ritual-of-refreshment
Latest
Blood Pact: How to use your warlock's party toys
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill steps back to cover some group functions of warlocks she feels she must explain every week to her raidmates anyway. It's in our fel nature to want to work alone, but warlocks actually have some great party utility. We lost some of that utility in Cataclysm with the advent of a specific guild perk, but now in Mists of Pandaria we've resurfaced in lore and game mechanics. It's time to relearn our old tricks and introduce a new party toy to group content play.
Forum post of the day: Table plz
In my humble opinion the refreshment table is pretty neat idea. A Mage spend two Arcane Powders and starts casting the ritual, then two others join in. Viola! A buffet of yummy, health-and-mana-regenerating, Manna Biscuit goodness appears before your raid. The table sticks around for five minutes or however long it takes to deplete its fifty stacks of food. This is probably one of Blizzard's best additions. In it's own way, the Ritual of Refreshment is also kind of a curse for Mages. True- the reagents cost a total seventeen silver at the vendor, that's not hard to swallow. Keylogger of Stormscale is annoyed by requests for tables. She pointed out that anyone with a friendly level of reputation with the Shattered Sun Offensive can purchase Naaru Rations, no badgering required. Other posters agreed that it's not the process of casting that's at issue, but the sense of entitlement from other folks about a table.
Well Fed Buff: Conjured Croissants
Well Fed Buff serves up tasty dishes to boost your HP, stats and appetite – with that special WoW twist, of course. Your friends will stand in awe of your mage-ly prowess when you conjure up these delectable Conjured Croissants. Not only do these morsels add a hefty 7500 calories hp to your heroic hulk, but their 3-second 10-minute cast time and low mats requirement means you can conjure them up in at a moment's notice – all while projecting the nonchalant air of a true master of the elements. Our version comes with a special twist: a gooey center of dark chocolate. Roll up this simple, two-ingredient version of pain au chocolat for a treat that impresses. One caveat: Conjured items disappear if logged out for more than 15 minutes. Don't AFK, or you may find yourself the only one in the group stuck using bandages (you did level your First Aid skill, didn't you?).
Arcane Brilliance: Why we Mage
Hi there! Yes, after a long hiatus, Arcane Brilliance is back. Snack tables all around! Anybody ninjas the biscuits, they get a Fireball in the face. Nah, just kidding. Even ninjas are welcome here. As long as they're mage-ninjas. I've been a Mage since day one with WoW, and until a few weeks ago I had never really questioned my class choice. I liked the idea of being a caster, a back row fireballer with robes and a pointy hat. When I came over from FFXI I asked my WoW-playing buddy (the aforementioned shammie) which class I should be. He asked what I was into, and I said something like "I want to be a huge caster-tastic wizard in a dress who sets things on fire with his mind. Is there a mage-type class?" He said. "Yes. It's called...Mage." And that was it. I rolled my undead Mage and began conjuring flaming death and croissants. I happily leveled my Mage to 70. And then...the bubbling, Healthstone-critting warlock happened. After the jump: Shameful self doubt, soul searching, and finally...sweet redemption! And more Mage-talk.
Watch out for Ritual of Refreshment ninjas
I've heard about this multiple times since Ritual of Refreshment was first introduced in 2.3: Mages are a little combusted over casting this food creation spell in the battlegrounds. Their first complaint was the reagent cost-- even though casting buffs is free in BGs, the reagent cost is still there for mages, and so lots of them haven't bothered casting it at all (I ran an AB to research this story-- tough work, but someone's got to do it-- and though we had two mages, I didn't see a table at all).But now, the other problem arising is actually ninja looters-- people are joining the battlegrounds, grabbing all the food from the table, and then afk-ing out. It seems crazy to me, but it's happening, and Neth says (as per Blizzard's rules) that stealing items from other players in this way isn't actually a violation of game policies. But it is dumb. Never mind why you would need all that food, but it seems like the issue would be easy enough to fix-- either make food conjured in BGs stay in BGs, or just make the food unique to 100 (apparently people are sometimes stealing all 50 stacks right off the table). Of course, that doesn't fix the other RoR problems-- a few mages are also wondering why they get to lay a great spread, while only getting crumbs and water themselves, but that's a problem for another day. Have you had your Manna biscuits ganked in the BGs?
/silly: The dough-based confectionery is a falsehood
I will come right out and say it - it is just plain silly how incredibly under appreciated mages are. I'm not referring to how they are treated on the forums for how much DPS they can dish out or what absurdly high numbers they can crit up to. No, I'm talking about the services that mages do for others on a daily basis. As illustrated in today's comic, they open rifts through the fabric of reality to help you get around quickly and conveniently, and far more amazing then that, they give you food. How can you beat that? Next time you are munching down on a health and mana rejuvenating slice of conjured heaven, take a moment to give some kind words or a hug to your guild's resident chef/chauffeur. Every time you thank a mage, an angel gets its wings. (and then a warlock rips them off and sets them on fire, but that is a fairy tale for another time)This is the first comic Ive done that draws from a source outside of the Warcraft Universe, and I'm hoping that the majority of our readers will "get it" even with the external reference. The way I see it, we WoW players do not live in a gaming vacuum - we are aware of other worlds out there beyond our cherished Azeroth, and possibly even spend time in them ourselves. As always, I will keep a close eye on the comments to gauge how well this little diversion came across. If you like it, you will let me know. If you don't, you will let me know even more verbosely. But hey, at least we have our new comment system so you can all show how much you agree/disagree with each others opinions, and all this feedback will help shape the comics to come. At least, until you all figure out my home address and assemble the lynch mob. Let me just state for the record that I'd hate to be burned at the stake... again.Every Tuesday, Arthur E. "Arturis" Orneck posts another hand drawn snapshot into his demented little mind, because he learned way back in kindergarten that its polite to share, unless what you are trying to share is lycanthropy, vampirism or the T-Virus.
You say Mana. I say Manna.
The Ritual of Refreshment is available for Mages today, among other things. The Ritual of Refreshment produces stacks of Conjured Manna Biscuits just as the Soulwell produces healthstones for others to take as needed.Conjured Manna Biscuits or Mana Biscuits? Which is right? Flaye reported it as a text bug, but Hortus confirms that Manna is the correct spelling.Manna: Magical food. You may have heard it in a non-game context as "manna from heaven".Mana: The resource pool that is used for casting spells in WoW.So Manna, in this context, replenishes Mana (and Health). It may have been a better idea to call the food that restores both health and mana something like ambrosia or chocolate chip pancakes or something less confusing.What do you think would have been a better name for the Conjured Manna Biscuits?Mmmmm. Chocolate chip pancakes. Now I'm hungry. /afk
WoW Moviewatch: Zul'Aman First Look
There were a lot of Zul'Aman videos to choose from on YouTube for Patch 2.3. This one was the winner for today's Moviewatch for a few good reasons: it opens with a shot of the new Ritual of Refreshment spell graphic, it only shows part of the zone leaving some surprises for your adventuring and it features a Rush song.Though it shows a lot of trash mobs on the way to the Bear avatar, it superspeeds through them. I recommend you let it play and enjoy the music. Oh, and Rush haters can form a line to the left. What's that? There is no line to the left, only a drop off the edge of the Outlands? My bad.Previously on Moviewatch...
Arcane Brilliance: You, me and 2.3
There is more meaty discussion to come in Arcane Brilliance, I promise you that, but being a mage keenly interested in what is in store for our class with the addition of Patch 2.3, I realized some of you too might want to know what we are gaining and what we are losing. I'm sorry for the tardiness of this edition of the column, I spent the last couple of days reinstalling windows, and if you have ever been spared that joy (or own a Mac) I am very jealous. So there is all this information oozing out all over the internets about the patch, and since the other classes aren't really my priority, we'll look at the really important stuff. First off, let's look a little at what information is different from what we originally knew about the patch and how it related to mages. We knew we had a new spell coming, that the damage coefficient was being "obliterated" as Drysc said, and that we would see changes to Arcane Meditation and Ice Barrier. This is what we know now:
Forum Post of the Day: Refreshment not so refreshing?
Nerfed is unhappy about the idea of the Ritual of Refreshment, the one announcement that came out of BlizzCon that sent me into a personal state of rapture. As he sees it, allowing players to pick and choose their water is cumbersome and redundant. Luckily Drysc has come to the rescue with some refinement on what the spell will actually entail:Ritual of Refreshment gives Manabiscuits, which restore 7500 health and 7200 mana over 30 seconds. It's just about making life a bit easier for the mage, now everyone can grab what they want. We're not attempting to or currently buffing the water/food you would normally conjure.Mana biscuits are delicious little items that I used to spend an unhealthy amount of scourgstones on back before the Expansion was released. Knowing that the Ritual of Refreshment will have this simple but effective sustenance for my party not only makes me happy, it also makes me a bit nostalgic for those days of grinding Argent Dawn rep. But I digress. It seems that there is only good news coming about this particular spell, although I would love to see a little improvement in the amount of mana the ritual provides. After all, there are three types of healthstones available from a warlock's soulwell, aren't there?
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.
