World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Release Date – PC

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Release Date – PC.

A rumour still – but I reckon now that November could be about right.

Cataclysm beta still needs some refining, but it really can’t be long now – there are large numbers playing, so the data must be feeding back – after a week away, I expect there to be another big patch in there…

We are at the end of August – so 8-9 more weeks of testing sounds good…

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…

Hmm – raiding?

I *think* I might have found a potential raiding home – they are not as progressed as EO was, and they may only be temporary, but:

• they seem to be mature – and require 18+ players
• the person I spoke to – not an officer –  was courteous and patient
• they want to do 25 man raiding – they have joined up with another raid group to do so, but have completed ICC10
• their raid days are Weds, Fri and Sat
• the raid times are 18.45-22.00 UK time – first pull at 19.00
• they do happen to have a space for a holy priest
• they might happen to have a space for a pally tank, if K is interested (but hey, he’s his own man, and he might not be)
• they are the guild of a vague acquiantance on /drum

So – I went to bed last nigh feeling positive, for once, about the whole raiding thing.  Because if there’s something I am sure about, it is that if you do not play a character, they gather dust.  PS and K are gathering dust.  And I’m not wildly happy about my 3rd main gathering dust.  And I’m not happy with pugging raids either.  And I do not want to try and join the top guild on the server, because that’s just hardcore.  I require committed social raiding 🙂

So, now to have a good look at their website and think about an application.

RIP Even Odds. RIP raiding?

http://vomsters.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/wrath-progression-no-more/

my response is below – I’m sorry to see the demise of my raiding guild – although it has been coming for a while. I’d hoped that the signs were just twitches, and that we could have papered over the cracks – it’s not long before the end of the expansion now – perhaps the entity that was EO could have survived, given a sort of hiatus.

EO was a good place to stay.  It had a problem with the 10man splits – they worked so long as they were not fixed raiding groups, and the teams were rotated, but the moment they became the tight-knit groups, then there was bad feeling.  There has to be – after all, a clique is something that you are either part of, or not part of.

But, I can cheerfully say that it was not a bad place to be.  There was little immaturity, not that much wowcock, a genuine feeling that behaviour that was insulting, racist, sexist or offensive would be stamped on – which, sad to say, is not the norm for WoW.  As a 25man raid group, we were either 2 or 3 on the alliance side of the server – 8th overall in progression – not bad for a social guild where people could admit to private lives, and where moving house/having babies/getting married were considered suitable reasons for raid absences – those kinds of markers that distinguish adults from teens, whose priorities and attitudes are different.

Is this the end of raiding for me?  I guess.  I don’t know.

Beta

I haz a beta key.

Now for the downloader to do its job.  It probably means I cannot even play tonight on live, if the guestimated download time is as long as it says.

But I can try the patterns.

From the looks, there are at least 6 people I know personally who have keys (three I share RealID with) so it won’t be quite as lonesome as last time.

No squee at all.  Absolutely none.  Especially when I checked Battlenet to make sure it was not a spam email, and saw the client.

Kingslayer (2)

Last night was the second time I was present when the Lich King was killed – only on 25 normal, but still a bit of an achievement.

And this time I did not get nommed by Vile Spirits and ran like a mad thing.  And was alive until 10%.  And the tank cried out for Guardian Spirit, and got it (not sure if it mattered, but it was present when he called for it)

So this time I earned my Kingslayer title.

The really strange part of it is that the pity buff is now 10% greater than when we first downed him, at the end of May – and so he went down so quick that the transitions were something of a surprise – happened far more quickly than I expected from my memory of last time.

It’s the strangest feeling – we are all geared up to the nines, and so we should be able to have a decent crack on heroic LK (not to mention PP and saurfang) but everyone is careless and not concentrating.

There is a title reward for getting Lichy down on 25man heroic – I don’t think anyone on the realm has done it yet, so perhaps there is still some lure there.  But I doubt it – there are not enough who really want it – most seem to be wanting to go off and play Starcraft.

Now, I think it is unlikely that Team Pirate will come back and get this on 10man – we just wouldn’t stand the constant wipes needed to learn the defile/valkyr:  I could be wrong, but I reckon Ruby Sanctum would be easier.

talent.mmo-champion.com – priest – 10/31/0 – holy priest build

This is an update post to https://timefortincan.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/cataclysm-talents-holy-priest/

talent.mmo-champion.com – priest – 10/31/0.

This is my second attempt at a holy priest build.

For some reason, my earlier link has gone horribly wrong – the underlying talents have shifted, and the point allocation has gone wrong – resulting in me spending a talent in mana burn (not something I need at all in PvE, so I know this wasn’t what I meant)

I’m still upset at not being able to choose Inner Focus from the Disc tree, and I’ve still gone for Evangelism and Archangel for their potential mana regen skills.

So, as follows:

Rank 1:

Improved Renew 2/2

Empowered Healing 3/3 (this tooltip says that Flashheal, Heal and Binding Heal gain an additional 9% of bonus healing, and Gheal 18%.  Since I use fheal and bheal now (and heal is supposed to increase heal choices in cata) this seems a more useful choice than in my current build.)

Rank 2:

Improved Healing 3/3 – not a brilliant choice here, but the points need to be spent somewhere.

Inspiration 3/3 – one of my favourite healing spells – even if it doesn’t show up on meters as mitigation and make me look good, *I* know it’s there – my Grid is set up to show those who have the buff, and on the times when my assignment includes extra love for tanks, I try to keep this up as much as possible.

Rank 3:

Empowered Renew 3/3

I tend to use Renew a lot as a filler spell whilst POM and CoH are on CD – and if CoH is going to have a much longer CD now, then I can splash more people with a little extra renew.  Even if ther are druids in the raid, my renew still counts for a fair amount of effective healing.

Deliverance 3/3

Has the old icon for serendipity, and has a similar effect – hasting the casting of your next Gheal or PoH – triggered by Fheal and Bheal.  But the effect is immediate and stacks up to 3 times.

Rank 4:

Healing Prayers – 1/1

SoR (failangel) 1/1 – look ma, I’m still healing, still healing, still ergh <flop>

Holy Concentration 3/3

Rank 5:

Lolwell 1/1 Have to take this in the new holy talent build, in order to have access to Chakra.  So, it was just a blip when I tried this last time.  Hope there is some use for this.  I mean, maybe Group 2 (healers) can use it.  Because at least healers don’t mind an extra source of healing, and we use raidframes and mouseover macros or Clique so could, feasibly, use this.  As things stand, the only way people would use it, is if a raid assist had it targeted…

Body and Soul 2/2 I’ve become a bit of a fan of this – the cleanse bonus works well for me in 5 mans and the speed increase is useful on wiping, and chasing after tanks that are determined to test my healing-through-walls/healing-from-the-other-end-of-the-street skills.  I’ve also used it to buff one of the chain red-line debuffed people in BQL, on tanks running in to Sindy when we have no disc

Rank 6:

Circle of Healing. 1/1  Signature spell.  Love it and squeeze it and call it George

Chakra 3/3 New spell system:

When you use Prayer of Healing, Renew or Heal three times in a row, you will enter a Chakra state empowering you for 20 seconds.  You can only be in one chakra state at a time.

There are 4 chakra states – PoH, Renew, Heal and Smite.

PoH:  Heal x6%.  CD reduced by a massive 1.5 seconds.  I can see a mini rotation of flash x3, POHx3 for a massive raid spike of damage.

Renew: Heal x6% GCD reduced by 0.3 second.  http://www.wowhead.com/spell=25222/renew is an instant cast spell now – Does this mean that, when hasted up to the max, a renew can be cast every 0.7 seconds?  It makes choosing Fheal or Renew even more critical – inspiration does not proc on Renew, and Deliverance is triggered by fheal and bheal.

Heal: Crit effect increased by 3%, Heal has 60% chance to refresh your renew on the target.  So a mini-rotation or spell-casting cluster might be Renew followed by 3xHeal (which may proc Inspiration and also your Holy Concentration through the increased crit.  And then perhaps a bubble or a pom before the next renew spell-cycle?  I guess it depends on whether the basic spell cluster takes longer than 15 seconds (the duration of renew unglyphed)

Smite:  Total Holy and shadow damage increased by 9%

Test of Faith 1/3 – one of those shifting priorities with Body and Soul – depends on how much overheal you get, I suppose.

Top Rank:

Guardian Spirit 1/1 – the more I use it, the more I love it.  Again, the  40% increased healing effect does not make my meters look good, because I usually throw it on a tank that is taking a pounding, and I am not a tank healer, but it is a wonderful feeling when it procs and I know it saved a tank life – it’s pretty heartwarming when I see the healthbar of the tank stop flickering with uncertainty on Grid.  And useful when I know that the tank healer is indisposed (so useful when the tank healer shouts “use your cooldowns, <tankname>” over vent) to throw this on to help out.  Glyphing it was the best thing I ever did 🙂