As promised, here’s a look at the new Light of Dawn animation from build 12803.
Personally, I’m not really a fan. What do you think?
New Light of Dawn Animation (Build 12803)
//Category: cataclysm
//Build 12803 Notes and Bugs
//Well, Word of Glory doesn’t work properly for Holy paladins, but works fine for Retribution and Protection pallies. Eternal Glory has not been nerfed to 20% as far as I can tell, because I got four Word of Glory heals in a row before losing my three-stack of Holy Power as ret.
There’s a new animation for Light of Dawn, which I’ll take a proper movie of tomorrow. The sound is the same, the healing is the same (lacklustre). Holy Radiance is exactly the same as Healing Hands in terms of sound, animation and healing done.
But the most hilarious thing about this build is that Crusader Aura is totally bugged out.
I’m still chuckling.
Cataclysm Beta Build 12803
//MMO-Champion is reporting some class changes in this new build. I’m sure I’ll have more stuff to say later on, but the basics:
1) Healing Hands renamed to Holy Radiance. I approve. This is very descriptive of the spell. Also, the less confusion with all the Hand spells the better. I still don’t understand why our single-target taunt is called Hand of Reckoning…
2) Illumination has moved in our tree. It’s now Tier 5, instead of 3, and only requires two points to get 30% of our mana back on a critical spell. I’m okay with this; this is less bloaty. It was one thing to pay 5 talent points for 100% mana return or even 60% mana return, but 5 points for 30% mana return was lame. I believe it’s switching places with Denounce, which grants you an instant, free Exorcism whenever you get a crit on a Holy spell. (To which I say, “feh.”)
3) One of the fun reasons for speccing into ret has been nerfed. Eternal Glory previously gave you a 20/40% chance to not lose Holy Power when using Word of Glory. It’s now a 10/20% (assuming it’s still two talent points – MMO-Champion just says 20%) chance. I think that dropping this from nearly half the time to a fifth of the time is sort of making this a blah talent. Of course, we’ll still want it, because saving Holy Power means another free heal through WoG or another boost to Light of Dawn, but it will happen even more unpredictably, which will mean one of two things.
a) We’ll ignore it almost entirely and actually make use of the proc only occasionally. Sort of like today’s Infusion of Light procs. I sometimes force a crit Holy Shock to get me that instant Flash of Light, but most of the time, when Infusion of Light goes off, I don’t even notice and just continue to heal. I’m not sure I like this, because while it’s nice on occasion, I like to talent for things that I can sort of use and rely on.
b) If mana conservation is as huge a deal as the devs are making it out to be, we’re going to be glued to our buff bar/Power Auras/in-game Power Auras to watch for those procs and do our very best to use them smartly. I’m not sure I like this idea. Prioritizing Word of Glory may not always be the best case, even if we have the proc go off, giving us another WoG heal. Perhaps we’ll then choose that time to cast Light of Dawn, but… I don’t know. I’ll have to play with it.
That’s about it with regards to holy changes thus far. I’ll try to get a couple videos up this weekend. Assuming things on the beta aren’t broken. ;)
Cataclysm Beta Build 12759, Holy Pally Style!
//Hoo boy, this build, which changes up ret a bunch, throws a kink into my pretty little holy spec! Who would have thought it?
Talents/Spells:
– Conviction is gone, so no more bonus 3/6/9% damage/healing when you get a crit
– Improved Judgements is now in Tier 1 of ret and THAT is the one that gives you 15/30 extra yards on your judgement range
– Eternal Glory gives you a 20%/40% chance to not consume Holy Power when you use Word of Glory
– Enlightened Judgements heals YOU for some miniscule amount (1k/2k) whenever you judge
– Clarity of Purpose is now .5 seconds of Holy Light and Divine Light cast times (well, .2, .4 and then .5 instead of .1/.2/.3)
– Light of Dawn now gains extra healing by consuming Holy Power, although it’s still usable without any HP stacks
– Blessed Life might now be worth something since it gives you a 50%/100% chance to generate holy power when you’re attacked (2s internal cooldown)
– Divine Favor, as I mentioned, gives you 20% extra spell haste/spell crit for 20 seconds on a 3m cooldown. I’m okay with this.
– Divine Light is a 3 second cast instead of 2.5 seconds. Holy Light remains at 3 seconds.
– Healing Hands got a bump. Instead of about 750 or so on someone, my Healing Hands is healing others for 1054 a tick and healing me for 1117 a tick.
What this means is that we don’t want Enlightened Judgements anymore, we MIGHT want Blessed Life and forget about speccing into prot for support, basically ever, because ret is just way, way, way too good right now for us.
There’s no updated talent calculator right now, but basically, my current spec on beta is exactly as it was last build, with a couple of exceptions:
1) I dropped Enlightened Judgements.
2) I dropped in one point in Last Word in order to get 30 points in Holy, so I could get Light of Dawn. (Last Word: Gives your Word of Glory a 30% increased critical chance when used on targets with 35% or less health.)
3) I picked up 2/2 Improved Judgements in ret (for my 30y range on judgements)
4) I kept Crusade (3/3) to get to ret’s second tier and to give my Holy Shock 30% extra healing
5) I picked up 2/2 Eternal Glory so that I would have that 40% chance to not consume my Holy Power when using Word of Glory
6) I grabbed 1/3 Rule of Law to up my crit chance of Holy Shock and Word of Glory by 5%. I should be able to fill this out at the level cap.
In retrospect, I probably should have grabbed Blessed Life 1/2 at least. Not that it’s terribly difficult to generate Holy Power, but now that Light of Dawn consumes it, that’s a bit of a difference. Also, I want to see if it’s AOE as well or if it’s actually someone coming up to you and smacking you that will proc Blessed Life.
Plate Specialization
So I trained Plate Spec. I am now wearing Silver Spur Boots (1791 armor, 196 stamina, 131 intellect, 94 spirit, 77 haste) instead of Earthsoul Boots and my 264 Emblem of Frost gloves instead of my heroic Unclean Surgical Gloves. Instead of 43.5k mana (with kings) I now have 44.9k or something close to that due to the plate specialization. Strangely, I don’t lose too much in terms of anything else (haste percentage, etc), so hey, why not.
Mastery
I wish the shield would last a little longer, but most of them are small enough that they’ll be gone in a hit anyways. But it’s neat, because you can see EXACTLY how big your shield is by hovering over the buff. Also, with only 41 extra mastery (from my cloak), my shields are 11.9% of the heal cast instead of 8%. (I expect this to drop as I gain levels from 83 to 85, when they open up the level cap again.) The shields are overwritten each time you cast a new one, by the way, even if the new one is less powerful, I think. They do not stack.
Instances
You now need to find the instance entrances in order to do them. Blackrock Caverns is easy and, for me, The Stonecore was easy since it’s right there in Deepholm, which I’ve already been to, but Madrana hasn’t touched Vashj’ir, so I think I’ll leave Throne of the Tides alone for the time being until they let me level beyond 83.
Guild Stuff
Internal Guild Errors if I try screwing with the ranks. Strange GMOTD spam continues. My guild should definitely be Level 2 by now, but we’re stuck at Level 1, and that’s if it even recognizes that we’re Level 1.
Bug Report is Bugged
The Bug Report tool now pops up when you hit the newly-returned button on the minimap, but you can’t really do anything with it.
Training
I was able to train from my class trainer on my shaman (shammy trainers now in the Dwarven District in Stormwind!) without dropping a profession, YAY!
Other notes
Nourish still isn’t refreshing Lifebloom as per Empowered Touch, Shammies now have a water totem that acts like Concentration Aura. And taking the Stormwind portal from Deepholm will cause you to fall through the world beneath Stormwind Lake. FYI.
Update from the North 1
//Of course I go out of town and they drop a new beta build. Awesome. I’m on 24Kbps dialup, so I simply cannot share breaking news with you right now. This makes me sad.
However, MMO-Champion has a great round-up AND has this awesome image of the new Holy Power interface for paladins which is, in my opinion, FREAKING BADASS. :)
Also, Kody from World of Raids/the Curse network says on Twitter that Divine Favor has been redesigned to provide 20% haste AND 20% crit for 20 seconds, with a three-minute cooldown.
I’m not sure I like that our forced crit button is gone, but I can’t really complain about the talent that they’ve come up with. Then again, I’m a haste fanatic, soooo…
Also, MMO is saying that Armor and Mastery specialties are in. Basically, our days of wanting to wear mail, leather or cloth are essentially over:
Increases your Intellect by 5% while wearing only Plate armor.
And our mastery:
Technically, these were both in the game in previous builds, but these are apparently going to work, this time. ;)
Anyways, that’s all from the cottage for now. I’ll check in again later.
(Dammit, I really want to play with Holy Power now!)
Throne of the Tides Video
//So this is what I did on my Tuesday night. I logged on to beta. Found someone who was LFG for a random dungeon. Grouped with them. Queued for a random. Got Throne of the Tides. And made a video.
I also have a written guide to Throne of the Tides!
Kurn's Contemplations on Tuesday
//Hello, lovely people. It is Tuesday once again and, once again, I have had a ridiculously low number of search terms I haven’t covered, so, once again, the Q&A post will be put off. Can’t wait for people’s Internet use to go up again…
Anyways, I thought I’d update the ol’ blog with some, well, updates.
Beta:
You may have noticed I haven’t talked much about Beta in the last few days, not since I hit 83 and got Healing Hands.
Why haven’t I been talking about the Beta? Well, I’m kind of stuck.
Madrana’s 83, which is the level cap, so I don’t want to quest on her, since I’m not gaining any more experience. I would love to do instances like crazy, but the Random Dungeon Finder isn’t working unless you’re already in a group, apparently.
So I could go quest on Kurn, right? I’m only level 81 and 3/4. But the thing is, Kurn’s stuck on a bugged quest in Vashj’ir (Still Precious, if you’re curious — no naga currently drop the pearls!). I’d rather not skip the content in this sub-zone and move on, because I’m enjoying the feeling of completing the subzones and continuing this storyline. Again, can’t really do instances… I could go do Hyjal on Kurn, but I figure I’ll be doing Hyjal and Vashj’ir enough times on live when Cataclysm drops, so I’m just sort of waiting for Blizzard to fix a few things in a new build.
God, I hope they drop a new build soon. Like, today. Tomorrow. Yesterday…
Leadership:
I went to a private, all-girls’ school for eleven years, from Grade 1 through to Grade 11 (which is our last year of high school in Quebec). Somewhere along the way, somehow, I obtained these things called “leadership skills”. I was never, ever a leader back in school. I shied away from positions of authority, I never liked being the one people looked to for decisions or depended upon to make decisions.
But in every circumstance since my high school days, I have found myself gravitating to leadership positions whenever it’s clear that whoever is currently leading is not doing it well.
And you know, I’m not terribly bad at being a leader. I’m good at allocating resources, scheduling things, thinking inside the box and then outside when it’s required… Sadly, I’m one of the better leaders I’ve encountered out here in the real world. It kind of sucks, because I really don’t like being a leader.
What I prefer is to be led by a competent leader.
If the leader is not competent or if I am not being led appropriately (not being used to my full extent, not being given clear instructions, etc) then that’s when my leadership skills step in and want to usurp the leader’s position and just DO IT BETTER.
Why am I talking about this? Because it’s basically describing my leadership experiences in WoW.
How did I get to be a raid leader/officer back in my old, old guild? I asked questions, I educated myself and then I educated others on why, precisely, they wanted to do Zul’Gurub and Molten Core.
How did I get to be an officer/raid leader/healing lead back in Apotheosis? It’s because I took initiative to help form the guild, it’s because I knew Karazhan and I researched my ass off for Gruul and Mag and everything else. I had learned to allocate healing from my short stint in another guild and applied it to Apotheosis and that basically meant that I was just doing healing, period. And I was okay with that, because there just wasn’t anyone else I trusted at the start to do healing, except for our awesome priest officer, who was, unfortunately, MIA more often than not.
How did I get to be healing officer in my Bronzebeard guild? The healing lead (and GM) stepped down from raiding/playing altogether for a long while and I was the noisiest healer of the bunch, so they were like “HEY YOU! Here! Do healing!”. I wasn’t being led properly, so I became the leader.
How did I get to do healing for a period of like, 3 months through Sindragosa (reg), LK (reg) and 8/12 ICC25 HMs? My friend had basically deputized me before she took time off, but I still had to earn my “position” in that I was CONSTANTLY talking to the raid leader about healing and such. Why did I do it if it made me miserable? Because no one else was going to be able to do it, barring the RL, and having been a RL and healing lead at the same time, I basically don’t wish that upon anyone.
So it’s nice to be in a guild now where the leaders work hard. I might not always get a precise healing assignment, but I know I’m on the tanks. My healing lead listens to my feedback (and the feedback of others, I would imagine) and sometimes strats and assignments are tweaked. Sometimes they’re not. But at least I have an idea that he’s listening.
My GM is awesome, as you guys already know. I don’t envy her the position, nor the work and time and energy she puts into the guild. I’m sort of dreading being in that position with Apotheosis in a few months. I think I’ve learned a lot about the workings of guilds in the last year and a half, though. I always go into a guild with the attitude that I will be there forever (or at least until the end of the expansion) and, barring seriously bad conditions (continuously cancelled raids, abusive environment, etc), I WILL be there. While I’m in any guild, though, I find that I’m soaking up all the little things to do or not to do if (when) I find myself back in the position of GM.
Raiding:
Re-learning some of these fights with a new guild isn’t easy. My current guild is struggling on Putricide and I don’t really know why. I got caught by the Gas Cloud last night on one attempt and I was like “WHAT THE HELL?” because I NEVER get caught by that thing. I realized that it hadn’t been slowed. Sure, I wasn’t in an ideal position for the possibility of being targetted by it, but, by golly, I had a head start on the sucker!
So I mention to my GM that I’d been caught because it wasn’t slowed. She countered that I didn’t move fast enough/was in a bad place.
Of course, I looked up the logs.
[22:22:53.499] Gas Cloud’s Regurgitated Ooze fades
[19:22:55.251] Gas Cloud Gaseous Bloat Madrana 17373
[19:22:56.582] Gas Cloud hits Madrana Absorb (574)
Okay, so it only took it two seconds to catch up to me, but I was right; it wasn’t being slowed. My GM later mentioned that she was aware of the slowing issues but honestly thought I was right next to the Gas Cloud and that’s why I was hit. I maintain I’d have been able to get away since I was the second target and the thing should have been almost dead, but anyways. The point is that — the Gas Cloud was not being slowed.
Why?
The Abomination has a lack of energy.
Why?
Druids aren’t keeping Rejuv up for Revitalize procs, disc priest isn’t keeping PW:S up for Rapture procs.
But on the bright side, we’re doing less dying to Plague?
I don’t know, it was a tough reset, I guess. It feels like there are too many little mistakes being made by too many people, which includes me. I’ve eaten some Malleable Goo, I got hit by the Gas Cloud, I’ve died to Unbound Plague because I didn’t pass it off when I should have.
I’m learning that heroic Putricide is actually a lot harder than it was when I first learned it. It was an easy fight to learn for my last guild, but, for whatever reason, it’s a lot more challenging for this guild. I’m okay with that, and getting to P3 and getting him to 7% or thereabouts this reset was great. I just want that momentum to continue.
Anyways, that’s about all for my deep thoughts right now. Hopefully we’ll get something going on the Beta soon so I can post more.
And who knows, maybe a new Holy How-To soon, eh? It’s been over a month since my last one!
Raiding and End of Expansion Malaise
//It always happens. As the end of an expansion draws near, people’s interests change radically. They might suddenly realize that the loot they’ve been working so hard for will be worthless at the new level cap. They might realize that all the aggravation of raiding isn’t worth it because the new content is on its way.
Your most dedicated and hardcore raiders might finally just burn out and say screw it and move along to a more casual activity, like random battlegrounds. Or they may choose to be more dedicated to something like competitive arenas rather than raiding.
People get sloppy, focus is easily lost in raids and there’s a lot of finger-pointing going around as people feel the pressure to get things done before the new expansion launches.
Raiding is a team activity. It takes some luck and a lot of work by the guild leaders to help keep that focus going.
I’ve suffered through the end of pre-BC and BC WoW. Both times, my guilds were, shall we say, screwed.
It was due to End of Expansion Malaise that my first real guild didn’t get Onyxia down and never even attempted Majordomo. Everyone was playing similar amounts to what they’d been playing previously, but they were spending it in the battlegrounds, grinding honor to get those epics, perhaps not realizing how quickly they would be replaced in Outlands.
Apotheosis just barely weathered the End of Expansion Malaise at the end of Burning Crusade. We were 4/5 in Mount Hyjal and 5/9 in Black Temple when 3.0 dropped and the nerf bat hit the remaining bosses. If this hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have cleared both instances. We had lost some valuable raiders who were frustrated with our progression and that we even managed to get Bloodboil and Gorefiend on farm before the nerf is kind of a miracle in and of itself.
We suffered through some cancelled raids and some short-handed raids and some really bad raid comps, but, by golly, we killed Archimonde (and probably would have done so even without the nerf!) and we killed Reliquary, Mother, Council and Illidan.
We had all of three attempts on Kalecgos though, because halfway through trash to him, one of our warrior tanks just gave up. He was asked to tank something and, well, he wasn’t. So our paladin tank (who was also an officer) taunts the thing and is now tanking two things and then the warrior tank wakes up and taunts it back, even when there’s something else that’s not being tanked.
After asking on vent and in the tank channel and raid chat, the pally tank loses it.
“[tank name] PLZ STOP NOT TANKING SHIT” goes out over the raid warning.
Personally, I laughed my ass off.
The warrior went offline.
Five minutes later, he comes back… on his shadow priest. And declares that he is done with people riding his coattails.
Alone, that’s just laughable. He was arguably our weakest tank.
But what pissed me off about it is that he just quit in the middle of a raid. Four days until the expansion launched, while we were tooling around in Sunwell Plateau, he just quits.
I have no respect for people who quit.
If someone signs up for a guild that I’m running, they are signing up for the rest of the expansion, as far as I’m concerned. If you have legitimate RL issues, okay, that’s understandable. But the fact remains that if you quit, you let the team down.
Why am I talking about this now?
I find myself experiencing End of Expansion Malaise. Not on my raiding character — I’m still looking forward to raids with my “new” guild (eight or so weeks in, are they still my “new” guild?). But I’ve neglected the hell out of Kurn and my other alts. Part of it is the Beta — it’s like I can just fast-forward ahead three months or however long it’s going to be and just experience the new game content, glitchy though it may be. I’m getting to see what my hunter is capable of right now — and, currently geared, I have yet to replace anything at almost level 82. (Although I would definitely replace a trinket with a trinket out of Blackrock Caverns.) What this means to me is that I’ve gotten to the point in current content where I will be able to power through early expansion quests without trouble, at least on the hunter, which is really the only character I really care about, apart from the paladin.
I honestly don’t care about daily heroics and Emblems of Frost. I don’t care about Primordial Saronites and crafted gear, clearing content, getting achievements… All of that interest and desire is pretty much gone.
I do, however, want to make a crapton of gold before Cataclysm hits. I’d like to have around 50-60k gold on my hunter’s server (which has all my other toons on it save the pally) and 20k gold on my pally’s server, so that I can transfer everyone over with the max amount of gold (or close to it) and be able to start over again on Eldre’Thalas with a healthy amount of gold.
We’ll see if that happens, though. With my increased apathy towards current game content on my hunter, I don’t know if I’ll find the energy to actually make gold over the next couple of months, particularly since my brother and Majik enjoy bankrupting me on a near-weekly basis. ;)
However, I am dedicated to finishing this expansion with my current guild on my paladin. I will be there for the raids. I will stick it out through thick and thin. It’s what I expect of everyone else and I hold myself to the same standards.
I’m still not convinced that Blizzard has mastered the transition from old-to-new expansion yet. But I know that even if they’re unable to keep people interested in playing, that I will continue to play out of duty and obligation, if not out of fun. Because I’m part of a team. And I understand how important it is to not let the rest of the team down.
(But I’m still having fun, too.)
83 and Healing Hands
//So I hit 83 last night after questing my ass off in Deepholm (screenshots of all that to come).
Just a quick note on Healing Hands as it currently stands on beta:
– 10 second duration, 30 second cooldown (with 3/3 Speed of Light)
-4 second 30% movement speed buff (with 3/3 Speed of Light)
– Heals people for ~764/tick as long as they’re within 10 yards of you (with about 3600ish spellpower and 3/3 Divinity). Unsure if this can crit, although I assume so. Edit: Yes, it can crit.
– Heals you for about 810/tick (with 3/3 Divinity – since you are receiving 6% more healing through the talent). This can definitely crit.
– Edit: It looks like this gives eleven ticks, not ten.
– Will not maintain the heal on someone if you move away from them. You cannot, for example, stand in melee, hit this and then run back out to range with the heal continuing to heal melee. It will hit whoever is surrounding you at the present time.
I’ll have a video demonstrating this later today, but my initial thoughts are “Uh… Okay?” I keep thinking this would have been amazing using the stupid door strat on 25-man heroic Twin Valks… But I haven’t had an opportunity to heal with it yet on beta, because the stupid random dungeon finder tool is broken. Alas.
Also, you don’t get experience beyond 83, so you can’t work towards 84 and just be capped at the end of 83. I don’t expect I’ll do a lot on Madrana (apart from instances) until they raise the level cap.
Anyways, that pesky “real life” thing beckons. I’ll finish up (and post) that video later. :)
Edit: Here’s the video!
The Trek to 83
//While I’ve played my paladin significantly more than my hunter while on beta, I am not quite yet 83. I have done the entirety of Hyjal (Kurn is exploring Vashj’ir and is stuck on a quest where the mobs don’t actually drop the quest items), I have successfully healed Throne of the Tides and The Stonecore and 3 of the bosses in Blackrock Caverns.
I have also quested my ass off and gotten a ton of ret gear. Naturally, I heal in instances and quest as DPS, although I’m hoping that by the time live comes around, I can more often heal through randoms with friends than quest on the paladin. I really don’t like melee DPS.
Anyways, things are buggy on the beta. Not that I wasn’t expecting that, but for whatever reason, Art of War is bugged, so I can’t grab it. I miss my instant exorcisms. :(
Having said that, Hyjal is a great zone. I really, really enjoyed it. The Firelord, which people say is bugged (but I got it done), was an awesome quest and brought back memories for me.
The Maelstrom zone, Deepholm, reminds me of Netherstorm, only not as purpley pink. No, more of an icy blue-grey, really. And I like it a lot, so far.
If only the bug report tool weren’t bugged…! I know I can post on the forums, but I figure they know various mobs are bugged since they have code in their names. (PH for Placeholder, task ID for cleanup work and stuff.) Some of the graphical bugs are hilarious. For example:
That white sort of square-ish thing? That’s attached to the mob, with the mob at the center. And it’s intersecting with the ground around it. The mob also doesn’t actually animate at all besides gliding here and there, moving that whole white platform around with it.
It’s clear that there’s a lot of work to do on a lot of zones and I think I would be shocked if Cataclysm came out before November or late October at the earliest. Apart from all the “little” bugs, like not being able to train if you have two professions, or bears being stuck in bear form if they got copied over while in bear form, there’s still a lot of work to be done on the content itself. Then there’s all the talent/class issues that are, of course, at the core of the game.
I’m about 7 bars away from 83 and Healing Hands. The Dungeon Finder tool hasn’t worked since the latest build was implemented late Wednesday.
Back to Deepholm questing I go, I guess. :)