Dreamwalker, et al.
Long overdue, but we finally took some time out of our busy schedules to put serious tries on Dreamwalker. Now that BQL was dead and that notch added to our progression belts, we wanted to fall back and do an easier encounter we could have done a while ago. It took us a few tries to get Dreamwalker down (well, up) because we had to figure out the optimal places for tanks, the dps spread, healer roles, etc. The last attempt went pretty went, and I’m happy with the efficacy of our kill.
One thing that stood out to me was how fast the fight goes towards the end. That is, it’s slow going from start to 75%, but after that the healers are accumulating more and more stacks, and one second you notice it’s at 90% and people are yelling for the Pallies to throw on LoHs, then suddenly it’s at 100%. Dreamwalker then stands up and melts all the Scourge. I don’t know why we waited this long to kill her.
And the biggest hurdle we probably had was communication. The Blazing Skeleton would sneak up on one side, get five ticks off and it would be game over. The last few attempts we got really good at knowing when they were coming (a mage would call out right before they spawned) and then people would screech when they made an appearance on their side. People would rush over and drop it with one or less ticks of waste being laid.
I gotta say, I’m pretty psyched that we went from being unable to kill Putricide–or any other wing boss for that matter–to convincingly being able to farm Putricide, and having the option of saying “we know we can kill BQL, but do we want to go try out Sindragosa?” Options! I love ‘em.
Lastly, this goes without saying. My guild’s healers are pretty awesome. They had a great system down, handled their own assignments in their own channel, and I knew I didn’t have to give a second thought to if they needed guidance assigning people to a role.
Oh, holy grip
For months now Zilga, one of the healing priests, has been saying the only thing she wanted in Cataclysm was a holy grip so she could “pull the dumbasses out of the fire.” While driving to work today I got caught in a traffic jam so I whipped out my phone and hit up twitter to see if the priest preview was ever released. I then saw they actually did add a holy grip, the Leap of Faith, and could not stop laughing. Zilga, got the lotto numbers?
Hints of Pally changes in the so-far released previews?
I’m going to issue the following predictions based on what we’ve seen in the previews for Shamans, Priests, etc.
1. There’s going to be an early attack like the “Primal Strike” that shammies are getting. Some kind of baby Crusader Strike, if they don’t just move that attack earlier in the Ret tree.
2. We’re getting something like the Warrior’s Vengeance Mastery:
Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn’t fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character’s un-buffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Protection tree. These values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Protection tree, so you won’t see Arms or Fury warriors running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today – there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is for all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.
We’re so getting that too.
3. Warriors get Critical Block as their third-tier Mastery ability. Likewise, I think we’re getting a Redoubt like effect where a proc will give us extra block chance. The proc rate will make it over time reduce damage as much as Critical Block would.
4. I’m still holding out hope for some kind of gap closer. I strongly hoped that we’d be given Heroic Leap as our lvl 85 spell, but I guess Warriors are getting that (the jerks), foiling my initial prediction. Still, Ret suffers in pvp from having no gap closer, and we remain the only tank that can’t immediately zip to a mob or bring it to us. I think that’s going to change.
Armory Feed
I hope you’re right about getting a closer ability, I’m kinda hoping for a “hand of god” ability like the DK’s grip to snatch em’ to me, useful for both Prot and Ret, and Holy can have one like the priests leap of faith.
Hope we do get something, just hope they don’t change Paladins more radically than the others.
@Anafielle
8 April 2010 at 2:53 pm #
“Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character’s un-buffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. ”
Didn’t we already go through this argument when people were discussing stacking trinkets ….?
As an offtank, I’m really not a huge fan of this stacking idea. I mean, obviously I reserve judgement, but a stacking buff on hit really doesn’t do much good when you’re soaking up damage. Unless it triggers when you’re dealt damage, not just hit.
Even so. My threat should be just as good as the MT’s regardless of whether I’m getting hit or not. I should still be able to stay second on Omen when I’m meant to be there.
Obviously I’m not trying to QQ or say the sky is falling here. I also haven’t read a whole lot of these new changes due to work. Huh… I should go read up on the warrior ones.
Anafielle’s last blog ..Lich King Blues
@Rhidach
8 April 2010 at 3:24 pm #
@Anafielle: That’ll add some interesting possibilities, eh? Like tank/OT swapping frequently to keep Vengeance up. I’m expecting though that Vengeance will be needed by the maintank to hold threat better on a target against trigger-happy dps while the OT just does normal piddling tank dps like normal, so they don’t have to start factoring total tank dps into enrage timers and what-not.
The biggest thing I want to see is how long Vengeance lasts before falling off.
@Orthien: I hope you’re right. I see a lot of classes getting *fun* stuff. Nothing would be more fun for me as a tank than a gap closer. Shield doesn’t cut it in a world with Death Grip and Charge.
@Orthien
8 April 2010 at 3:03 pm #
I have to admit I was dissapointed to see our closer name Leap of Faith going to priests (doesn’t fit the spell ether) and our jump move with it going to warriors giving them two gap closers. I’m withyou though on holding out on us getting a gap closer, I’m hoping that the extra time were recieveing they are working on fixing us so that Ret wouldn’t be deemed OP in PVP if given the closer.
Orthien’s last blog ..Cold night in April
Ability normalization continues apace. “Fun” spells like the Leaps and Spiritwalker’s Grace will make the classes unique, but I am just a little sad that we’re all getting 3 similar direct heal spells.
The consolation, of course, is that Prot and Holy should be receiving one or two really nice spells. I can’t be bothered to contemplate Ret, sorry. I’m looking forward to next week.
I know you don’t write about Ret, but the change to Whirlwind strongly implies that we will see a similar change to Divine Storm, presumably being made up for by us getting some new option for single target DPS to replace it. Also, I would LOVE to have some kind of gap closing ability. My target switching is bad enough as it is, watching warriors charge to things just makes me sad.