We're WoW players. We've been around a long time. We've seen Tier sets that pigeonhole hybrid classes into one (healing) role. We've seen shadow priests used as healers with no itemization until Blackwing Lair and beyond. We've seen all raiding mages forced to spec a certain way until BWL and beyond. We've seen a pally class where the supposedly strongest single target healer in the game only had two heals in their entire repertoire and a seal/judgement system that, while central to class mechanics, had nothing to do with them. We've seen druids forced into subpar healing roles, two entire trees more or less ridiculed. We've seen warlocks with subpar dps and nothing to be done about it. We've seen raids where if you wanted to tank, you rolled a warrior, end of story.
And still, people played the game. Those shadow priests, holy pallies, prot pallies, ret pallies, moonkins, feral druids, fire mages, fury warriors, destro locks, etc....soldiered on. And today, they have more options to play their toon the way they want to. You want to dps as a paladin? Fine, go to it. You have gear upgrades that actually give you stats you need, that are plate, not leather, not mail. You have a better, more tightly organized tree, making it easier for you to do what you do best. And you have raids that will actually take you as dps without having to be Esotarious, the god-paladin of Argent Dawn.
And still, so many classes complain about their supposed "inbalance" and the lack of love to their trees, to the point where it becomes a game-quitting decision. You all have no idea. You never had it this easy.
Priests, I know that as the only healing class forced to wear cloth, you're at a disadvantage when it comes to gear. Not only do all the other healers have the option to downgrade to cloth, but mages and warlocks and moonkins all want to roll on your shit. Yes, the itemization in Wrath sucks right now for you. I know that Circle of Healing is getting a cooldown soon, possibly making the Holy tree less desirable. Yes, I know that Rapture in the Disc tree is currently bugged so that it's a hard tree to play if you don't have the mana regen for it. Yes, I know that you cannot dispel poisons so a lot of heroic instances are hard for you to heal. Yes, I know that the complexity of the shadow rotation has increased, and that you might find yourself out-dpsed on the meters, at least until you hit 75 and then and start spamming Mind Sear to inflate your dps like all the other classes that have AOE. Yes, I know that Hymn of Hope is kind of stupid and that Dispersion doesn't seem like a worthy 51-point talent.
Is this enough to quit the game over?
Well, I don't know, you tell me. Are you the kind of person who only does something if it's easy?
Why don't you talk to holy pallies, who sat by and watched while ret got massively buffed, while gameplay for them stayed essentially the same (and let's not even get into the prot pallies that left the class in disgust because of the prot warrior buff. If you're a prot pally who thinks the spec is worthless now, then yes, you probably should quit, and good riddance). Or to resto druids, who throughout all of Burning Crusade dealt with their hots getting overriden in higher level raids, to the point where Nihilum's druid class leader complained that restos couldn't get a raid spot in Sunwell level content?
You have an entirely overhauled new tree designed to be an even better main tank healer than holy paladins, who have long since filled that role. Discipline is actually a worthwhile tree now! And shadow dps seems fine at level 80. Yes, it's complex. So is being a death knight. Does that mean it's any less rewarding to play? Shouldn't that make it more so?
There will always be a class that can do certain things better than you. You cannot do everything best, and if you can, you probably should be nerfed. Instead of despairing over the differences, and whining about them every chance you get, why don't you instead re-evaulate what you do have, and try to find ways to use them better?
Some people don't play their class because it's OP. They play them because they enjoy it, and they use skill to cover their weak areas, realizing that a scenario that may be difficult for them may be easier for someone else -- but that it works both ways. Blizzard is in a tuning stage right now and the round of nerfs and buffs will continue for a little while longer. If you wring your hands in despair and reach for the cancel account page every time they change something, or compare every little difference to what used to be and what others have, then maybe it's best that you quit, because frankly I worry about your mental stability.
I can understand leaving the game for other reasons -- it's not fun anymore, you're moving on, etc. But quitting because of a sense of inferiority is just silly. It's a game. It's not like life, where you're born with an identity and stuck with it forever. Make the best of what you have, reroll, or quit.
This goes for everyone, not just priests. Ret paladins, hunters -- you knew it was coming. I guess you'll actually have to be skilled and geared instead of just OP now. Isn't that a novel concept? Maybe you should feel what it's like to be a mage in Burning Crusade, knowing that past Karazhan you'll always be considered an inferior dps class. And we're still here. Well, some of us are. We stuck with it because we enjoyed playing it and we had faith in our ability to be of some service to the raid even if we can't sneak off with Number One on the charts all the time. And let's not even go into the PVP aspect of it...
Perhaps, someday, Blizzard will tune the game perfectly so that all classes are unique, yet equally viable in all situations. Until that day comes, get used to the roller coaster.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
How to Mage: Heroic Edition
The mage class is supposed to be a fairly simple class. It's so...basic. You sling spells at things, they blow up and die. Simple.
Well, okay, sometimes you turn things into a penguin. Which you should in heroics, because things hit hard, and tanks get nervous. You might find the setfocus-polymorph macro useful, because it will enable you to keep the sheep target as your focus for easy resheeping. Something like this:
You may have noticed that FFB is really slow. That's too bad, because there's nothing you can really do about that except to stack haste. Now, haste usually comes at the expense of crit, unless you are lucky enough to find a piece with both on it. They're fairly rare, right now. But don't destroy your crit rating that much, because with the FFB fire spec, it procs Hot Streak, which is a very, very nice dps boost. It's even better if you can proc it consistently. Anything from 25-30% crit on fire spells is a pretty good number to aim for, and considering that FFB hits like a truck (it has a crit modifier of 315%, properly talented), most people are saying that crit and haste are equally important for a mage to stack.
Keep your Living Bomb up. Keep your scorches up. Don't neglect your scorch because there will be a lot of situations where FFB is too damn slow to cast before something dies. You don't want to waste that cast, so cast a scorch/fireblast combo instead. It's fast, it's deadly, and it might proc a nice Pyroblast for you to hurl at the next dps target instead. Use with caution, however, as it's a bit of a threat jump.
Use Scorch/Fireblast/Pryoblast on heavy mobility fights, or something will probably smack you down while you're standing there charging your FFB. It's not optimal but it's better than being dead.
You have two spells which can be used to protect yourself or your healer. Dragon's Breath is a daze, Blast Wave is a knockback. Adds eating the healer? Blast Wave them off, the Frost Nova them in place.
Juggle your cooldowns for sustained high dps. You have three or four, depending on your spec -- Combustion for when you want those Hot Streak procs, Mirror Image for some nice extra firepower (also very nice for when the mob throws around random group damage, which sometimes goes to the image instead of a player), Icy Veins for some added quickness, and maybe a trinket or so. Are you going to be AOEing? As in channeling Blizzard? Pop your spell-damage trinket first.
Yes, that hunter next to you is OP. Yes, he's going to be nerfed soon. Watch out, mages. The nerf bat may be coming for you next. But that's ok, because we don't play our mages only when they are OP. We play our mages because we like them, and we are damned good at what we do.
Well, okay, sometimes you turn things into a penguin. Which you should in heroics, because things hit hard, and tanks get nervous. You might find the setfocus-polymorph macro useful, because it will enable you to keep the sheep target as your focus for easy resheeping. Something like this:
#showtooltip
/clearfocus [target=focus,dead]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/cast [target=focus]Polymorph
/stopmacro [nogroup]
You may have noticed that FFB is really slow. That's too bad, because there's nothing you can really do about that except to stack haste. Now, haste usually comes at the expense of crit, unless you are lucky enough to find a piece with both on it. They're fairly rare, right now. But don't destroy your crit rating that much, because with the FFB fire spec, it procs Hot Streak, which is a very, very nice dps boost. It's even better if you can proc it consistently. Anything from 25-30% crit on fire spells is a pretty good number to aim for, and considering that FFB hits like a truck (it has a crit modifier of 315%, properly talented), most people are saying that crit and haste are equally important for a mage to stack.
Keep your Living Bomb up. Keep your scorches up. Don't neglect your scorch because there will be a lot of situations where FFB is too damn slow to cast before something dies. You don't want to waste that cast, so cast a scorch/fireblast combo instead. It's fast, it's deadly, and it might proc a nice Pyroblast for you to hurl at the next dps target instead. Use with caution, however, as it's a bit of a threat jump.
Use Scorch/Fireblast/Pryoblast on heavy mobility fights, or something will probably smack you down while you're standing there charging your FFB. It's not optimal but it's better than being dead.
You have two spells which can be used to protect yourself or your healer. Dragon's Breath is a daze, Blast Wave is a knockback. Adds eating the healer? Blast Wave them off, the Frost Nova them in place.
Juggle your cooldowns for sustained high dps. You have three or four, depending on your spec -- Combustion for when you want those Hot Streak procs, Mirror Image for some nice extra firepower (also very nice for when the mob throws around random group damage, which sometimes goes to the image instead of a player), Icy Veins for some added quickness, and maybe a trinket or so. Are you going to be AOEing? As in channeling Blizzard? Pop your spell-damage trinket first.
Yes, that hunter next to you is OP. Yes, he's going to be nerfed soon. Watch out, mages. The nerf bat may be coming for you next. But that's ok, because we don't play our mages only when they are OP. We play our mages because we like them, and we are damned good at what we do.
Dear Heroic Healer (who used to be dps)...
Dear Heroic Healer (who used to be dps),
I know, it's a hard world out there for you. You'd like to do heroics, you like being shadow, or ret, or moonkin, or elemental, because you lawlpwn and know how to play it -- but with the current shortage of healers at level 80, you'll never get into a group if you don't respec and heal. Now, I commend you for your sacrifice. I really do. It's a thankless job, made even more difficult nowadays with mages and warlocks and moonkins wanting to roll on your gear, and warrior tanks scoffing off the idea of CC because they need the rage, or death knights insisting that they can tank but that never use cooldowns and consequently stand there and get two shotted.
But seriously, if you haven't healed since vanilla WoW, and you're still rolling in your Burning Crusade dps epics (with the dps gems still in there, no less), and you don't even know how to spec a healer anymore, you just went through and picked all the talents that said "increase healing" on them...please, don't try to heal a heroic and pretend that it'll all be fine. It won't. Don't act like this instance is impossible just because you can't do it. It's not. Every healing class changed a lot, even over the course of the last few patches. Even people who have been healers for all of Burning Crusade got new talents and spells to play with -- and they, at least, knew that a talent called "pushback protection on healing spells" might well be a useful thing for a healer to have. You are going to walk into that heroic with your 1600 spellpower and 100 mana regen and probably get owned on the first boss. And you're going to find out that it's probably not as simple as you imagined.
My priest lead for MC used to simply tell people to "push the heal button." Unfortunately it's not that one-dimensional anymore (it never was, but if you were a real healer, you would have known that already). There are a lot of things besides pushing the healing button that you have to consider, such as: how do you manage your mana? How do you know when you must keep the individual topped off, or when it is ok to move first or dispel first or HoT them instead? How do you deal with group damage in a situation where you have to move around a lot? When you get silenced a lot? When two or more people are near death, one of which is yourself, in what order do you heal them? Which healing spell do you push so that you get the most bang for your buck? When the crap hits the fan? Will they be the same thing? What happens when you've got an add on you and the tank is preoccupied for the next few minutes with 10 other adds and a boss?
It might be the tank's fault, if he's not defense capped. Or it might be the dps's fault if they really are just not cutting it. But if the tank is dying while you're solo healing him, or the group dies because of unavoidable AOE damage, it's probably not their faults. It's yours.
So yes, former shadow priest still wearing the dps badge legs from the SSO island, who insists that he used Circle of Healing even though Recount shows not a single instance of that spell (are you sure you're not confusing it with Prayer of Healing?), or resto druid with hit gear who doesn't know how to heal more than one target at a time, you should probably run the normal level 80 dungeons and get some actual healing gear. Or at least try to research a good spec first. Because as it is, you're just wasting everyone's time.
With love,
Grim
I know, it's a hard world out there for you. You'd like to do heroics, you like being shadow, or ret, or moonkin, or elemental, because you lawlpwn and know how to play it -- but with the current shortage of healers at level 80, you'll never get into a group if you don't respec and heal. Now, I commend you for your sacrifice. I really do. It's a thankless job, made even more difficult nowadays with mages and warlocks and moonkins wanting to roll on your gear, and warrior tanks scoffing off the idea of CC because they need the rage, or death knights insisting that they can tank but that never use cooldowns and consequently stand there and get two shotted.
But seriously, if you haven't healed since vanilla WoW, and you're still rolling in your Burning Crusade dps epics (with the dps gems still in there, no less), and you don't even know how to spec a healer anymore, you just went through and picked all the talents that said "increase healing" on them...please, don't try to heal a heroic and pretend that it'll all be fine. It won't. Don't act like this instance is impossible just because you can't do it. It's not. Every healing class changed a lot, even over the course of the last few patches. Even people who have been healers for all of Burning Crusade got new talents and spells to play with -- and they, at least, knew that a talent called "pushback protection on healing spells" might well be a useful thing for a healer to have. You are going to walk into that heroic with your 1600 spellpower and 100 mana regen and probably get owned on the first boss. And you're going to find out that it's probably not as simple as you imagined.
My priest lead for MC used to simply tell people to "push the heal button." Unfortunately it's not that one-dimensional anymore (it never was, but if you were a real healer, you would have known that already). There are a lot of things besides pushing the healing button that you have to consider, such as: how do you manage your mana? How do you know when you must keep the individual topped off, or when it is ok to move first or dispel first or HoT them instead? How do you deal with group damage in a situation where you have to move around a lot? When you get silenced a lot? When two or more people are near death, one of which is yourself, in what order do you heal them? Which healing spell do you push so that you get the most bang for your buck? When the crap hits the fan? Will they be the same thing? What happens when you've got an add on you and the tank is preoccupied for the next few minutes with 10 other adds and a boss?
It might be the tank's fault, if he's not defense capped. Or it might be the dps's fault if they really are just not cutting it. But if the tank is dying while you're solo healing him, or the group dies because of unavoidable AOE damage, it's probably not their faults. It's yours.
So yes, former shadow priest still wearing the dps badge legs from the SSO island, who insists that he used Circle of Healing even though Recount shows not a single instance of that spell (are you sure you're not confusing it with Prayer of Healing?), or resto druid with hit gear who doesn't know how to heal more than one target at a time, you should probably run the normal level 80 dungeons and get some actual healing gear. Or at least try to research a good spec first. Because as it is, you're just wasting everyone's time.
With love,
Grim
Make me bad: Mage Edition
Once again, I find myself in the position of gearing up for raids, but this time there are far fewer crafted items to help me along. The good news is that I seem to be okay to at least start Naxx already, being as the requirements to successfully start it seem to be a lot less stringent than they were to start Karazhan. The bad news is that I have very few ways to upgrade certain slots before raids:
For raiding I'll probably pick up Flask of the Frost Wyrm and some Succulent Orca Stew. I can hit cap FFB with just 2 gear switches, to cap out the other fire spells might not be possible right now. I'd like to shoot for 1400 spellpower, 30% crit, and 176 haste (which makes my FFB down to a 2.8 second cast).
Rotation is still a little bit up in the air. It will depend on whether I want to respec to get Living Bomb. I'm doing a solid 1.5k in heroics, which seems pretty standard for mages with no raid buffs. In Heroics, I find myself using scorch and fire blast a lot more than I thought I would. Sometimes you just don't have time to cast another FFB, and a Scorch/Fireblast combo is a good way to ensure death for a mob. Of course, ignite doesn't really do much for trash, but it's very good for bosses, or really anything that's up longer than a minute or so.
I'm also using the scorch/fireblast combo on a lot of mobility fights where I don't or can't stand long enough for 3 seconds (the last boss in Nexus, for example). It's suboptimal but better than death. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, it will proc the Hot Streak pyroblast for some extra damage.
To recap:
Enchants: Shoulders, cloak, bracers. New head enchant (might wait until later).
Hit cap: 289 (FFB), 367 (everything else). Soon this will just be a flat 367.
Consumables: Succulent Orca Stew, Flast of the Frost Wyrm.
I need better gems, but I can't afford them right now. Sigh.
- Shoulders: except for the BOE from Naxx, which even if I were lucky enough to see on the AH anytime soon, should easily go into the realm of 5k gold, not too many upgrades. The new enchant for them is from Sons of Hodir, which I will need to grind to put on my crappy, crappy blue.
- Legs: Short of H. Halls of Lightning or H. Utgarde Pinnacle -- and we all know how everyone loves doing those -- again, not that many upgrades. I don't like giving up crit for more spellpower when I make absolutely no use of spirit whatsoever.
- Bracers: There are some decent ones from H. Oculus, but again, not too many upgrades. I need to put a spellpower enchant on the ones I have. They just seem almost not worth enchanting. I still can't get used to the sight of all these blues.
For raiding I'll probably pick up Flask of the Frost Wyrm and some Succulent Orca Stew. I can hit cap FFB with just 2 gear switches, to cap out the other fire spells might not be possible right now. I'd like to shoot for 1400 spellpower, 30% crit, and 176 haste (which makes my FFB down to a 2.8 second cast).
Rotation is still a little bit up in the air. It will depend on whether I want to respec to get Living Bomb. I'm doing a solid 1.5k in heroics, which seems pretty standard for mages with no raid buffs. In Heroics, I find myself using scorch and fire blast a lot more than I thought I would. Sometimes you just don't have time to cast another FFB, and a Scorch/Fireblast combo is a good way to ensure death for a mob. Of course, ignite doesn't really do much for trash, but it's very good for bosses, or really anything that's up longer than a minute or so.
I'm also using the scorch/fireblast combo on a lot of mobility fights where I don't or can't stand long enough for 3 seconds (the last boss in Nexus, for example). It's suboptimal but better than death. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, it will proc the Hot Streak pyroblast for some extra damage.
To recap:
Enchants: Shoulders, cloak, bracers. New head enchant (might wait until later).
Hit cap: 289 (FFB), 367 (everything else). Soon this will just be a flat 367.
Consumables: Succulent Orca Stew, Flast of the Frost Wyrm.
I need better gems, but I can't afford them right now. Sigh.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
One Month Later: Wrath in Review (Part 2)
Magery at 80
A problem I had with the mage as I leveled was that I wasn't finding that many true upgrades. Not that my gear was exceptional or anything -- but it felt like the pieces I was getting just didn't match up, all the way up to level 80 dungeons. I've been 80 for a bit now, I've run some heroics, gotten 1 piece of emblem loot, and now I'm sitting at about 1300 spellpower, 27% fire crit, and 115 haste. Not too shabby, but not too great either, considering that was completely reachable at level 70 with Sunwell gear.
I dabbled in arcane before Wrath came out, but I leveled frost. It's still the best AOE grinding spec, it's decent for world PVP (although in the first few days, there was an unofficial cease-fire across the leveling zones of Northrend), and it has great survivability, which is key for those new dungeons where no one know what the hell is going on. I did well in damage meters, up until the last few levels before 80. At that point, ret pallies and DKs would pull ahead of me, mostly due to their AOE abilities and my hit rating.
At 75 I went frostfire, but hated it and switched back to frost. At 80, frostfire is much better. A little streaky, for sure, but certainly powerful. I can do a sustained 1500 dps, non-raid buffed, and can burst up to 2300 in certain situations -- and this is in level 80 blues, a few dungeon drops, and 1 emblem loot. Eventually I'd like to be reaching for 30% fire crit, 1500 spellpower, and 300 haste, but that will have to wait. Right now, the mage's progress is being hampered by a serious lack of healers available to do level 80 content.
I haven't seen very many good warlocks at 80, but hunters are completely OP and I hate them with a passion.
Druidism
My resto druid was next in line for a good leveling push, since the mage is going to have a hard time getting into my guild's Naxx run, which is being hampered by lack of healers and willing dps. Honestly, I'm not sure I want to go into Naxx with these OP hunters and DKs bragging about their dps as if it took skill to do. In any case, leveling as resto was easier than I thought, the new spellpower changes make a lot of difference, and I never run out of mana grinding. I never run out of mana healing either, the same stack of 20 waters lasted me for 5 levels. I can also solo elites as resto, it just takes quite a while. But I'm running into my limit of that now -- if the elite can't be rooted, then I have a bit of a problem.
My druid had fairly good gear -- at least BT level -- before Wrath. I've also found not that many upgrades, although she is definitely having an easier time of it than my mage, as I've already replaced a lot of my old world epics. Spellpower went up to about 1150, while my spirit based regen degraded with the level. With the gear changes, it stayed about constant up to 78. Healers are so in demand now that even badly geared ones make out all right -- I was healing Violet Hold (a 4 manned Violet Hold, as it turned out) at 71, Halls of Lightning at 75, and Oculus at 77. Cake.
Incidentally, if you happened to be shadow or dps or something all through Burning Crusade, and you leveled as dps, rolling on healing gear all the way, and suddenly decided to respec healing and jump right into heroics at 80 because you cant find a group willing to take you as dps -- no offense, but screw you. At least try to research a good healing spec instead of just "picking all the talents that have healing" on them. Healers have a hard enough time of it as it is, what with mages and warlocks rolling on their gear, and being difficult to level (sure it's more efficient to level as dps, but someone has to heal your sorry ass in normal dungeons, and I don't see you volunteering for the job, now do I?), we really don't need you coming in and giving us a bad name. Endrant.
Resto is poised to be great healers at 80. All the heavy mobility fights really favor a resto druid style, and fights that give priests and paladins trouble are remarkably easier for me. With the incoming nerf to Circle of Healing, more priests will probably go disc to become tank healers and "mitigators of damage," since deep Holy might not be worth it anymore. Druids and shamans will become group healers, which is fine with me, since Wild Growth is so good now. And I'm really looking forward to getting Nourish, which is like a better version of Flash Heal for the same mana cost.
I did briefly respec my Alliance priest to disc and healed a UK and Nexus, just to try it out. First of all, playing Alliance is so easy compared to Horde -- no one is spamming meters after every pull, huntards are still huntards, not that many people are 80 yet. Discipline is interesting, and in some ways, very counterintuitive, as you've been taught your whole career as a priest not to bubble the tank. A few things to improve on - I should get the glyph of Power World Shield, bind it to something in Clique, and also bind Pain Suppression to something. The biggest downside is the lack of effective group healing abilities, something which these dungeons also heavily favors. But Penance is a great heal, possibly the best in the game, since it is channeled and thus begins immediately, and if they fix Rapture, disc could be very powerful. Currently, however, you have to have pretty good mana regen to pull it off.
At 80 I would like to aim for about 1200 spellpower, 1200 regen on my resto druid. It is becoming desirable to stack both in almost equal amounts now instead of favoring regen exclusively. In terms of how I heal, it hasn't changed that much, but Nourish will completely alter the game.
Playing Paladin
I stayed off the ret bandwagon and stayed prot -- and already generated a few surprised looks from DKs fleeing the paladin to play a "better class." Well, holy paladins might have gotten a bit shafted, but the other two trees seem solid. Lots of changes to protadin tanking. You're using Seal of Vengeance now, judging Light, and you should be rolling in Sanctuary and Improved Devo aura. Always. Unless you undergear the instance, and then you need Kings.
I'm not really seeing much of a threat problem anymore, unlike what all the threads say. And the new Shield Slam will make leveling as prot so much easier, if it comes down to that. Eventually, I'll have to learn the 96969 rotation, which looks something like this:
Prep Seal
Avenger's Shield pull
0.0 Holy Shield (9)
1.5 Hammer of the Righteous (6)
3.0 Judgement (9)
4.5 Shield of Righteousness (6)
6.0 Consecration (9)
7.5 Hammer of the Righteous (6)
9.0 Holy Shield (9)
10.5 Shield of Righteousness (6)
12.0 Judgement (9)
13.5 Hammer of the Righteous (6)
15.0 Consecration (9)
16.5 Shield of Righteousness (6)
18.0 Holy Shield (9) ... and repeat.
Divine Protection for OSHIT situations, enrages, etc, or Lay on Hands for a extra heal on yourself.
A problem I had with the mage as I leveled was that I wasn't finding that many true upgrades. Not that my gear was exceptional or anything -- but it felt like the pieces I was getting just didn't match up, all the way up to level 80 dungeons. I've been 80 for a bit now, I've run some heroics, gotten 1 piece of emblem loot, and now I'm sitting at about 1300 spellpower, 27% fire crit, and 115 haste. Not too shabby, but not too great either, considering that was completely reachable at level 70 with Sunwell gear.
I dabbled in arcane before Wrath came out, but I leveled frost. It's still the best AOE grinding spec, it's decent for world PVP (although in the first few days, there was an unofficial cease-fire across the leveling zones of Northrend), and it has great survivability, which is key for those new dungeons where no one know what the hell is going on. I did well in damage meters, up until the last few levels before 80. At that point, ret pallies and DKs would pull ahead of me, mostly due to their AOE abilities and my hit rating.
At 75 I went frostfire, but hated it and switched back to frost. At 80, frostfire is much better. A little streaky, for sure, but certainly powerful. I can do a sustained 1500 dps, non-raid buffed, and can burst up to 2300 in certain situations -- and this is in level 80 blues, a few dungeon drops, and 1 emblem loot. Eventually I'd like to be reaching for 30% fire crit, 1500 spellpower, and 300 haste, but that will have to wait. Right now, the mage's progress is being hampered by a serious lack of healers available to do level 80 content.
I haven't seen very many good warlocks at 80, but hunters are completely OP and I hate them with a passion.
Druidism
My resto druid was next in line for a good leveling push, since the mage is going to have a hard time getting into my guild's Naxx run, which is being hampered by lack of healers and willing dps. Honestly, I'm not sure I want to go into Naxx with these OP hunters and DKs bragging about their dps as if it took skill to do. In any case, leveling as resto was easier than I thought, the new spellpower changes make a lot of difference, and I never run out of mana grinding. I never run out of mana healing either, the same stack of 20 waters lasted me for 5 levels. I can also solo elites as resto, it just takes quite a while. But I'm running into my limit of that now -- if the elite can't be rooted, then I have a bit of a problem.
My druid had fairly good gear -- at least BT level -- before Wrath. I've also found not that many upgrades, although she is definitely having an easier time of it than my mage, as I've already replaced a lot of my old world epics. Spellpower went up to about 1150, while my spirit based regen degraded with the level. With the gear changes, it stayed about constant up to 78. Healers are so in demand now that even badly geared ones make out all right -- I was healing Violet Hold (a 4 manned Violet Hold, as it turned out) at 71, Halls of Lightning at 75, and Oculus at 77. Cake.
Incidentally, if you happened to be shadow or dps or something all through Burning Crusade, and you leveled as dps, rolling on healing gear all the way, and suddenly decided to respec healing and jump right into heroics at 80 because you cant find a group willing to take you as dps -- no offense, but screw you. At least try to research a good healing spec instead of just "picking all the talents that have healing" on them. Healers have a hard enough time of it as it is, what with mages and warlocks rolling on their gear, and being difficult to level (sure it's more efficient to level as dps, but someone has to heal your sorry ass in normal dungeons, and I don't see you volunteering for the job, now do I?), we really don't need you coming in and giving us a bad name. Endrant.
Resto is poised to be great healers at 80. All the heavy mobility fights really favor a resto druid style, and fights that give priests and paladins trouble are remarkably easier for me. With the incoming nerf to Circle of Healing, more priests will probably go disc to become tank healers and "mitigators of damage," since deep Holy might not be worth it anymore. Druids and shamans will become group healers, which is fine with me, since Wild Growth is so good now. And I'm really looking forward to getting Nourish, which is like a better version of Flash Heal for the same mana cost.
I did briefly respec my Alliance priest to disc and healed a UK and Nexus, just to try it out. First of all, playing Alliance is so easy compared to Horde -- no one is spamming meters after every pull, huntards are still huntards, not that many people are 80 yet. Discipline is interesting, and in some ways, very counterintuitive, as you've been taught your whole career as a priest not to bubble the tank. A few things to improve on - I should get the glyph of Power World Shield, bind it to something in Clique, and also bind Pain Suppression to something. The biggest downside is the lack of effective group healing abilities, something which these dungeons also heavily favors. But Penance is a great heal, possibly the best in the game, since it is channeled and thus begins immediately, and if they fix Rapture, disc could be very powerful. Currently, however, you have to have pretty good mana regen to pull it off.
At 80 I would like to aim for about 1200 spellpower, 1200 regen on my resto druid. It is becoming desirable to stack both in almost equal amounts now instead of favoring regen exclusively. In terms of how I heal, it hasn't changed that much, but Nourish will completely alter the game.
Playing Paladin
I stayed off the ret bandwagon and stayed prot -- and already generated a few surprised looks from DKs fleeing the paladin to play a "better class." Well, holy paladins might have gotten a bit shafted, but the other two trees seem solid. Lots of changes to protadin tanking. You're using Seal of Vengeance now, judging Light, and you should be rolling in Sanctuary and Improved Devo aura. Always. Unless you undergear the instance, and then you need Kings.
I'm not really seeing much of a threat problem anymore, unlike what all the threads say. And the new Shield Slam will make leveling as prot so much easier, if it comes down to that. Eventually, I'll have to learn the 96969 rotation, which looks something like this:
Prep Seal
Avenger's Shield pull
0.0 Holy Shield (9)
1.5 Hammer of the Righteous (6)
3.0 Judgement (9)
4.5 Shield of Righteousness (6)
6.0 Consecration (9)
7.5 Hammer of the Righteous (6)
9.0 Holy Shield (9)
10.5 Shield of Righteousness (6)
12.0 Judgement (9)
13.5 Hammer of the Righteous (6)
15.0 Consecration (9)
16.5 Shield of Righteousness (6)
18.0 Holy Shield (9) ... and repeat.
Divine Protection for OSHIT situations, enrages, etc, or Lay on Hands for a extra heal on yourself.
One Month Later: Wrath in Review
Wrath of the Lich King has been out for about a month, so now might be a good time to step back and reflect on all the new things that have happened, and how this game has changed. This will be a two-part series; in this post, I'll talk about the initial impressions of Northrend while leveling, and the follow up will discuss my admittedly limited impression of the end game (classes, specs, itemization, etc).
Leveling
I've leveled to 80 on my mage. Ghostcrawler mentioned that if you already have a level 80, you're pretty hardcore -- I guess that means my guild has a lot of hardcore players, since there's about 14 people that are 80 by now. I took my time with it and did it in about 2 weeks -- and that takes into account the fact that I would switch to my pally or druid in the early levels to tank or heal instances that didn't need dps. Leveling seems much easier than before, the quests are remarkably easier and even fun, in some cases. So easy, in fact, that I've been leveling other toons at the same time, so that now my druid is 78 and my paladin is 72. Pretty soon, I'll have two 80s -- the first person in my guild to accomplish that, but a measly feat compared to the efforts of some others on my server. Within a few days of the Wrath release, an Alliance warrior hit level 80 for the server first, and then a few days later, his Death Knight hit 80 to become the server first 80 Death Knight. I don't know whether to congratulate him or tranq him with an elephant sedative.
Death Knights
I was about 74-75 when the influx of power-leveling death knights hit Northrend, and ever since then we've been plagued (no pun, etc) with death knights of various calibers, all convinced they can solo Elune with only their pet. Some of them are fairly good, most of them are just OP, and a few are just resoundingly bad. It's one of those classes where you could just button mash and do decently on the meters, but the thing that irks me the most about them isn't how OP they are, but how cocky so many of them seem to be. Every last one is convinced that they don't need healing except on bosses (protip: yes, you do) or can pull aggro off the real tank with impunity (protip: no, you can't). I've heard from some DKs that they run into problems at the end game, but we'll see. Right now, the greatest variance between them seems to lie in the skill of the player behind them.
I did make one of my own. I intended just to try out the class a bit and reserve my DK name, but to my surprise, the starting zone quests were really fun and engrossing, the class mechanics interesting, and before I knew it, I was level 60 and in Outlands and trying to run a 5-DK Ramparts just like every other DK in the world. Blizzard really did their best to make them feel special and to give them a real backstory and a purpose in this universe, because it feels like a class that a lot of love and care was lavished on -- more so, maybe, than some other classes that have been around for years! But I want to wait to level it until the death knight craze dies down a bit.
Northrend
I love this continent. I loved Outland, too, because it really felt like a different planet, and was suitably flashy and spacey-looking to capture the imagination, but Northrend is something else entirely. It's got a beautiful, lush, Gothic feel to it, the music is sweeping and epic, and for the most part, the annoyances of questing in Outland, which was already a huge step up from questing in Azeroth, were done away with. A lot of the time, I found myself reading the quest text, getting engrossed in the storyline -- and I've already met the Lich King himself on more than one occasion. He's definitely not shy, like Illidan was.
For the most part, the instances were all really easy. We mostly just zerged every instance up to the level 80 ones, not even really taking time to learn boss strats. Once you start getting to Halls of Lightning, however, your tank's defense rating actually starts to matter, your healer's decaying spirit regen starts to make a difference, and all that hit rating that you can't make up because you are 4 levels lower than that level 81 boss really makes the instances become non-trivial. That's a good thing, on a lot of levels, though. My favorite one so far would probably be Utgarde Pinnacle, both because I've only done it once (once on normal, and once on heroic) and because the fights seem geniunely interesting. There are a lot of heavy mobility fights in these new instances. You didn't really have this in Outland, but in Northrend even normal dungeons emphasize quickness and careful repositioning.
Professions
I'm a bit disappointed with the lack of grind-worthy tailoring recipes this time around -- after getting to 410 (which required an epic amount of frostweave cloth by itself) and making my flying carpet just for kicks, I don't really have an incentive to level tailoring past 420 (and that only to get the cloak recipes, which are only available after achieving Loremaster of Northrend). On the plus side, there are new engineering googles out, and since I'm having trouble replacing my mage's headpiece with a true upgrade, I might just have to slog through and make those. The engineering bike is, right now, a little above my pay grade.
I was going to make my pally's second profession Inscription, but now I'm starting to think that there's no need to have an inscriptor of my own. The most useful thing to have had is an Enchanter, but it's too late to level one from scratch. Cooking also seems to be something that I should have leveled when I had the chance, but there's still time -- my druid can be the herber/alchemist and the cook, my pally can mine, and my mage can produce tailoring greens to be DEed for mats. I guess. Might as well get some use out of it..
...to be continued.
Leveling
I've leveled to 80 on my mage. Ghostcrawler mentioned that if you already have a level 80, you're pretty hardcore -- I guess that means my guild has a lot of hardcore players, since there's about 14 people that are 80 by now. I took my time with it and did it in about 2 weeks -- and that takes into account the fact that I would switch to my pally or druid in the early levels to tank or heal instances that didn't need dps. Leveling seems much easier than before, the quests are remarkably easier and even fun, in some cases. So easy, in fact, that I've been leveling other toons at the same time, so that now my druid is 78 and my paladin is 72. Pretty soon, I'll have two 80s -- the first person in my guild to accomplish that, but a measly feat compared to the efforts of some others on my server. Within a few days of the Wrath release, an Alliance warrior hit level 80 for the server first, and then a few days later, his Death Knight hit 80 to become the server first 80 Death Knight. I don't know whether to congratulate him or tranq him with an elephant sedative.
Death Knights
I was about 74-75 when the influx of power-leveling death knights hit Northrend, and ever since then we've been plagued (no pun, etc) with death knights of various calibers, all convinced they can solo Elune with only their pet. Some of them are fairly good, most of them are just OP, and a few are just resoundingly bad. It's one of those classes where you could just button mash and do decently on the meters, but the thing that irks me the most about them isn't how OP they are, but how cocky so many of them seem to be. Every last one is convinced that they don't need healing except on bosses (protip: yes, you do) or can pull aggro off the real tank with impunity (protip: no, you can't). I've heard from some DKs that they run into problems at the end game, but we'll see. Right now, the greatest variance between them seems to lie in the skill of the player behind them.
I did make one of my own. I intended just to try out the class a bit and reserve my DK name, but to my surprise, the starting zone quests were really fun and engrossing, the class mechanics interesting, and before I knew it, I was level 60 and in Outlands and trying to run a 5-DK Ramparts just like every other DK in the world. Blizzard really did their best to make them feel special and to give them a real backstory and a purpose in this universe, because it feels like a class that a lot of love and care was lavished on -- more so, maybe, than some other classes that have been around for years! But I want to wait to level it until the death knight craze dies down a bit.
Northrend
I love this continent. I loved Outland, too, because it really felt like a different planet, and was suitably flashy and spacey-looking to capture the imagination, but Northrend is something else entirely. It's got a beautiful, lush, Gothic feel to it, the music is sweeping and epic, and for the most part, the annoyances of questing in Outland, which was already a huge step up from questing in Azeroth, were done away with. A lot of the time, I found myself reading the quest text, getting engrossed in the storyline -- and I've already met the Lich King himself on more than one occasion. He's definitely not shy, like Illidan was.
For the most part, the instances were all really easy. We mostly just zerged every instance up to the level 80 ones, not even really taking time to learn boss strats. Once you start getting to Halls of Lightning, however, your tank's defense rating actually starts to matter, your healer's decaying spirit regen starts to make a difference, and all that hit rating that you can't make up because you are 4 levels lower than that level 81 boss really makes the instances become non-trivial. That's a good thing, on a lot of levels, though. My favorite one so far would probably be Utgarde Pinnacle, both because I've only done it once (once on normal, and once on heroic) and because the fights seem geniunely interesting. There are a lot of heavy mobility fights in these new instances. You didn't really have this in Outland, but in Northrend even normal dungeons emphasize quickness and careful repositioning.
Professions
I'm a bit disappointed with the lack of grind-worthy tailoring recipes this time around -- after getting to 410 (which required an epic amount of frostweave cloth by itself) and making my flying carpet just for kicks, I don't really have an incentive to level tailoring past 420 (and that only to get the cloak recipes, which are only available after achieving Loremaster of Northrend). On the plus side, there are new engineering googles out, and since I'm having trouble replacing my mage's headpiece with a true upgrade, I might just have to slog through and make those. The engineering bike is, right now, a little above my pay grade.
I was going to make my pally's second profession Inscription, but now I'm starting to think that there's no need to have an inscriptor of my own. The most useful thing to have had is an Enchanter, but it's too late to level one from scratch. Cooking also seems to be something that I should have leveled when I had the chance, but there's still time -- my druid can be the herber/alchemist and the cook, my pally can mine, and my mage can produce tailoring greens to be DEed for mats. I guess. Might as well get some use out of it..
...to be continued.
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