Leveling Disc – Once More, From The Top

Post soundtrack:  “Come to me” by Koop.

Guess who’s leveling a new disc priest?  No, I’m not leaving my dwarves high and dry – this is mostly a preparation-for-cataclysm-and-thought-experiment kind of thing.

Meet blood elf Phinglezouse, priest soon-to-be-extraordinaire.  Or semiordinaire, maybe.  Almostordinaire?  Yes, it’s going to be disc all the way (mostly because I just like the playstyle*, but with an added touch of “You’d have to be utterly insane to level another priest to 80”).  Helped along with some bits and pieces from the AH, of course, because I’m lazy like that and have a higher-level alt to help bankroll it.

Phingle is currently sitting at level 19, with Herbalism and Inscription learnt.  Her sugar-daddy is OldDingle, who’s now level 54 (with Enchanting and Skinning).  Total bankroll between the two of them, around 340g when the server went down earlier this evening.

Talents at this stage are pretty minimal – there’s only 10 points to allocate at level 19, and nothing fancy for a few levels yet.  My picks so far:

Level	Talents
10	Spirit Tap (1/3)
11	Spirit Tap (2/3)
12	Spirit Tap (3/3)
13	Twin Disciplines (1/5)
14	Twin Disciplines (2/5)
15	Twin Disciplines (3/5)
16	Twin Disciplines (4/5)
17	Twin Disciplines (5/5)
18	Improved Power Word: Fortitude (1/2)
19	Improved Power Word: Fortitude (2/2)

Her dps rotation right now is pretty much what you’d expect from your average low-level priest:

1. PW:S on herself
2. Smite to pull her target.
3. SW:P on it while it’s running toward her.
4. Mind Blast.
5. Then she just wands it to death.  (Don’t underestimate wands; they’re mana-free dps, and they make for a great way to start regenerating mana before you engage your next target)
6. …
7. Profit!

Old internet memes aside, it’s a pretty straight-forward routine – single-target pulls, and if an additional target blunders in, she uses Psychic Scream where possible, puts SWP on the new target, and finishes off the original target.  Self-buffs at this stage are PW:Fortitude and Inner Fire, along with the inscription-made Intellect scrolls.

Time for another quick list, this time tips for new characters

• It can be worth taking your new characters to the blood elf or draenei starting zones when they’re just getting started, as they zones make for a much less irritating leveling experience than the vanilla starting zones.  (And the gear from Tranquillien rep is a nice bonus on horde side)
• Casters should always buy the best water you can get for your level.  (It helps to actually buy a stack or two when you’re still the level before you can use them, so you don’t forget – and you invariably will).
• If you’re leveling a priest, it’s a lot easier if they have the best wand you can get for their level.  (I might do a quick post on what/where, if I don’t forget or get sidetracked again)
• Bags!  Four netherweave bags for a new toon are the gift that keeps on giving.

That’s probably going to be it for this post – I’ll probably do another one when Phingle has something interesting to talk about (the 20-29 stretch would likely do).

/wave

* – Disclaimer:  My playstyle (and leveling style) aren’t designed for efficiency, or speed, or ease of leveling – indeed, if you want to level a priest fast, shadow is likely your best option (I’ve been told my bloody-mindedness is part of my charm).  So I’m sharing on the off chance someone discerning out there might find something in this to be useful, not because I think it’s fast or easy (or even fun, sometimes).  Offer void where prohibited by law, and probably causes cancer in rats.

When Are Bigger Numbers Worrying?

Post soundtrack: “Ready Steady Go” by L’arc en ciel

It’s an odd combination; the excitement of raiding with a new guild, combined with increasing demotivation as pre-patch ennui settles in with the newguild raiders.  It’s good to be getting back in the saddle (so to speak), but due to a lack of numbers the 25-man raid last night was scaled down to a single 10-man (which I sat out on, giving me time to get another level on Dingle v1).

The thing that’s really jumped out at me from the first couple of raids has been how much more healing I was doing, while not actually doing that much more healing.  The best way to illustrate is this comparison between oldnewguild (perhaps failedappguild would be more accurate?) and newguild logs.  (I was a little chagrined after offering to parse the logs and post the results to the newguild forums, and then discovering I was quite often at the top of the healing-done lists – hopefully it doesn’t come across as bragging, or something equally unflattering)

Oldnewguild:

This was ToC25, along with FL and XT from Ulduar25.  That’s an average of 2666hps or so from me, putting me at #7 of 8 healers.

Newguild:
This is Koralon (we skipped the other two VoA bosses), Onyxia and ToC25.  About 2730hps from me.  (The priest bringing up the rear is shadow; I just left him in to keep the number of rows the same)  Anyway, #1 of 7 healers.  Sure, it’s not completely an apples-to-apples comparison (and I was healing as 100% disc for the latter raid, compared to mostly holy for the former) but the effective result was the same in the other 25-man log I’ve parsed.

It’s quite an ego-boost for me, to be honest.  (The results were very similar when parsed through WMO as well, so it wasn’t a parsing error on WoL’s part as I was originally suspecting)  So, yay for disc priest topping healing meters!

I could also make comment about this being the difference between a hard-core, hard-mode raiding guild and a casual raiding guild, but the numbers tend to speak for themselves (although what they said most to me was “this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, so don’t go reading too much into it.”  Followed with “and why don’t you call your mother more often?”).

Of course there’s a downside to go with the swollen head.  While normal modes aren’t too much of a problem, the guild won’t be burning through hard modes the way I’m used to.  It follows on from that, that progression through new content (I’m looking at you, Icecrown) may also be more drawn out than I’m used to – although the drip-feed manner in which 3.3 encounters are to become available may nullify that to some degree, with the corollary that ToC25 (and maybe ToGC25 with the advantage from Icecrown gear) won’t be leaving the raid rotation for some time yet.

Ah well, at least I’m still healing.

And I’m putting a tentative plan together to try make some profit from the upgrades coming with 3.3 with leg armors, gems and belt buckles, along with getting back into the glyph market (albeit in a more casual manner than previously was the case).  Of course, milling inks is still one of the most mind-numbing activities in-game at this time, so it’s really dependant on how much of it I can put up with.  (Doing it in batches of 30 stacks of herbs at a time is about the best compromise I’ve been able to come up with, between bag space and milling time – seriously, Blizz, your implementation of milling, along with inscription crafting in general, is truly EPIC FAIL game design)

OldDingle (ok, that works better than Dingle v1) has been working his way through Azeroth, and hit 52 late last night.  And thanks to the market for Greater Nether Essences, he’s building up a bit of a bankroll that should be handy when he gets to Outland and buys his first flying mount.  I’m tentatively aiming at getting to OL by the end of the weekend, depending on how much grinding I can get under my belt over that time (although my trusty magic 8-ball reckons “Outlook not so good”).

My tentative plans to roll a horde warrior (perhaps a tauren?) and priest (both troll and forsaken are…  unappealing, but the troll is slightly less so) remain tentative.  WTB dark dwarves horde-side (sigh).

In a non-WoW topic, I bought an iTunes gift card yesterday and have purchased my first apps for my shiny second-hand ipod touch – some nifty games (just what I need for those milling sessions), and an app to track my weight while I try to reduce my weight from “Planetary Mass” to “Small Asteroid.”  It’s a nice system (the app store I mean), apart from the nearly-total lack of filtering to let you find the gold amid the immense quantities of dross.

For now?  Back to milling.  And more milling.  And general inscription-type-stuff that takes a metric way too long.

/wave

(Oh, and if the person I’m expecting to pop by and read this does so, “Hi Mr. Good-Looking Pally Healer!”)