I’ve spent that last couple months running 10 mans with some close friends.  That’s been an amazing experience.  However, an itch was never satisfied while doing that.  So I left and joined a 25 man guild under my old guild leader, when running Naxx at the beginning of Wrath.  I LOVE it.

I’m a shadow priest now, I’ve moved on from disc pvp.  Which means I’m apart of the face melting crew around the globe.  Its a different level of focus and concentration.  Thank you to Shadowpriest.com for making this transition really awesome.  Elitist Jerks gets an honorable mention as well.

It comes as no surprise then that with the introduction of heirloom items that indeed, they are items.  Blizzard never disappoints!  They scale and allow for a low level character that can’t find a regular instance group to gather necessary equipment.  Since the leveling speed has been increased, the lower level areas are almost completely devoid of life.  It’s nothing like it was 4 years ago.  I would suggest anyone that began WoW post Vanilla, IE BC or Wrath to try an mmo they find interesting when it launches.  I wonder if the denizens of Shattrath or even Hillsbrad ever get lonely?  Remember those times when you spent countless hours at those locations?  I certainly do.  Those two locations were densely populated for roughly 2 real world years!  I bet they do and they’ll never show it!

While reminiscing, it came as a surprise that I came home one day to find my baby playing on her shiny white mac.  While macs reflect the sun, the screen reflected the World of Warcraft world.  “O Rly?” I asked.  “Ya srsly!” She replied.  And so I sprinted to my PC, logged into my main, purchased a bazillion heriloom items, 3, weapon, shoulders, bow and created a hunter.

After numerous gaming sessions I’m realizing that my reward for the above isn’t one available through Blizzard.  While they may be involved by the sole purpose of providing the arena, they aren’t reponsible for the adventure my baby and I are experiencing.  Blizzard isn’t sitting next to my baby and training her on MMO terminology and game mechanics.  Mmos are renown for not training players.  Even I remember the first time I learned about “aggro”, “tanking” and DPS.  Another useful lesson that came way to late; leveling a cleric in EQ meant that I should try to find a group and not solo!

Back to my baby!

They don’t even get to watch her freak out every time she has to kill a spider.  While cute, on occasion a jump, “WHAT THE FUCK!”  Followed by “EWWWYW EWWYWY EWYEWYY EWYEYWE”  And then “GROOOSSSSS!”

No, my reward from leveling with my baby are different.  They can’t be summed up with any heirloom item transferable amonst X characters on my server.  They can’t be displayed in a title over my head.  They can’t even help me level.  No my rewards are memories and bonding.  Now that’s leveling with my baby!

Bring on the fun times!

As a social experiment I’m going to twitter during my raid time.  With that in mind, starting at 8:45 EST PM Tuesday and Wednesday I, Green Text on Black will twitt.  Why might you ask am I twittering?  Excellent question!  I was inspired by Tony’s blog post about twittering on Zappo’s website.  I figured why not!  WoW has a great community and live posting seems an interesting social experiment.

Disclaimers:

1. I play a Disicpline Priest
2. I don’t really know how to use twitter
3. Follow me here or @GrnTxtOnBlk
4. I am well geared.
5. I will not be sharing my guild name
6. I will not be sharing my characters name
7. With a little work, you can already find all that information

Here’s looking at you twitt!

WE ONE SHOT KT!  WOOT!

Every raider in my estimation has moments of pride.  Moments where the late night, wiping, new specs, new gear bear fruit, not of the forsaken kind but of a succulent “Hey I earned that” flavor.  Fully Clearing Naxx, is one of those moments for me.  On top of that, we ran with 5 healers instead of the usual 7.

Hats off to my guild!  What a glorious evening we shared!

I wouldn’t have minded had we had Naxx on farm.  I wouldn’t have minded had the upgrade been a side-grade for the cloth rollers.  I wouldn’t have minded had there been a small discussion of the events in question or the loot distribution that normally occurs when a class rolls on lower armor tier loot.  The fact remains that we don’t have Naxx on farm.  The upgrade was not a side-grade for the cloth involved.  And there was no discussion.  The druid won and within a couple seconds the loot was given.

So who was the culprit?  A druid rolled on a piece of cloth gear.  In fact a very good piece of cloth gear for many of our raiders.  Not the best by far, but at least in the top 10 for most classes involved.  On said piece of loot, Boots of Forlorn Wishes , every cloth wearer in the raid rolled on it, save our three geared priest, myself inclus.  And a druid won it.  A fucking boomkin no less.

There was an immediate morale drop.  Many on both vent and in raid as we called bullshit.  I was peeved.  I can’t explain why I feel cheated.  I’m more upset that the cloth wearers lagging in the dps meters didn’t get the upgrade.  I’m more upset that the raid overall didn’t get an upgrade.  I’m really upset that the raid didn’t discuss it.

How have you handled this in the past?  How often do you let Paladins roll on mail/leather/cloth upgrades?  How about shaman?  Is it appropriate for the druids, shamen and paladins to roll on lower tier armor classes before said class?  What do you think?

For titles and reference sake, I like the term prayer when naming new priest mechanics.  Hold on!  Prayers exist currently in the priest healing paradigm.  That’s right!  Prayer of Healing was our first prayer which healed every member in the group for a relatively large amount.  Not, correct me if I’m wrong, Prayer of Healing was a newer mechanic to what is now known as Vanilla Wow.

Fast forward to BC, with the introduction of Prayer of Mending.  Awesome spell.  It acts as a buff,  Upon the target taking damage, the buff will jump to a closer target and reduce its counter by 1.  This was and is still an amazing spell.

What could we possibly add to the mix?  How about:

1. Prayer of Confidence – Increase all healing done by your spells to the target by x%
2. Prayers of Protection – The target avoids 2% of all damage taken and your healing is reduced by 50%. Target must be healed by the healer every 4 seconds or the prayer is lost.  Stacks up to 4 times.
3. Prayer of Efficiency – Restore 0.25% maximum mana upon receiving a heal from the priest.  This buff stacks on the caster up to 4 times.
4. Divine Aegis would become Prayer of Divine Aegis with the same effect, talented in the discipline tree.
5. Surge of Light would become prayer of surge of light, a self buff placed on the priest.

Small steps and ultimately, probably very far from the actual implementation.  I’m looking forward to a little more proactive responsibility on the part of the priest and the player.  Time will tell what Blizzard thinks.

As I’ve stated before, priests are all about utility.  Not utility like levitate on any raid member, although its sweet.  Utility in that we have a variety of spells to accomplish almost every task.  For instance, last night our priest healers experimented with holy nova, prayer of healing, coh rotation, every possible combination we could think of.  In the end, a shaman held the top spot for raid healing with 2 priest not far behind.  Not much has changed.

Loatheb was a lot of fun, although granted that encounter isn’t bound by a cool down.  Priest healing didn’t really suffer on Maxxeanenawheahhowever you spell it.  We cleared OS, Vault, plague and spider wings.  Tomorrow my reactions with the full clear, and if I’m lucky, I’ll be going disc!

Second, I hit 80 on my priest.

Third, I’ve raided as both discipline (very enjoyable) and holy (powerful but boring).

Fourth, I got my Valorous Shoulders.  They’re hawt!

There are several topics that I’d like to discuss.  1 I’ll actually discuss, 1 I’ll mention and 1 that deserves its own post.  The topic deserving its own post is a discussion on existing and possible future priest healing mechanics.  As a note, I REALLY like the way discipline plays and I would like to see some major mechanical breakdown of the CoH tree… oops, I meant holy tree.

I’m going to mention the addition of the 6 second CoH cooldown and discuss briefly my feelings on it.  I feel if a player rolled a priest to mash 1 button 50% of the time then they should have rolled either a paladin or shaman for healing.  The largest distinguisher between the priest class and other healing classes is the sheer volume of tools available to you.

• Flash heal, quick cast
• Greater heal, long cast
• Power word: Shield, instant
• Power word: Fort, buff
• Shadow Protection, buff
• Renew, instant
• Prayer of Healing, long cast, multiple targets
• Prayer of Mending, instant, multiple targets
• Hymn, mana regen, channeled
• Fear Ward, instant buff
• and the list continues

As a brief list, all untalented, we can accomplish and heal through every possible scenario the developers at blizzard decide to throw at us.  We may not be the best at each scenario, but we bring enough utility that it doesn’t matter.

I happen to be one of the silent many that welcome the 6 second cooldown to CoH.  I really look forward to the introduction of the necessary smart choices that make a raider what they are.  I look forward to making stupid DPS accountable for standing in the fire, moving while flame wreathed and/or standing in AoE.  I look forward to bringing back smart pulls where the tank manages LoS to the raid, healers hide behind corners and hunters are more than just moving turrets that can’t kyte.  Lemme tell you, when a hunter can’t kyte effectively during the Gluth encounter, my blood boils.  Leave that player, you can find a similar class.

I’m looking forward to the good old days of raiding, where every player had to be aware of what was going on and still complete their task.  Players that don’t just look at grid, or xperl, or whatever and access every situation for the better of the raid.  Greater heal takes roughly 2.25 seconds fully hasted and talented, that’s 2.25 seconds where you’re eyes can meander around the screen, looking for the next target or danger will robinson! Flash heal provides one second, believe me, your brain can make a decision in that time, just watch out for scratches from spiders, apparently, that’s a desease we cannot abolish.

I’ve really been enjoying the slow trek.  The quest hubs are in small digestible chunks, roughly about 30 minutes to complete an area and move on.  The lore is interesting, although I care nothing for the tuskarr, they happen to be a means to an end.

What I am enjoying is the new equipment, instancing and class balance.  I’m spec’d holy with 11 points to shadow for mind flay and 2 points into meditation from disc.  It rocks!  This is the first time since Warhammer Online that I’ve been able to effectively level as a healing class.  And man is it awesome!

Instancing is by far the creme de la creme in WotLK.  The encounters are well done and will prep the majority of players for 10 mans.  Following that, I hope the 10 mans train the player to accomplish the 25 mans.  Hopefully, we’ll see raiding be a larger part of the average players play schedule than last expansion.  If raiding becomes the norm instead of 5 mans, many studies in social dynamics of gaming will likely need to be updated.

So far, I’m almost 73!  I’ve run Utgarde Keep thrice, AZ twice and nexus more times than I can count.  Nexus is by far the most epic of the three with AZ being the most fun.  The keep has the better loot, I just find it uninteresting.  Instancing is where its at!