Dun Dun DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNN
Full details to launch tomorrow! Stay tuned! :D *
*This filler post brought to you by NaNoWriMo madness! And the fact that I’m in a mad rush to get some things done personally, and don’t have to ton of time today.
Hello again lovelies. It is that time again, NaBloPoMo! I figured what better time to get back into the swing of things on PW:Bubble than now right? 30 days of new content, you should all feel so special. I only hope that you’ve missed me as much as I’ve missed blogging. I’m considering this a fresh start and I’ve got lots and lots in store for everyone and a new project in the works. I’m working out the details on Project SG (though some of you *cough* @_anea) know what it is already. So be on the look out for some site redesigns, blogroll updating, Project: SG, and all sorts of shenanigans, I’m reinstalling WoW on my computer as we speak, so pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable. Mind the cobwebs though, I’ll have them cleaned up soon enough.
In case you don’t follow me on twitter, I started playing again. I’m still not playing as much, but I’m not ready to hang up the blogger hat just yet, so posts will be incoming!
Plus twitter shennanigans are just TOO fun. (@arrens / @ilikebubbles search term war I’m lookin at you!)
In case you didn’t realize from the lack of posts here, I’ve not really been playing WoW much lately. My account was up today, and I didn’t renew it. I’ve spent almost 5 years playing this game, but I think I’m done. I don’t know if it’s forever or a semi-permanant deal. I don’t agree with the way that Blizzard is handling things at the moment, and if the rumors on MMO are true, then I definitely don’t like the plans for the next expansion. I’ll still be around for sure, and I may still log in now and again (and Dueg, if we get the raiding thing set up just let me know. I’ll pay my account for that!) but for the moment logging in to my priest and doing the cooking dailies and the fishing dailies doesn’t justify the money.
So who knows? Maybe I’ll play again in a month or 2 (or even a few weeks) but for right now I need a break and having the account active will only make the boredom with the game that much more noticeable. But until then, I will still be around on twitter.
For the Horde!
/salute /thank
In case you haven’t heard yet….
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtvIYRrgZ04&hl=en&fs=1&]
*A.N: MAAAAAN. I posted this last night and WP ate it :'(. oh well. LEFT SIDE MANY WHELPS!
Thank you for sapping my will to play for a multitude of reasons. Here are my main reasons why I’m no longer excited for 3.2, or the new raid, or about your direction for priests. (my thoughts/comments in green, Blizzard Devs in blue of course) All Blizzard quotes can be found from the Q & A unless otherwise stated.
in Wrath of the Lich King we increased its damage-dealing potential to make it near that of a primary damage-per-second (dps) caster — such as a mage — while also retaining some of its unique utility which made it cool during The Burning Crusade. (Um, comparing Spriests to Mages in terms of DPS? Granted I don’t play Spriests THAT often unless I’m messing around on my friends toon for research purposes/feedback for her on rotations or gear/weapon options;Â I have never seen someone prefer an Spriest for a DPS race fight over a mage or a lock. Most of the time if we need to fill a raid spot and we need caster dps it’s always “see if we can get a mage. or a lock.” not “hey you know what? We should get an spriest!” Unless it’s for 25 Razuvious.)
Are the developers happy with the functionality of Dispersion and is it considered to be an adequately valuable final talent in the Shadow tree?
I think the key word here is “final†talent. Players have developed an expectation that the 51-point talent should be the best one in the tree; and for damage-dealing trees that means it’s expected these final talents do more damage than anything else the player has. (Is it just me or hasn’t blizzard stated before that they want the 51 point talent to be good? Look at the other trees/classes and if their 51-point talents are used often. Penance, Guardian Spirit, Explosive Shot, Chimera Shot, Big Red, Arcane Barrage, Bacon, Divine Storm, Wolves, Riptide, Chaos Bolt, Meta, well you get the point. So how come Spriests shouldn’t be upset about not having a GOOD 51 point talent?)
Would you consider removing the cast time for Mind Blast to make it a more desirable direct-damage spell given that it already has a cooldown?
Obviously if the spell was no cooldown, no cast time then Shadow priests would not ever cast anything else (Um, this would be the case IF THAT WAS WHAT WAS ASKED. The question was would instant cast be possible with the CD IN PLACE. In PvP this is a very risky spell as it gives a big opportunity to expose spriests to school lockouts, crippling them damage wise.)
As for the Mind Flay range (which I think should be extended. It seems odd to have a main source of DPS be such a short range when all the other casters are waaaay in the back dps-ing) SW:D (ok the changes GC brought up would be nice, no backfire in execute range or backfire is not affected by raid buffs would make it more useful in raids without insta-deathing yourself) I didn’t have much hope, and to be honest I don’t think most people were expecting anything great from GC on those.
Furthermore, the priest has strong heal-over-time spells (HoTs), direct heals, and area-of-effect (AoE) heals. (Um, HoTs PLURAL?! Since when? And strong? Not exactly a word I would use to describe Renew. Semi-worthless, maybe. Strong not so much.)
I don’t think many players look at Greater Heal as being too expensive from a mana-per-healing standpoint. They often aren’t in danger of running out of mana. (Dude, GC, what priests are you running around with? Mana is an issue with me and a certain priest I raid with. I use HoH, pots and Shadowbuddy as often as I can and still am occasionally scraping the bottom of the barrel by the end of some fights. And Gheal just sucks. And from reading your spriest stuff your logic is: Talent taken by most = must be good! therefore one would assume spell NEVER USED BY ANYONE = Spell not good. But no! Your logic is: Spell not used by anyone = Spell is fantastic player needs to L2P. /boggle GC, /boggle. btw, I challenge anyone to dispell -> Gheal on an IC Hardmode Fusion Punch and see if your tank is still standing when GHeal lands then tell me it’s effective.)
with the exception of Flash of Light, which is mana-efficient but heals for a very small amount. So my favorite healadin can hit a 10k+ FoL, and I crit 6k FH, but their mana efficient FoL heals for a very small amount while my mana suck FH heals for too much in addition to being slower than their FoL? o.O
The problem is that in the current raid environment, speed is everything while mana isn’t nearly so scary. What I mean is that you are generally at a greater risk of failure through raid members dying than you are for healers going out of mana. The speed of Flash Heal just trumps other issues. … Second, in a raid in which healers don’t coordinate well it’s easy for other healers to stomp on your big, slow heals. While you are casting, someone heals your target for you. I’m not saying these are bad players — in my experience it’s just the style of raid. Some players are really talkative and coordinated. “Big heal coming.†“I got Jimmy.†Or else everyone has their targets and won’t heal someone else unless something unpredictable happens. Other raids just heal anyone who is injured and don’t have a lot of assigned targets, except for probably the tanks. Again with us apparently being Mana Gods. Ok, we get the Holy Priests are good for raid heals, but what about SINGLE TARGET HEALS? Disc is penalized for raid healing with the mechanics of Grace, but we are being gimped for single target healing with the penance CD and there is no mention of the insta-gibbing of most tanks in ulduar to where GHeal just isn’t viable at all. And what we all need to L2P because we aren’t coordinating enough with other healers? I call BS. GHeal isn’t used because it is slow and speed is everything thanks to YOUR FIGHT MECHANICS and it’s way too big of a mana sink not because I’m not yelling “I got Jimmy!” on vent. (oh, Dueg, I feel for you… that is so getting macro’d into one of my heals)
On Divine Hymn: It was balanced like Tranquility. We basically want these to be once-an-encounter spells. We have considered a mechanic that allows you to use the spell again in the case of a wipe, sort of the same way Bloodlust / Heroism works. Um, does anyone other than priests know wtf Divine Hymn is? And more importantly, do they care? It’s not like we are being brought to raids because we have Divine Hymn!
On Lightwell: The basic root of the problem is that most dps classes seem unwilling to have to take the time or spatial awareness to make use of the Lightwell, even if it provides great healing. No Shit, Sherlock! Most DPS will DIAF rather than move/bandage/anything else that might mess with their precious DPS. There are, however, some very good ideas on making Lightwell fun and non sucky on the forums. (7 posts above the blue towards the bottom of the page by Meia of Bloodhoof)
On Absorption in the combat log: The change we made for 3.2 was to show how much damage was left on each absorption effect before and after the damage was done. This should allow third-party addons to figure out which absorb effect goes with which caster and properly credit them for it. The answer, I suspect they will find, is that shields actually prevent a lot of damage. We have seen priests prevent as much damage as they healed. 2 things. 1.) So, someone scripting a 3rd party addon can make it figure out what caster it gets credited to, but you guys can’t manage to figure out how to make it do that? Sounds to me like maybe Blizz should hire some of the addon writers. 2.) I highly doubt that I absorb as much as I heal since I’m usually focusing all my heals on 1 person and there is the Weakened Soul debuff so I can only absorb so much. If I was raid healing bubbling then I could see the Absorption rates being much higher. But we all know about Disc Priests and raid heals.
On Dispel and Abolish Disease being 1 spell: We think that pushes dispels too far into easy mode. But it’s not easy mode for Shaman and Paladins?
On Dispel missing on bosses: This is annoying and we don’t really want healers to have to worry about being hit-capped. Gee, tell us something we didn’t know? I don’t wanna worry about being hit capped either.
On Inner Fire having charges: At that point it just becomes a passive buff and we might as well just say that priests have the armor of a leather-wearer while wearing cloth. It works a little better for mages and warlocks who are at least making a decision about which armor spell to cast. WTF GC is all i’m saying here. So we get penalized because we only have 1 kind of armor boost instead of multiple like Mages and Locks?
Pretty much the Priest Q & A felt like GC telling priests that everything is fine, they are happy with priests and if we aren’t happy we need to L2Priest. And some of the blue responses on the Q & A Forums were harsh and basically made us seem like QQers who have no idea what we are talking about. Not cool. That combined with the Penance CD change (which was calculated on the forums as being a loss of about 160,000 healing over a 5 minute boss fight… but it’s no big deal according to devs. I’m still working on all the numbers myself though.)Â the FUCKING JOUSTING (I guess there’s no new dailies for me. I hate jousting, and I refuse to do it, and I’m not going to take a month to get enough seals to be able to do MORE jousting dailies!) and the new raid not seeming very new (Yay I can fight bosses I’ve fought before only now they hit harder? No thanks. And I can see the same room in the 5 man regular, 5 man heroics, 10 man regular, 10 man hard, 25 man regular, 25 man hard? /whee)
All I can say is hopefully 3.3 drops soon, and I GOT JIMMY!!!
<3
Tart
Hai. My name is Tart and I’m a forum troll.
Wow, I feel better now. I just thought I would share this gem while I finish up my post on the upcoming penance nerf and why I think more people should be upset about it.
Someone tried to insult me and my point on being mildly offended at the “disc priests are OP in PvE and PvP go QQ moar noobs and L2P” comment they had made with:
“At least I don’t gem for intellect.”
WTF internets? I lol’d for a good few minutes. Then lol’d some more when they got directed to EJ’s Priest compendium and flamed by a multitude of raiding disc priests. oh forums, i love you.
Hai again internets,
I have decided that I have WoW A.D.D. Either that or I have the most severe case of Altitis that I’ve seen. I decided since my beloved Priesty is on Darkspear now, that I would reroll a priest on Dunemaul to appease certain individuals (T – I’m looking at you!) so I did. And I gave her the same name, because lots of people were confused as to my paladin’s name… and why 90% of my characters have Tart in their name.
Then I decided that I didn’t like the look of my 24 mage, so I’m rerolling. I want a troll mage. But now I’m stuck on her name. Currently it’s idmndpiggies (an Invader Zim reference. Zim is one of my all time favorite shows, and the thought of using Polymorph: Pig rather than sheep and Macro-ing it to yell I DEMAND PIGGIES!!! amused me greatly) and I’m not sure if I want to keep that same name or rename her something else with Tart in the name. But I have no idea what. SheepTart? teleTarter? So I come to you internets for advice. What do you think?
(Author’s Note: Please excuse any horrible grammar, or lack of coherent sentences. It’s late, I’m sleepy and probably slightly delirious at this point.)
<3
Tart
Hallo all!
I’m so terribly sorry for the lack of updates lately. The real life monster struck, so twitter and the blog kind of got the short end of the stick. You’d think not working and being home all day would mean more blog/twitter/email/fun time, but in reality it’s been more job hunting, cleaning, training the puppy time. But it’s looking like things are starting to settle down here, so I should be back to updating on a semi-regular schedule!
Let’s see, what’s been happening WoW wise. Tart has been fairly dormant lately, Holy Dueg got the new guild started after the old one went boom, but as usual, new guild take time to build up, and get everything going, so I have taken advantage of the time to level my pally. (Not that Mr Tart’s declaration that his druid would beat me to 80 and be geared up long before I ever would had anything to do with it. I won btw. Beat him to 80 by 20 minutes!) So now I present to you, my 2nd 80, retadin Tartdarling!
Man...she made me pop wings in this cold ass place just for a picture?!
and yes internets, you read that right. Retadin. Why after 79 levels of being a tankadin, am I no longer bashing things in the face with my shield and leading my group? Because I discovered that while I probably could be a good tank with practice, (and Amber’s Flowchart) I really have to group to practice with, and I don’t feel like getting flamed on the forums for being ‘teh nub-ist failtank’ on the server. Plus the swirly gold shit of death, err, Divine Storm, is really really fun and I’ve never had a DPS toon. But never fear her offspec is Holy so I can still bubble away, even if they are a different kind of bubble.
And one last note for those who don’t follow me on twitter: If you are ever in BG’s, and particularly if you are carrying the flag in WSG, please, for the love of all that is holy disc, protect and stay near your healer. This PSA has been brought to you by my frustration and for the saving of your life in BGs from healers who may or may not wish to MC you directly into a mob of well geared PvPers from the opposite faction.
Ever since Blizzard annouced The Great Mount Changes of ’09 the intertubes have gone crazy. There was rioting, people were injured… oh wait this is WoW not RL so I guess that should be people threatened to cancel subscriptions and the forums blew up. Apparently people were angered; I, however, was not one of them. In case you’ve been living under a rock the changes are:
Had a chance to absorb? Good. Here are my thoughts on the whole deelio:
Regular mounts at 20? FUCK YES. I’m leveling a bebeh shaman right now and let me tell you, the barrens? That place is fraking HUGE. I leveled in ghostlands because at least there was some sense of reasoning to where those quests were and it didn’t look like the quest devs splattered paintbrushes at a map of Azeroth and went ‘well that looks good for the placement of the drops.. especially given that people will be RUNNING AT AN INCREDIBLY SLOW PACE.’ And yes, I am aware that I have Ghost Wolf at the moment, but my leveling partner is a Rogue and well, he is still running, so I run with him. And it sucks.
Epic Mounts at 40? Sweetness. This would have been so helpful in those places like feralas. or the crater. or tanaris (epic mount + carrot on a stick? sign me up!) Again with Blizz’s let’s see if we can put the quest givers any farther away from the quest drop locations only this time they added an element of LETS MAKE YOU GO TO A DIFFERENT ZONE FOR A QUEST DROP. (see: Hinterlands/Feralas horde side. and the noggenfogger quest. srsly blizz? SRSLY?!) Any less time that I have to spend schelpping my ass on a slow mount is time better spent getting exp.
Flying Mounts at 60? You mean I’m less likely to get squashed by a Fel Reaver? or attacked by 859,156,120,5261 hellboars on my way to turn in a quest? AMAZING. And improved flight speed? I’m DOWN. Lemme tell you, my priest had normal flying FOREVER. Cuz yanno I don’t like to farm on my priest…and that shit is SLOW. really slow. When you would rather take the taxi with all it’s godforsaken loops and random pathing than fly because the taxi is still faster then you know you need an epic flyer and well my priest isn’t the person to earn that money.
Travel Form/Ghost Wolf/Aspect of the Cheetah at 16? Good news for my druid, though I’ll be mounted soon enough.
Lock/Paladin mounts at 40/60? Again, woot. Even though both my lock and my paladin already have these things it’s still cool. Now, here is where I admit something. I didn’t do the quest on my paladin. I waited until 61 and just bought the mount. I know, I’m a horrible Paladin. But fact of the matter is, those Pristine Black Diamonds you need for the quest? upwards of 150g on my server. NO THANK YOU. Plus I know that finding a group for that shit is damn near impossible now. I rememember helping a friend with her lock quest in TBC where she had to wait for 3 weeks trying to get a group. ugh. I know everyone says the lock/paladin quests are the best in the game. Well here’s where I have another confession. I did the quest on my on my lock (in Vanilla WoW!) and I DIDN’T EVEN READ THE QUESTS. Just oh go here and kill some guys, then drop a buttload of money? ok just give me my firey horsey kthnxbai. So I say, give people the horses, that’s the reason they rolled a paladin/warlock in the first place most likely. Those that care about the quests will go back and do them (they count for loremaster remember? And I have some achievement whoring friends who would do it for the 10 points, even if they waited until 80 to do it) and those that don’t, well they won’t.
Summary? Good Job Blizz. I’m on my 6th character that I’ve leveled through Vanilla, I know where Mankirk’s wife is (and yes I remember doing that quest before Quest Helper/Carbonite/LightHeaded and thinking WOW BLIZZ COULD YOU BE ANYMORE VAGUE?!) and if I can get to her quicker for my sweet, sweet exp than I’m all for it.