[Beta] And I Thought Leap of Faith Was the Only One …

Update: Fortunately for the spell, but unfortunately for the fun you could have with it, the issue with Chi Wave seems to have been fixed in a recent Beta build. Additionally, Jasmine Force Tea, an ability that could supply you with Chi for a small mana cost (read: eternally if out of combat), is gone, which slows down Chi generation outside of combat dramatically.

I was strolling around in Ashenvale on my Mistweaver monk today — just a normal day in the life of a cuddly, questing bear — when suddenly …

In order to get rid of my Chi, I decided to cast a Chi Wave.

As some might already know, Chi Wave is an instant cast that you can cast on either friend or enemy and that will bounce up to four times, always from friend to enemy or the other way around (creating either three heals and two damage ticks or three damage ticks and two heals). So, imagine my surprise when …

And go to Orgrimmar, I did.

And this is when it hit me … If all of this worked, maybe I could even … ?

No, that would be too good!

Haha! Hit you right in the face, Garrosh! What are you gonna do now, huh?!

And after this had worked, I just had to try and kill someone with it. Death by Chi Wave, so to speak.

15 minutes later …

Another 5 minutes later …

I’m sorry, priests, but I couldn’t let you learn how to kill your allies, too, now could I? (also: she was level 60! Where is you hit point regeneration NOW?!)

Satisfied and with a smirk on my face I turned around to go back to questing.

But then I saw him.

I could kill him!

I never had anything against the dude, per se, but damnit, I couldn’t let the opportunity to kill a celebrity from my own faction slide, could I?

And so, this beloved hero of the Horde found his end at the hands of Chi Wave.

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Stories of Spooning With the Os

Dum duddledum duum dumdumdum dum duddledum duum dumdumdum

A very daunting title, I know. For some obscure reason that I cannot comprehend the two Os — Oestrus and Ophelie — invited me to join their healing roundtable of The Double O Podcast (yes, we are all spying for her Majesty and no, despite my name being Daniel I don’t look a bit like Daniel Craig) as the priest guest. Apparently, all it takes to get onto a podcast is to offer. Who would’ve thought? If that isn’t encouraging, I don’t know what is. I have no doubt in my mind that they were running out of good options, though. Oh, and the fact that I am German and they expect me to have some weird accent might have played a role as well.

The Double O Podcast is not only an eccelent podcast about WoW and hosted by the wonderful and illustrious outspoken, opinionated, openminded, observing, omnipotent, omniscient, off-the-cuff, organized, outrageously original, overpowered, outstanding, outright owning, and otherwise O-some personalities that are Oestrus and Ophelie; one of the points that sold me personally was that they focus on a specific topic (and a different one) each episode and stick with it for the entire episode. In that respect, they are quite different from your normal WoW podcasts, which consist of news to a large degree. So, if you ever wanted to learn more about how to earn more gold in WoW or what it is like to be a gamer parent, listen to The Double O Podcast. Like, now. What are you waiting for? DOOO EEEEET!

The episode will, as I mentioned, be a healing roundtable. Since Oestrus spilled the beans on Twitter already (this IS how you’d say that, right?), I’ll go ahead and introduce you to the other knights of the O-shaped table (all THE awesome!!!). Besides yours truly (who can still not believe he’s going to be on a podcast and is afraid he might serious eff up the whole affair) the episode will include:

• Jasyla from Cannot be Tamed
• Lodur from WoWInsider (or WoWJoystiq or WoW.com or whatever they are now; I lose track) and World of Matticus
• Lynesta from Word of Glory

We’ll record on Sunday evening (or rather night for me) and the podcast will then probably take a few days to get all my “umm”s and silences (as I think of the right word for something) edited out.

Did I mention that I feel giddy as a horse? What? I don’t care if it’s a normal horse or a Worgen mount.

Can it be real?

If you have any healing-related questions, you can either send them to Oestrus or Ophelie via Twitter. Or you can also comment below or email me.

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Class Feedback: Priest

A gnome priest in his natural habitat: above the ground. Most times because he blew up.

Blizzard (fairly) recently asked the player base for their opinions on their classes: what they feel makes their class more/less fun, how they feel their class performs and what they would like to see for their class in the future:

We’re looking for feedback on your class as we work on changes and adjustments for a future game update. While we may be making some specific class changes in 4.3, what we’re looking for in this thread is overall feeling on the class as a whole for more long term changes in the future.

As this is one of the few chances to voice your stance on the class(es) you love to play with a good likelihood it will be read, you should seize the opportunity. Now. Go on, spit spot!

Now, without further ado, here is my feedback (on the official forums, it can be found in these three posts):

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How to Touch the Cooker … in a Positive Way

He certainly won't touch the cooker a second time.

Warning! Long post containing lots of rambling and criticizing ahead!

Misconceptions are a rather funny thing. 90% of any sitcom’s story revolve around them; in action flicks, they make heroes go after the wrong bad guys (rendering the real bad guys with more time to practise their evil laughs … muhaha); and directors like M. Night Shaman (or whatever his name was) base whole movies around the misconceptions of their audience. Of course, you expect a twist (not the tree dance, people!) at any turn during the Shaman’s movies (hah, ‘twist at any turn’…brilliant!), but that’s beside the point.

Misconceptions in the raiding world of WoW are hardly ever as funny or entertaining. They can be thrilling, but most of the time they are thrilling in the wrong way. This is the story of one person who failed to state their expectations beforehand and then got angry about the people failing to meet these uncommunicated expectations. For anyone asking themselves who this incredibly handsome, awfully intelligent and utmost perfect individual might be: it’s me. Did I mention I am as modest as they come and completely down-to-earth?

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Cannot be Shielded

No more beating around the bush. Here I come!

 

Ever since I signed up on Twitter (@danslatable *shameless plug … on my own site*) people have started visiting this blog; which of course I didn’t expect at all! So, to finally get started (and before I find something else to divert myself with — I mentioned I was kind of a squirrel that way, didn’t I?), here goes. This post was inspired by Jasyla‘s post about sniping heals and padding meters and is written from a PvE Discipline priest’s perspective, hence the title.

 

I wrote a blog post about sniping heals (i.e. “stealing” heals from other healers) as a Discipline priest in Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm and how the healing mentality had changed throughout expansions. I thought it to be well-written, very professional and including many mentions of spells, talents and much crunching of numbers. Typing the last few words, I felt this was going to be a great first “real” post.

Then I read it. And promptly deleted it.

It was confusing as hell. It wasn’t linear by any stretch of the imagination. But worst of all, it was boring. It read like an analysis of how different sizes of suitcases affect the packing standards of their owners. Interesting for a few select people, but not at all relevant for the majority of humanity. It wasn’t just a theoretical post about sniping heals with shields. You would have had to have played the game for several years to understand the background of it, and even then you would have had to have a profound knowledge of certain mechanics of the priest class. Which I’m not even sure I possess.

So, instead of telling you in detail how shields are so much more expensive in Cataclysm (shields are so much more expensive in Cataclysm — happy now?) and that they cannot be used to snipe heals from anyone any longer (well, okay, in singular cases they can), I will do something else. About shields, of course. I’m a Disc priest, remember? At least for this post.

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