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!”)

Holy Moly!

It looks like I’m going to be expanding my horizons, as I’ve been accepted into one of the few hard-mode guilds, who are currently doing 25-man heroic ToC.

Needless to say, I’m a little nervous.

Or maybe, quite a bit nervous.

You see, I’ve been given a trial as disc/holy despite my having no holy experience.  I’ve done my research, re-gemmed and adjusted my gear to suit holy (and picked up a couple of upgrades to suit), along with changing my much-disliked shadow spec to holy, and setting up Vuhdo and Power Auras for my new holy spec and spells.

Now it’s a matter of getting some hands-on experience to go with my new-found theoretical knowledge.  Might be a little short of time, as first raid is scheduled for tomorrow night.

Yay, me?

Life As A Healer: Week Two

It’s been an odd kind of week; my time has been split roughly between WoW, D&D Online, and catching up on my backlog of Criminal Minds, Warehouse 13 and Eli Stone.

I’ve had my first experience with real raid healing, having spent an evening working on the hard-hard mode of 25-man Iron Council last night (which we didn’t get down in the end, but we were getting close).  Now that’s what I’d call a challenge: being one of the designated healers for the Steelbreaker tank.  Apart from a failed attempt at ToC10 Heroic earlier in the week, it’s just been normal ToC25 and Ulduar25 which, while challenging, didn’t really require me to stretch my abilities.

You see, while I’m a competent healer at this stage (helped by my relatively high-level gear), I’m still working on picking up the little things that I can do to keep a tank alive (and the pressure in hard modes encourage growth – along with the desire to throw things at the screen).  Growth in this sense means picking up things like how to time my cast of PW:S to get Borrowed Time at the right moment to then be able to cast a 1.6 second Greater Heal that lands right after Fusion Punch hits the tank instead of a Flash Heal that lands for maybe 2/3 as much.  (Maybe that’s not the best way to react to it, but it’s proving effective for me to use in that situation, especially if Penance is on cooldown at that moment)

It’s tricky, as I don’t really have anyone in-guild I can get to mentor me; our priests are all either main-specced Holy or Shadow, and our leading healer priest wasn’t able to offer much advice when I did try to get some advice.  Looking at WWS logs for other guilds are only effective in showing what spells they cast; it doesn’t give me tips on how they cast them, such as the Borrowed Time thing I described above.

One thing that has proven effective has been improving my visual alerts with the new version of Power Auras Classic, which now has support for dual-specs and more options that make it more flexible.  I’ve replaced Inner Fire Helper with a simple aura, changed my Flask aura to alert me when I don’t have either Flask of the Frost Wyrm or Flask of Pure Mojo active, and implemented another that displays when Penance is off cooldown and ready to cast.

I’m also having some success having dropped Bartender4 in favour of the default Blizzard action bars, and relocating Vuhdo’s raidframes closer to the centre of the screen so it’s easier to glance up at my toon to check if there’s something happening that I need to react to (such as patches of fire on the ground in which my character may be standing).

Sadly, the downside to being so reliant on mouseover healing is an equally growing reliance on keyboard-turning due to my mouse being unusable for turning while it’s over the raidframes; I think working out some way to get around that will have to be my next move.

Other than my healing, things have been pretty quiet.  I’ve been investing in Eternal Life for darkmoon cards in preparation for the next faire, along with my other usual AH investments.  I’m back down at 50k from my high of 70k, but I’m still ahead considering just how much I’ve invested in card mats (I’ve cards enough for three nobles decks already).

For now, though, I think I might go do some research on the possibilities of Prot Warrior PvP.

/wave

Life As A Healer: Week One

Well, I’ve a week of raid-tank-healing on Mingle under my belt, and I think I’m off to a good start.  (Translated: when the tank died, it wasn’t my fault)

I suspect the situation would be different for someone in a guild that isn’t one of the better-known progression guilds on their server, but it’s fun being able to enjoy fights that left me gritting my teeth as shadow.

In the week past I’ve healed 10-man and 25-man Ulduar, along with 10-man normal, 10-man hard-mode and 25-man normal ToC.  Admittedly the 10-man Ulduar only consisted of doing Razorscale, XT, Kologarn and Auriaya while the main raid did the first three bosses in 25-man ToC (and I was the raidleader for it – talk about stressful).  And on 25-man Ulduar I sat out for Yogg-Saron+3, but I’m proud to have successfully tank-healed up to and including General Vezax.

The way we tank-heal on General, we rotate through three healers who each heal the tank until they’re down to 50% mana, at which the next in the series takes over and continues until they reach half mana.  When the third person in the sequence starts healing, the previous two go stand in a saronite pool to regain their mana and get ready for the first person to take over from #3.  Anyway, I was #3 in the sequence, and was quite surprised when the boss died just after I hit 50%, and before I got to engage the saronite-boss.  Bear in mind that I’m still pretty inexperienced; enough so that I don’t know how much of the time I spent healing (which felt like I was in there for ages) was due to very-well-geared and skilled DPS, how much is due to well-geared and skilled healers, and how much is me not screwing up.

While I was only in for the last 25-man ToC boss, Anub’arak, I was in for the full 10-man normal clear, and the first two 10-man heroic bosses that were downed.  No pretty loot for Mingle, but some other new raiders got some upgrades and one of our priests finished making Val’anyr.  (Why yes, I am just a little jealous)

The Heroic Beasts encounter was pretty full-on to heal; the tweaks between normal and heroic change the substance of the fights quite a bit, especially that change to Icehowl that changed the fight the most, namely removing the speed-buff you gain after everyone is stunned and knocked back to the wall, right before he charges someone.  (The tank wiped us twice by not running out quite fast enough; she’ll probably be very happy to hear that they’ve added an extra half-second before he charges)

The Faction Champions are even harder on heroic than I expected, and they’re such a hard fight on normal that it’s already (sometimes) remarkably difficult – it’s probably the most unpredictably difficult encounter I’ve come across, with the difficulty of the fight being almost completely reliant on their group makeup.

Still, I’ve managed to pick up one piece of nice badge loot (the non-tier badge shoulders, not to be confused with the horde equivalent), and I’ll probably be looking for the badge ring next.

It’s the start of Week #2 though, so hopefully it’s more of the same, but better this time.

Oh, and I’ve managed to reach another personal milestone.

Ding 50k.

/wave

The Downside To Changing Raiding Spec

Well, I’ve experienced the upside of changing Mingle’s raiding spec (healing is fun!), now I get to enjoy the downside.  Maybe in a month I’ll start being able to pick up some upgrades for her healing gear that don’t require badges.

Yup, I conveniently forgot that part of the process of changing raiding spec was that Mingle’s rank drops from Raider to Applicant, and with that goes the Raider-first loot opportunities (along with guild repairs and flasks, but they’re not really as important when you’re financially secure like I am).  Now, due to a combination of bad luck (/roll doesn’t like me), generosity (it made sense to pass on the mace from Razorscale which was of more benefit to the other dps caster who wanted it rather than roll on it for my underperforming shadow priest) and a biased loot system (mp5 on an item means healers get preference – which is kind of necessary in order to differentiate otherwise identical loot, but it’s painful when there aren’t many 1h caster weapons that don’t have it) she’s currently wielding Mariel’s Sorrow and Accursed Spine.  Not the worst combination you could think of, but it’s irksome when I bear in mind that (barring upgrades from Ulduar or ToC10) she’s going to be stuck with them for a while.

Well, I guess I can look forward to being promoted back to raider in a few weeks (provided I get the nod from the healing officer – still WTB feedback on how I’m doing), and by that time there should be enough people who’ve received loot that I’m a bit closer to the top of the queue when Misery’s End drops.  Of course, that’s provided the guild lasts that long – we still don’t know if we can up our game sufficiently to keep the raiders who want to work on hard mode progression from leaving for greener pastures.

I love being an optimist.

/wave

Maybe I’m Not As Burnt-Out As I Thought

Yesterday I officially started raiding on Mingle as a disc priest, and it was pretty enjoyable.  Apart from the Faction Champions.

I’m not saying I dislike that encounter – indeed, it’s very much the opposite.  Healing through the Champions on 10-man was Awesome!  Seriously, that fight alone was the most fun I’ve had playing WoW in quite some time.  And the rest of the night was pretty good as well.

I’ve yet to get some feedback from the Healing Officer about my performance so far (I’ve been told not to expect too much until I’ve several raids worth of WWS for officers to study), but I’m cautiously optimistic.  I think part of that is the fact that healing (at least, Disc-style) plays up one of my strengths (reaction time) whilst avoiding my two biggest weaknesses (targeting mobs at range as a dps class, and hesitation when starting to dps).  But it’s quite a turn-around from the last time I did the Faction Champions on my priest – that left me fuming and probably the angriest I’ve been in a long time, when I last did it as shadow.  (That was the 25-man version though; I’ve yet to see what it’s like to heal)

I was also in for the first guild 10-man run of VoA and the new boss, Koralon, on tank Dingle.  It was easier than Emalon (and probably almost puggable, given decently geared people with at least a little competence), but a fun little fight.  I still haven’t been able to get in there on priest Mingle; missing out on the 25-man VoA run last night was annoying, but considering that we had so many new raiders that we ran a 10-man Ulduar simultaneously with the 25-man ToC run to give people something to do, it’s not really worth getting upset over.  (I guess I’ll have to see if I can get Mingle into a VoA25 pug)

Anyway, I haven’t done any ToC25 so far this week – I’m really hoping I get the chance, as I have enough emblems of triumph saved to be able to buy a t9.5 piece (probably the Shoulders) but need to get my hands on a Trophy of the Crusade.  It’s a pity the tier 9 is such a plain, characterless set – hopefully the tier 10 from Icecrown will make up for this set’s boredom.

But I have been in ToC10, and the guild group managed to clear it all – even Anub’arak (which was more fun than he was in AN).  After the 25-man raid, we went back to do heroic ToC10 and managed to get through both the Beasts encounter and Jarraxus.  (Sadly, the bosses don’t drop the Trophy I need for my shoulders – apparently they only drop from the tribute chests after killing Anub’arak, if you have enough attempts remaining)

Unfortunately we’re stuck on the Faction Champions again, which is even nastier than it was first time around.  Fortunately while it’s irritating to be wiping on the encounter, it’s challenging to heal and not mind-numbingly frustrating the way I found it when specced as shadow.  We’re going back tonight after 25-man, and I’m looking forward to the challenge.

For now, though, it’s time to get busy with the little bits and pieces I’ve been putting off – not least of which is grinding Netherwing rep on Fingle, who’s going to be my designated drake-rider.

/wave

Is WoW The Game It Used To Be?

Or it the players who’ve changed?

I never reached the level cap playing vanilla WoW so missed old-school raiding, but managed to raid everything in TBC up to Felmyst in Sunwell.  However, the changes to raiding that Wrath has brought us seem to have changed the raiding experience considerably for a large number of people, myself included, and not necessarily for the better.

Last night our guild was faced with the possibility that a large number of the raiders (including several officers) are so unsatisfied with the quality of our raiding (and the lack of recruitable players on the server) that they’re facing either stopping working on 25-man hard modes (which are pretty much the only remaining measure of progression raiding) or transferring to another server with a more mature raider population in order to continue progression raiding.

Several factors have lead up to this, ranging from experienced players getting burnt-out and leaving the game, to raiders server-transferring to more progressed guilds elsewhere, to unreliable raiding performance of current raiders (myself included) and general dissatisfaction with the progression-raiding model.  While some people are afraid that we may end up disbanding or at least retiring from 25-man raiding, the officers are working on one last recruiting push to try and get enough capable raiders and see if we can still push hard-modes.

Personally I’m beginning to think that if I’m not careful, this might be the feather that broke this particular camel’s back.  WoW (and the people I play it with) is a big part of my life, but the game doesn’t have the thrill that it used to.  Raiding especially has changed, with the challenge level going from “Challenging” in TBC for everything (well, with the exception of Sunwell), to either “Faceroll” for normal fights or “Impossible” for hardmodes in the current raiding tiers.

Apparently (hearsay FTW!) Blizzard’s goal with hard-modes is that only the top 1% of players are skilled enough to complete them.  I reckon this is raising serious issues with raiding guilds, who at a rough guess comprise 5%* of the total player base, but due to the binary nature of current raid difficulty the majority of them will end up either wiping in growing frustration or possibly dropping hardmodes entirely due to their very small reward-to-effort ratio.

* – Numbers may have been completely fabricated in order to support my rant.  Take with a large grain of angry salt.

Gear no longer has any meaning more than being the (occasionally aesthetically pleasing) vessel for your various stat bonuses – some of my guildmates still keep their T6 sets in the bank, because of how much completing the set meant.  However, when they replace their T7 with T8, or T8 with T9, the set it’s replacing will get vendored without a second thought because of how little the old items mean in this age of disposable gear.

The leveling game isn’t all that bad (once you get past the archaic 1-60 grind), and Outland is still quite beautiful (well, apart from Hellfire Peninsula).  But once you hit 80, the remaining game (either self-goals like collecting pets/mounts/reputations/achievements or group goals like raiding) just isn’t that exciting anymore.  Even raiding has gone from feeling elation at having defeated boss X (so you can move onto the next boss), to feeling relief that boss Y is dead (until next week).

I suspect I’m just getting burnt out by the same-ness of the endgame (and the necessity of a month of jousting to open up the latest group of dailies is just salt in an open wound).  To be blunt, I’m running out of things to do.

So it’s time for a change.

I’m going to try something new on my priest; I’ve changed raiding spec from shadow to discipline, and that means trying something very new.  I’ve spend a metric bucket-load of gold picking up some new disc-friendly gear (including the Etched Signet of the Kirin Tor – thank you Inscription), and my talent build has passed the healing officer’s once-over, so now I just need a lot of experience (which I suspect I’ll be getting in short order).

Here’s hoping we’re able to pull the guild back together, and reclaim our place as A Guild That Doesn’t Suck.

/wave

Eggs: Spawn-Camp Or Run Circuits?

As someone who spent a couple of hours running in circles while shape-shifted into rabbit-form, picking up eggs around Azure Watch, I’ve been surprised at the number of people who’ve spent their time camping at a spawn-point for several eggs (quite a few I picked up from in front of them as I travelled past at near-supersonic speed).

If I wanted to sit in one place and click on an egg when it spawns after however many minutes, I’d probably be missing the old 30-second duration of fishing.  Actually, even the old fishing system would be more fun than egg-camping, for me at least.  I just don’t get it. 

But I’ve completed the meta-achievement on Mingle, so I don’t have to stress over it any more (until this time next year, maybe).

Mingle’s endeavours with rod in hand have been rewarded with another fishing item, the Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat.  Besides giving her a certain stereotypical-adventurer-chic, the on-use lure ability is very convenient.

In 25-man raiding news, Auriaya came to a sticky end last night (and I was dead for most of the fight, just like I was for the 10-man kill of her I was party to).  We then moved on to wipe all night on Thorim and Hodir – it…  really wasn’t pretty.

Also, I’m the guildmember responsible for logging the fights to put WWS and WMO reports on the forums for the guild after raid, but after replacing the logging addon I’d been using when 3.1 broke LoggerHead (which has been updated, finally) I forgot to enable it for Ulduar.  Thankfully another raider was able to log the fight (thanks Tame), so my poor performance wasn’t lost to the ages.

Last of all for today, I stumbled across a couple of interesting links that I thought I’d share.

• An enlightening article by Matticus entitled “Frustrated by Ulduar? Here’s Why.”  (And I’m certainly frustrated with it lately)
• And on an entertaining, Noblegarden-related note:  Hannelore.

Back to my dailies (and fishing), anyway.

(I’m beginning to wonder if I should rename the blog to “One Of These Fishermen”)

/wave