OK, Seriously now, the “even as disc” Post

I got you good last time, didn’t I?

Thought I would actually finish up my long-winded manifesto about disc healing, didn’t you?

Ha!

Anyway, we were talking about Deathwing fucking up the world when last we met.

Along with the birth of goblins and worgen, we were witness to the death of the bubble.

Now don’t get me wrong, PW: Shield is still a VERY valid tool in a disc priest’s (or any priest, for that matter) arsenal of defensive tools. I die a little inside when I’m healing alongside another priest and the only bubbles in the raid are my own. It is always better to keep the damage from happening than to play catch-up while scrubbing the gore out of your target’s armor. Unless it’s a paladin tank and he’s low on mana, But that’s an exception so we’re ignoring him.

For reals, the “even as disc” Post

So yeah, we just might finally get around to finishing this up. Maybe.

Anyway… I’ve recapped what healing was like in Wrath, glanced at some of the new abilities available to priests in Cata, and looked at the monumental increase in the mana cost of providing even the most basic of support utilities: dispels and buffs. I’ll not kill you all with the math, but rest assured that the heals, especially AoE heals, suffered a similar inflation.

But truly, the most important part of healing is the mindset.

Healing is a beast unto itself, just like tanking and DPS require different schools of thought.

In the days of yore, disc healing had its ups and downs.

Take Two, the “even as disc” Post

The problem with not blogging in a while is there’s so much to say that it just wants to all come bubbling forth at once. I’m not sure how many are willing to sit through multiple thousand-word posts, so I’m trying to limit my exuberance to more manageable sizes.

Last time I talked about how disc healing, and healing in general, was in Wrath.

By the end of the expansion, it wasn’t too difficult at all.

And then Deathwing fucked up the world.

The “even as disc” Post

So I mentioned the other day, something about something being cake to heal, even as disc.

And I promised an explanation to be forthcoming in a future post.

And the peanut gallery proceeded to all but place bets on when the next post would be.

Har-har-har, guys.

So here’s a rose-tinted view of what healing was like in Wrath:

Easy.

Oh, I know, if I went back and read all my posts about learning how to heal it paints a far more frantic and bloody picture.

But truthfully, I bring a lot of that upon myself.

I’m not dead yet!

Although I am sick as a dog again.

Went to the midnight release of Cataclysm with Tir to keep him company in line.

My beautiful Collector’s Edition was to be shipped to me sometime on the 7th.

(After threatening to not ship until the 9th, Amazon finally moved my date to the 7th.)

I think the late night in the cold did me no favors.

But I met some great people and the Horde outnumbered the Alliance by about the whole line to 3 willing to admit they played Alliance.

My other roommate also happened to order a collector’s edition from Amazon.

It’s a Small World

No, this isn’t a post about some Kevin Bacon-esque finding of someone a million miles away through WoW or anything like that.

However, I must say: mmmmmmmmm…….. bacon.

Anyway.

So I rolled my blood elf warrior and have been leveling him with Tir’s holy cow.

I started in the blood elf starting area (duh) and completed all the quests in the “cradle” without any BoA gear.

I think I was 5 or 6 when I was told I was ready to move on to Falconwing Square.

Which I promptly ran through, stopping long enough to pick up the flight point (WTF?!?) and eating at the bountiful tables.

555555

That number, shit you not, was given to me by my authenticator.

What does it mean?

It means that I finally got a chance to log in and play some WoW!

Work is still kicking my ass and I’m at least a month behind on all the blogs that I read.

But, I did get a chance to sample some of the new things that came in with the Sundering. Or Shattering. Or whatever the hell it was called.

…

So what have I been able to squeeze in to my limited play time?

The good. The bad. The WTF.

Some random thoughts on new and exciting or new and horrifying issues since patch 4.0.1. I’ll dive a little deeper in to the class-specific goodies and freak outs when I’m brave enough to actually test them out.

New character animations shown on the character selection screen.

This is kind of spiffy, but not in a “wow, that’s spiffy!” way. Just sort of “meh, that’s spiffy.”

My blood elf DK does the roar animation with what might be the blood presence graphic and then he goes in to what appears to be an unarmed combat stance – while holding Shadow’s Edge. Awkward.

Arioch appears to be casting fireball at this stage. Not sure if this is the default because he’s not specced yet or will always perform this animation.

Good?

Tabards displayed on character selection screen. And in game. Even if no tabard equipped.

This time, it’s going to be different

With patch 4.0.whatever dropping we are that much closer to saying goodbye to the world of Azeroth as we know it.

A lot of people are getting nostalgic in light of the upcoming Cataclysm (cwatididthar?) and I’m really no different.

I may not have memories of late nights in MC with drunken tanks or original Kara or the opening of AQ or anything like that, but I have been playing for a while now. Just before IQD opened up, if anyone has those dates memorized. I could look it up but I believe I’ve mentioned before that I’m lazy. Besides, this gives someone an opportunity to show off how much of a geek they really are by rattling that date off.

My first year was spent bumbling around Alliance-side. I was an embarrassment to warriors everywhere, I’m certain of it. I think I broke 100 DPS around the time I was hitting my 40s.

Then came the decision to reroll Horde and run a dedicated guild with some friends and family.

Suddenly, my outlook on the game changed.

More Guild Perks

OK, last post I looked at the first 15 perks, now we’ll peek at the proposed last 10.

Perks 16 through 20:

Guild Mail – Instant transmission of crap through the mail between guildies. Woot! Mail without attachments has long seemed to be relatively fast and painless but this is a definite improvement. Sometimes it’s a little time consuming to get raid flasks from point A to B or materials for gear crafting – not everyone can be as cool as a mage. Of course, with the cooldown on the hearth to 15 minutes, this isn’t *quite* as cool as it could have been. Why couldn’t this be something that lets me mass-mail the guild with one click?