Behold: Anathema!

Between raiding, leveling, and improving my tradeskills, I actually never had the time to focus on some of the older content I had skipped (being a Draenei means that this character was created long after the MC era). Luckily, during a Molten Core run for a friendly hunter’s Petrified Leaf, the Eye of Divinity dropped instead…and I was the only priest.

I already had the Eye of Shadow in the bank, and quickly marched off to the Eastern Plaguelands to get the quest done…and failed miserably. Back then I had no mouseover macros, no healing spec, no grid, no experience in healing, no nothing. There were so many little health bars, dropping so fast, and I had no overview of the situation. Annoyed, I put the trinkets in my bank and vowed that if I had some spare time, I would get around to it.

Zoom to the day before yesterday.

In the knowledge of not having a raid for the coming three days and with some healing experience under my belt, I set off again. And I can tell you that even though this is a level 60 quest, it is still pretty hard. Like the Epic Hunter quest, it’s one of those quests that measure skil rather than overpowering gear. To go in style, I specced Holy and put on the few healing pieces I had to get rid of some Hit.

The next four or five minutes were a blur of cleansing, renewing and Flash Healing. After the second wave I was almost OoM so I resorted to sticking to Cure Disease and Renew, killing the skeletons with my wand. As my last drops of mana were spent and I had 5k health left (I did not heal myself so I would have the mana left for the peasants) I saw the liberating message “quest complete”.

I completed the quest, created Benediction and went straight to the trainer to get back into my Shadowy self. I had done it. I was giggly for an hour or so, as I actually had a difficult time with the quest.

Benediction/Anathema is still an icon of dedication to the Priest class, and I think our server only has a handful of people who actually have it (Mostly people with Classic accounts who cannot really access TBC gear) and now I was one of the happy few. ^_^

Anathema looks awesome when matched with a Merciless Gladiator outfit.

I know people say “This quest is easy” and “I did it in the MC era without Tier 1 gear” as well as “It is a quest 20 levels lower, who cares?”. It is still and achievement, and I did not find the quest easy at all. It requires sound judgement, wise decisions, without being able to rely on Downranking as before patch 3.0 – my Renew might do 2-3k overhealing, but I have no choice to downrank and be cheapass.

Anyway! Life is good. *cuddles staff*

New beginnings and sad goodbyes

Today I was checking out the patch notes for the 3.1 PTR on MMO-Champion.com here, and I was both delighted and saddened to see the results. We are going to have both our utility and damage increased, our PvP survivability as well, but will see our PvP ability to CC reduced even further…Say farewell to Blackout!

Focusing on Shadow and Discipline:

• Abolish Disease: duration reduced to 12 seconds, but cleanses a disease every 3 seconds (down from 20 seconds and 5 seconds)
• Devouring Plague has a new icon
• Divine Spirit is now trainable at level 20
• Holy Nova: Mana cost reduced by approximately 20%
• Hymn of Hope: Removed (No skin off anyone’s back)
• Prayer of Healing: Now heals the target’s party, rather than just your own (mini-Circle of Healing, anyone?)
• Reflective Shield: Removed
• Divine Aegis – Divine Aegis effects will now stack, however the amount absorbed cannot exceed 125*level (of the target).
• Grace: Duration increased to 15 seconds, but now is only limited to one target.
• Improved Power: Word Fortitude – Now also increases your total Stamina by 2/4%.
• New Talent: Soul Warding: Reduces the cooldown of your Power Word: Shield ability by 4 sec., and reduces the mana cost of your Power Word: Shield by 30%.
• Penance: Damage increased approximately 30%.This spell can now be cast on yourself.
• Power Infusion: This effect now has a new spell effect and sound.
• Unbreakable Will:Increased from 3/6/9/12/15% to 6/12/18/24/30%.
• Blackout: This talent has been removed.
• Darkness: This talent is now in tier-1, moved up from tier-6.
• Dispersion: Now clears all snare and movement impairing effects and makes you immune to them while dispersed.
• New Talent: Improved Devouring Plague (Shadow): Increases the periodic damage done by your Devouring Plague by 5/10/15%, and when you cast Devouring Plague you instantly deal damage equal to 5/10/15% of its total periodic effect.
• Shadowform: Bonus damage from critical strike chance removed and replaced by the ability of those periodic damage spells to generate critical strikes.
• Silence: Range increased to 30 yards.
• Vampiric Embrace duration increased to 5 minutes, up from 1 minute. PvP duration is now 60 seconds. Cooldown removed.

The short of it:

Given the average raiding Shadowpriest’s talent setup, we will only gain from this. We will have a Divine Spirit buff at all times, 4% additional Stamina, 15% damage on Devouring Plague and 15% of its damage done instantly, Vampiric Embrace is almost removed from our rotations (1 or 2 times per fight at most) and our main DoTs can crit in Shadowform.

Marvellous! Devouring Plague will definitely be the most powerful spell in our arsenal now, and since our DoTs can crit now, they can also proc effects that proc “on crit”. Very nice, no complaints there.

In PvP, we are harder to CC and burst down, we do more burst damage due to the changes to DP and we will have a bit more Stamina and thus staying power. Still, the loss of Blackout is a harsh one, and will severely impact our ability to (randomly) keep people out of the fight for a few seconds. Perhaps this was done to prevent PvP Shades from multi-dotting/Mind Searing whole groups of enemies and stunning them all. Even so, it was also a very useful tool while leveling up, and on top of the mana regen changes announced it will slow down SP leveling a bit more.  Silence on a longer range is nice, but I can’t see this as making a terrible impact.

Buffs for the raiders, and an even trade for PvPers, as far as I can see.

As always, we’ll have to see how this pans off once the PTR experiences are released on Live.

Edit: After playing around with the talent calculator, I have come to the (obvious) conclusion that since we gain 3 points worth of talents in our tree, we cannot get all our goodies anymore (read: Meditation) and still fill out our Shadow tree. I’ll try and see what would be the best way of getting it, because with the changes to mana regen, we need it more than ever.

A tree falls in the forest…but not quietly

Today is a sad day for many Resto druids who visited Phaelia’s blog Resto4life often. Due to time restrictions placed on her by her work and an oncoming family addition, she will be closing the doors of Resto4life.com. See her goodbye post here.

While my main is a Shadowpriest, I have had a lot of fun with my new Resto Dr00d, and the way Phaelia described healing and gearing was intense enough for me to focus on getting my Druid to 80 and geared. It was then that I realized how my experience with keeping DoTs up 100% of the time was of great value, and I owe it all to poring over Phaelia’s theorycrafting and easy-to-use guides.

Phaelia rocks!

Three cheers for Phaelia!

Ghostcrawler crawls on: 40% nerf to mana regains

Ghostcrawler was unusually open and talkative about the expected nerfs in base mana regeneration. For those who did not know, Blizzard was not happy that healers are able to use the 5-second-rule to regain a few seconds of full mana regains in combat, which in some way made mana “trivial”. In order to counter this, a few hefty nerfs will be applied:

• Mana regeneration out of combat will be nerfed by 40%
• Divine plea already faced a -50% healing penalty (Paladins)
• Spiritual Attunement will be made “less useful” to non-protection Paladins
• Meditation and similar “in-combat mana regain” talents will be buffed to compensate

This will have some serious implications. I am not even talking about how healers will have to adjust to the next big change to healing after removal of downranking and unifying spellpower, but about our alts.

Nerfing the base mana regain will be a big pain on characters that are lower-level, and will also mean that while leveling you need to rely more on these talents, rather than being able to skip them. This will mean of course that since the in-combat regains will be the same, an alt is more likely to chain-grind while leveling, rather than even accepting downtime.

It may mean that drinks/food may have to be enhanced (same healing/mana but over a shorter time) because else it will take quite some time to regain mana between pulls. I may be crying wolf over this, as so many things are connected that perhaps we can gain an advantage somewhere else to compensate.

While this has little to do with Warlocks, our Warlock alts will actually benefit from this change. Because Life Tap still benefits from Spirit (and knowing Blizzard, they will either nerf this too or leave it as an oversight) and can be covered (refueled) by Drain Life, warlocks will be unfased by this news. In fact, since their mana/life regains are self-powered, they may actually be more beneficial. Especially if they gain replenishment too (talented).

For Shadowpriests it means 2 things:

• Meditation, which some have skipped because the raid provided enough mana regain, becomes more mandatory
• Replenishment will probably be next on the target list if mana consumption is still deemed “not consequential enough”

We’ll have to see how these changes play out. I have a strong suspicion that there’s a lot on the horizon that is dovetailing with this of which we haven’t heard yet…

Dual-spec Q&A

Below is the transcript of the Dual-spec Q&A featured on MMO-champion. It provides a nice glimpse of what will be in store for us; unfortunately, while dual-speccing seems dandy, it will be confined to max level (80) characters, and you will need a lexicon of power to access it.

Summary

• Can be done at level 80, after a one-time fee to the trainers
• Needs a lexicon of power
• An item, made by inscriptors, can summon a lexicon of power with other players assisting
• Action bars, glyphs will be saved with each spec
• Pets will be sent back to the stables (if exotic and now “illegal” and hunters can access stables from a distance with a cooldown)
• There will be a Blizzard version of outfitter
• When respeccing, it will apply to your current spec
• You will get a confirmation for your spec before it is saved, so you can play around a bit more

Transcript
Nethaera:  What is dual speccing?
Ghostcrawler: Dual speccing is the ability to save two separate talent specs, glyphs, and action bars.

Nethaera: Why are we allowing players to dual spec after all this time?
Ghostcrawler: We really felt like this was a great way to increase the flexibility available to players and encourage them to take part in more aspects of the game. To use just one example, some players like to participate in both raids and Arenas, which is awesome behavior that we want to promote. But, there are some talents which are more useful in one part of the game than another. Currently, players have to pay respec costs and go through the process of setting up the desired talent spec and action bars whenever they switch.

The new system makes this a much more logical process, saving on time and cost and allowing players to easily move from one aspect of the game to another.

Nethaera: Who will be able to use it?
Ghostcrawler: Players who have reached the maximum level will be able to set up dual specs.

Nethaera: Why do players need to be max level in order to do this?
Ghostcrawler: We didn’t want to burden lower-level players with extra complexity as they’re working to level up and learn their class. But if the feature proves popular we might consider expanding it.

Nethaera: How will you be able to set up a dual spec?
Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to visit their trainer and pay a one-time fee to be able to use it.

Nethaera: How do you switch between specs?
Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to switch between their talent specs by visiting any Lexicon of Power provided they’ve paid for the ability to have a secondary spec. Lexicons of Power will be available in major cities, and inscribers will also be able to create a new item that summons one. Anyone can purchase this item, but it requires a ritual of several players to summon it for use by the party. It’s similar to a repair bot in that it will exist in the world for a short duration. It’s important to keep in mind that you will not be able to switch specs while in combat or Arenas. While you won’t be able to switch your spec without the Lexicon, you will still be able to look at your secondary spec whenever you want to.

Nethaera: Will solo players have the ability to switch their specs outside of the cities or will they still need to visit a Lexicon of Power?
Ghostcrawler: Solo players will still need to go into the city to visit the Lexicon of Power to switch their talent spec or will need to get together with other players to summon one in.

Nethaera: Is the item that allows you to summon a Lexicon of Power reusable, or is it used up?
Ghostcrawler: We haven’t made a final decision on that yet, and will be evaluating how it works on the PTR.

Nethaera: Can I respec only one of my talent sets, or will I need to respec them both if I reset one?
Ghostcrawler: When you reset your talents, it will look at the spec you currently have in use as the talent set you want to change.

Nethaera: Will you be able to switch gear easily to match your spec?
Ghostcrawler: At the same time we implement dual specs, we will also be setting up a gear system. The feature is called “Gear Manager.” It can also be used to just swap weapons or trinkets or put on that tuxedo to strut around town. It will not automatically switch your gear when you change your talent spec, but it will allow for an easy gear change between them. The feature may not be fully functional immediately in the PTR, but we’ll have more information to share about it before too much longer.

Nethaera: What about hunters? Often their pet talents are set up to match the talents of the hunter. Will they be able to switch their pet specs as well?
Ghostcrawler: We will wipe the pet talents. However we are going to remove the respec cost for pet talents so that players won’t feel like they need to jump through an additional hoop to respec their pet. In addition, we are going to provide hunters a new core ability to let them remotely access their stable on a long cooldown. This way if their exotic pet heads off to the stable, they will be able to get a different pet. We hope to be able to discuss this new spell in more detail when we get a little further along.

Nethaera: Will you be able to change your Glyphs as well?
Ghostcrawler: Glyphs will be tied to each talent spec so that if you switch between them, so too will the Glyphs. You’ll notice the UI will have changed a little bit so that the Glyph panes show up alongside the Talent panes now that they are associated.

Nethaera: What about hotbars? Will players be able to save them for the talent spec they’re running?
Ghostcrawler: Yes, you will be able to save hotbars and use them with your talent specs. It just saves your bars at the same time as it saves the glyphs and talents. If you want to switch to your other action bar, you will need to change specs.

Nethaera: Is there a way for players to choose their talents without them being saved? Currently, once you spend your talent point, it’s spent unless you pay the respec cost again.
Ghostcrawler: With the dual spec feature, we are going to allow players who respec to configure all their talents before they get saved. They will be able to allocate the points, then choose if they want to use that as their spec, rather than needing to carefully diagram out their talents ahead of time. This will allow players a little more freedom when deciding on the talents they want to pick and avoid costly mistakes.

Nethaera: Will players be confined to only setting up two specs?
Ghostcrawler: We will be launching the feature with just two specs, but depending on how we feel it works out, we might consider additional specs in the future.

Nethaera: When can players expect to try out dual specs?
Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to try out the dual spec system on the Public Test Realms when they are made available. This has been a pretty big project with a lot of people working toward making it a reality in the game. We’ll definitely be watching the feedback and looking for ways of making sure the system works the way we all envisioned it to.