So after a break for most of Legion I'm back and this time running with Eternal Kingdom...if I pass the trial that is.
Looking forward to raiding again and to thinking about raiding again.
=)
Sunday, September 16, 2018
Friday, August 25, 2017
Raid Organization
"Who's in charge around here?"
For many guilds the Guild Leader is the Raid Leader and the recruiter and the one shouting "Come on guys, you've got to get better". The problem is that this way of doing things fails to understand and then proficiently execute the various things that need doing. Expectations can become unclear, goals are nebulous, and everyone is suddenly expected to be on the same page and just as competent as the loudest disgruntled in voice chat. This voice is inevitably not the raid leaders.
Approaching your raid team with the mind set that this is an organization with goals to be met and understanding the various positions that need to filled can be a great way to minimize stress and increase not only performance but also the enjoyment of the guild as a whole.
Let's break it down.
For many guilds the Guild Leader is the Raid Leader and the recruiter and the one shouting "Come on guys, you've got to get better". The problem is that this way of doing things fails to understand and then proficiently execute the various things that need doing. Expectations can become unclear, goals are nebulous, and everyone is suddenly expected to be on the same page and just as competent as the loudest disgruntled in voice chat. This voice is inevitably not the raid leaders.
Approaching your raid team with the mind set that this is an organization with goals to be met and understanding the various positions that need to filled can be a great way to minimize stress and increase not only performance but also the enjoyment of the guild as a whole.
Let's break it down.
Saturday, July 23, 2016
Thoughts on Holy pre-patch
Just real fast.
So, yeah once I kinda figured it out I have to say I like it for the most part. HW: Serenity hits like a truck.
Incidentally I was wrong about some stuff in my pre-pre-patch look and I'll redo that work later.
I've learned that complaining and saying "I'd do it this way" is pretty pointless but never the less I do have a few words about the Talents.
The level 15 row is fine. The level 30 one though, it's just so odd to see movement talents mixed with a self heal OSB. Instead we could maybe have something that alters how Leap of Faith works, like the old glyph that changed it to pull the caster and had a small healing buff.
Level 45 is whatever, its a leveling talent and then your raiding talent. Shining Force is a silly spell. How about a silence for once? Whatever.
60 is a good tier. Good choices that are sorta related. This is a well done tier.
75. So this is the one that I am most interested in changing. Healing without Binding Heal just feels like a tool went missing from my toolbox. I miss it and honestly the 3s reduction to both HW's would be a nice thing to have baseline. This would also give you another choice in the AOE category besides just PoH. "But you can take it as a talent" Well, sure. Surge of light however is simply too good. Free, instant Flash Heals? They reduce HW: Serenity by 6s, not 3, they are free, and they work well with Trial of Light. And they are free.
So I would love it if Bind was returned to our base kit and desperate prayer was moved to where bind is. Or really it doesn't matter what you put there because SoL is awesome.
Finally on the 90 row I would move Divinity. It just doesn't fit there. Put Circle Heal there and give us a row that insures we have a second healing spell. Plus, choosing between circle, star, and halo is actually a good choice as they all do roughly the same thing in different ways.
But then what do you do with divinity? Put it on the same row as Apotheosis? Sure why not? Either HWs give a healing buff or once every three minutes you can boost the rate at which they can be cast. Now thats real choice.
Also, why do we have shackle undead? WHY?????
So, yeah once I kinda figured it out I have to say I like it for the most part. HW: Serenity hits like a truck.
Incidentally I was wrong about some stuff in my pre-pre-patch look and I'll redo that work later.
I've learned that complaining and saying "I'd do it this way" is pretty pointless but never the less I do have a few words about the Talents.
The level 15 row is fine. The level 30 one though, it's just so odd to see movement talents mixed with a self heal OSB. Instead we could maybe have something that alters how Leap of Faith works, like the old glyph that changed it to pull the caster and had a small healing buff.
Level 45 is whatever, its a leveling talent and then your raiding talent. Shining Force is a silly spell. How about a silence for once? Whatever.
60 is a good tier. Good choices that are sorta related. This is a well done tier.
75. So this is the one that I am most interested in changing. Healing without Binding Heal just feels like a tool went missing from my toolbox. I miss it and honestly the 3s reduction to both HW's would be a nice thing to have baseline. This would also give you another choice in the AOE category besides just PoH. "But you can take it as a talent" Well, sure. Surge of light however is simply too good. Free, instant Flash Heals? They reduce HW: Serenity by 6s, not 3, they are free, and they work well with Trial of Light. And they are free.
So I would love it if Bind was returned to our base kit and desperate prayer was moved to where bind is. Or really it doesn't matter what you put there because SoL is awesome.
Finally on the 90 row I would move Divinity. It just doesn't fit there. Put Circle Heal there and give us a row that insures we have a second healing spell. Plus, choosing between circle, star, and halo is actually a good choice as they all do roughly the same thing in different ways.
But then what do you do with divinity? Put it on the same row as Apotheosis? Sure why not? Either HWs give a healing buff or once every three minutes you can boost the rate at which they can be cast. Now thats real choice.
Also, why do we have shackle undead? WHY?????
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Fast and dirty look at pre-legion-post-wod Holy Priest
Without the artifact and using last Tiers gear we are only getting a vague idea of what the Holy Priest will look like in full Legion Raid Regalia. And as I shall use the most wishy of the washy napkin math here this will not be a very thoughtful nor accurate examination of what is in store.
With all that in mind I can say that I am excited for the first time in a long time. Holy is looking good it must be said.
Shall we dive in?
With all that in mind I can say that I am excited for the first time in a long time. Holy is looking good it must be said.
Shall we dive in?
Saturday, July 2, 2016
Preparing for Legion
With Legion looming on the horizon and the great Sippy Cup Mythic Experiment a seeming success it is time to begin to mentally prepare for an actual season of Mythic raiding. HFC saw us dip our toes and eventually belly flop into the pool of serious raiding and now it seems that there is a hunger for even more.
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Log Review
Ok. So you had a bunch of pulls and are wondering how you can improve for the night. Time to hit the logs.
I'm going to grab one log from tonight and go over my own performance but the concept applies to all logs.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/py3689jHrG1vTDLa#fight=28
I'm going to grab one log from tonight and go over my own performance but the concept applies to all logs.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/py3689jHrG1vTDLa#fight=28
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Why is raiding hard?
Or rather what makes encounters difficult?
So suppose we decide to designs raids around a 20 man group. 2 tanks, 3 healers, and a mix of 15 melee and ranged.
Now suppose we want fights to last roughly 5 minutes (300 seconds).
Our DPS, with perfect rotations, can output 100 damage per second. Tanks can do 50 DPS.
Our healers can sustain 100 heals per second with perfectly optimized casting for 300 seconds before running out of mana. Tanks can mitigate or self heal another 50 HPS worth themselves.
So with perfect play in five minutes our DPS output 450,000 damage, tanks put out 30,000 damage, healers can heal 90,000 incoming damage and tanks can mitigate/heal another another 30,000 damage.
We then set the boss health to 480k and tune the raid to output 120k damage over five minutes and set an enrage mechanic to go off at the first second after five minutes that will kill everyone still alive.
So this is a very bare bones set up but it represents a zero margin of error style raid encounter. Every single raider must perform perfectly for five minutes without any human or computer error or even lag spikes.
In reality even the hardest fights are not this restrictive. By lowering the boss health we allow the DPS a margin of error. By lowering the unavoidable damage dealt to the raid we lower the healers margin of error. Tanks depend on how damage is dealt to them typically with a stacking mechanic that needs to be swapped off. If we add wiggle room to the amount of stacks a tank can have this allows for some error from the tanks as well.
We can also move some of the damage being done to avoidable mechanics. This increases the difficulty for players who have to now move or in some other way handle this issue but also allows for our group to show skill by lessening the difficulty of healing with greater awareness and reaction time.
We can also move some of the boss health onto adds, or have a period of time when the boss takes extra damage, or other such mechanics to lessen the amount of damage that needs to be dealt.
At the end of the design process we get a raid tuned in to a skill level that we find is acceptable for the challenge we wish to present.
We can then remove some mechanics entirely to make an easier difficultly, then again reduce out going damage and enemy health pools and extend the timings needed for other mechanics to make the raid easier still for an entry level raid.
This all sounds very simplistic and like common knowledge but I'm always surprised at the number of raiders who begin to attempt Mythic level content and blame a lack of gear or bad luck or some other such nonsense for poor performance or even for the lack of boss kills. I also hear players claiming that rankings don't matter. At the end of the tier it is true that a subset of the population over gears and goes on parse runs looking for top slots but there are ways to filter these people out and then see what people are bringing to the raid. The ranking is essentially a way of telling log analysts how well you perform compared to others who play your same spec.
Mythic fights are designed with a lower tolerance for error and sub optimal play and as such Mythic teams who value progression look for those players who make fewer errors and have more optimal performance.
So suppose we decide to designs raids around a 20 man group. 2 tanks, 3 healers, and a mix of 15 melee and ranged.
Now suppose we want fights to last roughly 5 minutes (300 seconds).
Our DPS, with perfect rotations, can output 100 damage per second. Tanks can do 50 DPS.
Our healers can sustain 100 heals per second with perfectly optimized casting for 300 seconds before running out of mana. Tanks can mitigate or self heal another 50 HPS worth themselves.
So with perfect play in five minutes our DPS output 450,000 damage, tanks put out 30,000 damage, healers can heal 90,000 incoming damage and tanks can mitigate/heal another another 30,000 damage.
We then set the boss health to 480k and tune the raid to output 120k damage over five minutes and set an enrage mechanic to go off at the first second after five minutes that will kill everyone still alive.
So this is a very bare bones set up but it represents a zero margin of error style raid encounter. Every single raider must perform perfectly for five minutes without any human or computer error or even lag spikes.
In reality even the hardest fights are not this restrictive. By lowering the boss health we allow the DPS a margin of error. By lowering the unavoidable damage dealt to the raid we lower the healers margin of error. Tanks depend on how damage is dealt to them typically with a stacking mechanic that needs to be swapped off. If we add wiggle room to the amount of stacks a tank can have this allows for some error from the tanks as well.
We can also move some of the damage being done to avoidable mechanics. This increases the difficulty for players who have to now move or in some other way handle this issue but also allows for our group to show skill by lessening the difficulty of healing with greater awareness and reaction time.
We can also move some of the boss health onto adds, or have a period of time when the boss takes extra damage, or other such mechanics to lessen the amount of damage that needs to be dealt.
At the end of the design process we get a raid tuned in to a skill level that we find is acceptable for the challenge we wish to present.
We can then remove some mechanics entirely to make an easier difficultly, then again reduce out going damage and enemy health pools and extend the timings needed for other mechanics to make the raid easier still for an entry level raid.
This all sounds very simplistic and like common knowledge but I'm always surprised at the number of raiders who begin to attempt Mythic level content and blame a lack of gear or bad luck or some other such nonsense for poor performance or even for the lack of boss kills. I also hear players claiming that rankings don't matter. At the end of the tier it is true that a subset of the population over gears and goes on parse runs looking for top slots but there are ways to filter these people out and then see what people are bringing to the raid. The ranking is essentially a way of telling log analysts how well you perform compared to others who play your same spec.
Mythic fights are designed with a lower tolerance for error and sub optimal play and as such Mythic teams who value progression look for those players who make fewer errors and have more optimal performance.
Friday, March 25, 2016
PSR adding numbers into our subjective raider rankings
At the beginning of HFC I did a little spreadsheet that tracked some metrics for our raiders. Directly or indirectly this objective look at our team helped lead to an improvement in our raiding. At least I believe it did. Once we completed heroic content I dropped the charting, which to be fair was cumbersome to maintain, and we entered mythics almost as a lark.
I honestly didn't expect us to do so well in mythic and I certainly wasn't expecting a Gore clear as early as it came. With things going better but still some performance issues it seemed time to bring out the PSR scores again and see where our raiders stood.
I do want to take a few minutes to explain the metrics chosen and how the PSR score is calculated but first I should note that this is simply a way to collect and compare numbers, it does not take into account more subjective things like group dynamic or other nontangible qualities. It ain't perfect.
I honestly didn't expect us to do so well in mythic and I certainly wasn't expecting a Gore clear as early as it came. With things going better but still some performance issues it seemed time to bring out the PSR scores again and see where our raiders stood.
I do want to take a few minutes to explain the metrics chosen and how the PSR score is calculated but first I should note that this is simply a way to collect and compare numbers, it does not take into account more subjective things like group dynamic or other nontangible qualities. It ain't perfect.
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Ranks, good gob, what are they good for!!??!!
First the obligatory not dead statement.
Ranks. If you raid for long enough you are going to encounter that raider who goes on and on about ranks and how well they rank and /FLEX epeen power!!!
But what the pickle are ranks, and more over what good are they?
But first a bit about logs.
Ranks. If you raid for long enough you are going to encounter that raider who goes on and on about ranks and how well they rank and /FLEX epeen power!!!
But what the pickle are ranks, and more over what good are they?
But first a bit about logs.
Saturday, May 2, 2015
A month away from my Garrison
This blog post and the wow forum post it referenced got me thinking; can I live outside of my garrison for a long period of time?
Well I'm going to give it a go. I think the most important thing to note is that I just had this idea, I'm not home yet so can't log in, and yet I'm feeling a good bit of anxiety over the idea that I won't be in my garrison....but why?
For one thing I'll miss out on a months worth of new followers from the Inn and the free bonus rolls from the warmill. And all those resources from work orders. Oh my....
I'm not being sarcastic here either, the thought of those losses is a real source of anxiety and that anxiety is making me think this challenge is even more important than ever.
So when I get home today I shall do my chores for the last time this month and then walk out of my garrison and not return until the first Saturday in June.
Fortunately I can manage my followers from the remote outposts or this really would be a deal breaker.
I'm only going to be doing this on my main but I rarely do much on my alts anyhow, only one of them has reached 100, so this isn't much of an issue.
The goal here is to see how different WoD might be without the chores and the secluded hideaway that garrisons became.
I'll try and check in more frequently on the blog than I have this expansion...and maybe even write some of the other post ideas I've had.
See you out in Dreanor 0/
Well I'm going to give it a go. I think the most important thing to note is that I just had this idea, I'm not home yet so can't log in, and yet I'm feeling a good bit of anxiety over the idea that I won't be in my garrison....but why?
For one thing I'll miss out on a months worth of new followers from the Inn and the free bonus rolls from the warmill. And all those resources from work orders. Oh my....
I'm not being sarcastic here either, the thought of those losses is a real source of anxiety and that anxiety is making me think this challenge is even more important than ever.
So when I get home today I shall do my chores for the last time this month and then walk out of my garrison and not return until the first Saturday in June.
Fortunately I can manage my followers from the remote outposts or this really would be a deal breaker.
I'm only going to be doing this on my main but I rarely do much on my alts anyhow, only one of them has reached 100, so this isn't much of an issue.
The goal here is to see how different WoD might be without the chores and the secluded hideaway that garrisons became.
I'll try and check in more frequently on the blog than I have this expansion...and maybe even write some of the other post ideas I've had.
See you out in Dreanor 0/
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Where others dare not tread
There is a very old post over on Blessing of Kings called People Afraid to Try.
I'm finding many of BoKs articles agree with me.
In our case there have been two recent accounts where the PAtT concept reared its head and was squashed.
During one of our normal High Maul attempts we got Ko'Ragh but our setup was suboptimal for the fight. And I was told as such to which I replied "Are you telling me the fight is impossible? Unless you are telling me it is impossible then we are doing it with this group and we will find a way!"
We one shotted it.
Later on when we were doing Heroic Beastlord for the first time our second pull happened to pickup the Rylack first....which is supposedly a major no-no...for an instant I thought of calling for a wipe but then realized that we should push anyway...we got the kill and it is one of my favorite kills we have gotten ever =D
I wish people would be more open to trying things....crazy things.
I'm finding many of BoKs articles agree with me.
In our case there have been two recent accounts where the PAtT concept reared its head and was squashed.
During one of our normal High Maul attempts we got Ko'Ragh but our setup was suboptimal for the fight. And I was told as such to which I replied "Are you telling me the fight is impossible? Unless you are telling me it is impossible then we are doing it with this group and we will find a way!"
We one shotted it.
Later on when we were doing Heroic Beastlord for the first time our second pull happened to pickup the Rylack first....which is supposedly a major no-no...for an instant I thought of calling for a wipe but then realized that we should push anyway...we got the kill and it is one of my favorite kills we have gotten ever =D
I wish people would be more open to trying things....crazy things.
Monday, March 23, 2015
Quick and Dirty Holy Priest Talent/Glyph Assessment
Assumptions: you will be raid healing in a group larger than 12
First off blue chackra will be your main stance, there are very specific times to swap out to yellow and maybe red but blue is the safe goto.
Secondly you are casting renews like a psychotic sprinkle fairy...and I don't even know what the freak that means.
This is interrupted by CoH when there is damage to warrant it and its off CD.
After those two no other spell will see very heavy play except once you have your 2p from BRF which then allows PoM to be cast on CD.
Here we go:
First off blue chackra will be your main stance, there are very specific times to swap out to yellow and maybe red but blue is the safe goto.
Secondly you are casting renews like a psychotic sprinkle fairy...and I don't even know what the freak that means.
This is interrupted by CoH when there is damage to warrant it and its off CD.
After those two no other spell will see very heavy play except once you have your 2p from BRF which then allows PoM to be cast on CD.
Here we go:
Monday, January 26, 2015
Renew all the things!!!!!
I've been looking over logs and searching far and wide for a way to improve my healing numbers and maybe overcome that last little bit I need in order to get my Endless title for my holy priest and what I'm seeing is renew, renew, renew, renew.
Now as a holy priest I do use renew but what I don't do is spam the ever living phunkinwaggler out of it but this is exactly what I'm seeing on top logs. The greatest part is I'm not seeing the overhealing that I was certain I would find in this renewcentric world. So, it is time to look into the math and learn to love the renew.
Now as a holy priest I do use renew but what I don't do is spam the ever living phunkinwaggler out of it but this is exactly what I'm seeing on top logs. The greatest part is I'm not seeing the overhealing that I was certain I would find in this renewcentric world. So, it is time to look into the math and learn to love the renew.
Saturday, January 24, 2015
The ilvl Fallacy
Players have become far too obsessed with ilvl. They feel that they will do better once their ilvl is higher, that they aren't worthy of raiding yet because their ilvl is to low. The truth of the matter is that most people have a poor understanding of what ilvl is, the two assumptions it makes, and why it is one of the poorest determinations of player skill that can be used.
So let's clear this up shall we.
So let's clear this up shall we.
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
I've got the itch
The new raiding season began today a midst another round of Blizzard's servers having seizures. There has to be a pill for that.
We don't actually begin our official raiding until tomorrow night so we have yet to be effected by it but I did follow one Fullspectrum's healers as he battled the login boss...it was not good.
I'm genuinely excited. I haven't been for a while now. I lost the drive at the end of MoP and literally up until today I had little desire to play wow at all. I've been focused in on Minecraft lately but today the winds changed.
This season will certainly be different for me as I am now officially in charge. This is my ship, it sinks or floats by the skill of my guidance... and I couldn't be more nervous.
I desperately need a recruitment officer. We will not grow properly until I find the right person to head up our HR department. Its just not something I am good at.
So what I have for now is a 6 hour, two day a week raiding schedule, 2 tanks and a DPS locked in plus another DPS who I have a feeling will be there but it is unconfirmed. That gives us 4 for sure and most likely 5. 5/6 on Fridays when I know we will have an extra hand.
Its a good starting point. We will have to use the LFG channel and be fast about removing trouble and replacing with something useful.
Its up to me. That is a scary thought and one I have been trying my best to avoid but somehow I always end up leading and this time its more my fault than ever. And to be honest I want to lead. I want to be sure that when all goes to shit that I have no one to blame but myself because I can handle that more that chalking it up to some one else's poor leadership.
And the thing is I get the impression that the people who follow me actually believe I'm an ok leader. Sure they think I need a van down by the river but they seem happy with me leading for the most part. Of course this does mean that they aren't so happy when I vanish for a few months to dig blocks and they are right...I lost my fire. Nothing to it but to do it now though. Get back in there and start swinging.
I can't wait for tomorrow night.
We don't actually begin our official raiding until tomorrow night so we have yet to be effected by it but I did follow one Fullspectrum's healers as he battled the login boss...it was not good.
I'm genuinely excited. I haven't been for a while now. I lost the drive at the end of MoP and literally up until today I had little desire to play wow at all. I've been focused in on Minecraft lately but today the winds changed.
This season will certainly be different for me as I am now officially in charge. This is my ship, it sinks or floats by the skill of my guidance... and I couldn't be more nervous.
I desperately need a recruitment officer. We will not grow properly until I find the right person to head up our HR department. Its just not something I am good at.
So what I have for now is a 6 hour, two day a week raiding schedule, 2 tanks and a DPS locked in plus another DPS who I have a feeling will be there but it is unconfirmed. That gives us 4 for sure and most likely 5. 5/6 on Fridays when I know we will have an extra hand.
Its a good starting point. We will have to use the LFG channel and be fast about removing trouble and replacing with something useful.
Its up to me. That is a scary thought and one I have been trying my best to avoid but somehow I always end up leading and this time its more my fault than ever. And to be honest I want to lead. I want to be sure that when all goes to shit that I have no one to blame but myself because I can handle that more that chalking it up to some one else's poor leadership.
And the thing is I get the impression that the people who follow me actually believe I'm an ok leader. Sure they think I need a van down by the river but they seem happy with me leading for the most part. Of course this does mean that they aren't so happy when I vanish for a few months to dig blocks and they are right...I lost my fire. Nothing to it but to do it now though. Get back in there and start swinging.
I can't wait for tomorrow night.
Friday, November 14, 2014
oh the lag....the laaaaaaaaag
So if you haven't heard WoD dropped....well like 23 hrs ago. I'm now 92... =(
I couldn't have hit 100 even if I had wanted to today. Area52 was very ill, poor little guy just couldn't take the invasion of the Iron Nerds.
But!
I still have opinions.
I couldn't have hit 100 even if I had wanted to today. Area52 was very ill, poor little guy just couldn't take the invasion of the Iron Nerds.
But!
I still have opinions.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Move your body body
There is an Army cadence that we used to have to echo while running that had the line "Move your body, body". It always stuck with me.
Despite my extreme loathing for propelling my body forward with more than a modest amount of velocity I sure did love the cadences...many of them told tales of powerful old grandma's. /shrug
From Dayani
Dayani took the time to write a well thought out reply and I appreciate her for doing so. Her reply carries even more weight due to the fact that she has seen these classes in action in the beta. Her thoughts aren't simple pontifications but are backed by actual data and they provide the answer that I was hoping for.
You see a class must provide something that others can not in order to hold enough value to bring it instead of some other higher value class. Sometimes that value is simply availability but in this case I am controlling the toon so I get to choose which one to play. I like Priests. I will need to see Disc in action at 100 but at 90 they are doing very well and Holy just feels solid. So if they are also the most mobile and feel very complete compared to others that provide more bells, whistles, and totems then that is a pretty good reason to stick with the class.
Furthermore limiting a tool kit to healing and a very few other things allows me to focus on being the best healer I can be without the need to juggle a handful of situationaly(really, that's not a word google???) useful abilities. Now of course if I find any uses for Chain Undead, Dispel Magic, or Dominate Mind then I'll be all over that like hot on sour.
I still don't understand the multistrike attunment and more importantly why Holy didn't get the raid buff for multistrike. There are far too many times when the developers do odd things that I would love to hear explained, love to hear the logic behind. /sigh
Despite my extreme loathing for propelling my body forward with more than a modest amount of velocity I sure did love the cadences...many of them told tales of powerful old grandma's. /shrug
From Dayani
The reason to be a Priest, if you really want to stay Priest, is that you're so much more mobile than any other healer except Druid. The Renew/CoH engine in Sanctuary Chakra is incredibly powerful and movement is extremely intensive in WoD encounters. Holy Priest actually feels like the most "complete" healer on the beta to me, although I'll admit Resto Shaman feels nice too.In my last post I was lamenting the lack of utility in the Priest toolbox. What I didn't post was an addendum stating that at least in pre-release the healing felt really really good and given all other factors I just needed one reason to consider a Priest over another class.
Dayani took the time to write a well thought out reply and I appreciate her for doing so. Her reply carries even more weight due to the fact that she has seen these classes in action in the beta. Her thoughts aren't simple pontifications but are backed by actual data and they provide the answer that I was hoping for.
You see a class must provide something that others can not in order to hold enough value to bring it instead of some other higher value class. Sometimes that value is simply availability but in this case I am controlling the toon so I get to choose which one to play. I like Priests. I will need to see Disc in action at 100 but at 90 they are doing very well and Holy just feels solid. So if they are also the most mobile and feel very complete compared to others that provide more bells, whistles, and totems then that is a pretty good reason to stick with the class.
Furthermore limiting a tool kit to healing and a very few other things allows me to focus on being the best healer I can be without the need to juggle a handful of situationaly(really, that's not a word google???) useful abilities. Now of course if I find any uses for Chain Undead, Dispel Magic, or Dominate Mind then I'll be all over that like hot on sour.
I still don't understand the multistrike attunment and more importantly why Holy didn't get the raid buff for multistrike. There are far too many times when the developers do odd things that I would love to hear explained, love to hear the logic behind. /sigh
Healing Rain...healing rain....Purple healing raiaiaian
So the changes are in but we are still stuck as children without our full set of adult abilities. Or maybe more like adolescents I suppose. Still the changes are in.
So what do I think? Well...I think I may swap mains from priest to Shaman. I also think the new grouping tool will be both a blessing and a curse.
Let's discuss shall we.
So what do I think? Well...I think I may swap mains from priest to Shaman. I also think the new grouping tool will be both a blessing and a curse.
Let's discuss shall we.
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Weak Auras; Strong Addon
This isn't a major post, just some notes to myself as we prepare to enter pre-WoD and I have to do the ritual UI dance.
Weak Auras
Spells and Their CDs
Short CD spells will go on the spell bar along with their CDs. I think I'll actually make a group for Holy/Disc/Druid/Sham/Monk/Pal this time instead of the single bar I had for MoP.
Long CDs go at the bottom of the screen.
CC CDs....do we priest have any CC =,( ....top of the screen.
Track Renews. Worth it to track PW:S? Probably not. Will assess other healers as I get to know them. Also track PoM.
Throughput Buffs in one bar group
Regen Buffs in another.
Throughput has priority, so for something like Serendipity it would go in regen.
Dispels are tracked by when they are on CD. This is the same for any rarely used spell.
Weak Auras
Spells and Their CDs
Short CD spells will go on the spell bar along with their CDs. I think I'll actually make a group for Holy/Disc/Druid/Sham/Monk/Pal this time instead of the single bar I had for MoP.
Long CDs go at the bottom of the screen.
CC CDs....do we priest have any CC =,( ....top of the screen.
Track Renews. Worth it to track PW:S? Probably not. Will assess other healers as I get to know them. Also track PoM.
Throughput Buffs in one bar group
Regen Buffs in another.
Throughput has priority, so for something like Serendipity it would go in regen.
Dispels are tracked by when they are on CD. This is the same for any rarely used spell.
Friday, October 3, 2014
Do Priests Lack Good Raid Utility?
One root, but only as a talent. One fear, same tree as the root. No battle rez, no way to remove movement impairing effects from allies. Disc received a Silence but Holy still has none. Fear Ward is nice but on a 3 min CD. Warriors now have access to Stam buff.
The MoP proving grounds really highlighted the lack of offensive utility Priests have in the game. We have some decent spells like levitate and Leap of Faith but they just don't compare to the utility of the shaman or druid. Dispel Magic would be great if it was more useful in a raiding environment.
I'm trying to justify a why a Priest would be needed in a Raid during WoD. Trying to figure out if I should switch over and play a Shaman as my main.
The MoP proving grounds really highlighted the lack of offensive utility Priests have in the game. We have some decent spells like levitate and Leap of Faith but they just don't compare to the utility of the shaman or druid. Dispel Magic would be great if it was more useful in a raiding environment.
I'm trying to justify a why a Priest would be needed in a Raid during WoD. Trying to figure out if I should switch over and play a Shaman as my main.
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