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.

Single Abstract Noun

I joined for a week now the blogging community guild created by Kumquat alias the The Artist Formerly Known as Tamarind from Righteous Orbs.

At first, I didn't know what class to choose. I already have at least one alt of each class. Finally, I choose a troll shaman, Zahiou (Zahia was already taken grrr !)

Did you know you could jump directly from the Valley of Trials to Ratchet ?

My first impression when I joined is that the guild is actually very nice. Each time I log in many members are online, and most of them are very chatty. As i often level my alts in ghost guilds, having actually an active guild chat is nice ! Even if I don't participate a lot in the chat yet. It's my first time on an English server, and it's like discovering the wow language again. It's a bit awkward not knowing anymore how to say "Hello" or "Good bye" to the guild. In my french guild I'd often say "Plop" (or even "poulpe"¹) and "A +", but I'm not sure you'd understand.

Levelling a new alt on a new server is a kind of new experience too. Money-wise it's ok (thanks to the bags from the guild bank !). But levelling without any Bind on Account gear is another story. I thought levelling had became easy since a few patches, but the awesome Bind on Account gear had a lot to do with this impression.

Despite my full grey set and having found myself at 1% xp from level 10 with only one red quest left, I managed to hit level 12, and went to the Ghostland to get the awesome gear you find there. But yesterday, I finally transferred a forgotten alt who had Bind on Account Shoulders (shame on me !) and could craft Mooncloth Bags.

⁽¹⁾ Poulpe is the french word for octopus. In french servers we sometimes use french words that have about the same pronunciation as the specific wow or English name (but generally a completely different meaning). Like for example Poule (= chicken) instead of Pull, or Boeuf (= cow) instead of buff. Here Poulpe is used to replace plop.

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 ?