Joe Perez
Articles by Joe Perez
Totem Talk: The problem with restoration shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how. Don't get me wrong, I love shaman healing. I've loved it for as long as shaman have existed in this game. I enjoy the hell out of healing bosses in raids, dungeons, strangers in spontaneous world PvP. Basically, if I can heal it on the shaman I've loved it. That's not to say that there haven't been any problems over the years with shaman healing, in fact there have been many. Mists of Pandaria is no exception to this. I mean we still kick all kinds of tail, but we just have some things that feel off. There are things that are just, well, I just look at them and I see potential issues. Problems that will come up later, even some that are coming up right now. It's far from a perfect world for us right now.
Totem Talk: Healing Stone Guard and Feng the Accursed
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how. Anyone who has followed me on Twitter or happened to look at my streams will have likely read some choice words flow from my finger tips based on the first two fights in the current tier of raiding. It's not that they are particularly hard fights, but they are a test of your coordination as a group. There are a ton of elements to the fights, multiple sources of damage at any given point of time, and of course some pretty high damage spikes built in because we just love those. The good news is that these first two fights in the Mogu'shan Vaults are in reality quite shaman healer friendly. Despite the damage, and the multiple mechanics, our toolkit makes us go-to healers on these first two fights. There are some tricks and helpful hints I can offer you to help squeeze all the healing juice you can in the fight.
Totem Talk: Restoration shaman two weeks into Mists
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how. Can you believe it's been a whole two weeks since Mists of Pandaria launched? The time just seemed to fly right by. I don't know about you, but I've been incredibly busy between leveling to 90, exploring the gorgeous new zones, pounding out my daily quests and getting ready to raid. It's been a learning experience in some regards, and I'm happy to finally be getting to test out some of the theories and ideas I've been kicking around in beta in an actual live environment. A lot can happen in two weeks time, and I thought it would be good to give you a run down on some of the findings I've had using our toolkit in heroics and raids, and some tips and tricks that I've learned along the way.
Totem Talk: Mists reputation rewards for restoration shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. As you're leveling up, there is going to be plenty to explore and plenty to do. One of the things you're going to notice sooner or later is that there are a bunch of new factions to earn reputation points with. This expansion does two things really when when it comes to reps. First is that reputation isn't quite as hard or tedious as it has been in previous expansions, which is most welcome. Second is that the rewards that each faction has to offer you can be quite awesome for your chosen Warcraft profession. Shado-Pan clan The Shado-Pan clan are a very interesting faction as far as the pandaren are concerned. They are much more dark and sinister when compared to the other factions. They resemble more of closely to the ninjas of the old stories than the kung-fu masters. They are considered the most elite warriors of the pandaren dedicated to fighting against the Sha. Players will first encounter them in full at the Shado-pan Monastery, one of the new 5-man dungeons in Mists. Leveling your rep with them nets you some very nice rewards that you can buy with Justice Points and Valor Points.
Totem Talk: Dungeon gear for restoration in Mists
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. Every time a new expansion comes around, we get to look forward to the ever-evolving sense of fashion that Azeroth has in store for us. Whether it's the skull motifs of Northrend, of the fire touched gear from the Firelands, it's always filled with various looks ranging from good to just down right terrible. The problem has always been hit or miss when gearing up a beginning restoration shaman, that initial tier for every expansion just sits a little bit weird for us. Sometimes it's due to new itemization, or new talents. Sometimes it's just because you can't cram everything in those early dungeons and reputation gear. Mists, though, is fairly surprising in how well you can gear yourself out without actually ever stepping foot into a raid.
Totem Talk: Surviving patch 5.0.4 as a restoration shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. It's the day of the great patchification! I have no clue if that's actually a word, but we're going to pretend it is. Patch 5.0.4 is the pre-Mists patch containing all of the major system changes well in advance of the expansion pack's release. It is both scary and exciting with the number of changes that are coming, and you can take some time today to prepare yourself for what is about to come. Today, we're going to recap the upcoming changes for restoration shaman and make sure you have the tools to handle this massive upheaval. So grab your towel, don't panic, and let's make sure you aren't a sad panda when you log into game today! I'd also like to take a brief moment and thank all the theorycrafters for all the hard work they've been doing finalizing, verifying and extracting all the numbers. Special thanks to Binkensein, Keldion, Hamlet, Derevka and Therya.
Healers need something like the raid dummies
If you didn't know by now, there will be a new raid dummy setup in Mists of Pandaria's latest beta build. They will be located in Shattrath and are designed to mimic a raid boss. They will have 50 million health, can be killed, respawn quickly and are set up in such a way that they won't interfere with other people's tests. They will not turn to face you, so you can practice DPSing from behind, and will give a full suite of raid buffs for the duration of your combat with the dummy. The idea behind this new marvelous tool is to make it so players can get a better idea of their actual numbers in terms of damage output under the optimal conditions. It's a way to really bring simcrafting back into the game instead of solely through a spread sheet, adding a layer of practical application. It's a fantastic idea, something that I think should have been around for a long while. While I agree something like this is fantastic for DPSers, lets not leave out the other player types as well. Something like this could be absolutely amazing for healers, something that I know would be most welcome.
Breakfast Topic: Have you ever named a pet after a WoW NPC?
Sometimes you come across a character in a game, be it an NPC or another player character, that you just absolutely love. You identify with the character in such a way that they become a sort of ideal for you of some type or another. Every now and then, you try to incorporate that character into your real life in some manner or another. For us, it took the form of naming our puppy after a great and terrible NPC, Lady Sylvanas Windrunner. When we first got our dog, she was born on Halloween and since she was a beagle, she liked to howl, so we figured that naming her after the Banshee Queen was a suitable name. Unlike the leader of the undead, though, she's a small furnace and wails surprisingly little, but we love her just the same. She's also become my World of Warcraft buddy and will whine at the screen if she sees me getting particularly frustrated with a boss fight until the boss is killed. She also has this super-awesome little dance she does whenever I cheer or get really excited. So how about you? Have you ever named a pet after a World of Warcraft NPC that you particularly loved? What type of pet is it, and what type of adventures have you had?
Totem Talk: Calm before the storm for resto shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. Last time we met, I had quite a bit to say about tier 3 shaman talents in regards to restoration shaman, and I promise that today I won't spend too much time harping on it, since I've already committed a couple of thousand words to the topic. Since that time, there have been quite a number of changes. There's been a new beta build release with all manner of updates, which is probably the most important one. There's also been a ton of information flowing from the official forums, especially when it comes to terms of such things as class balance, healer throughput and talents. Also during this time, there has been a massive amount of raid testing for both normal and heroic modes. Truth be told, there's a ton of information to absorb this week -- not least of all that fezzes are in fact cool.
Breakfast Topic: How excited for pet battles are you?
I don't know about you guys, but I find myself getting maybe a little too excited for pet battles. First of all I'm a huge collector of all items like pets and mounts, and I just have to catch them all. The pet battles themselves are incredibly fun, and even with the seemingly obvious comparison to a certain other pocket pet fighting game, it is being implemented pretty well. It also helps that pet battles justifies my years of obsessively obtaining every single pet I could find across multiple continents and worlds. Not only is it giving me all the justification I could ever want for grabbing these pets, but it also adds considerable elements to the user interface. The new pet journal looks absolutely amazing. It is clearly organized with all the information you could possibly want on your pets, and the team UI is something I wish a few other games would have had when dealing with miniature pet fighters. With the number of obtainable pets that you can find, battle and tame, I find myself sometimes just sitting around rubbing my hands together and cackling like an evil genius. That's perfectly normal, right? Besides, now is the time where I get to exact my revenge! They laughed at me when I farmed for hours on end to get a Disgusting Oozeling, but I will have the last laugh when it melts their faces! Feel my wrath, fruit vendor, it is time for war! Oh ... well ... I'll just be over here making more videos until it goes live. So how about you? Do you find yourself getting super-excited about the incoming pet battles?
Totem Talk: The problem with tier 3 talents for Mists resto shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. I'm sure that you've been busy preparing for Mists of Pandaria, logging into the beta and testing things out for yourself. Maybe you haven't gotten into the beta yet but have been testing things out on the PTR. Either way, with the announcement of the release date for Mists, things have been kicking into high gear. More beta invites are going out, and now more than ever, player feedback is incredibly important. Over the last two weeks, I've been thinking about a recent change restoration shaman have had to their level 45, or tier 3, talents. I've had a few discussions about it on Twitter with fellow shaman in the community, and after much deliberation, I've decided that it would in fact be the major topic for this week's article.
Totem Talk: Restoration update and preparing for Mists
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. Did you miss me? I know I missed you! I know you were all super excited about the update to restoration shaman on the beta a couple of weeks ago. I was. We got some good information to mull over. Clarification on one of our new talents along with some numbers for estimated proc rate was a good starting point, and we even got our first glimpse of the tier 14 raid set bonuses. I still believe that the four-piece bonus needs to be revisited, because I think that it will wind up wasted on us for the most part. I'm holding out hope that we'll get an update sometime soonish. That said, we haven't had a whole lot in the way of updates the last few weeks for restoration shaman. Things are starting to slow down, at least for right now. I'm guessing that will change as soon as more raid data gets parsed and verified. We'll see some tweaks, whether it's to spell coefficients or mana regeneration. While it's been slow, there has been at least some news and some blue responses to the current restoration position.
Totem Talk: Mists beta updates for restoration shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. Two weeks ago, I was gushing about how much fun I was having in Mists. I still am having a blast, and I truly enjoy healing through the new dungeons. I haven't had a chance to test out shaman healing in one of the new raid encounters yet due to the times they've been scheduled, but I'm keeping my eyes peeled for a time that lines up with my being home so I can bust in some raid skulls. Over the course of the last two weeks, however, there have been a number of updates to the beta client, as well as statements and replies from the developers at Blizzard Entertainment in regards specifically to a shaman talent in the expansion. One of the updates also contains the first glimpse of our tier 14 bonuses for both two-piece and four-piece sets. Keep in mind that all of this information is based on the latest Mists of Pandaria beta build and is subject to change at any time.
Totem Talk: What resto shaman will miss in Mists
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. Mists of Pandaria is proving to be fairly cool so far for many reasons. I've been absolutely enamored with the visuals of the new expansion. The lush zones even at this stage of the beta are absolutely wonderful, and for some reason, I just really feel at home in the setting. The new talents are interesting and involve some strategy when picking depending on what you're doing, and the new spell effects are pretty neat as well. For all of the good that's coming, though, there are still some things that I am going to miss about being a restoration shaman when moving from Cataclysm into the brave new world. It's the classic inevitability -- in order to gain something new and move into the direction of progress, something must be sacrificed in exchange.
Totem Talk: Resto shaman looking good at level 90
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. The big news this week is that the level cap on the Mists of Pandaria beta has been raised to 90. You can go and explore Dread Wastes and Vale of Eternal Blossoms, but there isn't any raid content or Pet Battles, and some of the scenarios and Battlegrounds are not yet available. At the time of writing this, the premade template characters were not available yet for level 90, so you'll have to climb the level ladders the old-fashioned way right now. I'm sure you're thinking that it took long enough, but to be honest, this is a bit sooner than I anticipated. While we've seen the talents, we haven't have the chance to work with them quite yet. Now, we finally get to dive in and play with them, experimenting for what will be our best choices in any given situation. It's like unwrapping a brand new toy for the first time, and I'm pretty excited.
Totem Talk: New look for Chain Heal, new features for resto shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how So with all the excitement over the release of Diablo III, Mists hasn't been one to sit idly by and just be completely quiet. There have been a number of changes to shaman in general over the last few builds. I figured if you could tear yourself away from the eternal struggle of the High Heavens and the Burning Hells, then we could take a look at some of those changes. One of the most underrated aspects of the new expansion, in my opinion, is the glyphs themselves. There's a lot to be said about the importance of the glyphs in the new expansion. I personally feel that they will become much more useful as tools to help define our healing kits for the fights, much more so than talents currently do.
Totem Talk: A restoration shaman hands-on with Ascendance
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how This week, we're going to talk about our level 87 ability, Ascendance. That video above is not mine, but it is pretty darn cool, so I figured I would link brandonk99ing's video here since it did such a nice job. It shows our brand new ability for Mists, which we get to play with at level 87. Each flavor of shaman gets a different version of the ability. Elemental and enchancement get some nice damage increases, while resto gets to walk around like a giant water elemental, throwing out crazy healing numbers. Basically, while in the Water Ascendant form, all of our healing done is duplicated and distributed evenly among nearby allies. I've commented that it looks just like the ability Essence of Dreams from the Ultraxion encounter -- and to be honest, that's exactly how it feels. I figured I would share with you my impressions of the ability, now that I've gotten my hands on it.
Totem Talk: Mists talents for restoration shaman, tier by tier
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how The talent systems for Mists of Pandaria is one that's received quite a bit of attention since it was first announced, and with good reason. It's a complete revamp of the current system, a reduction of the total number of talents by a considerable amount and an attempt to make the talents something more fun and less mandatory. We've talked about them since they were announced at BlizzCon 2011, but talking and speculating about them is much different than actually sitting down and getting to test them out for yourself. Today, I'm going to talk about my own personal experience with these talents, and I'm going to offer up my own opinions, just like the last article. The talent system now doles out talents every 15 levels, presenting a clear tier structure to anyone looking at them, and that's exactly how we'll tackle them.
Totem Talk: First impressions of restoration shaman in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how Well, I finally got my hands on some beta access for Mists of Pandaria, and the first thing I did was make sure good old Lodur got copied over for some healing experimentation. I mean, after all, that's what I live for. Before doing any healing, though, it was time to poke around and see how things have changed. And boy, have they! Even though I expected it, it was quite jarring to log in to Mists and see that Lodur had a measly 100,000 mana to work with. Any of you out there would probably notice that this is almost half of what we're sporting on our final run-through of Dragon Soul. While it is daunting, it's something that we have to keep in mind will be compensated with mana regen and increasing the mana pool as we level up to 90.
Totem Talk: The state of Telluric Currents and speculating for Mists
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how Time to revisit this topic again. You're probably asking yourself why we're talking about this again. Well, to be honest, it's because it's the end of an expansion cycle. While we're prepping for the next expansion that will shake up mechanics and stats, we find ourselves at a point of speculation -- and therefore, things like Telluric Currents find themselves back in the crosshairs, so to speak. The talent itself is something you use, or you don't use. There are some hard facts about the talent. You do not need to stack hit to make it useful, only to make sure every bolt hits. It is not mana neutral, using the talent and casting Lightning Bolt will indeed fill up your mana bar. It can be used to supplement low spirit totals for beginning healers, and can be used in certain phases on raid bosses to maintain healing mana totals. Whether it is optional or mandatory depends on a lot of factors up to and including the team you're healing with and the content you're healing through.