Healing on the priest

I have found, that healing on a Disc priest in a 5-man, is ridiculously easy.  At a 5.1k gear score, my shields absorb so much damage, I can heal (even undergeared tanks) while sleeping.  Throw a shield, and a PoM (Prayer of Mending), and go afk for the rest of the pull.  I have healed on my paladin, my druid, and now my priest.  Neither Paladin or Druid healing compares to the the Disc priest in my mind.  The amount of breathing room that Power Word:Shield affords you, makes healing much less stressful.

Since I am now guildless, I think I might respec the paladin's second spec to Holy again (it is Ret right now).  Maybe I just need to spend some extra time healing on the paladin in order to get more comfortable with the Holy Paladin style.  I know, that the paladin's holy gear is 5.1k gear score (same as my priest).  But one, seems SOOOOOO much easier than the other.

Anyone have any opinions, tips, or tricks?

No more Nerd Raging . . .

Today I said farewell to my guild.  

I don't want to get into specifics, but needless to say, I felt like I didn't belong in Nerd Rage anymore.  It certainly is not the guild that I joined a year and a half ago.  Maybe it is just the summer doldrums, or maybe too many of my long time WoW friends have already left, but for whatever reason, Nerd Rage just doesn't feel like home anymore.

 

New Beta Build, New paladin mechanics...again

Well, a new Beta Build was deployed last night, and paladins are once again seeing sweeping changes. Here is the list according to MMOChampion.com:

Holy

• Divine Plea is now trained at level 44, down from 58. Now reduces the amount healed by all your healing spells.
• Concentration Aura is now trained at level 42, down from 54.
• Holy Wrath is now trained at level 28, down from 50.
• Lay on Hands is now trained at level 16, down from 38.
• Seal of the Pure is now named Seal of Insight.
• Tower of Radiance - Directly healing the target of your Beacon of Light has a 33/66/100% chance to generate Holy Power.
• Healing Light - Increases the amount healed by your Word of Glory and the damage and healing of your Holy Shock by 10/20/30%.

Protection

• Hand of Protection is now trained at level 18. Down from 42.
• Divine Protection now reduces all damage taken by 20% for 10 sec. (Down from 50% for 12 sec) Cooldown lowered from 5 min to 1 min. Spells restrictions (Divine Shield/Divine Protection/Hand of Protection/Avenging Wrath) removed.
• Devotion Aura is now trained at level 18, down from level 22.
• Blessing of Kings is now trained at level 22, up from 18.
• Hammer of the Righteous now causes 160% weapon damage as holy damage. (Old - 3 times your main hand damage per second as Holy damage.)
• Shield of the Templar has been revamped - Reduces the cooldown of Avenger's Shield by 2/4 sec, Guardian of Ancient Kings by 10/20 min, and increases the amount absorbed by your Sacred Shield by 10/20%.
• Holy Shield now Holy Shield - Consumes Holy Power to grant 5% block per stack of Holy Power and deals 97.8 Holy damage for every attack blocked. Lasts 15 sec. / 10% of base mana, Instant cast
• Sacred Duty has been revamped - Increases the critical strike chance of your Hammer of the Righteous by 5/10%. In addition, your Hammer of the Righteous critical strikes have a 50/100% chance of making your next Judgement a critical strike. /
• Grand Crusader - When your Crusader Strike deals damage, it has a 10/20% chance of refreshing the cooldown on your next Holy Wrath.
• Ardent Defender is now a Tier 7 talent (Up from Tier 4). Cooldown increased from 2 to 3 min.
• Judgements of the Wise is now a primary skill.

Retribution

• Inquisition is now Exclusive with Holy Shield.
• Seal of Vengeance is now named Seal of Truth and its Holy Vengeance renamed to Censure.
• Zealotry now has a 2 min cooldown, down from 30 min. Now lasts 15 sec. (Down from 30 sec)
• Wrath of the Lightbringer gone.
• Acts of Sacrifice *New* - Decreases the cooldown by 10/20/% and mana cost by 10/20% of your Hand of Freedom and Hand of Salvation.
• Righteous Vengeance is now Inquiry of Faith - Increases the periodic damage done by your Seal of Truth by 20/40/60%.
• Swift Retribution now also increases damage by 3%. Moved from Tier 6 to Tier 5.
• Sanctified Retribution is gone.
• Improved Crusader Strike is gone.
• Heart of the Crusader is gone.
• Sanctity of Battle no longer reduces the cooldown of Exorcism.
• Templar's Verdict is now a primary skill of Retribution.
• Communion *New* - Your Judgement grants the Replenishment effect to up to 10 party or raid members mana regeneration equal to 1% of their maximum mana per 5 sec for 15 sec.
• Improved Judgement no longer decreases the cooldown of Judgement.
• Judgements of the Wise is now a primary skill.
• Selfless Healer (Tier 5) - Increases the healing of your Word of Glory by 30/60% when used to heal others.
• Divine Purpose is now a Tier 4 talent - Your Templar's Verdict, Divine Storm and Inquisition have a 40% chance to generate Holy Power.
• Divine Storm is now a Tier 3 talent.

What a wall of changes. My thoughts:

• The whole "Inquisition" vibe in the Ret tree is very cool. Finally, Rets get talents and abilities that seem to match the coolness factor of the Tier2 Judgement Armor.
• Divine Protection (a.k.a. bubblewall) cooldown reduced from 5 minutes to 1 minute. Damage reduction reduced from 50% to 20%. This is very analogous to the Warrior's Shield Wall.
• The OP version of Holy Shield (I touched on in this post) has been changed to something much more reasonable, but still cool.
• Ardent Defender is now our 31 point talent.

Speaking of Ardent Defender...It doesn't mention it in the notes above, but if you go look at the new talent trees here, you will notice that the "below 35%" requirement on Ardent Defender has been removed. THANK GOD. It retains it's Guardian Spirit like effect which is also cool.

Another thing not mentioned in the notes above, but notated here, is the fact that Righteous Fury will now apply the threat multiplier to ALL damage, not just Holy Damage. This makes it okay for us to use Crusader Strike (which is pretty clear what the Devs want us doing).

Also mentioned in a previous post by Ghostcrawler, is the fact that Spiritual Attunement is gone. No more mana from heals received. We will now regen our mana the same way the Ret does, with Judgements of the Wise. This is a big change, and we will just have to see how it works out. Obviously, I don't think that Blizzard wants to gimp our ability to generate threat, but it may take a little more thought on the part of the player now (a.k.a. not a bad thing).

The Cataclysm Paladin

So . . .

It would appear by my comments in the previous post, that I misunderstood what the Devs were saying about the introduction of Holy Power. It is not replacing mana, rather, it is an additional resource that augments certain abilities.

Lots of other bloggers have already talked about it, but the best explanation I have read is that Holy Power is kinda like a reverse combo points (that only go to three). Instead of stacking on your target, they stack on yourself. Some of your abilities generate Holy Power, some of them drain Holy Power and are improved based on the number of stacks you have. For instance, the tooltip for Holy Shield reads:

Increases your chance to block by 30% for 10 sec, and deals 79 Holy damage for every attack blocked. Consumes Holy Power to extend duration by 10 sec per stack of Holy Power.

So, we have a 1 minute cooldown that (if used with full Holy Power) will last 40 seconds.

Think about that. In Cataclysm, every block will knock a straight 30% off of damage taken (source). This looks to me like we are going to be able to keep that straight 30% reduction up for 40 out of every 60 seconds.

Yikes!

Can you say OP?

I don't see this going into Cata as is (unless the other tanks have similar abilities that I haven't noticed)

This just in from the Dev Chat

Q: What is the goal when re-designing the paladin class? How do you plan to change rotations, talents, etc?

A. All of the paladin specializations will make use of a new resource called Holy Power. Holy Power accumulates from using Crusader Strike, Holy Shock, and some other talents. Holy Power can be consumed to augment a variety of abilities, including:

• An instant mana-free heal: Word of Glory
  
• A buff to increase holy damage done: Inquisition
  
• A massive physical melee attack for Retribution paladins: Templar’s Verdict
  
• Holy Shield’s duration is now extended by Holy Power
  
• Divine Storm’s damage is now increased by Holy Power

We also introduced several new heals for Holy Paladins including Healing Hands (an AoE heal-over-time that is applied to all players standing near the paladin), Light of Dawn (a cone heal with a 30-yard range), as well as a new heal called Divine Light, which is similar to a priest's Greater Heal, and the new instant heal mentioned above, Word of Glory.

Whoa. . .

That is pretty startling news. They are changing the resource system for paladins. So, according to the above quote, Paladins will no longer use mana. Even Holy Paladins.

I am going to have to let my brain chew on this for a while. I'll be back with thoughts later.

Halion and Pursuit of Justice

So,

We were working on 25-man Halion last night.  I am the Twilight realm tank.  Which, means I do LOLPROTDPS in phase one.  Ah well, such is the life of a tank.

In phase two and three, I tank Halion in the Twilight realm.  Now, the strategy we have settled on is as follows . . . I take the portal, aggro Halion, turn him 90 degrees so he is not facing the portal, and then watch for the orbs circling the room.    Meanwhile, the rest of the raid all group up on Halion's left rear leg.  Now comes the fun part.  I hit the "/" key on the num pad to switch from running to walking.  Then, once I see the orb just to the right of my toon's right shoulder, I start strafing left.  Now walking speed on your toon is the exact same speed as the orbs' travel speed around the edge of the circle.  So, once you have the orb in the correct position, then you just strafe left for the rest of the encounter.

Now this is a perfect example of the need for one of the skills I brought up in my Tanking 101 article.  Being able to perform your threat rotation while moving.

But I have encountered a problem with this strat.  And the problem stems from one talent that is only available to Paladins.  Pursuit of Justice.  Now, there have been countless times through out this expansion that I have been very happy that I specced into Pursuit of Justice.  However, on this fight, it screws with me.  Since my movement speed is 15% faster than normal, my walking speed moves 15% faster than the orbs move.  So the big question is . . . do I just suck it up and deal with having to adjust on the fly (what I did last night) or do I spec out of Pursuit of Justice and replace it with 2% more crit?  

Decisions, decisions.

I don't want to hear it.

So, I have one extra thought related to the previous post.  I don't want to hear anyone say that Blizzard doesn't listen to their customers, or any "Blizzard doesn't care about their customers" remarks.

Here is the evidence that Blizz does pay attention to what we say.  Pretty much everyone hated the real name forum thing, so they decided to make a change so that real names are not required for forum use.

Good Game Blizzard.

Sorry about the small posts recently, but I have been pretty busy IRL lately.  Hopefully, I will throw up a priest related post soon. :)

RealID and the forums...SIKE!

Breaking News!

Nethaera on Regarding real names in forums (Source)

Hello everyone,

I'd like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We've been constantly monitoring the feedback you've given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we've decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as the ability to rate posts up or down, post highlighting based on rating, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it's clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you'll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that

Every Voice Matters, (http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html)and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard's success from the beginning.

Mike Morhaime

CEO & Cofounder

Blizzard Entertainment

So, it seems reason has prevailed. The WoW forums are no longer going to require you to display your real name.

All I can say is . . . GOOD.

Please disregard my previous comments, as they no longer apply. :)

RealID and the forums + a new addition to the family!

Seems like eveyone is talking about this nowadays, so I give you my thoughts.

This is a BAD idea.

I don't post to the official forums often, because the ratio of good, insightful posts to shitty, trollish posts is pretty bad.  However, I do know, that if this goes live, then I will definitely NOT be posting to the forums at all.  The idea that I have to give out my real name to 11 million potential viewers is pretty terrifying.  Now, I am not worried about anyone cyber-stalking me.  Though, I do worry about my wife and other friends be stalked.  The bigger concern to me is the possible repercussions to my future employment opportunities.  We all know that employers do facebook, myspace, twitter, and web searches on  potential employees.  If your real name is attached to a forum post, then it will show up in a google search of your name.  

So, to clarify, if you are applying for a new job, and you posted with your RealID, then your prospective employer will KNOW that you play WoW.

Many people, myself included, like to keep their real life and their game life separate.  You spend time with your family and friends outside of the game, and you spend time with your WoW friends and family inside the game.  I have lots people who I would consider friends in WoW, whom I do not know IRL.  I won't RealID friend them.  So far, I have only added two RealID friends (and one of them is my wife).  I can really only think of about three more people I would consider adding.

I think the think that really gets my goat (so to speak), is the fact that when RealID was first introduced, it was touted as "optional".  You didn't have to participate, but could if you were so inclined.  Now, if you want to post in the Technical Support or Customer Support forums, you MUST reveal your real name to the world.  Even if you call Blizzard for tech support, more often than not, they direct you to the tech support forums.

*On a happier note*

The wife and I got a new dog over the holiday weekend.  He is a 3 month old chocolate lab named . . . Leroy.  We got him so that Tika (our 6 year old Malamute/Pyrenees mix) will have a playmate/companion for when we are gone all day.

Also, I would like to take this time to introduce Wisdom, my priest.  I got to take him into ICC last night (with a 4k gear score) and he scored a new belt and his rep ring, plus lots of frost badges.  He has a long way to go, but I really enjoy playing with the priest.  So, I may make some posts about the priest form time to time, at least until Cata comes out.

That is, if the RealID changes to the forums don't drive me away from the game altogether.

Making progress

Despite horrible attendance issues, and the release of Ruby Sanctum, we are still working on getting our 25-man Lich King kill.  The majority of the guild has gotten the kill on 10-man, but we are primarily a 25-man guild, so the 25-man kill is important to us.

To me, Lich King is a great fight, where, regardless of gear (or ICC buff), you have to master the mechanics of the fight to beat it.  You can't just power your way through it.  Which is why we are having such a hard time with it, I suppose.  Nerd Rage may not be the best guild on our server, but we DO have the best DPS on our server.  That is one place where we excel.  Take last night for example.  In our many tries against LK last night, we routinely had 6-8 players over the 10k DPS mark.  We can almost blow through phase1 only getting one Shambling (...almost...).  

Despite a freak wipe one Phase1 once, we really do have that phase down and clean.  The first transition is getting cleaner just about every time we do it as well.

Now, Phase2.  That is where the test is.  The second set of Valks, immediately followed by the Defile is rough.  But even that is getting better (if only we could get people to stop dropping Defiles in the middle of the platform).

The big news, though, is that we finally pushed LK into the second transition on 25-man.  Last night was the first time that we got through Phase2.

There is definitely some progress being made.  I truly feel like we are only a few more pulls from a kill.