Talents & Glyphs – Game – World of Warcraft

Talents & Glyphs – Game – World of Warcraft.

 

Although I have now signed up with a main spec of shadow, I still think about healing as holy – and wonder about whether I have made the right decision to leave it behind in this expansion.

 

Which is one of the reasons I read about Derevka (Garona US) at http://talesofapriest.com – and am thinking about updating my holy spec and glyph choices.

 

He seems not to have abandoned the use of Prayer of Healing yet – even though it is the sort of cast you use earlier in a raid tier, rather than later, where it doesn’t see quite so much use (people know where not to stand, and instinctively move out of fire before it is cast etc, and fights take a shorter amount of time. etc etc)

I don’t want to forget all I learned about holy healing – after all, I did it for about a year or so – and let my offspec slide into uselessness.  If I do that, I might as well have a PVP spec as offspec – they would see the same amount of use…

There is good news on the guild front – potentially more raids – which pleases me, as I am a 2-3 raids a week, every week sort of raider – less than that means I lose concentration/focus.  And means that my raiding experiece falls behind where I think it should be.  I’ll admit to being one of those people that sees a debuff dodging fight a few times before it sticks in the subconscious enough to be good at a role – I never was one for sight-reading at the piano after all.

Raids

So far, I have been to Baradin Hold twice – kills both times – first time was a first kill – much running around madly…

And Magmaw – as DPS.  The tactic of all players bar tanks together in a melee group, and one player at ranged really worked for the positioning of the column of fire – we managed to DPS down the adds, even with mind sear being nerfed.

Three priests in 10 – so three Hymns of Hope – all required.

And it felt like a solid kill.

Next was the Tron Council  – by the end of scheduled raid time,  I thought we had got the rhythm down – now we need to pick it up and do a little more and we are there.  Target switching needs to be slightly more focussed – but otherwise good – we were regularly at 50% with good healer mana, but it seemed to slide a bit round about boss number 7 – Arcanotron seems to be the easiest – and having a regular dedicated interrupt on the big damage casts is also helpful.

Leap of Faith – Squishy says: help!/hold it right there!

So the usual thoughts about this one are:

a) how to grief friendlies
b) how to get a DPS out of the fire
c) how to stop your tank from charging too far ahead

but how about:

a) how to bring your tank/plate melee to you so that you can be protected by them
i) ^^ in battlegrounds/other PvP
ii) when you have unaccountably got aggro in PvE (oh, over DPS is one thing, but overhealing is another. And dispelling seems to have an unfortunate habit of annoying enemy NPCs) and your tank is too far/does not have an intercept ability, and this is accepted as a tactic with your group…

Cataclysm: Uldum – that’s another fine mess…

You can take away my freedom, but – look, why didn’t you just let me dot them up and run around from side to side – we’d have been OK, trust me, I’m a priest…

Patch 4.0.1 – Cataclysm starts now!

To be honest, I think that the blog will take a back seat for the next few weeks, as I struggle to get to grips with the new mechanics…

Let’s see, after hours of download yesterday, a complete wipe of my addon folder and some new downloads later, I have several key addons not working/not updated.

I have several missing glyphs – most of them have been destroyed.

I have re-configured the Power Auras for 2 characters, bought some T10 for my new rogue, attempted two heroics as DPS, gemmed and enchanted the new stuff (almost). I have configured clique for the priest only (2 specs)

Noticed that my hunter now needs new gems, made one spec for my mage, made a dodgy feral dps spec and a dodgy heal spec for my druid, made a DPS spec for my DK, and gone round sholazar a few times hoovering up the herbs so I can persuade a willing scribe to make the missing glyphs on *all* of them…

My plans over the next week are to attempt to fill in the missing holes in the addons, get a few more glyphs made up, practice heals and dps on the priest, practice dps on the mage and rogue.

Just possibly, I might try and play on the other toons a bit, just so that I know what the buttons do now… but the immediate priority is the priest, rogue and mage…

As for the emblems – well, I spent some on my rogue – and there is still one or two more items to get – but just about everyone else is going to keep their emblems in the bank – unless I get close to the cap – and I’ll worry about that when it happens. Getting emblems (points) now will be a happy by-product of learning to play again. And I can see how the money is going to be useful, given the costs of the next expansion…

Rogue 80: Rogue 80 Hit Caps

Rogue 80: Rogue 80 Hit Caps.

Now I have my combat-specced rogue at 80, I am working on gear.

I am gemming constantly for agility, and looking for drops that have agility and arpen on them.

I have enchanted for agility and have chosen the icewalker enchant for my boots, to increase my +hit chance and my crit rating.

I believe that this posts suggests that although the melee hit cap is 8% (as expected) my 5/5 precision helps make my effective melee hit cap 3%.

However my poison hit cap is 17% (less 5% this is 12%).

I am currently sitting on 10.8% hit from my gear, so this means I am within shouting distance of the poison hit cap – at 15.8%.  Add a draenai and I am very close.  Or add a shadowpriest and I am capped.

My current rotation (plan) is to Sinister Strike to 5 combat points, then Slice and Dice, then Sinister Strike to 5 and then rupture.   Then sinister strike until 5 points and if it is not dead,  then Eviscerate.

The thing is, I am not yet at the point where I have got my CDs under control.  I sometimes end up with SnD dropping, because I was too busy watching the combat points number, or without energy.  Also, I have not effectively worked out a multi-target strategy that seems effective – other than hitting tricks to tank and charging in with FoK or Killing Spree.  If things die too fast, then I cannot follow the combat point rotation above, because I barely get 3 Sinister Strikes in (with blade Flurry that is slightly better, but the comabt points do not seem to add up any faster).  I am leaning towards a 1 point SnD starter, then as many CPs as I can before a rupture, so long as it is not dead yet.

My DPS is a little ineffectual.  Against the dummy I can get up to 2900 – using the single target rotation.  But it is not yet fixed in my internal timing system yet, as to which ability is about to go.

One of the things I am trying to train myself atm is to always have tricks on CD.  And to try and interrupt as much as possible – I think I need some alteration of my action bars to make it slightly easier – perhaps a keybind or two.  It gets a lot easier when I remember the fights and what to expect.  There is probably an interrupt addon out there that makes it slightly more easy than the default interface.  But practice has to make it easier.

So, practicing in heroics (preferably ICC ones) is what I really want to do with Neuri – the badges will soon turn into badges of super-duperness with the next patch badge-conversion system – so I shall get an effective triumph=> Frost badge conversion.  So nothing wasted there then.  But the real thing I am trying to achieve is practice.  And apart from working on the target dummy (which very obligingly stays still and does not attempt to eat me) this seems the best way.  Because 3K DPS is way too low now for my gear level – I’m fairly sure it should be heading towards 5K+ – there are a few pieces of ilvl 200 in there, but I’m pretty sure more could be squeezed out of the kit if I really understood what I was doing.

Picking Hard Modes « I Like Bubbles

Picking Hard Modes « I Like Bubbles.

This is quite interesting – since ItP now have a substantial number of Slayers, we are trying heroic modes.  And, basically, we are trying everything on heroic mode until the servers break on us…

So, that’s Marrogar, LDW, Gunship and *kersplat**Ow!* Saurfang – Ok, we try that one on Friday…

I’m supposing it’s more about going for a new challenge.  And, boy, Saurfang is a challenge for us – but we are getting closer and closer to it.

I quite like being able to do heroic modes – the tuning suits me better – it reminds me of when EO were learning ICC25 9 months ago – we were triumph +1 geared, and there was no buff – things were a lot harder then.  And therefore a lot more fun to achieve.  Everyone had to pull their weight and then some.

PlusHeal.com • View topic – Priest 4.0 Glyphs Analysis

PlusHeal.com • View topic – Priest 4.0 Glyphs Analysis.

Good discussion post on the new patch glyphs.   I will need new glyphs cutting.  I do like the psychic scream one much more….

Pottering…

There’s a definite feeling of autumn in the air for WoLK – lots of people are levelling, making the final push to 80 – or getting in a few achievements that they would not have time for otherwise.

This weekend, Cress was lucky enough to get a group that could manage Lessrabi – which is pretty amazing, since Cress can either damage things or heal things, but not interrupt – as it happened, both the healer and the tank switched to max DPS – only one interrupt seemed to be used (but I could be wrong). All over in a few seconds. I now have a red drake.

And I’m working on killing ogres around Nagrand for the Kurenai reputation – I am working through Revered now, but it’s a long old slog.

Worse than that, apparently, is the collection of stuff (that looks like dust) to make Halaa tokens – one of my new guildies was kind enough to log onto his horde alt, and dance around in his birthday suit in the graveyard, whilst a group of alliance 80s raced to see whether they could kill him before he got out of range. Feel the pain – I think he died over 150 times… Actually, it was a race to kill him before the DK ghoul did…

Trying to overcome my phobia about PvP – cue “feel the fear and do it anyway” – Neuri had the most fantastic time in random Wrath dungeons – levelled a whole level like that- probably only about 5 in total, but all pretty painless, in company with new guildies. Who pointed out that AV was a good place to get XP this weekend – and who said that rogues were fantastic in PvP… now at level 77, I have not taken Neuri anywhere near a battleground – so cue PvP achievements popping up all over the place… I have to be the worst PvP rogue in history – but amazingly, staying with the pack helped – and I didn’t even die – which was unusual. I usually die and then can’t orient myself to the *right* place to be…

I have *still* not completed Dragonblight as a result of this dungeon fun – so I have decided to take a trip up to the Argent Tournament to see what’s happening up there – and to do a few IC quests.

Our Sunday raid with ItP did not come off – probably because a few of the core raiders were unavailable – post wedding party fallout meant that they were probably tired. And/or hungover. And because RL>wow, this is fine. And just goes to show how important the presence of committed raiders is – and how casual signups cannot be relied upon to make up a raid – and how we all depend on each other to get something done. It’s not the absence of one individual that breaks us, it’s 4 people.

Having said that – the absence of 2 people meant that we nearly could not get Jaraxxus down – I was really hoping to do this on Bieslook, as she needs frosties more than Cress does, and should be amply geared for that instance – but… we had two new 80s with us, who were a bit rusty, and so 8 manning the beasts was painful… Popping over to TS brought 2 people from ItP to help out – which sort of saved the day really, as they were top damage.

Oh – is saying “your DPS is *enormous*” in awestruck tones [1] a bad thing? Because I used to think that getting over 1K DPS as an average in a dungeon before level 80 was quite good. But I was put to shame by a frost mage who was pulling 3K… about the same level as me…

[1] not sure if it counted as acceptable banter. Hoping so. It’s kind of easy to get too casual though. I remember one time I talked to the wife of another guildy whose opening comment was “I hear you’ve been spending a lot of time with my husband”….

Trial night

So, first raid night with new guild.

ICC10 normal (shame Kingslayer 25 doesn’t unlock heroic 10 really).

I didn’t bring enough candles   For the first time in ages, I went in with only a stack.  Spec changing ruins my candle consumption.  I think there is already an EO guild called “you no take candle” because otherwise I should rename my banking guild…

So, kind of strange really.  EO has this system (I guess this is how 25man raiding differs – you have to have systems, rather than ad hoc ways of doing things) where you have dedicated healer chat channels, class channels and then the raid channel.   Where there is a bit of healing strategy, the healers can talk amongst themselves about what they were doing, and adjust it.  The healing officer of the day will set assignments (the same in the DPS channels etc).  Where there is a difficulty, this can be addressed in the channel, rather than the whole raid having a bit of a barney.

So, I  felt a bit of a numpty having to ask whether I was DPS or healing for a particular encounter, or whether I was healing right side, left side or whatever – or, *facepalm* whether this was a 3 healer fight or not (I really got confused between the names of the two caster druids – one a tree, one a chicken).

One wipe, a mispull, but otherwise a clean run – there were clear explanations, no shouting, some people had done the bosses before, some not – I have done the first four on 10man quite a few times, but the rest on 10man not that often.  Some of the pulls were more cautious than I had expected – I am so used to EO casually zerging the 25 man trash (who cares if you get a little bit singed/poisoned – that’s what healers are for) that using CC on the trash up to Council and BQL was unexpected.   Although, not using a LOS pull on the trash into the council room was something I have not experienced:  I’ve never been at the front up with the tank with my shackle ready and waiting…

The whole arrangement is so casual, but that doesn’t mean they were not serious – I mean, no-one was messing around, and we got as far as Sindy, but with not enough time to get more than one pull at her.

I quite like them – it’s early days yet, but I am slightly worried they think I am waving a wowcock…  I *have* been working on the gear now for 9 months, so it ought to be reasonably good.  But if you mostly run 10mans, and don’t get to go into 25mans, then when you reach your ceiling of what gear drops you can have, then looking at the 25man gear must seem like another level.  This has to be the evil that Blizz is seeking to cure in Cataclysm – even if it was the final nail in the coffin for the 25 man guild that was EO.

I have no idea how long this trial will last,  who will be telling me whether I have passed or failed, how long to wait and find out – nothing of that nature is written on their website – again, so unlike the systems in EO where you got a 4 month (extendable if necessary) trial.  Some people failed rather sooner than that if they were not deemed to be a good fit for the team on a social basis.

The good thing about this guild is that they are not so *tired* and *jaded* and*fed up* and *shouty*.  That was the downside of EO – the officers were so fed up with having to make people behave properly and efficiently.  And being closer to the front end of progression raiding makes the work harder – less of a cushion for error when your gear only just matches the content – and some raiders just don’t find that level of challenge to be comfortable.

So, I don’t know.   But they do seem nice…