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Patch 6.0.3 hotfixes for November 5th
Once again into the breach, dear friends, and instead of using dead bodies as material for a wall, we're going to look at the hotfixes that Blizzard made for November 5th. Shall we? Let's do. Hunter's tenacity pets saw a couple of fixes. Tenacity Pet Specialization: Blood of the Rhino now reduces the pet's physical damage taken by 15% instead of increasing armor by 20%. Tenacity Pet Specialization: Great Stamina now increases the pet's health by 60% (up from 12%). Priests saw a 15% nerf to Holy Nova's healing, while Divine Star's healing or damage (based on spec) was buffed by 15% Fixed an issue where Zidormi may send players to an incorrect phase in the Blasted Lands. Once a Challenge Mode has started, characters can no longer change specializations, talents, or glyphs. For a full list of the hotfixes, follow us beyond the curtain.
WoW Archivist: Class protests and the Million Gnome March
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? Betas make players nervous about their class. It happens every time. Blizzard makes changes, often drastically, and for better or worse some people hate the changes. I've been keeping my eye on the beta class forums since the Warlords beta began, and I've seen a lot of unhappiness this time around. The ability pruning that was one of Blizzard's major design goals for classes this year has removed depth from rotations, taken away both utility and cosmetic options, and in some cases radically altered or deleted abilities that players enjoyed. Beta testers have voiced strong opposition to many of the changes. In ten years, I haven't seen players this up in arms about class issues since classic WoW -- an era when many specs and mechanics were simply broken in PvE, PvP, or both. This past Friday, something happened that I believed would never again happen in WoW: an in-game class protest. With much more open lines of communication from developers to players in recent years, I thought the game had matured beyond the point where such things would ever be necessary. But here we are, almost ten years after the most famous class protest in WoW's history, and players once again felt the need to gather in Azeroth to voice their complaints.
Five must craft neutral Hearthstone cards
There are a lot of cards in Hearthstone. It can be difficult to know which ones to craft with your hard earned dust, especially in the beginning. Do you save up for a legendary or try and craft more accessible cards in order to build up decent library? I mentioned it before, but I think the best option is grabbing up the basics, specifically cards that hold value across multiple decks. There's no ranking behind these cards, so grab them up in whatever order you see fit. All of them have strengths and weaknesses, which we'll discuss below.
Know Your Lore: The color of magic
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. .@yuvalaziza Both priests and paladins can wield the Holy Light. However, not all wield it through the same means (e.g., Elune, An'she). :) - Sean Copeland (@Loreology) July 22, 2013 Earlier this week, Blizzard Historian Sean Copeland was answering questions on Twitter when the above answer came up. People were upset about it because the answer, while seemingly pretty simplistic, seemed to devalue the importance of Elune and the unique nature of night elf philosophy and religion. Magic, in all its forms and function in Warcraft, is one of those tricky subjects to understand -- almost as tricky as trying to wrap one's brain around the cosmos of the Warcraft universe. These types of questions get asked a lot, however. And while not everything regarding magic in Warcraft has been fully defined, we can definitely take a look at these different schools of magic and how they relate to one another on Azeroth.
Should you play a priest in WoW?
If you're just getting started with WoW -- or even if you aren't -- picking the perfect class to play can be a challenge. But the number of class options doesn't mean you need to close your eyes and see where your cursor lands in order to pick the class you're going to play. With a bit of research, you can make an informed decision on which class best fits how you like to game -- and we're here to help. Today, we're talking about priests, spiritual devotees who unleash the powers of light and shadow to heal or harm. Priests are unique in their talent specializations: while specializations for most classes mean multiple ways to do damage or fill different class roles, priests are the only class with two healing-focused specializations: holy and discipline. These two specs offer very different ways to heal, which can make priests very versatile healers... if you're into that kind of thing. But even if you aren't, don't count priests out as on offensive class: their shadow specialization gives them access to a powerful arsenal of damage spells, which could make priest the class for you even if you never want to cast a healing spell. But does that mean you should be playing a priest? Read on and we'll discuss just what priests can do.
WoW Archivist: Launch classes' 9 biggest aggravations
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? The launch of WoW was a magical time -- everyone who played the game back then would agree. The concept of questing rather than grinding was fresh and exciting. The world felt immense, full of secrets and adventures. Classes, on the other hand, were very raw compared to today. While many players yearn to play on vanilla-only servers, I doubt that most of those players would prefer their class to return to its vanilla version. Though some were better than others, every class had its problems. In this column, I'd like to highlight the biggest aggravation, as I see it, with each of the original eight classes -- and how Blizzard has since fixed every one of those issues.
Where does the pressure lie in healing?
I used to be a healer, once upon a time. It was in the days of vanilla, when being a healer consisted largely of staring at 40 bars, pressing Flash Heal, and occasionally mixing it up with a bubble or Heal Rank 4 while swigging potions like they were going out of style. It was a very different time, and healing was by and large much less complex than it is today. My guild didn't use Vent, so I did all the healing rotation calls via macros on my keyboard -- that's how easy healing was. I had time to press macro buttons and pay attention to calling things. But at some point that guild fell apart, as guilds are wont to do on occasion. And since server transfers weren't even a possibility at that point in time, I simply rolled another character on another server, vowing to take a break from any and all raiding. It lasted until paid server transfers were added as a feature, at which point my priest was promptly moved to my new server and I began healing again -- this time, in battlegrounds. I helped a lot of friends by healing them while they tried their hardest to get High Warlord in the original honor grind. So what happened? Well ... healing happened.
Wings Over Atreia: Aion's classy balancing act
I'm in trouble now. I thought I had it made; I thought I was on easy street. I had one Aion character slot left, open and waiting for that inspiration. Then along came the cloak-donning, guns-blazing gunslinger class. Right on! I know who that slot's going to come 4.0. Or do I? Basically, NCsoft is evil! I had no interest in a musically minded class, none at all... until the Troubadour announcement last week. A healer! Come on, that's not fair; healing classes are my favorite, my passion, my calling in life. Short of a second Aion account, what in Atreia do I do now? This is not a good predicament for the decisionally challenged. Thankfully, at least I know I have no interest in the third class. No, really -- this time I mean it! I know, because even though I gave it a shot once before, I just have no desire to play a tank. And how do I know it is a tank? Elementary, my dear Daeva.
Hotfix incoming for select priest healing spells
While he says he doesn't want to get into the habit of it, everyone's favorite blue crab, Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street made this announcement today: @venaliter It may not be live if you haven't seen it. I don't want to get in the habit of announcing hotfixes on Twitter. +25% PoH and PoM. - Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) October 10, 2012 Now, while he says it "may not be live yet", it seems from follow up posts from Nethaera on the official forums that "yet" is code for "in the next batch of hotfixes". Nethaera says: Nethaera Quote: When will this buff go live. Because it was not there last night. Checked my logs from last week PoH is still the same. I don't have an ETA for you as of yet, but we'll make sure it gets updated in the Hotfix notes when it happens. source Keep an eye on Ghostcrawler's twitter, you never know when he might let another hotfix creep into his feed! And I'm sure priests will welcome the changes to Prayer of Healing and Prayer of Mending. Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Priest glyph changes in patch 5.0.4
When the new 5.0 patch flips over on Aug. 28, will you be ready with glyphs? Blizzard is recycling old glyphs instead of making new spell IDs and charring old ones. Some glyphs are staying the same, some are new, but some share IDs with old Cataclysm glyphs. Below is our list of new or changing glyphs for priests. This is not a list of changing tooltips, just which glyphs you ought to have if you want to automatically have the new glyphs when the patch flips over. Priest glyphs are confusing. Priests are getting some brand new glyphs and also some switched-around glyphs, such that old glyphs will need to be rediscovered. Completely new glyphs include: Glyph of Confession Glyph of the Heavens Glyph of Holy Resurrection Glyph of Lightspring Mind Flay needs to be rediscovered Glyph of Shadowy Friends Glyph of the Val'kyr Glyph of Vampiric Embrace Glyphs that are changing into new majors: Spirit Tap becomes Dark Binding Mind Flay becomes Dispel Magic Shadow Word: Pain becomes Holy Fire Power Word: Barrier becomes Inner Focus Flash Heal becomes Inner Sanctum Guardian Spirit becomes Leap of Faith Shadow Word: Death becomes Mind Blast Divine Accuracy becomes Mind Spike Dispel Magic becomes Purify Shadow Protection becomes Reflective Shield Prayer of Healing becomes Spirit of Redemption Glyphs that are changing into new minors: Fortitude becomes Borrowed Time Shadowfiend becomes Dark Archangel Fading becomes Shadow Ravens It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Raid Rx: Recap of recent healing changes
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast. There's been some large changes to healing for some of the classes in recent builds. This week, we'll recap and go through the classes to see what's new. You might be interested to know that at level 89, my priest has 250k mana. Who wants to wager that 300k mana is the maximum cap at level 90? Remember with the new intellect and mana system coming in with the expansion, intellect stats no longer raise the mana pool anymore. Your mana regeneration is governed strictly by your spirit levels. Priest Lightwell receives a few tweaks to the healing numbers. More importantly, it now has a glyph that completely changes the functionality of the spell. Glyph of Lightspring turns Lightwell into an automatic healing ability with a catch. Lightwell will only heal players with health lower than 50%. It will only perform the check once every 5 seconds. That is a fair compromise to me. I've never been truly satisfied with Lightwell since my experience has shown me that most players never click on it when it really matters. At least this glyph helps remove control from them and I gain the knowledge of my Lightwell kicking in when it'll be needed.
Mists of Pandaria: Priests get an optional Shadowfiend upgrade, Zoidberg approves
Getting tired of your Shadowfiend, priests? After having served us faithfully over multiple expansions, your Shadowfiend will be able to be talented into an upgraded Shadowfiend. Enter the Mindbender! The Mindbender is a floating, squid-like creature that'll leech mana off opponents just like the original Shadowfiend --not just that, but the Mindbender hits harder and you get more mana back. Mindbender can be talented into at level 45. (That spot used to be blank before.) At level 87, my little minion was doing around 12,000 damage with possible crits up to 30,000 against the raider training dummies while I was in a healing spec. Pretty cool facelift for the little guy! It'll be an interesting choice between Mindbender, Archangel, and From Darkness, Comes Light. Too bad we can't give these pets names. I'd name mine Zoidberg. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
GuildOx player analysis highlights the warlock decline
The folks at GuildOx have gone through their database and done some simple filtering that reveals some fascinating things about who is raiding heroic Dragon Soul. GuildOx started with level 85 characters, filtered for characters with ilevel 400 gear, and then filtered out anyone with PvP gear. What you see in the chart above is the result of that work -- a representative sample of who out of the over 13 million level 85 characters in the GuildOx database is raiding heroic Dragon Soul. If you remember the post about the complexity of systems and player retention that I made a couple of weeks back, you'll remember that I mentioned Cynwise's excellent posts about the warlock decline. Well, here it is again reflected in GuildOx's data. Warlocks are the least played class in heroic raiding. Warriors aren't doing much better, really. Most other classes seem fairly healthy, with classes that have healing specs doing fairly well and rogues absolutely ruling heroic raiding despite being one of the least-played classes in the game overall. It gets even more interesting once we get to look at the GuildOx spec-by-spec breakdown.
Shadow priest takes down solo heroic Alysrazor
Proving once again that anything is possible with creative use of game mechanics,Shantál on Al'akir (EU) has successfully soloed the heroic version of the Alysrazor encounter. I've done some soloing myself in the past, and I can say that this is one of the most impressive individual feats I've seen, especially from a non-tank class. To my knowledge, this is the first heroic tier 12 encounter to be soloed, period. According to Shantál, many hours were spent "figuring out the tactics, pushing DPS to the limit, and not going crazy after dozens of near kills." For a full strategy explanation, check out the thread on MMO-Champion.
Raid Rx: Mists of Pandaria healing changes
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast. You'll notice that there are a ton of new glyphs that have been added for all the classes. That list is by no means exhaustive. I also noticed some slight changes in the way certain spells work. I can assure you it won't be anything too drastic, but these changes are enough to keep you interested and wondering. This week, I'll be rounding up what we know healers will be getting, as well as any other notable modifications. New for druids Cenarion Ward appears to be a Prayer of Mending-like spell without the subsequent charges. Good spell to open with before an engagement. Won't have to pre-HoT as much. Just remember to pre-Ward. Wild Mushroom: Bloom! Hope you love 'shrooms, since you'll be gaining the use of these in addition to your Balance friends. Anticipate a moment where big AoE healing is needed, and plant 'shrooms. Detonate after raid group takes a hit, and relish in the healing spores that explode. Regrowth can be glyphed to remove the HoT component. Benefit? 40% increased chance of a critical heal. I guess you can configure a HoT-based class to switch to a non-HoT direction.
A priest's guide to class romance
It's a troubling yet underpublicized fact that four out of five shadow priests respecced shadow for the first time after experiencing a romantic break-up. Recent studies show that priests are 63% more likely to respec shadow within 72 hours of a break-up, while a separate poll found that 78% of healing priests had seriously considered respeccing to shadow after having an argument with their spouse or significant other. To the tenderhearted healing priest, shadow probably seems like a quick way to steel yourself and mend a broken heart; unfortunately, too few priests realize the two points they're putting into Masochism 'til they're staring down into an empty bottle of Volcanic Potion and wishing they could do the same DPS as a warlock. The simple way to avoid all these drastic courses of action is, of course, to skip getting your heart broken in the first place. Easier said than done, you think? Perhaps, but knowing the battlefield of love will certainly help you avoid the more obvious pitfalls. Want to know what your best match is? What about your worst? This week, I've got the answers in a special guide to the classes.
How to look like a priest with transmogrification (even if you're actually a mage)
In high fantasy, the archetype of the priest is a patient, powerful figure whose strength comes from his vigilance and his faith. This iconic archetype exists in World of Warcraft as well, manifesting in the form of inspiring heroes like Tyrande Whisperwind or Prophet Velen. Want to follow in their footsteps? Well, you'll have to roll a priest ... At least, that's what you had to do prior to patch 4.3. Now, thanks to transmogrification, all cloth wearers can finally "take the cloth." This week, I'll be showing you how to create the look of a traveling, battle-ready priest. With the draped hood and cloth foot wraps, I want to call on the idea of a medieval monk or friar sent to a far-off land on a divine errand. The set is wearable by all cloth wearers, so even mages and warlocks can get in touch with their holy side. Most of the key pieces come from a recolored version of the Absolution Regalia (priest tier 6), with a few twists to make the outfit look less crisp and uniform.
What might Mists of Pandaria mean for healing?
Mists of Pandaria is something of a scary thought for the future of many healers. The introduction of another class that is capable of tanking, DPSing and healing marks a potential destabilizing factor. While it is scary, it is also exciting to a lot of players. Shaking things up isn't always a bad thing, and it has the potential to introduce some very different playstyles. The most important question, though, is what the addition of another healing class could potentially mean for how the other healing classes play and are balanced. The introduction of the monk class has the potential to trigger a series of changes that could wind up being seen across all of the healing classes -- that is, depending on the reception it receives. These changes are things that some healers might not have considered or further expanding of particular mechanics that are already in game. With that said, it's time for a bit of speculation!
Raid Rx: Healing the Spine and Madness of Deathwing
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast. This is it. This is the final encounter of the expansion. Everything you've ever worked for and fought through has led to this point. This is the moment you get to help rid the world of Deathwing. First, we need to ground this oversized lizard. Immediately after the conclusion of the gunship (part two), you'll be parachuting onto Deathwing's back. We'll go over the different obstacles and what you and your healers need to do to get over the proverbial raid hump. (To the raiders who do 10-mans, you'll have to adjust the numbers a bit. I'm not as well versed on 10s, so you'll have to bear with me as I draw up assistance for the 25-man version.) To attack the Spine of Deathwing, we need to peel off those metal plates on Deathwing's back so that we can really weaken him further. Our healing goal here is to ensure that our tanks live. Apparently, Deathwing has all sorts of little defenses that he'll use to try to shake us off; there are several threats on this fight that healers need to be aware of. You're on an extremely narrow field of battle here, so movement's going to be really limited. What did you expect, though? You're fighting on the back of a former dragon aspect.
BlizzCon 2011: Screenshots of the new Pandaria talents for all classes
If you wanted to look at the new talents that will be debuting in Mists of Pandaria, I would hope you followed our liveblog of the talent system overhaul. The short version is you get to pick 1 talent from a pool of 3 talents every 15 levels. By the time you hit the new level cap of 90, you will have 6 talents. Each set of talents does the same thing, more or less, in different ways. Now, for your perusal, we present a class by class gallery of the new talent system as it stands today. Remember this is subject to change, alot, before Pandaria, launches. Make no mistake, this is a significant game changer for everyone. This is the dawning of unparalleled flexibility in personal customization choice. Arms warriors with Shockwave, fury warriors with Bladestorm. This is the biggest change to the game since reforging. There are no tree examples for the upcoming Monk class yet. Galleries of each class's talents after the cut.
