Talents are out and I am Burnt

The new priest talents are out and a talculator is up on the World of Warcraft website. The changes are fairly surprising and I definitely forsee a new resurgence in priests in the future.

As of late with the raiding my guild has been doing I'm pretty burnt on the game. Awhile back I said that the 1.10 patch would "make" or "break" this class and the devs definitely didn't "break it". If I wasn't as burnt out as I currently am with raiding I would probably be much more enthusiastic about the changes than I currently am.

I'm currently looking for folks who would like to join the PriestSpot team to take up writing the occasional article here and there. If your interested drop me a comment.

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UI Loaded, Missiles Locked.....Fox 5!

I apologize for the delay in articles as I've been moving into a new apartment with a guildie/rl friend of mine. After getting his PC set up and checking to make sure the pings in WoW were ok I had him click his addons button out of sheer curiosity. Needless to say my curiosity almost cost me my lunch as I was pretty close to throwing up in his room at the sheer number of UI's he had loaded.
One of the things I really like about this game is the sheer number of modifications you can make to the game. While this is a blessing, it can also turn into a curse. Its my hope after reading this article you will have a whole new perspective on the art of UI'ing.

Much like the packratter and porn collector, the UI whore revels in the glory that is modification. So much modification isn't necessarily a bad thing when its done correctly. There are some simple rules that a good healer (and good player) should follow when journeying to the land of "Modified":

• The mod must serve a function beyond the stock
• The mod must be compact in size, and trim in memory foot print
• If 2 (or more) mods do similar things but vary slightly in a single feature, consolidate.
• Function libraries are only cool if all the UI mods you use make use of them. Since users tend to be anti function library chances are you can find the very same features from a mod that doesn't make use of them.
• The mods as a whole should never be obtrusive
• The mods should be easy to use, read, and devoid of embellishments.

-The Bottom Line by Cardnyl Sin

-Use Beyond the Stock
A good example of a mod that does not do anything you couldn't gather by a quick glance of the stock UI is the bag mod for Titan. All it does is shows you how many empty slots you have left in your bags. What's stopping you from hitting shift+b to open your bags, take a quick glance, and shift+b to close them? Nothing. So why would you needlessly use a UI mod to perform the same thing you could do in less than 3 seconds at the cost of system resources? This is a simple example but a good one to heed. If a mod does not serve a purpose beyond the stock then there's no point wasting valuable resources on it.

-Compact in size, and trim in memory footprint
Selecting a mod to serve a purpose is a lot like shopping for a car. You don't necessarily want to pick the first one you come across, you shop around. For any given mod chances are there are at least 2 other mod authors out there who have a similar UI. Often times these similar and often times superior mods go unlooked and unappreciated. Because the author's vary in coding style and features their mods thus vary in features and more importantly how much of your memory they gobble up.

For a very long time I used a very powerful mod called Flexbar. For each person in my group I had 4 buttons that would sit next to them that contained macros which would cast a spell (renew, flash heal, shielding, greater heal), use the correct rank based on targets level (for shield/renew), and then reselect my old target. Things were great but Flexbar is kind of on the beefy side due to the sheer power and flexibility the UI offers. At the suggestion of a Druid guildie/rl friend of mine I switched to a UI mod called GroupButtons. In doing so I was able to reclaim all of my macros (at the time you needed a UI mod to have more than 16 macros), eliminate the quirk I was having with Flexbar at the time, and then some.

Within the last 2 months or so I noticed that I really never clicked the buttons much in raid situations. I found myself manually targeting my group members in raids and using my Nostromo pad to spam the heal buttons on my party mates. Since outside the buttons I wasn't really using any of the other features of GroupButtons I went ahead and deleted it. I watched in amazement as my UI memory usage dropped from 23-24mb to 16-18mb active use. Using a mod that's not so pretty graphically yet serves the same functions as another mod are better than mods that feature embellishments.

-Two or More? Consolidate!
Using the above as an example, there's really no point in using a mod like GroupButtons in conjunction with Flexbar. It doesn't make sense from a memory nor a functionality standpoint. Getting your UI usage as low as possible is key.

-Function Libraries, Mixed Feelings
Being a coder I can sympathize with the UI mod makers about how nice it is to have function libraries available. The problem is that unless 50% or more of my UI mods being to make use of a specific function library I don't see any justification to burden my computer's performance by a large piece of code. The problem with function libraries is that its Catch 22. In order to see them come into the mainstream you need to have more mod authors using them. Since 95% of the mods I see publicly available are updated at the suggestion of the user base, and the user base seems to have a deep seeded hate for function libraries, its very hard for the authors to justify pissing off the user base to ease the code load. Sadly enough, a lot of the authors end up writing the same code (often times written less efficiently than the same code sitting in a library) to achieve the same effect as having a library function present. Also the less complicated the mod is the less likely it is to need to make calls to a function located in a library. The end result is those functions end up sitting in active memory. The bottom line is that, I feel for you, but for now I will dodge libraries at all costs and I suggest you do the same unless you fall under the caveat mentioned above.

-Mods Should not be Obtrusive
There is quite a bit going on when your playing wow. If your a healer you have probably become very familiar with the wack-a-mole sub game (aka healing a raid). The last thing you want is very busy and obtrusive mods taking away from your concentration. Right now my alt rogue was using a UI mod that graphically showed the pulses of energy regen. I have since switched to a UI mod that instead plays a sound while in combat for the same effect. The graphical mod, while nice, slightly diverts my attention off the action and onto one of many graphical bars and do-dads already on the screen. The switch to an audio indicator is a very key move.

Ultimately your goal when modifying your UI is to consolidate down to the really valuable UI mods. To use mods that aren't very pretty but get the job done. To use mods that don't divert your attention to much from the action because they are obtrusive. At the same time, use mods only if you are desperate for a specific function not because you can. Doing so keeps the on screen clutter down. For users who have 1GB of ram just like me, I've had times where my peak windows memory usage broke 1GB forcing the game to use the slow swap file and as a result slow my game play down. Having less UI mods means more memory to keep open your favorite music player and WoW info websites. It also means your game is less likely to use the garbage collector which tends to hit its capacity a lot faster on computers that are bogged down with mods. For faster computers the impact is not so harsh, but having played WoW on a slower PC, when the garbage collector kicks in I've been a victim of some in game stuttering.

My next installment of this article will cover UI's as it relates to healing.

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PriestSpot Has Moved!

Thats right folks, PriestSpot is now at www.priestspot.com .

Special thanks goes to Azzor Community for hosting PriestSpot. More updates to come!

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Fake Priest Patch Notes, News at 9!

Today while trolling my guild's message board I came across a post made by one of the priests in guild (the same one mentioned in my Vael healing article) the title was "PRIESTS REJOICE!" and it contained a link to the cursed-gaming message boards that contain some alleged priest 1.10 patch notes. I usually have a hard time swallowing most of the changes in supposed pre-leak notes, but I think I recall an occasion a few patches back where some of the changes did indeed go through.

Consider this post to be a work of fiction. Come with me my fellow priests, come. Come to a land where priests are the best healers bar none. To a land where itemization doesn't favor just the warlocks and mages. To a special place where greater heal deserves a place on our spell bars next to renew/shield/flash heal. This land I speak off is hidden, hidden in the depths of your own mind. This land is called Dream Land; population 2345345345345; native language spoken: Gullible. Take a trip with me to this land. For a moment, let yourself fall prey to stupidity and let the gullible 4 year old within come out to say "HI!, If you give me your cookie ill be your best friend!".

Before we go there's some travel arrangements we need to make. First begin by opening the aforementioned link in a new browser window. If you cannot accomplish this, I fear you will not survive the trip to Dream Land. Next resize the windows so you can view the patch notes side by side with this article. Now watch in amazement as Cardnyl becomes so gullible that he would devote an entire article on PriestSpot to ripping apart the changes with the speed of the Ninja, Heart of the Tiger, etc.

(All kidding aside, without the patch notes open along side this blog post, none of what I am about to type will make any sense whatsoever. I've been told it what I say rarely does, but the risk of this happening increases by a factor of 6x in the absense of the forum post.)

-The Bottom Line by Cardnyl Sin

1) I think its a cool idea for dwarves to have this buff, but in typical blizzard fashion they made it 3 minutes. Its bad enough they have us slaved to our own inner fire spells. Now they expect us to keep something up on a party (possibly a group depending on how AQ is). Fuc....Screw you blizzard =/ .

2) Changing Desperate to make it targetable at the cost of cooldown and amount healed isn't to shabby at all. Many times while I played my human I wish I could hit others with it (Yes Cardnyl was a Human BEFORE he died and saw the light that is Undead).

3) So every 15min humans can double shield. I guess that's ok but honestly if shield remains the way it is all it means is the assist train will have to devote another 1.6 seconds to that priest every 15 min to get rid of him. Nothing game breaking here.

4) So this is cannibalize on crack. I guess folks were tired of having to roll undead to level just a bit faster than everyone else and demanded Alliance have it just as easy mode as us horde (HAH!). At least the out of combat thing keeps it out of the hands of raiders who already have it easy with such spells as blessing of bullshit, erm I mean Kings =).

5) Should have just left the range alone and fixed the issue with folks moving outside the range of the channel. Way to overfix.

6) Wow, what can I say here other than it really does pay to bitch, moan, and complain about a single spell until the cool down on the nerf bat is ready. The damage to mana ratio was fine. Debateably it was better than expected because of the healing it did. The whole party healing thing is just super gay because you can already achieve the same damn thing using Vamp Embrace. Dropping the amount healed due to damage to 40% from 100% just means that if you want to have damn near close to post nerf Dev. Plague you need to be shadow spec'd. So we have nerfed WoTF, gave cannibilize to Night Elf Priests, and nerfed Dev. Plague. I truly hope this is enough to get people to just shut the hell up about UD Priests being overpowered PvP machines. Oh, and while were on the topic, I just want to let the audience know that if you still think 1v1 PvP means anything in this game I will be the guy in the lobby, stabbing people in the jaw. You can't miss me, there's not many of us out there. Look for me, get in the line, and I will stab your jaw (Got to love that Dane Cook, he's one silly S.O.B).

7) When folks said "No one uses touch of weakness" some pioneering spirits took it upon themselves to use it, that is until they nerfed wands triggering it. Now, the spell really does adhere to its namesake. Jesus help us the priest reduced my melee/ranged/spell damage by 20 for 2min what ever will we do! Oh wait I know! Lets nerf the damage reduction portion, HAH!. No one used the spell to begin with, adding a stupid ass cool down to it isn't going to make us want to use it. I don't care how "significant" the damage increase is on it. Wait I take that back, I care, but "Care" only kicks in when the damage/mana ratio is better than 1.5:1 ratio. Want to know what I currently use ToW for? I smack Onyxia with it to help out my tank a bit in phase 1. That's it. Most if not all of the time I'm not allowed to (nor would I want to in some cases) get close enough to the boss to swing and trigger a ToW. I see they added spell casts as a triggerable event, that's nice. Would have preferred to have been able to do it with my wand. Now I guess Ill have to keep R1 Smite on my bar for ToW purposes. Golly gosh Mr. Cardnyl have ya heard? The damage reduction now applies to all party members. Well Brittney Brightside guess what? The tooltip already hinted at this, good to see it only took 1+ year for blizzard to put their money (the patch) where their mouth was (the tooltip). I wonder if party covers raids. I'm betting not. -20 off of Ragnaros' fireblast would just be to IMBA (imbalanced for you not in the know).

8) Bout damn time Troll priests had some loving. To bad its only going to shine in the hands of a shadow priest; the most persecuted creature to ever walk the plains of Azeroth. Pre-patch hunters and Rogues taking up close seconds. I predict that this will see the brunt of the nerf stick (cool down pending after this patch of course) just because of sheer utility.

9) See first sentence for #8. Also this is a really good indicator of why these patch notes are complete bullshit. I present you with the following links:
Hex of Weakness
Touch of Weakness

So they gimp the piss out of a spell that, as is, doesn't see much use to begin with. Then buff a Troll equivalent that does damn near the same thing for the same mana cost to make it "more attractive to troll priests". I'm not really sure what to think since it just doesn't make any sense even in Dream Land. I'm betting who ever wrote this article had a baby in a carriage and left it unattended. Much like the wild dingo of the Aussie outback a hungry UD shadow priest came and snatched the baby as an easy snack thus starting a life long grudge for UD priests. Bringing us to our present day trip to Dream Land.

10) Inner Fire. Wow, its been a long journey my friend and yet the one thing that annoyed me the most WASN'T fixed. I guess that 3min duration thing is like genital herpes. You can treat the herpes with a recast but you can never be cured of the problem. Increased resistances ala Mage Armor. I'm impressed, but I'm not satiated by any means. This buff should have that same increased regeneration crap that mage armor gets. I'd gladly trade 5% wand damage (Another unneeded fix to the 1-60 grind, while ignoring the true class problems that don't crop up like an errant STD @ level 60) for the regen, especially if I'm never going to see any sort of itemization that helps me do my job.

11) Honestly have Complete Heal rotations from Everquest1 than mindlessly hitting the HealFlay (yep you heard it here first, I'm coining the phrase right now.) key over and over without any sort of need for skill on my part. Nevertheless its a step in the right direction. I might actually drag the icon out of my spell bar. (I lie, in fact just this week I successfully used Gheal to heal a good tank friend of mine for the Major Domo Executus encounter; /wave Meryll).

12) Hahah, you're kidding right? I better be getting some extra talent points to toss around for this because realistically this should be something fixed via itemization and not talents. Woah, wait a second. I've seen this shit before! Oh yes, how could I have forgotten our good friends over at Everquest who repeatedly for years used Alternate Advancement points to patch up problems with the class rather than addressing the issue at the source. It doesn't surprised me they'd choose this route what with some of the EQ1 dev staff on their current payroll. Way to be innovative guys =).

13) Cool, to bad this isn't going to do squat for my melee surviability, which, is SUPPOSED to be what they were going to address when we said we had no PvP surviability. Even for the casters who will have to deal with this, albeit slight problem, there are UI mods (SpellAlert, IOTH, and many more) to re-target in the event of a lost target. One moment whilst I twirl my index finger in the air. Maybe if this patch had gone through back when rogues could loose their combo points when they lost their target I might be a bit less angry with this half ass attempt.

14) Good, not that I care since I won't cast that spell w/o Inner Focus us =p.

15) Hurray a crappy spell got buffed! (Be thankful you even got a response to this one Holy Fire is a huge waste of talent points. Make it free, then I might raise an eyebrow).

16) ....I really hate you people. No seriously, die please. I used to use this spell a LOT. Those days have come and gone since I no longer have the Mana Burn talent out of Disc. Even with the talent the spell's cast time was significant enough that with a spell alert mod you could more than likely back pedal out of range. Without the talent and this change, just un-bar it. Hey this gives me an idea. Since bar space is precious and what not, just replace mana burn with greater heal on your bar! Priests Rejoice!.

17) A good all around fix to the priest class. *gasp!* Blasphemy!

18) Uh, ok. *scratches head*. Whatever.

19) Divine Spirit Cost reduce eh? I wonder where exactly this talent was moved since its currently being occupied by Fear Ward.

20) Focused Casting nerf. I think I had this talent once and I remembered it not being worth a damn. Wish I could recall why. At any rate, nerf is a nerf.

21) Mind Soothe increased mana cost! Oh no, another spell I don't use, will never use, and currently can't find a use for while leveling or otherwise has been fudged with. Golly, whatever will I do. /yawn. Ooo increased to level 65. To bad the duration on it isn't long enough to warrant using it for raids when raid leaders would rather just kill whatever is in their path that dodging around it.

22) Should have left this on those ugly ass dwarves. Why would I want a spell counters a spell whose sole use is to interrupt someone for a split second before their Trinket UI mods kick in. A spell that basically creates a 1-2 yard gap between me and a melee class (sometimes less if were talking warriors here). This, although it appears to be a blessing is really a slap in the face. We should have got a mana regeneration talent for our disc 31. Instead we got a memo from Blizzard which reads:

To: Priests
From: Blizzard Development Team

Conclusion: In an effort to not bring anything truly innovative or useful to the table for the priest class we have decided to rob a race of its spell and give it to everyone.

Background: We got lazy. We love giving you all the shaft. In an effort to continue our policy of stringing you poor bastards along until you give up/quit and/or roll a druid (which we have deemed "your replacement") we have given you this spell. By doing this we have avoided any need on our part to play test, or really, just think of anything even remotely original. This gives us more man power to apply our time to more money making ventures such as new expansions.

23) Ok (/sarcasm Good use of man power folks)

24) Excellent

25) Ok (/sarcasm Good use of man power folks)

26) Ok (/sarcasm Good use of man power folks). I'm guessing this is in reference to what I was saying towards the end of #7 (putting money where their mouth is).

27) The last thing I would be doing is casting slow ass mana burn to stop a flag cap. Glad its fixed but whatever.

28) Cool I guess. See ( ) of #23.

29) Should most likely be 2 separate changes. One a graphical fix. The other is a change to poly which strips Weakened Soul. The former is typical Blizzard development team. Standard allocation of resources to something that has 0 bearing on game dynamics. The latter conjures thoughts range from "Ok that's kind of cool I guess" to "Wtf why?".

30) Not sure what it currently does. So I'll just say, Ok and be done with it.



*Announcers Voice* Now Boarding for Reality Land. Please have your tickets ready in hand. Thank you.

The absurdity of these changes as outlined above should be indication enough to any who read it that these are completely fake. However, it's patch notes like these that appeal to the not-so-optimistic parts of our psyche. What if blizzard is actually stupid enough to do something like this to fix our class in PvE and PvE. What if indeed. I can tell you this though, if this is any indication of what crap lies on the horizon for us, I will not be there to share it with you my fellow priests. It has been said before and I will say it again, 1.10 will make or break the priest class. I'm currently working on an article about poor business ethics as it relates to this game. It will feature a heated conversation between myself and Cerias Shadows of RogueSpot about Blizzard, World of Warcraft Development Team, and their piss poor use of man power.

In other news Rising Force Online is slated for release on Feb 10th 2006. If they hold true to their release date and things don't go so well for 1.10....who knows.

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Healing - The Vaelastrasz the Corrupt Encounter

Last night my guild did Onyxia, Vael (no one spells out his full name), then Ragnaros. During the Vael encounter we come to find out that one of our priests spec'd shadow over the weekend and forgot to spec back. He was promptly told that if he forgot to respec back again before our next raid to not bother showing up to raid. I think the guild sorta spotted the shadow vulnerabilities and began a shadow priest inquisition at which point the priest confessed (to his sins?).

This particular priest happened to be in the tank group doing the usual spam Prayer of Healing (PoH) and died, repeatedly to Burning Adrenaline. For those of you not familiar with this event basically the boss starts picking off the folks highest on his shit list to hit with a buff (if you can really call it a buff) that increases your attack speed and damage you dish by 100%, eliminates cast time, drops you hp to 0 and turns you into an explosive that can hurt your own raid. When you get Burning Adrenaline (which we will refer to as "BA" from here on out) you, as a priest, are supposed to drop as many heals as you can to top off your group (PoH=instacast w/BA), drop dots, then start hitting folks with renews before you die. Chances are you will be dead before you can get through 5 or 6 folks.

We ended up wiping 4 or 5 times to Vael before finally spanking him (we only recently defeated him and usually 1 or 2 wipes is due to people needing time to get the "newb" out of their system). In the process of beating Vael we lost this one particular priest 3+ times to BA, and each time it happened it was at the very beginning of the fight. Generally speaking, if the tanks aren't being slack, one of the druids/shamans healing the MA should get it first, maybe a mage next, then the MA himself. After that its usually Tank, DPS caster, Tank, DPS caster, rinse repeat. This obviously assumes optimal performance with the aggro control.

Usually its my job to keep the rogues alive. Its a job I've come to love because it seems my guild's healing team lacks the level of appreciation I have for rogues. Cerias and a few others usually make special requests to get dropped into my group for raiding purposes. On this particular night I mentioned over ventrillo (vent) that it didn't matter that this priest was shadow spec'd for the event. That nothing special was required to heal this event other than common sense, game knowledge, and a bit of luck. They were fairly adamant that it was this priests shadow spec that was doing him in (even though the priests only dot on this fight, and only after Vael is <25%). I even heard mention of Subtlety being a necessity for BWL in general. Me being the cocky sonofabitch that I am I proceeded to tell the raid in vent that not only did I have some shadow spec (21pts to be precise) but that I also lacked thier beloved Subtlety talent that they're all hung up on. I also happend to briefly cover the technique described in 8 steps at the end of this article. After making my boasts I was quickly swapped out of my rogue group and into the tank group where the shadow priest had been. The guild leader wanted to see what kind of a difference it would make, much to the chagrin of my rogues (/wave Henryv, Roogue, and Benchi).

I love healing the rogues because I know I'm good at it. Thier survival rate in my group is something like 90% (if were talking about attempts that result in a win and averaging all the attempts together). I wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea that they were going to drop a priest into a rogue group who has been consistently getting BA'd well before the first tank dies; especially my rogue group. Should that priest die early in another priest will be moved to his group to keep the rogues alive out of necessity. This results in another group flat out dieing due to the periodic aoe since all the priests are focusing on PoH and all the Shamans/Druids are focusing on the tank list. I made the best of the situation and kept all my tanks alive with no pre-mature deaths. We won the event after the group swap. Coincidence? Perhaps, but nevertheless a good cause to write this article.

-The Bottom Line by Cardnyl Sin

So how did you do it Cardnyl? What is your secret (or seekret if you're one of those kids) to success? I must know!

1) Wear your hit point suit. My team lead tries to encourage the other priests to wear thier fire resist suits. I feel its better to wear your suits that boost your HP the highest. Since Vael tosses a buff your way theres no reason to throw on your PVE suits for this. Having more HP means a bigger buffer when dealing with the periodic AoE that vael does. In all the time we've done Vael so far when the raid recieved a flame breath it was a wipe. When Vael turns to breath on the raid he also adjusts where hes standing and in turn adjust who he cleaves. The turn causes the rogues to take both a cleave and a breath and usually kills them off. You will not win this event without the rogues. Let me repeat that. You will NOT win this event without the ROGUES. Now that thats been cleared up,

1a) If you have your epic staff use Anathema, not benediction. PoH is plenty of healing on its own. Get the Anathema for the shadow damage boost to your dots which you will be casting once Vael is < 25% hp.

2) Before the fight beings you should be casting Power Word: Shield on every single person in your party. If weakened soul effect drops from anyone in the group you are to re-shield them. You want to ensure they get a full duration shield. Don't worry about mana, you will be getting it all back real soon. Shielding your group creates an artificial healing buffer at zero (0) aggro cost to you. This is a necessary move to healing this event like a pro. Don't be a newb, sheild your freaking groups.

3) When the first periodic AoE hits it will only slightly damage your party (due to #2). The group should only be missing 500 max at this point. If any single person is missing -800+ drop a renew on them. If its 2 or more drop shield on the worst, renew on the other. This is the only triage style healing you will do. From here on out its PoH only. This also happens to be the reason you are wearing your HP suit. You are not allowed to triage yourself in this manner. This is strictly for the rogues/tanks. Watch in amazement as all of the other newb ass priests are either midway or almost done casting thier first PoH because they didn't pre-shield thier group.

4) Begin PoH spam immediately after triage. By the time the first PoH kicks in your entire group should be missing 1k at the very LEAST. Ideally you want them to be missing ~1.2k when the PoH hits the group. After your first PoH immediately Fade. Cast Inner Focus (if you have it which you should), then start your next PoH when the group is missing ~800.

5) After your second or third PoH Vael should be at 25%, drop SW:P on Vael and Devouring Plague if you picked a real race when you started playing World of Warcraft :).

6) Our guild usually has Vael at 21-23% before the first tank catches BA. You should be continuing to use PoH and nothing else. Tossing on a new SW:P when yours runs out. If Fade comes back up and you haven't lost your first tank yet save fade, even if its ready. When the announcement is made that he/she has BA (vent/CTRA/etc) count to 10 in your head. Continue to PoH as needed and at the 10sec mark Fade. In 5 more seconds your first tank should be dead and you want the Fade actively running for that. Its better to be pre-preemptive about it than to get summoned or have Vael run at you during a very important transition.

7) Don't suck. Continue the PoH spam, use Fade every single time it is up and don't slack on SW:P.

8) Collect loot and proceede to your nearest porno folder to reward yourself for a job welldone.

That's about it kids. Not really a whole lot to it other than this. If it works for you drop me a comment I'd love to hear about it.

*EDITS*
The following changes were pointed out to me after writing the article:

-The 10 second wait time described in Step #6 varies from tank to tank. Since BA drops your max hit points by 5% untill your either killed by it or Vael its hard to say when your particular tank will drop. After one or 2 runs you should know about how long to wait, 10 is just a starting point.

-The periodic AoE vael does is Fire damage based. If this is indeed true then I may need to reevaluate Step #1 since ultimately, your trying to avoid healing yourself as much as possible and a balance of HP/FR gear would accomplish this better than straight HP gear. My guild requires all casters to be at 120FR unbuffed, your mileage may vary.

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Priest, Why oh why didn't I take the Blue Pill (Rogue/Warrior) - Part 1

So You Wanna Be A Priest?

When I first started looking at this game I had just got done with a 6 year stint as a Monk in Everquest1. At the end of the game I realized that for me to be able to get the additional abilities I wanted in the form of Alternatve Advancement points I would either need to be a caster or get groups. Since Monks are by no means a required class for a AA grind group often times I would login, beg and plead for a group for a few hours, and logoff an angrier person than when I started. Many days I spent talking over many spicey chicken sandwiches from the dollar menu with my good rl friend Cerias, who, I personally got addicted to the fine game of Everquest. I told him that I would be damned if I fell into the crap I experienced in EQ as a non-caster and vowed to pick a class I knew would be the backbone of groups so that, if and when a similiar AA system went into effect I would see the glory that is non-frustration.

And Then There was Warcraft....

Some time passed and soon the impending juggernaut that is WoW began to release more and more game related information. We then had access to class and race descriptions and thus the pre-game or meta game as I like to call it began. I quickly sat down and decided that I would try to find a class that was sort of like my Monk. When I read the initial class description for the Priest class I was hooked. I got the impression that although the class wore cloth it was still a strong combatant and best of all, a crowd control/best healing class. Remembering back to my EQ days, Clerics and Enchanters were necessary in anything worth doing since they represented the premier in healing and crowd control.

The description was more or less the following:

• Your the best healer bar none
• You are able to make creatures your pets via mind control
• You have strong offense and defensive spells

I thought to myself, "bingo, we have a winner!". I put my money on the poney called Priest and let it ride.

Open Beta, Let the Games Begin

Open beta rolls around I play, and I love it. My class, the game, it's like Blizzard could do no wrong. I level my priest to 53, and me Cerias and some friends decide that the Alliance on Arthas are just a bunch of winey bitches and they would serve best as padding under our feet for our soon to be Horde characters. We delete, we re-roll and re-level. The killing is good, real good. Thier utter lack of skill becomes more and more apparent as time goes on. Even with thier abundant numbers they still manage to suck and botch everything from 1 on 1 to small group fights. It was only then that something interesting happend.

.....to be continued.

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Gamer Discrimination

I saw this link posted within my guild's boards so I decided to take a look.

The gist of it is American gamers pretty much assume any person speaking broken English is a money farmer and should be treated as such without regard for the truth. Truthfully I must admit that at times I'm not very "PC" (Politically Correct to those of you not in the know). This is definitely one of those times, but bear with me as you may learn a thing or two today.

First off, if your speaking broken English chances are you aren't from this country and/or don't reside in this country. Writing a language is about 5x easier than speaking it properly and since MMO's revolve around text, the fact that someone can't even get that right sends of a flag at one of the follow 2 things:

1) They have fat fingers and/or no regard to common spelling. So long as you get the gist of what they are saying the spelling shit can stay in the classroom where it belongs. Which is fine, as I'm one of these people (No not the fat fingered people, the people with no regard).

2) Your a fuckin foreigner. You nabbed yourself an American copy of the game after the company explicitly told folks not to do this since they were releasing Euro servers, etc.

Now we all know that American's are pretty racist bastards. Racism in this country is about as old as Bee Arthor vagina and about as tired as her libido. You need to understand that if your going to be playing on a MMO thats predominantly English speaking your bound to catch some shit if your in capable of this. If, however, you think this shit is completely one sided with regards to MMO, you sir, would be a fool. For your viewing pleasure I give you the following URL.


The gist of the forum post (complete with GM screenshots) is that its ok for a Japanese gamer on FFX Online to display tags of "NA (Death) {You want some?}" (NA means North America(n)) but its not ok for an American player to replace NA with JP (Japan) or Asia.

FF has been around longer than WoW so Ill make you Asians a deal right here and right now. You cut the bullshit out in that MMO and I'll cut the bullshit out in this MMO. Until then.....in the words of the Illustrious David Chappelle

"CHING CHANG CHONG CHONG, I cant UNDERSTAND YOU, Go BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY, White Power!"


-The Bottom Line by Cardnyl Sin

For our not so culturally savvy folks, Dave Chappelle is an African American comedian who did a skit on his comedy show (Chappelle Show) on Comedy Central about a blind black man who was a white supremacist. In said skit he made a number of witty comments like the one above. I say this because I'm sure some idiot will come here and read this and think I'm trying to use my blog to spread hate. Quite the contrary. This blog entry is to show just how narrow sighted people can become when they think they are the sole target of something, in this case racism. Get over it Asian community. You aren't first and certainly won't be the last to be the target of ignorant statements and bigot fucks. You can however, file a complaint and get in a line because if you think your distress over being called a money farmer is rough try being a Jew for the last few thousand years.

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