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New guild week 1

Published May 28, 2010 Gaming , MMORPG , raid , Shadow Priest , World Of Warcraft 9 Comments
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I’ve been raiding 3 days now with my new guild, Done 10/12 Heroic modes on ICC 25, Killed TOGC 25, and almost done on Ulduar

I’m just the Yogg achievement off getting my 310% drake – and all going well we should have that this week.  

My old raiding guild disbanded when we were in the middle of doing all the Ulduar hardmodes – and working on TOGC  – never thought I would get to finish it off this side of Cata. 

In the fights so far, I go through periods of hell yeah – I rock at this fight –  Eg I did well on Hodir,  because I was chasing the person with the “Storm Cloud on me”   because not everyone understood how to get max dps and yes I still had damage  on  the ice tombs  –  It was like being back in Ulduar wiping on hard modes all over again,  except this time it was a cake walk.

Hodir 2010

Hodir 2009

From my post I could say that my DPS was rare  – and I found out after that Shadow Priests were getting 14k, and 16 k then back in Oct 2009.   So my Almost 19k dps now doesn’t look so hot. 

And then     I get hit with a Shadow Crash on General. I moved.   I swear.  I had been dodging shadow crashes  easily,” Shadow Crash on me”   Run.  Cake.  I may have run into someone elses. Either way.  Fail train went Toot Toot again

Some of the ICC heroics,  I had attempted  / read about / done on 10’s /attempted on 10’s so the 25 mechanics aren’t too different, but there were a few I had never done before,  and spent most of the time repeating – Do not fail in my head in between non verbal squeals of  omg green stuff! ( So much green stuff in plague)

I’m enjoying the intensity of it.  They actually count down pulls!   So pre- potting a pull is less guess-work.   ( lesson learned  Prepot on 2 – not 1)  

 I also am looking at getting something like Lowerping, one of the guildies gave me a link to one that’s free – but the tech specs were too complicated to understand at 1am in morning on a work night so I’ll have a look and work out exactly what it wants to do with my PC and if I am ok with that.

I’m also shopping around /playing with mods,  and am extremely glad my App didn’t ask for a pic of my UI.  Mostly because I have the default UI for Bars –  and there is still massive discrimination against the default UI.  Then after discussion with a friend  I downloaded Bartender  – and found you canhave like 10 bars of stuff! , and hide things – and its awesome.  So I am setting it up on my alt, to get used to it, ( after I got over the initial panic where it dumps everything in the middle of your screen)  and I then I get to work out the bars on my main, and make it pretty!  I have tried to stick to the philosophy of if it’s not broke don’t fix it,  and the default Bars do ok for me. – except – the ability to customise it now is a lot more appealing.

I am also looking at what other Shadow Priests are wearing / Glyphing / Specing / Talents It matters more  now – and checking things like armory crawlers, and the like.

Been looking at www.wowranked.com a little bit.  It has some interesting class stats, eg enchants,  gyphys and so on. Like all the other ones you need to manually refresh your characters data,  so that means the stats will always be off.  The majority of players wouldn’t go refresh their profiles to resync with the armoy on all the armory crawlers. 

Looking at the class statistics page for priests  I notice that the Shadow Boot enchant at 80% is Tuskers Vitality +15 Stam and Minor Speed increase, and Icewalker is 17%  

 

I looked at boot enchants last year,  and even checked out Blackrocks stats on it then in my boot enchant  post where most people were still using icewalker  ( 12 hit & 12 Crit)  Checking Wow Hero’s  Statistics again  now shows that Icewalker is still way more popular then Tuskarr’s on that crawler.

So which crawler is  right? The massive discrepancy makes me doubt any of the stats on both them. 

Did you know. I have a bad shoulder enchant.  ( Which I need to fix)  do you know how bad that is, buying the wrong shoulder enchant. I’m wearing 18+ sp 10 crit, instead of 24sp 15 crit *hides head in shame. No idea how long I’ve been wearing that one.   It’s getting fixed tonite! Promise

Apologies for the brain dump  – one of the reasons why I blog is to keep record, and it’s funny to look back at my old posts, and see that some issues do repeat themselves.

Just Bite Me Baby

Published May 28, 2010 Gaming , MMORPG , Shadow Priest , World Of Warcraft 5 Comments
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Why doesn’t anyone bite the Shadow Priests first?

 While I don’t quite go to the length of   Keredria  and their raid’s Musical ICC  but everytime I get to Queen and the biting assignments are worked out.  I get the Oh Oh Oh Sexy Vampire song in my head

Sexy vampire,
I’m falling in love
So just bite me baby
And drink all my blood 

BITE ME ! Mainly cause  getting bitten 1st = sexy dps. Just think of all the extra VE healing you would get to the party = Less stress for healers is a good thing

No Colours anymore I want them to stay black.

Published May 27, 2010 Gaming , MMORPG , Shadow Priest , World Of Warcraft 4 Comments
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I look inside myself and see my heart is black
I see my red door and must have it painted black
Maybe then I’ll fade away and not have to face the facts
It’s not easy facin’ up when your whole world is black

Paint It Black – Rolling Stones

 

I sympathise with the resto druids worried about losing their form in the expansion. Changing from being a permanent form, to temporary form.

Imagine if you took Shadow Form off a Shadow Priest? – I would get upset.  Even though you can never see the colour of my gear,  and that I do not wear a shirt so you can see cleavage.  That I painstakingly picked the colour of my tabard to match,  that you can’t tell I’m on a ‘special’ mount because it’s Shadow.  Blue drake – what blue drake.  They’re all blackish purple. I could stand naked in Ironforge, and I would still be ‘modestly covered.

It may not bode well with us Shadow Priests if they take away druid tree form. 

Shadow Form is great for instant identification as to class and spec.  Every body knows you can only get shadow form if your deep enough into the tree to be considered ‘shadow’ spec,  besides being furry, feathery, or leafy – what other class besides the druid, and a shammy ( and only in travel form)   are so easily identifiable.? We can determine classes by accessories,  Pets,  Minons,  disco totems, gear, or those blue blue DK eyes – but we see a tree – we see resto druid, and going forward you won’t see a tree that often.

“Where’s the shadow priest?”  Just look for the black blob.

Special is being lost to homogenization

Warlocks have a metamorphosis ( if they are in the right spec) so while this musing is pure speculation,  without even a hint of such a change, and perhaps even fear mongering  annnnddddd  the ongoing debates on hybrids, and all the things that make our classes special that seem to be dispearing,  or getting shared.  Eg Shadow Priests getting Mortal strike – there is no reason why a Shadow Priest  couldn’t lose our form permanently and it become a buff,  or even the nuke we have so desired.

Shadow Form: Caster becomes embroiled in darkness, calling up their awesome shadowyness to increase Spell power, Haste, and Crit by 300 for 20 sec

So While it may be a little late to add to the campaign ( the fever for the druid protest seems to have passed a little – for in fear of my own shadowy skin

 

From Treebark Jacket

Where’s my Replenishment?

Published May 16, 2010 Gaming , MMORPG , Shadow Priest , World Of Warcraft 6 Comments
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Shadow Priest T10 4 set bonus  makes procing replenishment a dps loss.

But ” A good shadow priest…   ”

1) Proc’s Replenishment because we are the original mana battery B*tches

2) Does what is good for themselves   ( and the raid by doing awesome dps!)

3) Trys and finds a happy compromise like a good raider should.

I aim for # 3

But I need a little help.   Replenishment lasts for 14 sec   I could proc it so it overlaps more if I used Mindblast on Cool down  but I don’t have to unless people are having serious mana issues.

I set Power Auras the add on up to show when Replenishment is active – so If I am not seeing it often enough I can deliberately proc it.

^^ Dodgy Screen shot taken while writing this and waiting for a TOGC to form.

I have a regular 10 ICC group now  ( does 2 weeks so far make it regular?)  and  I am the only source for replenishment.

It seems kind of silly though,  that of all the things to be concerned about in a raid – that replenishment becomes so important when it’s not there

To Mindblast or not to Mindblast

Published May 2, 2010 raid , Shadow Priest , World Of Warcraft 11 Comments
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Shadow Priest T10 4 set bonus  makes our Mindblasting redundant.

You need Shadow Priests Mindblasting to Proc replenishment.

I got my 4 set, and have been running lfg’s with it to test – but nothing tests out a gear set then a 25 man raid, and competition between similarly geared  x 3 shadow priests

I was coming 3rd for the first 4 boss in ICC between the shadow priests on the boss fights  ( one shadow priest wasn’t even bothering to dps the trash – so I was coming 1st over all but that doesn’t count) .  Some of it I thought I could contribute to,  that I don’t do many 25’s –  so experience.  I was dpsing adds when they weren’t – or doing more dps on the adds.  One didn’t even touch the spikes on Marrowgar. I mean wtf  2 ticks of Mindsear on Marrowgar as the target gets all 3  at the same time- that same priest  basically stood there during every trash pull and did nothing.  No kidding.  Me and the other shadow priest were 1st and 2nd over all – that priest was 15th

That same priest was kicking our butts on the 1st 4 bosses however.

They Pst’d me before we hit Rot and Fester telling me my Mindflay percentage was lower than it should be  – offering fellow shadow priestly advise.  I explained I was getting used to my 4 set,  and I know I was mindblasting more often than I have to with the 4 piece,  but the healers had complained about reduced replenishment anyway .

Then I thought   Its a pug GDKP.  They aren’t going to check who does what damage on what – unless we wipe on something silly – its damage that counts, and then it became important to me.  I checked their spell casts, and not one Mindblast.  So I thought – I can do that.

I could be the fail dpsing Shadow priest coming 3rd  -(was still top 10 I think for the Marrow,  Lady ,and Saurfang  so I wasn’t far behind). – that proc’d replenishment when the others didn’t ( and as if they would ever check mana gained, and who gave it to them)   or I could do what was best  for me.

It worked out quite well.

Festergut.

And I now have one token,  so I will be replacing one piece of T10 with an upgrade.

I pst the Shadow priest after this change in dpsing strategy – that I felt dirty not mindblasting – but it sure made a difference.  Eg I was chasing their coat tails.  They never replied, but I know what I didn’t do to get that result.

Maybe I’m the only one that cares – but we didn’t wipe,  the healers didn’t complain again anyway.  My Dps output was better. My 4 set bonus was put to better use. However maybe the reason why that 3rd shadow priest was 3rd was they were doing the ‘right’ thing

Did I do the right thing?

I DO feel dirty –  but maybe I shouldn’t.   We aren’t the only class that can proc replenishment.  Why Should I gimp my dps just in case.    It becomes a problem if no one has it  – but it wasn’t a problem then.

Other classes don’t necessarily know the intricacies of each other – so I think at this point – I shall do what is recommended – and mindblast a lot less.

Obligatory Shadow Priest Cataclysm Changes post.

Published April 9, 2010 Gaming , MMORPG , Shadow Priest 7 Comments
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Ghostcrawler says

” The answer to almost every question of “But why would they bring me?” should be “Because you know what the hell you’re doing.” Page 15

Priesty Changes can be found here

What makes Shadow Priests special?

Nothing.

SHOCK -HORROR- AWE

So we better know “what the hell we are doing”

Of course this isn’t going to stop me eulogizing about my love of Shadow ( cheers for the link)

We are becoming less tool-like – and more a DPS class.   Currently we are ranked down on Boss dps  amongst comparatively geared and skilled players in ICC.  But give us some trash and we shine! Maybe this will be our equalizer.

Shadow Priests: ICC trash killers extraordinaire

But as for the changes.

In Cataclysm we are getting a Nuke:  Mindspike  ( level 81) which is Shadow Frost damage – no school lock – burst – blah.  Yeah!

We are getting a speed boost  ( Yeah no more Tuskarr’s Vitality)

 I like Leap of Faith  ( yeah) ( Please not be an extended April Fools cause I so want to make my raid members fly ( if it will be available as a out of shadow form holy ability.)  but  don’t like it’s intended use as a ‘rescue’  ( BOO) from stupidity. “pulled aggro, are being focused on in PvP, or just can’t seem to get out of the fire in time”

Instead of ” OMG Where’s my Heal  “It will be “OMG where’s my Yank /  LOF  / Leap”

Yank ( no not you Americans… )  being  a play on a bloggers blog name ( in the nicest possible way because I think it’s awesome  The new Priest motto for healing will be ” You Yank it – I will yank you”   Cheers You Yank it, You Tank it

Can you see raid chat “Yank me baby”

Divine Spirit /Prayer of Spirit   ( one less buff! ) Yeah!

Misery will not longer affect spell hit ( mixed)  Misery is currently a contributing reason why we still get invited to raids – we are no longer Mana regen special,  Party Healing Special,  take away  our +hit and we really become another DPS class – so the changes really need to boost us comparably.

BALLZ  – Need I say much more.   My Shadow Orbs shall bring all the ….   I like the idea of consuming a ball for a damage increase. It shall make it  more a balancing act  –  fiends, orbs, dots, nukes, flays,

 Overall – I can’t see anything bad about it – the complexity seems to have increased but this is early days – and only an intial impression.   As a class – losing our specialness further – well its a little sad.  As much as I like the idea of being comparable, it is a massive amount of pride to be able to kick the butt of a person comparatively geared  when theorycrafting should say we shouldnt be.

I’m not likely to comment on continuing updates – changes happen.  I’m somewhat excited – but am also restraining my self untill we see /test what changes come in.

If you want to read some other Shadow Priest reactions are ones I have found /read  so far.

Misery

Dusknoir

Twisted Faith

I was going to submit a Guest post on the changes for Wow.com but It’s only $10 bucks – and I am not even sure Australian’s can even sign up with Seed yet but if your in the US – got something to say – go for it!

Dispels /Cleanses/decurses prevent damage and should be measured.

Published March 28, 2010 Gaming , Guild , raid , Shadow Priest 12 Comments
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Measuring the performance of a Disc Priest was a little difficult on damage metres that didn’t take into consideration the preventative damage of their shields –  where damage was absorbed instead of healed.  So on those damage metres,  like recount the performance of a disc priest will always on the surface seem like they were lazy healing.  Disc priests were getting kicked from groups and fights because their raw heals didn’t measure up to most peoples understanding of how the class worked.

Untill you look at how many shields are cast & damage absorbed.

I was thinking that on that premise,  because a shield isn’t a heal.  It stops damage being done,  that a dispel, or a cleanse also stops damage being done, and perhaps could be counted as a performance measurement and given a figure as well.

By dispelling *this* magic affect 4k damage was prevented. Not all debuffs that are removable are damage dealing.  But It would be a start.

A magic affect, a poison, curse or a disease that can be cleansed/dispelled if had been let run its course would may have caused damage that needed to be healed or absorbed,  so then becomes measurable by our performance measurement standards  – but stopping the damage from happening all together only gets lumped in as a figure in a such and such did *this* many dispels.

I ‘outgeared’ an alt shadow priest ( a well geared alt.)  on a run once in one of my guilds and we were doing TOC  and he beat me on damage.  I got a whisper from the GM wanting to know why an Alt beat me, and that I needed to pick up my game.

“He didn’t even touch the adds and wasn’t dispelling.” I argued back in my defense.

It was all about damage. The whole picture of the raid wasn’t taken into consideration   It was disappointing to see my raw figures  of damage done as the only measurement of having done my job – dispels, killing adds none of that mattered. Even though it was clear that he had done none of that as evidenced by the logs – he ‘beat’ me on damage and I was the scrub.

If dispels/cleanses/decurses were measured with numbers of damage prevented then there is more incentive for more people to remove them.

In guild or pugs,   a damage meter is linked  and healing/damage done are flashed around as measurements of performance,  and we all nod at who came first. But that top dps/heals may have only gotten that high because they didn’t do something that someone else did.

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