About badges and the death of Naxxramas.

The new badges system for Cataclysm has been revealed. It'll be a lot like the current badges system, except that there will always be only 2 different "badges". It's simplier than our current emblems, but in my opinion it's still faulty...

If you didn't read the blue post about the new badges system, here is how it'll look like. We won't have emblems anymore, but only points. There will be 2 type of points:

• Valor points, that you'll get from higher tier of content and daily/weekly quests
• Hero points, that you'll get from all the lower content, including heroic instances

Each time a new tier of content is released, your Valor points will be converted to Hero points.

This system has many advantage compared to the current one. First you won't have to change you're emblems of Triumph into Conquest into Valor into Heroic so you can buy a new heirloom for your baby hunter. But, most importantly, your Hero points will never be lost! At the moment, you probably have a few of lower tier emblems, and until you're an altoholic and often buy heirloom you'll certainly have them forever, without being able to use them on something usefull.

But it's still faulty. Look at the current content you could raid: Naxxramas, Malygos, Sartharion, Ulduar, Trial of the Crusader, and of course Icecrow. Which one are you doing more than once every 3 months? I mean, which one do you REALLY do. Doing only the "BigBadBoss must die" quest doesn't count. I suppose you're often doing ICC, and sometimes ToC. Did you try to do Naxxramas raid since ToC is out? I did try. After a few evenings spamming trade channel and convincing my hubby to come and heal, I finally manage to have 10 people ready to go. Well. This wasn't glorious.We didn't pass Gluth. Kiting zombies is apparently too hard. Of course, at the first wipe, half of the raid leaved. And this was before the new random dungeon tool.

Poor lonely Sapphiron!

Why would people bother doing a raid, where you could wipe, when you can get better gear by just doing a few heroics? Especially now that you just have to hit a button to be insta ported into an instance with 4 other people.

I'm not saying Naxxramas is the best raid ever (Ulduar is a great raid!), but it is actually nice to do something else than always the same bosses, in the same monotonous decor. Back in TBC, I remember doing Karazhan very often. With my alts, to gear them, but sometimes with my main too, to help friends gearing their alts. And I loved it.

It would be great if the Cataclysm badge system would encourage people doing old raids, and not just the higher tier raid and the fast random heroic. The current system make the older raids deserted. I'd like to do Ulduar with my shaman, but I know it'll be almost impossible to find 9 people with adequate gear and experience wishing to go past the weekly quest.

There could be something simple to have players still wishing to do older raids : make 3 type of badges instead of 2. Heroic instances would give you poor badges, Higher tier raid would give you great badges, and all the other raids would give you medium badges. Imagine that today : if you'd want some T9, you'd have to do some raid, be it Sarthartion, Ulduar or ToC. I know most people would choose ToC but still, it'd be better than nothing. If you'd only want to do random heroics, you could still get T8 gear with your poor badges. And really, with the Citadel zone buff updated to 15%, T8 is enough to do some pick up ICC 10.

And the winner main for Cataclysm is...

Warning! In this post I'll talk about Cataclysm class preview, if you don't want to read spoilers, don't read this post !

Shaman and priest preview are now out for Cataclysm (ok it's been for a few days but I couldn't write before now), and that's plenty of nice changes announced. As I played and loved both classes as my main, this led me a little step further to choose which character I'll play when Cataclysm goes out...

Shaman changes

Let start with resto shaman changes. Those are pretty nice : new healing spells, nice mastery bonus, and the come back of Spirit Link <3.

Healing Wave (level 4): While the shaman already has an ability called Healing Wave, we're adding another spell to the class's direct-healing arsenal and giving it a familiar name. The current Healing Wave will be renamed Greater Healing Wave, and the intent is for the 'new" Healing Wave to be the shaman's go-to heal. Lesser Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave will be used on a more situational basis.

As it was announced, shaman have their healing spells panel extended. Now we'll have an Healing Wave that will be mana efficient, a big heal (Greater Healing Wave, our current Healing Wave), and an emergency heal (Lesser Healing Wave). I'd guess the new Healing Wave cast time will be somewhere between Lesser and Greater Healing Wave, the mana cost will be very low, and it won't heal for a lot, perhaps a bit like the healing provided by Lesser Healing Wave.

Unleash Weapon (level 81): Unleashes the power of your weapon enchants for additional effects (see below). A dual-wielding Enhancement shaman will activate the effects of both of their weapon enchants. Instant cast. 30-yard range. 15-second cooldown. Undispellable. * Earthliving Weapon - Heals the target slightly and buffs the shaman's next healing spell by 20%.

This spell is nice, but we'll have to use it on cooldown if we want it to be really useful. I suppose we'll want to macro it to some big or emergency spell.

Healing Rain (level 83): An area-effect heal-over-time (HoT) spell that calls down rain in a selected area, healing all players within it. There is no limit to the number of players who can potentially be affected; however, there are diminishing returns when healing a large number of targets, much like the diminishing returns associated with AoE damage spells. This should give Restoration shaman another healing tool that improves their group-healing and heal-over-time capabilities. 2-second cast time. 30-yard range. 10-second duration. 10-second cooldown.

This spell seems just wow. An aoe healing spell, without a limitation in the targets number, and without having to channel it, of course I want it ! It's not overpowered though as it requires that people stay in the area of the spell for the full duration. And I suppose the size of the area will be limited too. But resto shaman will clearly become even more powerful when healing stacked people.

Spiritwalker's Grace (level 85): When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks. This will give shaman of all three specs another way to heal or do damage when it’s necessary to move in both PvE and PvP. Instant cast. 10-second duration. 2-minute cooldown.

Imagine you're running and chain heal ribbons of awesomeness are still jumping in every directions... Who wouldn't love that ? Apart from the hunt trying to hit you while you run around pillars in arena of course. But I suppose we'll have to get used to this spell before using it efficiently. Running and casting are such opposed actions since we play wow.

• We're making changes to which classes and specs are able to dispel magic, diseases, curses, and poison, largely for PvP purposes. Shaman will have Cleanse Spirit as a baseline ability, but it will only remove curses. Restoration shaman will have a talent that will improve Cleanse Spirit so that it also removes magic. Shaman will no longer be able to remove poison.
• Cleansing Totem will be removed from the game, as we want dispels to be a decision for players, not something done mindlessly. To that end, all dispels will cost slightly more mana, and you will waste the spell if you cast it when there is nothing to remove. (Currently, the dispel is only cast when there is something to remove, which encourages spamming 'just in case.") We will balance PvE dispelling with this new model in mind.

The change to dispel mechanism is the only one I don't like. I was perfectly fine not being able to dispel magic with my shaman, and I'll miss poison dispelling. I'll miss cleansing totem to, but I have to admit this could be overpowered. But I really can't imagine how you can manage fights like Iron Concil Hard Mode without being able to spam you dispel button on the tank before the debuff land.

Spirit Link will likely be worked back into deep Restoration in some form. The idea is that you will be able to link targets together so they share damage. When we had previously tried to implement Spirit Link, it was hard to balance and a little confusing. However, we really liked the concept -- and so did players -- so we are trying to bring it back

I love that. I was so sad when they abandoned Spirit Link for Riptide in WotLK beta. I just hope they'll be able to balance this spell now. Not only will this spell make resto shaman very useful for some fight mechanisms, but it also has a great synergy with Chain Heal!

Resto shaman specific Mastery bonus : Deep Healing: Your direct heals will do more healing when the target's health is lower. This will scale to damage (e.g. someone at 29% health would receive more healing than someone at 30%) rather than have arbitrary break points.

This is a great mastery bonus. Your spell become more powerful when you really need it, that's always good! I just hope this will work with all chain heal jumps(I don't know what they mean with "direct heal"), but even if it only works with the first jump it'll be ok for me.

Priest changes

I don't know if it's because I read shaman changes first, but I fell less excited by priest changes.

Heal (available at level 16): While priests already have a spell called Heal, the existing version becomes obsolete at higher levels, which is something we intend to change in Cataclysm. Introduced at a low level, the "new" Heal spell will functionally work much like a down-ranked Greater Heal did in the past, adding more granularity to your direct-healing arsenal. If you need to heal someone a moderate amount and efficiency is an issue (making Flash Heal the incorrect spell for the job), then Heal is what you want to use. Heal is intended to be the priest's go-to direct-healing spell unless they need something bigger (Greater Heal) or faster (Flash Heal). We will be following a similar philosophy with all the healing classes.

Here again a new healing spell. As I understand why they add a new spell for resto shaman, I don't really feel like priest did need a new spell. We already have lots of them, a little adjustment in mana cost and amount healed could have done the job very well in my opinion.

Inner Will (level 83): Increases movement speed by 12% and reduces the mana cost of instant-cast spells by 10%. This buff will be exclusive with Inner Fire, meaning you can't have both up at once. Inner Fire provides a spell power and Armor buff; Inner Will should be useful on a more situational basis

While this new buff will be situational, it's nice to have the choice between 2 buffs, depending on fight mechanisms, or on your gearing choices.

Leap of Faith (level 85): Pull a party or raid member to your location. Leap of Faith (or "Life Grip") is intended to give priests a tool to help rescue fellow players who have pulled aggro, are being focused on in PvP, or just can't seem to get out of the fire in time. Instant. 30-yard range. 45-second cooldown.

Ah! This is the fun change for priest. This will be a fun joke to make to your fellow raid members at the beginning of Cataclysm, when they still don't know this ability. But the spell would need a little instant heal to be really useful in PVE. Without any heal, I suppose a shield could do the job most of the time. We still need more information about this spell though, but for now I would say it'd be situationnal, and could be a good spell for some fight mechanisms.

Greater Heal will probably be the tank-healing spell of choice, though we've also discussed giving Discipline a second shield so that they have a small shield to cast on lots of different targets, and a big, more expensive shield to cast on a tank or anyone else taking a ton of damage.

I hope some love will be given to Greater Heal. This spell is seldom used, and I understand why : there isn't any talent that improves Greater Heal in the disc tree, holy priest are rarely on tank healing duty so they don't pick Greater Heal talents, and, most of all, the spell doesn't have a glyph! I hope the developers will give this spell a nice glyph to make it more attractive and a real gameplay choice. By the way, I love the facts that disc priest will have many shields at their disposal. I suppose they'll all share the Weakened Soul debuff, and that's ok because we will have to choose wisely the good shield to cast.

Discipline will finally be getting Power Word: Barrier as a talented ability. Think of it like a group Power Word: Shield.

Lots of priests loved this spell, but I'm not particularly excited. Won't some fight become boring if you can shield the full raid with 5 gcd ? I suppose the spell will have a cd but still, I'm fine with PW:S for now.

We want to make Holy a little bit more interesting to play. One new talent will push the Holy priest into an improved healing state when he or she casts Prayer of Healing, Heal, or Renew three times in a row. The empowered state varies depending on the heals cast.

This mechanism seems interesting. I can't wait to know what the empowered state will provide! This probably won't be always useful, there are some fight when you really need to use all your spell, and can't just use aoe heals or single-target heals. But there are some fight (or some phases in fights) where you just spam one type of heals from the beginning to the end.

• Discipline specific Mastery bonus :
  Absorption: Improves the strength of shields such as Power Word: Shield, Divine Aegis, and Power Word: Barrier.
• Holy specific Mastery bonus :
  Radiance: Your direct heals add a small heal-over-time component to the target.

The disc priest mastery bonus is great. What else could have suit better to disc ? But I feel the holy bonus a bit strange. I never liked the glyph of Prayer of Healing that much. I suppose this bonus will be situational. It could be great if the holy priest is the main raid healer and there are constant raid damage, but if there is one or many druid or shaman healing the raid, I don't think the little holy hots will have the time to heal anything. Plus, how will these hots works when a priest heals multiple times in a raw the same target ?

As I said, I do not feel as much excited with priest changes as I felt with the shaman changes. By now I'd say Cataclysm will be the good time to take my "shaminette" back to the front. And you, what do you think of these preview? What are your favourite ones ?

Getting Started with Grid

For the Lunar Festival, Khi from Tree Burglar challenge the blogging community and asks us to write some guide for new players. Here is mine !

"You're the Elder. Pretend you're smart for a few days =P"

So, you're a new healer. Or you finally want to have some tiny raid frames so you can dispel you fellow raid members. You've heard of Grid as a great raid addon, but you have also heard it was hard to set up. You're right, Grid is a great raid addon. It takes little place on your screen and let you know about anything you want to know, without giving to you useless information.
But you're also wrong. Grid can pretty well work out of the box, and I'll give you a short guide to make it usable.

Step 1 : Download Grid

If you've never used an addon before, you can download Grid on www.curse.com. But you'll get the latest version if you go directly to www.wowace.com.
Click on the "download" link, extract the file in the Interface\Addons folder in your World of Warcraft directory. (Depending on the setting you choose when installing WoW, it is generally in C:\Programs\World of Warcraft)

When you then log into wow, click on the "Addons" button at the bottom left of your screen and check Grid.

Step 2 : Getting started with Grid configuration menu

You have now grid running in your interface. You should have a new icon on your minimap, and perhaps one small and ugly square in the middle of your screen.

If you don't see the minimap icon, type /grid config, and uncheck "Hide minimap icon".
Now click on the minimap icon. A window opens with Grid configuration menu.The menu is divided in 3 part :

• Layout : Here you can choose how the little square are arranged. You can have different size of raids depending if you're in group, raid, battleground, etc., and you can choose to show pets, main tanks, have vertical or horizontal groups. You can also choose to hide Grid in some raid configurations by selecting "None".
• Frame : Here you can choose the appearance of the little squares. But, most importantly, this is where you'll choose how information you need are displayed in the square. In base grid, information can be displayed in different ways, called "indicators". It can be a colored dot in a corner, a colored border, the color of the square itself, a text information or a central icon. You can add more indicators by downloading pluggins.
• Status : Here you'll choose which information you want to see in grid.

To display any information in grid, you'll need to configure it in Status, and then to choose in which indicator it'll appear in Frame.

Step 3 : Setting Grid appearance

First of all, you want to choose a profile other than default, else your grid configuration could be erased when you update the addon. You do that in Profile.

To configure Grid without having to be in a group, you need to choose a solo layout. You can do that in Layout/solo. To place Grid in your interface, you want to choose the greater layout you'll use most of the time. For me it is by group 25.

Now you should see one little square in a rectangular background.

As the square is too small to be easily readable, you'll certainly want to change its size. This can be done in Frame/Advanced. You can change the scale of the square in Layout, or change it's form by changing its width and height in Frame/Advanced. In this menu you can also change texture, font, and the size of the indicators. You'll certainly want to change the corner size as the default one is very small.

Now, you can place Grid where you want on your screen by dragging the "Grid" tab. The background give you an idea of the place it'll take when you're in a raid. Make sure you uncheck "lock frame" (in Layout) to be able to move Grid. If the little Grid tab does not appear, check and uncheck "lock frame", it should appear.

You can also change the background appearance and the spacing between the squares in Layout and Layout/Advanced.

Step 4 : Displaying needed information

The default Grid configuration show most information you'll need :

• magic, disease, curse and poison are shown as blue, brown, purple and green dots of in top right corner and as a center icon (no screen, sorry but level 1 mobs don't put debuffs !)
• name is shown in center text if the target is at full health
• Incoming heals are shown as a green dot in bottom left corner, on center text and as a visual heal bar.
• aggro alert is shown as a red dot in top left corner
• health deficit is shown in center text if the target isn't at full health
• the border change color to show low health warning, low mana warning and your target.
• Frame alpha changed if target is out of range, dead or offline.

I still suggest doing a few change to this configuration :

• hide the debuffs YOU can't dispel on the center icon icon indicator. To do so go in Frame/Center icon, and uncheck the debuff types you don't need.
• The incoming heals alert show in 3 different indicator. I suggest you disable at least one of them. (I disabled the bottom left corner)

• The border change color to show low health and low mana warning. Personally, I find this information redundant / useless and I suggest you disable it. (You'll see if someone is at low health, you won't wait for the border to light up to heal !). It'll save you one great indicator to show more relevant information (for example, aggro alert). If you want to see an indication of mana, I suggest you download GridManaBar instead (see below).

In the default Grid configuration some specific class buffs and debuffs are already entered in Status/Auras, but they're not shown. These buffs are Lifebloom, Power Word:Shield, Regrowth, Rejuvenation, Renew, Riptide, Forbearance, Mortal Strike and Weakened Soul. To begin with, I suggest you enable only your own buffs and debuff, and to check the "Show if mine" option. Then choose the indicator you want and enable your buff. For example, I choose center icon for the Mortal Strike debuff, bottom-left corner for Renew and top left corner for Power Word:Shield and Weakened Soul.

You can add more buffs and debuffs in Status/Auras by entering the exact name in the correct text area. You can use this functionnality to show missing buffs. For example, I want to see a wite dot in the bottom right corner if Power Word Fortitude is missing. To do that, I enter the buff name.

A new line "Buff : Power Word: Fortitude" appeared in Status/Auras. I choose the color, and check "Show if Missing".

Now I go to Frame/Bottom Right Corner and check "Buff: Power Word: Fortitude".

Step 5 : Having more from your Grid

Your Grid is now usable. But there are some additional change you'll certainly want to make before a long time :

• Showing raid debuffs : you'll certainly want some of the debuff raid bosses use to put on your raid to appear in you raid frames. That can be done in 2 ways. The simplest is to download GridStatusRaidDebuffs. You'll need to update it often to have new debuffs. That's why I suggest you to download it directly at wowace.com to have the newest version.
  In Status/Raid debuff, you can choose which debuff you want to see (you don't want to see all debuffs, some are not useful and will just hide important information). You can also choose not to show dispellable debuffs (I suggest you choose this option, as the dispellable debuffs are already shown). By default, the raid debuffs are normally shown as a central icon. If not, go to Status/Central Icon and check raid debuffs.
  If you don't want to download a new plugin, you can add each debuff manually. (It also works for any buff/debuff you want to see in Grid)
• Setting different priorities allow you to see multiples status in the same indicator : for each grid status, you can choose a priority level. If differents status are displayed in the same indicator, only the status with the higher priority level will appear. For exemple, I chose to have Power Word: Shield and Weakened Soul in the same corner. I chose a priority level of 91 for PW:S and 90 for WS. Thus I see the WS debuff only when the PW:S is consumed.
• You'll certainly want to know how much time is left on your hots. You can have that by downloading GridStatusHots. If you're a priest, instead of selecting Renew in your renew indicator, you'll want to select My Renew. Then the color of the hot will change depending on how much time is left on it. You can choose the colors of the dot in Status/My hots/My Renew, as well as the moment you want the dot to change color.
  
  
  
  For example, as a shaman, you'll want the riptide dot to change color earlier than for other hots. I set it to change to color 2 at 4 seconds remaining and to change to color 3 at 2 seconds. When the dot is color 2, I know it is the perfect time to cast a Chain Heal on that target. When it change to color 3, I know I don't have the time anymore to cast a Chain Heal before Riptide wears off.



Bright pink dot :
Riptide just applied



Red dot : less than 2
seconds left on Riptide



4 to 2 seconds left on Riptide,
time to cast Chain Heal on that target



• If you're a priest or a shaman, you'll want to see your group mana bars. You can download GridManaBar. This plugin can be easily configured in Frame/Advanced/Mana bar.


• There are 2 useful options to set up Grid on your screen:
  In Layout, you can check (or uncheck) the option "Horizontal groups", depending if you want your groups displayed horizontally or vertically. In 25-men raids it won't make a huge difference, but in 5, 10 or 40-men raids you'll need to use this option to fit Grid in your UI.
  In Layout/Advanced, you can define an anchor for the unit frame. Selecting the good anchor will allow Grid to be exactly where you want, whatever raid setup you're in. For example, I chose the Top-left Anchor. Thus, the top-left square of Grid will always be at the same place, and the groups will grow to the bottom and to the right.
• There are more options to change the look and feel of you frames. Default frame are empty at full health and fill up vertically. I find it great : you can better notice low health people and the vertical orientation allow me to have small frames thus I don't have to move my mouse a lot. But it can be confusing at first. You can change that in Frame/Advanced.
  Frame orientation allow you to have your frames fill up horizontally, like most unit frames.
  Invert frame color will allow you to have your frames full at full health, like most unit frames.

I think I summed up all you need to know about Grid to get started. Of course it won't be the awesome layout you can see on some UI, but you should be able to use Grid and improve your layout to make it fit your needs as you go along.

Mourning Priest T10 4 pieces bonus

Since Icecrown release, the T10 healing bonuses have been controversial. Their usefulness wasn't proved, and thus many priest didn't pick the T10 healing set at all. But in the next patch, the 4 piece bonus will change and improve the favorite spells of both holy and disc specs.

RIP Funny priest T10 bonus

For now, the T10 healing bonuses are the following :

• 2 pieces : You Flash Heal has a 33% chance to make your target to

  heal for another 33% of the healing amount over 9 seconds.

• 4 pieces : Your Penance and Circle of Healing spells have a 20% chance to make your next Flash Heal cast within 6 second to reset the cooldown of your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.

The 2 piece bonus is ok, but it has many imperfections. Many disc or holy priest seldom use Flash Heal. And for the priests who spam Flash Heal on the tank, there is a risk that the hot will never heal (or at least, not heal for a long time). Indeed, when the hot is applied for the second time on the same target, the next heal is delayed by 3 seconds. If the hot is each time re-applied before the first heal, it will never heal !

Here is an example :

If you only cast one Flash Heal :

• t = 0 : your Flash Heal land and the hot is applied.
• t = 3s : first tick of the hot
• t = 6s : second tick of the hot
• t = 9s : last tick of the hot.

If you spam Flash Heal, assuming a 1.25 seconds cast time, you can have this happen :

• t = 0 : first Flash Heal land, the hot is applied
• t = 1.25s : second Flash Heal land
• t = 2.5s : third Flash Heal land, the hot is reapplied (next tick delayed by 3s)
• t = 3.75s : 4th Flash Heal land
• t = 5s : 5th Flash Heal land, the hot is reapplied (next tick delayed by 3s)

Etc.

In this short period of time, the hot is applied once every 2 Flash Heal. Thus it'll be a moment where your hot will finally heal the target. And at this moment, it'll heal for a lot. But the hot didn't tick for more than 8 seconds !

As you can see, the 2 pieces bonus isn't absolutely awesome.

And it is the same for the 4 pieces bonus. If you cast Penance every cd, once every 5 Penance, you'll have a cd reduced to your Penance + Flash Heal cast time. Assuming 20% haste raid buffed, that's a 2.75 cd. That means you can cast 5 Penance in 34.75 seconds instead of 40 seconds. That's 5 more Penance on a 5 minutes fight (43 instead of 37). If you cast Penance every cd, that's ok. And it becomes a great bonus if you take into account the fact that Penance is often a life-saver spell, unlike Flash Heal. But a lot of these shield-spamming priests out there found this bonus pretty useless.

That's why many priest didn't pick the T10 healing set at all, and preferred some off-set items, or even the shadow set !

Personally, I didn't have enough frost emblems to buy the full set, but couldn't wait to try the 4 pieces bonus. Even if it wasn't a great healing increased, it would have add some changes and, most probably, some fun to my gameplay.

But today, as I read the updates to the 3.3.3 patch, I was a bit sad. The 4 piece bonus will change ! And I don't even have the time to try it ! (I have 2 pieces by now, and as I don't raid I'm far away from the 4th piece bonus)

The new bonus is far better for most priest: it increases the healing done by Renew and the absorption done by Power Word: Shield by 5%.

But is that fun ? Not at all. It's just healing the same way I healed for the past year, just with bigger numbers. Well, switching gear to T10 already give me bigger numbers, as I have more spell power. I'd better have some fun from my set bonus.

And you, what do you think of the old and new bonuses ? Will you change your gearing strategy with this change ? What to you wait from a set bonus ?