Cataclysm Changes Announced!!

The initial Cataclysm changes for priests has now been announced. Some we were expecting, others may come as a shock, and some to be frank I don’t really understand the explanation of their addition/removal. Lets see what Cataclysm will bring for Priests.

Heal: I hadn’t really considered the addition/revival of another direct healing spell, but im certainly not going to knock it. This will offer us with a third viable direct healing spell and should fit in nicely between the Flash Heal (1.5s) and Greater Heal (2.5s).

Prayer of Spirit / Divine Spirit removed: With all the recent info on stat mechanics etc… it was inevitable that these would be removed. Essentially spirit will become a bread and butter stat in Cataclysm Healing and having it as an additional buff is unnecessary.

Radiance: I suspect the balancing for this talent may be ongoing for some time, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it reformed as a proc with an internal cooldown. Essentially every direct heal will cause an additional HoT. To little and its not worth having, to much and its overpowered… let the nerfs begin!

Power Word Barrier: This has been on the cards for some time and again how the mechanics and balancing of this spell are worked will be interesting. Personally I still think this will get pulled from the final release, although full credit to the devs if they can work a way of balancing this in grp/raid situations… It’s a lovely concept, but the practicality of introducing it and balancing it are daunting.

Leap of Faith: Firstly, misleading talent name! When you get over the name and read the content, its quite an interesting addition to the priests arsenal. I can certainly see the benefit of having such a spell although not necessarily the need. I think introducing something like this may say more about the sort of content we can expect in the next expansion. PvP whores are going to love this though, but again working the mechanics so that it is not abused is going to be interesting.

I’ve read a few bloggers this morning hesitant of this talent, and for the record I don’t disagree with them one bit. It is clear that this will be a useful utility, but it should not nullify the requirement for raid awareness. My primary function is to keep the raid alive, and whilst recovering dps from the fire may be included in this remit I am not there personal nanny. If you have agro on a mob I will save you, but if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time you will die! FACT!

Inner Will: This will give us a speed increase and reduces the cast of instant-cast spells by 10%. Down side, its either Inner Fire or Inner Will. Assuming they put something in the tree talents to upgrade this I would be quite interested in its situational functionality, although I suspect that 9 times out of 10 I will continue to use Inner Fire.

Chakra Effect: Ok, so they need to sort out a name, Matt has used Holy Form, which is as good as any, so I’ll go with that. Essentially upon casting 3 consecutive types of healing spells, i.e. AOE, Direct, HoT, you will go into a holy state, which will vary depending on the heal consecutively cast. This could work as a boost to haste, increased ticks on HoT’s, or maybe expanding your AOE to the whole raid… who knows, but im positively wetting myself at the prospect of this talent!

Other:

Other things to consider are the changes to mana pools, consumption and replenishement… The FSR is being removed, rightfully, replenishement talents are being worked and the word from blizz is that healing is going to be more fun, which basically means decision making is again paramount to the success of a raid!

Blizz has also coined the idea of lesser/Greater shields for disc(o) priests, i.e. you will have an uber shield which you will cast on the tanks and a lesser shield to bubble the grp/raid damage. Nice idea, could be a real mana drain though, and considering the above not sure what usage this will get.

There are a number of changes to shadow aswell, and whilst I will pass comment on some of these in a later post, I will generally leave this for the experts to mull over.

To conclude, there are some really interesting ideas coming out of this initial cataclysm preview, and I cant wait to get my teeth into some of them. One things for sure, Cataclysm will provide a new (fun) challenge for priests everywhere.

~Cav~

Dear Blizz.....

Why oh why wont you let me trade my badges up rather than just down. Im not stupid, I know one for one is not logical, but please let me trade by surplus badges upwards, even at 10:1 so I can get some bloody use out of them…

With the new tier system, whereby you must get badges to get your tier gear It is exceedingly difficult to “catch up” when you cant raid every week and really just want to get your tier set already!

Presently I am 1/5 on my tier10 and only have 23 badges towards my next piece. Given the current badge set up its going to take me another month to get my leg piece, let alone worrying about other tier gear!

Pretty please Blizz, will you help me,

Yours grudgingly

~Cav~

If at first you dont succeed, find someone better!

This post is a little late in coming, but in an effort to keep this joke running for a few more weeks its well worth mentioning!!

As i was writing this post, i actually remembered that this situation had actually happend twice in the last two weeks!! coincidence much??!

So to set the scene a little bit, we were in ICC10 and had cleared upto Rotface without any real issues. We had a Pally (Brenstorm) healing the Tanks and me, in my 70's disc(o) spec healing the groups.

A couple of wipes into the Rotface encounter, or RotGate as i now referrer to it, the raid leader (Brenstorm) calls for a change in the raid setup. At this point i should probably also clarify that as we are a relatively small raiding guild, we are quite versatile in our spec's and between the raid we can cover various roles.

Now to this day, i still do not think our previous wipes were as a result of poor healing, but i can be overly defensive when i believe i am being criticised, and never the less i was swithced out to my dps role and DJhuxter (druid) was brought in to group heal.

Needless to say we downed Rotface first time with the new setup, admitedly moreso because of my imba dps then the change of healers (in my expert opinion) :P , although it soon transpired that DJ had forgotten to switch to his healing gear, which was slightly embarrasing for me, much to the raids ammusement.

Anyway, I dedicate this post to Brenstorm. Without his insight and bravery in switching me to dps to melt faces like never melted before, we would probably still be wiping now!! Thanks Bren!!!

Holy Tree, how i missed thee...

If you are reading this chances are you probably know more about priests than i do, but nether the less, its worth pointing these things out.

So, a tip for all you priests out there... play to your strengths.

Im all for priests being spec'd a specific way to help their guilds, but no matter how much you work at it, some priests cant play holy and some cant play disc, its just not in their dna. I have learnt over the years that i am a holy spec priest, i eat, sleep and breathe holy and wouldnt have it any other way.

Before my last wow break i had decided that i would ms/os holy/disc, just so i and the guild had options for raiding, and to be perfectly honest it came in really useful on certain fights. However upon my return and due to the loss of raiders i changed my o/s to dps and the expense of my holy spec.

^^This was without a doubt the biggest mistake ive made in wow, period! Over the last few weeks of disc healing 5mans and raids i have come to realise that i cannot heal disc spec for shit, my play style just doesnt suit it, at all! and so with that i had no choice but to respec.

Last night was my first raid using my precious Holy spec again, and to be frank it was fecking amazing!! I wish i had remembered to screenshot the meters before resetting them, as it would have been nice to have a record of my return to form, however im content knowing the improvement even if noone else saw it.

So fellow priesties... dont let the bastards get you down!! We are a very unique class but we have the ability to heal in pretty much any situation! play to your stregths and heal like you've never healed before!!!

Why we are drawn back into the wow universe!

Ive done the whole coming out of retirement thing a couple of times now, and ive usually blamed it on new expansions etc and wanting to see what all the fuss is about, but recently I’ve been reconsidering my views and reasoning behind returning to wow.

I wont bore you all with the details, but suffice to say the last couple of months have been some of the hardest of my life and in that time I felt cancelling my subscription was a sensible move. I’d like to say id spent this time away from wow wisely, but in truth if I was not sleeping or working, I was sat staring at blank television screen or pretending to be interested in a book, but in reality ive not really been interested in anything, and have been relatively disconnected from the world.

Yesterday I decided that I would resub, only for a month at first to see if I was really interested or whether it was just something else to pass the time. Upon logging onto wow I still felt pretty empty. I know there haven’t been any real changes to wow in my absence and so there wasn’t really anything exciting to do. After an hour or so I went on a random run with a couple of guys from the guild, and it was then that everything sparked for me.

Last night was the first time in a couple of months that I actually felt connected to anything or anyone. Speaking to these people that I have known for so long, even though I may never have met, or ever meet them, really made me feel, well, secure. I was in an environment that I understood and felt comfortable with, and although I don’t envisage playing every night, or every week, its so reassuring that even ingame friendships can provide you with this reassurance.

So in answer to my initial question, why do you come back?

For me, I now realise, whether it be consciously or not, I return to wow for the community that plays it with such passion and camaraderie, and makes you feel welcome no matter how long you have been away….

I have played a lot of games in my time, but the community spirit within wow is still one of the greatest I have come across, and long may it continue.

~Cav~