Flame on!

Let’s look at the spell: Power Infusion

(Remember that 1% haste = 32.79 haste rating, so Power Infusion grants 655.8)

Some of the confusion comes from the fact the spell didn’t always work this way – it used to be a 20% direct damage boost. Now that’s pretty easy to understand, isn’t it? Everyone wants MOAR DAMAGEZ!!!111111ONEONE. But with the change, it’s no longer a pure spell damage boost – it’s now a haste boost., and who it benefits the most is no longer so cut and dry.

“WHHHAT? “ you say. “Don’t all casters want MOAR HASTE? God, you’re dumb, Ava.” Well, yes, I am dumb, but that’s besides the point. Most casters usually do not skirt the haste cap on all their spells, but that doesn’t mean that you should just randomly pick a caster to toss is on, nor does it mean you should toss it out when ever it’s up without thinking about it.

Power Infusion Does NOT Stack with Heroism

First, let’s get the most irritating thing out of the way: What PI does, and does not, stack with. A general rule of thumb is that you can only have one external activated haste ability at any time. Things such as Heroism/Bloodlust are considered External, and therefor DO NOT stack with PI. You can, of course, still cast PI during a Heroism/BL, but the only benefit received will be the mana reduction – quite the waste of a powerful spell.

While you can’t stack external haste buffs, you CAN have an infinite number of self only buffs. Things such as Trinket Procs, Potions of Speed, Troll Beserking – those will stack with PI.

Passive abilities, such as a Wrath of Air totem, Swift Retribution & Improved Moonkin Form will also stack with PI

PI also does not affect your GCD.

So Who do I put Power Infusion on?

In no particular order:

Shadowpriests: Show our shadowy brethren some love. Shadow priest damage scales very well with haste, & this is especially yummy on fights with multi target mobs.

Warlocks: I just want to thank Bringing Chaos for his infinite patience with my warlock questions this expansion

• Affliction: Incredible haste scaling with their DoTs, but only only a good choice when the boss is above 30% health.
• Destruction: Gain direct output from haste. A good choice ASSUMING they are not GCD capped and can still receive haste benefits. You wont see too many of these at ICC levels.
• Demonology: a good choice. If you are running with one, wait until you see the big purple demon form aka metamorphosis, or when a boss is under 35% health for maximum gain.

Mages: All 3 spec mages are good choices, but just to clear up some confusion I’ve seen:

• Frost/Arcane mages: Icy Veins DOES stack with PI. Arcane Power DOES NOT. Some of the confusion regarding AP comes from what happens when casting this on a mage with this active: If you cast PI when AP is already active, you receive “A more powerful spell is already active” error. If you cast PI and THEN the mage casts AP, PI is over written.

Elemental Shaman: While my first choice is usually a Warlock, Spriest, or Mage, Elemental Shamans are still a good choice. They love haste, & PI DOES stack with Elemental Mastery.

Boomkins: Again, not my first choice, but to maximize the gain, cast PI during an LUNAR eclipse, not Solar. Look for the blue moon. Someone once remarked “Once in a Blue Moon, give a boomkin PI” and the saying stuck.

Yourself and other healers: We rarely use PI on ourselves, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an option. The key to a great healer is being able to quickly choose tools and adapt. If you are in a hairy situation that requires intense direct healing, use it. If you fill more of a bubble spammer role, and you see your tank healers are struggling, give it to them – better to lose some DPS than wipe the raid. That being said, don’t use PI on yourself as a mana saving tool unless it’s a make or break situation – if mana is tight, ask for an innervate, pot, Hymn of Hope chain, Fiend, have a shaman in your group drop Mana Tide…the DPS gains outweighs the mana reduction, especially if you have other options. On a side note, if you give PI to a holy pally during Dreamwalker, he or she will probably hump your leg.

Don’t hate – COMMUNICATE!

It’s a lot to think about, so the best way to maximize PI usage is COMMUNICATION AND AWARENESS! Set your raid frames up to track these buffs you need to watch for. If needed, have the casters macro in a notification /tell to you on certain spells so you know when ( and when not to) cast PI. Use a mod like Guardian Spirited to communicate to them what you’re casting, or make a simple macro yourself.

Plan your targets before the pull, and make sure you understand the fight (and therefor the best times to use PI), and what the positioning will be, especially relative to your chosen target. The last thing you want to do in a fight is take your attention away from your healing target(s) to go chasing down a PI target. Also keep in mind the range of PI when planning this – just because a target is in range of heals, doesn’t mean they’re in range of PI. Let your potential targets know what you plan to do so they can be aware of their positions as well.

A PI macro is a big help. You could do something as simple as setting a Focus Target and using:

/cast [target=focus,exists,nodead] Power Infusion

However I find that rather limiting. As I said, a good raider is about reaction & adaptability. If your focus target is dead, DC’ed or out of range, it leaves you fumbling around to “click & pick” a new target – not something you want to be doing.  You need to quickly pick a target, keeping in mind these pointers. Sometimes, the best choice for PI isn’t the ideal one, due to the dynamic nature of a raid encounter. For this reason, I use this:

#showtooltip

/script local u,pi=”mouseover”,”Power Infusion”;if IsSpellInRange(pi,u)==1 and GetSpellCooldown(pi)==0 then SendChatMessage(“Flame on, Asshole-You have Power Infusion! “,”WHISPER”,nil,UnitName(u)) end

/cast [target=mouseover] Power Infusion

I embed mouseovers into most of my spells, as you see, so this allows me the flexibility to quickly mouse over  a target, check that it’s in range, and cast with a notification. I also run guardian Spirited, so the embedded tell is kinda redundant. I tell myself all the /tell spam makes sure they’re paying attention, but really it’s because I can’t pass up an opportunity to call someone an asshole.

Use it or Lose it.

The worst use of PI is to not use it at all. We’re a big fan of ForteXorcist and PowerAuras – both can notify you when PI is off cool down. As I mentioned, don’t spend time hunting and picking for your PI target either. If you planned to throw it on the mage, but he’s clear across the room, throw it on the elemental shaman right next to you – you’ll do more harm trying to chase him down for a potentially larger DPS gain than you would hitting who you can. Think Heroic Lich King – do you want to delay your shields and possibly risk blowing up a shadow trap to find someone? Probably not. Analyze what’s available and in range, and quickly pick.

I’m sure most of this is old news, but hopefully someone will still find this useful. Derevka has our Beta key and infinitely more time, so I’m left cleaning up the few remaining topics for Wrath. Obviously these mechanics can and will change in Cata so CAN I HAVE A BETA KEY PLEASE?

Re-Revisiting Power Infusion in Wrath is a post from: Tales of a Priest

That being said, we DO have some great posts coming in the next 2 weeks – Renews & You, Holy Nova How to, Grid For Dummies, PI guide for non healers, Heroic LK25 (finally killed it) & Heroic Halion 25 guides, so you’ll see some great discussions to make up for the down time. We’re just trying to put the finishing touches on them all.

I just thought I would use this post to take a moment and reflect on things related to raiding in Wrath, & give our opinions on them. Beta is currently ongoing (Invites please?), & the current expansion is winding down. I’m not sure how raiding will turn out in Cata, so let’s just look at what was good, what was bad, and what was downright ugly in our current expansion:

Raid Zone Buffs (ICC)

• The Good: It solved the issue of how to get more people to see the content. Lore is a huge part of this game, and I know I enjoy the stories & background. Being able to see and experience the boss fights shouldn’t be so far out of reach of the majority of the player base. Also, having the buff gradually increase allowed more capable players & guilds to progress as normal, while allowing those that lagged behind a light at the end of the tunnel.

• The Bad:
  • The buffs had no business being in heroic mode raiding. The fights are not drastically different & do not add anything to the lore, but require more skill and team play – adding a buff negates the whole concept of HEROIC mode raiding. They give raiders a goal to work towards, and if a fight proved difficult, you work on strategy & gear until you win. There’s no sense of accomplishment in steamrolling things.
  • Also, having a heroic mode with an end boss that was tuned for the high end of the buff value was just plain silly. For most people capable of that fight, the entire zone becomes a 2 hour cake walk, only to have the difficulty go over 9000 by reaching LK25. It was very awkward, and it sends mixed signals:  Do you intend for people to see all the content, or was LK only intended for the Best of the Best, frustrating the guilds that finally managed to scrape their way past the last few heroic bosses as the buff hit 20-30%? There’s nothing wrong with bosses increasing in difficulty as you progress – that’s how it SHOULD be – but having the difficulty at completely different scale as the rest of the instance is downright annoying.

• The Ugly: As the buff increased, it gradually began to negate the need to understand one’s class and the need to play well. Instead of gear being a reward for tackling content, it became an expected right, something everyone seemed entitled to. As gear became commonplace on even the worst of players, certain asshats started looking for a way to discriminate. Since skill was no longer much of a factor, a player’s worth started being designated by a nonsensical numerical value called Gearscore. It didn’t matter if the rogue in T9 could out DPS a one in a 5500 GS – his gearscore sucked, so he must as well. And when PuG raids made up of these high Gearscore players encountered difficulty or wiped, they were bewildered – how could that happen? And then the insults and rage would ensue. No one seems interested in learning the mechanics of their class or content, or even gearing properly – it’s all about making that number bigger. It’s no longer a MMO community – it’s every man for himself on the quickest, easiest path to purples, and it down right sucks.

Heroic Modes:

• The Good: Excellent concept – a great way to add extra challenge for progression raiders when normal modes weren’t quite the difficulty people were looking for. The rewards were slightly better, yet not substantially enough to offer a severe advantage on later content, and rewarded prestige items that had no impact on actually gameplay such as mounts and titles.

• The Bad: Pick a way to access heroic modes! In my opinion, the “flip the switch for heroic” like ICC & TOGC was downright lame and boring – most fights simply came down to more damage & bosses had more health.  Sarth 3D & Ulduar were much more interesting, adding elements & ways to approach the fight that usually completely changed the fight itself. Now THAT was interesting.

• The Ugly: Certain cosmetic rewards for doing these probably should be removed after some point. Removing them immediately after new content is released might be pushing it, but going back to get a Sarth 3D drake or Ironbound Protodrake in full T10.5 gear cheapens the accomplishment since they’re intended to be rewards for doing the hardest (at the time) content. Or an better idea is to have them attached to conditions, like a more loose version of Dedicated Insanity or Herald of the Titans, where you can’t outgear the instance by a certain factor to complete the achievement – that way they can still be done at any point in the game, AND it gives people a reason to go back and gear up in old instances.

Mounts & Titles are rewards for Challenging content

Progression:

• The Good: This expansion offered a much easier way to progress & stay current. You could change your main or come back after an extended break and be right back in the game after a minor amount of time. It also allowed more casual players to partake in content without falling behind as well.

• The Bad: With every new raid or dungeon, previous content was completely negated. There was no need to progress thru older content to gear up and “learn to play”. In a nutshell, unless it was part of the weekly dungeon quest, all previous content was forgotten.

• The Ugly: This resulted in a complete loss of character progression. In an MMO, you develop your character thru progression. By collecting badges on the way to 80, running the new 5 mans, weekly dungeon, and crafting some gear, you can usually be ready for the latest normal mode content in a minimal amount of time….and then you’re out of things to do, unless you roll an alt, and do it all over again. It’s become the norm for most players to have several characters, and it’s become a boring treadmill. I would have loved to progress new alts thru naxx & ulduar, but my guild had done them to death, & PuGs have no reason to do them now, other than to steamroll them for mounts.  Bring back content progression, time investment and character development to the game!

Gated Content:

• The Good: It kept players from being overwhelmed by so much new content.

• The Bad: It provided a brick wall to more progressed players. I’ve heard Blizzard say it was a way to keep players from being unhealthy, but IMO – who are they to tell people how to play, or enjoy the game? If guilds like Exodus or Paragon want to play nonstop until they’ve cleared all the content – LET THEM. Don’t put an artificial barrier up on the way people play the game.  Saying people will  bored if they finish all the content so fast can be counter argued they’ll be bored & frustrated by being forced to wait.

• The Ugly: I don’t know if this is considered ugly, but I always believed gated content was a way to release the content before all of it was finished. If that’s the case, say so – don’t try to feign concern for peoples’ well being.

Limited Attempt/Timed End Zone Bosses:

• The Good: I liked this. A boss like Algalon was not required to complete a normal raid instance, but was an optional, heroic challenge that opened up after completing heroic modes, and offered some excellent rewards. I also like it because it forced more focus to be on skill, rather than throwing yourself at a boss until 3am. More guilds could remain somewhat competitive without raiding absurd amounts of hours.

• The Bad: If it’s a limited attempt boss(es) like H LK, those that really want to will use alts to learn the fight. But I really don’t think that’s bad – that’s dedication, as far as I’m concerned. But if it was Blizz’s intention to prevent top guilds from continuous work on a boss, it didn’t work too well. Other than that, I don’t see really anything BAD with ‘X’ attempt bosses, other than when atrocious server lag would rear its ugly head in the middle of them. If you can’t guarantee a stable server, then you might want to rethink this.

• The Ugly: A Timed boss, like the hour on Algalon, was also at the mercy of server stability and internet providers. If the server crashed or went down unexpectedly for maintenance, or some part of infrastructure for an area of users failed, the timer didn’t stop and there goes your attempts for the week.

These are just some random thoughts I had on what I’ve seen during this past expansion. There’s more things I could talk about, but those are the major changes I saw. Most of you know Derevka and I are hardly elitist Pricks, so please don’t read this post with that angle. What we are, however, is passionate about a challenge in our hobby. I think that’s what most raiders find fun. The biggest rush is working together with your guild to tackle challenges, and I am crossing my fingers that Cata can bring back the positive things we saw introduced for raids this expansion, while refining the things that didn’t work so well. I’m holding my breath that Cata can bring back challenges and accomplishments to raiding, and find a way to balance 10/25 man raids so they have both.

So what do you guys think? What are your thoughts on these issues? What did you like or dislike about Raiding In Wrath?

A Reflection on Wrath Raiding is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Big Crits is something that Stoneybaby has been working on for the last several months. Many of you know Stoney from the Totem Talk column at WoW.com, Big Hit Box, and his Starbucks Foursquare updates on Twitter. This project is really somewhere between a documentary and “Real World: Azeroth”…complete with the “Confession Booth” like interviews — and I love it.

Big Crits currently has 3 episodes out, with the 3rd episode just released last Thursday.  Each episode follows a guild as they progress through Icecrown. The guild is made of a very diverse group of players. Some of them came from guilds that had already earned their Kingslayer titles, others from guilds that were just encroaching the Lower Spire. You learn more about these players — these people – as the episodes progress. You see the guild develop. You see officers rise. You see players fall.

One of the really interesting things about this project, is that it really helps bring to light a lot of the issues that every guild faces. Tank issues, healer problems, learning curves on fight mechanics, and every other potential issue ICC Guilds face. The episodes don’t just highlight the QQ and the drama– it also highlights and showcases the victories as well. You get to see each of these through the webcam “Confessionals” from many of the members of Big Crits. You hear their thoughts, their opinions on that week’s raids– you experience the fights along with them.

Each episode is about 9-10 minutes in length, and you can really catch up on the guild’s progress and the dynamics of each of the players as the weeks go by. The production quality of each episode is nothing short of spectacular and really make each week fun to watch. The broadcast dates are a few weeks behind “real time”– but from what I do know, the next few weeks promise some great progression and excitement! (No, I won’t put any spoilers in this post– you’ll have to see!)

Big Crits is something I think most of us will be able to relate to and enjoy watching – if anything to just root them on as they progress through ICC. For more information on Big Crits, you can visit the Big Crits website here. From here you can get information, watch the videos, subscribe on YouTube, apply to the guild, and learn more about the project.

But wait; there’s more!!! In the next couple of weeks you’ll be seeing a guest post from one of the priests over at Big Crits, Suzushiiro,. Suzu’s topic I will keep underwraps right now (as I don’t want to steal his thunder)– but I do know that I am looking forward to reading it, becasue it is a question that I ask myself before every single boss encounter I raid in! Stay tuned!

I Like Big Crits and I Cannot Lie is a post from: Tales of a Priest

One very common misconception about Disc Priests and the Lich King encounter is that it is all about Bubble Spam– nothing more, and nothing less. If you have a Disc priest, Infest is irrelevant: just spam and /profit. This couldn’t be further from the truth – the key to this fight is an INTELLIGENT Disc Priest, not just some Bubble Monkey. There is a lot you need to keep track of during this fight all while protecting your raid from Infest: You need to be very aware of your ability and the detriment of “outgearing” Infest. (Yes, I said DETRIMENT).  On top of all the other stuff that is going on during this fight you need to remember that the LK Encounter is a 10 minute fight, can your mana pool stand up to 10 minutes of blanketing the raid with a 900 mana per cast Power Word: Shield?

To better understand all of this, first lets go over what Infest actually does…

Infest: Deals X to Y Shadow damage to all enemy players within 50000 yards. In addition, the targets will take increasing Shadow damage per second. This effect is removed when the target has more than 90% health.

Note that it will continue to do damage until you are at 90% HP. What PW: Shielding does is it eats the first hit of Infest and leaves people at (hopefully) greater than 90% HP. Lets take a look at each of the 4 versions of Infest.

Infest is Shadow Damage, so you will have a certain amount of resist from your Shadow Resist buff. (don’t forget to cast it!) The amount that is resisted each time (and by each player) is completely RNG. This and the “range” it hits for is the wild card and can be a bitch. Lets use a very simple example here to explain how using PW: Shield works on mitigating Infest.

Here are the basics of this example:

PW: Shield Value – 8,000
HP of the Player – 30,000
Infest Hits – 10,000
Shadow Damage Resisted – 500

Great! We resisted 500 damage of the Infest, and absorbed 8,000 damage from the shield resulting in 1500 net damage to the player, bringing them to 28,500 HP which is 95% HP. Since we landed at 95% HP we do not have to worry about Infest ticking on the player. Woohoo!

Now, lets kick it up a notch, and take a look at a Heroic 10 example.

PW: Shield Value – 8,000
HP of the Player – 30,000
Infest Hits – 13,000
Shadow Damage Resisted – 1,000

Taking all these mitigations and resists we have the net damage resulting in 4,000 putting the player at 26,000 HP or 87%. Uh oh! Infest ticks! This player will need fast heals to get them back up over 90% pretty quickly or the Infest DOT will kill them in a matter of seconds.

Of course these examples assume a rather low Sheild Amount- for purposes of illustration. My Shields, with 15% buff, and when I have my 4pc equipped, absorb around 12k. Which, as you can see isn’t enough to handle Heroic 25 Infest by itself, you have the Shadow Resist in there as well.  (typically somewhere around 1.1-3.8k)The additional shadow resist  is VERY important, and (as you can see) is a bit of a wild card. You can see resists from 0 to 3,000. Not only do you have the resists being variable, you also have your spellpower being variable. (ICC Ring Procs, Trinket stacks, Cloak Enchant Procs, forgetting to buff Inner Fire, etc.). Of course the total HP of the target also plays a factor since Lower HP targets are more likely to fall <90% than higher HP targets.

Here are some examples of the RNG aspect of Sheilding with resists and SP Variances.

The Lich King Infest Derevka 1848 (A: 12235, R: 3821)
The Lich King Infest Derevka 3531 (A: 11856, R: 1895)

Raidwide buffs such as Totem of Wrath and Demonic Pact also cause variances in your shield amounts (we could even try to include DA procs from the PW:S Glyph), and when you are trying to mitigate a Heroic 25 Infest for upwards of 19,800 damage: every. bit. helps. The issue with Demo Pact is that you don’t get the buff until it procs, and the first Infest you should be preemptively shielding your raid during Fordring’s RP diatribe. (I start shielding my groups at about 15 seconds until combat). That means, I don’t have the spellpower that Demo Pact provides… which means, the first Infest can get messy. If you are struggling with the first Infest due to variable Spellpower, do what I have been doing pre-pull pop a Wild Magic potion for the 200 SP bonus and spam your assigned groups for Infest shields.

So depending on your gear, raidwide spellpower, and resists you should be able to mitigate most (if not all Infest damage).

Outgearing Infest
With 4-piece and the impending 20% buff (25% and 30%) eventually PW: Shield will outpace Infest, including SP and resist variables. You may already be encountering this on your current attempts on Normal 25, 10, and Heroic 10. At first glance you might say “Great! I don’t have to worry about Infest ticks since everyone will be able to stay at 100%! People will take no damage from infest at all! WOOHOO!!”

BZZZ WRONG!!!!

This is one of the situations where bigger isn’t always better. Let me say this explicitly: You do not want to have your shields be bigger than the Infest damage. Two things happen as a result of ‘outgearing’ the Infest damage.

1. You don’t get mana back from Rapture if your whole shield isn’t eaten by Infest. PW: Shield isn’t a cheap spell, and when you are casting it on 10-15 people each rotation of Infest, you’ll burn through mana pretty quickly if you aren’t getting your Rapture procs back. (Further the ICD of Rapture triggers upon full absorption, and if you can get 10-15 shields eaten all at the same time, you get 10-15 procs at once… which means you’re getting a LOT of mana back).

2. “A more powerful spell already exists”. I hate seeing those red words across my screen – even if your residual shield is only for 100, you will not be able to reapply a new shield if your SP is lower. This can happen from a Ring Proc on an earlier shield, Lightweave proc, etc… This prevents you from reapplying a shield and protecting that target from the next Infest.

Granted, you could make your whole raid use a /cancelaura macro for PW:S and leech Innervates, but that seems to be a waste.

You want your whole shield eaten by the inital blast from Infest. This also means you might have to downrank your shields… On Heroic LK10 I downrank to Rank 12 to allow for full absorption with my SP/Gear. With the increased ICC buff coming shortly, more and more people will have to downrank soon, otherwise they could bleed out of mana from lack of Rapture restores, or they could run into the overwriting a more powerful spell issue.  What rank works for you will vary based on your gear (if you have 4pc) and your spellpower and raid make up… trial and error FTW. Customize your PW: Shield to the Mode/Size of the encounter you are doing, your raid will thank you for it. You want your shield to just cover infest, be completely used up, and remove the RNG aspect. Ideally you want everyone to land at 95-99% HP, so your Glyph of PW:S brings them back to 100% the next go around.

Working Rapture
Rapture is your savior on this fight. Putting out that many Shields can be very mana intensive if you aren’t watching your Rapture cooldown. (I track mine using ForteXorcist). You want your Rapture returns to be from your mass bubbling on Infest, NOT from anything else. This means you need to be careful about when you shield a tank or a player who is taking damage. Rapture can only restore mana to you every 12 seconds. So if you need to shield one of the tanks, do so during that 12 second ICD (and be sure the shield will be eaten during those 12 seconds). You don’t want to lose sync of your Infest Rapture mana restore. Also, be wary of shielding high aggro melee players. I’ve found that our Ret Pally and Whirlwinding Arms Warrior tend to pick up aggro on the Ghouls and can take substantial damage, so I try to shield these players at the last moment before Infest. (and often time’s follow it up with a POM to heal up any Infest damage that PW:S didn’t absorb)

Communication
For our Heroic LK25 progress we use 2 Disc priests on the raid: Ava and myself. We are on opposite sides of the circle, and are moving quite regularly due to Shadow Traps. We also split the raid in two. (I take 2 groups, Ava takes 2 groups and we both cover the 5th). Protip: be sure your Grid Shows not only Weakened Soul, but also other Priests PW:S. We also communicate on a Vent Bind to each other if one of our ‘assigned’ players is out of range. Given the amount of movement required in Phase 1 of Heroic LK25, we often need to cover each other regularly. You need to work as a team, and communicating is pivotal.

This is not a pure mindless bubble fight, you could try to just spam your Shield button and try to play the hero that way, but but you might as well stick Billie Baddie with his 1337 Gear Score in your raid slot and hope to win. Lich King is a great encounter (even though I’m tired of hearing the RP speech at the end/begining) and more and more guilds are getting the opportunity to go toe to toe with him. I hope these pointers provide some good insight to how Infest works, and more importantly gives the Disco Priests out there some insight they might have overlooked in some of their earlier attempts.

Lich King Shielding & Infest – More Than Just Bubble Spam is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Thanks for reading! See you next week!

What, you actually want an in depth answer? No one wants an in depth answer any more ! No one wants to THINK! If they did, we wouldn’t have this WUTS UR GS mess in the first place.

Fine, be that way. First, let’s look at how the GearScore mod actual works:

The Forumla for Gear Score

G is the calculated Gear Score
j is the slot index
i is the attribute index
V is the associated attribute weight

Items are assigned an ilevel, relative to the content they drop in, and have a stat allowance based of said ilevel. GS mod assigns a number based on ilevel & item ‘rarity’ (ie blues vs greens vs purples) and adds them up. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Now, the full mod actually has an armory like page that lays out stats for viewing, but there’s a few issues with that:

1) No one uses it. Most players’ knowledge of GS comes down to the little tooltip number that pops up when you mouse over a player, without any clue to its meaning. I’ve seen it all: Naxx weekly groups wanting a 5800 GS to join, ICC 10s requiring 5000, TOTC wanting 5500 – do you know what it means? I don’t. I’m sure they don’t either – they’re just pulling numbers out of their ass.

2) Most of these players don’t understand their own stats and class; you can’t expect them to know someone else’s too. Now some can understand the hunter with spellpower is bad (and I say some – not all), but how many would catch the 800+ haste or 20% hit? Or the priest gemmed for pure sprit? The DK in shield block gear? Anyone that has pugged lately knows the answer is depressing.

I know what you’re going to say: Gearscore is just a tool to evaluate a player’s potential based on gear – and I’m sure that’s what the original mod author had in mind. And in the hands of a competent pug raid leader and equally competent players, this certainly would apply. Unfortunately, in the land of “Faceroll Ur Way To Epix”, one or both is a rare occurrence.  Which brings me to my first point on Why Raiding Guilds Don’t Care About Your GS:

1)      Your gear doesn’t play for you. Maybe in the next expansion it will, but for the time being, your output is still determined by the hunk of meat behind the keyboard. I really don’t have to go into detail about the player in 5700+ gs sets that couldn’t outdps a wet paper towel, or the healer that couldn’t keep a plastic plant alive – we’ve all seen it, multiple times. In fact, you see it so many times that it completely negates any redeeming value GS may have. With gear so easy to obtain, many players miss the step of learning how to play to acquire it. Gear doesn’t automatically grant you situational awareness, spec/ gear understanding and how to adjust it based on raid comps, reaction times, or numerous other things that are required of a progression raider. You lack these and other things, all the gear in the world won’t make you raiding material.

2)      Gear is easy to get. Anyone can get gear. Anyone. However, finding a smart player – that’s the tough part. However, for smart players who don’t have access to decent raiding guilds, they are at the mercy of PuGs and random rolls for loot, and may not have that awesome gearscore. Or maybe they’re amazing players, returning to the game after a break. Whatever the reason, regardless of gear, the smart player will understand how to spec accordingly with his current gear level and be able to explain his or her choices. The player in T9 that says “I take <talent X> to compensate for my low levels of <stat>; I would run a <x/y/z> spec once I acquire <gear a,b,c> is going to get way more consideration than the app in full ICC gear that equipped whatever he could get his hands on &  copied his spec off EJ without understanding why. A player that understands what gear he or she should be getting, how to spec, glyph and gem based on content, gear and raid make up is invaluable, and gearing them up in a raiding guild is a non issue.

3)   Higher iLevel gear does not mean it’s the CORRECT gear. I’m still amazed how many people don’t grasp this. You can’t have blinders on when evaluating gear & focus on just one piece – very rarely can you just do a <item x> vs <item y> comparison. Your OVERALL gear is what matters. What stats will you be losing/gaining if you equip a new piece of gear? Do you lose good set bonuses? Are you wearing gear with the stats you need? Hell, I didn’t replace my Pandora’s Plea until well into ICC for some of my setups, and we still go back and try to get Reign of the Unliving for some of our casters. Raiding guilds want you to equip the gear that is going to give you the most potential, and that is not determined by an item’s ilevel.

Toot toot! All abord the FailBoat!

4) Your Gearscore tells us absolutely NOTHING about how you perform as a player. This is probably the most important one. As explained above, the gearscore number doesn’t mean you’re a good player with a high number, or a bad player with a low number. But it doesn’t tell raiding guilds ANYTHING specific. How many times have you heard “I do 12K DPS” or “I’m the top DPSer in my guild”? How can you consider those metrics to determine skill? We don’t care what your DPS is on a target dummy, that you did the most healing in a PuG, or that you were the highest DPS with the guild <WEBREAKFORFATCHICKS>. That’s like saying your 1993 Ford Escort smoked a bunch of 1974 AMC Gremlins – not exactly impressive.

We want to see APPLICABLE information. We want LOGS. Raiding guilds LOVE World of Logs – it details EVERYTHING that occurs in a raid. All of the sudden, Mr 5900 GS with the 12K DPS becomes Mr “12K AOE DPS on trash, but didn’t do more effective damage than the tank on LDW”. It also shows that even though your guild as a whole didn’t progress very far, the applicant was doing the job correctly. It shows the spells, rotations, targets, damage taken (yes, we can see you standing in BAD SHIT!!!!!) and so much more. It allows a raiding guild to parse information and verify what you’re doing is correct based on what you were raiding with. The best part is ANYONE can run these – the basic account is free and keeps logs for 30 days. Parsing your own logs makes YOU a better player by helping you understand why things went wrong (or right!) and what you can do to fix or improve on it.

Now, it’s not a deal breaker to some raiding guilds if you don’t have these, but obviously, you can see why they are REALLY appreciated.

The Gearscore reliance has really gotten out of hand. It keeps lesser geared, good players (and their alts) out of runs, and has led to absolutely ABSURD PuG requirements (5500 GS for ToTC? Naxx? Really?). This forces people to be more concerned about boosting an artificial number than using the correct gear, and led to a mentality that if your gear is good enough, you don’t have to understand what you’re doing. In short, it’s making for a horrible player base with a huge sense of entitlement, and it’s making recruiting a nightmare.

Back in vanilla & BC, it was always the raiders accused of being elitist – the raiders didn’t want Joe Casual having raiding gear. I find it amusing that now, real raiders won’t touch this crap with a ten foot pole and Billy Baddie & Freddy Stand In Fire are using this to look down their nose at everyone else. It’s funny how things work out.  But not “haha” funny. Take a look around the next time you see some guild recruitment spam, or browse recruitment sections – the raiding guilds are not asking for GEAR scores. The ones that throw in “we have vent and 5 bank tabs”, are.

I’ve hung on to this cartoon for years ( I don’t remember where I got it, so props to the original artists – Edit: it’s from Dark Legacy Comics, thanks Golane!) – I think it’s pretty appropriate for the gearscore junkies, don’t you?

I'M A RAIDUUUUUUUURR

Why Raiding Guilds don’t care about your Gearscore. is a post from: Tales of a Priest

“To ensure all participants in the Arena Tournament have the best experience possible, there will be a zero-tolerance policy for any inappropriate character or Arena team names created on the Arena Tournament realm.

Characters with inappropriate names will be deleted. This means that you will need to customize another template from scratch and re-earn all personal and hidden ratings. Keep in mind that in a later phase of the Arena Tournament team rosters will be locked down. If your character is deleted during this time, no exceptions will be made and your team will need to use whoever is left on that roster in order to continue competing.

Arena teams with names deemed inappropriate will be dissolved. This means that you will need to create another charter for your team and climb back up from a rating of zero.

Please think twice before naming your characters and Arena teams!”

I have to admit that my eyes widened a little when I read this blue post in my RSS feed the other day. Is Blizzard actually drawing a line in the sand?

Let’s take a closer look at this a little closer. Yes, we all know that harassment and inappropriate names are all against the EULA– however Blizzard has never made such an explicit statement comment regarding naming. I find it more interesting that Blizzard feels they need to make this distinction. Of course Blizzard is covering all types of inappropriate names, including racism, sexism, domestic violence, etc– and for that I applaud them. I really want to dive into this a bit more as to why does this need to happen?

Many of you know I am very open about my sexuality. I started this project (Tales of a Priest) with the intent of keeping a fair amount of personal anonymity.  While I’m open about my sexuality, I’m not “wave it around like a big old rainbow flag” open about it. I don’t put it into every post, tweet, or comment I make. I’m always of the mindset, “If it comes up, it comes up.” My sexuality is only part of my identity in real life, why should it be more than only part of my identity in game or on this blog?

Let’s be real, Trade Chat (and the Internet itself) is littered with asshats, plain and simple. Why is that the case? I highly recommend everyone taking a look at this article by John Suler called The Psychology of CyberSpace. Mr. Suler does a really good job discussing why we do things online that we wouldn’t necessarily do them “IRL”; a good read.

How many times have you seen, “oh that’s gay” or, “fag” used in trade chat? How about, “girls can’t play WOW,” “get back in the kitchen,” or, “so-and-so jewed me on this GDKP run?” Probably more times than you notice. It’s a result of the “you don’t know me!” and “you can’t see me!” mantra that the Internet provides. People approach the game as if they have a shroud, often disassociating reality from the game. Why should they be culpable for what they do in a MAKE BELIEVE world?

(c)2004 Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins

In an online universe, people say things that they would never say in a real life environment. Call me naive, but I highly doubt any of these people actually mean what they are saying.

I’ll use “fag” as an example, because it’s one that affects me personally. The word has a negative connotation. Does that mean I have to accept that people say it? No, it doesn’t. But I don’t feel compelled to go around correcting everyone, informing them of the origin of the word faggot and its association with a negative term for gay men, either.

Still, I’m not afraid to make a comment here and there if something irritates me or bothers me. If someone is bold enough to personally call me a faggot or is otherwise negative towards me in game, I’ll confront them. If someone in raid goes, “that’s so gay!” I often times reply with, “yeah, it’s so damn straight!” A friend of mine will say, “Yeah, but not as gay as me sleeping with your dad.” It’s hyperbole, and that’s the point — to show how absurd it sounds.

People will ridicule and mock things that are different or that which they don’t understand. It doesn’t mean that we have to put up with it. But as a gay gamer, I should be prepared to deal with it.

There are plenty of good people who do recognize who you are as a whole (or as much as you can show through an internet friendship). Many of my good friends I have made in game understand that my sexuality is only part of who I am. My guild knows I am one of our strongest healers, and that’s that. We do ”spar” with sexuality and whatnot in guild chat and Ventrilo, but it really is all in good fun. If I was offended and said something, they would recognize that offense and correct it because they respect me as a person. Through happenstance, I have become real life friends with many people in the WOW community. I’ve met several players in real life and consider many of them friends. The WOW community, and the Internet for that matter, allow all of us to meet people we otherwise would not have met (or “met”) — and for that I am grateful. Much love to many of my guildmates (Avalonna included), Seven and Brian of Raid Warning, Leech of This is Outcasted, Thespius, Fox a Fellow Blogger/Bostonian/new guildmate, and many others. All of these people are exceptionally diverse, and we respect one another for who we are as a whole person, not just one aspect of our identity.

Who your raiders are in real life is ultimately irrelevant to your gameplay. Are they a woman? Are they in a wheelchair? Are they gay? Are they black? Are they Jewish? It doesn’t matter. They are your main tank. They are your top DPS. They are your clutch healer. You should raid and respect them as a player and as a tank/dps/healer. But just as being a tank/DPS/healer is only part of their identity, so too do these other parts of their identity comprise only PART of their identity.

If they are solid players and your raid is ultimately better as a result of them being in it, respect that fact in and of itself. That is the point that Blizzard is trying to make with their post the other day. Yes, part of it is to make the WOW community a friendlier place, of course, but ultimately a good player is a good player is a good player.

I am sure people will disagree with this post, in fact, I’d bet on it. Frankly, I don’t care. This faggot is a far better priest than you and I’ll hit you with my purse if you say otherwise.

The One About Identity and Culpability… is a post from: Tales of a Priest

It was a dark and stormy night… Ok it wasn’t stormy, but it was dark – I went out last night for Margaritas with some friends, and we found out one of them plays wow… we all wind up back at my place, so my friend Anthony asks if he can see my account. Sure.

I try logging in, put my authenticator password in… Invalid.

I chuckle, and try again.

Invalid.
Invalid.

I try to log into Account Management.

Invalid.

I try to log into the Blizzard Forums.

Invalid.

…. fuck.

I check the armory hoping my character is still clothed. She is. /phew

I send Avalonna a text asking her to check if my toon is online. She texts back saying she’d check and let me know.

“Nope, not online.”

I’m sitting there thinking, “I know when you change your password you get an email letting you know you changed your password.” (I did it just the other day)…. yet I have no email.

Let’s try one more time, and then I’ll call customer support tomorrow morning. Boom. I get in. Hmm… is it really unlikely that after several pitchers of margaritas that I can’t type a password…. apparently so.

Friends don’t let friends drink and try to type in passwords.

While, my story is funny – there are other stories that do not end this way. They end with naked gnomes with not a copper to their name, and guild banks plundered… both of those things are very scary!

EVERYONE SHOULD GET AN AUTHENTICATOR. Period. The end. One of the more recent tactics of compromised accounts, is that the Hacker immediately puts an authenticator on the account. What this does, is that it makes it even more difficult for you to get your account back since you can’t even log in and change the password back. Most smartphones have the ability to download the Blizzard Authenticator for free or for a nominal charge – and I urge everyone to get one.

Yes, typically you need to do something to get hacked – be that a phishing scam, going to unscrupulous sites, downloading things from non-official webpages, using powerleveling services, etc. However, it is not unheard of that people who do not do any of these still sometimes fall victim to keyloggers.  You hear that excuse quite often: “Well I don’t go to weird sites and click ads or links.” or “I don’t watch Furry porn and type in my password there.” or “Those fake Beta Cataclysm emails go straight into my trash bin.” Be that as it may, you still can be hacked! These keyloggers are tricky… they don’t simply have a big banner ad that reads: “I’m loggin ur keyz!”

Blizzard recently launched their Account Security page, which does a fairly good overview about how to keep your account safe.

That being said, Tales of a Priest will be giving a Blzzard Authenticator away!! (Canada and US players only). To enter into this contest simply send an email to contests(at)talesofapriest.com with your characters name, realm, and a quick note! We’ll be picking a winner at random on Noon EST February 7th, 2010! Good luck!

Derevka’s Account Hacked? And A Contest! is a post from: Tales of a Priest

They will fight provided you have Fuel for them, which from the sounds of it will likely be a future reward. (Tomorrow?)

Don’t miss a single post! Remember to sign up for my RSS feed.

Mt. Dew Game Fuel Pet Now Available is a post from: Tales of a Priest

When I showed up to a raid as a male dwarf, I got tons of comments on Ventrilo, whispers, raid chat, and /gasp emotes. After all, I have been playing D as a female dwarf for over 4 years now. People expect me to be a certain way, visually. Showing up contrary to that surprises.

I have to admit, I couldn’t get used to it. The audio cues when I was /lol, out of range, on cooldown, or even death just sounded wrong. I kept hearing the male dwarf emotes and thinking, “Who was that?!” It wasn’t Derevka.

Creating your character visually has got to be one of the most important parts to bonding to your toon. It sets the tone and feel to the game. Playing Derevka as a male dwarf just simply didnt feel right. It was as if I was playing another person’s account with the same UI as mine. I wasn’t playing Derevka.

The countdown to Blizzard’s Character Re-Customization cooldown began. On the 11th, I went BACK to female-Derevka. I’ve raided a few nights since then, and the general reaction I got from many was, “Yay!”. I tend to agree… Yay!

I am not on an RP server, so it is really interesting how attached I am to my character. It isn’t a RP thing really. I think we ALL get attached to our toons. Especially those of us who raid or play regularly; we stare at the back of their heads for hours at a time.

Will the real Derevka please stand up?

Character RE-Re-Customization is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Yes, there are the situations when your party members need mana (or you do) and using it is tempting. If that is the case, communicate with the other healers… however think before you assume doing it is ok. If you are low on mana, it usually means the other healers are too… are they able to pick up your slack for the next 8 seconds? Or consider using your Guardian Spirit as well.

Lets discuss fights/phases that you can typically safely use Divine Hymn:

1. Malygos Phase 2 Transition – You have 15 seconds or so during the transition where Malygos has a dialog and the adds start to arrive. In my guild I instruct all non-shadow priests to use their Hymn during this transition. (If you have more than 1 in the same group its quite nice and a good deal of mana restoration)

2. Loetheb - taking time to stop assisting the DPS with Shields, Holy Fire, SWP, etc to channel this spell before the healing debuff wears off is another good place to use this spell. Returning mana to the “real dps” classes is better than you getting off a couple of 2k-3k smites.

3. Gothik the Harvester – in between waves you should have enough time to get off a full channel before you get more mobs coming at ya.

4. Anub’Rekhan Kite Phase – While the tank is busy running around the arc of the room the MT healers should be able to pop Hymn and be able to return mana to the party while the non-priest healers keep up the Add-Tanks who are on the Crypt Lords & Corpse Scarabs who may still be up.

Just find a time you can use it, and use it! However, that doesn’t mean I’m not hoping Blizzard changes this so its not a 8 second channel… oh no, quite the contrary.

Hymn of Hope- practical uses? is a post from: Tales of a Priest