Category Archives: WoW

Holy qualms and related Cataclysm healing links

So Discpriests got some sweet buffs last week to boost their raidhealing power and having gone through various articles on healing in Cataclysm and the state of priests on the beta servers lately, I am beginning to wonder more and more where that will leave Holypriests in the upcoming expansion.

[/rant on]

I can’t say that I am very happy at the moment. The echoes from the test servers so far were disheartening – “priests have the lowest throughput”, “priests go OOM before everyone else”, “priests are the least efficient of the lot”. Blizzard states that druids and paladins are getting the nerfbat and that priests apparently are the only healers that are working as intended for lvl 85 while everyone else is still slightly overtuned. Wonderful…
While Disc gets buffed, our Chakra sounds duller by the minute and Blessing of Sanctuary got nerfed along with the respective AoE heals from other healers. And with the distribution of heavy AoE healing to everyone in Cataclysm, Holypriests will definitely not hold their niche of powerful raidhealing in the same way they have done in WotLK anymore, with our fabulous CoH (since nerfed) and bursty PoH – the two spells that really set us apart from Disc and the shammies or druids on raidhealing duty.

What will be the state of Holypriests in the expansion? Does our strength come down to “gimmicks” like Lightwell and Leap of Faith now, while we’re struggling to maintain our Chakras AND Evangelism stacks (an issue I have seen coming for a while)?

All the articles I’ve read so far have done nothing to improve my initial mood on the holy tree changes. From day one I have played a holypriest in WoW and those of us rolling priests back then chose the class because they wanted to be healers – good healers, THE healer. Continuously Blizzard homogenized all healing classes in WoW and I am fine with equally powerful healers as long as you still have reasons to favor every class for their individual strengths. This was true in TBC and mostly in WotLK too. Holypriests were never the most efficient healers but we were always the most versatile while producing great raid healing together with the shammies. It seems this is true no longer.

At the same time I don’t see we were given buffs to make up for this loss: where’s our improved single-target power? Heal-Chakra (still too slow @ 1500+ haste)? We do not have access to the buffs and shields of Discpriests and we don’t have the Holy Paladins single-target throughput. As for HoTs, they’ve just taken our extra HoT away again with the removal of Renew-Chakra.

Where’s my share Blizzard?

[/rant off]

Further reading

Dawn Moore from WoW Insider recently published a detailed and insightful overview on priest healing in Cataclysm heroics. I linked this in our guild forums as it is a very useful read for healers of all classes, while including some more priest-centric advice. To highlight a few of her most interesting points:

  • The new heroic dungeons are properly challenging and will require players to prepare a lot more than before due to more complex encounter mechanics. For this reason, you might want to lay off PuGs for a while – a long while.
  • Priests might find themselves in situations where they want to use Psychic Scream (glyphed) as CC.
  • You will want to encourage parties frequently to use Lightwell so you have more time for mana breaks.
  • Yes, you want to spec into Evangelism and Archangel – and things are going to get rather complicated for Holypriests:

So let me lay it on you … You will want to take the talents Evangelism and Archangel. I’m talking to both disc and holy here.  […]

Anyway, let’s get back to Evangelism and Archangel. The key to not going out of mana with these talents is upkeep. Especially with holy (and all the Chakra maintenance), it’s pretty easy to forget about your Evangelism stack and just heal until you realize you’re nearly out of mana (OOM). When this happens, you can freak out a little and pump out four or five Smites in a row — and hell, you might even pull it off without anyone dying. But if you do that, you fall behind.[…]

As a holy priest, I will look for natural breaks in the damage to Smite, then heal the rest of the time. You have to get comfortable riding out the duration of Evangelism (make a Power Aura for it if you have to), and if you must use Archangel at three or four stacks to keep from losing it, do so.[…]

While I always look forward to a challenge and welcome anything that adds to our versatility, I am very skeptical about coordinating for Archangel as a Holypriest. I’ve never liked the idea of smiting several times in a row just to regen mana and I have yet to see just how chaotic this will get while we are also trying to heal, cleanse, manage CDs and juggle Chakra states. Then again, if Chakra really ends up not being much of a choice anyway that should simplify matters, huh? /sarcasm

To finish off,  Matticus recently posted a Cataclysm raidhealing video that gives healers a nice idea of what to expect for the first raid encounters. I am actually looking very much forward to the more technical and tactical aspects of healing in Cataclysm – I just do have my justified worries about holy right now and how all players will cope with the required switches in mindset. Alas, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.

Dear guild applicant, what’s your weakness?

There I sat at one of my job agencies last Wednesday, feeling horribly out of character. I am looking for a new job at the moment, that is to say for a new new job, one that is hopefully as unlike to my last few jobs as possible, but there’s a desert to cross first, an annoying phase of explaining curricula and dealing with administrative bullshit.
And I notice these job agencies all look the same: gray and impersonal bastions of corporate capitalism, “help us to help you, so we get money from you working”, it’s a modern version of slave-trade really. Nothing to make you feel the ordinary human resource you are quite like job agencies. But to get where I want to go apparently they’re my best shot.

So, I sat in that small cubicle office waiting for my agent, some way-too-young, teeth-bleached sunnyboy in a way-too-expensive suit. Instantly I felt under-dressed. The whole procedure took about 30 minutes, half an hour of jolly good fun trying to explain to Ken why I am looking for a change of scenery and what salary I deem appropriate, given the fact that I lack experience in the field while holding an academic degree that probably surpasses the education of most people I would be working with. There’s something horribly depressing in realizing those 7 years at university were worth so little. Maybe I should mention my epic WoW skills and guild leadership experience? No?

Anyway, halfway through the exercise Ken caught me slightly unawares as I wasn’t actually prepared to do a full job interview, all I expected was some administrative stuff – yeah, call me a noob. So when he got to asking how I see my future or what my strengths and weaknesses are, I actually didn’t know what to reply to the latter straight away. My weaknesses? Errr…right that’s the standard phony question you can expect in every job interview. You know, the one where you’re supposed to display how much of a self-critic you are, oh-so capable of self-reflection. And that’s why everyone answers with some wanna-be weakness that isn’t a weakness at all, but a strength too really, like “I am such a perfectionist” or “I’m overly punctual”.

HA-HA…!

I hate things like that. They’re part of what (the brilliant and ingenious) Billy Connolly calls”beige-ism”. Everyone knows how utterly stupid and empty these questions (and answers) are – as if you were gonna tell your future boss that you’re a messy slob or like to steal cookies from the cafeteria. So I just sat there for a moment contemplating a potential answer vs. my utter disgust for the procedure, before I told him I was a little impatient at times (which is actually true), but in the way that I “really like to get jobs done fast and efficiently” (which is again actually true), ya know! He seemed to be perfectly happy with this answer and the conversation proceeded to other topics from there. Phew.

An exercise in phoniness

On my way home, the whole experience got me thinking about what a hilarious thing it would be to incorporate the more nonsensical parts of job interviews into the standard WoW recruitment procedure. Most guilds, ours included, already run a questionnaire that will touch on matters like playtime, goals and expectations in their application form. What if we included the awkwardness of real interview questionnaires in them, could we expect to get similar cringe-worthy answers? What would we expect our applicants to say?

Question #14: What do you consider your weaknesses as a player?
– Answer 1: “Sometimes I am just so focused on downing a boss, I forget about my CDs or taking a potion.”
– Answer 2: “I’m a total perfectionist. I always want to be the main puller and clear every pack in an instance.”
– Answer 3: “I’m a little impatient. I always want to start raids on time and hate wasting time on bio breaks.”

Question #15: Where do you see yourself 2 years from now?
– Answer 1: “As a valuable member of your raid guild and one of your top DPS”
– Answer 2: “As part of your officer’s team where I can contribute in the guild’s best interests.”
– Answer 3: “I’ll be celebrating our success of having become one of the server’s top 2 progression guilds.”

Question #16: Why should we take you instead of that other applicant?
– Answer 1: “While I don’t know the other person, I assure you I am better than him.”
– Answer 2: “Because nobody can heal like I do.”
– Answer 3: “I am a 100% committed and fit your guild’s profile perfectly. We have a great future together!”


Now wouldn’t that just be a blast? I really think we should include these questions in our guild’s recruitment questionnaire for shits and giggles if nothing else! A lot of players already think that WoW feels like a job rather than a game sometime, so let’s go the whole nine yards I say! =D

P.S. Dear job agents, please don’t be offended. I do not actually dislike you, it’s not like you invented the system. And I like keeping the pen!

World of Warcraft secrets: revisited

Some time ago I wrote an article on one of Dalaran’s best-kept secrets and was surprised and happy to get so many reactions from people telling me that they had never known about this. On top of that I was made aware of other similar secrets inside the game that I hadn’t discovered yet myself – once more a big thanks to those that left a comment or sent an Email!

I love the small and silly things in WoW so much that it inspired me to suggest the topic over at Blog Azeroth as they were desperate for more suggestions at the time – if you ever have a topic to share yourself, go and give them a hand.
Several WoW bloggers joined in the secret hunt and came up with great articles of their own. Once more I found that I hadn’t discovered nearly all the fun things hidden in WoW! Did you know that Dalaran does not only hold one, but actually three great secrets of this kind and that all of them are brought to you by a gnome?

Well, I do now! And if you’re curious to find out yourself, have a look at the full list of contributed WoW secrets published on Twisted Nether Blogcast! I’ve been wanting to get back to these for a while, well rather late than never.

For completeness sake I’d also like to mention two more contributions that didn’t join the shared topic but added a WoW secret of their own, either on their blog or as commenter on Raging Monkeys:

In case you’re a little bored with WoW at the moment, these might keep you entertained for a while! I can’t wait to discover the secrets hidden in the upcoming expansion – “WoW secrets, Cataclysm edition” coming soon!

Mi warcraft no es su warcraft

…or English for: my warcraft is not your warcraft.

In a past article of mine I wrote that gamers are not a community, a fact that has often grieved me on my journey through the gaming world. Even if we love the same MMO that doesn’t mean we have a lot in common, our views and values inside and outside of our cultural backgrounds and upbringing can be entirely different, even if gamers often wish to speak of themselves as a community, a group to belong to and identify with. My heart jumped a little at Metzen’s “Geek is…” speech at the Blizzcon 2010 but in reality many of these geeks will give other geeks a hard time because playing golf is so much cooler than playing tennis, ya know. Even in the world of geekdom there are nonsensical pecking orders.

Yet a facet of this that often strikes me, and on a much brighter note, is the diversity in which MMO players can and chose to play the game. When you look around in the WoW blogosphere you can already see the multitude of different approaches to the game, different interests and playstyles. For all I know, some WoW players are playing a completely different game than me! Every time I read an article on improved goldmaking or the many-colored world (and drama) of pugging or finding the right guild, I am strangely fascinated about the experiences and issues of some players, feeling oddly remote from them.
I actually love reading such articles because they show me how diverse an MMO really is and what “sub-cultures” there are entirely untouched by myself, existing like some parallel society.

Inside our own bubble

When I read this article by Spinks some time ago, I was reminded very strongly of the disparity in which all of us experience online games. I play WoW in my own little bubble which is the safety of my PVE raidguild of many years with its stable, longtime member base. Some of my guildmates have been around me since vanilla. I play on a European PVE server on which I have played my holy priest since day one. I’ve a long friendlist of people that have shared this server with me, acquaintances in other guilds and resources I can rely on if required. My entire outlook on the game and my future therein is safely founded on this.

I’ve no idea how it is to play this game as a more casual player, a non-raider, a role-player, a trade seller, a pugger or a frequent guild-switcher. The last time I filled out a guild application form was in vanilla WoW because ever since I have been an officer in raidguilds I have helped founding myself. I do not know how it is to feel “homeless” in WoW, I don’t need to pug and I don’t get scammed after paying a stranger to do my enchants. If people talk about the trolls in tradechat, I don’t know who they are – I haven’t followed any public chats in years. In my guild everything is available to me, access to content, free services and most of all shared companionship and laughter. I couldn’t imagine playing WoW in any other way and I dare say I would’ve quit ages ago if I had not found and created this space for myself.

We all live inside our own bubble when we play MMOs – the “massively” is actually only so much true. If we’re lucky, we find like-minded people to share them with. Sometimes we meet players who live in bubbles different from our own and when we do, we’re impressed or surprised at best, although irritated or annoyed are an option too. One such “clash” I’ve experienced myself was when Adrenaline established a temporary raiding alliance for lack of active raiders during our very first summer in TBC. All too soon we realized that our partner guild (which had a somewhat similar progress orientation, or so we thought) had an entirely different and (from our standpoint) less serious approach to raiding – it was two different worlds colliding, much to our own dismay. Of course they felt exactly the same way about us with our set standards and quiet, militaristic raid style. Needless to say our alliance didn’t last for long but it got us through the worst weeks of summer. It also taught us that lobotomy is probably preferable to raid alliances, even if a common enemy is great for building team spirit.

MMO subcultures

The more sandboxy an MMO is, the wider the potential spectrum of bubbles or sub-cultures becomes. I’ve played MMOs where big groups of people dedicated themselves entirely to trade, running shops of their own and spending huge amounts of time harvesting and crafting all around the clock. The most remarkable such example I have ever seen was in Ultima Online on the Atlantic Shard, where a player had set up his own gateway station located in his house where he provided teleports leading to all the different corners of the world for a fee. He had undertaken extensive traveling himself first in order to provide this service and it was widely used and appreciated.

While World of Warcraft is far off from a sandbox game, it still offers space for a variety of “sub-cultures” to develop and play the game to their own ends. By default Blizzard gives players the choice to experience their content from a PVE-, PVP- or RP-centric perspective. While I like PVP in WoW, I have never ever ventured into RP and I admit that it’s a very curious thing to me that I don’t feel comfortable with (whatever floats your boat tho!).

Then there’s the greedy goblins, fully dedicated to the mammon in WoW and it’s quite a fulltime endeavor if you choose to delve into it fully, goldmaking guides and respective mods included.
There’s the crazy collectors of mounts, minipets or whatever other baubles. There’s the achievement hunters that spare no expense for another 10 points. There’s the dedicated arena teams. There’s the daily PuG organizers in public channels (I noticed that one time I looked!). There’s the perfectionist alt players desperately out of character slots. There’s the explorers and the lore masters. And there’s pretty much every flavor of guild.

Indeed, WoW can be many things, also in the way we look at it and what we appreciate most about it – Larísa has written a post on this just the other day.
And I wonder what other groups there might be in WoW playing the game from their unique angle, different from others. Do you know of more niches or sub-cultures in World of Warcraft, remote from the standard PVP or PVE oriented endgame playstyle? Are you one of them?

There’s no reality..

…there’s only perception. Many of us enter a different micro-cosmos when they log into WoW. This gets most noticeable when we discuss features and aspects of the game or share experiences, also very often on our blogs. We forget that the other person we read about or talk to might come from an entirely different WoW than us: with a different lookout, different people sharing the game with him and hence different experiences. And in all these differences things are not so different from the real world.

I’m sure that my way of playing this MMO might seem strange to somebody else. I know that my opinions and attitude toward it are merely a product of my personal experiences. It’s a small and fragile world we call home.

How to prep your guild for Cataclysm. Or: "Dear DPS"

Ever since Blizzard announced their intentions for healing in Cataclysm I’ve had this uneasy feeling about how the changes might turn out, or rather how to get the message across once the time arrived. Already in December 2009 I posted some quotes by Ghostcrawler in our guild forums, discussing the changes to health and things like mana regen. And I do welcome these changes, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside because things like meaningful spell choices, timing, prioritizing and mana management should matter in an MMO and it reminds me of how it was to heal encounters like Ragnaros or Firemaw back in vanilla WoW. We had good HPS back then but HPM was seriously lousy, so as a consequence you would employ tactics like the classic healer rotation or dancing with the 5-sec rule in longer fights. Do you remember when we were still timing our mana potions and bandage quickly between phases? That’s right. <3 You can hear my nostalgia and that will never change – I do agree with Dwism that WoW raiding as a whole has become better, encounters more diverse and interesting certainly, but there are things about the past that this priest simply misses. Mine is a healer’s background and as such I have always been working inside a closeknit team. Our healing struggles brought us together and forced us to communicate in ways that are almost forgotten today. Maybe that seems a good thing to some but I am a team player through and through and I love working with my team.

I’m under no illusion that Cataclysm will be vanilla all over, I know it won’t be but maybe it can find a middle ground between unnecessary downtimes and imbalances vs. steamrolling and easy loot. Cataclysm is a bit of a homecoming, not just thematically but the way it’s going to simplify stats again, make things like mobs or mana-management harder and epics (supposedly) feel more epic again. We will see.

Changing mindset

To get back to the uneasy feeling, what I’m worried about is how we will revert to this more careful and tactical mindset in WoW, not “we” the healers but “we” the entire player base. All of us have become reckless halfway through WotLK, tanks reckless with pulling, DPS reckless with starting to fire and AoE right away, healers reckless with mana and overhealing. It’s a mindset we will all have to lose if Blizzard’s promises come true and it’s a good thing because it will make encounters more tactical again.

Once I saw the new talents and spells that are now live, I was planning to write a short summary for my guildies with all the healing relevant changes, so people are prepped and also aware of new spells and effects to look out for in our future raids. I don’t expect everybody to be aware of other classes new spells, so when there’s important news to share that is going to benefit you in raids, I do like to communicate that beforehand so people have time to read up and adapt. There is also an entirely more selfish reason behind it: I don’t intend to go through important things like that mid-raid and I’ve been an officer in WoW long enough to value anticipation over reaction, it’s saved me and my fellow officers a lot of nerves in the past. In fact I will always try and open a topic or write a summary or guide so I can point people to it if need be or get grumpy because “it’s all been written on the forums for weeks damnit!”. I’m all for being prepared and transparent – especially if it saves me from getting moaned at because death is suddenly a feature of the game again. If you expect people to take note of something, write it down and get a large trout ready for later.

That said, I have been putting this off for a while, mostly because I didn’t know quite how to approach it yet and I have to say thanks to Tam for his recent topic which reminded me that there was something important I needed to do before Cataclysm!
Have you informed your DPS already that there would be no more heals for them in the expansion? Pardon, I mean, informed your guild about the healing-related changes? If not, I recommend you mention it at some point for your own sake as much as everyone else’s. Also, those guild forums aren’t there to look pretty!

The reason why I single out the DPS too is simply because they are the biggest group in WoW and often outside of the healer-tank equation in the sense that while healers and tanks are always made aware of changes in their departments quite instantly, for obvious reasons of closer teamwork and imminent consequence, DPS are often late to notice. And that is the nicest possible way for me to say this, so don’t push it.

“Dear DPS”

Since I have gone through the trouble of putting a post together that (hopefully) sums up the essential healing changes in a simplified way for non-healers, see a copy of my post below and feel free to use, alter or copy it for your own purposes in case you’re not up for writing one of your own. If you do copy, you might wanna change the guild name though (/ahem)!

And yeah, there are always those that already know most of this (or think they do), I’m actually surrounded by dedicated raiders and crazy alt-players myself in Adrenaline, but it still doesn’t hurt – and then there’s also the large trout thing.

Those shiny new AoE heals to look out for in Cataclysm!

I was planning to write a short (ha-ha) overview about healing changes sooner or later before the expansion and since I got some time tonight, now is as good a time as ever! 
There’s obviously some changes in game mechanics and playstyle incoming for everybody in Cata which is going to concern all of us in our future raids. I haven’t played the beta but I’ve followed things and talked to those that have, and if you believe blizzard’s announcements some things will change bigtime, at least in the beginning of the expansion. some of these things concern me as a healer more than they concern you but ultimately we are all co-dependent and it’s important that everyone is informed about major changes in the healing or tanking or dps department so he/she can adapt to it. Adrenaline IS a progressive raidguild and even if we aren’t of the leet persuasion we care about things like raiding quality and optimization.

To cut to the chase, there’s a few changes I’d like to make people aware of from a healing POV: several healing classes have been given new and more area-related heals (meaning they stick to the ground) in the last patch and we can therefore expect these to become relevant in our future raids. for them to be used to their full potential however, all of you need to understand what these spells are and what exactly they can do for you. 

I know some of you already know this, in which case it won’t hurt to refresh your memory! <3 Before going on, I’m going to sum up briefly what has been announced on Cata and is healing-relevant: – mana will be a lot bigger issue for everybody. many healing spells have been or will be scaled/nerfed accordingly for lvl 85
– HP will increase more dramatically than HPM/HPS
– all healers now have in-built dps mechanics that either improve healing and/or mana-regen
– cleansing and decursing have been nerfed

What does this mean for you? basically that healers can’t and won’t spam heals the way they have so far. there is less “universal” healing spells around which means we are forced to make choices again between most efficient heal vs. fast heal vs. big heal and believe me when I say we haven’t really had to do this in a long, long time!
There will be less tolerance for ‘unnecessary’ damage taken and there will be less leeway to cover up or compensate. one thing that won’t change in Cata is that it’s the MTs > you and there will be situations where it’s good to go back to whatever means of self-preservation you got. we have all fallen into a bit of an OP or lazy mindset towards the end of WotLK and that will have to change again and revert to a more tactical and sensible playstyle.
The good news is that our HP is increasing massively, which should give everyone some breathing space – at the same time this means HP bars won’t always be topped up right away like people are used to, so don’t panic!
along with that note that you will see healers more often adding dps now as part of their healing “rotation”. and since blizzard wants debuffs to become a bigger deal again, cleansing won’t be as swiftly or efficiently anymore in some cases either. priests for example have had their improved cleansing removed entirely.

now for the cool stuff –

New healy stuff – look out for it, use it, love it!
(*including spell changes up to Cataclysm beta-build 13277)

1) Shiny yellow dome: PW:Barrier coming to you by a Disc Priest.
Will shield from 30% damage and spell interrupts for 10secs.

2) Yellow circle of northern lights: HW:Sanctuary coming to you by a Holy Priest.
Will heal up to 6 players for 18secs.

3) Green circle with floaty leaves: Efflorescence coming to you by a Resto Druid.
Will heal up to 6 players for 7secs.

4) [lvl 83] White patch with rain drops: Healing Rain coming to you by a Resto Shaman.
Will heal up to 6 players for 10 secs.

1)-4) stack and are either costly and/or on a longer CD so making use of them is important. You won’t always be required or asked to run for these of course, ideally they will be placed in the best spot for/on yourself, or wherever they make most sense. Still if you’re outside and close to one while taking damage, you know what you gotta do! Yes, you can stand in the yellow/green crap now, wohoo! (these show better or worse depending on your video setup afaik, so you might want to check that out!)

5) Golden floaty bowl: Lightwell / Lolwell coming to you by a Holy Priest.
You can expect to see lightwell more in Cata than we have so far. I’d like to point out that this is now one of our most efficient heals and I encourage everyone to use this if you can and need to. it has been fixed so you won’t have to target the well anymore in order to heal yourself. it’s easy to oversee in the heat of battle but you can get used to clicking it more.

6) Light of Dawn: not really something you can seek out, but still nice to know that Holy Paladins have a shiny cone heal of their own now. They are also getting Holy Radiance at lvl 83 which is another AoE healing spell emanating from the Paladin to players around him.

That’s it! I hope people will be more familiar with these new spells and effects until Cataclysm, there’s some shiny new stuff going on really and while nobody can tell how much these will be used, I think it’s safe to say they will have their regular place! 🙂
It probably makes sense too to make similar topics about changes in the dps or tank department for everybody if you feel there’s things that are good to share and inform the rest about. Cheers!

And now you know what sort of WoTs poor Larísa is regularly subject to in her guild forums!

The end is near, w00t!

I haven’t kept a close watch on the WoW multiverse ever since the Blizzcon, mainly because I am somewhat busy with real life and also there is not much happening, is there?
You can feel it now, the end of Wrath of the Lich King is edging closer every day…finally! We’ve spent the past weeks discussing and analyzing every snippet of Cataclysm news but I’ve had enough now personally, I long for December and playing and testing myself what I’ve been reading about for so long!

What I’ve missed

I’ve had a look over at MMO Champ today and read about the elemental invasion and achievements, I haven’t actually bothered to log into the game to have a look around myself yet. And I’m not sure I want to now, it sounds as underwhelming as the Gnomeregan pre-quests were, titles and achievements thrown after you like candy at Halloween really kills the whole idea for me personally. I can’t say any of it feels epic.

The Arena Season 9 sets all look exactly the way I thought they would, maybe with exception of the hunter set – now that eyepatch makes no sense whatsoever but hey, it looks good!
The priest set is properly horrid, but no shock there. The Chakra changes were to be expected too even if it feels somewhat weird that they removed Renew from the equation. I’m ready for more surprises before taking on an update on Chakra again in Cataclysm.

One less for the hardware graveyard

I love the fact that Cataclysm is available for download and I am definitely going for that instead of the retail version. I have always been in favor of losing the wasteful hardware aspect of gaming as much as possible, it always felt wrong to buy games only to hold them in my hands for 5 minutes to get the key and install done and then throw the boxes in some dark corner for the dust to settle on forever. I can’t collect game packages anymore even if some of them look lovely, I simply lack space. Buying a box with several CDs makes no sense whatsoever if all you’re looking for is a key.

That’s what I love about XBOX live so much too: all the easy down-loadable games and demos are just awesome. And with MMOs especially, what is there to “own” anyway? The only thing we own about WoW is our experiences. If Blizzard shut their servers down tomorrow that would be the end of things. And I’m fairly certain anti-piracy campaigns welcome the change from paying for hardware to paying for downloads and subscriptions. Personally I do not mind this at all, I already know that as a gamer I am paying for something immaterial.

Speaking of which, I’m currently playing Dragon Age Origins which is an absolutely fantastic experience, a stunning game and must-play for anyone into RPGs! The Witcher is next in line, I have been shamefully negligent of both these great titles in the past (/blush) and on top of that Fable 3 just arrived in the mail today. So I guess there’s something good about having to wait for Cataclysm – another month is all I have in me though!

This is Halloween, this is Halloween (again)

“It is over, your search is done! Let fate choose now, the righteous one!”

That’s right, the Hallow’s End is taking another round in WoW from this week on, with the same old quests and mobs to farm in order to get minipets and special mounts – if the event isn’t bugging out on you, that is. And once more I find myself wondering if Blizzard will ever bother to update the seasonals because really, it is only fun so many times…Are we going to see the same quests and rewards again in Cataclysm? I hope not!

As you might have noticed if you aren’t accessing this page by reader only, the header of Raging Monkeys has been slightly re-decorated in honor of this great holiday and also, because we really love to dress up – or rather I do and it’s not like the other two can do anything about it! =D Squirrel has withdrawn to live inside a jack-O-lantern for the time being, until hibernation time anyway.

It’s been a busy week full of srs bsns, buggy patches to discuss and new skills to analyze, so it’s high time for another Frivolous Friday topic, before we’ve entirely ruined our blog’s reputation by appearing way too serious and ..informative!

My PVP Pit

I’ve already mentioned in my last post how baffling some of the bugs and imbalances in battlegrounds are at the moment, it’s really not a good time to start PVPing if you’re currently contemplating the option. Nonetheless I am quite a passionate PVPer in WoW, at least as much as times allows me to besides raiding, so when I saw Zelmaru’s call to join the Bee Pit Bingo, I was instantly tempted to contribute with a PVP card of my own.

In case you don’t know what the Bee Pit is about, be sure to visit the page and have a look around – you have probably tossed a lot of players into the pit yourself in the past without knowing!
I have quite some player disdain to share in WoW, I could’ve easily created another PVE card, but there’s so many BG annoyances I have accumulated over the past years that it was great fun to think about my personal tops there. So here’s my contribution, if you’re frequently pvping yourself I’m sure you will know them all too well!

Make sure to check out the other fabulous Bee Pit Bingo cards currently up @ Murloc Parliament. And as always a good weekend everybody!

Bugs bugs bugs!!!

They’re everywhere, have you noticed? Every time I log into WoW since last Wednesday’s patch, I seem to discover something else that is currently broken in the game. I don’t remember when a patch broke so many things in the game before lol – 4.0.1. buggiest patch ever? What’s going on?

Today several of my guild mates got their characters stuck in limbo while trying to enter instances. Half the time I find myself “not in a guild’ after logging on. I am also wearing a tabard, when really I am not. And I cannot seem to inspect people anymore. There’s something odd going on with guildchat and the guildranks too and the inbuilt item comparison simply ignores stats on some of the gear.

Then yesterday, I realized that I do not exist in the BGs I’m currently playing in. When trying to find myself on the BG charter to check honor gained or healing done, I do not exist! There is also some weird, small nametag flashing up on my screen during PVP now, overlapping my hotkeys or then moving on top of my minimap….ermm? Apparently I am also the only one with this issue, quite unnerving!

At least I was able to buy the Wrathful weapon now, after realizing that those angry red tooltips on all the last season PVP gear are simply bugged (yes you can buy everything now, no rank required anymore!).
Oh and don’t even try to compare your converted points for honor or justice points with other guildmates, because it won’t make any sense!

In case you hate  the new Blizzard raidframes as much as I do and want to get rid of the minimized tab they leave on the top left of your screen even if disabled, you might wanna macro this command:

/run CompactRaidFrameManager:UnregisterAllEvents() CompactRaidFrameManager:Hide() CompactRaidFrameContainer:UnregisterAllEvents() CompactRaidFrameContainer:Hide()

Simply enter this once when inside a raid and the tab will disappear completely. There’s no other way currently to do this, as far as I know.

….so much for bugs and post-patch annoyances. That said, I am not actually too annoyed, I find it more amusing than anything to discover more and more bugs as I am playing! =D

I am a little surprised there was no big hotfix yet this morning though – or maybe that’s bugged too?

Double Trinity: Priest Chakras explained

After last week’s initial irritation with the new holy priest talents and spells, I set my mind on understanding Chakra better and making sense of the triple function in combination with Holy Word: Chastise. If this is the new holy priest mechanic for Cataclysm, there’s gotta be a lot more to it than what the confusing and cumbersome explanations on the inet and tooltips inspire you to believe. So I entered a couple of 10mans with my priest to give Chakra ample testing time. I got used to things pretty soon and dare say I understood matters a lot better after playing around with the different states in various boss encounters.

The main issue with Chakra is that there’s a lot of misinformation around. I’ve come across pages that talk of “stacking chakra” (lol?) or “spamming chakra”….right.
Also, Blizzard have done a lousy job on the tooltips in my opinion: the wording is often unclear, at least for me, and there’s information missing especially when it comes to Holy Word: Chastise with Revelations. If you haven’t looked into the matter yet before the patch (and possibly even if you have), you’ll spend a lot of time trying to wrap your head around the entire 3-1-3 idea but in essence it’s actually quite simple.

In the following article I have attempted to simplify the new holy priest Chakra mechanic for all those that feel somewhat overwhelmed or confused with all the tooltips and new names. I will try to explain how Chakra works and what I believe its potential uses in raids might be, in combination with Revelations. I will leave out all unnecessary information, especially the long and clunky names for each of the Revelations effects. Names are great and all, but while learning a new, complex mechanic, I find them obstructive and irritating – makes my head spin!

Understanding Chakra

Chakra essentially is a state in which you chose to heal a particular encounter. That state can either empower your HoTs (Renew / green state), your direct healing (Heal / yellow state) or your AoE healing (PoH / blue state) – so depending on the fight and/or your healing assignment, you will chose your Chakra state accordingly.
The way Blizzard designed the spell, being cheap on mana and fast to re-activate, you should think of Chakra as a mechanic that you frequently use or maintain over an entire bossfight. Switching Chakras makes a lot of sense too, for example if you are healing in a multi-phase encounter with different assignments and a different healing style for each phase.

There is a self-refreshing element to Chakra: while a particular state lasts 30secs, you will add an extra 4secs to that timer every time you make use of the respective Chakra spell when talented into State of Mind. So let’s say you choose Renew-Chakra, your Renews will heal for 10% more during the next 30secs – but also, you will add another 4 secs (back up to 30secs) every time you cast a Renew. The same for your other two states.

I’ve tested this and not surprisingly Renew was the easiest of the 3 spells for maintaining Chakra. Not just is Renew the fastest spell of the lot, but obviously also the one that’s most easy to apply on an entire raid. I was able to cast Chakra initially on a bossfight and then maintain it throughout the entire fight via Renew.
PoH being both more situational and also a lot more expensive, you would certainly let this Chakra state drop more frequently and refresh it if needed. As for Heal, I did not test it as much as the other two, but assuming you’re on focus- or tankhealing during a bossfight and Heal is indeed replacing Flash Heal in Cata, you would probably be able to maintain its state for quite a while before re-casting Chakra.
That said, you don’t want to forcefully spam costly healing just to maintain your Chakra state as it’s easy and cheaper to re-activate if you’ve dropped it. It’s good to note that it’s possible to prolong though.

As already mentioned, not all of the 3 Chakra-states are equally mana-efficient and you will have to choose in what “state of mind” to heal each encounter and encounter phase individually for best results. Flexibility will be key here. It does however almost certainly always make sense to use one of the 3 Chakra states to boost your healing powers in bossfights as Chakra in itself is a cheap way of gaining some extra healing.

Chakra and Revelations

If you’ve picked up the Revelations talent in the holy tree, your HW:Chastise spell will transform into 3 new healing spells that correspond to one of your 3 Chakra states each. To understand this a little better and see everything at a quick glance, I’ve created the following graphic:

Click to enlarge

Please note that all healing numbers correspond with my own holy priest’s stats and spec. I am assuming Tome of Light and State of Mind are talented.

Revelations basically brings an extra spell to your healing arsenal that further empowers your healing in combination with your chosen Chakra. If you’re using Renew-Chakra during an encounter, HW:Chastise will let you apply yet another HoT to a chosen target beside an instant heal. The mana cost of 386 is cheaper than if you manually cast a Renew and FH yourself. This effect is useful in a variety of situations, as a quick save on yourself or another player, or frequently added on an MT while raidhealing for example.

The same goes for your PoH-state: HW:Chastise will let you cast an extra AoE healing zone on the ground which makes for some remarkable focus-healing on a certain area or raidgroup in combination with your other, direct AoE heals. I can see potential uses for this on the melee camp where it usually hits MTs too, or if more focused raidhealing is required on a stacked point or ranged group, maybe also in combination with a Disc Priest’s PW:Barrier or a Resto Druid’s Efflorescence.

Inside Heal-Chakra, you will be able to gain even more single-target Heal power if you combine it with HW:Chastise. This makes for some impressive MT- or focus healing!

Out of the 3 Revelations, Heal-Chakra will probably make for the most mana-efficient one at lvl 85. Your Renew state takes the middle position while using HW:Chastise during PoH-Chakra is going to cost you a lot. It does however come with the shortest cooldown, so re-positioning the AoE healing zone if needed, is fast.

Preliminary bottom line

The extra healing power and tools gained from using and playing your Chakras and Revelations right should be quite remarkable in Cataclysm. Adopting these new mechanics into your standard healing habits and repertoire will take some time and experimenting, but there’s a lot of potential there once you got the hang out of things, know how to combine and when it’s best to use what.
Holypriests should think of Chakra as their three new healing states of mind, with Revelations bringing you that little extra tool to go with your different states.

We will see how things work out in Cataclysm: I’m most eager to see Heal come out of the closet especially and I expect some more changes to our talents or at least the numbers. It is yet to be seen how big our mana issues will be which will further impact on Chakra‘s significance in the coming expansion.

I will look into updating this topic come lvl 85, until then have fun experimenting with your new abilities and feedback is of course welcome!

Patch me if you can!

So the big patch of 4.0.1 is finally upon us and you’ve all spent the past 2 days re-speccing and re-glyphing your chars like mad, frowning over those odd stats and mastery on your brand new character pane and trying to figure out reforging. Maybe you’ve also spent half of Wednesday swearing in front of the computer like me, because that damned patch took a lot more space than indicated, so you ended up re-downloading it all and a second time after that, due to some critical errors. Or maybe you’ve been luckier and the patch just slowed down at the strangest time or then the updater did. Patching….it ain’t easy business!

Syl vs. 4.0.1

This patch is really a 50-50 deal for me so far, meaning to say I have probably never been more undecided about whether I should hate or love the changes before me. I’m generally a bit of a ranter type when it comes to WoW patches, not because I dislike all change but let’s face it, they often really mess things up! I also naturally focus on negative things a lot more, I see the good for the good but then it’s back to the negative for me, because that’s where things still need to improve and we got work to do!

Anyways, I’ll be forcefully un-Syl today and start with the good things: I love what they did to glyphs. I can see how the new glyph system will cause scribe whining, but on a general note it’s a great change because we’ll finally have all our glyphs on us, so a lot more accessible than before. I never bothered to switch glyphs much in the past, bagspace being one of the reasons, but now I can see myself using glyphs depending on encounter a lot more.
I also love the adjustment to mount speed, finally I get to use some of those older mounts again. And the new talent and guild windows are great (yay for the professions tab!), the UI changes seem to be a big improvement altogether.

And here comes the big but (no, not the bear one): I’ve not been looking forward much to the holy priest changes and I can’t say they blow me away. For one, re-speccing seemed already very dull. Then there’s Chakra which is Blizzard’s way of saying that holy priests are the versatile healers of the game, I know – I just don’t feel the whole triple deal in combination with HW:Chastise is such a wonderful, intuitive mechanic. But I’ll get used to that. Oh and note that Chakra is now down to 30secs!

Aside of Chakra, nothing is new for holy really. We can’t spec into shiny wings proc yet like the Discpriests, because we lack the points. That aside, I absolutlely HATE what they did to Surge of Light, taking it off general crits, making it exclusive for crappy Heal (crappy for the moment anyway) and Smite instead….I loved to get my SoL procs from almost every CoH, that was so much extra mobility!
And I really do miss Spiritual healing and Prayer of Spirit, it’s been quite noticeable statwise too…mehhh Blizzard, why did you have to take away all the spirit from this priest?

Priest Tier 11

As for our recently published T11, I’m again on the fifty fifty side:
I love gear and tier sets and once more I find myself thinking “thank you, thank you, whoever designs our sets!” because it’s BLUE! YAY! I was scared to end up with a red and brown, fiery cataclysmic looking set which is great for some classes surely, not so much for a holy healer though. Let’s see what the other colors will be, but this is a great start! It looks very royal with the blue and gold and considering the onion-shaped headpiece and overall theme, it reminds me a lot of some oriental, middle-eastern garment.

Here comes the first but – the shoulders look like those old Mage T2 water dispensers or then the Harvest Festival shoulder-piece. Either way, they don’t seem to fit the rest of the set at all! What’s up with making priests look like football players?

The even bigger but: the female tier model is the only one that comes belly-free….did the tailor run out of cloth or something? Oh, get real already! And not just about the usual stupid male designer touch, but seriously: is this what you think of priests Blizzard? The sissies in the raid that go belly-free because really, they aren’t doing that much so why not flaunt their bellies in combat while everyone else is geared up in their battle armor? Let’s tan our tank a little while some blazing AoE of doom is raining down on everybody?? Wut???

I hope they get a ton of angry emails until Cataclysm! And yes, I will wear a matching shirt!