Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s been a fun, long ride, but it’s time for me to get off.
I’m not going to go into a lot of explanation. I’m just going to say thanks to those of you that made WoW an awesome place to be. I’m not going to promise I’ll never be back; I’m not going to promise I will. Only time will tell, for now.
I’m going to leave the blog running, but I probably won’t put a whole ton of effort into keeping it up to date and such. Likely, I will eventually have to either upgrade it or bring it down due to security risks.
If you wish to get in touch with me, check out my tech blog at http://binarymuse.net. Once again, thanks a lot, and farewell.
This post is several months old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
This post is several months old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
It is my understanding (from a few different sources) that the current plan is that 3.3 will be live next Tuesday, December 8th. Here’s just a little to-do list I’ve put together to make sure I get everything done I want to get done.
This post is several months old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
Before I say anything else, I will say this: this is not a QQ post. In fact, I think Chill of the Throne is, in the end, a good idea (at least now that we’ve dug into the itemization hole, as it were).
What Is It
Chill of the Throne is a buff, similar to Sunwell Radiance in BC, that allows all enemy mobs in Icecrown Citadel (coming in 3.3, currently on the PTR) ignore 20% of their targets dodge. Essentially, if you are tanking IC, you can subtract 20% from your total avoidance; however, boss hits will be adjusted to compensate. Let’s continue the disussion.
Why Is It Here?
A couple people from WoW’s development team explain why they are implementing this spell, and Ghostcrawler discusses it a bit more. To summarize, tank avoidance is too high. This is primary because the team that planned out Wrath’s gear did not count on having hardmodes with higher item level gear–in the end, the gear people have is better than the gear the development team thought it would be. This means that, in order to offer any chance of a challenge to a raid, the hits that do actually hit the tank (ie, the ones that are not avoided) have to hit really hard in order to have any chance of killing the tank. What you end up with is healers having to time their big heals to land right after a bit hit (or else spam their biggest heals) and tanks that are unable to reactively use cooldowns.
Ideally (and Ghostcrawler has stated multiple times that this is the aim for Cataclysm), damage from a raid boss should be lower but more consistant (”smoother”), and the challenge in keeping tanks alive should be healers having to worry about running out of mana (i.e., not overhealing) and tanks having to use cooldowns more retroactively.
So, to try to push things that direction for the last raid of this expansion, Blizzard is nerfing avoidance artificially and also nerfing the amount of damage the bosses do (resulting, basically, in lower avoidance but higher mitigation, albeit mitigation via less damage), hoping to smooth out all these giant spikey hits while still creating a risk that the tank will die.
What It Is Not
This is not a worse nerf for druids than other tanks. Let me repeat myself: druids will not suffer worse from this nerf than other tanks. “But druids can only dodge!” you might say. Well, let’s take a look here.
Theoretical (i.e. made up) Avoidance Outside Icecrown
Class
Dodge
Parry
Total Avoidance
Warrior
30%
20%
50%
Druid
50%
0%
50%
Adjusted with 20% Less Dodge
Class
Dodge
Parry
Total Avoidance
Warrior
10%
20%
30%
Druid
30%
0%
30%
It’s easy to see that both tanks end up with the same amount of total avoidance. Now, you could go and make arguments about dodge being better than parry for certain tanks, etc. etc. but the main point is that other tanks are being hit just as hard as druids.
Another Note on Gear and Item Level
Guys, just because new gear has a higher item level does not always mean it is better. Ghostcrawler has said time and time again that it’s not designed that way–gear should be a choice, you shouldn’t be able to train a monkey to buy all the newer, higher item level gear and be a better tank/healer/DPS than you were. (This is part of my issue with gear scores in general.)
This public service announcement provided to you by The Altoholic.
This post is several months old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
I thought I would share with you this post by Ghostcrawler on the forums, posted in response to a rant about people obsessing over gear scores:
We actually talked today about adding an item level 300 shirt that did absolutely nothing but mess with mods that attempt to boil down players to gear scores.
The interesting part, though, is the next post, in which he elaborates a little, and I agree 100% with his point. Emphasis below is mine:
The ubershirt solution would be pretty easy to bypass unfortunately.
Ultimately, we’re really not that interested in trying to shut mods like this down. Players will always have the Armory and to a lesser extent Inspect with which to judge other players.
It’s not an easy problem to solve. On the one hand, we can recognize that there is value in being able to determine if that guy you are considering for your pug is much less experienced and talented than he claims to be and is going to drag everyone else down and cause other players to leave. On the other hand, the WoW community seems to have become so obsessed with efficiency and so adverse to wiping that there is, in my opinion, an unreasonable demand for player skill and gear requirements even for relatively easy content. It’s one thing if your VoA tank is in all blues. It’s another if you’re asking for Ulduar gear for your Naxx run.
Many players are perfectly reasonable. However we’ve all run into That Guy who takes any attempt at measuring his awesomeness in the game (gearscore, achievements, dps meters) way too seriously and looks for the same in others.
While I agree with the OP that some people really do seem to be obsessive about their gear scores and much, much less about their skill or attitude (two things that are, in my opinion, much more important), what I’m really interested in is the other point GC makes.
Last night, a guildie got mad and quit a ToC 10 Normal run because we wiped four times on Northrend Beasts (each time at a different spot), even though we were running in the “second group,” a group put together by a couple of go-getter non-officers when the “official” Thursday ToC 10 run filled up. Apparently, four times is far, far too many times to wipe on Northrend Beasts.
Now, I can understand getting frustrated when people make the same mistakes over and over, won’t listen, etc. But many, many times this isn’t the case. Many times, some of your players just aren’t as geared as you’re used to. Maybe they’re new to the fights (as was the case in this ToC 10).
So my question is, what is it that has made the WoW community so “obsessed with efficiency and so adverse to wiping?” I will share my opinion: I believe this is mostly because of the decreased difficulty in content in Wrath. Things are much easier, on the whole, and people have become accustomed to facerolling through anything but the hardest content–any semblance to something that may be the slightest bit hard or even take a little effort is too much.
This post is several months old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
I’m surprised at how long it’s taking the whole PvE discipline priest mindset to sink in, even among other priests. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been discussing specs with other priests and they say something like “Of course, I don’t PvP,” to which I reply “Yeah, me neither.” The response almost invariably is “Oh… then why aren’t you holy?”
Discipline in PvE is all about healing via mitigation. You won’t have the throughput or super-strong AoE that a holy priest is capable of, but you have plenty of tools to be a powerful healer and a very strong single-target healer. Furthermore, your used-up shields will count for zero overheal (because the damage they absorb uses up the shield before the target starts to take damage again!). Let’s go into detail.
Power Word: Shield
Power Word: Shield is the bread and butter of the discipline tree. A large number of talents are designed around making PW:S faster, more powerful, or cause additional effects. Even Weakened Soul, designed to keep you from shielding too often, ends up providing a benefit in the end. Let’s take a look at some talents in particular:
Soul Warding: One of the cornerstones of the discipline tree, Soul Warding completely removes the cooldown on and reduces the mana cost of PW:S.
Rapture: Another defining discipline talent, Rapture is one of the primary ways in which you will regain mana during a fight. This is one of the reasons discipline priests gem for intellect instead of spirit.
Borrowed Time: In addition to providing 40% more spellpower toward your PW:S (it already uses 80.68%, according to WoWWiki), it also provides you with 25% haste until your next spell–and Penance (see below) doesn’t eat the effect.
Divine Aegis
Divine Aegis is, most simply, a miniature Power Word: Shield that appears on a target after you heal them with a critical heal. The mini-shield absorbs an amount of damage equal to 30% of the amount of the heal, including overhealing. Disc priests favor critical strike chance, so this is a very nice talent. If you crit multiple times before DA is consumed, the effects will stack, but only up to 125-times-the-level-of-the-target (10,000 for level 80 targets).
Renewed Hope
Renewed Hope is a very nice raid-wide buff that gets applied whenever you cast PW:S (which is often–this buff should be almost at 100% uptime). It provides a raw 3% damage mitigation to the entire raid. Go to your WWS/WoL log for a fight, look at “damage taken by raid,” and figure out 3% of that. You “healed” approximately that much damage just by casting PW:S every 20 seconds! For my latest Mimiron 10 kill, this was just shy of 100,000 passive healing. It is important to note, however, that the buffs don’t stack with multiple disc priests.
Renewed Hope also increases the critical strike chance of Flash Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance (your three primary throughput spells) when the target has Weakened Soul, easing the pain of not being able to shield the target again.
Penance
Penance is one of the most recognizable healing spells in the game. People who have never seen a discipline priest in action will whisper you, “What is that spell you cast that goes pew pew pew?”
Image courtesy of Wowhead
Penance is a channeled spell. It heals in three ticks, each capable of a separate crit. The first tick hits immediately, the second one second after the start of the cast, and the final two seconds after. Penance is a very strong single-target healing spell, and also stacks Grace (see below) to three stacks all by itself.
Grace
Grace is a buff that appears on a player when you heal them with Flash Heal, Greater Heal, or Penance. Grace can only be on one target per priest at a time, just one of the reasons disc priests excel at single-target healing. At three stacks of Grace, you will heal your target for an additional 9% (other healers do not benefit from the buff). As mentioned earlier, Penance can stack Grace three times on a target in a single cast.
Power Infusion
Power Infusion is a fun little spell that is pretty straightforward–reduce mana cost and increase casting speed by 20% for 15 seconds. I usually find a caster DPS who knows how to use it properly and use it on them every cooldown, complete with an addon that notifies them that they have the buff. (On a side note, it also has one of my favorite looking animations in the game).
Pain Suppression
Perfect for those predictable big-tank-hits, Pain Suppression decreases damage taken by 40% for 8 seconds. It also increases resistance to dispel mechanics, a very PvP-oriented effect.
Typical Talent Spec
Your stereotypical disc healing spec looks very similar to this 57/14/0 spec. A few of the talents, especially in the holy tree, can be moved around, but that is a discussion for another post!
Gearing and Gemming Choices
Discipline priests will focus on critical strike chance for more Divine Aegis procs and bigger heals, intellect for a larger mana pool and better mana regen via Rapture/Replinishment/Shadowfiend, and spellpower for general throughput. You won’t find discipline priests going for a lot of spirit, as it does less for us than our holy brethren. Disc priests usually aim for approximately 10% haste without raid buffs, so that the magic 15% haste (which reduces the GCD to one second) is achieved in raids.
Assessing a Disc Priest’s Performance
Any good healer knows that glancing at the healing meters is not a good way to assess healing performance; however, this is even more true for discipline priests because of the way they do a lot of their healing: via absorbs. Absorbed damage isn’t recorded in the combat logs, and thus not reported on addons such as Recount (however, there are addons and combat log analysis tools that attempt to accurately capture and display this information). For this reason, disc priests will almost always be very low on the meters.
For example, let’s take a look at the same Mimiron 10 kill I mentioned earlier.
As you can see, based on recount’s numbers, I did less healing than the restoration shaman, who was on the raid, and considerably less than the holy paladin, who was on the main tank. Had I been main-tank-healing, my effective healing would be even lower. However, let’s take a look at a graph generated from the numbers provided by World of Logs, a combat log analysis tool that takes disc shields into account:
As you can see, Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis accounted for 429,473 healing, almost 45% of my entire healing for the fight, skyrocketing the amount of healing I did. Also, remember that since shields are damage absorption, any shield or DA proc that is used up has absolutely zero overheal. Here’s a screenshot of my overall healing for the fight, so you can see how things played out a bit more:
I hope you learned something from this humble article. Disc is a very strong PvE healing spec, especially on a single target (such as a tank). Spread the word: discipline priests aren’t just for PvP anymore!
This post is several months old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
Day one of Blizzcon is over. It was a lot of fun. I decided not to carry a camera or anything on me this year, and just hang out and enjoy the sights. Of course, Cataclysm was announced and MMO-Champion was right. There’s a lot of cool new stuff, which you can read about pretty much anywhere else–so I won’t recap it here. I’ll probably discuss a few things in more detail, but not until I get back from the conference.
As usual, the first day was topped off with a costume contest, a dance contest, and a voice contest (sound-alike, this year). They are always a lot of fun, and I’m always amazed at the amount of really, really good costumes. The winner this year did an incredible job! Here’s a photo, from WoW.com:
You can’t see it very well from this picture, but her teeth are wicked–super long and sharp. It really had a dramatic effect on the costume.
Tonight, of course, is the Ozzy concert! Should be a lot of fun. I also plan on playing some Diablo III and my friend wants to try out the new races’ starter zones, so we’ll probably do that as well.
So far, tons of fun. Time to go to the convention center!
This post is several months old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
We’re in traffic right now, Neal’s driving. We will arrive with about half an hour to spare to go get our badges and goodie bags. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to get the in-game pet tonight, but I doubt it. I’m excited about what news the opening ceremony holds–stay tuned!
This post is several months old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
I’ve been wanting to develop an addon for a long while now, but I never had an idea for a need that could be filled that did not already have very talented addon authors creating spectacular addons for. Well, recently, a good friend of mine leveled a hunter, and discovered the joys of Misdirection–including casting it on people it wasn’t quite meant to be cast on (namely: me).
Thus, Nice Try was born! From the Curse.com page:
Everyone knows that no-good hunter or rogue that’s always trying to get people killed by using Misdirection or Tricks of the Trade. Don’t fall prey to their wily ways–install NiceTry to automatically cancel both these buffs when they are cast on you! Watch them fumble for Vanish or Feign Death the first time you automatically cancel their buff and they proceed to attack XT-002!
This post is several months old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
Blizzcon is getting close super fast! My friend Neal and I will be heading to Anaheim again to check out all of the awesomeness again, and we will most certainly hear something about the new expansion. Personally, I’m convinced it will be Cataclysm as described by MMO Champion and others–if this really is a “fake leak” started by Blizzard to throw us off the scent, then it is a very good one, because even my private sources confirmed the general idea.
I’ve been playing my new healer like crazy, as I’m really getting into the vibe of the spec and healing in general–it’s been a lot of fun. In my opinion, Trial of the Crusader is a really run raid, but I’m just getting into Ulduar for my first few times so that’s been exciting as well.
Be sure to check in for Blizzcon, as I’m sure I’ll have news–or at least commentary–on what’s announced.
PS: Here’s hoping for a Diablo III beta key! NO you can’t have it! >.<
