/tagged

Dueg has tagged me for my first WoW-blog-meme.  These questions are to be answered from the perspective of one’s toon, and while K- and I play on an RP server, I really haven’t spent as much time developing Khaeli’s background story as I’d like.  But nonetheless, her answers…

What is your name and where did it come from? The humans have a word in one of their languages — céilí — for a dance.  Khaeli’s name is a nod to such celebrations as well as to the longstanding custom in her family to begin girls’ names with the letters “Kh.”

How old are you and what is your birthday? While young by Night Elf standards, some days, she feels bloody ancient.  Khaeli’s hair has been white since her childhood, which saves her from worry about that feature as she ages.  As with most Night Elf females who love to dance, she’s far more concerned that her ass might be getting a bit saggy as the years progress.

Are you in love and with whom? Khaeli is madly in love with the Death Knight, Kaleyen.  They are a solid pair:  he slays; she heals.  But when he boasts, “Ha!  I totally one-shotted that clothie” admittedly she mutters “bastard” under her breath.

What is your favorite mount and why? Khaeli’s favorite mount is the Baron’s Deathcharger.  Khaeli doesn’t have this mount, sadly.  Shadow form does make almost any mount look bad ass… except the Alterac Valley ram.  A purple smoky goat is still a goat.

Do you prefer a certain type of Azerothian meal and where do you get it from? While Khaeli isn’t particularly fussy when it comes to food, she is known to hoard the Hot Pockets summoned by her Mage companions.  She has come, lately, to resent the Fish Feast as she always feels she enters battle smelling like a Kaluak.

You know those giant mushrooms in Zangarmarsh? What is your theory on how they came to be and why are they so huge? In all likelihood, it’s a combination of fertile spores and Kurenai feces.

If you saw the Lich King walking toward you, what would you do? Khaeli would be torn between pointing out how fat he looks in his armor or shadowmelding.

I’m supposed to “tag” other bloggers to continue this meme, so Kaleyen from Hungering Cold, Megan at Out of Mana, and the Pugnacious Priest (and anyone else who wants to do so), you’re it!

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Back in Black

Upon turning in yesterday’s JC daily, Khaeli was awarded the Breadwinner achievement.  With the expense soon-to-come of buying dual specs for three toons (elementa/resto shaman, elemental/balance druid, discipline/shadow priest), I certainly need to work on winning more bread.  However, as our guild and raid leader will be out-of-town for ten days (and I’m just not confident that much will happen in the way of 25mans without him around), K- and I plan to spend the weekend working on alts.

Funnily enough, he’s leveling a priest; I’m playing the DK.

Initially, I made the DK a scribe for profit.  But the class is too damn fun, and if I’m not careful I’ll lose track of my plans to level an AOE healer and instead find myself with a level 80 plate-wearing DPS (no, I will never tank.  It’s verbotten.  Trust me.)  Right now, the goal is merely to hit 65 so I can level inscription up the rest of the way, but honestly I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop.  It helps immensely that K- can give me advice on my spec and rotations, as it feels rather odd to be in the Outlands with a class that I am such a noob at playing.  But noob or not, whether it’s from wearing plate, wielding a big ol’ sword, or not needing mana — hot damn — I am a killing and leveling machine.  Rawr!

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Raise shields!

I applaud the bloggers who are abstaining from writing about Patch 3.1, since they're right — so much is still in flux, it's hard to say much other than "Wow" and "Ow" and "Ew" and "Hmm."  As mothers are wont to say, "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

I am happy to be able to say something nice this morning though — changes to two discipline talents:

GRACE
Now:

Your Flash Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance spells have a 100% chance to bless the target with Grace, reducing damage done to the target by 1% and increases all healing received from the Priest by 2%. This effect will stack up to 3 times. Effect lasts 8 sec.

PTR:

Your Flash Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance spells have a 100% chance to bless the target with Grace, increases all healing received from the Priest by 3%. This effect will stack up to 3 times. Effect lasts 15 sec.

RENEWED HOPE
Now:

Increases the critical effect chance of your Flash Heal, Greater Heal and Penance spells by 4% on targets afflicted by the Weakened Soul effect.

PTR:

Increases the critical effect chance of your Flash Heal, Greater Heal and Penance spells by 4% on targets afflicted by the Weakened Soul effect, and you have a 100% chance to reduce all damage taken by 3% for 20 seconds for all party and raid targets when you Power Word: Shield a friendly target.

Of course, it's still too early to tell the final shape the Discipline tree will take.  But the changes to Renewed Hope and Rapture and the introduction of Soul Warding seem to indicate that "the plan" is for Disc Priests to spend a lot more time shielding (and shielding a lot more players a lot more often at a lot less mana cost).

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“Casual guild is casual”

K- had to remind me multiple times last night that, indeed, “casual guild is casual.”  By the end of the evening, we were in stitches with some of the inanity from our fellow raiders:  the holy paladin who passed on a chestpiece because the PVP gear he was wearing had more stamina, then later passed on pants with two sockets in them because the ones he had equipped had more haste; the two holy priests who proudly proclaimed during Maexxna fight that they were covering the tanks — “Guys, you’re on raid heals,” said the raid leader; the bevvy of healers that croaked as we ran the gauntlet from Heigan to Loatheb; the person who prevented us from getting the “Hundred Club” achievement because she was wearing her frost resist belt; the paladin who said “oh shit, I left on retribution aura” as we failed to get the achievement on Loatheb.  As a guild, we’re getting sloppy, really sloppy.  Due to the ease of the content, we’re bringing people — mains and alts — who do not understand simple mechanics, who don’t know how to gear, who don’t understand their roles.  Sadly, none of the guild officers really seem to notice.  “We never interrupt Kel’Thuzad’s frost blasts,” stated the raid leader.  “Um, I interrupt them,” said K-.  “We always manage just fine without interrupting them.”  “Um, I interrupt them,” K- repeated.  “It’s not a big deal when they’re not interrupted,” continued the raid leader.  “Am I talking to myself here?” K- responded.  “Oh.  Good job, Kaleyen.”  Good job, indeed.

Ulthuar is going to be a serious wake-up call, and I really hope that the officers in the guild crack down on some of this bullshit.  We have a guild full of people in Tier 7.5 gear that make me feel nearly as sour than those AV-AFKers in their “welfare epics.”  At least I could /report those buttheads.  These folks are my guildies, and there’s really no avenue for redress.

Except to laugh.

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Priest Glyphs for 3.1

I think the consensus with most classes is that while some glyphs are so excellent that they're mandatory, there are plenty of glyphs that are so useless, it's almost insulting.  

I believe that typically, PVE Priests use the following glyphs:

Disc:
Glyph of Flash Heal
Glyph of Power Word: Shield
[Either Glyph of Holy Nova or Glyph of Prayer of Healing]

Holy:
Glyph of Circle of Healing
Glyph of Flash Heal
[Either Glyph of Renew, Glyph of Holy Nova, or Glyph of Prayer of Healing]

Shadow:
Glyph of Shadow
Glyph of Mind Flay
Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain

As seen at MMO-Champion, there are several new and changed (major) Priest Glyphs in 3.1:

Glyph of Psychic Scream — Increases the duration of your Psychic
Scream by 2 sec. and increases its cooldown by 8 sec. (Old: Increases
the duration of your Psychic Scream by 1 sec.)

A PVP-oriented glyph.  The PVP gloves lower the cooldown on Psychic Scream by 3 seconds, but with this glyph and with the gloves, you're still looking at 2 seconds longer fear with a 5 second longer cooldown.  I don't know if that's worth it.

Glyph of Fear Ward — Reduces cooldown and duration of Fear Ward by 60 sec. (Old: 30 sec.)

I dutifully use the fear ward in a couple of heroics, and I do sometimes wish the cooldown was less than 3 minutes.  Even with a cooldown of 2 minutes, I can't imagine anyone needing to glyph this spell.

Glyph of Fade — Reduces the cooldown of your Fade spell by 15 sec.
(Old: Increases the duration and cooldown of your Fade spell by 50%.)

L2Omen.  L2Generate aggro.  If you need to use Fade so often that you've got to glyph for it, something is wrong.

Glyph of Inner Fire — Increases the armor from your Inner Fire spell
by 50%. (Old: Increases the charges on your Inner Fire spell by 20.)

If someone were to glyph for soloing and/or for leveling, I guess they might look into this one.  I guess.

Glyph of Mind Control — Increases the duration of your Mind Control spell by 30 sec. (Old: 12 sec.)

The minute I'm asked to go Mind Control spec, I /gquit.  I swear if there are more encounters in Ulduar that involve MC and that make this an appealing glyph for priests, I'll cry.

Glyph of Smite — Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Smite by 100%. (Old: 50%)

If, as a priest, you are glyphing for damage spells that aren't in the shadow tree, you need to suffer pushback, in my opinion… pushback right to level one where you reroll.

Glyph of Dispersion — Your Dispersion ability now also clears
movement impairing effects and makes you immune to them for its
duration. 

Apparently the designers who develop glyphs haven't chatted with the designers who develop the shadow priest tree as, in 3.1, the talent already clears movement-impairing effects.

Glyph of Guardian Spirit *new* — If you Guardian Spirit lasts its
entire duration without being triggered, your Guardian Spirit cooldown
is reset to 60 sec.

Much like players who might be compelled to glyph for fade, those who must enhance guardian spirit have bigger problems that a glyph will not solve.

Glyph of Penance *new* — Reduces the cooldown of Penance by 2 sec.

This will bring the cooldown on Penance to 6 seconds.  When the patch is released, I will definitely be dropping Glyph of Holy Nova in exchange for this one.  Even with all the cooldown timers I have installed, I often find myself reaching for Penance when it's not quite ready to be cast.

Glyph of Mind Sear *new* — Increases the radius of effect on Mind Sear by 5 yards.

Mind Sear currently extends 10 yards around the target.  While the increased radius is nice, I don't know that it's so awesome that Shadow Priests will be deviating from the glyphs they already take.  Unless, I suppose, they are truly "trash mob" specced.

Glyph of Hymn of Hope *new* — Your Hymn of hope provides 3 times the
normal amount of mana per time, but its duration is 50% shorter.

Much like Dispersion, the glyph and the talent tree departments didn't get the memo.  The spell is gone from the game.

Glyph of Pain Suppression *new* — Allows Pain Suppression to be cast while stunned.

This will be nice for PVP Disc Priests, but I cannot imagine anyone taking it for PVE.

If there is reglyphing to be done in 3.1, then, it will be a result of the changes to our talent trees more than these new and altered glyphs.  Holy Priests might consider dropping the Renew glyph, for example, now that they'll have a talent to give the spell more oomph.

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“But Ghostcrawler promised me a pony!”

Disc Priests say they're disappointed in the Patch notes.  GC hints at more Disc talents still to come.

For the latest discussion of how 3.1 might impact healers, visit the PTR forum at PlusHeal.com.

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3.1 for Priests

The 3.1 Patch notes were released last night, and this morning the blogosphere is buzzing with updates and commentary.  I’ve copied Khaeli to the PTR, but I haven’t downloaded the patch yet.  Nonetheless, I’ve got opinions, dammit.  For the complete notes, read here.  For my initial reactions on all the priest changes that I’ve noticed thus far, read on.

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WTB Raid Heals

Decision:  Leveling the shaman.  I have no intention
of abandoning Khaeli as my main, nor will I respec her to Holy.  But
damn, someone has to heal the fucking raid.  At least, given a week or
so of leveling, I will have an alt that can try.

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Weekend Update: The Bulleted Version

• Was finally promoted from Initiate to Raider

• Dropped Tailoring, and leveled Jewelcrafting to 400

• Won a greed roll for the DPS pants Sapphiron drops versus an alt of the priest that won them last time they dropped, then announced they'd just rot in his bank.  Yay karma.

• Kaleyen got his Betrayer of Humanity

• Hit Exalted with the Knights of the Ebon Blade, completing the tabard-wearing-faction-grind.

• Won the drake in a timed CoT run.

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Does This Mount Make My Butt Look Big?

in lieu of the 25man Naxx "alt" run (well, as we have no alts at 80),
Kaleyen and Khaeli raided the Horde cities last night

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