Coming out as a Paladin

Well the burn in period is over, and I've leveled both my priest and paladin to 85, and having done a few dungeons and heroics on each, I see a world of difference.

My priest is mana constrained, I struggle with throughput, and I have a heart attack every time a pull doesn't go perfectly.

My paladin finishes most pulls with 80% of his mana, I have no trouble keeping the whole group topped off, and I have a lot of tools to smooth out bad pulls, like divine protection, salv, etc. It's really so much better right now as a holy paladin then as a holy or disc priest, at least for me.

This is all 5-man, of course, I could see how holy priests could tear up raids, but right now I just can't even bring myself to log onto the priest right now. So I think I'm a paladin, for now.

Did you ever have to make up your mind?

Did you ever have to make up your mind?
Pick up on one and leave the other one behind
It's not often easy, and not often kind
Did you ever have to make up your mind?

Haven't been posting yet, because I've been busy leveling, duh!

Cata Impressions

So I am really enjoying cataclysm so far! The new zones are all really fresh- the phasing is a little awkward when group questing, but it does give the zones a more narrative feel than in past expansions. Love love love the Harrison Jones questchain in Uldum.
The dungeons themselves... so far I've been a little on the fence about them. When I do them with guild groups, they go great, but I've gotten into some sketchy PUGs with entitled tanks who seem to think that mana is some sort of healer myth. Actually in general I'm finding healing to be a little crazy right now.

Class selection at 85

So I was kind of on the fence about which of my toons I was going to level first. I ended up leveling the priest first because I was having a lot of fun playing holy at 80 and thought it would be pretty fun to level shadow too.
The unexpected thing for me at least, is that the leveling grind from 80 to 85 was really quick! On top of that, I have an incentive to level my alts, because the questing will contribute to guild xp. So, I think my plan now is to continue leveling my alts and then decide on my main. So here are my general thoughts on the classes so far.

Priest

I leveled shadow for the last two levels, but I did a fair bit of questing in my holy spec, mostly if I was waiting in the dungeon queue and didn't want to bother switching out. Most mobs were pretty squishy, and any spec where I was glyphed for Spirit Tap was pretty easy to level with. I ended up ditching my disc spec after the first dungeon- I had some bad luck with Atonement- I don't think it's practical for a 5-man. It might be good in a raiding environment, but overall I found the holy spec to be really fun and versatile.
At 85 though, I've only run 2 heroics, and I've had severe mana problems. I have to drink after every pull and I and up oom on several bossfights, even when I feel like I'm being pretty conservative with my spell selection. I'm not that enamored with the priest after all. I might try a non-smite disc build to see if the mana efficiency is a little better...

Shaman

So originally when I was picking a toon to level, I was comparing priest and shaman, and looking at all the shiny new toys priests were getting, while shaman seemed a little boring. Now at 85, as my priest, I find myself pretty much healing like I would on a shaman. Sure, I have all these other fancy buttons, but if I actually use any of them (looking at you, Holy Word: Sanctuary), I'll go oom in about 30 seconds and just sit there watching my party members die.
So I'm going to start leveling the shaman in parallel. It's pretty easy to level to 85, and it is all contributing to guild xp, so it's gravy.

Paladin

The dark horse in this race is my paladin- I had this tank alt on another server, and cause my guild there folded I decided to transfer him to BT and start leveling him just to get some mining/ore for jewelcrafting. I am actually still leveling prot, and I really like it! I also am going to look at a holy spec for him as well, but tanks are so in demand I doubt I'll get much use out of it.

I have time to choose, cause my guild isn't really going to start raiding for at least another two weeks.
And then you bet you'd better finally decide...

So, anyone have any initial impressions of healing in cataclysm?

First, Do Some Harm

Gone are the days of the pacifist healer sitting in the back row patching up the dpsers doing the dirty work. Come Cataclysm, with the new mechanics, abilities, and talents showing up in beta, it's prety clear that Blizzard wants us healers to get down off our high horses and get our hands a little bloody. So healers? Let's get ready to rumble.

Pre-Cata

Prior to cataclysm, most healers really only did damage when they were super bored. A healer spending mana on a dps ability would be pretty much unthinkable on a progression encounter, much less talent points, with only a few exceptions.

• Holy Paladins in Wrath got Judgements of the Pure, which, combined with Enlightened Judgements, allowed holydins to judge from a distance, and in fact, were encouraged to do so at least once every minute to optimize their healing.
• Holy Priests have frequently found themselves using their Shadow Word: Death backlash to force a stuck Prayer of Mending to bounce to another raid member.
• Holy Priests have Surge of Light, which prior to WOTLK could only proc a free smite, instead of a Flash Heal like it does today. This was generally regarded as a poor talent prior to being changed.

Other than those, most healers had no real incentive or reason to dps while filling a healing role. Even dead time was better spent regenning mana out of combat.

New Talents/Skills for Healing Classes in Cataclysm

In cataclysm, across the board, we're seeing dps talents showing up in previously healing exclusive trees.

• Shaman
  Resto shaman playing with a cataclysm talent calculator will find that it's nearly impossible to build a pve restoration build without being forced to take one of the new "hybrid" talents that encourage resto shaman to dps during periods of light healing.
  • Focused Insight allows you to get a cheaper and more effective heal after any shock spell (this does not include Wind Shear).
  • Telluric Currents gives you a portion of your mana back from casting Lightning Bolt relative to the amount of damage done. Interestingly enough, on beta, many shaman were able to get to spellpower levels that would actually cause lightning bolt to be a net gain in mana, although Blizz has since clarified that this is not the intended purpose and presumably the talent will be rebalanced as needed.
  I'm not crazy about either of these mechanics. For Focused Insight, I feel that Shaman have many other ways to "charge up" their next heal, including Tidal Waves and the new Unleash Life ability. Telluric Currents confuses me, because we're constantly being told by Blizzard developers that we've had it too easy in the past and they want mana conservation to be an issue going forward. Even if they're cheap, I can't see how encouraging Resto Shaman to waste mana on lightning bolts is part of this overall strategy.
• Priest
  Disc priests have always had the schizophrenic Penance which contextually heals or damages based on who the spell's target is. Now Holy is getting a somewhat similar spell called Holy Word: Chastise that is an instant damage ability by default, but can convert into either Aspire, Serenity, or Sanctuary, based on the Chakra state that you are in. The mechanic sounds confusing, and potentially a nightmare for keybindings/macros, but the abilities themselves look really cool, so it's definitely something I'm looking forward to playing with. Beyond that, priests of both healing trees are getting a lot of talents that encourage smiting.
  • In the second tier of the Disc tree, priests get a talent Evangelism which looks like a pure dps talent until you see it's dependent Archangel which restores mana and gives you a short healing boost. This definitely fits in with the "dps during dead time" model nicely, and gives you another nice mana regen and healing boost cooldown.
  • The disc-only talent Atonement is probably one of my favorites of the new hybrid talents; you heal low health allies near you when you smite. Simple and kind of fun. Dovetails nicely with Evangelism.
  • I'm not as excited about the Holy tree's Trinity because it is useless unless you have enough downtime to smite three times in a row, and your haste boost is only good for the next 12 seconds. You really need to time this effect right to make it useful, whereas Archangel is much more adaptive. Still, this talent is a prereq for the new Surge of Light, which most people will probably want.
• Paladin
  The aforementioned long range of Enlightened Judgements is now actually becoming baseline for all Paladins, which is kind of a nice treat. In addition, they get some new and somewhat confusing new dps/healing hybrid talents.
  • Denounce looks basically like the old pre-wotlk Surge of Light. At 2 points it reduces the cost of exorcism by 75% at its base, and gives your holy shock the ability to proc fee exorcisms. Additionally, the free Exorcisms can crit, allowing you to proc other talents like Conviction for free.
  • As I said before, the old Enlightened Judgements range became baseline, and the new one causes your judgements to heal yourself. Healing yourself is pretty boring, but it's not a bad filler talent, given that you have to judge at least once a minute.
  I gotta be honest, a lot of these changes confuse me, because I've never really raid healed on my holy paladin. I'm just gonna keep my mouth shut.
• Druid
  Druids, most dramatically, actually could only cast restoration spells in tree form in the past. Now not only can they cast all their Balance spells in tree form, but they even get a bonus to Wrath while in Tree form. Additionally, there is a new talent that encourages dps.
  • Fury of Stormrage makes Wrath FREE and allows Wrath to proc instant Starfires. While this seems like a strange mechanic for healing, any free spells are awesome. Not only does your mana regen continue as in out of combat, but I would assume that these free spells can still proc talents and abilities like Omen of Clarity. Anyway, this talent is a prereq for Malfurion's Gift, so I think all Resto druids will be picking this up anyways. Enjoy it you guys.

So as a whole, I'm intrigued by the hybrid aspect of these talents, and there are some of them that I think work really well without interfering in the primary role that healers signed up for. Obviously these will all be tweaked and edited and modified before cata goes live, but it's definitely something I'm keeping an eye on.

From 70 to Icecrown in 2 weeks!

Since I knew I'd have some time on my hands during the Christmas holiday, I decided to pull out my old 70 priest and level her, since she hadn't seen any action since Black Temple. I was also really interested on how the gearing up process would go with all the changes in 3.3.

Fortunately, between the new LFG system, changes to questing, and the newly available gear, I found I was able to get my priest ready to heal Icecrown Citadel in just 2 weeks!

Leveling through the new LFG system

I leveled with a Shadow spec (for soloing) and a Disc off spec to heal some dungeons, and my initial thoughts on the new LFG system were very positive. From 70-80 I ran each dungeon once, with VH 2-3 times. During this time I was only in 1 pug that didn't finish the instance and probably only had a total of about 4 wipes.

I also found that the new quest/map system was really amazing in zones that I didn't know very well, such as Sholozar Basin. It replaced the need for extra mods like TourGuide or Carbonite.

Overall, leveling from 70 to 80 took about a week.

Gearing up a fresh 80

Once I hit 80, I decided to concentrate completely on Disc (I queued as both but, unsurprisingly, have never been selected for dps). After 3 days and about 40 heroics later, I had amassed full iLvl 200 gear with a few 245 pieces from triumphs: the Talisman of Resurgence and the Band of the Invoker.

Hitting the new 3.3 content

Once I had at least 200s in every slot, I felt comfortable running the regular version of the Icecrown 5-mans.

After running them all once, I'd picked up a few pieces of 219 gear. Since I still didn't feel completely ready to dive into the heroic versions, I just kept queuing for these 3 and continuing to pick up the free 219s, and noticed that after another day or two of this I was finding it hard to OOM. The only way I could do it was spamming Holy Nova even on packs of 1-2 mobs. When healing regularly, I never even had to drink between my Hymn of Hope and Shadowfiend cooldowns, so I decided it was finally time to start into the heroic versions. Besides 1 failed PoS run, I've found them to be pretty smooth.

Ready to raid!

Overall it's been a really good experience, the new emblem system mixed with the new LFG system makes it very easy to get into full 232/245 gear and ready for Icecrown Citadel in a matter of a few weeks. Compared to the BC days where hitting 70 during Black Temple meant you were about 9 Karazhan runs away from doing anything higher than SSC/TK, I have to congratulate Blizzard on catering to the alts of people who love the game and know how to play but don't have time to raid off nights to gear up.

RE: Healing and fun

Llyra from the Healing Way blog is starting a series of posts on Healing and fun from the perspective of WoW development. I thought there were a lot of interesting points which I wanted to give my perspective on.

Can healer's enjoy solo-ing? With dual-spec, does this even matter anymore?
So from 70-80 I actually ended up preferring a holy/disc leveling spec for my Priest rather than Shadow. This is mostly because my spirit levels were so high from my raiding 70 gear, that any build with Spirit Tap would have zero downtime, and my spellpower was high enough that mobs would never live long enough for the very long dots to tick to their full extent. In contrast, holy has a spammable damage-up-front spell, and can spec to actually make this damage totally fine for solo content.

With the advent of dual-specs, Llyra discards the idea that this will make hardcore raiders pick a dps spec as a second spec, as they can now min/max even further. While this is totally true for Priests, and I actually do have 2 healing specs on my priest even though I am not a hardcore raider; I don't think this is very true for the other healing classes. I'm not even sure what talent points I would want that I'm not already getting on my Shaman. Maaybe Healing Focus. I've already told you why I don't like Improved Reincarnation. Other than Priests, who have two very different healing trees, the other healing classes are viable in their cookie cutter specs.

How can Blizzard make healing more fun?
Obviously I don't know if this applies to me- I played a DPS class (Rogue) for about a year and got pretty bored, after which I leveled my Priest and that became my main for the next 2 years. I really don't think I'd ever consider playing as my main any class that doesn't at least have the capacity to heal on it. While I do really enjoy the occasions that I get to DPS in my ele spec for a 5-man or for a specific boss where we scale down our healers, it's more of a vacation than anything else; I don't think I'd be happy dpsing every day. DPSing just doesn't seem dynamic enough for me, while healing forces you to constantly be reacting.

That being said, I think the biggest barrier to entry for healers, is that it really is almost unimaginable to be a raid healer without mods. The default user interface just doesn't cut it. It doesn't normally bother me, but I was trying to make a character on the PTR, and I didn't want to migrate all my mods. I found that I had no problems dpsing things there, but I just didn't want to deal with the default UI when it came to healing. I'm sure I could approximate the functions of Grid/Clique (or Vuhdo or Healbot) with the default unit frames and mouseover macros, but it wouldn't be elegant, and it would be pretty miserable overall.

Blizzard has got to be aware that their default unit frames aren't adequate. This would be fantastic if they addressed it some way. In general, I'm having fun as it is though ;)

-Zigi

Knee-jerk blue reaction: Improved Reincarnation

A recent blue post on the forums revealed that they are thinking of lowering the overall cooldown on Reincarnation to 30 minutes, which means that with the talent it will go down to 15.

Quote from Blizzard staff

Reincarnation cooldown
We might drop Reincarnation to 30 base, talented to 15. That's a slight nerf to the talent, but at the same time taking the cooldown that low might make an unattractive talent more attractive. (Source)

They hope that this will make the unattractive Improved Reincarnation talent suddenly popular. Now I'm not normally one to look a gift buff in the mouth, and if they give me a 30 min CD on base Reincarnation, I'll take it and be happy, but I still don't think this makes the Improved Reincarnation a good talent, or an attractive one to Shamans. To see why, you need only look as far as the iconic healing class and my former main, the holy priest.

Prior to patch 2.0.1, holy priests would rarely spec for the Spirit of Redemption talent. Back then it merely provided the pop-up temp healer effect, and had no passive bonus other than that. Even though that pop-up healer is extremely useful and can often make the difference between a progression boss kill and a wipe, it was referred to as "Improved Death" and was avoided except for very specific gimmicky progression fights. Finally after years of being an ignored talent, Blizzard buffed the talent in 2.0.1 and gave it an awesome passive spirit bonus. The talent became a spec-defining talent in the holy tree.

The main reason no one wants to take Improved Reincarnation or pre-2.0.1 Spirit of Redemption talents is that we're healers. Healing aggro is basically a thing of the past; the only way these talents could have any use is if we die, and more often than not, that would be our own fault. Rather than spec to improve when I fail, I'd rather spend points in throughput or mana efficiency talents, to help me NOT DIE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Still, I feel like Shaman are very strong healers right now, and I'm not going anywhere. But I will be leaving that box 0/2 until they can find a way to design that talent so it doesn't just improve your fail. Cause Zigi don't fail. Zigi win.

-Zigi