MMO Coverage

BattleTag Precedence

So what do your BattleTag friends see when you log into World of Warcraft, Diablo III, and Starcraft II all at the same time?

Well, first your friends and guild members get really snarky :D

Hehe, seriously though, in terms of what they actually see, Diablo III takes precedence, and you show up as being on your Diablo III character.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting test. Also, for the record, I had a Real ID friend of mine log into both World of Warcraft and Diablo III and it had the same behaviour; showing him as being in Diablo III.

Anyone else seeing anything different with either BattleTag or Read ID friends?

Published May 17 »

MoP Beta: Glyph of Lightspring

Glyph of Lightspring: Transforms your Lightwell into a Lightspring. Every 5 sec the Lightspring will attempt to heal party and raid members lower than 50% health for 5735 over 6 sec. Attacks done to the target equal to 30% of your total health will cancel the effect. Lightspring lasts for 3 min or until 15 heals are expended.

Oh yes please! This is looking to be an amazing Glyph for the much maligned and seldom used Lightwell. It appears to reduce the overall mana efficiency of Lightwell, but that isn't a huge issue, as Lightwell already was the most mana-effecient healing spell in the game.

Besides, if you use the Lightspring at times of high incoming damage, it has the potential to use all of the charges, and when was the last time you saw a group use all of the charges on your Lightwell?

Published May 15 »

MoP Beta Build 15689 Shaman Glyph Changes

The latest MoP BETA build contains several updated Shaman Glyphs.

• Glyph of Telluric Currents has been changed. It now causes your Lightning Bolt to restore 10% of your mana when it strikes an enemy, instead of restoring mana equal to 50% of the damage done. This is potentially a really big improvement to Telluric Currents. If I'm correct, this means the new Glyph should be a more reliable means of mana regeneration. In current Cataclysm content, Telluric Currents is a signficant part of the Shaman rotation. On some fights, it is nearly 20% of all of my spell casts.
• Glyph of Totemic Recall - Now restores 100% of the mana cost of your totems, instead of 50%. This is a great change, and even more reason to make sure and always recall your totems just before they expire!
• Glyph of Earth Shield is now the Glyph of Deluge. I'm not sure what to make of this; as it seems like a purely cosmetic glyph now. The old Glyph was arguably useless, but still, this seems like an odd change. Is the old Glyph of Earth Shield coming back in a future Mists of Pandaria build?
• Glyph of Lightning Shield is now the Glyph of the Lakestrider - You automatically gain Water Walking whenever you enter Ghost Wolf form. Whoa. This is just a huge nerf to the existing glyph. In fact, it's such a big nerf that I assume the old glyph is coming back in some way, or being incorporated right into the base Lightning Shield spell.
• The new Glyph of Thunderstorm no longer increases the mana return from using Thunderstorm like the old glyph did. This seems like an unnecessary nerf.
• Glyph of the Arctic Wolf has been changed to Glyph of the Spectral Wolf. This is kind of confusing, since I thought Ghost Wolf already looks kind of like a spectral wolf. Or does this make Ghost Wolf look like the Enhancement Shaman Feral Spirit Wolves?

Overall, I think these are good changes, with the exception of the loss of Glyph of Lightning Shield, and the change to the Glyph of Thunderstorm.

Published May 12 »

MoP Beta: Glyph of Confession

What does the new Glyph of Confession actually do? I assume it's some sort of "flavour" glyph that makes players do an emote or make up some kind of /say or /whisper command.

However, I just updated and logged into the Mists of Pandaria beta and I can't seem to find the glyph in game.

Published May 12 »

Dragon Soul Challenge Number 2

Only three weeks after the Live Raid Challenge between Method & Vodka, Athene is back with an even bigger four-guild Live Raid Dragon Soul Challenge!

Overview

• The event was hosted by Athene of Athene Live and Kinaesthesia of Learn 2 Raid.
• The competition was between Stars (Asia), Paragon (EU), Blood Legion (North America), and Exorsus (Russia).
• There were individual video streams for each guild, as well as a main live-stream hosted by Athene and Kinaesthesia. The main stream went up to over 55,000 viewers, with more than 400,000 viewers in total!
• None of the guilds were using the raid nerf, and all four guilds agreed not to skip any trash using bugs.

Morchok

• None of the guilds killed the extra Morchok trash on the sides, instead they pulled one split boss back up the entry ramp.
• Paragon and Stars appeared to kill Morchok at about the same time, but it was hard to tell with the stream lag.
• Exorsus killed Morchok, mounted up, and then immediately lost 7-8 players. It turned out after the fact that a crystal spawned that no one saw exploded, killing people.

Warlord Zon'ozz and Yor'sahj the Unsleeping

• Paragon and Exorsus went for Zon'ozz after Morchok, while Blood Legion and Stars went for Yor'sahj after Morchok.
• Exorsus didn't pull Zon'ozz immediately, even though they killed trash first. This appeared to cost them some valuable time.
• For Yor'sahj, all four guilds prioritized killing the green ooze as the highest priority.
• Paragon killed second boss first.
• Blood Legion killed second boss last.
• Paragon pulled third boss first.
• Blood Legion suicided right at the end of Zon'ozz, and almost messed it up with only two players surviving.

Hagara the Stormbinder

• Exorsus suicided off the top of the tower just before Hagara to remove Sated. I think this might have cost them some time.
• Stars pulled Hagara first, with Blood Legion only a few seconds behind.
• Blood Legion used a "plus" strategy for the Lightning Phase to instantly kill the totems, with the rest of the guilds using a very similar strategy.
• Stars and Paragon stacked in the middle for the Ice Phase (they had very few melee). Blood Legion stacked the ranged DPS in the middle, with the melee moving around the edge.
• Blood Legion is now in the lead, followed closely by Stars and Paragon, with Exorsus loosing players to some connectivity issues.
• I missed most of the Exorsus fight, but I did see that many Exorsus players ignored the ice walls, and ran straight through them. Because in Soviet Russia, players kill Ice Walls.

Ultraxion

• Stars and Exorsus suicided after starting Ultraxion trash
• As far as I could tell, Blood Legion didn't suicide, and pulled the Ultraxion trash first.
• At this point, the stream crashed... I guess the own3d services was owned... /golfclap :p

Warmaster Blackhorn

• All guilds used a cooldown rotation to handle the Barrages. Looked much easier than 10 person.
• Blood Legion raid leader yelled a lot because his raid was eating a lot of the charges.
• Blood Legion stacked on the edges of the ship where there was no fire. Seemed to make shockwave easier.
• Exorsus stacked up at the front
• Paragon stacked in the middle.
• Blood Legion killed Blackhorn first, with Stars only seconds behind.

The Spine of Deathwing

• Blood Legion had most DPS switch to Crit trinkets!
• Blood Legion used a risky "no roll" strategy after the killing the first tendon.
• Stars used a strat where they pulled the Amalgamations in a row in the middle and cleaved them.
• Stars killed The Spine of Deathwing first, with Blood Legion just behind them.
• Exorsus had 3-4 people disconnect in the middle of the fight, and ended up having to 4 heal the fight!

The Madness of Deathwing

• Blood Legion suicided off the back of the platform to get rid of Sated.
• All four groups used the same order: Green, Red, Yellow, Blue.
• All raids ignored the initial hit from the Bolt and used survivability CDs to finish the Corruption Tentacles.
• All raids used CD rotations for the parasites.
• Blood Legion almost caught up to Stars on the final platform.
• Stars lusted and ignored the adds for a few seconds to get a bit more DPS on Deathwing while Bloodlust was still up. I think this allowed them to pull even further ahead of the other groups.
• Stars downed The Madness of Deathwing first, to win the overall contest! Blood Legion was second, followed by Paragon, and Exorsus.

Summary

• The event raised over $16,000 in donations (as of when I stopped watching). At least one of the teams gave their prize money ($500) back to the charity.
• Paragon was ahead for the first three bosses, however, Blood Legion and Stars caught up with them and then passed them, with Blood Legion in the lead.
• Blood Legion lost their Druid tank on Spine, and Stars pulled ahead.
• Paragon used a strategy on The Spine of Deathwing that, unfortunately for them, allowed Blood Legion and Stars to pull fairly far ahead.
• Stars won at 5:42:57, with the next closest guild, Blood Legion killed Deathwing at 5:43:31. Paragon was next, with Exorsus finishing fourth.
• Exorsus seemed to have quite a few connectivity issues, which really hurt them overall.
• Overall, switching back and forth between the streams, Blood Legion was the most entertaining, with the raid leader being very loud. Conversely, the Stars team was very quiet, and even though I couldn't understand them when they did speak, they did appear to be very calm and collected.

Athene & Kinaesthesia

Overall the event was really great to watch. However, in my opinion, Athene and Kinaesthesia could have done a better job on the live-stream commenting. To be fair, Athene isn't really a PvE player, and Kina apparently hasn't raided for a while. Considering this I don't think they did a bad job, however, I feel like they could have done a lot better. In particular, they did make a few mistakes explaining the fights and covering the fight details. For example, they didn't even know all of the boss names, and the one time they tried to discuss the fight in detail (Yor'sahj) they managed to mix up which ooze was responsible for each effect.

In addition to being somewhat lacking in knowing the fights, Athene and Kina provided very little discussion of the strategies and raid compositions that each of the groups were running. The only comment that I remember hearing about raid composition was that Stars normally runs with a huge number of Mages. As far as I noticed, there were no comments about how many melee vs ranged DPS each group was running, the number of healers, the number of tanks, or anything about which classes the groups were favoring for each role.

At the very minimum I would have expected Athene & Kinaesthesia to be prepared with a few things:

1. An outline of the fights themselves so that they could discuss the details.
2. Some "insider information" from each team concerning how they planned to tackle each fight, so that they could cover some of the differences between how each team was tackling the fight.
3. More information on the roster and group composition for each team.

Now, to be totally clear, I really respect what Athene and Kinaesthesia are doing, and I give them huge props for pulling it off. However, I think there is room for improvement, and opportunity to make this event even better. I wish them all the best, and I really hope to see more of this in the future.

Published May 12 »

MoP Beta Spirit Shell Reimagined

In the latest MoP beta build (15688), Spirit Shell has been significantly altered. In previous builds Spirit Shell was designed to be the mana neutral healing spell for Discipline Priests.

I finally had a chance to log on and check out the new Spirit Shell, and it's very interesting. There are a couple of interesting notes about the way in which it works.

Multiple Spirit Shell Shields

Casting Spirit Shell and then multiple different healing spells stacks up different "shields", each of which is named after the individual healing spell. For example, the following two screenshots show what happens when you cast Spirit Shell followed by Flash Heal and Greater Heal.

Spirit Shell Stacking

Casting Spirit Shell and then the same healing spell stacks up different "shields", each of which is named after the individual healing spell, although there does appear to be a limit to the stacking, as you can see in the combat log:

Interestingly, it appears as though the stacking cap is per each healing spell, so in some cases you might be better off casting multiple, different healing spells. However, in practice, your targets will likely be taking damage, and the shields might not even have a chance to stack up to their maximum value anyway.

Conclusion

It's still early, but Spirit Shell seems like a very interesting spell, although it is certainly a significant departure from the original goal of Spirit Shell, I can see it having a few very interesting uses.

1. Preparing for incoming raid AoE damage with Prayer of Healing. The 15 second duration of Spirit Shell should allow a Discipline Priest to pre-cast two full Prayer of Healing spells on each group in a 10 person raid.
2. Preparing for spikes of tank damage with a few casts of Greater Heal.

All in all, I like what I see so far, and Spirit Shell should prove to be very useful.

Published May 10 »

Heroic Warmaster Blackhorn

My guild downed Heroic Warmaster Blackhorn tonight!

I can't even tell you how happy I am to have this fight down. We had a lot of issues with the fire bugging out on this fight. Often the fire would just not go away, and, by the time we got to the third wave of adds, the fire would be covering the entire ship.

Strategy

We tried a few different strategies, and in the end, we went with a strategy that divided the ship into 3 zones, with two tanks + two melee grouped by the door, one healer + two ranged DPS on the front left, and one healer + two ranged DPS on the front right. Each group was responsible for soaking as many Twilight Barrage hits in their zone as possible, and we had everyone group up for the Twilight Onslaught, unless someone had 2+ stacks from the Twilight Barrage. The other minor change we made towards the end was to have the ranged kill only one twilight drake in the final set of drakes, focus down the melee, and then finish the final sapper and drake.

Attendance RNG

A few things also went right for us tonight. We had a good group combination covering almost all of the raid buffs & debuffs. In addition, one of our main tanks was away for the week, and we had one player tanking on his ALT Death Knight. Death Grip makes a huge difference for dealing with the Goblin Sappers, especially when you have more than one melee DPS. Oh, and here's the other nice reason for bringing a Death Knight:

And before you ask, no, it wasn't just a bunch of overhealing either:

So What's Next?

Anyway, I'm super happy to have this fight down, and I'm looking forward to wiping on Heroic Spine!

:D

Next week though my guild plans on going back and working on Sinestra. We did give it one quick attempt this week after dowing Heroic Cho'gall, and it looks like a fun, and still somewhat challenging fight.

Published May 09 »

Loot and Random Numbers

After completing the Dragon Soul raid some 20+ times, several guild members have commented that we seem to have really bad luck with loot RNG. We've seen very few caster or healer trinkets, and only one healer mace. However, more than 14 (FOURTEEN!) tank swords have dropped on Deathwing (the joke is that our Warrior tank never needs to bother repairing his weapon, he just gets a new one each week :p), and we seem to get the same strength trinket every week. Same thing with the tokens; we keep getting the Conqueror Paladin/Priest/Warlock tokens over and over and over again.

In fact, some of us were starting to wonder, so I actually took the time to go back through logs, tally everything up that I was able to, and compare it to our actual raid composition. Sure enough, the results are somewhat skewed towards the Paladin/Priest/Warlock tokens.

	Paladin/Priest/Warlock	Hunter/Shaman/Warrior	DK/Druid/Mage/Rogue
Crown	9 (47%)	2 (12%)	7 (41%)
Shoulders	13 (43%)	6 (20%)	11 (37%)
Chest	11 (46%)	4 (17%)	9 (38%)
Gauntlets	10 (32%)	6 (19%)	15 (48%)
Leggings	14 (44%)	5 (16%)	13 (41%)
Raid Comp	2-3 (20-30%)	5 (50%)	2-3 (20-30%)

Yes I know, random is random, and our raid comp is a bit skewed towards Hunter/Shaman/Warrior, but still, a part of me hurts each time I see yet another tank sword, or yet another Paladin/Priest/Warlock token that no one can use any more.

Published May 09 »

Have Group, Won't Travel

According to WoW Insider, it appears that the Have Group, Will Travel and Chug-A-Lug guild perks will be going away in Mists of Pandaria.

I think my guild will be able to live without Chug-A-Lug. It means we'll have to make twice as many Cauldrons, but that's not a huge deal.

On the flip side, the replacement of Have Group, Will Travel with a flightpath speed boost will be a significant loss for us. My guild already has a very tight raiding schedule (only 2 hours per night), and a signficant number of guild members can only sign on right before the raids start. This hasn't been a problem for us, since we can quickly summon everyone using a single Have Group, Will Travel.

But the convenience of Have Group, Will Travel goes far beyond the initial summon. The current design of the 10 person raids means that we often need to either swap characters or roles several times in a given raid. Furthurmore, if we want to successfully min/max some of the heroic modes, several of our players need to hearth out and reforge their gear. Right now this isn't a problem, since a quick Have Group, Will Travel brings them back. If we no longer have this available, we would need to send two players back to the instance entrance to summon. Over the course of five or six bosses, this will quickly add up to a lot of lost time for us.

Published May 09 »

MoP Beta Build 15668 Shadow Priest Changes

As is now becoming a weekly occurence, Blizzard has once again changed the Shadow Priest mechanics! Here are some previous articles covering some of the more significant Shadow Priest changes in the Mists of Pandaria beta so far:

• Mists of Pandaria Shadow Priest Impressions
• Mists of Pandaria Beta Build 15657 Shadow Priest Changes
• Mists of Pandaria Beta Build 15662 Shadow Priest Changes

Here are the latest changes:

• Devouring Plague - Damage reduced by 66%. This DoT now lasts 6 secs total, and the duration is no longer increased based on the number of Shadow Orbs consumed. I kind of liked the previous mechanic, where the duration was based on the number Shadow Orbs consumed. I think that felt a little more strategic.
• Shadowy Apparitions - Still a passive ability, but it no longer generates Shadow Orbs. Less reliance on RNG will make the Shadow DPS spec easier to tune and balance, so I think this is a good change.
• Mind Surge - The proc chance has been increased from 10% to 15%.

Overall, I think these are good changes, and I like where the Shadow Priest is going. I would like to see even less reliance on RNG mechanics (I'm looking at you Shadowy Apparitions!).

Published May 08 »




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