IM SSSSOOOOO SSOOOORRRRRYYYY!!!!

Yes I am sorry. I started this blog what seems like an eternity ago...

I have had a lot of RL issues to deal with in the last few months, my dad passed away very suddenly, my contract at work ran out so there has been a lot of job hunting, Xmas holidays, new year festivities, starcraft 2 :P ..... there was this other thing ... what was it .... Oh that's right


CATACLYSM!!!!!!

Most probably don't care and I know I don't really have all that many people reading my blog but for those of you who care here's the updates:

1. LK HC went down a few times prior to Catas release. Our two 25man raid teams were having issues getting 25 each every night so we finally decided to combine the teams to put an end to LK once and for all. (Was fun raiding with the "other guys").

2. Officers decided that a new expansion meant it was time for Contingency to be reborn. (Contingency was a short term back up plan for our GM and a few officers once their old guild Horizon disbanded). As a result all those wanting to raid left the guild ....

3. We all joined the newly created guild Ad Elysium.

4. We no longer have 2x 25man raid teams ... that was just crazy ...

5. We now have 1x 10man - 7day raid team, 2x 10man - 5day teams, and 1x 25man - 3day team. There is something for everyone. The 7day team were smashing content and were in the world top 50 until one of their main healers went all EMO over loot and gquit - this put a bump into their progression but after a few team transfers and some hard work they are back to progressing.


SO THIS IS CATACLYSM HUH?

Well Cata was released. I don't know how everyone else found the release but other than the 45mins of frustration I endured trying to log in once it went live as I sat of guild comms hearing people swearing at the log in servers then cheering as they were given access, it was very smooth.

Ofc there was the crowding of the starter zones the respawn rates were nice and high which meant that there wasn't too many issues. I have to say straight away i was awe struck. The quests and story lines were very interesting and gripping. The only "downside" if you will was the rather linear quest lines which Cata introduced. Now I have heard a few people complain about this - you only get 2qs you do them then get another 2 etc caused some confusion to people who moved on missing the phase shift and skipping qs. While this isn't really Blizzards normal method of questing - IE there were no big HUBs where you could pick up 6+ qs go do them come back and hand them in. The gd thing about the new method - which I have told many many people - is it means Blizzard can tell the story. There are a lot of people who have no idea about the lore surrounding Deathwing and TBH this felt like / was the sequel to War3. WoTLK basically wrapped up all the Jazz that went on in War3 and with Cata they had to put in a story.


MY TOONS!!! AND HEALING

Well ATM I have Panzee (still Disc/Holy) and Tanglewood (Resto) at 85 and the gearing is going well. In a future post I will go over my opinion of the dungeons and the player base. Before Cata was released I had several chats with different healers in my guild regarding their concerns surrounding the healing game for Cata. Hell for a little while there I was worried ... just a little though.

The worrying was useless the changes they have made to the game has made healing much more fun and complex than it was in Wrath. There are decisions which have to be made and it also makes raid composition much more of a balancing act - you need the healers to survive the encounter, but at the same time you need the DPS to kill the bosses. Similarly, all the classes have differences to their respective classes but at the same time they all have the same tool box: 1 big heal(medium mana long cast), 1 small heal (low mana long cast), 1 fast heal (high mana quick cast) with AoE sprinkled throughout. This is a very general statement I know but its true. Sure there have been post about various classes and there are slight advantages to some classes over others for roles, but in general they are all balanced and a lot of it comes down to player skill, and the ability of healers to adapt to the new style of healing.


TEAM PANZEE ASSEMBLE!!! WARNING CONTAINS RANT!!!

Well as you can see from above out guild has went through several changes recently and we currently have 4 raid teams progressing through content. Pre cata there was a little drama and uncertainty amongst the guild. We have the Officers from the old 5 day team decide they wanted to go for server 1st's and world Top 50 as a result there were several members from that team who were left in limbo :( similarly there were 9 players from the 3 day team who also wanted 10man content and before long Slanesh's team was composed. At this time our GM Nos came to me and basically said "there are people who want to raid 5 days I only want to raid 3 days can you try and put a team together." What could I say? I was used to raid leading and the concept of 10man raiding appealed to me more than 25man so before long I had a team up and running.

We had a gd set 10 people with 3-4 other people interested who I could easily fit in and rotate people since there will inevitably be occasions where some people cant make it and the others will still want to raid. At this point Slanesh came to me and tried to get me to join his team sicne he was going to be short 1 healer. I told him that I was going to have to stick with the 5 day team since they needed someone to lead them but so long as people leveled at different speeds there was no issue that if my team leveled slower that I would probably be able to raid with his team for the 1st week or two until such a time as the rest of the team caught up. Sounds like a good idea huh?

So the players leveled and it ended up my 5 day team was much faster in leveling and come the Wednesday we were only 2 people short for raid. As a result we got Slan and his teams healer in and we went in 1st night was a bit of a disaster but so many people didnt have a clue or the gear, gems, enchants etc which was needed to do things properly. The following raid was much smoother we went in down went Def System and Magmaw - wow everyone was happy. Unfortunately, due to Xmas holidays and what not we didn't raid 5 days but 2/12 bosses down was good and had everyone in high spirits. The following reset rolled round and once again Slan didn't have the people he needed to again we brought him in and bish bash bosh down went 2/12 again.

Now here comes the drama. The following Wednesday I log in we have 11 people signed up for the raid 11 of my own team so the team was finally together. I log on comms at about 2pm and after a little while in the channel I hear Slan and one of his teams healers chatting and then I hear.

Slanesh - "Yes we might have a new Tank "
Allathiel - "Oh who?"
Slanesh - "Oh I don't want to say there are people in this channel I don't want knowing about it"

Now the night before this I should preface this by saying that as we ended the raid on the Tuesday I said ok GJ people show tomorrow looking at sign ups we will have enough people. To which Slan said I doubt you will have enough (at this stage i thought he was just a little pissed because his team who were meant to level fast still weren't ready).

19:30 rolls around and I through out invs 10 people accept and then I get /w from my main tank and my teams top DPS saying "Eh thnx for the raids but I have decided to go raid with Slan" I was pissed off and so annoyed that Slan a fellow officer who I had raided with for over a year didn't have the decency to warn me at any point that this was happening. At the point I wasn't alone in this feeling and approx 5 other people from the team who were RL friends decided that a guild where that sort of stuff happened and people treated one another like that wasn't where they wanted to be and they decided there and then to transfer server. So my team to 10 had went to a team of 3 :(

This wasn't the only issue as a result o this deception and lack of respect for other teams, officers, and people (in general) rubbed several people / officers the wrong way. Mick (god love him) was furious and too this day Slan still doesn't see what he did wrong and doesn't understand why people were / are upset. Anyway, for a few days this really annoyed me then I decided to get back to work and reform the team. The upside of this whole drama was that I was in a different team from Slan and I now didn't have to have anything to do with him. Sure we have the same guild tag and we we are both officers but other than that we don't need to interact with one another. And other than a very very weak apology which wasn't even really an apology which I got from him 4 days after the incident we ha vent spoke, but again there is no reason for us to speak.

Anyway, after a little recruitment drive we are finally back to 10 people over the Holiday season we managed to raid together as a team 2 - 3 times (for 2hish at a time) killing 3 bosses in BWD, which was nice and let the team know that while we we rent raiding 5 days a week we were capable of downing bosses which meant that things looked promising come official raids. Come last week we started official raiding and after 4 days of raiding we had 9/12 dead leaving only Nefarion, Alikir, and Chogall alive. The following night we spent time progressing on Chogall and after a few tweaks and a few 15% ish tries we had to call the raid but the progress was definitely there.

This week Wed rolls around and we have 2 tentatives and 3 people sign as accepted and not show. Needless to say we didn't have enough people to raid :( so we did BH that night and went on to Thursday. After a little struggle on Maloriak (didn't know why we were struggling) we cleared 5/6 in BWD. The new team is strong and I hope everyone in it is having as much fun raiding with one another as I am having raiding with them :)

Sorry for the ranting and the long post. But as I said its been a while and I had a few thigns to get off my chest. In the next few days / weeks I am hoping to discuss priest specs, healing spells, gear, the new HCs, PuGs, Raiding, and hopefully more alt discussion.

I hope everyone had a great Xmas and New Year and All the Best for 2011.


Panzee

(I promise I will be back - no more big breaks - forgot how much i enjoyed putting my thoughts, ideas, and feelings on the interent.)

The Gearing of Alts

Well quick update Contingency's 5 day team finally got Prof P. down last night so now only LK awaits. Well im not saying that clearing Prof P. and Sindragossa each week will be easy but hopefully they wont have too much of an issue and they can progress on LK for a bit and drop him.

Ok so the 3day team is also doing well. We have managed to blaze through the HMs so far with relative ease. We still have to master Lady Deathwhisper but hopefully she will go down either this week or next week. The fight isnt that difficult but it requires awareness and as my fellow raiders will no doubt be aware too many people suffer from tunnel vision. This last week we progressed a few tries on Lady DW but fearing we wouldnt be able to clear the rest within our 3 days we moved on. Needless to say we were wrong we blazed through everything else including managing our thursday night where I was MT healing on my Disc Priest due to the lack of Holy Paladins availible for the raid.

We finally managed to get Blood Queen down very easily and also managed to have a few tries on Prof HC. I have to say this is now my fav fight. In Naxx I never had a fav boss, in Ulduar it was Mimiron HM hands down and for the majority of this expansion it has been my favourite. It required skill, awareness, and a solid understanding of mechanics to conquer. Once we went through ICC I liked Prof P but wasnt overly impressed then LK came and while the majority of the guild hated it because they couldnt face roll over it like they had so many encounters before, I LOVED IT!!! Now I LOVE Prof P. HC - the guild is having difficulties co-ordinating different mechanics but we will get it ;) I really cant wait to hit LK HC from what I have seen and heard it will also be very challenging.

BRING IT ON!!!!

Bring on the ALTS

With so many people storming through ICC and with only a handful of guilds on my server actually interested in ICC HC this is opening up the opportunities for us to gear up our alts. Tanglewood - my resto druid is now 3/5 - Sanc T10 and almost full 265 in all other places. Hell my druid is just as well geared as my Priest now ... well my main Priest ;)

Panzeemktwo finally hit 80 on Saturday afternoon and since then I have been running him through HCs to gear him and got him all the crafted gear I could muster in order to hit the ground running. Needless to say he is coming along quite nicely, before long I will be in ICC with him gearing him up in the same fashion as my druid and priest.

AVR / AVRE

Ok there seems to have been quite a bit of drama and discussion about this recently. AVR and AVRE are interesting tools and while I agree they shouldnt really be part of the game they do provide a helpful tool. Before we started using AVR we simply talked through the tactics and showed people where to stand when. AVR simply makes the situation a little easier because you have pretty pictures and shapes to make things easier for the simple raiders ;).

I view AVR as a whiteboard. Its just like in sports when the team get together before the big game or half time they draw on the board to show people where they are supposed to be and when etc etc. I view AVR in a similar light, unfortunately as with most programs availible which allow people to express themself creatively tend to result in - spam, penis pictures and totally inappropriate images, so I applaud Blizzard for taking this step and making it so my screen doesnt look like a kids colouring book during raids.

The most people who seem to be speaking out against the removal of this tool seem to be focusing on Blizzard's reasoning rather than using their own minds. As my fellow Offcier Mick would say "Addons? That's cheating". I have to agree though Blizzard's arguement wasn't all that good, had they reasoned their decision a little better they would have avoided alot of QQing.

Panzee

Lich King is DEAD!!!

Woop Woop thats right people the Lich King is no more. Wednesday night came and we had planned to reset ICC25man head in grind out the 11 bosses and spend a night and a half on LK progress again but our GM for some reason unbeknown to anyone decided:

"FUCK IT! We are going LK tonight and thats all there is to it if we are awful we will reset in an hour or 2 clear a few bosses and finish it off tomorrow"

In we went ... we went through tactics and down he went. On our 3rd or 4th try of the night aswell, and a convincing kill with only 5 people dead at the end including a healer who stood out of position and got dropped off the edge by the Valks in PH2. Needless to say I am very happy about our kill. It had been a bit of a barrier for us recently and with so many people leaving the guild, and many of those who stayed bitching about our trials we did it! It has renewed the faith in our raiding team and most cannot wait to get stuck into the HM's.

Haha the only problem with us killing LK is that we didnt have anything to raid for the rest of the week. Seems like a stupid complaint ... once again Woop! Woop!


Any Suggestions

Ok I have a bit of a dilema and I decided to look to the interwebs and whoever might come across my blog for a little advice. Well here goes...

Well im an Officer in my guild and generally im in charge of the healers. It used to be Skittle but one night he said he was tired asked me to do it and ever since then I seem to have been stuck with the job (who am I kidding I like it lol). Anyway at present we have a Resto druid in our raiding team who used to be in out other guilds raiding team, after some internal discussions she decided she would like to come and riad with us. The problem is her healing is less than optimal and she seems to be using spells in situations which I wouldnt recommend. Up until recently i had just taken her along for a few encounters kept and eye on her etc etc and her healing is nowhere near the lvl it should be for a player with her gear.

Ok this might seem like a problem and it is. One of the other Officers asked me if I could have a chat with her and try and guide her a bit. Normally I would be all for this, hell I have a resto druid of my own and after reading through a few blogs and guides today I will deffo be making a few tweaks to my own druid. The problem I see is that its easy to tell a DPS that they are screwing up their rotations and tell them what they should be doing and when, but with healers its all situational. I can pour over log data and tell someone I think you are casting X too much, or why the hell are you casting Y at all? But trying to explain the niches to someone is hard. Not only that but I dont wanna sound like a giant cock by over simplifying things. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I should approach this? Or has anyone been in a similar situation? - Long shot I know but im getting desperate - With HMs starting we cant really afford to be carrying players and as I see it I really only have a few options:

(a) Have a chat with her and see how she thinks she is performing? And go by how she thinks she is doing to decide on future course of action.
(b) Let my own healing slack alot for some encounters watch her like a hawk and call or note her mistakes as and when they happen and then talk over the mistakes after the raid (this is the chess player in me coming out - I used to spend a few hours playing a game of chess then a few hours after the game going over the game and the various things I did wrong or missed to try and improve - problem is this isn't a method for everyone)
(c) Point her in the direction of a few druid guides and hope she takes the time and effort to read over them, and take away the advice and pointers from the guides.

Any ideas? Seriously, any at all?


Panzeemktwo

Oh and just as a side note my second priest hit lvl60 yesterday so hopefully ill be able to hit lvl80 in a few weeks and start gearing him for my alt runs, the number of priests out there who really dont have the foggiest idea about their class is rather astonishing. Hell the number of healers out there who dont have a clue is just as bad.

Im a disc priest at heart but on occasions I enjoy putting on my Holy Hat and giving the raid healers a run for their money. I went along to a VoA 25man yesterday on the off chance that the ilvl264 Priest Gloves would drop (they didnt :( ) anyway I was one of the first healers in and the RL was asking everyone for GS and Achivements so the characters in the raid should have been able to pump out a decent amount of healing (notice i said "characters" not players and "should"). Anyway as the raid filled up I said to a few guildies on vent that I had better go Holy for this since the set up was 2 x Holy Palas, 2 x Resto Shammies, a Resto Druid and myself. I had a funny feeling and boy was I right. I was running about like a mad man - normally when I go Holy it takes a few attempts / fights for my mind to switch to Holy mode and perform at my highest level and I dare say I whould have done better in the healing if I had been holy for a bit longer but at the end of the encounter I had 30% of Healing Done - 30% people!!!! thats shocking - my guildies had a good laugh about it on vent but I was gob smacked really made me think about the poor healers who run about in game, and made me appreciate the fact that I have the honour of raiding with and generally bossing about healers who actually understand what the healing game is all about... and people still ask me why im rolling another Priest ... isnt it obvious? So I dont have to raid with healers who dont know what they are doing and I have another all round healer who can pull their asses through fights.

/facepalm

Panzee

QUICK: UPDATE

So Mondays raid didnt exactly go according to plan. We logged on made the raid and we had about 10 trials, and were still only 22/25 for the evening with a further 2 of the 22 having connection issues.

Needless to say not the set up I was hoping for. As we made the group people were saying oh this is crap we dont have enough players etc etc but I swiftly told them to cram it and get ready to go. I told everyone this would be a learning raid for our trials the aim was to go to Blood Queen have 2 - 3 attempts so the new people could see the encounter and also so officers could focus on core players who were repeat failers. We went in and on the whole the attempts were gd the trials did a decent job and knew what to do.

Once again those nay sayers pipped up with there this is crap we cant kill her like this. To which I told them to SHUT THE FUCK UP! reminded them of my intention behind this raid and told them to head to Sindragosa for a further 2 wipes there.

Needless to say there were a few older members who simply were not happy. TBH I couldn't careless I had 3 whispers from trials after that raid thanking me for my idea and letting them actually experience the encounters where there was no real preasure rather than throwing them into an actual raid and expecting them to know our tactics and the encounters asthough they had been raiding with us from day 1.

Anywho, everyone was shut up last night. After speaking with a few guildies and Idcb my old GM from New Order (and i mean Old lol) they advised me that the current raid leaders werent vocal enough on vent and there were too many people talking at once. So last night I went in and spammed VENT as much as possible. This was the first raid ever I think where we had 25/25 players in raid and 8 players on standby. We took as many trials as we could while still trying to be effective went in and stormed the place. 1st 4 bosses down (incluging gunship HC - granted not a difficult fight and any way shape or form but still good). I even got people to use the tactics I will be using in HC versions of the encounters so the transition will nto be as bad. I then called a quick 5 min break we went 1 shotted Rotface and Festergut. We then headed to Prof P - first try was shocking as one of our rogues didnt listen to my express instructions and started DPSing the brown ooze before it had choosen a target and it chose him and wiped us :( we had a further wipe where people werrent avoiding the mallable goo's properly but that got more or less fixed and down he went.

The previous week we had went and killed dream walker but this week I had decided to do the bosses in order of release. Few officers wanted to do Dreamwalker 1st but the GM stuck by me and told them it was my raid and we would be going where I said. Going into the blood wing we picked up the weekly raid Q we had 30mins to clear the wing ... BAN|G Princes dead on to Queen ..... quick run through of tactics as we were takign down trash followed by the instructions to bite one of our palas 1st so he could do his quest and off we went. Ok this is where I kind of fucked up. We were all doing very well no deaths then our mage died ... to focused on the healing at hand I didnt call for the combat res for over a minute up he got rebuffed him and BOOM! 3% wipe :( it was my fault for dropping the abll on it I had called for more or less silence on vent and i had missed the CR ... it was no biggy though everyone was impressed by the trials and by our progress so we will go in tonight hopefully clear the rest and see where we stand from there ;)

WOOP! WOOP! Raid Team 1 is alive and kicking once again.

WARNING: Changes Ahead

Well where to begin. Blizzard announced some of their planned changes and new mechanics for each of the classes. Now im not going to rehash all the different changes to the different classes, or even analyse the changes .... why? Well I have no doubt they will be changed alot between now and Cataclysms release. Hell, many of the changes announced for Cata were originaly supposed to be changes in Wrath and were scrapped so I think a few of the changes will once again be scrapped. This doesn't exactly mean I wont be hitting the refresh button in the blue tracker repeatedly to see any and every little change.

Well these havent been the only changes I have been facing recently. Contingency (my guild) have been going through a few changes of its own. Ok quick summary ....

1. We cleared 1st 6 bosses in ICC easily.
2. Then we spent a few night progressing on Prof P .... following week he went down. As did the blood princes.
3. We spent about 3 weeks progressing on Queen spent a whole week getting her to below 10% each time but each try resulted in her beserking and wiping the raid.
4. The following week she went down and we spent a week on Sindragossa and wah lah! Down she went.
5. This left us with LK .... a fight which isn't exactly difficult but which requires people to do as they are supposed to, when they are supposed to.

Basically, the following 4 weeks we were on LK, now during this time we lost a few players here and there. Nothing major, but they were good players who had been part of our core group and who either quit the game entirely, or transferred servers. (Now these 4 weeks weren't entirely useless we have had a few gd tries but the problem seems to be our players. Lack of attendance to raids meant of those 4 weeks progress on LK we only actually had 8 nights trying him.

Any who....this lack of progress has caused many players in our team to now decide they dont want to play anymore and leave. This has meant that we have had to recruit new players, and generally they do not have as much exp or gear as the rest of us so there is a certain level of gearing up and teaching involved. Unfortunately, some more players have now ... somehow ... come to the conclusion that they are better than the new players and shoudlnt have to and I quote "drag them through content to get them gear". Im sorry I have warned you all before that these are the rantings of of a crazy priest and these events have driven me and my GM rather crazy. Just wondering if anyone else was facing similar problems? Or had any advice.

We have been lucky that we have now a good handful of players on trial (some better than others) who we can fill spots with and hopefully we will see some more progress soon. Fingers crossed that other players who I know are feeling a little frustrated wont buckle and chuck it all in.

In light of the recent changes to my raiding team and guild in general I have told my GM that I will take over the whole raid leading bit for a while. I dont want to toot my own horn or anything but a few raiders have told me I am clear on vent and seem to be more patient with players, as a result I told my GM that I am willing to take a more active role in raids. My first forray was into proper 25man raid leading in ICC took place on Wednesday and overall I was happy with it. We purposely took as many new recruits as possible to see if they knew what they were doing and evaluate their performances.

Anyway another quick summary .... went in cleared up to Prof P with no problems at all. Prof P we got him into PH3 twice when we wiped. Some of the older raiders (the ones who kick up trouble and complain ALOT) ofc blamed the new raiders. Pleanty of who hadn't even seen the fight before and the tanks even admitted that they had made a few mistakes in PH3 - thats why I love my guilds tanks they are good solid players who you can pretty much count on and count what they say. They admit when they fuck up, advise one another, and unlike many other tanks when wiping dont automatically blame the healers. So when they say its a healer problem I look at my healers and see whats going wrong and adjust accordingly.

Anyway Prof P went down on the 3rd try and by this point it was getting a bit late so I called a quick 10min break we then re conviened and went and killed Dreamwalker and called the raid. I thought things had went well, we had cleared a fair bit in a relatively short period of time, and sure if we hadnt died on Prof a few times we might have manaaged Princes aswell but it was no Biggy. I was happy .. even had a few people /w me and tell me they thought I had done a good job which I greatly appreciate ;) - ofc this wasnt good enough for the trouble makers and they felt the need to start complainging ... "jeese now we cant even kill Prof P" - but we did - "yeh third fucking try" - so? It's not the easiest fight in the world and we have new people who are learning the fight for the 1st time - "this isnt good enough". Please tell me that this progress for 2.5h of raiding was decent enough and that things arent all doom and gloom.

Things got alot worse the following night. The GM took over the RL again. Princes down NP, then came Queen. One of out Palas had decided they wanted to do the quest portion of Queen for their legendary. This shouldn't have been a problem, but it SSSSooooooooo was. The pala basically had to get bitten at the beginning of the encounter then proceed to bite 3 other people in the encounter and kill Queen. Problem was the pala couldnt bite people ... he sucked and in 4 of the attempts got MC'd, and 1 further attempt due to a DC. Basically, everyone got frustrated and we stopped. We then went to Sindragossa, killed the trash and went over the tactics on vent, the GM then marked 5 people for the frost tombs and asked them to take their positions.... nothing .... he asked again .... nothing .... I then went to the bottom of the stairs in an attempt to get others to move, and show the GM that I was listening ... still nothing. RAID END!

Needless to say I have told my GM I will take over the RL for a bit to give hoim a break. Prob is following this raid we have had 3 more players leave. The Pala left (most think he has quit out of shame - that his performance was sooo bad on Queen that he didnt wanna show his face again) his good friend and one of our top DPS has also left. One of our other DPS left as well just "ok im leaving /gquit" sort of thing. No speaking to an officer or GM before hand :( this annoyed me quite a bit. Prob is with these people leaving there are murmerings ... other people thinking perhaps they had the right idea. Luckily I have spoke with a few members and while there appears to be a few people who may still leave on the following days or weeks many I know will stay. They like the community and guild as a whole. Hopefully, after tonights raid (assuming there is a raid) Sindra and Queen will be dead and I will be able to silence the trouble makers by showing them that even with our new trials who arent all that well geared, and who are still learning, that we are still at the same stage of progress.

Anyway ... I know this post was prob boring and very ranty but explaining what going on and the different things which annoy / trouble me is quite theraputic and held clear my head. Anyway, I will keep you guys updated as to where we are at, and how things go, and if anyone has any suggestions or general tips I wiuld be more than happy to get the advice.


Panzee

So where do we stand?

Ive entitled this post ... so where do we stand for a few reasons, hopefully they will become clear once people have read the post, but for the time being I apologise because this will no doubt be a bit all over the place rather than focused on one particular point.

Anyway for those of you out there living under a rock 3.3.3 and the subsequent 3.3.3(a) which fixed the problems caused by 3.3.3. I unofficially dubbed 3.3.3 the discipline priest patch. Im sure it did other things to other classes but IMO the major changes effected Discipline.

(a) PW:S Glyph - the heal from this can now proc Divine Aegis and Trauma this is a nice little change especially for those fights where shield spamming is prevelant.
(b) the reworked T10 (4) set bonus means that discipline priests out there now have an additional 5% absorbtion on PW:S
(c) The ICC buff which is currently sitting at 5% and which according to Boub over at MMO has found evidence that this buff could scale up to 30% at some point in the fututre.

(b) and (c) combined amount to a pretty impressive increase to PW:S I read a few other blogs by a variety of people, who tried to say that the 5% from the set was minimal and weren't really worth it but it so is. The only downside to the increase absorbtion it that those encounters where I normally bubble spam for example Lich King the infest generally doesnt break my shields anymore lol. This may seem like a good thing but it means I aint getting the mana regen I used to from Rapture. I cant believe that I am almost complainging about PW:S being too strong.

(d) There was a fourth thing but ATM I cant remember what it was :S.

So all in all it looks as though Discipline has seen a nice little increase in its effectiveness.

So what gear did I get?

In case you hadn't guessed I picked up the T10 (4) now that it has been reworked. Hell even the (2) is more impressive than I had 1st thought:

T10 (2) - the HoT from this is rather nice. As first it may appear a little underwhelming but it stacks. I have had it stacked to the extent that the HoT ends up ticked for a very substantial amount. It might be a short duration and it will drop off frequently but it is very impressive nonetheless.

T10 (4) - it ROCKS!!! read above and below if you want more info but its just superior to the old T10 (4) in so many ways.

I ended up buying Healer T10 - Head, Shoulders, Gloves, and I already had the legs. I also picked up the Shadow T10 - Chest and Shoulders (for those fights where the T10(4) might not be as strong and I would prefer to have the additional through put).

After reading a few articles from varying people and reading comments on said blogs it appears that a large number of people are choosing to avoid the T10 (4) as most Disc Priests were planning to before 3.3.3 changes were announced. The main arguement put forward is either (a) 5% isnt enough (I would like a little more but the 5% is still very impressive) and (b) I have already spent my badges so I aint spending anymore. Dont know about everyone else but I am swimming in badges. Hell I aint even doing my daily dungeons, or weekly raids anymore unless I am waisting time. I would suggest that anyone unsure about what to do should run their own calculations and tests rather, and deciding themselves what they should do rather than relying on other peoples analysis or evaluation.

Progress?

ATM Contingency have been doing reasonably well in progression. We have 30 people in the guild now who have killed Lich King on 10man and are currently progressing through ICC 10HC, unfortunately due to scheduling issues my group have only managed to clear to DS - we got 1 night on progress and Blizzard in theor infinate wisdom decided to break the log in servers which meant we had about 2h where people were unable to log in :( so far I have to say I am impressed Lord M is how he should have been from day 1 but Lady DW and Gunship have been relatively easy. Even the few attempts we had on DS were good, despite out terrible set up.

ICC 25man has seen similar progress. Last week our faces were sore after slamming them against our desks repeatedly. We just weren't syncronising together as we should have been. I am happy to report that last night everyone (well almost everyone had taken their brain medicine) and we saw some real progress last 3 - 4 tries saw us getting into PH3 without too much bother or almost getting there before one little thing threw it all away. Another week progressing like that and we should have a kill.

Side Projects

Ulduar 10 - managed to get in with a few friends this week and happy to report I am now only missing 2 achievements for my Proto Drake and those who came to help are in a similar position. ATM Yogg 1 keeper and Razorscales dwarves are all that stand between me and my drake.

ICC Alt runs - this week saw a strange turn of events where a few old guildies from New Order who are now in Excesse got in touch with me and we did a 25man and 10man alt run. Was nice to catch up with some old friends and pick up a few achievements on my alts in the progress.

Ok this is where things get a little strange, or crazy, or insane ... heard all of these things this week. I have decided to roll another priest on Haomarush Horde side. See told you it was crazy. The reasoning behind it ... however faulty it may be is sound to me. I have many many healers but after I have taken Panzee through his lockouts and someone asks me to help them with some run they are putting together I tend to either do on my Druid and Heal or Warlock and DPS, my shaman I no longer feel a connection to and my healing on him is no where near as fun or impressive as it once was. The result is during these other runs I always find myself thinking ... "Damn I wish I was on my Priest for this" while working out at the Gym at the weekend it hit me ... make another priest - I love both holy and disc, the variety and effectiveness of Priests is impressive and I love to play them. The next hour at the gym involved me going through everything in my head planning progression, professions, going through names etc etc . So I am pleased to announce the creation of my 2nd priest on Haomarush - Panzeemktwo (Basically Pansee MKII unfortunately Blizzard dont let you put spaces, or capitals in names :( )

Well thats all for now. I hope all the Priests out there dont think im too crazy and have decided themselves what gear they are going for.


Peace

A tier bonus aimed at Discipline Priests? Is this a trick?

Well where to begin? When I started my blog a few weeks ago I had planned what my 1st few posts would be about.

Background in WoW .... check!
Loot and the new LFG .... check!
Loot in raids .... check!

My next few posts had intended to be about the Priest T10 set bonuses. I had planned to lay out all the different conclusions I had come to and evaluate the sets bonuses for both Holy and Disc. I had then planned in the following post to set out what my "ideal" gear would be .... but looks like this wont be happening.

The recent PTR patch notes show that Blizzard have changed the T10(4) bonus. FINALLY!!!!

I have never been a fan of the T10(4) sure it was interesting but IMO it was just too RNG based to be considered usefull or for that matter reliable. I had posted a HUGE post on my guilds website laying out all my calculations and theories behind the bonuses in a hope of convincing my guilds priests that they should try and avoid the T10(4) but apparently people dont like numbers? Who would have thought it? As a result of this my guilds Priests aimlessly picked up their T10 pieces. I actually compared them to sheep ... "But its the Healer Set" ... use your heads people.

Anyway incase you didnt know the new bonus is:

"Zarhym -- PTR Patch 3.3.3 Notes

Priest Tier-10 4-Piece Healing Set Bonus: Redesigned. This bonus now increases the effectiveness of the caster's Power Word: Shield and Renew spells by 5%." - 2nd March 2010

Now in order to see whether this proposed set bonus is useful I had to get out my calculator.

Bit O' Math:

Taking Contingency's latest Prof P kill into consideration - I was MT healing pretty much constantly so I think that will be more useful to consider rather than the likes of Queen where I am just bubble spamming people, although I will put that down as well because the amount of DMG that can be absorbed on that fight by PW:S is just impressive.

So on the Prof my absorbtions from PW:S totalled 942,495 DMG so the added 5% would mean that my absorbtions from PW:S would have been 989,619.75.

On Queen my absorbtions on one fight were around the 1.5million mark meaning .... quick math ....would result in an extra 75,000 dmg absorbed.

(Clearly these numbers arent exactly mind blowing but the extra 5% soon adds up.)

OOooooooo I am a moron .... unlike the previous set bonus I can use both these spells in my rotation / healing. I am speced into IMP Renew aswell so this set bonus would as Disc increase PW:S and Renew by 5%. Obviously, the increase in PW:S is the main thing but I always have a few Renews rolling around aswell so this will also be a nice little buff.

For the forst time ever I am glad that I have only recieved the 1 token to upgrade my gear so far lol. If I had been able to upgrade my gear more I would deffo have picked up the T10 shadow gear. I think my best bet now will be to pick up the T10(4) Healer Bonus and still pick up the Shadow chest or shoulders.

I must do more research ......

I will need to run a few senarios to see how useful this bonus will be for Holy Priests. IMO it is more beneficial to Disc. As Holy players tend to have their general rotations ... if you can call it that .... with either Renew or FH as their filler spell. IMO Renew has always been the stronger spec but I do realise that FH it good and a compentent spec to choose. The issue I see is that many / most priests seem to choose the FH option leaving the HoT rolling to the druids. Similarly, since the current T10(2) some have changed to FH filler (I was considering it) since the T10(2) has a 33% chance to add a HoT to the target of your FH which would heal for 33% of the original heal.

I think the T10(4) on the PTR at the moment although not mind blowing will definately be worth picking up. I read a post my someone on some forum somewhere (sorry I didnt take a note of name or place otherwise I would deffo give you props) who said that:

"the 5% might not seem amazing but its similar in many respects to Blessed Resilience in the Holy tree. If it were a level 1 talent choice in the Disc Tree or Holy Tree would you pick it up?"

I think this is probally the best way to look at it. Hell just think of it as an extra 2 or 3 talent points which are being put into a talent that you would probaly have taken if it had been an option.

This is more or less just a first look / analysis of the proposed changes and once I get a bit more data I will run a few more simulations and evaluate its usefulness for both Disc and Holy.

Fingers crossed this change makes it to live. Hell if Blizzard wanna make it a little stronger im ok with that ;)


Panzee :)