I was going to make an actual post, but instead, I’ll leave you all to wonder what I wonder: WTF was Blizz thinking when they drew up the T10 armor?
http://www.wow.com/gallery/shaman-t10-frost-witch-regalia-shoulders/
Yeah, me too. At least Seri’s not the only one developing a twitch.
Derevka has a poll up pinging the community for interest in his new idea: a video blog detailing encounters, UI stuff, and general healery.
Go take a look, and comment if you’re interested! (I know I am.)
http://www.talesofapriest.com/2009/11/perhaps-return-of-sorts.html
As if to rub my well-established hatred of TOC in my face, new fun things are apparently on the menu for Icecrown. One of which is a healing fight.
For those who’ve kept themselves buried under a rock, the hilight (screw Arthas, this is the hilight) of Icecrown is Valithria Dreamwalker.
If you don’t feel like following the link, at first glance, she seems slightly reminiscent of Vael back in BWL. Friendly dragon, captured by our enemy, worn down and at half health… But there the fight changes, my friends. Unlike Vael, Valithria wants our healings.
Our tasty tasty healings.
That’s right, we heal the boss to full to win the encounter. (yes, there’s also waves of trash and stuff. But none of that matters. This is a HEALING FIGHT in the truest sense of the word. Hot damn!)
And I have to sit here in ToC for HOW much longer?
/protest!
Happy Birthday to 
You live in a 
You look like a 
And we totally love you for it <3
This rebuttal is brought to you by Morrigahn of Caer Morrighan
There’s been some discussion about WoW being too easy recently. It started with a discussion of how the change in the difficulty has affected social relations on World of Matticus. This was followed by an excellent post at the Pink Pigtail Inn which I must say I agree with 100%. Then it spread across the blogosphere like wildfire and was picked up by the likes of Casual Hardcore and Tobold.
This is my contribution to the debate. Instead of talking about the problem I’m suggesting a solution. Its not a practical solution. Its more a ranting, slightly insane type of solution.
Let me tell you whats really behind the ‘too easy’ and ‘welfare epics’ complaints.
Once upon a time, only a very few people had epic gear because only a very few people could raid. This allowed them to feel better than everyone else. Their gear was the visible evidence of their success. They could walk around their relevant city, confident that no one looked better than them. This rewarded them for their lack of social life. They were the ‘elites’. Everyone else was a ‘pleb’.
Fact 1: players who whine normally weren’t a part of this elite. They resent the fact that they won’t ever get the chance to lord it over their fellow players based on having cool looking gear.
Solution 1: make gear more user definable. Then elites can prance around in ridiculous looking gear and think they are better while plebs get a good laugh instead of having to listen to them whine.
Fact 2: players who think that raids and gear should be limited to a select few are quite happy to be gaining whilst others pay for them to do so.
Solution 2: make raids ridiculously hard but make players pay extra to access them, whilst us plebs pay less since we can’t access them since we have jobs/lives/our sanity. So if for every 10 players, 9 are plebs then those 9 players can pay say $10/£6 a month. Raiding is about 1/3 of the game content so plebs pay 1/3 less. That means that the $45/£27 a month that the plebs were paying should all now be paid by the elite. The elite can be elite, but they have to pay $60/£36 a month to do so. Of course since the elites have no jobs they can’t afford to do this. Which means even less elites. Which means, to cover the cost of raid development, the fee would have to be higher. It also means you brought your epics. But you can strut around and look cool if that’s what you really want.
Fact 3: players who complain that content is not worth doing because world top 5 guilds have already completed it need a quicker way to get the hell out of my WoW.
Solution 3: implement software that recognises these key phrases so that when someone makes a statement like this an option box pops up in WoW allowing them to choose to end their subscription immediately. In fact, give them a $50 bonus for leaving. That money will easily be made back by the saved time on the forums not answering their posts. Plebs would be happy to increase their subscription by the 0.50c/30p it would cost to cover this for the reward of not having to listen to this complaint ever again.
Fact 4: players who like to be judged based on their gear don’t like it when new gear comes along to replace it. This makes them feel that all their work has been a complete waste of time.
Solution 4: allow gear to scale with epeen. Then the plebs will be able to spot the enormous d***** a mile off and avoid them. This would be an addition to Solution 1.
Fact 5: players who want to be better than everyone else don’t want to play in a cooperative environment.
Solution 5: make a whole new version of WoW that doesn’t involve cooperative play but can be played competitively only. Call it … Starcraft? In order to make up for the lost revenue from Solution 3, players could be directed to this game instead.
I am a pleb and proud of it. I call upon plebs everywhere to rise up and defend their right to have epic gear and participate in raids they are paying for the development of. Yes, entry level raid content is easier than it was, but this is our right as paying players! No the game is not easier because most players still have never even seen Algalon yet, and hes the end boss of the previous tier! No they are not welfare epics because every player who has an epic item has to suffer through the complaints of the epeen brigade and that is payment enough!
Disclaimer: This was a political broadcast brought to you by Morrighan, head of the Plebs for Epix party. Morrighan accepts that not all vanilla raiders are epeens. Not all people who complain about the game being easy or welfare epics are epeens. Morrighan has a lot of friends who were both vanilla raiders and don’t like how easy epics are to get and is not calling them epeens. She’s just fed up with listening to complaints about WoW being too easy from people who can’t even manage Heroic Azjol Nerub!
My posts lately have been so multi-faceted and stream of consiousnessy lately, haven’t they? Well, have some more!
(They’ve been updated since they were first announced)
I know some people are pretty enthusiastic about the bonuses. But this is my blog, and I think they suck. So nyeh.
The 2-piece: Per WoL, my average Flash Heal hits for approx 2600. The HoT would heal another 650, broken up into however many pieces, over the next 9 seconds. That total heal is 1/3 of my average Renew tick. Let me repeat 1/3 of my average Renew tick. But wait! What about a Discipline Priest? Well ours is geared to the hilt and her average flash is approx 2200. Her total healing from the 2-piece would be 550. Also, it’s somewhat unlikely the HoT would self-stack, meaning the Discipline Priest would only get ticks if their Penance is off cooldown and they take the time to Penance/re-shield. Otherwise, it would exist in the no-man’s land of constant overwriting.
Also, the above numbers are best-case. If you get a crit on overheal, the phrasing seems to state that only the amount healed gets the HoT value. Double plus-plus useless.
People have also been commenting that the 2-piece is the old FoL HoT v 2.0. I counter that the pally FoL hot was a copy of the Priest 8-piece T2 bonus (yes, 8-piece, I’m going back to the golden age of raiding before tier tokens when you had to WORK for your set bonuses). Back in my day, that was the only stacking-hot in the game. And it still kinda sucked.
The 4-piece: I’ll be the first to admit I kinda miss the days of no-cooldown CoH. (You miss them too, you know it!) I also have no qualms with admitting that the spell was totally OP at its height. Smart, not party-limited… no cooldown. mmm… Tasty, tasty OP’ness. The problem with messing with the cooldown length on cooldown-based spells is always going to be rhythm and muscle memory.
Muscle memory may be something you can train yourself out of pretty easily, but only if the changes made are consistent. The 4-piece is not a consistent change, it’s a chance on proc.
1. Jov hates procs. Murphy’s Law of Procs = shit never procs when you need it, only when you don’t.
2. Jov hates procs.
3. Did I mention Jov hates procs?
Best definition I’ve heard of the 4-piece bonus was “Has 20% chance of screwing up your rotation.” Yes, it has a strong potential for burst healing, but at the same time, most people have a feeling for when they can hit their Penance or CoH, and missing this proc is MUCH worse than missing out on a SoL.
It was great knowing you all, but I’m leaving…
HA! Fooled you! Y’all are stuck with me for the next while at least.
The past few weeks have seen the official closings of two of the best and brightest lights in the Priest Blogging community. While Ego’s final goodbye was expected, as her departure had been announced quite a bit earlier, the finality of the doors closing did drive the point home. Seri and I are still friends with the player behind the horns, and have a promise from Hannelore that we’re her first stop if she ever feels the urge to post in the future, but it’s always difficult to see something important to you move on.
And speaking of important and moving on, Dwarf Priest has also closed her doors. While Ego’s departure was expected, Dwarf’s was a sudden blog silence, leading many to have concerns about her health (and even some rumors of her death). While quick to dispel rumors of her death (vastly overrated), the health concerns proved to be true, and she has moved on, both from the responsibilities of the game and of the blog.
To you both, whether or not you see this: Goodbye and Good Luck.
First off — Snarkcraft is still looking for guest post submissions! We want a vacation we can spend on a sandy beach with an umbrella drink in hand. Got an idea? Want to pimp your home blog? Email us! Snarkcraft@gmail.com
Second — I’ve never really done this before, but I’m going to do a UI post. I’ve seen other people doing them in the past, and I always love those posts, since they give me great ideas (plus, looking at UIs is purdy) but I’ve always been kinda hesitant to do one on my own. I mean, Snarkcraft isn’t a UI blog, it’s a Priest/Raiding blog. So I took a screenshot while raiding on my priest, so nyeh!
click to enbiggen
I have healer tunnel-vision. I stare at healthbars and get in the zone where I’m just heal heal heal heal healing, and I rarely notice anything else. This has led to me building UIs which try to combine a need for free visible space around my character, while still keeping my eyes in that general area. Hyjal, Archimonde specifically, taught me my old habit of raid frames on the bottom left, spells in the middle, chat frames on the bottom right, unit frames at the top? Totally wouldn’t work for me.
I’m gonna be honest here… My chat frames and action bars on the right and left of my screen? I generally don’t look at them when I’m raiding. Likewise with my minimap and buff/debuff bars. They’re there for me if I make a mental note to keep an eye on them, but my focus is entirely on the center 1/3 of my screen. Gone are the days of Vanilla WoW, when some fights just had me pounding my decursive key while chatting on vent/reading chat. Unless you send me a whisper (which causes a popup window to spawn directly above my top chat frame) or say my name (which causes a combat text message) I’m not going to notice if you ask me or try and tell me something. However, I know this about myself, and as GI Joe taught me back in grade school, knowing is half the battle. The primary question becomes “What do I really need?” which can easily be answered in 3 steps.
1. Raid Frames — I’m a Grid healer. Specifically, I’m a Grid + Mouseover healer. I don’t use Clique, I don’t use Decursive, I don’t use Healbot or Vuhdo. You could say I’m a creature of habit, and you’d probably have a good bit of truth. You could also say I’m stubborn and spent long enough setting Grid up in the first place that I’m never going to use anything else… you’d probably also be right. Suffice it to say, I use Grid because we’re old friends who go way back. I’m comfortable with it, it’s comfortable with me, and we understand each other. My must-have Grid modules are Mana Bars, Raid Debuffs, HoTs, Missing Buffs, and Side Indicators.
2. Unit Frames — I have a love/hate relationship with unit frames. I started out a few years ago with X-Perl, primarily because it allowed me to have the nifty 3d portraits. Unfortunately, that was all I liked about it, and soon after I tried AGUF before moving on to PitBull. I used Pitbull forever, mostly for the same reason I use Grid. Yes, it’s a pita to set up, but once it’s set up, your initial thought is “OKAY NEVER DOING ANYTHING ELSE EVER!” Unfortunately, it was a memory hog, and my computer, which was a good computer when WoW first released, couldn’t quite handle Ulduar, leaving me in a mad scramble to try and find low-memory alternatives, which led me to oUF. I picked oUF Lyn primarily because it was workable, especially with a couple guides I found for editing the .lua.
3. Other Stuff — Cooldowns, consumables, and boss alerts all count as stuff I want to keep an eye on, but at a distant 3rd priority. For my cooldown thingie, I use Coolline. I’ve seen the other things, but they all include stuff I don’t really need. I also have a couple DBM alerts (the urgent ones… I don’t need to know an ability is gonna fire in 2 minutes, I need to know it’s going to fire now) above my cooldown bar and one action bar for primarily consumable and emergency buttons directly beside my raid frames.
I love my guild, but we have the worst luck with some things. From it’s founding, Axiom has had THE WORST luck when it comes to legendaries. (Don’t let that stop you — We’re also still recruiting ranged DPS!) Specifically, we never see them. Months of farming Illidan in TBC, nothing. Fairly regular MC runs during TBC and Wrath looking for Bindings of the Windseeker? Nada. We never see them drop. Well, last night, Axiom FINALLY broke the curse, and Crutches (y’all remember Crutch from So You Think You Can Blog?) got the first in-guild, not-transferred-in Legendary Axiom has ever seen. And it makes me squeal with glee when a friend gets something.
Congrats on your hammer, hun. You deserve it. <3
Though I’ve made no real secret of it, I can’t actually remember if I’ve stated here, on the record, that I hate ToC. So I’m going to do so: I hate ToC. I hate it’s mother. I hate it’s babies. I hate it’s cute little pet kitten named Mittens. Nothing about ToC isn’t boring at best, cringe-inducingly obnoxious at worst. I know it is the source of all that is good and ilvl 245+ but if I never went back there again, it would be too soon.
I also tend to be a somewhat cyclical raider. Each expansion, Blizzard releases that ONE INSTANCE that just makes me want to punch babies. Back in Vanilla, it was AQ (Bugs, why did it have to be bugs…?). TBC had Hyjal (and it’s waves and waves of dynamic trash encounters.) Wrath has ToC.
I’m also surrounded by people who enjoy it, or at least enjoy the ilvls enough to farm the shit out of every available version as often as possible every week. I’m stuck in the position of being a bad raider, and occasionally preventing groups from going just because I’m unwilling to burn myself out faster by spending 5 days a week in there. I do the guild-progression 25s, but no, I’m under zero obligation to run it for “fun” on 10s as well.
I’m also kinda tired of people trying to convince me I’m a bad person, or wrong or mistaken for not enjoying the encounters, wanting my PVP kept separate (read: not present entirely) from my PVE, or the constant assurances that “It’s really not that bad.”
No, I’m sorry. You’re not in my head, you don’t know what I feel. ToC really is that bad, and I’m not going to go there any more than I have to.
Now, I fully admit that these are my issues. I found ToC boring but bearable until we hit Faction Champions for the first time. Jov doesn’t pvp. Specifically I do not pvp. It’s somewhat the guild joke, but… I don’t. Get me in a pvp situation, and my brain turns off and I turn into a ball of super-anxiety. I’m totally useless on that fight. I hate the fight, I know (and hate) that I’m useless, it’s a nice happy ball of feeding on itself.
Telling me “it’s not that bad” doesn’t actually do anything but make me feel worse, but thanks for playing.
I’m looking at the finish line. In Vanilla, Naxx 40 was my salve to AQ. Hell, even in it’s nerfed version, I still enjoy Naxx. TBC had me squealing in joy at the thought of Sunwell enounters; it was just enough to get me through the Hyjal grind. My eye is on the prize; and that prize is Icecrown. I just hope Blizzard continues their tradition of ending an expansion with a bang.
Congrats to Myranda for winning the Party Grenade!
And to Oraxia for winning the Sandbox Tiger!
You two should be receiving your codes via email shortly. Thank you again to everyone participating in our birthday extravaganza (Prizes = extravaganza y/y?)
And now, back to your regularly scheduled Snarkcraft programming.
Expect posts to run the gamut of priest-related subjects, from gearing and gemming to raid healing and leadership.
There may also be snark... You never know.
 |
 |
| Jov | Seri |
Got a question or topic request? E-mail us!
 |
Follow Seri on twitter! |
|
Follow Jov on twitter! |
E-mail: Subscribe
|
