Postponed

Supposedly the rumors are that cata will now be delayed until early December. I'm a little disappointed cause I was getting pretty excited to start up again in mid-october and get ready for a November release.

So it's pretty frustrating to even look at talent calculators or patch notes since everything will probably be wildly different in two months... Already from my last post, one of the talents I mentioned (Trinity) has already been removed.

I'm probably going to move into a more read-only mode until November or so.

See y'all then!

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.

The Road to Cataclysm

Mage on a shelf

I got my mage to 73 when my account lapsed, and I figured that was for the best. I have a lot of real life events that have kept me busy, and haven't had time for anything more than one daily dungeon a day, which wasn't really satisfying. I do really like the mage, and I hope to finish leveling her maybe sometime after cataclysm drops.

Waiting game

So just this morning, Boubouille from mmo-champion predicted that the cataclysm release date will be Nov 2. He's been pretty spot on about expansion and release dates in the past, so I'm going with this for now.

I figure that I'll probably start my sub up in late October, after the last of my trips, so I have maybe a week to mess around with talent specs on all my toons, and maybe do some of the pre-expansion content.

Planning

I still don't know who my main is going to be post-expansion. I've been loving the shaman, but the priest mechanics coming up in Cata look really fun. This is probably what I'll use that week pre-expansion to decide.

It's only really going to be a factor for the first month. I do plan to eventually level all my 80 toons (shaman, priest, pally, warlock, and maybe mage) to 85.

In the meantime

I've been pretty occupied with Starcraft II, which is a fun game too. A lot of my WoW friends are playing that now, mostly. I don't think I'm ever going to be that great at it though, so I've been pretty casual.

I've also been playing a ton of iPhone games, because I've been traveling so much, but again, nothing serious.

Reading

Vixsin from Life in Group 5 mentioned a new shaman blog resource called TotemSpot which seems like it will be the go-to source for shaman questions starting in Cata. Definitely looking forward to that.

Reincarnation (not improved)

My life as a noob mage

So my cousin has been leveling on a different server, so I packed up some of my heirloom items on a middling toon and transfered over to try rolling a new mage.

I'm level 42 now, I've pretty much exclusively been leveling with the Dungeon Finder, and just some filler quests and profession stuff while I'm waiting for queues to pop. It's not as efficient as questing, but I just can't bring myself to kill coyotes in the badlands again.

I've found the mage super fun for the most part. I'm not sure either of my leveling specs are that efficient. I started with frost, and focused on aoe talents, thinking that I would be solo aoe farming more, but since I really haven't had long queue times in the LFD finder (Blackrock is crazy overpopulated, so I never wait more than like 5 mins), I haven't even been doing that much.

I basically Cone of Cold whenever its off cooldown no matter how many targets there are, and if there is only one target I frostbolt it, and if there is more than one target I Blizzard. If I pull aggro (which is likely with my half enchanted heirloom items), I frost nova the mobs, blink away, and pray my tank can pick up the slack. Ice barrier has saved me a few times.

When I hit 40 I had my transfer money so I bought my dual spec and got a fire build, but I don't know if I've found my groove with that spec yet. Most instances are just chain pulls of aoe, especially with pally tanks. I am hoping when I get dragon's breath I'll be able to aoe as much as my frost build, but right now I find that in between flamestrikes, I am just single targeting. I know I probably should be blizzarding there, but it seems strange, with my fire spec.

Can anyone recommend a good mage blog, particularly one with leveling theorycraft?

Cata talent preview

I also browsed the talent previews on mmo-champion. I thought the resto shaman ones were super boring, and I was a little perplexed by the priest "smite" talents showing up. For a second, I thought it would make holy leveling more fun, but someone on EJ pointed out that without the damage bonus of the masteries (that you only get in shadow spec), holy leveling will still be painfully inferior. So i guess it's for bored healers in instances to dish out a little damage when their tanks overgear the instance? Sounds kinda lame to me.

The only spec that interested me so far is the ele shaman tree. I do like that they're getting what looks like a flamestrike aoe, and there are some new mechanics coming there way that seem cool.

Zigi out.

Moving right along

Last night our guild had a sit down and we decided it was time to stop raiding. Some people are going to move on to larger 25 man raiding guilds, but I think for the most part, I feel that our guild had reached a logical conclusion to the progression we started about a year ago.

I just haven't felt the drive to log on lately, and I know I wasn't the only one. Getting on for raids was feeling more and more like a chore; in the past few weeks, when other guild members had other engagements and raids were getting cancelled, I felt relieved, not irritated.

I do regret not downing the Lich King, but I am pretty proud of what our little scrappy guild was able to accomplish during its run.

So I'm paid out through July and I may still log on for pvp and such, but for the most part, I think I'm pretty much on an official WoW break until Cataclysm. Looking forward to it!

Cataclysm Class Preview: Shaman

Saw these notes on MMO Champ today. Just going to break down the resto changes:

• Healing Wave will be split into two direct heals, a larger nuke heal called "Greater Healing Wave", and a medium heal with the current name.
  Not sure how I feel about this. I really am skeptical that they'll be able to make 3 levels of heals individually viable, but we'll see. With the larger health pools they've promised in Cataclysm, I can see how finer granularity could potentially be necessary
• Unleash Weapon Unleashes the power of your weapon enchants for additional effects (see below). A dual-wielding Enhancement shaman will activate the effects of both of their weapon enchants. Instant cast. 30-yard range. 15-second cooldown. Undispellable. Earthliving Weapon – Heals the target slightly and buffs the shaman's next healing spell by 20%.
  Umm, cool ability on a short cooldown, gives us another instant heal
• Healing Rain An area-effect heal-over-time (HoT) spell that calls down rain in a selected area, healing all players within it. There is no limit to the number of players who can potentially be affected; however, there are diminishing returns when healing a large number of targets, much like the diminishing returns associated with AoE damage spells. This should give Restoration shaman another healing tool that improves their group-healing and heal-over-time capabilities. 2-second cast time. 30-yard range. 10-second duration. 10-second cooldown.
  VERY NICE. Kind of like a wild growth/tranquility spell. As the only heal with no limit of targets Could be crazy OP in 25 man situations. Gotta wait on numbers to see this one
• Spiritwalker's Grace When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks. This will give shaman of all three specs another way to heal or do damage when it’s necessary to move in both PvE and PvP. Instant cast. 10-second duration. 2-minute cooldown.
  A really nice buff that will give us some great mobility on a cooldown.
• Dispeling Shaman will be able to remove magic defensively and offensively, and remove curses. Cleansing totem will be removed from the game.
  I'm a little disappointed with the dispel changes, but they are so closely tied to encounter mechanics, we'll have to see how those look
• Spirit Link The idea is that you will be able to link targets together so they share damage. When we had previously tried to implement Spirit Link, it was hard to balance and a little confusing. However, we really liked the concept -- and so did players -- so we are trying to bring it back.
  This could be very interesting, but I do remember when they tried it at 70 and couldn't get it to balance right
• Mastery Our passive talent tree bonuses are Healing, Meditation, and Deep Healing (increased healing to players at low health).
  No surprises here- I think these are going to be the boilerplate masteries for all healers

Looks like some really exciting changes coming up for Shaman. It looks like devs are addressing our issues with mobility and group healing, and have some good ideas for new mechanics to make cataclysm interesting. Can't wait to hear more!

First dance with the Lich King!

So, just yesterday I was fretting on another shaman blog that I feared we had hit a wall with Sindragosa. I don't know if it was the new 10% ICC buff, or just improved raid coordination, but we got her down in just 3 tries last night!

We got to take a peek at the Lich King encounter, which incorporates some unique encounter mechanics, feels dynamic and fun, and has an epic feel to it. I like that his fight seems to incorporate little elements of other WOTLK fights: his Necrotic Plague ability is kind of similar to Rotface's Mutated Infection; healing up a raid after an Infest is similar to healing a target of Lord Jaraxxus's Incinerate Flesh (In fact, I'm thinking of trying to fix up my broken GridStatusRaidDebuff so I can actually make sure the raid is getting Infest taken off).

We got in about 10 attempts last night, and were comfortably getting him into phase 2. Though we're not going to have any more raids this week due to the Easter break, I'm pretty confident that we'll be able to get a hang of those Defiles down, and I'm hoping to see Phase 3 next time I'm in there.

From a resto shaman perspective, I found the healing intense. It's not constant AOE like BQL or Sindragosa, but instead it's sudden bursts of intense raid healing. Maybe it's because it was my first night on the encounter, and maybe I was a little paranoid, and overhealing a bit, but I found myself burning through mana like crazy. I am gonna try to set up my shaman_hep parse for my log to just look at the LK encounter, but as it's such an intense fight, and so much longer than the other ICC encounters, I am thinking I'm going to have to rethink my stat weights and trinket choices for that fight, and I may go back to the mana restore meta gem.

So excited to finally get a crack at this guy!