Big happenings are coming down the line this week, and this little harpy is prepared, I tell you! I have my picnic blanket, I have a bottle of bubbly, and a spot picked out on one of the hillocks in Durotar with a perfect view of Orgrimmar. The fireworks are going to be magnificent, I can just feel it. I expect to see the sparkle of new spells and the stompy stomp stomp of dinosaurs, and more life in that place since - well, since it must have been before Outland was the new favorite hangout. So! Since I don’t have much time to waste with you people (must procure munchies for the festivities!), I have prepared … a list! Everyone loves lists. Shutup, you love lists.

Things Hanners is looking forward to by this weekend:

Going through a bunch of Scarlet fanatics in Strath - with a gorilla as a tank.

More bank space for cute outfits because my pets and mounts will be ‘spells’.

New spells! Zot.

Dinosaurs EVERYWHERE. Stompy stompy stompy.

Better threat management, maybe?

Druids with an out-of-combat rez, so that ferlol cat is not completely worthless.

New warrior abilities. I can’t WAIT to see some of those things in action.

Paladins with weird new ways of doing things - I dunno much about this, but just the idea of any new things for my favorite multi-monster tankers makes me so happyface I may have just respecced holy without need of a trainer. (As opposed to discipline.)

Death knights. Wait, are they coming this week?

Northrend - no, not this week?

MAMMOTHS! - not this week?

Okay, so I may wind up just sulking while dodging Rhinos, but it started out positive. Picnic time!

Some interesting WoW news this morning. I’m hardly the first to mention it, but it looks like Blizzard is going to be pushing a large content patch out for all WoW players that will contain some of the Wrath of the Lich King changes.

The official announcement :

With the release of Wrath of the Lich King approaching, we wanted to provide you with some important information. In preparation for the expansion, we will be issuing a new content patch in the coming weeks. Much like the patch made available shortly before The Burning Crusade’s release, this content patch is designed to bridge current game content with that of the expansion and will contain some exciting changes and additions.

We have outlined some of the larger features scheduled to release with the patch below:

New class spells and talents
Stormwind Harbor
Barbershops in capital cities
Zeppelin towers outside of Orgrimmar and Tirisfal Glades
Two brand-new Arenas featuring challenging new layouts, terrain hazards, and moving obstacles
Guild calendar
Hunter pet skill revamp
New profession: Inscription

As mentioned above, this is not a comprehensive list, just some of the major highlights. We’ll post the full patch notes as soon as they’re available. Regarding Inscription, please note that all Burning Crusade players will be able to select Inscription as one of their two professions and level up to a skill level of 375 with it. Upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King, players who purchase and install the expansion will be able to continue leveling in Inscription and the other professions beyond 375.

Big Bear Butt and Matticus both posted on the issue before I woke up this morning, and I think both of them have good points.

Bear is optimistic, looking forward to being able to play with the new talent trees and Inscription before the expansion actually comes out.

Matticus is more pugnacious and pessimistic, viewing the patch as the death of raiding, and pointing out some rather gaping flaws in the logistics of releasing this information early.

Me? I agree with both of them. Matticus is definitely looking from the perspective of the hard-core raider. And Bear is looking from the perspective of the casual raider.

And they’re both right.

I do hope that the concerns Matticus brought forth, especially with regards to Mana Regen and Crushing Blows changes are evaluated before this patch is actually finalized, because he has a very good point. The new talent trees are keyed toward the changes in gameplay that WotLK will bring, and NOT to the gameplay currently in effect. I remain cautiously optimistic that it won’t change so much as to actually kill raiding, though.

Matticus also worries about chugging mana pots and the death of downranking. I imagine I’ll cover those later (after the final information about them goes live) but for me, I’m excited about these particular changes. I’ve always been someone who resented having to use mana potions, and who thought that downranking seemed counter-productive. I’ve been in the minority on these, and I’ve come to the unhappy understanding that they become more and more necessary as higher level content is breached…but in the end, I approve of those particular changes. Not, as Matticus noted, perhaps before the gear that supports those changes is available, as well as the content for it.

But I am supportive and excited, nonetheless.

I’ve been avoiding posting on Wrath updates for the same reason I rarely post on upcoming patches - nothing is REAL and FINAL until it goes live.

I’m posting on THIS because I was very surprised to hear we’d be getting content this soon, and I think that surprise is going to make me do some more detailed research into the talent trees currently available for priests. And if I get the opportunity to do that, maybe you guys would appreciate the heads up as well.

Also, I’m inordinately excited about the hair stylist. Vonya’s hair, although lovely and excellent, cuts through 90% of the helms available to her. The only ones that have ever actually looked good were halo-types - ones that float above her head. And even though it’s not in-character for her, if I can get the flying propeller braids of my beloved dwarf priestess on her, I may have to seriously consider it.

It’s a well-known fact that twirling and spinning braids actually increase your healing power. It’s science.

And, of course, Khuuna is excited about the hunter pet skill revamp being available. If that comes hand in hand with the “tamed pet levels up to you” change, she’ll be sporting a bear sooner than you can say “democrats.”

Also, I love that Inscription is going to be available soon. As Bear mentioned, with JC you couldn’t access the skill until the expansion came out, resulting in an explosion of Auction House prices that took ages to die down.

Hopefully, this will allow people to get the skill up to 375 in preparation for the expansion content, so they don’t have to spend all their time in lowbie areas, ganking plant nodes from each other.

I currently have no thoughts on the Guild Calendar. Time will tell on that one, I think. The question is really - what guilds is it aimed at? Very small guilds probably don’t need one. Medium guilds may, but also may not have structured raiding and soforth that would need a calendar. Large guilds already have complex websites to do the raid signups.

My prediction? It’ll be used for RP guilds and to post birthdays more than it will for raiding.

The patch itself indicates to me that they feel the Expansion is almost ready. To release talent trees, they must feel confident that they’re balanced (enough) for live players, and to release that MUCH content, and say it’ll happen “in the coming weeks”, they must expect the expansion to come out relatively soon afterwards. Since I was half-wondering if next Christmas might be a reasonable guess for release date, that bumps up WotLK sooner than I’d personally expected.

And…I think that’s enough rambling. I’d intended to post on a few other non-patch related things, but I don’t think I have time. Hope y’all are having a lovely week!

Belated, I know. But better late than never, right?

Right.

Step by step, let’s go through the changes, and how they affect me personally, and the classes I play.

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This is mostly just a link, and thus doesn’t count as a “meat and potatoes” type of entry.

Curse Gaming Preview of Shattered Sun Offensive Content

An excellent source of information, and I don’t know about you guys, but I’m all giddy at the upcoming content. <3

Those of you who know me know that I don’t usually like to spend much time talking about upcoming patches until they become a reality.

Things keep changing and getting nerfed and renerfed right up to the point of deployment, so I don’t generally see much value in speculation and preparation for things that may never even come to pass.

Keeps me from getting my fragile little hopes up too high.

HOWEVER.

However, 2.4 looks like it’s got some stuff that - if it makes it all the way to live - we’re all gonna wish we’d spent a little time preparing for. (And oddly enough, all three add up to very good reasons to run Heroic Botanica)

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Priests

* Blessed Recovery: This talent can now trigger while the Priest is sitting.
* Blessed Resilience: This talent can now trigger while the Priest is sitting.
* Chastise (NEW) is now available to Dwarf and Draenei priests at level 20. Chastise causes Holy damage and incapacitates the target for 2 seconds.
* Circle of Healing: The base amount of healing from this spell has been reduced along with increasing the bonus it receives from bonus healing effects. Characters with more than 1338 healing will see their Circle of Healing heal for more than previous patches. Characters with less than 1338 healing will see their Circle of Healing heal for less.
* Cure Disease and Abolish Disease range increased to 40 yards.
* Divine Spirit: It is no longer possible for a target to simultaneously have Divine Spirit rank 5 and Prayer of Spirit Rank 1 icons showing at the same time.
* Elune’s Grace (Night Elf) effect changed to reduce chance to be hit by melee and ranged attacks by 20% for 15 seconds. There is now only 1 rank of the spell.
* Fear Ward is now available to all priests at level 20. Duration reduced to 3 minutes, cooldown increased to 3 minutes.
* Fixed a bug where the global cooldown was triggered when shifting out of Shadowform.
* Focused Will (NEW Discipline Talent) - After taking a critical hit you gain the Focused Will effect, reducing all damage taken by 1/3/5% and increasing healing effects on you by 4/7/10% for 8 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times.
* Holy Fire: The tooltip on rank 4 has been adjusted.
* Inner Focus will now properly affect Lightwell Rank 4
* Inner Focus: This effect is now properly consumed by casting Mind Soothe.
* Meditation (Discipline) increased to 10/20/30% mana regeneration.
* Mind Soothe: This spell will now consume Inner Focus.
* Mind Vision: Now consumes the Inner Focus buff when cast.
* Pain Suppression (Discipline Talent) is now usable on friendly targets, instantly reduces the target’s threat by 5%, reduces damage taken by 40% and its cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes.
* Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing and Holy Nova (healing effect) now gain additional benefit from spell damage and healing bonuses.
* Prayer of Mending: This ability will no longer be overwritten when the new Prayer of Mending would do less healing.
* Power Word: Fortitude, Divine Spirit, Prayer of Fortitude and Prayer of Spirit mana costs reduced.
* Power Word: Shield now gains additional benefit from spell damage and healing bonuses. Base absorb values of ranks 10, 11 and 12 have been reduced.
* Shackle Undead: This spell will now always be removed correctly if multiple Priests overwrite each other’s Shackle Undead.
* Shadow Word: Death: Resilience no longer reduces the backlash damage from this spell.
* Starshards (Night Elf) is no longer channeled, costs 0 mana, is now a Magic effect, lasts 15 seconds, causes damage every 3 seconds and has a 30 second cooldown.
* Starshards: The damage per tick of this ability no longer changes during the duration of the effect.
* If you are in Shadowform and try to use an ability that my not be used in Shadowform, you will leave Shadowform and use that ability. This can be disabled with /console autoUnshift 0
* Silent resolve: This talent now benefits the triggered buffs from Blessed Resilience, Blessed Recovery, and Martyrdom.

Aside from a few tweaks to talents that I, as a PvE healing priest, do not have, there are a few very important priest changes to note in 2.3.
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1) I was utterly WRONG about warlocks being able to send the frisbee on.

This ability will now be triggered when a player takes damage from effects placed on friendly targets.

That sure sounds like Lifetap to me! But I’ve confirmed, it doesn’t work at all. Warlocks are still not the sharing type. *cry*

2) Lightwell. I like it. Somewhat. I say that cooldown is way too long, but at least it’s something I’ll use now. We tried it out in a couple of heroic runs, and it came in handy. I don’t believe I’d have had any problems with healing the situation without it, though, which means my OFFICIAL position on the spell is that sometimes it’s kinda nice to have.

It DOES heal for a lot now. I basically tacked a one thousand in front of the old healing amount, so it now does nearly 1,800 (not quite) per tick. The warlock likes it. I wouldn’t advise someone to try and bend over backwards to get the spell, nor is it something I’d expect another priest in the group to have.

But it’s better than it was, and situationally useful. I’ve heard people argue that every spell we have is “situational” and that’s true, but the situation where I use Binding Heal (as an example) happens with far more regularity.

It is most useful in a fight where the ranged dps is taking periodic damage. Not steady damage, but periodic. And with enough time between hits that they can use the Lightwell and not have the effect canceled.

The cooldown makes it useless for reducing downtime between fights. The number of charges makes it less useful for use on longer fights (like Nightbane. I’ll use it on Nightbane, mind you, it would just be a lot more useful if it had…say…ten charges).

BUT, it’s definitely much improved over the old version, and I wasn’t doing anything with that talent point anyway. In Kara, I think it’ll be useful on every single bossfight, and that’s a good enough recommendation for me.

3) I was told that Frisbee got a new graphic. I didn’t notice a difference…did anyone else?

4) I’m still distraught over the warlock thing. I was so HOPEFUL. I was so SURE! *crycry*

Patchmaker, Patchmaker, make me a patch!
Give me a Buff,
Please no more Nerfs!

Am I the only one who sometimes looks at Patch Notes and goes “DAaaAAaaAAng, I didn’t even know I could do that!!” ?

• Power Regeneration: Any effect which triggers a change in your rate of power regeneration (Mana, Rage, Energy, Focus) will now cause an immediate reward of some power at the old rate of increase, and then begin new “ticks” of power at the new rate approximately 2 seconds later. This was done to improve functionality of abilities such as Evocation and Innervate so that they did not have wasted “ticks”.
• Focused Power: This talent now increases the hit chance of all components of Mass Dispel correctly.
• Inner Focus: This ability will no longer lose charges when Shadowguard or Touch of Weakness is triggered.
• Lightwell: The heals from this ability are now increased by the bonus healing effects on the Priest.
• Mass Dispel: The portion of this spell that removes immunity effects (Blessing of Protection, Ice Block, etc.), now has a chance to be resisted, and will display correctly to the combat log. It will no longer cause Rogues and Druids in Cat Form to lose stealth.
• Mind Control: Creatures immune to this spell will now cause an immediate error message rather than make it seem like the spell succeeded with no effect.
• Mind Control duration against PvP targets has been reduced to 10 seconds.
• Pain Suppression: This talent will now reduce the chance for any buff on the Priest to be dispelled, rather than reduce the chance of dispelling buffs cast while it is active.
• Prayer of Mending: This spell can no longer jump to an Imp with Phase Shift active. It will also no longer cause the healed target to stand up.
• Prayer of Mending: This ability will now be triggered when a player takes damage from effects placed on friendly targets.
• Shadowguard: This ability will now work properly even when the Priest is stunned, fleeing, or incapacitated.
• Shackle Undead: It is no longer possible to have Shackle Undead on two targets at the same time in the outdoor world.
• Surge of Light: This ability now properly grants its effects to one and only one casting of Smite each time it activates. Interaction issues with Inner Focus have been fixed.
• Touch of Weakness: This ability will now trigger properly if struck while mounted.

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Patch 2.1.2 comes out today. Here are the bits that seem most interesting to the average priest.

• Feedback: This buff can now proc when the Priest is sitting.
• Shadowfiend: This creature will now reset to full health when it is summoned. It will also automatically attack your current enemy target when it is summoned.
• Surge of Light: The buff from Surge of Light will no longer prevent Inner Focus’s charge from being consumed. In addition, it is no longer possible to get two free Smites when this ability procs.
• Touch of Weakness: This spell can now trigger Surge of Light when it does critical strikes.

The Shadowfiend is my favorite change - Mother of monkeys was that annoying, to call in your already gimpy Innervate, and have him stand next to you like a lump of clay.

I ended up making a quickie macro : /cast Shadowfiend /petattack : and then punching it a few times to force the pet to fight.

With this change, I won’t need it any more, but I may keep it anyway just for brevity’s sake. Saves me a pet bar.