Don’t Nerf ICC Bro!

If I could say four words to Blizzard right now, I would say “Don’t nerf ICC bro!”

Blizz has stated that they intend to eventually deploy a buff which will increase damage, health, regen, yadda yadda yadda for players inside the instance thereby making the raid less difficult.  Blizz has also stated that the buff will get progressively bigger as time goes on, thereby gradually decreasing the difficulty of the instance.

Overall, I like the concept.  I JUST DON’T WANT TO SEE THE FCUKING BUFF IMPLEMENTED ANYTIME SOON.

Seriously.  I am really enjoying the fact that progression in ICC is slow.  The encounters are challenging, and when you finally beat them, there is a wonderful sense of accomplishment.  (<Covenant> finally downed Festergut and Rotface this week on 25-man.  And it kicked fcuking ass.) 

So the announcement today that they are removing normal mode limited attempts has me really concerned that Blizz is going to flip the switch on easy mode ICC sooner rather than later.  WoW.com article is here.

Blizz, if you are reading this, DON’T DO IT.

Seriously.

On a somewhat related note, I have it on pretty good authority from a dependable source close to the Lich King himself that on February 2nd, Arthas emerged from his citadel and saw his shadow. 

Which hopefully means that there are at least 6 weeks of un-nerfed ICC left.

“Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don’t forget your booties ’cause it’s cooooold out there today.”

Vess

PVP Shields Get 10% Nerf As Well

Blizz caved to the drooling masses that complained about Disc Priest and Paladin shields not being subject to the 10% healing reduction in PVP that recently took effect, and reduced shields by 10% to match.  The wow.com article is here.

Can’t say that I am too happy about the change, but it’s Friday morning, and I am normally pretty grumpy on Friday mornings.  I am gonna go grab some coffee and ponder this some more.  brb

back (coffee courses through veins, and red haze of nerd rage seems to fade . . . somewhat)

It is fair to say that while not happy with this change, I am not entirely surprised either.  I figured that the odds were 50/50 we would see this change follow the healing nerf.  I gave it those odds, because there are different ways of looking at shields.

PVP Welfare Epics Are Back!

I strolled over to the Hall of Champions (or whatever its called) in Org on Tuesday to see what new goodness was on sale for the PVP crowd, and couldn’t believe what I saw:

ilevel 264 Wrathful Gladiator offset pieces (wrist, neck, back and trinket) available for Honor Points.  That’s right: Honor Points.  No Arena Points, no Arena Ratings, just straight up honor.

In addition to the above, the entire line of ilevel 245 Relentless Gladiator offset pieces are available for Honor Points as well. 

Furthermore, the ilevel 251 Relentless set pieces can be purchased for a combination of Honor Points and Arena Points.  No Arena Rating is required to purchase these items either.  (Meaning you can lose 10 Arena matches a week for Arena Points, or do the BG Daily quest which also awards Arena Points without even setting foot in the arena.)

All of which means that a freshly dinged level 80 toon can now farm honor in Wintergrasp and the BGs, and outfit him or herself with tier 9 or better gear, without setting foot in a raid instance.  And although the gear will have plenty of resilience on it, which is a wasted stat in PVE, the itemization of the ilevel 245+ gear is not soo horrendous as to make it unusable.

In short: PVP welfare epics are back!

10-Man Heroic Saurfang Downed & Progression Update

Apparently the Saurfang encounter was set to heroic last night for both 10 and 25 man raids.  I have not seen Blizz confirm this yet, but then again I didn’t read through all 20 pages of the thread on the forums either.

My 10-man team was in ICC last night, and we ran the encounter without any knowledge of the bug.  The week before, we killed Saurfang with zero marks, but last night, we had our first mark go out when Saurfang was at 60%.  We ended up one-shotting him, with two marks out when he bit the dust. 

Since we have been face rolling the Lower Spire for a couple weeks, and just got our OT back from his account being hacked (/wave to Zapan), we just figured that people got sloppy on the attempt, and moved on.

So I had to laugh this morning when I read about Saurfang being on hard mode.  Without even knowing about the bug, we one-shotted him, with no deaths and only 2 marks going out.  Awesome.

From Rawr to Meow (?)

As you may have heard, Blizz is implementing its PVP healing nerf to partially counter the effects of the recent resilience changes.  The wow.com article is here.

So high resilience Disc Priests might be a little less hard to kill than we were last week.  (I really hope you got to enjoy our brief moment in the sunshine.)

Some have suggested that because mitigation has not been affected by the resilience buff or the healing nerf, that Disc Priests will become unstoppable.  While it is true that mitigation has not been reduced in the way that healing and burst damage have, I do not believe that shields have become totally OP. 

Disc Priests are Hard to Kill (again) ((finally))

Season 8 Disc Priest

The double resilience change went live, and ZOMG are Disc Priests hard to kill again.

Like, late-BC-PVP-welfare-epics-Disc-Priest hard to kill.

With a solid set of PVP gear, and some skill, you can easily priest tank 2-3 dps in battlgrounds.  You can also DoT/lolsmite/outlast almost any non-healer class one-on-one.

I kid you not, I had more solo kills this weekend, than I probably have had in the past year. 

In one Wintergrasp, I took on a Boomkin who was softening up a cannon.  Half way through the fight, a DK jumps me.  I managed to kill the DK, and then finish off the Boomkin.  Solo.  Then, before I could even get back to full mana, a Ret Pally decides I look like an easy target.  I buried him, and then I also killed the mage that tried to light me up immediately after I killed the Pally.  Now clearly the level of play in Wintergrasp is not very high, but a healer beating a 2 on 1, followed by 2 solo kills, on like 1.5 mana bars is just retarded.

Can Disc Priests Compete As Tank Healers In Progression Content?

There seems to be a lot of talk on the interwebs about how Disc Priests cannot tank heal effectively on progression content anymore. 

Most recently, Paolo over at Penance Priest gave a pretty discouraging review of Disc Priest tank healing after he jumped into progression content alongside two solid Healadins.  You can read his article here. 

While I respect Paolo’s opinions, I do not share his beliefs on the state of Disc Priest tank healing.

So how can the two of us have such differing views on the subject?  Simple, we follow two very different schools of thought when it comes to stat priorities.

Arena Season 8 Disc PVP Spec

Season 8 begins next week, and I think I am ready to get back into the arena on a consistent basis.

Gearwise, I am 4/5 Furious 1/5 Relentless, with Furious offset pieces in all other slots, with the exception of my rings and weapons.  I am using Marrowgar’s Frigid Eye and Ashen Band of Unmatched Wisdom in lieu of PVP rings at the moment, because they are just so damned good.  I also picked up a Mag’hari Chieftain’s Staff off Saurfang in ICC-10 the other day, and dropped 2 stam gems into it for my PVP set, till I can get something better.

Here is the spec I will be running this season:  Season 8 Disc PVP Spec

Show Me The Money: Tailoring

I am by no means an AH warrior.  Most of the time, I am lucky to have 1,000g on all my toons combined.  I don’t farm (more than I have to), I don’t quest (much), I don’t play the AH.

But I do manage to make some money now and then.  Most recently, I have been making great money selling the ilevel 245 crafted bracers:  Royal Moonshroud Bracers and Bejeweled Wizard’s Bracers.

On my server, you can generally get the mats for around 1500-2000g.  The Moonshroud sell for 3,000g, and the Bejeweled for 3,500g.  If you have Emblems of Triumph lying around, you can drop your cost even further by turning in emblems for the Crusader Orbs.

Season 2 Fcuking Rules

Merciless Gladiator's Investiture

For the record, I seriously dislike the recent  models for the Priest tier sets.  Tier 9 had us looking like warlocks.  Tier 10 makes me feel like a mage.  Tier 8 was alright, but it is no where near as cool as Season 2.

I love the look of Season 2. 

When I am standing around in Dalaran, I wear Season 2. 

Oftentimes after the first pull in a random heroic, I wear Season 2.

Season 2 is how a Priest should look.

Some people think I am nuts for keeping 7 pieces of level 70 PVP gear in my bags.  They think I am bat shit crazy when they notice that I have epic gems and enchants on my Season 2 gear.

They are probably right.

But when you look this fcuking cool, it’s ok if people think you’re crazy.

Vess