That’s like your opinion, dude (about Worgen and general Beta musings)

Riiiight. This is the non-spoiler paragraph. You are free to read on without the urge to poke your eyes out with rusty spoon in order to preserve your Cataclysm gameplay virginity. I will tell you when there will be spoilers. You won’t miss that, promise. It will be really, really obvious. Like really obvious. Something like big, capitalized, bolded and underlined, centered and red text saying there will be spoilers. Thinking something like this:

!!! BEWARE OF THE DOG AND SPOILERS. SPOILERS, DUDE!!!

Well okay, not underlined. But that’s how it will look when there are going to be spoilers. Not yet though. We are still in the non-spoiler part. Anyways, I spent some time on beta over the weekend and I am still pretty gutted Shaman trainers refuse to teach Rahana the new Cataclysm spells and I don’t dare pugging any instance without. I mean come on, they rebuild our healing arsenal but don’t issue new weapons. Dull. Anyways (and that’s gonna be one tedious task) I noticed the same on my druid who actually, could train the before-untrainable spells after leveling up. So guess I need to start working and push the blueberry to 81.

Last beta build came up with few great things – you can play Worgen (more on that later). You can’t submit feedback because for some reason that feature is broken (wasn’t me!) – which is kinda stupid for beta tested game; I even found out few bugs and stuff actually worth reporting but I can’t. Meh. The greatest thing so far though is the new game installer/launcher/downloader, that streams game data and downloads them while you play. Sure, getting into Dalaran and waiting a minute till your client actually downloads all textures and you are not in strange shades-of-purple-but-no-texture world, but it’s fast, it allows you to play the game quite early after initial installation file download and, contrary to the current downloader, it doesn’t lag you so much (even if you let just launcher up to download).

Okay. That’s about it. Now I will do something I haven’t done in ages – I will insert a page breaker. That means if you don’t want to read possible spoilers related to Trolls and Worgens, you better not click and read on. If you want to comment, feel free to I will make sure I will put down some harmless picture of swans or something so your eyes don’t ever land on spoiler content. For reading more, click read more. Somewhere down below this text.

SPOILER ALERT. PLEASE CLICK READ MORE AND YANNO, READ MORE ONLY IF YOU ARE SURE THAT’S WHAT YOU WANT.

YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

New Shaman changes…

I know I haven’t been talking much about coming Cataclysm changes and all, mostly because I jumped the bandwagon too late and everything worth of importance was already said in other places, but after two or three Beta builds Shamans finally got some love. And I am saying love as the changes don’t sound all that bad actually – you know I am the type that prefers Shaman to go to Cataclysm untouched rather than damaged by some eager class designer wishing to show us how they understand what this class needs.

Oh and don’t hold your breath – no Spirit Link.

Elemental goodies

Let’s see what is in the pot of Elemental goodies relevant to Restoration Shaman. Oh and no, I am not really going to say how good the changes are for Elemental There are people far more competent to do that. Actually I guess pretty much anyone is more competent for that matter than I am…

We have Hex lasting 1 minute (up from 30 seconds) – sweet change – I often felt crippled on fights like Faction Champs or Blood Queen HM when my CC was needed to save the day *cue Superman theme song* and the thirty seconds compared to the cooldown just wasn’t cutting it.

Obviously, Searing Totem  now prefers to target enemies that are afflicted by our Flame Shock or Stormstrike effects. About time I say. It actually makes it a worthy totem for us if we fancy pretending we do some direct damage contribution on those pre-enrage pushes. Guess our dps specced comrades are really happy about this change.

Last change I will mention, probably the most relevant to us is that Ancestral Knowledge (mana up) is now named Acuity and increases our critical strike chance with all spells and attacks by 1/2/3% (I think this is low value). Well, hm. At first I thought – yay, compensation for our low crit rate early on and bonus crit later. Then I started pondering whether the larger mana pool wouldn’t actually be better in the announced Cataclysm healing. I guess we will see. Right now we can only hope that all the crit dependant mana returns and the crit heals will somewhat compensate for replenishment loss.

That’s about it from Elemental, let’s go see what is in Santa’s bag for the freaks like me who throw around green leaves of good and slice through raid with golden lazorz.

Restoration changes

Okay. Here we are getting quite some interesting things that might actually spice up the talent trees a bit (and yes I thought they were boring. Solid, but boring).

Totemic Focus is now a 2-Ranks talent, down from 3-Ranks. Now also increases the duration of your totems by 20/40%. I seriously can’t see the benefits of this. Unless they make totems pop cost like 50% of your maximum mana, what’s the point here? Is there any totem duration decrease coming, or should we spec this just to make Searing, Earthbind totems last longer? On second thought – I guess some 25 Shamans might be forced into this spec for longer Mana Tide. Hm…

We even got new talent – Cleansing Waters. When our Cleanse Spirit successfully removes a harmful effect, we also heal the target for [ 1093 to 1164 ]/[ 2187 to 2330 ]. This talent sounds excellent – basically saving  a global cooldown every time we dispel and don’t have to whack another heal on the person right away. Especially if Cataclysm will be full of debuffs that hurt. Not totally sure it’s worth 2 points, I guess time will tell. It’s interesting mechanic at least.

Enhancement tree

Well this got me worried a bit in addition to other new talents. We were more or less speccing into Enhancement yet again, to pick up Weapons and Shields and try to reach the increased run speed (dropping Tuskarr’s for some sort of directly improving enchant) or investing the points in mana pool enhancement (intended) in elemental tree; now the choice is even harder. You can go pick up crit in elemental tree not leaving you enough points to pick up the new talent in enhancement tier 2 - Totemic Reach that increases the radius of your totems’ effects by 15/30%.

Again, we might not see enough fights where you’d need your Healing Stream to cover area worth of Orgrimmar, but in case this indeed is needed, it might get tricky on the points. Aaaanyways might be useful in five-man instances so you don’t have to re-drop totems all the time.

To conclude

In my opinion, these changes look interesting. They don’t add anything to be considered overpowered so we don’t have to tremble in fear we will get QQ-omg-nerfed to the ground and yet these abilities smooth some of the sharp edges this class still has in preparation for the new era.

Let’s stay positive and actually welcome it with open arms, trusting the developers they might have a clue as to what are they doing. Heh. What is your take on new spells? Especially cleansing water?

I am too old for this…

Yes I am. Current raiding scene is not for me as it seems. I just don’t understand it anymore. I still live in the (don’t know how you’d call it) mindset that when you join a raiding guild with set raiding days and times, you do it to raid. You know, because you are interested in raiding. As in the raiding, really. Not purples or whatever. But the pure fun you have with your guildies when you manage to down and encounter. As well, whenever I was joining a guild, I made myself pretty sure I can match attendance expectations before I even applied. And by match I mean not make sure I can meet the lowest expectations, but to be actually able to attend all raids (barring vacations and unexpected events / emergencies). I came to pretty much every raid I signed up for; can think of only one case when I made up excuse because I really was in no mood to raid that night, more so get shouted at for good or none reason. But I’ve always been there and always ready to raid.

Why am I writing all this? Because I think I really am too old. Attitude dinosaur, if you will. I see it in my guild – I see few of the people around me who think the same, and then many others who actually don’t care that much. Which in turn hurts and makes the game no fun for those like me. Those who actually worked their schedules around to be on time every day, prepared and ready to rock.

Disregarding the guild you are in, be it hardcore, social, raiding, roleplaying, whatever the guild is really, I am not saying you need to devote your whole life to the guild and do whatever you can just to get along with the rules. Then again, in a guild that raids three nights a week, starting a bit later than usual in order to give its members time to sort out kids and some food after work I don’t see why attendance should be a problem if raiding truly is your hobby. But instead people go skipping raids, not caring about sign ups or making up silly excuses over and over again.

By the way, and this should be stated way earlier I guess, this post is inspired, but not really related to situation my guild is in at this moment. We do have ups, we have downs as any other guild and there is summer. There is ICC that has been released what… 8 months ago and raided all over again and again. And from all the mailing and talking and forumeeering I did lately, it seems this is the usual summer-prexpac blues all over the place. But it’s still a thing I don’t really get and I will quote some friends, officers or raiders of guilds all over the scheme of things.

The stomach to actually progress

For me the thing that has held us back here for quite some time, to a much larger extent than ability: attendance, and the stomach to actually progress raid rather than farm. Consider what happened with LK…we got up to him fairly comfortably really, had what…an hour or two? on him, then went like a month before having another go due to two people quitting and attendance dropping off. Again just after we started hard modes, first few fine, once we get roflstomped by Marrowgar once or twice though suddenly noone wants to raid. And yet again just before X and Y joined, we were seeing a situation where peoples attendance was dropping off during learning Putri, leaving progress on him all over the place. This is what needs to be sorted out, as its really costing us progression. We cancel raids or have to fall back on farm content for a reset far too often, and when we dont we inevitably end up having to learn encounters all over again because half the raid from the last time decide to take the night off. Even when we have something down numerous times – Saurfang and Putri spring to mind – when we end up taking a load of off specs and poorly geared people due to shit sign ups, we are always going to struggle.

“The stomach to actually progress rather than farm” – I wonder where this comes from. You can’t quite frankly blame it on people caring only about their gear as there is better gear in heroic modes. I actually think Blizzard is the one to blame here. Their idea of reworking raiding for both the hardcore and the casual probably looked awesome on the paper. Reality check failed a bit. The current rewards for heroic raiding hardly compensate for the extra effort you have to put in (what effort really, most of the hardmodes felt like properly tuned challenging encounters at the 10-15% buff marker). The World of Warcraft community is spoiled in lazy, in my opinion. Let’s go through the Northrend raiding scheme all over again.

First raids released were Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum and Eye of Eternity. I enjoyed Naxxramas quite a bit as I haven’t raided it back in the day; Obsidian Sanctum was a bit dull till you tried any count of dragons up – that’s when it became very interesting or frustrating encounter. I loved how the 3D mechanics pushed your ability to play your class and your raid awareness to limits. I never liked Malygos, but it was new concept raid that wasn’t all that bad. Besides, we got lured by Ulduar quite early on. With Ulduar the first change came – hardmodes. People loved and hated them, yet another hardcore vs casual war started but truth be told, it was probably the best instance in this expansion. While triggering hardmodes was a bit clumsy and dependant on how your fight goes, this instance had it all. It was long, it had diversity and it concluded story and lore of many quests and your previous actions. There were fun achievments, there were painful hardmodes, all tuned exactly on the edge of fun-insane. This was, in my opinion, the peak of Wrath raiding. After Ulduar, we got Trial of the Crusader; how can they have released such a shitty raid instance after the awesome Ulduar is still beyond me. They made short, no trash, dull looking instance  that even had PvP combat included and presented that to us in the glorious “there you go, whole new raiding tier” fashion; “and it has hardmodes too”. This instance was a bit of fail, especially beasts heroic. I mean really – you kill Anub’arak on normal and then hit the brick wall that heroic beasts were. The biggest problem to Grand Crusader in my opinion were these hardmodes. They didn’t bring anything new. It just did more damage and had insanely more hitpoints. There was not so much required from you raider wise – you just had to push your buttons faster to dish out the required dps / hps, how we longed after new instance. Then, finally, ICC hit us. And it was not as good as we thought. The gating, the difficulty of some encounters was just stupid. And when the community finally got into the hardmode game, the ICC buffs came and numbed it down even more and normal modes became roflstomp content for like, anyone. Do not forget at that stage a soft gear reset happened and everyone was allowed to get raider gear.  In my books, the events after Ulduar was completed truly ruined any sense of proper raiding in Wrath. You can get everything in pug, so why bother. You can get your T10 without too much effort, just sit and wait and that’s the best there is anyways, why bother. And let’s admit it, raiding an instance for 8 months straight does not really add to the novelty and appeal of hardmodes.

Guns don’t kill people; people kill people

We can’t blame it on Blizzard. All Blizzard did was creating not so great atmosphere and community tools that actually allowed people to turn into lazy tards; so at the end of the day, the blame lies on players again. And there isn’t much you can do about it nowadays anyways. You can’t quite possibly kick all the slackers now, as you either won’t have a pool to recruit from over summer and in expectation of new expansion, or you will recruit but will be pushed way back on progression because you will have to teach the fights to new people all over again. This may of course lead to your veteran core getting pissed off over and burning out faster than you though, eventually quitting, leaving you with yet another newbies as replacements.

I presume the tool that caused this was indeed the gear. As said as it is for me to admit, unless there is huge motivator in gear, people don’t give a damn about raiding anymore. It’s not only stats though – it’s the exclusivity; remember how many paladins on your realm had full T6 before 3.0 came? Remember how many of them had Sunwell gear? I remember. We got exactly 3 retribution paladins on our server with T6 or better. I was the worst geared, but still one of them. I was damn proud flashing my golden rimmed shoulders on my dwarf of doom. The pride came from wearing something a bit more rare than the generic epix. Again, T9+T10 killed this. You see nowadays 15 paladins in just Dalaran bank and all look the same; same armor, same weapons; so not only there is no gear quality motivator anymore for most people, there is no real gear side motivator – the looks.

Bringing the fun into raiding again?

why the fuck some people in this guild seem to treat raiding and playing WoW as some kind of punishment that they try to avoid at all costs, and why does their attendance drop off so much when we actually get to something interesting?

This statement I hold as very true nowadays. And I wonder what Cataclysm will do to the current community. “Merging” 10 and 25 loot tables is a step in good direction, however will Blizzard have the balls to push on harder to make the content like, actually challenging? Or will they still go with their politics of “everyone gets to see content” like the did now? And what the hell was wrong with Burning Crusade raiding progression – “everyone gets to see content, those not so hardcore just a patch later”. From the early promises it actually looks like they might go the “hardcore” way, but I am afraid any anti-crowd decision they will want to force through will be taken back in order not to cause civil war and riots.

They already want a purple pixels to be more valuable. The are unifying 10 and 25 raiding so getting tier armor could be a bit harder. They are implementing a bit more complex guild system to make being guilded and progressing new content more important in the grand scheme of things. They seem to be on a good way, in my books at least.

Uff, what a ramble. And I didn’t really get to say what I wanted to say and I forgot was my original point was supposed to be entirely. Who cares, rite?

So, how does your guild handle the summer and pre-cata blues? Are you going strong or cancelling raids? And what you think is the cause?

PS: I am getting devastated a lot in StarCraft II; so if you face yourself with Terran (yes I play only Terran) called Rahana, say hi and play nice. Imma newbie afterall

Gear resets

Because I got some sort of summer flu two weeks back, my Cataclysm testing so far is limited to something like 7 hours total, in which I logged Rahana and spent 10 minutes flying all over Ironforge and visited Ironforge Airport. Created a Goblin Shaman and spent few minutes waiting for Rocket Jump cooldown just tossing around. Logged my Deathknight, specced her and went into Ebon Hold to whack dummies. Without any sort of dps meter. Next log on I went again with Rahana, flying all over Azeroth to visit old and new places and got great twitch to roll new character come Cataclysm to experience the old new content. I did the “CSI: Old Blanchy” quest too. Oh and I rolled a Troll Druid with the intention to level it a bit higher to see the Bear form. He’s stuck at level 4 – but Echo Isles are by far the best (as in colourful, cutest) starting zone out there. Yesterday before raid I logged for quite some time because I was tasked with finding whether Water Elementals are still immune to Frost magic.

So I logged my frost knight, and asked humbly in trade how the hell can I get to 80+ zones. Use the teleport outside Stormwind bank they said. So I did.

Whooooom. Loading screen.

Mount Hyjaal (or how do you spell that). Beautiful zone. It has everything – druids, lore important NPCs, mining nodes, Big Tree of Importance (TM), quests and Twilight occultists (not the movie, the cult).

In my thorough search for a single water elemental (they have fire, earth and wind, but no water on Mt.H.) I picked up a few quests. The usual right-click-don’t-read-accept way as I didn’t want to spoil the lore line for Cataclysm for myself. I did those quests. Two to be precise. And seeing the quest reward shocked me a bit. Here I was, looking at a piece of mail caster gear with hit and crit on it, with about 150+ intellect on shoulder piece. I blinked. Then I blinked again. I sat there, looking at the green quest thing trying to figure what the hell is wrong with that. Then I figured. Rahana’s T10 (264) shoulder armor has about 200 armor and 60 INT less (but 1 socket more). After a while I managed to display ilevel in default Blizzard UI (if anyone knows of any working Beta addons, please let me know). i272. First rewards. Oshi.

I won’t try to hide it bugged me a little (yes, past tense) – after all replacing the set gear and nice purples with very first rewards, expecting to have pretty much 10M BiS by the time Cataclysm ships felt a bit weird for me. Second zone quest rewards, first instance blues would feel more appropriate. We are geared from the final instance for god’s sake, aren’t we? Anyways, as I said, it does not bug me anymore. We talked in guild about it, I did some thinking too and yeah, the complete reset is a great thing.

Complete gear reset is the best gear reset

It actually is. It allows people to change mains easily, it allows your raid squad to evolve and get ready and confident for Cataclysm. It was actually annoying to start doing Naxxramas in Sunwell and some other T6 gear just because the heroic / blue i200 alternatives were either pain to get or not that big upgrade to be worth trying to put together group for Oculus – and trust me, that was near to impossible at Wrath launch. If you think of it, using old expansion gear sucks out half of the fun from preparing for new content. You don’t have to run dungeons for gear, just badges. You don’t get to think about new gear set-up, whether this piece is better or not during the leveling process. You just wait for first raid drops and you perform just well in the raid. That definitely is unhealthy way to sort gear progression.

In hindsight, if we take our experience with Wrath into consideration, the QQ about TBC gear reset was stupid and pointless. Now I understand if anyone is pro raider with Naxxramas on farm, they wanted their gear to represent their feats and pride for as long as possible. Let’s as well admit that the BC visuals were far from the cool visor of grim, gothic looking Naxxramas (or vanilla in general) gear. Replacing your epic sword for some crystalish stick that looks like big dildo sure does feel humiliating, disregarding the fact that it is gear improvement. Then again, I really do think so far the TBC gear reset was the best so far and we can only hope that Cataclysm reset will be the tiny bit better. Better in what? Let’s see.

• There needs to be a lot of viable gear options in the 84-85 bracket instances. Bringing back D-sets would be just awesome, decking ourselves in blue sets before we set our feet into raids and replace them with !purplz! was probably the biggest thing I missed in Wrath.
• There must be enough viable options in quest rewards that will actually force us to break our sets early. Because let’s admit it, most of the time it’s not the raw stats, but the set value that is holding us back
• Community has to start thinking in number values, not colour values regarding gear. That means important is ilevel, not shades of blue or purple. I still recall getting a proper beating for using Spark of Life when Ulduar was out. I was supposed to go and buy Egg of Mortal Essence because it was upgrade. Well, bullshit. Same ilevel, different colour and Spark was actually priceless to me due to the mp5 proc.

Preparing for new gear

The most important task with upcoming gear reset however lies on us. At least I believe so. We need to actually prepare ourselves for the early gear switch so we can move on, not being stubborn asses that insist on keeping their heroic tagged purples no matter what. If you haven’t been to Beta, I can guarantee you will be blown away by the stat increase on the gear. I don’t know what caused it, my guess at long shot would be that the removal of ratings and some other stuff actually moved a bit the budget cost of other stats so the gear really does seem imbalanced and OP at first.

Anyways, that is just my thinking about how we should look at it. Gear reset is coming and there is nothing you can do about it. My question though is – how long do you think will the T10 set bonuses outweight the raw stats? And I am not interested in numbers, more likely the feel of it. Seeing the starter gear, I expect Rahana to be in brand new green/blue gear halfway to 83 latest.

The RealID afterparty

Oh yeh, too late for the party, am I not? I am. Although I was longing for a “proper” topic to blog about for past two and something months, I had to pass up the opportunity to blog about RealID (on forums anyways) when it came out. First because I knew the blogosphere would explode over that and second because I was rather sure the thing won’t ever go live (seeing the number of negative comments it raised within first hour of being posted). So yeah, what I am going to blog about then you might as.

Well, RealID as I see it. Yes, even my QQ about the forum feature. But hey, all things in good time. Let’s start with how the RealID worked for me.

The very first moment I heard about RealID I was quite frankly pissed. Not because people would get to know my name and whatnot, but because I was not given the choice whether or not I want to take part in this whole RealID business. Yeah, I am crazy like that. The first note about RealID business rather passed around me, as only Blizzard game I play is World of Warcraft and all people I knew in there (that I want to talk to) I already have in various IMs or mail adress books to keep in touch. So I didn’t see much in that, really. When the first wave of RealID integration came out, I was disliking the idea you have to share your private information with people, although your friends, just to be able to talk to them. Then again, after an evening spent clicking in and out of game window to reply in my Trillian chat windows, I figured that I might as well just RealIDfriend those people and talk in game. We actually already knew our names so there was nothing to keep us from realIDing each other.

After the first hour I spent bitching over the RealID for lack of privacy, I already got 4 RealID friends, some of those I haven’t spoken for few months and we were happily chatting like never before. A lesson learned for me. RealID might not be so evil tool as I thought.

But then, out of nowhere, the post about RealID use on forums came. And that was strike one for Blizzard regarding Cataclysm. I was seriously considering walking away from this game if they would let it go live. Not because I was too afraid about my names going public on forums (I don’t post on them anyways, neither am I on FBI most wanted list) but because of how far was it pushing the boundaries of the mutual trust between me and Blizzard. What would be coming next? Character named after our real names with some sort of _lock or _shaman suffix?

And it goes deeper than that. I must confess – I am real Facebook hater. I mean, it would be great place to hang around, if only there were no other people. I hate how the whole service becomes invasive in the sneaky way and yes, you can get rid of all the ads, invites, announcements and whatnot, but only if you actually spend great deal of time configuring that shit so you are hundertperzent sure you don’t miss on important (interesting) info from people you actually do care about and don’t have them in friends just to feel loved by many. Here comes my next concern – busting real names out on forums or anywhere will inevitably lead to getting flooded by invites and shit on these social services, RealID will (unfortunately) sooner or later lead to Facebook integration and that my friends will be the day I quit World of Warcraft.

Why? Because I can see my Facebook wall getting spammed by World of Warcraft messages, looted this item, looted that item, picked this herb and died there. I am pretty sure I could turn those announcements off somehwere on Facebook – but I don’t want to bother with that and I do believe I should have the choice whether or not I want them to be shared with Facebook first. Which obviously, is not the way it would be with Blizzard (imma doomsayer, k?).  Now don’t get me wrong – I am not ashamed about playing World of Warcraft. Most of my friends and my family know about that and they somewhat respect that. They know I am not going out on our raid nights but I am happy to get shitfaced any other night with them. The best of those actually learned how to schedule the “get together time” around my raiding hours and they respect my hobby – kudos for that. Then again – it’s not a thing I’d be extremely proud of anyways and I don’t see the slightest reason why it should pollute my Facebook either.

But back to RealID topic. As I said or didn’t say, I was enraged about the RealID on forums change. While I appreciated the effort to make forums troll-less, I was quite sure this is wrong way to go. Yes, it could quite possibly lead to lowering the number of trolling on the forums in the short run – but the price of upset community seemed too high to pay for that.

And yes, I said short run. It wouldn’t help against trolling at all after the trolls got themselves at least small balls to actually post under their real name because you know what – you can google only this much information and if trolling is what you want to do most in your free time, you will actually prepare your mailboxes and social networking site accounts for the expected negative feedback and you are happy to troll on. Pretty much what this episode of Ctrl+Alt+Del illustrates.

Anyways, enough was said about the pros and cons of RealID all over the blogosphere and well quite frankly everyone said more or less the same things, so I won’t be repeating them again. My concerns about RealID were expressed quite clearly above I think.

What I want to say to the whole “RealID on Forums” topic and issue is that I think Blizzard absolutely failed to handle the situation they caused in any respectful manner. I heard a lot of people were banned just because they voiced their opinions against RealID in that heated discussion and some of them were people who wouldn’t say a nasty word even if you held a gun against their head. I got very much amused by the ban reasoning of one of my officers:

Well…I’m not sure quite what it was I got banned for. The thing says ‘vulgar language’, but I cant actually remember using any…I disagreed with Blizzard a few of times in the RealID thread (the sticky one), which is enough for a ban in itself these days, and at one stage I insinuated that Wryxian might be lacking somewhat in the trouser department, but that thread has been deleted it seems.

Seems they are just banning anyone and everyone that has a negative opinion about RealID.

And no, I don’t uphold that as the absolute truth and knowing him the situation although in civilized disguise was probably far from friendly banter. However the (anecdotal) reports from all over really suggest that Blizzard was swinging the banhammer left and right in order to suppress any opposition that did dare to speak up.

And after causing the biggest riots in the whole World of Warcraft history (admit it, the “3.1 retadin fix drama” or both “epics for casuals for badges only” do not come even close to this) they come up with this (quoting just first and last paragraph):

Hello everyone,

I’d like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

…

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard’s success from the beginning.

I can’t help myself, but those two paragraphs just don’t really click together all too well. For me at least. I mean, they cause shi-storm on the forums, ban everyone left and right and then grace us with the note that they decided (after internal discussions) that RealID will not be required. It will not be required. Rejoice. I just don’t know really. The whole thing could be summed up quite easily – Blizzard came with well-intended yet absolutely misjudged plan to make forums better place. A plan that was destined to fail from the very beginning given the community of World of Warcraft. They get beaten to death with feedback; an elephant dancing in porcelain store would cause less harm than their efforts to contain the situation and they are unable to come up with an apology (for the lack of better word) or just admit upfront that they meant well, but didn’t really choose the best way to do it. No. We are graced by their highness to actually discuss (what was there to discuss with such negative feedback anyways???) and then we may be happy they decided to lift it.  A really strong and bonding experience for the community, especially with other Cataclysm changes around. Feels very welcoming to participate in discussion.

TL;DR version – RealID seems like a very cool feature. Trying to hunt down trolls on forums is great idea as well, but needs different solution. And Blizzard should man up with admitting huge fuck-ups like this.

In other news, I discovered that leading a guild in Cataclysm is harder than ever before; I discovered I do love PvP in Warhammer online on my Shaman (more on that later) and that after causing troubles in PlusHeal discussion about first Shaman talent drafts I absolutely hate the shi-thing Blizzard came up for restos for Cataclysm. Too much bloated in my opinion. More on that later too.

This just in – raiding in Cataclysm

Almost late to the party! Yesterday evening the so far most nerd-raeg causing news got published. At first the whole quote was copied over, but the post got a bit lengthy so I picked out just the most important stuff, the full blue can be found here.

Cataclysm Raid Progression Refinements

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.

Well, I was expecting many things come Cataclysm, but definitely not this. And I am not sure I like it. Strange coming from a strict 10M raider who is most of the time pissed about the current 10 vs. 25 situation, isn’t it? Because at first glance, this right here looks not only like fix, but like a complete paradigm shift. The question for Cataclysm now stands, why would any raid 25 men anymore? But before I answer that one, let’s look quickly on other interesting points.

One ring to drop from all, one raid to loot them

Okay. So there we go, we will be getting the very same loot from 10 and 25 modes (and hardmodes respectively). The loot tables are supposed to be identical both to contents and item level. I must say, I love the change. The worst thing about strict 10M raiding as it is now is the lack of gear options, or better to say, the sight at 25M raiders and their options. And I am not talking about wearing less powerful gear. I am talking about the simple fact that we lack some gear options from current tier, that we lack choices (the all-xpac caster trinket shortage in 10M comes to mind). I am glad this is being adressed and that both 10 and 25 raiders will have the same options – it should as well ease the BiS discussions and logistics across the board. And they have the same ilevel, which should make raid progression smoother, as there will be only two versions of items (2 ilevels if you please) so there won’t be any more unbalanced advancement to higher tier of raiding, which I believe can only help in balancing the encounters even better, not to make them trivial. Want an example? ICC10.

There were essentially two gear groups entering ICC10 – the 25M (and hardmode) geared and those 10M strict geared. Let’s leave the mixed be for now. So, for strict 10M guild, many of the encounters were hard. Actually as hard as progress bosses should be and besides for exceptions, the difficulty remained raising with attained gear (Sindragosa / LK with i251). However, with i251 in most slots and some crafted / badge i264s most of the content is somewhere on the easy-trivial scale (talking pre-buff here). And for the hardcore 25M raiders, it was just plow through instance to get some practice ground right from the start, which only springs discussion about “lol ezmode content”. The long phased gating did not help either. Having only two ilevels dropping, you can make these transitions better. You can easily look at stats and tell what % of raiding community has ilevel A, and how many do have ilevel A+ and scale fights accordingly.

As much as this choice sounds interesting, it’s really only going half the way. So far it would mean that 25M raiders have double gearing up options which in the end again diminishes the encounters very quickly – quicker gearing up means early access to hardmodes and better gear and completing the raiding tier, hungering for new content. Such thing as well naturally makes the lower level  a “lolcontent”. Then again, if both normal and hard modes are built around the same item level and thus qualitative difficulty, it’s all fine and dandy. However, Blizzard too the one step forward and said that raids will share lockout in both sizes. What does that mean? You can raid only either 10 or 25 version of the instance per reset. Hardmodes will be done in the same way as in Icecrown Citadel. This my friends is a way to proper 10 and 25 raiding differentiation and can finally mean neither of those is frowned upon. Now it will be your choice of preffered content and you will not have that many opportunities for direct comparison. And I believe this will even out the 10 and 25 raiding numbers. However, one big question comes to mind…

Why would anyone raid 25M in Cataclysm?

For for the very same reason they do it now. For the very same reason that always springs in any 10v25 discussion. For epeen. Epeen that you managed to get more people work together, that you handled the logistics and that you managed to get 25 people online. For pure love and preference of crowded content. For the same reason stricters raid 10 now. Because we do love the format, nothing else.

Sure, there will be decline in numbers as loot centered players will obviously move to 10M guilds, getting gear even “easier” way than ever before (yes I do agree logistics around 25M are way more demanding) and there can be expected quite some decline in numbers as people will create small groups of friends to raid content together, especially if this “content difficulty likeness” will mean that the rewards from the guild leveling system will stay somehow the same between 10 and 25 guilds (so far the concern was that 25 guilds would be able to earn points at double speed for PvE content compared to stricters). But I definitely do not see that as a bad thing. More like balancing of numbers. Which is  a good thing. None of the big leet guilds (sorry guys) will disband over this to create small teams. Those guys do it for the epicness of the content and epicness of the raid size. And those things will stay.

To calm down the waters, 25M are supposed to drop more items per boss kill as well as more badges, to compensate for the logistics issues. So it’s not really that same and it still should allow you to gear up at higher speed than 10M guilds, which is only fair in my books.

New “badge” system in Cataclysm

Seems badges are getting the boot in Cataclysm and probably will go to Totem Heaven where they will rejoice with Fred and Tremor Totem. The new system is supposed to be points based, but is pretty much the same as it is now. Just points and not badges. Big deal.

Hero Points — Low-tier, easier-to-get PVE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, but no cap to how quickly you can earn them. Earned from most dungeons. (most like the current Emblem of Triumph)

Valor Points — High-tier, harder-to-get PvE points. Maximum cap to how many you can own, as well as a cap to how many you can earn per week. Earned from Dungeon Finder daily Heroic and from raids. (most like the current Emblem of Frost)

So to compare it to current situation – any kill that is below current progression tier will yield Hero points, current raid tier and daily / weekly will yield Valor points the first time you do it that day / week. The most interesting change comes with the conversion though:

When a new tier of raiding gear is released, your higher tier of points will be converted into the lower tier. For instance, if a new tier of raid gear is released, your Valor points will be converted to Hero points. Of course that means with these new releases you’ll always begin without any of the higher tier of points, and thus be unable to stockpile them.

You know what this change essentially means? That you won’t have to spend 10 minutes every time you want to buy gems just by trading badges. Hooray!!! Nothing else. Don’t whine, it’s the same system as it is now. And there is one more change to come in Cataclysm that seems very appealing to people short on time:

To explain the reasoning for the weekly cap on points for the higher tiers, this is to provide flexibility in how players choose to earn the points without feeling like they have to do all of the content as often as it is available. If your Valor income from raiding is sufficient, you may not feel the need to run Dungeon Finder every night, or perhaps even at all.

I am not sure about the cap in reality and how it plays out, but I really like the idea of not having to log on every day for daily just to not fall behind on gear progression.

What gives?

I must say I like the concept and for me it is really a good step forward. I understand 25M raiders might be and will be concerned, but I believe this is a change for good things and I am very eager to see how it is when it comes live.

Mages to get Heroism and other lame jokes…

This Sunday was lovely Sunday. I spent a lot time in bed, playing WoW and had a great lunch. I even opened the blinds to let the sunshine in. Yep, it was that great day. My cats were trying to prevent me from any work by lying down across my keyboard, mouse, hands, laptop or whatever they thought may cause me most inconvenience at the time or were sitting there meowing at me loudly to be let out.

Late at night I opened up MMO-Champion and started scanning through class changes for Cataclysm, to get at least rough idea what will others get and how can gameplay change (pretty much trying to get some vague idea of it, as most things will change). So I went quickly through Hunters, nothing new there the Mana -> Focus change was long time coming, hunters will get some pet at level 1 (seriously can the class be any more nerfed for leveling?) and they will be able to swap pet without going to town (at last!).

Next up were druids. I was quite interested in those not just because I have one, but because me and my dear druid friend talked it on Friday and he was concerned that druids might get either only dps or tank tree (see Death Knights) and it turned out that I was right. I can’t imagine how pissed all the Trees were, seeing that not only…

Unlike the other healers, Restoration druids will not be receiving any new spells. They have plenty to work with already, and our challenge instead is to make sure all of them have a well-defined niche. A druid should be able to tank-heal with stacks of Lifebloom, spot-heal a group with Nourish and Regrowth, and top off lightly wounded targets with Rejuvenation.

.. Haha! Sorry. But as well…

Tree of Life is changing from a passive talent to a cooldown-based talent, similar to Metamorphosis. Mechanically, it feels unfair for a druid to have to give up so much offense and utility in order to be just as good at healing as the other classes who are not asked to make that trade. We are exploring the exact benefit the druid gets from Tree of Life. It could strictly be better healing, or it could be that each heal behaves slightly different.

So instead of having talent  just to be on par with other healers, they will get cooldown to empower their healing? A talented cooldown? And will that cooldown put them on par with other healers (think rogue stealth) or just boost their healing for a while? Mind boggling. But fear nothing dear trees, the talent of epicness and awesomeness is coming…

Restoration druids will have a new talent called Efflorescence, which causes a bed of healing flora to sprout beneath targets that are critically healed by Regrowth.

I really hope that’s new Restoration sub-51-pointer for 5 talent points (the one you need to max out to reach juicy 51 pointer)  and that only thing it would do is sprout those flowers. 1/5 is daffodils, 5/5 is rose garden. Seriously, this would be even more hilarious (read retarded) than Life Grip. Sorry, Leap of Faith. Oh and don’t forget boomkins shitting mushrooms. Seriously, what the fuck. I understand the mechanic, but mushroom??? Come on.

But hey, amusement of the day is behind us. And then, the F-bomb landed. Still amused by the poor resto druids, picturing all possible scenarios and really looking forward to Kae’s comics tactics involving sprouting and I start reading mage changes. Mages will get Herolust* spell. Fine carryin o- waitwha’?

Time Warp: Grants a passive Haste effect much like Bloodlust or Heroism to party or raid members. It also temporarily increases the mage’s own movement speed. Time Warp will be exclusive with Bloodlust and Heroism, meaning you can’t benefit from both if you’ve got the Exhaustion debuff, though the movement-speed increase will still work even when under the effects of Exhaustion.

*cue jaw hitting floor so hard it scratched floor tiles*

WHAT

THE

FUCK

Really, Blizzard? Really? After confirming yet again that hybrids will do less damage than pures, absolutely ignoring the fact that some hybrids play only dps spec. Correct me if I am way off the mark here, but in ideal circumstances considering your players are on the same level of skill, do mages not beat elementals? And I believe that enhancement shamans are even lower with their raid utility pretty much gone since 3.3.3? The only tricks those two specs had to push for worthy raid spots was Herolust and totems. Totems that are getting obsolete and need some rework in mechanics (longer duration? Maybe. Bigger range? Definitely). And they give Herolust to the prototype of dps. If we have to share the love, please be it with another hybrid. And they will even move faster. Bitches.

As a raid leader…

I honestly appreciate the spreading of Herolust. I am unlikely to ever see the real benefit as I lead raids as a Shaman, so Herolust is present at all times, as well as having another Elemental Shaman in guild to actually cover for me. So yeah, it was needed change. But damn it, why mages? I am still concerned a bit for dps Shamans loosing their spots, in majority “bring the player not the class” works quite fine – if Cataclysm keeps that up we are fine.

Lame jokes are lame.

Especially in such dull community. On Sunday, Chayah brought a topic into SAN chat – and it was referring to WoW.com. Namely one of the latest articles they posted, about merging Warlock and Mage classes. Now, don’t get me wrong, on 1st of April I would applaud for such prank. But as a serious column on community hub that tries to act like one of the biggest and best resource sites around? That’s pretty lame. Have you noticed what mess did it cause in /2? All those people that rely on WoW.com as the only source of their information were absolutely nuts.  Sorry, but that is not what I’d expect from paid editors on such big site. Or at least not with all the well faked blue posts and such. If you don’t have anything important to write about, don’t write at all. It’s supposed to be class and class mechanics column, not a social chatter column in which content does not matter. Just my 2 cents.

Effing 1019 haste from gear!

That’s right kids, aunt Rahana got some new shinies yesterday, finally pushing herself over 1000 haste from gear.  She can hang out with the cool kids now.

[*] Yeah I am tired of typing Heroism/Bloodlust, so it’s Herolust from now on.

Shaman Q&A and preview update.

Just reposting Shaman Q&A from yesterday in order to provide all information available, as well as try and finally win the battle with formating quotes. It if ends up in same mess as the two posts before, I won’t ever quote a blue again. Damnit.

There are as well few more posts on the subject by Flow who provides overview for all specs and digs a bit deeper into the Restoration and is very excited about Deep Healing (aren’t we all?). Another post to go to is this one by The ‘mental shaman for general Shaman changes with focus on Elemental as well as another post with Q&A. And of course, the exhausting post by Charles from World of Hats who digs deeply into elemental. There is as well post by our beloved Windsoar who refuses to join the party till the information is in beta at least. And yes kids, go read Windsoar’s post so you don’t come crying when Cataclysm comes live. Windsoar does have valid concerns (as we all do).

There was as well some clarification / update to the Shaman preview, so shortly to that before we move on to Q&A:

Meditation – the amount of mana you regenerate in combat as a function of your Spirit.

I was right! Shalalala! A mastery that will keep Shamans where we should be. A endless mana healer. Nah, it won’t and probably many healing classes will get this. But still, I was right!

Also of note, you only get one set of passive talent tree bonuses: the tree in which you’ve spent the most points. Sub-speccing in another tree will not net you those bonuses in addition.

I will admit I am still unsure how this will work? I get masteries from the tree I spent most points in. So far so clear. But is there any minimal amount of points to reach Tier 3 Mastery? And if so, will spending more talents provide stronger mastery (and I mean directly per talent spent, not by spending them on Mastery enhancing talents)?

Last but not least, it’s the intention of Primal Strike to let shaman play as an Enhancement at low levels. Currently when leveling in this spec, you end up just using Lightning Bolt a lot so you feel like an Elemental shaman instead. At a higher level, Primal Strike gets replaced by Storm Strike. They share a cooldown so Enhancement just won’t ever use Primal Strike after that, in the same way that Prot warriors don’t use Sunder Armor once they have Devastate or Feral druids don’t use Claw once they get Mangle.

I said this too, remember? Bragging aside, really really great change. Nice to see Blizzard listens. A question – what are the odds of getting DW as Enhancement at level 20 in Cataclysm?

Shaman Questions and Answers

We know there are a lot of additional questions and we’ll do our best to answer what we can. Keep in mind, this is merely a preview of things to come.

Q: Will Maelstrom Weapon include Lava Burst?

A: That’s the plan currently.

Aha. Okay. Wait what? Someone please point me to reliable Enhancement bloggers. The only thing I know about Enhancement is that playing it produces about 5K dps my side and spams my screen with crits.

Oh right – you mean that Maelstrom Weapon cast time reduction will apply to LvB. Oh yeah. Nice one. I think.

Q: How can Elemental Overload proc Lava Burst when Lava Burst already hits so hard in PvP?

A: We’re going to change almost every number in Cataclysm to adjust for everything from single ranks of spells to larger health pools to new combat ratings. With much higher health pools, hopefully burst damage will go back to being a tool and not the only way to win matches.

Please see any of the awesome Elemental bloggers, I haven’t played Elemental since I dinged 80. Or few days after that shortly.

Q: What happens to the Lightning Overload talent?

A: It provides a bonus to Elemental Overload.

Elemental overload is gonna be final mastery of Elemental tree, working as Lightning Overload is but including LvB. New Lightning Overload will provide a bonus to it. I think I understand that.

Q: Elemental doesn’t want to drop Searing Totem at range. We want to drop Magma Totem.

A: Searing Totem needs to so more single-target damage than Magma. That said, if we’re happy with the ability to occasionally place totems at range there is no reason it couldn’t apply to any totem. Imagine, “After using this spell, the next totem you drop will appear at the feet of your target.”

Aha. Okay.

Q: Will Elemental have to spend talent points just to get the Spirit to hit conversion?

A: It will be bundled with another attractive talent, such as Elemental Precision.

Yo dawg, I heard you like hit so we added more hit to your hit so you can have hit. Ahem. Yeah.

Q: Will Unleash Weapon work with Frostbrand?

A: Yes. We just provided some examples.

It will spawn a Snowman companion that will throw snowballs on your opponents, lowering their movement and casting speed. Lasts 20 seconds. Or something.

Q: Is Healing Rain channeled?

A: No, it’s not a channeled spell.

Short cooldown, AoE heal and not channeled spell? Okay seriously guys, what’s the catch? That sounds too good to be true!

Q: Is Earthquake channeled?

A: Probably, but we’ll see.

Channeled AoE does make some sense, as would a non-channeled one. But yeah, guess it has closer to Blizzard (the spell) and Hurricane. Thinking of it, popping Hurricane and Earthquake on the same spot, that’s a bit too cruel, isn’t it?

Q: Will Unleashed Weapon consume your enchants?

A: No.

Thank god. I hope Blizzard learned this is wrong concept with TBC retadins.

Q: Does the 10% spell power buff from Elemental scale with the shaman or the target’s spell power?

A: It will scale with the target the same as Demonic Pact and other buffs that bring the same benefit.

Aha. I will belive that this works when I see  it live and survive at least one patch and still be working.

Q: Are you supporting two-handed weapons for Enhancement?

A: Once you start to get into the dual-wield talents, then Enhancement is a dual-wield tree.

Booh!

Q: You didn’t address Enhancement survivability or mobility or X and Y!

A: This was just a preview and is not a comprehensive list of every change. Much more will be revealed in beta and much will change during beta.

You gotta admit there wasn’t much in the preview for Enhancement, Blizzard. So cut them some slack!

Q: You didn’t answer the most important shaman question! What about Sentry Totem?

A: The Cataclysm is a time of great upheaval. Deathwing’s return to Azeroth tore a hole in the fabric of the universe that tragically resulted in the ultimate and irrevocable destruction of all Sentry Totems. Level designers are contemplating a shrine for the Sentry Totem near that of Uther the Lightbringer. We know shaman players will greet this news with grief, but as with all class changes we’ll have to get into beta before anything is final.

This is too much. Stop fucking with us. First you take my Fred from me. Now Sentry totem. How can you remove Sentry totem? What’s the point? We need the totem. It has been here all along! The best possible thing for making kill screenshots, granting raid spots to all Shamans around the world. Please, don’t. Take my Healing Stream Totem, my left eye or Heroism (Bloodlust for Hordies). Take it all! Just don’t take away my Sentry Totem!

Okay, that’s pretty much it for the moment folks, so far so good. For restoration anyways. Let’s hope it will indeed be as awesome as it looks!

Cataclysm and me. And you. Us.

Cataclysm Shaman changes are out, at least the first batch. Enjoy the read, sit back and sip your tea. It’s definitely not final but it’s interesting enough to speculate!

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we’ll be making lots of changes and additions to class talents and abilities across the board. In this preview, you’ll get an early look at some of the changes in store for the shaman class, including a rundown of some of the new spells, abilities, and talents, and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with the different talent specs.

New Shaman Spells

Primal Strike (available at level 3): Primal Strike is a new weapon-based attack that every shaman will learn very early in the game. Our goal with this ability is to make leveling as Enhancement rather than as Elemental more viable, since many key Enhancement talents become available at fairly high levels.

Healing Wave (level 4): While the shaman already has an ability called Healing Wave, we’re adding another spell to the class’s direct-healing arsenal and giving it a familiar name. The current Healing Wave will be renamed Greater Healing Wave, and the intent is for the ‘new” Healing Wave to be the shaman’s go-to heal. Lesser Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave will be used on a more situational basis.

Unleash Weapon (level 81): Unleashes the power of your weapon enchants for additional effects (see below). A dual-wielding Enhancement shaman will activate the effects of both of their weapon enchants. Instant cast. 30-yard range. 15-second cooldown. Undispellable.

Here are a few examples of effects we’re considering for this ability:

• Windfury Weapon – Hurls a spectral version of your weapon at a target, dealing 50% weapon damage and increasing the shaman’s Haste for the next five swings.
• Flametongue Weapon – Deals instant Fire damage and buffs the shaman’s next Fire attack by 20%.
• Earthliving Weapon – Heals the target slightly and buffs the shaman’s next healing spell by 20%.

Healing Rain (level 83): An area-effect heal-over-time (HoT) spell that calls down rain in a selected area, healing all players within it. There is no limit to the number of players who can potentially be affected; however, there are diminishing returns when healing a large number of targets, much like the diminishing returns associated with AoE damage spells. This should give Restoration shaman another healing tool that improves their group-healing and heal-over-time capabilities. 2-second cast time. 30-yard range. 10-second duration. 10-second cooldown.

Spiritwalker’s Grace (level 85): When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks. This will give shaman of all three specs another way to heal or do damage when it’s necessary to move in both PvE and PvP. Instant cast. 10-second duration. 2-minute cooldown.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to adding new spells, we’re planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you’re familiar with. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we intend for each spec.

• Restoration shaman and other healing classes will need to pay attention to mana more than they’ve had to during Wrath of the Lich King. Spirit will be the Restoration shaman’s primary mana-regeneration stat.
• We’re making changes to which classes and specs are able to dispel magic, diseases, curses, and poison, largely for PvP purposes. Shaman will have Cleanse Spirit as a baseline ability, but it will only remove curses. Restoration shaman will have a talent that will improve Cleanse Spirit so that it also removes magic. Shaman will no longer be able to remove poison.
• Cleansing Totem will be removed from the game, as we want dispels to be a decision for players, not something done mindlessly. To that end, all dispels will cost slightly more mana, and you will waste the spell if you cast it when there is nothing to remove. (Currently, the dispel is only cast when there is something to remove, which encourages spamming ‘just in case.”) We will balance PvE dispelling with this new model in mind.
• Totem of Wrath now will replace Flametongue Totem for all shaman, and dropping this totem will buff the group’s spell power by 4%. Elemental shaman will have a talent that lets all Fire totems provide +10% spell power, allowing them to drop Searing, Magma, or Fire Elemental Totems without losing their spell-damage buff. The 4% and 10% buffs will be exclusive with each other and with the warlock’s Demonic Pact, so you can’t benefit from all of them at once. We’re also considering letting Elemental drop Searing Totem at range.
• We want to free up Enhancement global cooldowns to make the spec more dynamic to play. We’re considering, for example, increasing the cooldown of Lava Lash so shaman have time to work other interesting abilities into their rotation.

New Talents and Talent Changes

• Elemental Reach will be simplified so shaman have a more consistent spell range.
• We plan to add Earthquake as a deep Elemental talent for targeted and persistent AoE.
• Spirit Link will likely be worked back into deep Restoration in some form. The idea is that you will be able to link targets together so they share damage. When we had previously tried to implement Spirit Link, it was hard to balance and a little confusing. However, we really liked the concept — and so did players — so we are trying to bring it back.
• Elemental will have a deep talent that allows Spirit (which will appear on the gear they share with Restoration shaman) to boost their Hit rating.
• Ancestral Knowledge will boost mana pool size, not Intellect.
• Enhancing Totems will be replaced with Focused Strikes, which will improve the damage of the new spell Primal Strike and Stormstrike.
• With the Mastery system, we’re also considering removing a number of talents that grant passive bonuses, such as Mental Quickness, Improved Windfury Totem, Mental Dexterity, Call of Thunder, Tidal Mastery, Purification, Nature’s Blessing, and others, to allow players more freedom to choose more interesting talents.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Restoration

• Healing
• Meditation
• Deep Healing

Deep Healing: Your direct heals will do more healing when the target’s health is lower. This will scale to damage (e.g. someone at 29% health would receive more healing than someone at 30%) rather than have arbitrary break points.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.

General changes

Primal strike is awesome. Seriously, after two expansions someone finally noticed that leveling as “melee” spec of our class is pretty much autoattack, earthshocking and the odd lighting bolt here and there. Great way to finally make enhancement a more fun spec. It’s only one button to push, but it’s great button. Especially if it’s strike as it will give you something to add to ES cooldown on finishing a mob before it runs to the hills and pulls the rest of his very deadly level 20 naga / bristleback / gnoll / skeleton buddies.

Fire totem changes – we are all getting a totem that scales with gear. Yay go us! Let’s hope it will increase it by % of the target’s spellpower, not % of the casters. Then we are pretty much in the same situation as retadins were at the start of Wrath of the Lich King when we retadins in big raids had to compare our attack power values and take major buffs with highest uptime into consideration when deciding who will do Judgement of Light. Great point for Elemental shamans in providing 10% spell power on any fire totem – I know how much our elemental shammy whines not being able to pop any other totem just to secure group buff. In Cataclysm, he will be!

Enhancement shaman global cooldown cleanup. Don’t you say. That is totally welcome change, especially if you won’t be punished by not sticking countless spells in the created gaps and it will give you more time to actually lead the raid.

*random daily full of retards took place here. Swearing and a little note to Crushridge players will be place at the bottom

Healing related changes

Okay, we get once again the meme about dispel mechanics changes and that healing itself will change in Cataclysm. Healing change is definitely something we are all as healers looking for, dispel mechanics change is no world breaker, especially if they will make magic the only (mainly) used spell mechanic of Cataclysm boss fights.

Healing Wave (the new one) – a healing spell we are supposed to go to? So are they removing Chain Heal or something? Okay, seriously though, spell I go to nowadays is overhasted LHW. I guess with the new healing changes and healthpool shifts, this new Healing Wave will supply the % healing of current LHW, whereas LHW will be just short snipe heal to streamline and top raid in leisure time.

Unleash Weapon - another short time boost cooldown. So far it looks to me like what Riptide with 2T10 does now, well sort of. Once in 15 seconds we are able to waster our global cooldown for heal of unknown amount (my guess is that the direct portion will be equivalent to what Riptide can do on direct heal in T10 content). Fancy stuff that will most likely be worked into our rotations in order to make it more interesting!

Healing Rain – Ahem. Short cooldown for rather awesome spell. Wonder where the catch is. Presuming it will cost not load, but truckload of mana. Something like your mana bar plus all your mana you took into the fight on the cart you drag behind you. Or it will heal for some ridiculously amount. Or both. But sure, tranquility looks cool enough to pop such spell just for sheer fun.

Spiritwalker’s Grace – Oh my god yes! Yes yes yes! We got a mobility healing. Cooldown only, a longer cooldown only spell, but definitely a huuuuge improvement. I’d kill for having that on Firefighter progress when last phase just got wildly out of hands. This is something I am looking forward to really really much and I think we will soon get spoiled by this spell to the point when we will demand it to move out of cooldown, out of global cooldown and to cost no mana. You katanow, a reasonable demands.

Spirit Link - the very old timer and classic shaman healing spell is having a come back. Not sure what form and how useful it will be in the end, but it’s definitely something that brings the “shaman” back to shamaning. Or something. I gotta admit I never played with Spirit Link, Rahana is quite fresh and new Shaman when it comes to that, but I’ve heard the tales. I would love to see it and try it out.

Ancestral Knowledge - not increasing Intellect but mana pool size is quite logical and the only possible change that could come with the rework of stats for Cataclysm. So it’s no big surprise. Or is it? Is it? No, it isn’t. Muhai.

Talent masteries

So, the three masteries were revealed and we can look at those:

• Healing
• Meditation
• Deep Healing

Healing: A passive increase of healing. This will pretty much be the base mastery of all healing classes and specs in my opinion, nothing to see here, move along.

Meditation: Hm. Strange name. I guess it will have something to do with mana returns or interrupt prevention, what do you think?

Deep Healing: Our direct healing will do more healing to targets low on health, which is kinda nice. Will make us for great tank healers pulling off saves when targets are on low health. As well, imagine the outburst of Chain Heal on low health targets. For example, you know you’d love this on Stinky. However, it would have to be imba boosting to healing as final tier of masteries.

Well kids, that’s it at first glance. Wonder how many of these things will get a total revamp for Cataclysm, what will get boosted and nerfed and what will end up. So, how do you like these changes? Excited? Bored? Pissed off?

Random dungeon shout outs!

Seriously, I don’t know what is up with EU-Crushridge realm and I am sorry to any people who are actualy normal and play there, but every single moron I met in PUG on my Deathknight came from Crushridge. Tanks dropping group mid  first pull with “lolnoob”, healers absolutely not capable of anything, one or two of the fail hunters, all from there. And well, fuck the fact they were failing their play. But they were acting like absolute and total jackasses. Seriously, I am scared anytime I see a Crushridger in my group now. Once again sorry to those who play there and know what they are doing, or are at least polite and intelligent beings.

Second shout out goes to Löládin from Dunemaul who tanked Old Kingdom for me. It was the very first tank that cleared full instance, not even thinking about skipping anything. So kudos, it’s rare thing to see in PUG!

Cataclysm dispel mechanics, being carried and guest posters?

Hello there. In case you live in a cave or under a rock somewhere, there has been quite some blue activity over the easter weekend. We got announcement about some Cataclysm shaman revelations (tomorrow) – don’t be too excited though, there are three specs to be covered in that release, so I don’t think we will get anything more than “we were thinking” and “we might implement” but whatever! It’s shaman news for god’s sake! Rejoice!

Cataclysm change of dispels

Second news that popped up was about change of dispel mechanics in Cataclysm. And yes, we are getting huge overhaul there and although it brings one good thing, as a whole it’s shit. Yes. My OCD hates it. Hate hate hate. With passion. Anyways, here’s the blue:

We wanted to introduce some of the changes to dispel mechanics coming in Cataclysm. Our goals were to make dispelling a little less trivial to do in PvP, and to make sure there is more equity in dispel capabilities among healers in both PvP and PvE.

Within the system, there are currently five types of dispellable (or curable) buffs and debuffs: curse, disease, poison, defensive magic, and offensive magic. An example of defensive magic dispelling would be using a dispel to free a polymorphed ally, while offensive magic dispelling would be utilizing a dispel ability to strip away an enemy’s buff or heal-over-time (HoT) spell. The main distinction between these two types is in whether or not you can target an enemy with your dispel.

In Cataclysm each healing class will be getting three out of the five types of dispels, with one of these always being a defensive dispel magic. This design makes sure that finding a healer with the ability to remove magic isn’t restrictive in building teams for Arenas or rated Battlegrounds. It also allows the encounter designers to assume, when designing dungeon or raid fights, that every group can dispel magic.

In addition, we’re making the opportunity cost (what the player could have accomplished with different actions) for dispelling a bit steeper. We think the cost is too low for three reasons: 1) The actual mana cost is low. 2) You never waste a dispel. If you try to dispel a debuff that isn’t there then the dispel just won’t go off. 3) We have spells that remove debuffs with minimal input on the part of the player. In Cataclysm we are raising the mana costs, making it possible to waste mana by casting a dispel when there is nothing to dispel, and removing Cleansing Totem, Abolish Disease, and Abolish Poison from the game. With these changes in mind, we are working to plan dungeon and raid encounters where dispels aren’t in constant demand or spammed in order to be successful, though some need for dispels will still be a part of the design.

As previously mentioned, we are providing three dispel capabilities to all healing classes as follows:

• Druids will be able to dispel defensive magic, curses, and poison.
• Paladins will be able to dispel defensive magic, diseases, and poison.
• Priests will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and disease.
• Shaman will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and curses.

There is some trade-off that is being made in making these changes and we wanted to expand on this further.

• Protection and Retribution paladins will lose their current ability to dispel magic.
• All shaman will lose dispel disease and dispel poison in exchange for Restoration gaining dispel magic.
• Restoration shaman, Restoration druids, and Holy paladins will need to talent into their defensive magic dispels.
• Shadow priests won’t be able to remove disease in Shadowform.
• Mage, hunter, and warlock will retain their current dispel mechanics.
• Body and Soul remains the same, and basically any dispel mechanic not mentioned above is currently planned to remain as it is.
• When possible, we’d like to combine dispels into a single action. For example, the druid ability to dispel curses and poisons might be a single spell with a Restoration talent that also allows it to dispel magic. This part of the design isn’t finalized, however.

As with all of our Cataclysm previews, keep in mind that any of these decisions could change when we’re in beta.

Okay, where to start. Right… dispelling magic as a Shaman. Sure, why not. Loosing a poison and disease dispel as a trade off? That’s not a trade off, that’s rip off. Please stay the fuck away from my class. I mean, come on. We can stop playing World of Warcraft and start playing “Be a Triangle in Random Enviroment”. It’s World of Warcraft we are playing in. You know,  lore, history and all that jazz. How the hell can possibly a Shaman, entity close to elements be dispelling magic? Poison and disease as a nature-based class, sure. Remove curse as a healer? Well, fine. But magic? As a trade off for poison and disease? No. Just no. Not to mention most dps offspecs get shafted by all healers getting dispel magic.
Gimme all the “It also allows the encounter designers to assume, when designing dungeon or raid fights, that every group can dispel magic.” crap you want Blizzard, but this change is nothing but yet another PvP “balancing” fucked up nonsense that will, yet again, hurt PvE enjoyment and diversity of the classes. Everyone needs a magic dispel in arena for Cataclysm, every team has to have healer, so everyone is happy, amirite? No. There are still players who don’t step into arena ever and people who do it because they got really bored of sticking their fingers in their nostrils while doing fuck all standing in Dalaran.

And for the record, I am not even that much enraged about loosing the dispel capabilities but the obvious reasons it’s made for and that it really kills some aspect of PvE. So now what? There will be no poison / disease / curse debuffs in boss fights in order to ensure there are no comp restrictions? Bullshit.

But let’s not smacktalk – I like the point they are making about dispel mechanics and mana cost. It’s another small thing to distinguish good and bad healers by giving them one more thing to care about. So sure bring that change in, looking forward to it. It will definitely make it way more interesting. Too bad Cleansing Totem will get the boot for this change. I really love that bugger. I call him Fred and everytime I go to sleep I lock him in a closet in Exodar so no one steals him. R.I.P. Fred. In the light of this blue post, I am getting a bit scared about what will they come up tomorrow. Fred gone, dispel magic, spirit on gear…

*shivers*

Rahana’s PUG karma is BoA!

Before we move on any further I have this shout out to make. My Deathknight hit 80 over the weekend and is running wild through heroics to get her first piece of T9, her RP background and nature is getting a shape too and since there is no raiding planned on her, she is working her way to Explorer while waiting for heroic groups. Sorry, I derailed myself. Back on to the shout out:

People, don’t be bad.

And I bloody mean it. I met four hunters in heroics yesterday. Three of them were somewhere on the scale between bad and pathetic. 600ish, 870ish and 1250ish dps does not cut it in heroic. Especially if the tank is moron that can’t use TC and tanks through taunt and the best dps clocks at 2000-2200ish. Why do you even enter heroics with such play? Gear won’t help you! Go learn your class a bit. I don’t really want you to do more than 2000ish dps overall, but if you can’t, go do normals or quest or whatever.

On opposite note – being carried and knowing it feels lame. Even if the people carrying you are cool about it and cheer you up. I got into DTK heroic with these three folks from the same guild – a bear, a retadin and a fury warrior. I didn’t inspect the bear, in fact I didn’t inspect anyone, but from first glance those people were packed in 251+ items. Despite the Bear’s efforts to pull the instance at once, I got troubles to get anything else out than Icy Touch and Plague Strike. I didn’t even get to Pestilence because the mob was dead by then.  I was feeling this -><- small and halfway through the instance I offered to stop dps, strip down and break out pom-poms. I was feeling terrible. I managed to do 2.4K dps overal  a number I’d be fucking proud of in my average pugs but I got the awful feeling of fail compared to others. Kudos to those cheery folks who carried my ass through there, your not-bitching and sportsmanship should be long time remembered.

And I managed to get a helmet with metagem and activate it. Long live blacksmithing!

Guest posters?

And a little something I was thinking about for some time now – I hear it a lot around and often in SAN chat that people want to start blogging, just not being all sure about it and you name it. We were all there, some of us just jumped the deep waters and started swimming but I am as well sure the blogosphere is missing out on some awesome posts from people who give up at the sight of doing all the prep work before you even know you’ll get any readers or anything.

For that very reason, I am offering a guest post spots to those who would like to try it out. To go public and see what people say about it. I am no Tamarind or Larísa to get you thousands of views, but there is stable base of readers (love you all) and it’s a good place to start.

There are no rules – it does not have to be about Shamans or raiding, the only condition is that it probably should be something I’d post, not interfering with the general feel of the blog. If this blog has anything like that.

Feel free to send me your posts, drafts or just ideas to work out with me either at my profile mail, or for those who have troubles clicking through my username, you can e-mail me directly at probebu [at] gmail.com