Archive
4.3 thoughts
Michael Myers anyone.....
First off my beloved priests, our T13. I am not sure about it. I really like T12 so far. T13 reminds me of Holloween and mardi gras. Well with Transmog, it’s a moot point.
The bonuses for t13:
- Healer, 2P — After using Power Infusion or Lightwell, the mana cost of your healing spells is reduced by 25% for [10|15] sec. (10 sec for Discipline, 15 for non–Discipline.)
- Healer, 4P — Your Power Word: Shield has a 10% chance to absorb 100% additional damage, and the cooldown of your Holy Word abilities is reduced by 20%.
- Shadow, 2P — Shadow Word: Death deals an additional 55% damage, and you no longer take damage from your own Shadow Word: Death when the target fails to die.
- Shadow, 4P — Your Shadowfiend and Shadowy Apparitions have a 100% chance to grant you 3 Shadow Orbs each time they deal damage.
For healers: I am not sold on the 2P, especially as Holy. But it could be worse. For 4P – one word: blarg.
Shadow definitely wins out here. To be honest I would not be surprised to see it altered in some form before final release.
The changes to Holy for 4.3 are a step in the right direction – the changes to Divine Hymn and the ability to strenthen it and lessen its cooldown is quite nice. Its also nice to see they are fixing atonement to take into account large hitboxes (Beth’Tilac, and Rag made atonement useless)
The changes to Wild Growth were surprising to me.
•Wild Growth healing value has been reduced by 20%.
•Glyph of Wild Growth now also increases the cooldown on Wild Growth by 2 seconds.
Straight up nerf to druids? Why? Sure they are healing beasts, but does not make them seem OP or anything. It’s the player playing the class which makes it’s good, not the class. bad player still means bad druids.
Paladin’s also got some changes – no more mana from judging…they have to use spirit more. Why? Maybe someone can answer this, but are there low spirit paladins out there? (I know as disc i reforged a bunch of it away)
Other things that caught my eye was the new mounts. 🙂
Dancing Darkmoon bear! yes, please!
Also I know I should not have looked at it, but I could not help but look at the dungeon jounrnal preview for the new raid.
A few things caught my eye.
1.) Looks like a lot of damage sharing, so stacking…(SR we are screwed)
2.) Other mechanics where the raid may have to use the boss’ own abilities against it.
3.) Thrall as Earth Warden? not surprised really.
4.) Tyrande of the past…hawt….hopefully they will also make this her in game model. It’s quite impressive looking.
Hype……trying not to buy into it…must remain jaded!
As Lyssi knows, I am quite excited about SWTOR coming out. Well today Bioware decided to showcase and give us more info on the companions.
Pluses
1.) They have more personality then before, more customization, and romance if you are into that junk. 😛
2.) They will level up and gain access to special companion only talents/abilities.
3.) Besides changing physical appearences you can change their armor as well now.
4.) A lot more complex and intelligent then WoW pets it appears.
Cons
1.) this an MMO, not a single player console RPG
2.) more complexity is not necessarily better
3.) this is an MMO not a solo game….
The link also has an interview with it, Bioware says the game is fully playable, start game to endgame, and they are just focusing on getting bugs out of the system….cause they want to deliver a polished game…I really hope they do, cause all the bugs in DA2 sucked, although ME2 did not have the same issues. The more I see SWTOR the more excited I am to play, however, it can still flop like many other MMOs.
P2P MMO’s are really going to raise the bar to stay viable, against giant WoW or even rival upstart Rift. Another thing against big AAA P2P MMO’s is the f2p model is really becoming more and more popular, and lets face it maybe the future of MMO’s. Look at the ressurgance in people playing games like AoC, EQ/EQ2, or LoTRO. And look at the plethora of F2P games like Atlantica Online, Guild Wars, Perfect World, and League of Legends.
If F2P going to be the furture of MMO’S? It really does seem that way. The people with the disposable income who appear to be the main audience of MMO’s now, may have been hardcore and playing for hours at a time. These people now have grown older, gotten jobs, married, kids etc, they maybe looking for something they can pickup and play and leave alone for an extended period of time. If this is the case the F2P model is the more attractive model, pay for more feature one may want and worry about a recurring fee. It seems as an audience gets older, the more casual it may become as a whole.
Hell even take WoW now…lots of more features that the casual base have cried for years…Transmog! With WoW being as old as it is, Blizzard will have to decide what they want to do with the game. They will want to add more things to keep more casual players resubbing, also they may also need to take a look at the possible conversion to a F2P model as it gets older and older. Lots of blogs and lots of forum posts show…omg wow is so boring etc etc etc, is such a grind…A prime indicator…for a break or quit.
(however, lets face it, no matter what skin a MMO has on…it’s all the same formula: kill ten rats, level up, kill more rats, get more loots, boom kill dragons, more loots, kill demons etc, get more loots. The good ol’ purple carrot trap is in place for MMOs whether we like it or not. People are inherantly greedy and want more for themselves or even their own virutal avatar. Not much can realy be done to change the MMO formula, hell even for gaming in general. It’s variations on the same grind.)
SWTOR….
OMG has a bubble….for the jedi sage….disc priest in space with lightsabers…..
The link above is for a talent calculator we all know and love. Sure things may change prior to shipping, but its cool to play around with the talents. Looking around in the Jedi Sage as a healer. there are talents here and there that look a lot like wow talents. One for example reminds me of Furor and Moonglow of the resto druid trees. There is also a disc like talent to allow for faster casting of….BUBBLES! Also a straight up more healing and dmg talent and a increase in the amt of dmg said bubble takes. Lots of AoE and HoT….so a healer with bubbles, HoTs, and AoEs…sounds likea priest 😛
Ok I am set for SWTOR.
Raiding…makes you a bad person…really it does…
RAIDING MAKES YOU A BAD PERSON!
ok…i feel i wasted 5 minutes of my life reading this….it’s like calling going to work makes me a bad person, because work is a tedious, repeating process of trying to better oneself with promotions etc….
The author seems to equate any repeating monotonous activity, with the explicit goal to improve onself, even with small gains (so we need to get more) makes one a bad person….
damn sounds like just being alive makes one a bad person…..
If they also dont like MMO’s or gaming in general, why play..?
Sept 20th…GC applied the nerfbat to FL…4.3 please get here.
Catgirl?
• Shannox, Beth’tilac, Rhyolith – health and damage reduced by 15%.
Did these three…really need anymore nerfing?
• Other bosses – health and damage reduced by 25%.
Again….why?
• All adds’ health and damage have been reduced in the same proportions as bosses.
Meh
• Hellhounds and Unstable Magma deal much less damage.
the damage trash put out was quite ridiculous.
• Alysrazor’s Fiery Tornados move slower.
Cool i guess?
• The Wings of Flame buff duration on Alysrazor is now uniformly 30 seconds.
Still hate flying!
• Alysrazor drops 1 additional feather for 10-player mode and 2 additional feathers for 25-player mode in all cycles.
Not really needed…?
• Wrath of Ragnaros in Stage 1 now knocks targets up, but not back.
This is kinda cool, but you really should not be standing in front of a fire trap….
So Firelands…nerfed quite a bit 15-25% Really does take a bite out of the ferocity of the FL…maybe we should call it the Not so Hot Firelands…
But that being said…if you still cannot deal with mechanics…you are still not going to down bosses, no matter the nerf. But to those who can deal with them….well…have those peggle addons installed!
So 4.3…..
3 new 5 mans…must be done in order the 1st time. Sounds interesting, but will get old.
LFR – meh…this is not going to be pretty.
T13 in raids only – i like the idea, but I dont like how one can still obtain a lower version of it in LFR…looks like the min/maxer I am (when it comes to my priest) may have to jump into the LFR fray!
4.3 discussion
1.) Are nerfs good for the maintenance and happiness of the overall population in WoW?
Business Slice: Of course it is! Getting the majority of the people to see the content Blizzard has worked on makes perfect business sense. Which will net a company more money? 6-7 million customers or 2-3 “hardcore” players, of course the more casual base will make Blizzard money in the long haul. Without profit Blizzard cannot make improvement/develop more games. It’s all about the benjamins! MONEY MONEY MONEY!
Red Slice: RAWR! REDSLICE SMASH! WTF! WHY ARE THEY NERFING IT MAKES NO SENSE, 4.3 is not even out, or has any concrete information etc. Why are they caving into the whiners and baddies? Why even make a game and make it so easy? With the nerfs it may even make the most casual of player go…why am I playing a game this easy? This makes Hello Kitty Online seem more difficult. 4.2 have been out only for a few months, it only has 7 bosses, why make it so laughable that it can now be cleared by a new group in a week or 2 at most? /smash! WTH are they passing out epix 2 every1?
Slice: It would make more sense to have a balance of the two. They really should take a good look at what is over tuned and also what maybe under tuned and fix as appropriate. No real reason as well to nerf Heroic modes, those should remain as the pinnacle of raiding. Only the best of the best should be able to tackle those. Give the general player base the normal modes, and the heroics to the “hardcore”. Give them each a playground to play in. A flat nerf to the content in general is silly – make the players get a gradual buff (like in Icecrown Citadel) this allows for some mistakes to be made, but does not trivialize the content totally, this in coordination with appropriate hotfixes of mechanics that are under tuned and over tuned.
However by nerfing stuff by this degree so far from the 4.3 patch…I hope it does not cause a backlash that they will nerf 4.3 so quickly cause, “it’s too hard!”
2.)Should I cancel my sub and wait for DW/4.3?
Business Slice: No! Give me your money errr to Blizzard. You need your WoW crack no?
Red Slice: Yeah that will teach them to nerf stuff that doesn’t need it! “/grumbles” Freakin casuals!
Slice: Each individual should decide if they wish to play right now or wait. Use your brain and make your own decision.
3.)Transmogrify?
Business Slice: $$$ more ways to keep people attached to an older game! Good idea to pull at people’s heartstrings.
Red Slice: Old content? LOL…why go back there? It’s not relavent. Why waste time on old raid when you can raid current content or cap VP? Old cheevs? Only ones that matter are ones that are current and give you mounts that are current!
Slice: Yay for clothes! Barbie time?
4.) Catgirls?
All: HELL YEAH!
2 healing…a punishment?
2 healing is it a punishment for a job well done?
At times it does feel like it is…and I can understand that. You get thru the encounter for the 1st time 3 healing it, that is what one is used to, you can predict the amount of healing needed, you know someone(s) have your back, but there is still enough challenge to keep it exciting. 🙂 Then boom, you don’t have as much backup, your mana strains, and what worked in the past is no longer working.
I completely understand the “if it aint broke, don’t fix it idea” but if it aint working for a fight may need to change something. For some fight you can brute force it but others you cannot.
Looking at the rebuttal to Murloc Parliament – screaming monkies – where if you can 2 heal things, why not? Also the DPS can be doing all they can etc why not bring something to edge it over. However, bringing in someone who may not be used to a DPS OS maybe more of a hinderence then a help. They may mess up mechanics etc. (lol like i did on Baleroc – see 2 healing baleroc – also with 9 people I messed up quite a few crystal soaks)
Now I am not sure which strat they are exactly using, but both ideologies have there flaws and pros.
2 healing – more DPS, encounter ends faster. But allows for fewer mistakes. DPS have to avoid everything they can dmg wise.
3 healing – more room for error. Fights will take longer, poss might hit an enrage timer.
EDIT- Catgirls
Funny search terms….
ok…I know others have made posts about ways to get to your blog…thought I would share some…
1.) sexy space marine – Space marines…sexy? Not sure if they belong in the same search term lol.
2.) 4.2 disc reforging…ok this i can touch on
I like to think of it was int/spirit (play around to find where you are comfortable)/haste/mastery crit
Now this is not set in stone – this will depend on your preference on playstyle and your raid composition.
Int is important/king obviously.
Spirit is up in the air – mana regen is important, but how much do you need? too much and you lose out on troughput stats you could be going for. too little and you wont last the fight. (personally, i think i may reforge some of mine away – gonna overhaul gems/reforging tonight)
Mastery – probably out biggest thorn in our side. It helps our niche well (damage mitigation) but at the same only effects a few of our spells – Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis.
Crit – unreliable at best. With the change to crit heals it makes it appear to be very desirable on paper..but in reality don’t gem/enchant/reforge for it.
Haste – a nice throuput stat. Helps to push out those heals, PoH’s faster etc. However, haste does this at the cost of your mana pool. Watch the mana consumption.
When you take into account of raid size – 25 or 10 man. Your choices can deviate farther. in 25 man you may have the chance to specialize in your role – straight up PoH machine (haste), or tank healer (mastery). Also buffs you maybe missing in 10 you will more then likely have in 25 man raids.
What is in your healing team?
10 man – disc/rdruid/hpally – with the holy focusing on tanks and resto on the raid you may find yourself with a balance of three. In 10’s there will be lots of crosshealing as well.
10 man – disc/rsham/hpally – see above, but with a bit more raid healing.
10 man – disc/hpriest/hpally – once again see above disc/rdruid/hpally.
3.) funeral pyre or smoldering censer of purity for a disc priest?
My personal preference would be the Censer – haste would be better – especially if your OS is holy or shadow. Although you could reforce some of the crit on the Pyre – meh. Also with the spirit on the Censer one could play around with it if you have too much spirit and want to dump it.
Firelands update and thoughts on progression/training
OK as of this right now SR is now/still 6/7. Last night was our 1st real night of putting attempts on Ragnaros. Our other attempts were half-hearted attempts when we had maybe an hour left in raid time.
Last night was a full night of Ragnaros. I admit although we did not down the boss, I had a blast, the fight is a dynamic one and keeps you on your toes.
I would put the difficulty curve below that of Alysrazor – the stupid firebird is too dependant on a couple of things.
1.) You need a DPS or 2 who know how to fly in a 3rd environment well and DPS well.
2.) Tanks need max dps while still surviving and dancing around flame worms.
3.) Knowing how to dance, errr dodge fire tornados.
Ragnaros on the other hand…is really avoiding bad that you can and pew pew/heal heal. His mechanics are such you are not relying so on 2 roles. Everyone in this fight contributes to this fight to win.
We made it into the 2nd transition phase and through quite a few times. So I am glad we are able to blow past the first few phases quite easily.
phase 1
Tanks and melee closest to Rag. heal tanks easy easy.
What makes this phase is annoying is there is quite a few sources of unavoidable damage. I.E the silly knockback- make sure people spread out 6yds the best they can. Also when trigerring the trap make sure people are high on health. The damage is quite severe from it. Casters will want to be out of melee range of Rag, cause he has a knockback, which will also cause spell lockout.
1st transition phase
Done right there is very little damage done to the raid. Assign your raid memebers as approp to handle the 8 sons of flame. Most slows will NOT work – ice trap etc etc. One thing a feral druid friend told me was the slow from bear mangle does work. However, get used to the speed they move, but in reality they really have low health on 10 man, so sneezing on them will slow them down.
They move faster the more health they have. So slow down ones you can and kill more immediate threats 1st and go back to other ones who are not an immediate threat. Myself (a disc priest) found that even a Holy Fire and a Smite on one would slow it down quite a bit and allowed me to swap to another one and smite that one.
Phase 2
Again more avoiding bad and learning a pattern, we did have some rough patches here and there, but we got thru it quite easily. Things to watch for searing seeds, run to your assigned stack up point about 3 seconds before they spawn, the farther you are from them the less damage you take then they pop. Watch out for adds that spawn AoE them down. Watch for tire on the ground. It hurts! Again also watch the Hammer time smash. This phase lasts till he gets to 40%
Transition phase 2
Same thing he will drop the hammer and 8 sons of flame, handle like them like you would in the 1st one. He will however add 2 new things to this. He will summon 2 Scions of Flame (2 million HP on 10 man) Your tanks will want to pick them up ASAP and do what they do as normal in the transition phase.
Second the Scions have no real special attacks, except they will cast a spell which will target a random raid memeber. This spell causes the targeted raid memeber to leave a flame of trail behind them. Keep them healed. The target member till want to run to the edge to avoid leaving fire in the middle. Because any Son or Scion that runs thru the flame is healed for quite a bit.
Another change about this phase is you will want to keep 1 son of flame alive for a bit at 50% health, as he will be uber slow. This will allow the raid time to damage the Scions of Flame as much as possible. Cause in p3 right at the beginning would be the best time it would appear to pop lust/warp/hero.
Can’t say much about p3 as barely got into it. Our best attempt was about 38% ish. But he is going to go down soon!
Training or Progression?
Makes a very good point…progression or training? Do you always have the individual you are used to doing it…on it all the time? Or do you devote some time to let someone else learn just in case? I know for some fights we have gotten some people used to a different duty, and I am glad we did. But makes me wonder what would happen if our mage cannot make it for a Alice-razor kill? Our Aff lock is aquainted with it, but I am not sure aff lock would be best up there.
Orangeslice > Other Sodas 