of us, not so much. Many of them required friends with lots of patience to complete, and this is also something that Blizzard have mentioned as an issue about attunements. If you happen to be one of those people who enters the party after everyone else, it can be hell to rally the people necessary to the attunement done. Usually there are always a handful in each guild who sacrifice some time for those poor bastards, but not always. But that problem seems to be fairly simply solved, just don't make attunements a group thing. If I remember correctly, the attunement for Karazhan didn't require a group of people to complete, at least not the majority of the chain. As with most other things concerning karazhan, I recall that particular attunement as being a pretty good example of how to make a good attunement. According to me, attunements suffered another issue, far worse than just the difficulty level. The fact that you had to redo it for every single alt.

That was ok for some attunements. Again, the attunement for Karazhan was similar enough to any kind of quest chain so that I wasn't much bothered having to redo it for every alt. Also, they eventually changed it so that only one person of the raid needed the key for the rest of the raid to be able to enter. Far more annoying was the attunement for Caverns of Time. It wasn't even just for the raid, right? It was to be able to do any of the CoT instances as well, and it was, pardon my french, extremely f*cking boring. It wasn't as long as the Karazhan attunement, but I'd gladly pick that any day of the week over that ranting little kid whom you had to follow, not to mention I got ganked more times than not doing it, having to start all over again. That instead, was a good example of how to not make an attunement, eventhough you could do it just fine on your own and it wasn't even that long.

I really wouldn't mind if they implemented attunements again, in a way I felt like it made the raids feel more like raids. There was this little hurdle to overcome before you became a proper raider and could join the other guys. Nowadays, with LFR and everything, raids feel so much like big instances I constantly struggle between really enjoying the accessibility and missing the feel of raiding as being something separate and you know... elite from the rest of the instancers. Making something a struggle to reach is both a good and a bad thing, and when you find the right balance it adds an awesome feeling to your feats. In the end, that struggle is really what WoW is all about and I can't help but feel like Blizzard are just lazy when they say they removed attunements to make it easier for the casual player to join in on the raiding. I think there is a way to make attunements a part of raiding again, without going over the top with it like back in Vanilla.

WoW turns into Diablo (but only a little)

Whatever game I play, if it is even remotely similar to WoW, I will end up comparing it with WoW somehow. D3 was obviously no exception. One thing I quite enjoyed about d3 was the personal loot system, but I couldn't quite figure out how to implement something like that into WoW without flooding the market with gear, kind of like in d3. In d3 they've counteracted that issue by putting a 10-item limit on the AH, also trading just isn't as big a thing in d3 as it is in WoW. Apparently Blizzard enjoyed the system themselves, because they intend to implement it to LFR in the future. From what I understood of how it is going to work, it looks awesome. No more having to go into furious nerd rage over people who need on things they can't even use in raids, when you've killed that boss 50 times and lost that roll 30 times already. Systems where you needed on items just so you had some leverage later on in case you wanted something else developed among players, which only goes to show that the need/greed system just didn't work very well. It didn't work well in 5 mans and it definitely didn't work well in 25 mans. By having everyone get their own loot table, completely cut off from everyone else and their rolls, a lot of frustration has been removed from LFR. In a way LFR is soon going to be different enough from regular raiding so that it actually should be considered big-instancing rather than raiding.

And a word about priests

Can't do a WoW post without writing something about priests, can I? Well I have done plenty of those actually, but anyway. I won't write anything long winded though, apparently they're going to remove DH from the disc and shadow priest spec, and personally I don't have any issues with that. The way DH had an 8 minute cooldown as disc/shadow, it seemed like a skill Blizzard didn't want us to use, but didn't dare to properly remove either. Most of the time when doing progress raiding, I only had it available every other try, which in all honesty is stupid. As disc it was often overrated by everyone except me, having raid leaders telling me to use it in situatuions it just couldn't handle. Many times I often just preferred spamming other skills rather than throwing out DH, and I constantly had to explain the limits of DH to people around me. Don't get me wrong, it was still a strong cooldown, mostly for the healing buff, but it was clear Blizzard were not comfortable with disc/shadow having it. When you have a skill like this lying around in your arsenal, there is a potential danger that it prevents developers from giving you other tools, or refining the tools you have because they don't know how to balance it. Because of that I am glad they just removed it, rather than just dilly dally around it.

We've also gotten to see the new tier bonuses, as they look now anyway;

Priest T14 Healer 2P Bonus - Reduces the mana cost of your Flash Heal spell by 10%
Typical, and original, set bonus. No surprises, I could wish for something more interesting, and for my own healing style this set bonus isn't worth much either. Although I started using Flash Heal a lot more during the end of my raiding than I did at the beginning of Cata, it is still nowhere near the levels of usage I had back in Wrath, where FH was the basic heal. I don't interpret this as Blizzard wanting us to bring back FH more into our healing rotation, my impression is that Blizzard are quite comfortable with FH role at the moment, which means to me this set bonus won't be very valuable.

Priest T14 Healer 4P Bonus - Reduces the cooldown of your Penance spell by 4 sec and reduces the cooldown of your Circle of Healing spell by 4 sec.
Seems fairly well balanced between the two specs, at the same time giving a bonus to each specs strength (point healing disc and aoe healing holy). 4 seconds is a lot, and I wonder if it will stack with the glyph or if they will be removed so that this set bonus basically replaces them? I am not read up enough on MoP to know for sure, but as far as I can tell this set bonus looks boring but solid.

And the waiting continues...

MoP Beta Class Changes

It's my favorite time of the year - beta time! That's basically like Christmas in the WoW-world, with each news of changes is like opening presents - some you love, some are like those knitted socks you get from grandma each year. I haven't signed up to check out the beta myself, I never do, but I love reading about all the changes that are made. I love pondering about why Blizzard do the changes they do, so eventhough things are far from definite and probably will change a lot more before we actually take our first steps into Panda-land, there are few things I enjoy more than checking out what Blizzard has in store for us priests.

But no, I am not going to comment on the Tier 14 preview, because I am hoping it will change a lot before that goes live. It's not as bad as tier 11, but horns? Not sure if want. Ok, so I did some commenting on the Tier 14 preview.

Naaahhh....

What's up with the spell cost nerfs?
First thing I notice is that a butt-load of our spells have gotten their mana cost severely nerfed - we're not talking just a few percentages here but some serious drops, just look at this;

Power Word: Shield: Now costs 6% of base mana, down from 34%.

or this one;

Holy Word: Sanctuary: Now costs 7% base mana, down from 44%.

At a first glance I thought this was true for most casters, it seemed like both dps and healer alike had gotten an overall reduction to their spell costs, but then I saw that they had done the opposite to holydins by increasing the cost for a lot of their spells. For priests however, we are looking at a nerf leaving the mana cost for most of our spells at roughly one fifth of what they are now. It of course makes me wonder - why?

My first thought was that Blizzard might do something to mana regen. I might even be wild and crazy enough to think they're going to remove mana regen all together, leaving us with an -actual- mana pool, similar to what we had back in Vanilla (when mana regen only existed out of casting, and was quite limited even then). It would simplify things, and maybe Blizzard want to give us more "mana returning" skills like Rapture and Revitalize to work with instead. It would be a huge change to healing of course, but in all honesty I really enjoy the idea of such a mana using system. As a discipline priest I am already basically in that system, relying far more on mana returns like Shadowfiend and Rapture than combat regen. Combat regen isn't an interesting feature if you ask me, more like a necessary evil (similar to getting hit/expertise as melee). It is passive and revolves around balancing gear rather than making interesting choices mid combat (should I use Hymn of Hope now or save it? Should I stack my mana return with that of the shamans or not?). Reducing the cooldown on Shadowfiend points in this direction as well. Although I don't see how they could do something similar with hit/expertise, I would welcome a change to the current mana regen system.

But I am just speculating wildly of course, in reality these mana changes probably has nothing to do with that. It's a shame really.

So what else is there?
Let's look at some of the other changes...

"Vow of Unity New. You create a Vow of Unity with a friendly target for 15 sec. Whenever one of you receives healing, the other is healed for the same amount. Whenever one of you takes damage, % of the damage is redirected to the other over 6 sec. Vow of Unity cannot be cast on Tank specialized players. Instant, 2 min cooldown."

This is now specified to not be castable on tanks, which basically turns it into a pvp talent. Unless raids will be completely different in MoP, making dpsers more of tanks than they are today, I don't see any reason to use this in raids when compared to the options in this talent tier.

"From Darkness, Comes Light: New. Surge of Light - You have a 15% chance when you Smite, Heal, Flash Heal, Binding Heal or Greater Heal to cause your next Flash Heal to be instant cast and have no mana cost. Surge of Darkness - You have a 20% chance when you deal damage with Vampiric Touch to cause your next Mind Spike to be instant and not extinguish your Shadow damage-over-time effects from the target."

More than doubling the proc chance of Surge of Light might get it back in from the cold. It will still be far from as overpowered as it was in Wrath, but that is acceptable because no one likes overpowered skills except the wielder (which was me, nyahahaha!). The shadow priest portion of this talent looks interesting too, making Mind Spike more part of the rotation than it has now.

"Archangel: Archangel (Evangelism) Consumes your Evangelism, increasing your healing done by 5% for each Evangelism consumed for 18 sec. 30 sec cooldown. Dark Archangel (Dark Evangelism)Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay, Mind Spike, Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death by 25% for 18 sec. 90 sec cooldown."

Archangel gets a nice buff (25% extra healing instead of 15%) and I am glad to see that Blizzard don't intend on scrapping the idea of dps-healing in MoP. It's definitely a concept I like, eventhough you probably all know by now I was somewhat disappointed by the end result. I just wish it was a little more practical and made more of a difference than it does, but on the other hand I am glad that I'm not forced to spec into it - bitches will always be complaining about something.

"Angelic Bulwark: New. Anytime a damaging attack brings you below 30% health, you gain an absorption shield equal to 20% of your total health lasting for until cancelled. This effect cannot occur more than once every 90 sec."

When I first saw this talent, it increased the effectiviness on shields cast on yourself by 30%. I liked that idea, I am not too sure about this one. I am looking at it and thinking "lasts until cancelled = good. Procs after the damage has been done = bad". Most of the time when you want some way to prevent damage, you want exactly that - something that prevents damage. I am not sure how useful a skill that protects me after I have been taking shitloads of damage will be, unless we are looking at continuous heavy aoe which isn't uncommon but still rarer than that huge blast (that might of course change in MoP raids). The way it works now, it looks more like a pvp talent than a raid talent to me. Yeah it would protect me from dying after that big blast, but I would rather have something that protected me from that big blast to begin with.

"Spectral Guise: New. Your shadow blurs into the darkness, leaving your true form behind. As a shadow you are invisible, but remain in combat. Lasts 6 sec or until your true form is hit by 3 direct attacks. 30 sec cooldown, Instant cast."

This could've had so much potential! As I understand it, it basically works by giving you a buff that will "remove" the damage of the next three incoming direct attacks. Direct being the keyword. If only it would've worked with any attacks, which on the other hand probably would've made it OP. Right now this too looks more like a pvp talent, since I don't think priests will be taking much more direct damage in pve in MoP than they have been for the last 7 years.

There is also a possibility that this rather works like a version of stealth, in which any damage done to your "true self" still is directed to you only you'd be able to move about without anyone actually knowing where you are meanwhile. But yet again, I can't see how that would be of much use in PvE.

"Vampiric Dominance: When you deal damage or healing, 15% of the amount is healed to up to 3 low-health nearby allies. 40 yd range. "

This talent still looks the same as it did when I first saw it back in November. As a discipline priest I definitely welcome the possibility of some passive off-healing, since that is one of our weakness at the moment, and I can only hope that this makes it all the way to live and without being too much nerfed.

"Inner Focus: No longer works with Binding Heal."

Aww. I wonder why. No, I really do, was it too good?

"Dispel Magic: Now removes all Magic and Disease effects."

Finally priests don't have to be the last healer around having to use different spells to remove different debuffs. Opens up one more slot on my keybinds, yay!

"Spirit Shell: New. Creates an absorption shield on the target for [5231 + 50.3% of SP] damage lasting 8 sec. When the shield expires, the target is healed for 80% of the remaining amount. 40 yd range, 2% of base mana, 2.5 sec cast."

Holy doesn't seem to be getting anything new, or any changes at all basically, at the moment. No change there, Blizzard seem either very content with the way holy works or they just happen to be last on the list of a work through. Discipline is looking at this baby however, Spirit Shell, which basically is something as awesome as a shield and a heal in one. I am definitely looking forward to using this one, and I wonder how I didn't think about this combo before myself? The closest we've been is the healing glyph on PWS, but I definitely like the idea of this one. I recall that the fact that shields don't actually heal being one of the major issues I had when healing as a lowbie discipline in early Cataclysm. Absorbtion effects are really good, and in a raid I enjoy the fact of being the "preventer" while my fellow healers are the "repairers", but this way we will be able to do a little bit of both even better than we already have.

"Vampiric Embrace: Now has a 3 min cooldown. Fills you with the embrace of Shadow energy, causing you and your allies to be healed for 50% of any single-target Shadow spell damage you deal, split evenly between them. Lasts 15 sec."

I don't normally say much about shadow skills, simply because I play shadow priest so rarely (and poorly), but this looks like a really interesting change to VE, changing one of the longest lasting spriest skills into what could be a really handy raid heal cooldown. I am glad to see spriest being given something to help the raid with because I wasn't very happy with how VE was working. Making it stronger would make it too good, making it weaker (or the way it was) didn't make it very useful at all. Timed well, this could be a good cooldown indeed.

But as always, we can expect things to change a lot and often when there's a beta. And that is half the fun.

MoP Healing Priest Talents

I was really happy about all the cheer me ups I got on my last post, it has really helped me a lot, so thank you guys! Although it's only been 3 days since that post, it's been nearly three weeks since the incident actually happened (which, I can tell you, is about illness, but not my own) and I have had some time to pick myself up. I have good days and bad days at the moment, but I feel that the urge and joy to write is still there. I write to take my mind of things, and because of that my writing will be more randomly posted and slightly less proof-read than before - the topic stays the same however! If I've ever needed this blog, it's probably now.

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I've been out of the loop more than ever concerning WoW. First I had the guild issue, then the raiding issue, then the vacation and then the life changing disaster. When I finally crawl back up and peek over the edge of my table and onto my computer screen I notice that shit has been going on while I was gone. Who'd have guessed it? Suddenly I feel like them people who seem to have no clue whatsoever when a patch hits. I usually think "how could he not know?". Now I know how. You know, them people who go;

"Druids have chicken form now?"
"What are these Death Knights I see running around?"
"OH MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED TO ORGRIMMAR?!".

Yeah, that's gonna be me during 4.3, and maybe even Mists of Pandaria if I don't get cracking on reading up on everything that was announced during Blizzcon. Or maybe, I'll just let it be a surprise this time. Maybe I'll just let myself be clueless and bedazzled, kind of like the first time I set foot in WoW.

I have been checking up on one thing though. When I left for vacation, tier 13 for priests hadn't been announced yet, to my great annoyance. I was betting they'd announce it last just to make sure I wouldn't be able to see it until I got home, although I don't actually know if it did come out last or not. Either way, I've seen it now, and I love it. I thought I loved tier 12. I realize now that that was only because I really hated tier 11. When I didn't hate tier 12 I mistook it for love, such an easy mistake. But I knew true love when I set eyes on tier 13.

I'm not even sure just exactly what's so great about it. It feels unique, interesting, cool. It feels like it perfectly suits both the caring (?) healing priest and the not so caring (?) shadow priest. It feels like the designers hit the spot about what I think about priests for the first time since tier 8 - like they managed to put what being a priest is all about into clothing. But maybe even more so since it doesn't actually yell "priest" the way some other nice priest tiers have done. Maybe I am just being delusional. Either way I love it. Now I can only hope that it looks half decent on a goblin (pff, yeah right).

But the tier 13 isn't actually what I wanted to talk about with this post. Because I've been naughty and sneak-peaked on one other thing (oh and I know pandarens will come in Mists of Pandaria). Someone told me the talent trees were getting a complete overhaul, and I initially thought "Sure, for the tenth time in a row". But this time around it actually looks like Blizzard have tried to make a complete overhaul. I know they've been trying to present us with difficult choices since they designed the very first talent tree, and it has been Blizzard wettest dream to have players choose to play different styles of the same spec. In some cases they have succeded, like discipline priests who use or don't use Atonement. But in nearly any other case there is a cookie-cutter spec, and in end game raiding there is just little to warrant using anything but whatever will give you the best chance at killing that ugly boss.

Designing fights and talents that allow for personal style must be a nightmare, frankly I get a headache just thinking about it. It is basically impossible to make two things worth equally much, so how on Azeroth do you make someone choose the lesser choice? The only answer I can see to that question is that you make the choices good enough to warrant some taking the lesser just because it is also needed in the big picture. That way you'll have some people who can do A and some who can do B, and eventhough A might be better than B if you had to choose, having both in a raid is still the best alternative of all. This seems to mean that the one-direction orientation style class specs that we've seen for the last six years are gone as we know it, and I can't say I'm very sorry. I'm usually interested in giving new things a shot. Now, we can only really talk about the class, as each player can choose freely between different style talents. It will indeed be very interesting to see if Blizzard succeed this time around.

I am sure plenty of posts have been written about the choices we can make, but no Jinxed Thoughts post has been done yet! As always most of the talents will probably change until they go into action (whenever that is), but musing about what we know is fun nonetheless.

Now remember that I jumped straight into this and probably haven't really understood it all just yet. I'll just go through the different tiers and discuss which choice would be the best or most interesting from a healing priest perspective.

Tier 1
Void Tendrils: Summons Shadowy Tendrils out of the ground, rooting all targets within 10 yards for 20 seconds. Killing the tendril will cancel the effect.
Psyfiend: Summons a Psyfiend that stands in place. The Psyfiend casts a Psychic Scream on a nearby enemy within 40 yards every 2 sec lasting for 10 sec, preferring anything attacking the priest or her friends.
Psychic Scream: The caster lets out a psychic scream, causing 5 enemies within 8 yards to flee for 8 sec. Damage caused may interrupt the effect.

None of these choices are aimed at healing, since all seem to be about crowd control (for some reason) - something healers aren't known to use very frequently in a pve setting after level 80. I could probably count the amount of times I've found fear to be useful for my healing in a raid on my left hand fingers, which means both Psychic Scream and Psyfiend don't come off as very interesting choices for the pveing healing priest. That leaves Void Tendrils, which basically is a sort of Nature's Grasp/Roots. As I know nothing about how the raid fights will be designed in MoP it's difficult to say how useful this will be, but assuming that Blizzard keeps somewhat the same style as they have for the last couple of years, it still feels like some roots could be more useful than a fear.
Pvpers are going to have a field day with these choices though, and it is also interesting to note that this means Psychic Scream won't be baseline for priests anymore.

Tier 2
Body & Soul: When you cast Power Word: Shield or Leap of Faith, you increase the target's movement speed by 60% for 4 sec.
Path of the Devout: Increases your movement speed while Levitating by 25%.
Phantasm: Anytime you fade, you remove all movement impairing effects from yourself and your movement speed will be unhindered for 3 sec.

To me, the choice lies between Body & Soul and Path of the Devout. What we really got to choose between here is whether we want to be able to give run speed or have it ourselves. Experience tells me run speed is a really nice thing, and I do like Body & Soul. Unlike PotD, Body & Soul is something we can both use ourselves and cast on other people. On the other hand, PotD is a buff that lies on for a lot longer than B&S, unless you're in a fight with continuous aoe damage (and we all know they aint that uncommon). And B&S is handy, but how often do I really use it? In all honesty I use it more often to save my own ass than anyone elses, because giving someone a 60% speed increase without them knowing it doesn't always mean it will be put to good use. In the end I think it comes down to just how many of the MoP fights are about continuous aoe damage, because otherwise I think I would prefer having that 25% runspeed for myself even more than being able to hand out some speed on occasion.

Tier 3
From Darkness, Comes Light (caster form): You have a 6% chance when you Smite, Heal, Flash Heal, Binding Heal or Greater Heal to cause your next Flash heal to be instant cast and have no mana cost.
Divine Star: Fires a Divine Star in front of you, traveling 20 yards doing damage to all enemies and healing all friendly targets in its path. After reaching its destination, it will return to you also dealing damage and healing all targets in its path.
Archangel (caster form): Consumes your Evangelism, increasing your healing done by 5% for each Evangelism consumed.

Two oldies and a newbie. I've never been a fan of Surge of Light the way it was redesigned in Cata. I realize it was perhaps a little too good in its earlier forms (especially when it was bugged to proc from other priests crits!), but nerfing it to the ground wasn't the right way to go. Blizzard have tried to repent by making it proc from more and more spells, but I am still not very satisfied with this talent. Unless they change it to proc more often I still don't feel like it is something I would want.

Throughout Cata, I've had pretty much the same feelings for Archangel. As it is now, Archangel is a nice but not very needed buff to our healing. For MoP however, Blizzard are upping the incentive with 5% extra healing per stack, making the Archangel buff 10% more effective than it is now. 25% extra healing when you need it could actually make a difference, like when say the tank is really taking a pounding and you need that extra oomph, or there is some heavy aoe damage that needs to be healed up quickly. It might just be what Archangel needs to be a real healing tool and not just for funsies. There is also the question as to how you gather Evangelism stacks in MoP, the same way as today or a completely new way? Will that suit the raiding style of MoP or not? If gathering stacks becomes too much of a hassle, it might not be worth it.

Divine Star looks really interesting, but there is no saying how useful it is (which on the other hand, goes for all the skills since we don't know how they'll work in MoP). Being a cone effect basically, it has all the drawbacks of Light of Dawn, like the paladin constantly having to reposition to get the most out of it. This makes it mostly useful for situations where there is a lot of aoe damage and the raid group is huddled. If it is weak like Sanctuary has been most of Cata, there really isn't much use to it either. I don't like LoD, but I know many paladins do, so Divine Star is a pretty open card. Looking at what I do know about these talents I'd probably initially try Divine Star, but keep a very close eye on Archangel.

Tier 4
Desperate Prayer: Instantly heals the caster for 30% of their total health.
Angelic Bulwark: Increases the effectiviness of your own shield effects on yourself by 30%.
Final Prayer: Anytime a damaging attack brings you below 30% health, you gain an absorption shield equal to 20% of your total health lasting 20 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once every 90 sec.

This seems to be the ego-tier, seeing as all talents are aimed at saving your own ass. So which will do that best? Which one equates to the most healing? Depending on how useful shields will be in MoP, seeing as they have climbed up and down the useful ladder pretty frequently the last year, I feel like Angelic Bulwark is a really interesting choice. Assuming shields will work the way they do in Cata, with a 15 sec "cooldown" in Weakened Soul, 30% is quite a lot and will add up to a pretty strong shield. I think it will be more useful than a 2 minute and 90 sec cooldown. I prefer "weak but often" over "strong but rare". "Strong but rare" is usually better for tanks, "weak but often" usually works better for everyone else.

Tier 5
Twist of Fate: Increases the damage and healing done to targets at or below 25% health.
Power Infusion: Infuses the target with power, increasing spell casting speed by 20% and reducing the mana cost of all spells by 20%.
Serendipity (caster form): 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 10%/20% and mana cost reduced by 10/20%.

To me the choice is fairly simple in this tier. I am a huge fan of Power Infusion, always have been. It is an awesome healing cooldown, or dps cooldown if you want to use it on a fellow caster (like if). Yet again, it will depend a little on how the fights work in MoP, but if these choices were given to me today I'd go with Power Infusion without hesitation. To me it seems like the best from both Twist of Fate and Serendipity, in giving that extra oomph just when I need it.

Tier 6
Vow of Unity: You create a Vow of Unity with the friendly target. whenever you heal the target through spells and effects, you are also healed equal to 20% of this amount. In addition, when the target is attacked, 50% of the damage is redirected to you over 6 sec. if your target is victim to an attack greater than 30% of their total health, the Vow of Unity ends.
Void Shift: You swap health percentage with the current friendly target. After this effect ends, you are instantly healed for 25% of your total health.
Vampiric Dominance: When you deal damage or healing, 15% of the amount is healed to up to 3 low-health nearby allies.

When Blizzard talked about giving us tough choices, this is what they must've meant. Until now I've felt like the choices haven't been that difficult, but these actually all seem very useful. Vow of Unity seems really interesting, although maybe a little too dangerous to be really useful. Taking 50% of a tanks damage as healer could be devastating (like when I used Hand of Sacrifice on the tank on Baleroc just before a Decimation Blade). Would we want to use it on anything else than a tank? Difficult to say. I really like the idea of Vow of Unity, but it seems a little too much out of control to be good in pve.

Void Shift is dangerous too. Saving the tank (or someone else close to death) is a good thing to do, but it also means you instead will be close to death for a short while. How much will this be an issue? Difficult to say, but it means we won't be able to use it at leisure as with most heavy cooldowns, but have to make sure we're not using it just before a huge aoe slams down on us.

Vampiric Dominance is basically a 15% increase to our healing output, which looks insanely tasty. Eventhough both Vow of Unity and Void Shift look good, I'm not sure about their practical usefulness. 15% extra healing however, is always very useful and makes sure that we can do some aoe healing even when focusing on point healing, something priests haven't been very good at during Cata. For tier 6 I'd most likely go with Vampiric Dominance (which probably will be nerfed to 3% or something, before it goes live).

So there you have it! We can be 99% sure that the talent trees will look nothing like this in a couple of months, but I will be following the progress closely. One thing is certain: Blizzard mean serious business about making talents a real choice for us now. I really hope they succeed.