Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Priestly Patch Notes: 3.1

I'd be remiss if I didn't post a log of the possible pretty patch notes pertaining to priests of a particularly purplish persuasion. Gleaned from MMO Champion, which is a little confusing to read until you scroll past the "undocumented changes" section, which I won't delve into here.

Spell changes:
  • Devouring Plague: This spell now has a new icon.
  • Shadowfiend: Health scaling increased. Now receives 30% of the master's spell power. Mana return increased to 5%, up from 4%. The Shadowfiend now receives mana when its melee attacks land, rather than when it deals damage. Movement speed normalized to player movement speed. Tooltip revised. (Anon's note: SQUEE!!!! I love you, ShadowFRIEND! Let's be together forever. It's only a matter of time before he's a proper combat pet.)
Talent changes:
  • Blackout: This talent has been removed. (Anon's note: I forgot we even had this.)
  • Darkness: This talent is now in tier-1, moved up from tier-6.
  • Dispersion: Now clears all snare and movement impairing effects and makes you immune to them while dispersed.
  • New Talent: Improved Devouring Plague (Shadow): Increases the periodic damage done by your Devouring Plague by 5/10/15%, and when you cast Devouring Plague you instantly deal damage equal to 5/10/15% of its total periodic effect. (Anon's note: This is too fantastic. DP is already my highest refresh-rate, and now with the instant damage, I'm going to be even MORE meticulous about cooldowns.)
  • Shadowform: Bonus damage from critical strike chance removed and replaced by the ability of those periodic damage spells to generate critical strikes. (Anon's note: Hmm... I'll have to see this in practice before I conclude anything.)
  • Silence: Range increased to 30 yards.
  • Vampiric Embrace duration increased to 5 minutes, up from 1 minute. PvP duration is now 60 seconds. Cooldown removed.
Exciting patch all around! With the changes, I think this will be my new spec. Comments?

Monday, February 23, 2009

Shadow Priests and Naxx 25 (Part 2)

The long awaited (or maybe not) second part to my ongoing series of raid strategies for Shadow Priests. Continuing now with the Arachnid wing of Naxxramas.

Anub'Rekhan (or, aaaah! beeeeeeees!)
This guy is a big crustacean-looking vampire-ish thing (he can't wait to drink your blood). I'm not even going to go into the strategy really, because all you do is deal damage. First you damage the boss, then you damage the Crypt Guards he summons, then you damage the boss again. You do all of this from the center of the room; a nice convenient circle where everyone (except melee and tanks) stands. Things to remember:
  • Occasionally, you will be launched into the air. Just ignore this and resume casting as soon as you are back on the ground.
  • People will probably be saying things in vent about swarms, healing tanks, and kiting, but really you can just turn your little bod in one spot and dps most of the time. If you have the mind flay glyph you may not even have to move back and forth in the circle.
  • He drops between 3 and 5 things you might want, so pay attention to the loot.
Grand Widow Faerlina (or, just say NO to religious fanaticism)
I just love the story behind this creepy lady. She's the only humanoid boss in the wing, and she appears to be leading an induction ceremony of some sort when you first come into the room. There are two ways to do this fight as a shadow priest, and which you do depends largely upon your group's gear level. If you're stepping into the room with mostly Ulduar-ready people, you will just kill the followers and Faerlina straight out. DPS fight all the way. You don't have to care about her abilities or anything. If, however, you are going with a less-geared group, you'll want to follow this strategy:
  1. At the beginning of the fight, you need to go stand close to the Worshippers, at least in Mind Control range.
  2. When Faerlina goes into a Frenzy after 50 seconds (you can do some DPS if you are close enough), Mind Control one of the Naxxramas Worshippers. NOTE: Do not try to Mind Control the Followers, as they are dumb and useless. Faerlina enrages, and the Worshippers calm her down by giving her a hug and telling her she is a pretty princess pants.
  3. If fire starts raining from the sky, move your cutie patootie.
  4. Calling things by pet names is a good way to both alleviate stress and annoy your guildies.
There are 4 worshippers, so you will potentially have to MC 4 times. If you have to MC 4 times, you are probably going to wipe anyway. After doing this strat with your guild a few times, you should just be able to burn down Faerlina and not even bother with the MC.

Maexxna (or, Oh what a Tangled Web we Weave)
The final boss in the spider wing of Naxxramas is a giant spider named Maexxna. This fight will test your attention span. It's very simple from the priest's perspective, but you do have to pay attention.

Basically all you have to do is DPS mister spider and watch for Web Wrap. Basically, Maexxna sends a couple of people flying to the back wall and wraps them in...you guessed it...a web cocoon. Your job (if your raid leader assigns you) is to destroy the web wrap before it kills your raid buddy. I find that 2 Mind Flays and a SW:D take care of it nicely. There will be up to 3 of these all the time. Other ranged should be helping, but kill as fast as you can.

That's about it for this week's installment on Shadow Priesting in Naxx25. I do hope you've gotten something out of it. Now, wish me luck as I try to tackle the real world problem of fixing the computer that feeds my WoW habit. Toodles!

Monday, February 16, 2009

Keeping it interesting

Today was going to be "boss fight strategy" day, but I started thinking about another topic: how to keep the game interesting between level 80 and the promised difficult content in the Ulduar patch.

I got back into WoW after a three-month hiatus, and had to play catch-up to all my guildmates who bought the expansion at release. I sped through the content, didn't read quest text, and paid little attention to what I was killing and why. I then blew through heroics to get the gear and experience needed to raid 25-man dungeons and become part of the progression group. Now I'm burned out again after this short a time. I can't bring myself to join the pick up groups for 10-man dungeon achievements, I have no need to run heroics, and my general demeanor toward logging on to do anything on my priest is tepid, almost to the point of apathy. This is a problem, because I don't WANT to be burned out. I WANT to be excited about this game again. I could level my other toons, but they're all in the guild, and I'm always in "leave me alone and get off my lawn" mode when leveling. That said, here's a short list of things I can do to not lose interest in the game.
  1. Blog about it - done and done.
  2. Listen to podcasts that are still excited about it - www.theinstance.net
  3. Level on another server where no one knows me
  4. Read up on WoW lore and do quests in interesting places.
That's what I've been doing, but I am still trying to think of more compelling things. Any suggestions?

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Shadow Priest Spells: Mind Flay

Mind Flay

Mind Flay (MF) is a channeled damage spell. It requires 10 points spent in the Shadow tree (i.e. you must be level 20), and is an absolute MUST HAVE for leveling, farming, endgame raiding, and pvp. Unless all you are doing is fishing, you will want this spell.

This is, for almost every situation, your high-damage-output spell. In its basic form, it reduces target's movement speed by 50%, and does damage as follows:
Rank Level Mana Cost Damage (over 3 sec)
1 20 10% of base mana 45
2 28 10% of base mana
108
3 36 10% of base mana 159
4 44 10% of base mana 222
5 52 10% of base mana 282
6 60 10% of base mana 363
7 68 9% of base mana 450
8 74 9% of base mana 492
9 80 9% of base mana 588
The first one at level 20 is, of course, the talented spell, but you train up through rank 9 after that. There is a Mind Flay glyph that increases the spell's range and removes the movement speed effect There is some argument about the usefulness of the glyph, but if you ask me, an additional 10 yards to do damage is better than 3 seconds of slow movement. In raids, this glyph is essential if you want to move around less. MF is also boosted by the following talents (as listed by WoWwiki):
So, even though the base damage chart looks somewhat sad and pathetic, keep in mind how much damage you can do with all your talents/stats. I've seen Mind Flay hit for 5k each tick. That's 15,000 damage over 3 seconds, and that, my darlings, is nothing short of fantastic. MF is perfect for pretty much every situation, and should be your main spell cast in between cooldowns. Figuring out when to leave it for a full cast versus when to cut it short is tricky, but my general rule is to use a full cast when there are no pressing DoT refreshes coming up in the next few seconds, and cut it short when there are.

This little thing comes in at number 5 on my opening rotation, which brings our Shadow Weaving stacks right on up to five. Now we can REALLY bring the pain.

Next time, we'll do more boss fight strategies for my lovely priesties!

Thursday, February 5, 2009

No Nerf for the Wicked

A little birdie just sent me to (VERY) unofficial patch notes for 3.1.0, and if they're real (people seem to think they are not), boy will I be excited. The full text can be found here, but I'll post just a few of the Shadow-Priesty things that made me squee my pants a little:
  • Mental Strength: Also increases armor contribution from items by 5%/10%/15%.
  • Mind Melt: Critical strike chance increased by 3%/6%.
  • Improved Shadow Word: Pain: Now increases damage by 5%/10%.
And from official blue posts via MMO Champion, here's a far more likely change that is prettah good.
  • Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.
That one seems more for PVP folks, but could be incredibly useful for a few boss fights here and there, and reducing magic damage is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS welcome. Even if the damage increases are naught but lies, I'll be happy with the Shadow Form and Dispersion buffs.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Shadow Priest Spells: Shadow Word: Death

Shadow Word: Death

Velcome to spell number four on our epic journey to Face-melty Priesthood. Shadow Word: Death is our instant-cast, cast-while-moving damage spell. The tooltip reads "A word of dark binding that inflicts X to Y Shadow damage to the target. If the target is not killed by Shadow Word: Death, the caster takes damage equal to the damage inflicted upon the target." This ability scales with gear/talents/glyphs etc. The damage it does to you, the caster, can also be mitigated somewhat, though the mechanics of that changed somewhat in the last patch. You probably notice that the icon for this spell is almost the same as the one for SW:P. Don't get confused!

Here is a handy dandy chart telling you base stats for SW:D:
Rank Level Mana Cost Damage
1 62 14% 450 to 522
2 70 12% 572 to 664
3
75
12%
639 to 741
4
80
12%
750 to 870
There are just a few quick things to note about SW:D.
  1. If you type it into many chat programs, people think you're smiling at them in a creepy way.
  2. The best times to use SW:D are at the very beginning of a fight, when your more important cooldowns are less than 2 seconds away, or when you want to kill yourself to avoid durability loss.
This is a short post for a spell, because this is a short spell. I use it as number 4 in my opening sequence, and apply as needed (while running/vortexed/not quite cooled down). Healers, please don't be alarmed when we suddenly lose 5,000 HP. We did it to ourselves! Remember warlock hellfire spam? It's like that only less obnoxious.

Next time, we'll take a look at a little beauty called Mind Flay. Toodles!