I logged in Wednesday and was totally irritated. Is this why I pay my 15 bucks a month, for total irritation? I have no idea what spec to use. I have no idea if it is better to re forge or not. Sure there is a lot of conjecture out there about what is the right thing to do and the most effective for discipline, but again it is just conjecture not 5 years of tested theory and implementation.

I also have a question Blizzard, why the hell should I have to smite heal now to be as effective as I was BEFORE the patch? I know that supposedly it should become clear when Cataclysm goes live, but I guess my argument to that is, so what I don’t want to have to DPS to heal. The other problem right now is that with the quickness of WotLK fights you really get no opportunity to use this with archangel. I read a lot and supposedly DISC is now stupid easy, well wonderful just what I wanted an easy mode healer (dripping with sarcasm).

My Husband says just go holy, meh, I don’t want to do that I want my disc priest back just the way she was. I had recently after a short break (had to work on raid nights) come back to raiding and was having a good time, I do not see myself doing that anymore right now. I am so unexcited about playing that it just seems better to me to start a new game. I mean if I am going to be frustrated and newbie-ish why not in a new game that has a better graphics engine, new story line and hasn’t grown to such a beast they will still listen to their player base.

First of all if you have not run a close knit 10 man it will be hard for you to understand just how awesome they are.

A 10 man is usually going to be a close group of friends that have been playing together for some time. This makes for a lot less QQ’ing about loot and progression. Nerd Rage is hard to deal with for the person raging and the people getting raged on, in a 10 man that is curbed quite a bit. Because there is less of every class it should be easier to gear, and the format for handing out the gear will be less strict because generally it is just a simple need before greed MS/OS situation.

Another bonus of 10 mans is that I can usually find 9 people I want to hang with for long periods of time, with 25 mans that has never been the case. Too many personalities, to many bads, people not doing their job and either no one wants to tell them or they do not listen when told. The drama in 25 mans is unsurpassed by anything I have encountered in my real life drama and I play a game to have FUN and ignore my RL drama even if for only a few hours.

The downside of turning to 10 mans  remains to be seen as far as loot and progression. I can tell you that it is highly likely your guild will get more cliquey with each 10 man only wanting to hang with the people from their 10 man. If you have more then 1 10 man running it will become a competition of who is beating who in progression. The 10 man team that is doing better will be inundated with requests from members to join their 10 man which causes hurt feelings. 

I speak from being on both sides of the 10man, having a team running that had no room and running a team that had no room. It can be hard for everyone involved, and causes a huge amount fighting and behind the back talking. 

I personally only want to run 10 mans but I love my guild and the people in it so if as a guild we decide to run 25 mans I will do it (maybe happily). I am concerned that this will cause a rift in many guilds and that the backlash will leave many guilds disbanded. Planning for the raid lockouts and what kind of guild you want to be should begin now.

EXAMPLE:

Current guild situation we have a bloated roster due to many “core raiders” having stepped down from raiding until Cata goes live. We have recruited many people I personally find less then friendly which is of course is part of the problem of coming to the “end” of an expansion, you end up with less quality recruits. I was a core raider that had to step down due to work, and now I am back and just floating, I look at the current roster and think how can we run 25 man when we have 35-45 raiders. I am personally unwilling to sit and wait list forever and will most definitely want to experience the new content a.s.a.p. 

So what is the answer, do you drop the people who are newer, that does not seem fair. Do you tell core raiders who stepped down tough, you stepped down we are going with the newer peeps and rick losing those people? Do you try and recruit more people and run  2 25’s?

So far we have not come to a decision on what to do. There was a suggestion to run 1 25 and 1 10, but I still believe this will call some inner fighting and nastiness, yet it seems to be the best and most fair decision.

Question is how do you split the raiders up? Going to need 2 tanks min for each raid not a lot of guilds running around with 4-6 geared tanks. You need at least 3 Heals for the 10 man and 5-6 for 25 man so 8-10 geared healers. Now some would think deeps is deeps but you need to split em up right, we need both physical and magic as well as certain buffs from certain classes. It is a nightmare just thinking the whole thing through logistically.

Personally I am uber afraid as far as the guild drama that will ensue and we all start to reach 85, maybe it will be as easy as he who burns the content fastest is king (BAH)? I dunno but for now I have taken a very wth attitude about it in hopes I will be able to raid with the guildies I know and love in the next expansion.

 

We’re continuing to refine the raid progression paths in Cataclysm, and we’d like to share some of those changes with you today. Please enjoy!

Technorati Tags: warcraft,cataclysm,mmo,mmorpg,rpg

 

The first of the refinements being made is that we’re combining all raid sizes and difficulties into a single lockout. Unlike today, 10- and 25-player modes of a single raid will share the same lockout. You can defeat each raid boss once per week per character. In other words, if you wanted to do both a 10- and 25-person raid in a single week, you’d need to do so on two different characters. Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel. Obviously the raid lockout change doesn’t apply in pure Icecrown terms though, as this change goes hand-in-hand with a few other changes to raid progression in Cataclysm.
We’re designing and balancing raids so that the difficulty between 10- and 25-player versions of each difficulty will be as close as possible to each other as we can achieve. That closeness in difficulty also means that we’ll have bosses dropping the same items in 10- and 25-player raids of each difficulty. They’ll have the same name and same stats; they are in fact the exact same items. Choosing Heroic mode will drop a scaled-up version of those items. Our hope is that players will be able to associate bosses with their loot tables and even associate specific artwork with specific item names to a far greater extent than today.

Dungeon Difficulty and Rewards
* 10 and 25-player (Normal difficulty) — Very similar to one another in difficulty; drop the exact same items as each other.
* 10 and 25-player (Heroic difficulty) — Very similar to one another in difficulty; drop more powerful versions of the normal-difficulty items.

We of course recognize the logistical realities of organizing larger groups of people, so while the loot quality will not change, 25-player versions will drop a higher quantity of loot per player (items, but also badges, and even gold), making it a more efficient route if you’re able to gather the people. The raid designers are designing encounters with these changes in mind, and the class designers are making class changes to help make 10-person groups easier to build. Running 25-player raids will be a bit more lucrative, as should be expected, but if for a week or two you need to do 10s because half the guild is away on vacation, you can do that and not suffer a dramatic loss to your ability to get the items you want.
We recognize that very long raids can be a barrier for some players, but we also want to provide enough encounters for the experience to feel epic. For the first few raid tiers, our plan is to provide multiple smaller raids. Instead of one raid with eleven bosses, you might have a five-boss raid as well as a six-boss raid. All of these bosses would drop the same item level gear, but the dungeons themselves being different environments will provide some variety in location and visual style, as well as separate raid lockouts. Think of how you could raid Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep separately, but you might still want to hit both every week.
We do like how gating bosses over time allows the community to focus on individual encounters instead of just racing to the end boss, so we’re likely to keep that design moving forward. We don’t plan to impose attempt limitations again though, except maybe in cases of rare optional bosses (like Algalon). Heroic mode may not be open from day one, but will become available after defeating normal mode perhaps as little as once or twice.
In terms of tuning, we want groups to be able to jump into the first raids pretty quickly, but we also don’t want them to overshadow the Heroic 5-player dungeons and more powerful quest rewards. We’ll be designing the first few raid zones assuming that players have accumulated some blue gear from dungeons, crafted equipment, or quest rewards. In general, we want you and your guild members to participate in and enjoy the level up experience.
We design our raids to be accessible to a broad spectrum of players, so we want groups to be able to make the decision about whether to attempt the normal or Heroic versions of raids pretty quickly. The goal with all of these changes is to make it as much of a choice or effect of circumstance whether you raid as a group of 10 or as a group of 25 as possible. Whether you’re a big guild or a small guild the choice won’t be dependent on what items drop, but instead on what you enjoy the most.

We realize that with any changes to progression pathways there are going to be questions. We’re eagerly awaiting any that we may have left unanswered. To the comments!

First and foremost a cleric is a healing class. There will be two very defined cleric types from what I have read, ones that are ok at healing but can be offensive and then those who are beast at healing but are mostly defense. Trion has let us know that clerics will either being wearing mail (woot) or cloth depending on the way you decide to take your character. Clerics will also be able to choose from a wide selection of weapons from major 2h head smashers to the more arcane getting the staff type weapons.

Trion so far has let us know about three different sub classes of cleric. The three sub classes so far are Purifier, Inquisitor, and Sentinel.

Battle Clerics For THE WIN! I had a friend when I played EQ who was hard core believer that you could be a tanking cleric. I of course disagreed vehemently but hey maybe its just cause I am not twitchy enough to tank.

To quote Trion lore on the Inquisitor:

The Inquisitor is a cleric who no longer follows the doctrines of life or death alone; instead, they stand between these forces demanding purity from both. An Inquisitor passes judgment on those who are worthy, and damns those who are corrupt.

Their true strength is derived from their extreme faith; as such, they forgo heavy armaments in favor of a simple hauberk of chain and a sturdy maul.

Although Inquisitors will never achieve the great heights of power from choosing an exclusive life or death path, their ability to harness and manipulate both energies make them extremely valuable companions.

Strengths

An Inquisitor is a potent one-on-one combatant who specializes in mixing life and death magic, stealing their opponent’s greatest strengths and making it their own.

Weaknesses

Because they stand between the threshold of life and death, Inquisitors give up the strength found in those who walk a pure path. For that reason, they cannot support their allies in battle as strongly as other, more specialized clerics.

Inquisitor History

Ever since the arrival of the Blood Storm on Telara, the resulting rifts have created a dissonance between the land, the universe, and the gods.

Rifts provide opportunities for malicious spirits and demons from other planes to invade the world. Many dread intruders enter Telara in physical form while other planar agents use soul possession to venture forth. The abundant life and energy of Telara is irresistible to powerful beings trapped in the harsh environments of the planes. For the most part, the world of Telara has been defenseless in the face of such onslaught, until the arrival of the Inquisitors.

Combining the powers of life and death with an unshakable obsession for natural order, Inquisitors have become powerful weapons against planar corruption. Inquisitors perform a wide range of tasks, from simple exorcisms and banishments to the extraordinary purging of greater planar powers from the world. But while the role of Inquisitors in protecting Telarans from the rifts is immensely beneficial, even essential, they are widely feared for their tendency towards extremism.

Inquisitors have predictably been in the center of many violent and painful historical events across Telara. From the Mathosian purge of Eth Schematics to the cleansing of the Hammerknell survivors, the Inquisitors have always done what was necessary to protect the lands from corruption, even if their hands get a little dirty in the process. For an Inquisitor serving the greater good, the end always justifies the means.

First and foremost a cleric is a healing class. There will be two very defined cleric types from what I have read, ones that are ok at healing but can be offensive and then those who are beast at healing but are mostly defense. Trion has let us know that clerics will either being wearing mail (woot) or cloth depending on the way you decide to take your character. Clerics will also be able to choose from a wide selection of weapons from major 2h head smashers to the more arcane getting the staff type weapons.

Trion so far has let us know about three different sub classes of cleric. The three sub classes so far are Purifier, Inquisitor, and Sentinel.

To quote Trion lore on the Purifier:

The tradition of the Purifier begins with a baptism by fire, a test of faith from which only the strongest souls emerge. Those who pass are reborn as masters of the curative secrets of fire, able to heal the most grievous wounds with a searing touch.

These Clerics also draw upon a pact with their long-dead ancestors as the source of their offensive power. While Purifiers wreathe their allies in flames, they can unleash a spirit vanguard to visit wrath upon their foes.

Strengths

Purifiers dedicate themselves to mastering the healing properties of fire, and as such are potent support Clerics who can burn away disease and instantly cauterize the most horrific wounds.

Weaknesses

Purifiers are not known for their offensive capabilities, and while they are capable of marshaling the fury of their ancestors to strike down foes, they rapidly lose ground against the focused assault of a determined melee combatant.

Purifier History

In the time of the Blood Storm, a witch-doctor named Talos Roda fled into the volcanic jungles of Aegea when his village was overrun by the Dragonian servants of Maelforge. For days, he lay in a fever, his wounds festering as his life slipped away. At the end of the fourth night, Roda found himself surrounded by flickering motes of flame and the whispering spirits of his ancestors. These sprits promised him vengeance if he formed a pact with them and became their conduit to the physical world.

I am intrigued by the baptism by fire stuff, and I think it will be interesting to see this develop over time. I think this will more then likely be a class I try out seems right up my ally with all the SUPPORT stuff there.

So in my quest to always be looking for the newest thing to occupy my mind I have stumbled across this gem!

First and foremost what is it right? A new fantasy MMOPRG set in a world that has been torn apart.

The “Rifts” are tears in reality that brings on new creatures and dynamically change the world. Now all of that sounds really cool BUT what I am interested in is the same thing I am always looking for.

Playability! Its all well and good to have awesome graphics with a never ending world of beautiful things to look at but in the end how is your fighting dynamic.

This is part I am most excited about, it looks like class roles are extremely defined and class customization is endless. They have ascended class system which looks very interesting. They call it a “Soul Tree” and from what I have read seems that true multi classing may finally be a reality.

I am extremely excited about the CLERIC class that looks like it maybe the first “cleric” class since Everquest.

The can wear Mail and Cloth depending on how they attune. As the weeks move on I am sure I will be talking more about the Cleric/Purifier class as we all know in my heart I am a healer.

Ok so last night the hubby and I decided it would be fun to start anew. We created a Tauren druid/warrior combo and began our journey in to Mulgore. I am not a huge fan of vanilla WoW, for the simple fact that I have been there done that too many times. With that being said we were having a very good time. The strength of the combo is seen very early on with the fact that without anything but the starting gear we were able to dominate 6-8 mobs 4 to 5 levels higher all at once. I am excited to see how the growth goes and if we continue to be this nasty as we get older. We were able to make it to level 9 fairly quick, even with stopping to learn some trade skill stuff. We finally made it to the little town where we had access to a mail box and were able to get out our heirloom gear.

The best thing about heirloom gear is that you can pass it around to whatever character you are lvling once you buy a set of each cloth/leather/mail/plate. The other cool thing is that you can wear the set that you will be able to wear when you are 80 not what you can currently wear. For example, a warrior can only wear mail at level 1 but he can use the plate gear and it will scale to mail. Same holds true for all other classes like Hunters and Shamans. Also ya know all those stone keep shards you are running around with? This is a cool way to spend them if you don’t have enough badges or don’t want to convert frost badges down. You can find the vendor in Wintergrasp next to the stairs sitting on a mount. Downside to the stone keeper gear is you do lose a stat for resilience. The only experience boot you get is from the chest and shoulders and it will your 20 percent to everything including quest turn ins. The weapon is good to have because it has decent stats and you are not going to find anything better even on group quests. I am currently using one on my druid and we still need to get one for the hubby’s warrior.

I will keep this updated as we move through our levels.

Druid	Warrior

With the introduction of Penance coupled with Power Word:Shield Disc has become a very viable raid/tank healer. In my opinion more tank then raid but I will get into that a little later.

My one huge recommendation to you should you choose to spec Disc is know that most of the time other players are not going to understand how effective you really are. You will usually (NOT ALWAYS) be second to a holy priest or pally this is due to very little information about how awesome we are, and RAID leaders doing little to no research on viable classes/specs and still raiding like this is Burning Crusades. Take it with a grain of salt as you are able to get in to RAIDS and even Heroic 5 mans people will become more educated and you will be asked back.

Second big thing IGNORE meters they can not possible tell your effectiveness in a RAID and any raid leader using them to make decisions about healers is not doing their job properly.

So lets get into stat stacking because the question is asked over and over and argued about everywhere. Generally it is Holy speced priests not understanding the stat stack is DIFFERENT and that what may be good for them might not be good for their disc counter part. So lets go with the most important stat first

Spell power (SP): By far and away the most IMPORTANT stat to stack. For the most part you can not have enough. When ever possible you should be gemming and enchanting for it. I have been known on occasion to drop a socket bonus to use a Runed Cardinal Ruby especially if it’s some stupid bonus like Spirit. It is going to raise the effectiveness of everything you do as well as allowing your PW:S to absorb just a ton of incoming damage.  With that being said you of course can not ignore the other stats we need.

Intellect (INT): Ok so the major debate that lies here and how to weight it  and BLAH BLAH BLAH… a lot of talk without a whole lot of easy to read reasoning behind it. Here is what I see first and foremost your mana pool is directly based on this stat so in order to cast you must have it. Second it will add to crit which is one of the stats we will work later. (On a side note this secondary crti thing not as big a deal as you would think since you need 166 int to get 1 percent crit)

Ok so now we move into the seriously debated stats CRIT/HASTE/SPIRIT/MP5

First if we are talking a RAIDING disc priest lets just get sorta ignore MP5 and SPIRIT. The reason is that you will get all you need from gear. You never need to “stack” those stats. The reason being that first of all we should very rarely be outside the 5 second rule (which is the nice way of saying we should be perma casting) and because of this spirit does very little if nothing for us. As far as MP5 in a raid situation you will have sick mana regen because of all the raid buffing and Rapture.

(mana pool) x Return Percent from rapture(1.5/2.0/2.5) / 12 * 5 = X MP5 (stolen from Ejerks)

For the nitty gritty facts lets just say that if you mana pool is in the 21k range and you are SW:P the tank when ever possible then you will see a return of like 150MP5 added to your current MP5.

So all that being said when possible you should chose MP5 gear over spirit gear and never ever gem/enchant for either.

Now this is the the area we differ greatly from holy priests, stacking spirit is something they do.. why ? I don’t know and frankly I don’t care I don’t spec holy I don’t heal holy and truth be known if it were the only option for priests with healing like back in the day I wouldn’t play a priest.  Ok mini rant over .. moving on…

So what do we have left ? CRIT and HASTE

Critical Strike: Ok in my opinion this stat is more important then stacking haste. Once you get haste to about 11 percent is it useless for us .. so good rule of thumb stack crit and hope the gear will have enough for you hit the 11 percent cap. Divine Aegis is one of the main reason to stack crit where you can and when given a choice over haste or crit gear you should pick crit. A free bubble is a free bubble. The other reason is a critting flash heal is just awesome. It is low cast time, low mana and just be spammed like crazy. This stat right now is the one I am working and I will tell you it has helped my through put  a ton I am critting for near 8k on a flash heal. So I Flash heal, crit and now they have divine aegis which lets me be able to take a moment to bubble (Power Word:Shield) another raid target.

Haste: So yeah a lot of talk about GCD (Global Cool Down) which in easy terms is the time it takes for your spells to be able to be cast again. Even instants cant be rapid fired. With haste you can drop the GCD to 1 second but that is as good as it is going to get on that. Haste will still continue to drop cast times of your spells though. This is important because even though it is not as effective as a Holy Priest for us to cast Prayer Of Healing/Greater Heal sometimes it is just a must and dropping the cast time of these beast healing spells will help the Raid in the long run. A good rule of thumb on haste is cap it at 11 percent.

On a side note today is the release of 3.3 patch so I will have to take sometime and see how much this effects our healing and if the new encounters are making anything different.

Tech and I restarted on a PVP server as horde instead of Alliance this time. We really are having a great time. We chose a Paladin and Priest, which may seem odd from me since I already have the Ally priest on Senjin but what the hell I really like that class.

We spent most of our time so far in a guild called Heretic. We have met some really cool people and also helps our good friend was already playing over there. We have since moved on from that guild to a new venture with No Breaks. I will go ahead and post our less then stellar fun here to include vent chats, silly fun in guild and every time I get tail swiped into the whelps!

One was odd had like 1000 uses left to it. Gift of Lost Legacies.. so I claimed it. I received two 10 stack of potions 3 pieces of armor all better then what I had on .. it was the Defiant stuff.. a new weapon (which I did have better of) and a  book with 5 charges of port to PoK. I think this is awesome, part of the problem I have had in the past with trying to go back to Everquest, is that my gear just is not good enough for the newer zones. This allows me to gear back up and go hunt without having to go back to the older expansions that no one is in to get re geared. One of the potions is the Adventurer Potions which allows you to increase your exp for 30 minutes. I guess you can now buy these with real cash. So they have given returning players 5 hours of increased exp which is nice. I have not checked out the new mercenary system, but I think it has something to do with hiring PC’s to hunt with you. I find that kind of sad, means that the server populations have dropped so much people need to hire people to hunt with them. eqtheme