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Spiritual Guidance: Spells we forget
This Sunday, Dawn Moore has called a temporary truce with Fox Van Allen so the two of them can take Spiritual Guidance on a group trip to Disneyland. They almost made it through the entire Space Mountain line without a fight on what was better, healing or damage. Later, Fox got a stomach ache and dispersed while riding the tea cups, and Dawn had to go back to the hotel to lie down before the Hannah Montana concert. Once upon a time, an off-tank coughed. At the time, the off-tank was zoned into Trial of the Crusader and thoroughly engaged in a battle against Anub'arak. His raid was just transitioning out of the first phase 2, and he was moving to his position to pick up adds. Unfortunately, as the off-tank coughed, he shifted ever so slightly, causing a poorly placed cup of cherry Kool Aid to upturn. Not a second later, the off-tank's raid was audience to a colorful soliloquy about a different type of penetrating cold. As the above events transpired, a disco priestess noticed that she had suddenly acquired threat from a newly spawned bug add. She strafed momentarily before hitting the key for her Fade spell and in doing so, saved herself from unknown peril. The bug, having lost its focus, immediately turned its attention to another priest in the raid named Calvin. Calvin, it turned out, was specced holy. Before things could get worse, the off-tank managed to pull himself together and resumed his tanking duties; he taunted the large bug and the panic in the raid subsided. Surprisingly, the battle continued without incident, and in the end the nerubian king was slain.
The Queue: Dragon Slave!
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Allison Robert, erroneously described by Alex Ziebart as "universally adored" on this site (whisper the phrase "I hate Tauren cat form" in Turtlehead's direction and run) is your hostess today.Mmmm...my favorite kind of Queue, the kind with a tank question. Actually, there were two good tank questions from the previous Queue, but the one asked by Gatorforest is something I'd like to address in a separate article. Additionally, two of the questions you'll see here wound up requiring fairly involved answers, so there are a few more questions I'd like to take a crack at sometime later this weekend if I get the time.And because it's Friday:Charlie asks...How many Queue columns does it take for one to finally reach the front of the line?The readers or the writers? I don't know about the former, but for us, it depends on the outcome of the previous day's in-staff gladiatorial match. Much like Mary Sues in the now-classic Pirate Monkey comic, THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE. Actually, I'm just using this as an excuse to quote the following:Professor Flitwick: Wait, she said she's both Dumbledore's and Snape's daughter. How is that possible?Dumbledore: Ehh, remember that Christmas party where we all got really drunk?
Patch 3.1 PTR Priest glyph changes thus far
One of the things Patch 3.1 is supplying in spades is glyphs and glyph changes. Every class is getting a ton of them, and it's really hard to keep up with them there are so many. Priests are coming out alright so far through the whole process, with a lot of our current glyphs being improved and our new glyphs being legitimately useful, if situational. Let's see what's new, shall we? Glyph of Fade - Reduces the cooldown of your Fade spell by 9 sec. (Old: Increases the duration and cooldown of your Fade spell by 50%.) This is massively better than what it was previously, and I suspect that this will become a popular Shadow Priest glyph in PvP. Two points in Veiled Shadows plus this glyph means a 15 second cooldown on Fade. Every 15 seconds, a Shadow Priest will be able to clear all movement impairing effects, assuming they have Improved Shadowform. That's pretty friggin' sweet.
Fear Ward and Spell Haste for facemelters
Yesterday's announcements brought two big notes that will be affecting Shadow Priests. The Fear Ward change and the fact that Spell Haste will affect the global cooldown.The Fear Ward change, like I mentioned in my last post, is primarily a convenience change for PvE. Reupping Fear Ward every 3 minutes when you need to keep putting Shadowform back on afterwards is annoying, and a large mana drain over long encounters. However, it wasn't crippling, so not a very big deal. What this will help the most is PvP, especially arenas. Having an arena match last longer than three minutes isn't unlikely, so you will probably want to put Fear Ward back up at some point throughout the match. Being required to drop Shadowform to do it is sort of a pain, considering both the loss of damage and the mitigation Shadowform supplies you with, arguably one of the Shadow Priest's strongest defenses. The Spell Haste change is what has me a little excited. I'll admit right away, I haven't crunched any numbers. I'm notoriously bad at breaking down raw stats, I usually just eyeball my gear and take a guess. I'm right or pretty close more often than not but don't hate me too much if my guesses here are completely wrong. If you want to see some raw numbers, you can probably check them out over at the ShadowPriest.com forum.
Back in the Day: A week of EBay, Karazhan and class QQ
What was going on in World of Warcraft this time last year? Back in the Day looks into the past of WoW Insider and brings back posts notable, controversial and sometimes humorous reflecting the state of the game one year ago this week.For the week of January 27 - February 2, 2007:The big news in the third week of TBC was E-bay's announcement: they de-listed all the gold sellers. Not that that stopped the black market for in-game gold sold for real life cash, but just today Blizzard struck another blow in the unending battle: they used the U.S. courts to shut out a major player in the gold selling industry from doing business on the Blizzard servers. The dance continues.On the official forums, there was a mixture of apprehension about how classes were falling into their new roles and speculation about the nature of the post-60 raid game. One article addressed both these issues when it brought together the concerns of the community about Karazhan. Complaints included trash mobs in the zone being too difficult, bosses being too tough on melee classes, Nightbane's fear unfair to Horde and itemization out of line with the difficulty of the encounter.Nowadays, the trash has been nerfed repeatedly, some bosses are still tough on melee classes, all Priests have Fear Ward, but a nerfed version making the Nightbane encounter difficult for both factions and the debate rages on whether itemization is good or not, but really, it depends on your class (hint: don't get a Priest started on the subject.)
Officers' Quarters: 2.3 -- An officer's perspective
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.I know, I know. Last week I presented you with Part 1 of my examination of guild alliances, and my readers are probably wondering what the heck happened to Part 2. It's coming next week, I promise! (In fact, it's already written.) But since we were unexpectedly flooded with so much great information about 2.3, I thought I'd make this column a bit more timely and put Dark pacts, Part 2 on hold. The next major content patch has some interesting additions and changes that will affect many aspects of the game, but there are a few that officers should be thinking about now. Let's take a look.
Patch 2.3 and you: Et cetera edition
With the bonanza of upcoming changes coming out, there are a few categories that don't have enough changes to merit posts of their own. These are their stories. We're adding new relics to support all talent trees in patch 2.3 for Shaman, Paladins and Druids. In addition, (not that this will sweep you off your feet), most of the arena-system relics have been renamed so there is a more consistent naming convention. (Eyonix) Those who completed the [Tempest Keep] attunement process will have access to the title "Champion of the Naaru". Also, the plan is to hard-cap it at 70, meaning you can't go back at 80 and "cheese" the title. (Eyonix) We're looking into potential improvements for earth shield, and even lightning shield (Eyonix) Fear Ward will be available to all priests at level 20, but there are some changes in addition. Current plans are to reduce duration to 3 minutes, and increase the cooldown to 3 minutes.To give the dwarves and draenei something else to even it out, they'll see a new ability called Chastise (also given at level 20) which will cause holy damage and incapacitate the target for 2 seconds. (Drysc) Yay! Fear Ward for all! Racials are still a stupid idea, in my opinion, but this takes some of the sting out of them. A new title, and some new relics are both very welcome; the current relics are in many ways a bit silly.
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Beyond Patch 2.2: Schwick's compilation of verified info
Patch 2.2, currently in testing on the PTR, has some great improvements like voice chat and reporting AFK'ers in Battlegrounds. What it doesn't have is any new, big, sexy chunk of playable content. So when are we going to see the post-Karazhan 10-main raid zone, Zul'Aman? New Heroic Badge rewards? Guild banks? Oh, we already know that last one.Forum MVP Schwick on the WoW European forums has compiled a list of known updates in Patch 2.3 and beyond. He often provide reference links to his sources form many of his future patch notes, which makes him an information god in my book.He also goes on to list all the verified information about the WotLK expansion. I thought I had read all the info that was out already, but on Schwick's list I found items I didn't know, like the fact that Blizzard has a plan to deal with the fact that the Horde doesn't have a fear ward. Or that Naxxramas, the last raid zone introduced before TBC launched, will be repurposed in the new expansion. Or that new shaders will be introduced for shinier graphics. Mmm, sparkles.Check out Schwick's post if you want to get a look ahead about what's known for future patches.Screenshot of Zul'Aman boss models courtesy of MMO-Champion.com.
The latest on Priest racial abilities
Starting its life as a brief comment at Dungeon & Raids panel at BlizzCon 2007 ("We are going to do something about Fear Ward for the Horde."), we're now getting some interesting news on the future of the Priest's racial abilities. Says Drysc, post-BlizzCon:I think the general consensus among the designers is that ultimately priest racials were ... a poor choice to make... I'm not sure how many remember, but priest racials were created because there was player concern over how an Undead could appropriately wield the healing powers of the light, and the racials were added to give flavor which could back up some of those player concerns. Aside from some probably poor decisions on what that flavor should be, ultimately it was a concern that players would ultimately have benefited from if we had simply ignored it. It could be addressed any number of ways (everyone is given everything, or it's cut down to a small pool of abilities which everyone has access to, or only specific abilities are passed to different races, etc.), and I don't believe a final decision has been made at this time.So it looks as though Priests are looking forward to a future without distinct racial abilities. And while I'm sure that some Priests are happy about that, I'm thinking that those who picked their race for a specific skill (Dwarves and Draenei, in particular) might not be. Which side of the camp do you fall on -- are you glad that Blizzard is addressing the issue, or wish they'd just leave it be?
Remember, fear isn't going to be a big factor in the expansion!
That was the logic used by Blizzard to give Fear Ward to Draenei priests instead of Blood Elves. This comment runs through my mind every time I get feared into mobs in Steamvaults/Underbog/other instances, wiping the group due to something I cannot control. I hate mobs that fear in PVE. As a rogue, there's nothing I can do to control or stop the fear aside from permanently staying outside melee range. (No, I'm not undead.) I haven't even done Nightbane yet, who is apparently another Nef-like encounter that involves major fearing. Sure, tremor totem can help, but if you don't have a shaman you're sort of boned. This isn't another Alliance-has-it-easy complaint -- I know that most Alliance groups probably don't have a dwarf or draenei priest, and many of the "fear" effects are actually horror and aren't stopped by Fear Ward. The mechanics of PVE fear are annoying to everyone, from gnomes to tauren, and I sincerely wish it had some kind of counter -- either by reducing its appearance in instances or giving all priests Fear Ward. It's an overdone and repetitive mechanism that no one actually likes. Looking at the forums, it seems many people agree with me. And surprisingly enough, a good share of the complainers are Alliance. A dwarf paladin notes that he "loves getting stuck between a wagon and its wheel or falling through the world" after a fear, a human warrior hates that you can't stance dance past insta-cast fears, and a night elf priest says that "it's pretty uncreative to make the frustration factor in instances solely based on one spell for almost twelve instances." So do you think fear is overused, or do we just all need to lrn2play by pulling mobs further back and clearing large areas?
