Dec 1

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.

To Do Before Patch 3.3

• Save up/smelt a bunch of Saronite Bars so I can transmute it all to titanium once the transmute has no cooldown
• Save up 8 Crusader Orbs in preparation for possibly making my death knight tank my main character (for the 245 chest) done
  
• Read up on each of the encounters in the new 5-man dungeons
• Read up on current strategies for the available Icecrown Citadel bosses
• Research gear upgrades from the new heroics

To Do After Patch 3.3

• Transmute the Saronite Bars (above) into Titanium, make Titansteel for the 245 chest (above) done
• Farm heroics for Emblems of Triumph for T9 level gear on the death knight
• Run each of the new 5-man heroics, hope to be able to start the Quel’Delar chain

What do you have planned for 3.3?

Related posts:

1. An Evening of Upgrades
2. Mod Madness: Altoholic
3. Patch 3.0.8 Notes Updated – Highlights
4. Different This Time
5. Not Joining the Bandwagon

Aug 31

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:

• Improved Power Word: Shield: Pretty straightforward, directly increasing the amount your PW:S absorbs.
• 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!

Related posts:

1. Changes to Debuffs, Buffs, and Raid Stacking
2. These are the People in your Raid
3. Foray into Multiboxing: RAF Experiment Done
4. Another Change due to PvP Balancing
5. Baby Healer Dings 80

Aug 19

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!

It’s available for download at http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/nicetry.aspx or via the Curse Client. I will be getting it out to other addon sites eventually. If you have ideas for the addon, let me know!

[Edit] Now also available at http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/fileinfo.php?id=14476.

Related posts:

1. Mods for 2.4 Coming Around
2. Two Pugs Enter: Stupidity vs. Ignorance
3. Mod Madness: Altoholic
4. Qualitative vs. Quantitative Performance Analysis
5. A New Domain Name. Yes, Again.

Aug 17

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! >.<

Related posts:

1. I Can Haz BlizzCon!
2. BlizzCon, Here We Come!
3. Under Development: Ulduar
4. Blizzcon 2009: Day 1
5. BlizzCon: Day 0

Jul 14

Well, this past Saturday, my baby priest, Allianya, dinged 80. (This is the same priest that I dualboxed to 60 with my paladin earlier.) Her tailoring isn’t as high as I would like quite yet, but I’m working on it. I was very leery on jumping into heroics right away, but I got a spot as DPS and did okay–pulled about 1400 DPS in heroic VH. Got a few good drops, including Azure Cloth Bindings from H VH.

The following day, I started healing heroics. I felt like I could heal H VH, and it went quite well. The group I was in decided to run CoS and asked if I could heal–I said I’d be willing to try. Somewhere along the line, the group decided to try for a drake run–I was pretty skeptical, as my gear isn’t super great–a few iLvl 200 blues, a couple crafted epics, and a bunch of 187 and lower blues–even a couple green quest rewards! But, they said “hey, let’s give it a shot and see what happens.” Not long after, and The Culling of Time is ours! No drake for me, which is fine, as Allianya can’t even fly yet! After H CoS I healed H UP and it went well also.

Yesterday included such excitement as DPSing H DTK (and I pushed just over 2000, which I was very happy with, and included Oh Novos!), and then healed H HoL (with Lightning Struck and Shatter Resistant) and a Defenseless H VH (not a big deal, I know) and an H UK (with On the Rocks).

Overall, I’m really enjoying healing, especially as Disc. The playstyle has really clicked with me and I’m having a lot of fun, and the successful runs have helped instill a little confidence, so I’m not terrified to go looking for a heroic to heal! I look forward to working on my gear pretty heavily in the near future and getting raid-ready!

Related posts:

1. Decisions
2. Why I Love Druids
3. An Evening of Upgrades
4. Preparing for WotLK
5. Foray into Multiboxing: RAF Experiment Done

Jun 30

World of Warcraft’s default UI updates your action bars when you learn a new rank of a spell. For example, when you train from Wrath rank 1 to Wrath rank 2, the button where Wrath rank 1 was located on your action bar automatically becomes Wrath rank 2. It’s important to note that each rank of a spell, each training level of a skill, etc. has a unique ID number. So when the UI updates your action bar from Wrath 1 to Wrath 2, it’s replacing the spell ID 5176 on that button to spell ID 5177. Same thing for professions; when you move from Enchanting (Apprentice), spell ID 7411 to Enchanting (Journeyman), spell ID 7412, you actually unlearn the former spell and learn the latter one. WoW automatically updates your action bar for you.

However, WoW does not update the action bar for your second spec. I leveled through my 60’s mostly healing instances on my priest. Almost every time I visited the trainer, I was in my healing spec. During those visits to the trainer, I learned all my new spells, not just my healing ones. So, when at level 68 I finally switched back to my shadow spec, none of the action bar buttons for this spec had the correct rank of the spell on them. I did not notice for a level or two, after I was becoming frustrated with how hard it was to kill mobs.

So remember–if you’re leveling up with dual specs, each time you train, it’s worth it to switch to your alternate spec and check to see if any of the skills you just learned need to be updated on that particular set of action bars.

This public service announcement is brought to you by BinaryMuse.

Related posts:

1. Dual Specs Not Dead Yet
2. Clarification on Dual Specs at the Class Panel
3. The Death of the Epic Mount Quests
4. My Day as a Tree
5. Double-Specs Not Dead Yet

May 22

On the eighth of May I posted about my expirement with dual-boxing a set of characters with Recruit-A-Friend. As of yesterday, that experiment. With approximately 1 day and 20 hours /played, the priest and paladin are both level 60 (well, the Armory insists the pally is 59 but he’s definitely 60 .

Overall, the expirement went really well. I took the paladin along the path of retribution and just used Righteous Fury to hold aggro, while the priest went holy for improved healing and some DPS talents like Divine Fury, Searing Light, Holy Specialization and Surge of Light, along with Glyph of Smite. Mobs died quickly, and after the paladin got the replinishment effect it was difficult to run out of mana on either toon.

At level 56, while I was in the Plaguelands leveling, a guildie offered to run me through Scholomance and Stratholme. I gathered up all the quests and off we went. By the time we were done, both characters (the priest especially) had some nice blue (and a purple!) gear, and was about 30% from dinging level 61. So, now I’m taking my time leveling through Outland, with a focus on getting professions up to speed before I set foot in Northrend.

The experiement was a lot of fun, and though I considered doing the same thing with more characters (and I might in the future), for now I’m eager to get my priest to 80 and into heroics and raids, and my budday Neal and I are still doing our RAF with other characters.

Related posts:

1. Foray into Multiboxing: Introduction
2. Foray into Multiboxing: Dual-Boxing with Recruit-A-Friend
3. Foray into Multiboxing: Part 1
4. Foray into Multiboxing: Part 2
5. Levelin’ Like a Madman

May 8

It’s been a while since I posted anything in the Foray into Multiboxing category.The priest and paladin I was leveling on my old server, Shadowsong, go to about level 21 before I quit dual-boxing them. Part of the issue was that I moved servers, and let the second account die; the other part of the problem was the speed at which the character’s leveled.

In a group, the experience awarded by mobs drops due to the fact that it was easier to kill in a group. WoWWiki covers the math in detail, but in simple terms:

XP Gained = Mob’s XP / Number of Group Members * Modifier

Modifier is a constant that changes based on the number of people in the group; it’s higher in larger groups, so as to not punish people as much for running instances with full groups, etc. While playing solo, or in a two-person group, Modifier is 1.

In the end, assuming a two-person group (which is what I was running), and also assuming both characters are the same level (which they were), each character receives half the experience that a player killing the mob alone would receive. This makes the leveling experience when dual-boxing slower, and makes questing not only more efficient than grinding mobs, but practically required to make any decent headway at all.

However, Blizzard introduced once system that flipped that world upside down: Recruit-A-Friend. It was intended to get new players up to level more quickly so they could play with their high-level friends; the high-level friend would send an invitation, and for 90 days, the two accounts would be linked. For the duration, characters on both accounts receive 300% XP from everything assuming that (1) they are grouped together (2) they are relatively close to each other, and (3) they are within 3 levels of each other (if not, only the lower character gets the 300% XP).

So, the higher-level friend would create a new alt with his new WoW-playing noob buddy, and for every mob kill get 150% normal experience (the experience is split, making it 50%, and that is tripled, making 150% total), and 300% experience for every quest.

This is huge.

A friend and I have been leveling a few alts using the Recruit-A-Friend system. It is really… really fast. The 300% XP from quests is amazing–I’ve had quests give me half a level or more worth of experience.

At the same time, I’ve decided to dual-box again, this time using Recruit-A-Friend, during the times my buddy and I aren’t playing our RAF characters. 150% XP from mobs makes it much less painful to do, ie, quests where each character has to loot a certain number of items, and the 300% XP from quests makes practically every quest worth doing. Last night I started another pally/priest combo on my new server, and when I logged off they were level 10. I’m still using the same technology from my previous posts, so if you’re interested, be sure to check out the other posts in this category.

As time progresses, I’ll post some other information, tips, and tricks.

Related posts:

1. Foray into Multiboxing: RAF Experiment Done
2. Foray into Multiboxing: Part 1
3. Foray into Multiboxing: Introduction
4. Foray into Multiboxing: Part 2
5. Patch 2.3 and the Experience Curve

Feb 20

I’m a little late to the game, but I figured I’d join in all the “post the sixth screenshot from the sixth folder” hubub going around. I don’t have my screenshots in folders, so I just picked my sixth screenshot:

Well now that brings back some memories! My WoW life pretty much started like this:

1) Roll a mage on Shadowsong-Alliance. Get him to level 6 and realize you still have no clue what you’re doing.

2) Roll a warlock on Maelstrom-Horde with some friends.

This screenshot is shortly after number two. You can also tell it’s old due to the lack of addons (even the extra action bars are missing!). Simpler times….

Related posts:

1. Standing Room Only
2. Problems with Dual Specs and Action Bars
3. My Day as a Tree
4. New Stuff in Kara
5. Just a Cool Screenshot

Feb 18

I have nothing earthshattering to report today, but I did take a bunch of screenshots in some instance runs the other day. This one had a really nice feel, in my opinion. A /wave to Alliniana, who happens to be in the shot, and kept us alive during the encounter.

Click the small to make large!

Related posts:

1. A Day of (Mostly) Good PuGs
2. Screenshot Six
3. New Stuff in Kara
4. Why Can’t I Decide?
5. Patch 2.4: People are Far Too Optimistic