I’d Rather Be Wowing!

What an exciting day with all the new information about what’s coming up in patch 3.1.

With respect to shadow priesting, I could list all the changes in 3.1 and what I think about it, but Merlot over at the Misery has done a spot on job on it :). So head there instead.

One of the more controversial change is the removal of extra damage component in our dots in lieu for change for crits in each dots tick. The fellows in shadowpriest.com are currently discussing and theorycrafting this change.  Unfortunately, so far the verdict is that it’s at best a “side-grade”, assuming that shadow power will eventually affect the bonus damage from crits (which does not reflect in the tooltip). But everything is not set to stone, and I am optimistic that we will see something good from it.

So how about those new glyphs, heh? Or the lack of it ><.  The ones that are relevant to shadow priests are as follows (courtesy to MMO):

• Glyph of Mind Control — Increases the duration of your Mind Control spell by 30 sec. (Old:  12 sec.)
• Glyph of Dispersion  — Your Dispersion ability now also clears movement impairing effects and makes you immune to them for its duration.
• Glyph of Mind Sear *new*  — Increases the radius of effect on Mind Sear by 5 yards.

Is it just me, or the Glyph of Dispersion does what “new” dispersion is supposed to do?  I wish that Glyph of Mind Sear is a minor glyph, because I kinda like it, but I don’t like it enough to swap any of my currently equipped glyphs. If it is a major glyph, it’s interesting to see that we have this choice, similar to that what mages have, to be better in AoE or in single target dps.

I know that the screenies of T8 have been floating for a while, but I still don’t like how priest set looks, it reminds me of rogues with the face mask and all. I want to keep my halo :). And how about the new waist and boots that we can get from tailoring (BoE), and the possible legendary mace!?  It’s time to start saving up for ebonweaves and spellweaves again.

For the past 2 weeks, we have been doing Naxx10 with 2 healers, where I am the only hybrid in the group. While I am familiar with other ways of doing the encounter with only 2 healers, the strategy that our group used was to have me and an affliction warlock tank the back bosses, where I usually started on the right back corner (holy damage) and my lock friend started on the left back (shadow damage).

I know that I would need to pop some healing, but I didn’t expect that VE doesn’t seem to do anything and that I would be doing some frantic healing. I notice, however, that my lock friend usually fares better, that he would be okay if I don’t heal him for a while, even when we swap position. I’m usually close to being out of mana when the front bosses go down (after fiend, dispersion, and mana pot). I even try putting up my healing gear, but that doesn’t seem to be helping.

Am I missing something here? Or is this normal? Any hints or tips so that I can be more in “control” of the situation instead of hoping that the dps is strong enough to kill the other two bosses before my mana is completely drained?

I hope that this doesn’t come across as a post that were caused from “dissecting” Blizzard’s statements too much. Sometimes I’m just puzzled to they way things were designed.

About homogenization

At one point, Blizzard decides that homogenization of stats are good so that one gear can be considered useful for multiple classes/specs. One big change was the integration between healing and spell powers. I am all up for it, I don’t like loots to be wasted when other people can use it, even if being a cloth caster, I am affected with this the most with respect to the number of people competing for the gears. For most part, I think Blizzard has done a good job to achieve it. The latest example is by removing the druid-only staff, and integrate the druid-stats in general. There are other homogenization that I still find lacking, for example spell power plate can only be used by holy paladin alone. But I can understand the difficulty in changing that.

What puzzled me is how this principle of reducing the chance that the drop loots are not usable by anybody failed to translate for Vault of Archavon (VoA) instance.  According to wowwiki:

On Normal (10 man), he (Archavon) drops two items, which can be a hand, leg or chest T7 (10) set piece for any class (the item itself, not the token) or the new Hateful Gladiator’s Season 5 assortments.

Doesn’t dropping the items themselves - further divided to certain specs for each class, instead of the tokens, , essentially restrict the number of people that can vie for the item? I failed to see the reasoning behind this.

Continuing from my previous post, last Monday we went back to Naxx with only two goals in mind: killing Sapphiron and Kel’thuzad. And after lots of wipes, we did just that. And I won the key for Eye of Eternity :).

Recounting my experience and offering a somewhat amateurish tips below

Sapphiron

As a group, we aim to have about 300 frost resist. With the presence of frost resist aura, we just need to aim for about 170. I only have Glacial Slippers and Titanium Frostguard Ring on me, amounting to a little less than 300 frost resist. With this amount of frost resist, I took about 800 damage per 2 second (from Sapphiron’s Frost Aura). While not using the frost resist set probably would result in higher dps,  we felt that for learning the fight, they are useful to give some breathing room for the healers to also understand the movements of the fight. Especially considering that we have a lack of aoe healers.

Just a short summary to Sapp’s relevant abilities from the eye of a shadow priest. First is the consistent 1200 dmg per 2 second from his Frost Aura. I feel that keeping VE up at all time make a big difference in making myself less fragile (this is compared to our resident mage whose health drops below comfortable level way too many times). Two is his chill spell that looks like Shade’s Blizzard, though more irregular in its movement. I really hate this one because it’s really hard to see exactly the scope of the affected area. Not much advice I can provide other than try to avoid it, and pay attention to its movement, so that if you happened to get stuck in it, you know the “shortest” way to get out from it. PW.S helps in mitigating the damage while you make your way out.

When he took off to the air, he will shoot ice bolt to two random person, one after another. These two people will be ice tombed and you will need to hide behind the the ice block to avoid his other spell, i.e., Frost Breath, that will surely one-shot you when hit. The fact that he tombed two people sequentially is important. Hiding behind the ice block of the first person tombed before the 2nd person is tombed will afflict damage to you.  Also, chill/blizzard will still be going on during the air phase, and it is possible that the ice block lies in the area of the blizzard. So it might be preferable to “wait” for the second ice block and go there if it is safer.

When he’s on the air, you can still attack him. But not when you’re behind an ice tomb (LOS). Coincidentally, trying to cast while behind an ice block is a good check to see if you are truly safe from his Frost breath (you’re safe if you have that LOS warning).

Having some frost gears does reduce our dps capability so this fight can last pretty long, hence putting a strain on my mana bar. I found that my shadow fiend doesn’t last very long because of the Frost Aura. Investing in the glphy that return 5% mana when our fiend died prematurely I’m sure will help but I didn’t have that during this fight. Remembering to take out your fiend early, so that you can use it more than once, does make a difference. But what saves me is dispersion. I tend to save it during the air phase, where I popped it when I’m hiding behind an ice block or when I’m ice-blocked (yes dispersion is castable during it) or when I have to dash my way to an ice-block (and hoping I’ll make it before the frost breath goes down). I have not yet tried to see nor experienced  if dispersion can avoid you being on-shotted with the frost breath. Since I won’t be able to cast anything to him anyway, I minimize the down time from using dispersion.

Kel’Thuzad

You will start the fight standing in the middle of the room, fending from incoming (slow moving) mobs. Generally, casters and range is responsible for the skeleton and the banshee ladies. There isn’t really any tactics/strategies here. I think I used the most SW:D here :), especially to skellies that get too close.

Second phase will start after about 4 min. We still had some leftovers mobs when this phase begins, so the our first priority is clearing them off. As a shadow priest (and caster in general), there are only two things to know about this fight. First, is to spread out. Make sure that you are 10 yard away from anybody (mods can tell you if you are too lcose). If you stay spread out, you can just cast to your heart content except when a shadow fissure appears under your feet (which is the 2nd thing that you have to worry). If it is necessary, you can help your healers by PW:S-ing someone who is ice-blocked.

Kel is just too simple for casters in 10-man group. I imagine finding place to spread out is much more difficult in 25-man.

Vh’s Week

Vh is now 80! I was originally planning to keep her ele specced for a while just because she has more chance in running heroic with the guildies, hence accumulate some gears. On Sunday, in the effort of going into a Naxx25 pug (due to some coaxing from a fellow guildie), she was respecced to resto. But then the plan fell through mostly because I don’t feel that it’s fair to go in with such subpar gears (only about 1400 sp after scrambling for enchants) and relying on the other healers to pick up for my slack.  It’s probably meant to happen, however, since later in the evening, as Vh was just hanging around in IF, she received a tell asking her to fill in a healer in someone’s (mostly) guild Naxx10 run. I told him that she doesn’t have a good gear yet, but apparently they just want an extra healer, and one that is not that geared is better than nothing.

After saying yes, I just realized that I didn’t even ask which boss they are at (proving that I’m just excited to have a chance to get in) :). They were at Patch. Could you get a better fight than that to get acquainted with your healing spelss? At least I don’t have to move around and just concentrate on the healing. I have a big mana problem on that fight, with my mana bar empty about only 3/4 of the fight - and mana tide and pot have already been used. Thank goodness for replenishment. My overall healing was much less than the two priest healers, with also significantly less overheal. Is that a good thing? I am not sure, at least I am not blowing my mana for nothing. And I desperately miss my fiend, dispersion, and hymn.

We went on to kill the remaining bosses in that wing. They are pretty uneventful, except to the fact that I was somewhat behaving noobish in a couple of the fight. In Thaddius, for example, I forgot the polarity placement (they did it the opposite to what I’m used to). I died quite early, but at least I didn’t wipe the raid - but something kills them later on, and on the 2nd try,  I was one of the 2 healers left standing. We gave Sapp a try (another noobish moment here too), after 1 really unfortunate bad luck pull and 1 wipe, we lost a healer to DC and it was getting late. And that concludes Vh’s first venture to Naxx.

Vh gets two big upgrade because nobody else seems to need them. And I get another round of understanding and appreciation to all the healers and their willingness to live such a frantic life :). Also, this guild is interested to have Vh comes regularly, but alas, one of their raiding day collides with E’s, so she just has to be happy on being their backup on Sundays. I think she will remain a resto and learn how to heal better.

E’s Week

E has been trying to sneak in Wintergrasp whenever she could. Sometimes she got unlucky and miscalculated the time and ended up logging in when the battle has already over (and when they win too - to rub it in the face!). In any case, she only needs 10 more marks to get the head gear (Titan-forged Hood of Dominance).

In term of progression, for the last 2 weeks, we are able to clear the four wings (we were a bit stumped after the Heigan’s spot was fixed). But this past week, we had a signficant improvement in term of clear time and we were able to finally take a peek of Sapp - but were totally annihilated by him. We are continuing again today, and this time with the help of a few frost resist gear. We’ll see how it goes :).

Another week, another rounds of pugs - especially for OS, VoA, and Naxx. One in particular though, kinda stood up. This happened to be the pug that Vh was trying to get in. The raid leader is a very spirited person. And when I say spirited, I mean intense. He’s very generous in dishing out sharp banters (read: insults) that I think is appropriate when running with or targeted toward guildies and friends, but not really for strangers during pug. For example, someone after responding that they can watch out for locust swarm timer with the addon, he would say “yeah, Naxx10 needs an add-on cause Naxx10 is serious business.” At first I thought he only did it with his guildies, but apparently I was wrong. Under his ruling, some of his other guildies also plays this insult game. I guess that’s just how they are.

Anyway, the run pretty much fell apart after failing to kill Anub twice in a row - which is also the first boss that we tried. I don’t know if the fact that we couldn’t get the, supposedly, easiest boss down was the one that is causing it (which cause few of the healers to leave), or it is the chain quitting after fingers were beginning to be pointed toward people with less than 1.5k dps (with one guy casually told them to get their dps to at least 1650 before coming back), and the low performing mages pointed out that they tried to get the little swarm adds under control (whether or not this caused them to have less than 1.5k dps is reasonable, I do not know).

All I know is that, the raid leader, which throughout the fight also “insulted” the tanks for not kiting Anub appropriately (which coincidentally their first time tanking as well), continously saying that we are an “Epic Fail” group, is part of the low 1.5k dps team (yet, I found it amusing that he was on the top in healing meter). His reason for the low dps is simple, he is in ret pvp spec. It seems that it’s just fun and game for him. Boredom maybe? For me, it’s one thing to demand other people to step up their game, but it’s entirely different thing when it’s done in such a crude manner and when it comes from a person that is also part of the problem.