300 miserable posts

988 days ago I had a genius idea to start a blog. I had just finished levelling a shadow priest through Outland and had no idea what to do next; it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I called the blog Misery after a key talent in the shadow tree, but also because I’m a glass half-empty kind of guy. If you’ve had reason to pop by on occasion you probably know that.

300 posts later, and I’m still… well, you could hardly call it going strong, more limping along.

That amounts to an average of one post every three or four days, which is not exactly prolific — though I do still remember the dizzy feeling of posting twice in one day. Good times.

I average about 300 hits a day, which even in the rather specialised realm of gaming fanblogs I recognise as a modest splash in the pond. And I can’t even promise that all of those visitors find what they need; I am inherently lazy and don’t do nearly as much housekeeping as I should.

But every now and then, I catch a glimpse of the big time, thanks to the generosity of those rock-star bloggers at wow.com. The most hits I’ve ever received in one day was 2770 on 13 January 2010 for a post about shadow priest glyphs which Alex Ziebart very kindly promoted.

My most read post of all time is also about glyphs, which is a bit of a common theme on Misery. This time it’s the one about glyphs for levelling (hideously out of date). I’m sure anyone who ever hits that page bounces right back to Google in disgust. I promise to update it for Cataclysm, ok?

My top referrer is clearly Google, but I owe a good chunk of my visits to referrals from other blogs — top of the list are Blessing of Kings, wow.com, the (sadly retired) Egotistical Priest, and Penance Priest. Thank you very much guys, and thank you to all the bloggers who link to me that I have shamefully omitted here. Drop me a line if I don’t return the favour, I need a kick to update my blog roll as it is.

The most comments I’ve ever received on one post is a modest 19 for my musings about going holy. I clearly need to do more if I want the buzzing discussions of the big hitters like Matticus and BBB. Share your ideas in the comments please :)

Wrath of the Lick King has been a mixed bag for Merlot. He has seen shadow priests go from a hopelessly broken marginal support class to a dps contender, but he has had to sit out much of the end game while an upstart Tauren shaman monopolised my time. For casual players like me, this has been an incredible expansion, but it has come at a cost. I think most hybrid classes will recognise the pressure to offspec for healing or tanking, and many will understand the pitfalls of succumbing to that pressure for convenience. Once you accept that it’s easier to heal or tank than fight for a dps spot, you are lost.

So I have done more raiding this expansion than ever before, but I wasn’t melting faces. And now it’s too late to catch up. The advent of achievements and gear score have pretty much seen to that — but that’s another post.

With Cataclysm already in beta, I’ll be able to get my teeth into priestly class developments again, which is something I love. And I will soon have to make a decision about my Cataclysm strategy. Do I take the easy route and stay healing, or do I go back to shadow and bench the facehealer?

Either way, you don’t get rid of me that easily. I’ll still keep banging on about how priests need moar luv and how glyphs are broken and how I am totally going to redesign this blog like tomorrow. Yea, mañana baby.

Ad nauseum

Our raid leader described the new Wyrmrest Temple raid, Ruby Sanctum, as “Naxxramas difficulty with Icecrown heroic loot”. We all cheered and ran in. Then we spent the next two hours wiping.

The problems started in phase two. We’d consistently lose two or three dps to the cutter beams. Our dps must have the lowest IQ of all raiders because I don’t understand how you can fail to stay in the right place when the tank is rotating the boss for you. Hunters were the worst. And like true hunters, they always had an excuse ready.

At the phase three transition, someone always got smacked before the tank turned up. They only had one job, and they were constantly late for it.

And that was the point where it usually went tits up. The debuffs became a huge pain. Dps stopped watching them and didn’t move, and healers got sloppy with dispels (myself included, on shaman duty). With a good chunk of dps dead already, the remaining dps was invariably imbalanced. And again, this goes back to the their IQs, but really how hard is it to watch a big number at the top of your screen and stop casting for a bit if it goes the wrong way?

One thing of practical value I have to share from this catastrophe is that grid doesn’t seem to like the phase three debuffs. It displayed the phase one and two debuffs just fine, but then got sloppy. I didn’t even realise I wasn’t seeing them to start with. It was only after a few wipes when I and the other healers started swapping notes that we realised something was amiss. So we had to add the debuffs manually. That seemed to do the trick — not that it spurred the dps into moving any quicker when they got them.

Two hours of dying to a pink dragon is pretty demoralising. But then we disbanded and I got drafted into a 10-man heroic Saurfang attempt where I proceeded to get my ass handed to me for another two hours. We usually cocked up around the 40 per cent mark during an add phase — either a dps would die to the adds, or someone would die to a mark while we were busy trying to keep the dps alive. There’s just no coming back from a death in that fight.

I usually like fights like this: with two piece tier 10, all you have to do is riptide, faceheal x3 and keep earth shield up. It’s the bomb. But Saurfang is shaman kryptonite, especially on 10-man where you can’t even rely on a decent-sized melee group to soak up the chains. Ancestral awakening comes into its own, but it’s really no substitute for my face-shaped “I Win” chain heal button.

Four hours of dying and nothing to show for it except a huge hole in my bank balance. Sometimes, I really wonder if this game is a productive use of my time, you know?

Merlot meets Sara

Four titans and ten epicly geared heroes versus some old bird in a dress: this'll be a cake walk. Shield tank, frisbee, penance blah blah. Seriously, what god looks like Anne Robinson? No respect. That reminds me of that episode of Doctor Who when... oh bugger, move from green cloud. Move, move... phew. So yea, the old bird's going down like a sack of spanners. Wonder what she'll drop? I only need three more badges for my... WHOA where the hell did THAT come from? OK OK, we can do this. Nearly full mana bar. Shield tank, frisbee. That is one UGLY tentacle. She'd seriously better not put that thing anywhere near me... DO not... I said do NOT... omg she DID. I feel violated. This bitch is going down. Shield tank, frisbee, penance... penance? Why am I not shooting gold sparks? Oh, not enough mana. That can't be right. How the... omg, I have NO mana. It just VANISHED. OK, don't panic. Cast shadowfiend. Wait, no, use hymn. OK, channelling n... omg, feared. We're screwed. Why am I RUNNING? OK, it's OK. Drop a pot, stay calm. Shit, sanity is super low, better just jump in this nice green light thingy... great, feared. Breathe, breathe. OK, shield tank, frisbee, run back to green thingy... 70, 80, 90... Thank you Freya :) Hmm, is someone shouting at me? Why would someone be shouting at me? What does that red beam do? Why is my health dropping? Can we bring the old lady back now please?

A rare occurence

I'm not cutting edge, not what you'd call an 'early adopter', so the last place I expected to find myself tonight was in 10-man Crusaders' Colliseum; I still haven't finished Ulduar. Healing as well, can you believe it?

I think it will be quite fun when I get over the shock and horror. Among the beasts encounter, only the worms are a real challenge. Positioning is very difficult, particularly as a healer with a need to stay in range of both tanks while avoiding frontal cone attacks and moving around to dispel the poison. If the worms die, you've won.

The second guy, released yesterday, is a demon that throws just about every conceivable evil shit at the lot of you: chain lightning, dots, fires, adds, even volcanoes. This is another fight where staying out of trouble and keeping in range of everyone to heal them is the biggest challenge. The add tank died on a couple of occasions because I just wasn't standing in the right place at the right time. But we got him down on our fourth attempt, which ain't bad for me :)

Interestingly, we took two tanks and four healers into the instance. I've never tackled a 10-man with more than three before, and often only two. I don't know if this is how other guilds are doing it, but it was a good move on our part. The whole raid takes significant damage throughout both encounters and with range being the issue it is I think we would have struggled a lot more just keeping everyone up.

Win

Thank you very much for your advice and encouragement. Maybe I'm not such a priestard after all :)

Owning my mistakes

Time for some naval gazing after a disastrous attempt on the Instructor. This fight is much more appealing in theory than it is in practice. Lovely idea to give priests a novel role in a raid fight but if they wanted to tank, wouldn't they have rolled a mage? Hmm?

Razuvious should be easy.

Step 1. Mind control mob.
Step 2. Cast bone shield and taunt.
Step 3. Repeat step 2 every 40 seconds.

That looks easy, doesn't it? So what's my problem?

Mistake number 1 — not watching the channel time
This is my biggest problem. A minute feels like a lot, a minute is enough to lull me into a false sense of security. A minute is longer than my short-term memory. With the taunt switching every 20 seconds, even in ideal circumstances that means the cast will expire towards the end of only your second time tanking. And circumstances are never ideal. Damage from the knife will push back the channel, the spell will break early.

Solution: drop and recast after every switch. Even if this is overly cautious, it will minimise the risk of mind control breaking during my tank time, and that's a Good Thing.

Mistake number 2 — mistiming bone shields and taunts
Something else that should be much simpler than it is. Neither priest has voice, so we couldn't should out to each other. Trying to track cooldowns while watching the channel time and picking up dropped mind controls is easier said than done. The result? Razuvious either flattens a tank without his bone shield or runs after the dps when both taunts are on cooldown. I'm sure it's easy enough to do this without voice if you're practiced and have modest situational awareness, but I fail on both counts.

Solution: get voice. Strong preference for voice-enabled priests to tank.

Mistake number 3 — terrible positioning
Ok, the big guy is running amok and flattening the dps. Clearly something has gone wrong. He's bouncing around so fast I can't even catch up to him. And there are so many damn melee I can't even see him. But I'm going to fix this, I just have to get close enough to taunt and then... and then I run out of range and mind control breaks and it's all over.

Solution: assign positions for everything. All ranged here, all melee here. If he runs at you, suck it up. If he moves, stand still.

I have to say, this boss would be much easier if the taunt worked at range. You'd be able to position the tanks a couple of feet apart and it would be much easier to see when the switch occurs. Don't player class taunts work like that now?

Also, I hate being in melee. How do you see what you're doing? How do tanks cope when mobs break loose? Do people volunteer for this job?

On a personal note, it feels very, very shit to know your raid is wiping because you — and only you — can't get the hang of something. Tanks have a huge responsibility, and while some players respond well to the pressure, and have the reactions and the sharp mind to deal with changing circumstances, these aren't qualities that you nurture in the dps. My admiration and respect go to the players who choose this path.

I can't wait to get back to ranged.

Blizzard: never ever do this to me again.

Note to self: get better

I hate Malygos. Or rather, I hate the minds that contrived to assemble so many irritating mechanics in one encounter. Just because everyone else can defeat him with no problems does not mean it is good design. So there.

Right from the start, the damn platform gives me motion sickness. It can't just be me. But I grit my teeth and prepare for phase one. It 'should' be easy, I know what needs to be done. But the sparks spawn well out of range, are hard to see, and impossible to manouver without a death knight. With all the time wasted running around trying to target the damn things, never stacking the buff, my dps is way too low. I vaguely think I need an 'Illhoof'-style spammable macro but one that checks for range too. Is that even possible?

Phase two feels a little gimmickey, but it's not so bad. I have just enough time to ramp up some damage in-between bubble hops. I even get to ride the disc things occasionally. I feel a bit like the green goblin.

Phase three is the paradigm of gimmicks, it makes other gimmicks look conventional. I can spam the fire spells, I even have an addon to track my combo points and dot stacks, but it's hard to move at the same time and even harder to keep enough focus in reserve for the shield. I fail, I die.

So I need to get better at two things:

• Dealing efficiently with sparks with minimum interruption to my Malygos dps
• Staying alive during phase three

Any advice?

Rough guide to shadow talents

Work is hectic at the moment and the blog is having to take a back seat — which is a shame because some of the guides are out of date or just plain wrong and there are many, many great blogs I need to profile and add to my blog roll. I'll get around to it eventually.

In the meantime, there's a small chance some hapless young priest might stumble upon this blog in search of help and advice. What would happen to that bewildered adventurer if they saw me now? They would leave disappointed, confused, rudderless. That's a burden I'm not willing to bear.

So here, like a prophylactic for ignorance, is Merlot's rough guide to shadow talents — for pve, that is. While I could hazard a guess about pvp, I'd be talking out of my meta socket.

We're all pretty focused on levelling right now, so I've scored each talent out of five for its usefulness while levelling as well as raiding — five is most useful, one is pretty much useless.

What really struck me as I played around with my own talents and wrote this guide is how bottom-heavy shadow feels for levelling. To move on up the tree you really need to pick up talents that are of limited or questionable use for everyday grinding and questing. That's why I haven't bothered posting a levelling build yet — there are so many optional talents it really comes down to what works best for your play style.

If you're one of those bewildered adventurers searching for meaning in a strange new world, remember to check the comments where my more experienced readers will undoubtedly have exposed my horrendous errors.

Tier 1	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Spirit tap	3	5	2
Improved spirit tap	2	1	5
Blackout	5	3	1

Spirit tap is the star of any priest levelling build but it's only of situational use in a raid. Shame then that it's a prerequisite for improved spirit tap, as you'll need this in raids. Conversely, improved spirit tap is not much use for levelling — whether you crit a lot or not, the benefit is small on short fights and spirit tap will overwrite it when the mob dies.

Blackout's really not needed while levelling, but it definitely makes it easier. In raids, I'd avoid it: bosses are immune and tanks won't thank you if it procs while they're trying to move trash.

Tier 2	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Shadow affinity	3	1	5
Improved shadow word: pain	2	5	5
Shadow focus	3	3	5

For levelling, you don't need shadow affinity. To be honest, I don't even know if you need this talent in raids anymore, given shadow form's innate threat reduction. But I'll assume in a full raid build and geared properly it will come in very handy. No doubt we'll be hearing more about this from theorycrafters if it is indeed an issue.

Improved shadow word: pain is a no-brainer. More damage = good.

Shadow focus is one of those optional talents for levelling. Remember you need 4% spell hit to eliminate resists on equal-level mobs — well, between this and misery further down the tree, you're going to have 6%, enough for mobs two levels higher. That's not taking any hit you may have from gear into account. But you'll need 17% hit for raid bosses, so you won't want to skip this as you enter Naxx.

Tier 3	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Improved psychic scream	2	1	1
Improved mind blast	5	2	5

Improved psychic scream is a waste of points in any pve context; take this talent only if you want silence as it's a prerequisite.

Improved mindblast isn't terribly useful when levelling, but it is needed for raiding — the only question is how many points you should spend. Four points is probably enough here, unless you're factoring in a lot of haste.

Tier 4	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Veiled shadows	2	1	4
Shadow reach	2	5	5
Shadow weaving	3	3	5

Veiled shadows isn't terribly useful for levelling, but the reduced cooldown on your shadow fiend will be important in long raid encounters.

Similarly, shadow weaving isn't that important for levelling (you probably won't have time to benefit from a full stack, even if the mob is alive long enough to build it up) but it's a cornerstone of your raid dps.

Reach is almost mandatory with mind flay. Always take this.

Tier 5	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Silence	1	3	2
Vampiric embrace	1	5	2
Improved vampiric embrace	2	5	3
Focused mind	3	3	5

Silence is nice to have while levelling but you can easily survive without it, while in raids there are generally better options for interrupting caster trash and, as usual, bosses are immune. But I still like having it.

Since the nerf, I'm not sure how useful vampiric embrace is to raids, even in its improved form. But solo, it's still a wonderful spell and I'll never leave home without it.

Focused mind is easily skippable for levelling but it's important for your longevity in raids.

Tier 6	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Mind melt	2	3	5
Darkness	5	5	5

I don't think you're going to notice a 4% increased chance to crit while levelling, but I'd pick this talent up anyway for want of better options. For raiding it's a boost, no matter how small.

Darkness, again, is a no-brainer.

Tier 7	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Shadow form	1	5	5
Shadow power	5	5	5

No ambiguity here, no doubt — pick up your shadowy purple goodness and finally join the ranks of casters who enjoy double-damage crits. It's about time.

Tier 8	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Improved shadow form	2	5	3
Misery	3	4	5

The tooltip for improved shadow form must have been written by the work experience kid because it is grammatically — and therefore literally — wrong. What this talent actually does, in addition to the snare removal, is give shadow form 70% passive pushback reduction, and for that it is rather useful for levelling. Now you can more-or-less melt faces at point blank. What little pushback that remains will gimp you a little, but in two levels I've had no problems at all. So much so, that I rarely even bother to fear-flay any more. In BC raids I hardly ever wished for pushback protection, but I think it became more important in later content. That's why I've given it a rather non-committal 3 rating for raiding, but I'm sure someone will put me straight if I'm underestimating it.

Misery's great in any situation for the 15% spell power bonus; the hit may or may not be useful to you and your raid, but it comes as a package so make use of it if you can.

Tier 9	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Psychic horror	2	1	1
Vampiric touch	1	5	5
Pain and suffering	3	2	5

Psychic horror is in the improved psychic scream category: worthless for pve. It may even be worthless for pvp. Regardless, don't waste your points.

Vampiric touch is essential for any shadow build. It's now our most powerful dot (I think...) as well as triggering the rather underwhelming replenishment buff. What can I say, rain is as good as a river if your thirsty.

Pain and suffering doesn't really do much for levelling builds but you will be grateful for it in raids.

Tier 10	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Twisted faith	5	5	5

My favourite new talent is a dps win in virtually every situation, even though the spirit-to-spell power conversion is a bit lacklustre. For Merlot, at level 72, it equates to about 30 spell power or less than 3% of my total bonus spell power, but I assume that will get better as I collect raid gear designed around it. I love spirit and love having an excuse to gear for it. It works with spirit tap and improved spirit tap too, for an extra boost. The mind blast and mind flay boost is the best bit — shadow word: pain should almost always be up.

Tier 11	Ranks	Level rating	Raid rating
Dispersion	1	2	3

And after my favourite new talent, comes my most disappointing.If you are this high in the tree — and really, if you're dps, you've no reason not to be — you might as well pick it up. But don't expect it to change your life.

While levelling, it may, at a push, save your life, but six seconds is a very short time in which to extricate yourself from danger and it is more than likely only going to delay the inevitable. Remember, those are six seconds during which you cannot shield, heal yourself or fear. My experience of it in solo combat so far is that it's simply a frustration. I don't even generally need the mana.

In raids, it is situationally useful. Before the expansion, I popped it in Kara when Nightbane feared me into charred earth and I popped it when Illhoof sacrified me. It was too short for both situations, but it was better than nothing. It will likely be used like this in Northrend too — our challenge will be to time our mana needs around specific boss effects to ensure we get the most out of both the damage reduction and mana regeneration, otherwise it just becomes a mana pot with a silence. Not what any of us hoped for our top tier talent, but I've been over that enough times to know when to quit moaning. No honestly, I have.

* PS, if you think the tables look weird, they are. Blogger hates me.

This season's must-have accessory...

The shadow wolf suit: proving that face melters look good in anything. Spirit wolves are so last season.

It may just be me but this sucks

I gave my divine shadow idea a road test in Nagraand while grinding clefthoof leather.

Admittedly, this is hardly a difficult test for a level 70 character in epic gear. Now was it particularly scientific. I just played around a bit and compared how it felt to the cookie-cutter shadow build pre-patch.

Those of you who scoffed at the idea of a shadow priest with divine spirit will be smugly pleased to know it was rather... lacklustre. Mana was, as I predicted, bountiful, but killing was slow. I had a small insight into what it must be like to solo as a healing class and have newfound respect for all my friends and colleagues who persevere at it.

Then we went to Karazhan for the murkblood boss so I respecced to a more appropriate raiding build with dispersion. And I was still unimpressed.

We went in with only six players, one of whom was level 69. That was a strong indication to me of just how out-of-balance the game is right now. My under-geared, neglected elemental shaman alt is topping 1,000 dps in heroics, and he's never stepped foot in a raid. But that's not the full story, because despite the ease of the instance and the apparent boosts to class spells and talents, Merlot still felt underwhelming.

Mana was an absolute nightmare, much more than usual, even with improved divine spirit. During boss fights, and on several large pulls, I had to pot, disperse, cast hymn of hope, all while replenishment was practically a permanent buff, and still ran out of mana at an alarming rate. To get dispersion, I had to drop inner focus and meditation, which would account for a small part of the problem. Then there are my crit and spirit ratings, which are probably too low to get much benefit out of improved spirit tap. Ultimately though, this has to be a direct result of the vampiric touch nerf. Adjusting is proving much harder than I had expected. I just hope these problems are easily solved by new gear and a few more talent points.

I also noticed, or rather failed to notice, much difference in my dps. I'm absolutely sure some of this is down to human error — I moved some spells around to fit devouring plague and dispersion in and found myself hitting the wrong keys quite a lot. The devouring plague cooldown is also an issue in that it wasn't always ready when I needed it. I really don't think the spell is good enough to warrant such a long cooldown but meh.

Another problem I am having is adjusting to the utter explosion in spell noises and effects. Has anyone else noticed this? Suddenly every class is popping and beeping like Wall-e at a disco. I use sound a lot more than I realised to time my spell casting and know what's going on around me, so it's putting me right off my game.

All-in-all, my dps barely shifted from pre-patch levels. Will it improve as I get used to my key bindings? I can only hope so. I'd be interested in knowing what other shadow priests have found, so please drop me a note if you've got any tips for how to adjust.

Merlot taps his foot in frustration

Last time I checked an atlas, Europe was ahead of the US in time zones. Someone must have forgot to tell Blizzard this because we always seem to get our patches the day after. Now I'm at work and I am led to believe the marvellous new world of talents and changes await me.

It's all terribly exciting. Well, at least, my hunter is excited, and my shaman is curious and my druid is mildly interested. Merlot is pensive.

We thought everything bad that could happen had already happened, but then we wake up to a Wow Insider report that vampiric embrace has been screwed into the ground too. What a really, truly cynical time to hack our last remaining unique ability into bits. I'm reminded of the UK government's preference for burying bad news on big days. Alastair Campbell would be proud.

In return we get a reason to stack spell crit. It sounds good on paper, I'll reserve judgement till... well.. somebody else tells me if it's good or bad.

First thing I'll do is jump in and tell you exactly how awful, or not, the divine shadow build really is. Watch this space. Or not. No really, please come back soon.

The divine shadow

Raiding went out of the window for Merlot weeks ago, now my biggest concern is how to spec and dress to surge through Northrend like a dose of clap. I think the weeks of inactivity have gone to my head, because I'm playing with a rather wacky hybrid idea.

What I really want is a heavy spirit shadow build. It suits how I like to play — dot, wand, loot, rinse, repeat. The combination of high base regeneration and spirit tap make for a single-target grinding dynamo. Or so I like to think.

It's a great idea in theory, but there are some practical obstacles.

Gear is one problem. I have only slightly more spirit on my current raid gear than agility. In Outland, spirit is almost exclusively a healer's privilege.

Had I the foresight to collect an off-spec set of healing gear, I'd be in a much stronger position now. With the upcoming changes to spell power, healing gear is looking ideal for my needs.

Sadly, I didn't. I can run a few instances now and pick some up, but my best bet is badge gear. I have over a hundred burning a hole in my bank, which should be enough to boost my spirit for starters.

Longer term, spirit seems more prevalent in Northrend so it should work itself out as I go.

The real headaches start when I look at talents. Spirit stackers have a clear incentive to pick up twisted faith, which increases spell damage by a proportion of your spirit. But if you're stacking spirit, you also want divine spirit and its improved version. Unfortunately, you can't have both.

In a raid situation, it's a no-brainer, you take the shadow talent and hope you have a disc priest in your group. But solo, I'm not so sure. The purpose of a levelling build is not to min/max but to support solo questing and grinding. Improved divine spirit also provides mana regeneration.

The question then becomes: can I kill quickly and easily enough without the greater spell damage? If the answer is yes, being able to kill mobs continuously without drinking downtime wins out.

So you see I'm leaning slightly in favour of improved divine spirit for levelling, but there's another problem. I can't get improved divine spirit and vampiric touch at 70. Meh. The earliest I can have the two is 73.

Do I really need VT for levelling? If they hadn't changed the mana regen, I would have said yes, absolutely, without question. But now I'm not so sure. Considering you have to cast mind blast to trigger replenishment, which just isn't in my normal grinding rotation, I doubt it. And anyway, I'm planning to end up with full mana between pulls, I shouldn't need replenishment.

I might need it for damage though. I just don't know. Maybe devouring plague will be able to take its place.

So in the end, I'm facing the possibility of a hybrid build for the journey to Northrend, one with divine spirit and shadow form — what I've taken to calling the divine shadow. But it all hinges on how much damage I need to put out on the way.

I know it's not going to win any dps race, and I'll almost certainly have to respec to run instances. But you've never needed high dps to burn through world mobs anyway, and I can't help drooling at the thought of those huge spirit tap ticks.

What do you think? It's a terrible idea right? Should I suck it up and spec dispersion? Go on, you can be honest. Just try to be kind :)

Improved fort back where it belongs

We can all breathe a (temporary) sigh of relief. Improved power word: fortitude has been returned to tier 2 in the discipline tree as of the latest build (9038).

They've swapped it with improved power word: shield, which to be honest, is what they should have moved to tier 3 when moving improved inner fire to start with. They had some concerns for pvp specs not being able to pick up an improved shield. We'll see if that's still a worry for many.

In the meantime, I'm happy this now puts improved fort back in reach of most builds, which can only be a good thing.

Stamina dilemma approaching

Improved inner fire has been switched with improved power word: fortitude in the latest beta build, giving all specs easier access to a talent that, in Wrath, will boost spellpower as well as armour value.

Edit: this equates to 54 spellpower at level 80 (thank you Ho Ho).

I'm pleased with the increased accessibility of the inner fire buff — I've been scratching my head about how I would free up three more points to pick up improved inner fire anyway.

But the trade-off puts improved fortitude in a rather awkward place.

For shadow priests, it was always a filler talent on the way to meditation. There was simply nothing better to spend your points on. But that worked to everyone's benefit — we got the maximum stamina boost solo, groups where we were the only priest benefited, and we could help holy and discipline priests with buffing assignments in raids. Now it's probably going to be out of reach for most raiding shadow builds.

Its new position in tier 3 makes it look equally awkward for holy and discipline priests. I don't know enough about healing builds to say for certain whether they will be able to pick it up easily, but I suspect it raises a few difficult choices.

I can imagine a guild's raiding priests having to draw straws for this talent.

So on the one hand, I predict improved fortitude will become less ubiquitous, and will give priests pause for thought in their level 80 raiding builds.

But on the other hand, it's not that good a talent to start with (conveying as little as 230 hit points at level 70) and is even less attractive higher up the talent tree.

Is it time for the improved fortitude buff to be baselined?

Seven achievements you won't see in WotLK

(But respect for trying.)

1. Social pariah — be on the ignore list of 100 players simultaneously.


2. Chief corruptor — turn 20 holy priests to shadow (class: priest).


3. Conscientious objector — AFK your way through 100 battlegrounds.


4. Party animal — get drunk and dance with 50 raid and dungeon bosses.


5. The devourer — cannibalise the corpses of 100 human players (race: undead).


6. The tormentor — screw up 10 escort quests for the opposing faction by killing the NPC.


7. Chief inspector — inspect 1000...

[post becomes unintelligible at this point]

Shadow priests: a study in trust

Long post. Rather preachy. Sorry. But did you see Koraa's comments on the forums earlier this week? This one sentence stood out for me, as for many others:

In a nutshell, we feel we’ve made a lot of progress in our goal of bumping the Shadow Priest DPS numbers/scaling to where we want it to be.

I initially reacted quite poorly (read: steam came out of my ears) and was going to blog about how uninformed he must be. Then I had an out-of-body experience and saw how ridiculous I looked (steam notwithstanding).

I don't even have a beta key; what do I know? Koraa is in fact one of the most qualified people in the game to judge the state of shadow priests in Wrath, which makes the outpouring of scorn and abuse that followed his discussion all the more shocking. I really had to take a step back and re-evaluate my own attitude.

Suddenly, the whole dispute looked rather familiar. You see I work in internal communications, where I spend a lot of time dealing with feedback from staff who think the leaders of our organisation don't know what they're doing, that everything they say is at best spin, or more often just plain lies, and who feel that every decision made will result in the total annihilation of the company and their livelihoods. Wow, where have I heard that before?

I'm not sure where it all went wrong for Blizzard. When you look at some of the key concerns of shadow priests, (pvp survivability, mana efficiency and end-game scaling and itemisation), all have been addressed to some extent in the beta. Even if the execution of some spells leaves a little to be desired, surely it shouldn't feel as apocalyptic as it does. No wonder Koraa doesn't know what we're complaining about.

What it all boils down to, I think, is a lack of trust. Somewhere along the line, Blizzard has lost the trust of shadow priests, and this dispute is the result. This doesn't exclude the possibility that the class really is broken, but I think the fact that so many uninformed people are prepared to take the view of detractors over Blizzard says more about the state of customer relations than it does class balance.

One major contributory factor must surely be the lack of transparency with the development process. We have no clear iteration of Blizzard's vision for shadow priests, so we have no context in which to view certain decisions. We don't know how changes are arrived at. And instead of explaining why certain decisions are made, they are simply released without explanation. Sometimes, they are overturned just as impulsively. It's understandable that not every feature of a beta will make it to live, but unexplained quick changes and reversions look ill-considered and unprofessional.

I suspect another factor in the breakdown of trust is the inconsistent approach Blizzard has taken to development across the classes. When a shadow priest sees one class developer on the forums explicitly requesting feedback on, say, titan's grip or metamorphosis, they understandably feel overlooked when no such feedback is solicited on their own new talents. Debate and feedback on shadow priest talents have been erratic and unpredictable, which in itself leaves concerned players feeling insecure. It generates perceptions of imbalance and leaves them open to accusations of preferential treatment.

And then there is the 51-point talent, which is a PR disaster in its own right. For shadow priests, with only the one dps tree to choose from, the end talent — the flagship talent, the aspirational talent — must work for all purposes. Admitting that shadow priests would not be viable in pvp without dispersion was a terrible, terrible mistake. It simultaneously said to shadow priests that you can't pvp without it while telling those who don't pvp that it is not intended for them. This, in response to weeks of feedback from experienced pvpers who don't like dispersion and don't want it.

Dispersion may well be the saving grace of shadow (although I doubt it) — it was simply a bad decision to slap it at the top of the tree. This point was brought home to me beautifully by a comment on the forums (sorry I can't find it to link), which asked would we be so upset if dispersion was the level 80 baseline spell and mind sear was the top talent. Well, would we?

These perceptions of shadow priests may not be the reality, but in a battle for trust, reality is irrelevant.

It's unclear how this situation will play out. Blizzard's characteristic secrecy leaves a lot of questions unanswered but it appears that they are hell-bent on giving us dispersion. The class may go on to be one of the dps stars of Wrath as they promise, or it may die a slow, agonising death. The difficulty for concerned shadow priests is finding a hook with which to drive Blizzard into action. In the raiding world of Northrend, where no dps class is vital to a raid, our absence from the rosters may well go unregistered. And it's not like this situation is going to hit Blizzard's revenue — the most vocal players out there are talking about rerolling, not cancelling their subscriptions. It seems there is very little need for Blizzard to win us back.

I also have to ask just how representative forums are of the general player base. The numbers who participate are small in comparison to Blizzard's millions of subscribers, so perhaps Blizzard is even right to ignore them.

At this late stage before release, I can't see Blizzard even attempting a reconciliation with shadow priests. We have a fairly solid idea now what the tree will look like. There may or may not be further changes before release, but unless Blizzard re-evaluates its approach, even the most positive things are likely to be greeted with cynicism. The best we can hope for is that Blizzard is right, and that they have learnt some valuable lessons for the future on how to engage with its customer base and maintain a healthy relationship.

More quick changes than a Cher concert

Another beta build, another quick retraction from the shadow tree. This time, lolspersion's damage buff has been removed. Are they simply running more tests, or is this final?

Does anyone now think Blizzard has a clue what to do with shadow's premiere talent?

Don't panic, there's plenty of time. No, really...

Dispersion: where Blizzard went wrong

I made a rare visit to the forums last night to check out the popular opinion on dispersion. I'd say a lot of people are really rather pleased with the buffs it received in the last patch. The fact that it now offers a pve buff as well as survivability has placated raiders, while the ability to activate it when incapacitated gives the talent greater functionality for pvpers. It's a minor PR victory for Blizzard in their development of the priest class.

Well I'm not buying it.

You know what? I think dispersion was a better spell when it returned health but didn't dangle the prospect of a damage buff.

There, I've said it.

Don't get me wrong, I still didn't want it as my 51-point talent. But it made sense as a spell — you could immediately see when and how it could be used.

The problem was it was a purely defensive ability at the pinnacle of a priest's damage tree. How did that happen? Here you had a community of players threatened by the loss of a primary raiding role (mana regeneration) and insecure about their ability to perform, seeing warlocks and mages and hunters getting new and powerful abilities. When dispersion was announced, they saw their futures vanish in a puff of pure shadow energy.

I think what happened is the developers saw feedback and concerns about survivability from pvp shadow priests and mana conservation from pve shadow priests and married the two. Dispersion was a well-intentioned attempt to address both of these issues at once.

As we all know by now, the first iteration of dispersion didn't go down too well with anyone. There was much wailing, pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth, all of which served to muddy the waters and mask the true concerns.

Which was a shame, because those concerns were rather simple. You could actually boil them down to one thing: dispersion silenced you.

Pvp and pve shadow priest were united in their horror of the fact that the top talent of the shadow tree provided absolutely nothing to their primary roles. In fact, in both instances, it would likely serve only to reduce their damage output.

Blizzard had a million options for addressing the survivability of shadow priests, both through new talents and abilities and through changes to existing talents and abilities. And no reasonable person would have expected survivability without a cost. But they choose to pin all their hopes on one imba 51-point talent and seem determined to make it work.

Blizzard could simply have enabled shadow priests to cast while dispersed. Raiders would still have been rather grumpy about it, but it at least wouldn't have cut into their dps. There must have been some pvp reason I don't understand why this option would have been overpowered though, because Blizzard continues to resist the concept.

Instead, in an attempt find a use for dispersion in pve, they have bolted on a completely spurious spell damage buff which only activates if you don't take damage while dispersed.

Let's be absolutely clear what this means — dispersion is now an either/or spell. You can either use it to reduce incoming damage or to buff spell damage. You cannot have both.

Am I the only one who sees the joke? Blizzard invents a spell to improve shadow priest survivability but when it doesn't go down too well they add a secondary mechanic that virtually guarantees no priest will ever intentionally use it to reduce incoming damage.

All raiding priests will build this into their spell cycles to ensure maximum uptime of the buff. Even pvp shadow priests are likely to want the buff over the silence. How could you turn down a 25% boost to dps when your job is to kill things quickly?

Blizzard needs to make up its mind about a few things. Does it believe shadow priests need added survivability? Does it believe shadow priests need increased damage potential? And does it believe it is overpowered to provide both of these things in one spell?

Dispersion sells itself as a spell for all people, but fails to deliver in its execution. By forcing priests to choose one benefit or the other, it fails to address at least one current concern about the class and is simply storing up problems for the future.

I can certainly understand why they are reluctant to go back to the drawing board with shadow — they are running out of time. I personally think pvp survivability issues can't be solved by a magic button and it was misguided to even try, but it looks like dispersion is here to stay.

The good news is it shouldn't be hard to fix. You could balance dispersion in any number of ways to ensure it conveyed survivability and a damage boost — perhaps not to the extent it does either right now, but then however you look at dispersion today, 50% of it is wasted.

It's this waste that really upsets me. We've all heard Blizzard talk about their design philosophy for talents and how they assign values to talents to ensure balance across classes and trees. Clearly, we are loosing out on that value with dispersion as it stands.

That's why I still don't like the spell, why I won't be standing up and cheering for it today, and that's why I hope we haven't seen the last change to it quite yet.

How to flog a dead horse

1. Locate deceased equine.


2. Procure whip, birch or similar implement.


3. Strike carcass liberally.


4. If response is unforthcoming, apply saddle, braids, blinkers, bells and whistles.


5. Repeat steps 2-4 ad nauseum.

Alternatively, buff dispersion.

An end to priest racials

Blizzard has finally nailed its colours to the mast on priest racials — with mixed results.

You'll remember, these are the race-specific spells that priests get access to at levels 10 and 20. They've been a source of controversy and bickering on the priest forums since their conception, and some kind of decisive action on Blizzard's part has been long overdue. Well now, wow insider is reporting that class designer Koraa has announced an end to them altogether.

A few things are happening instead:

• Devouring plague, the undead dot disease that heals the caster for the damage it does, is becoming baseline, with a reduced mana cost and cooldown.
  
• Symbol of hope, the draenei spell that returns mana to the priest's party, is also being baselined. The spell is being renamed hymn of hope, but the amount of mana it returns is being severely reduced.
  
• Desperate prayer, the human and dwarf instant-cast, mana-free self heal, is replacing holy nova as a talent. Holy nova is being baselined instead.
  
• All other racial spells are being removed.
  

These changes are largely positive, and I think shadow priests come off particularly well. We get an extra dot, a second way to provide mana to our party, and access to holy nova — finally, an aoe for levelling shadow priests (who won't pick up mind sear till Northrend).

I suspect our holy brethren will also be pleased to get desperate prayer as a talent instead of holy nova, which while fun to use, is rather short on utility.

I'll be keen to see how devouring plague scales, and how it's damage per mana compares with our other spells (right now, it's a hideously expensive spell). And I think it's a shame that symbol of hope had to be nerfed so badly, but I understand why. I for one won't miss any of the other spells.

The important thing to me is that the system is now fair, and no longer penalises people for rolling without prior knowledge of the spells.

That's the positive. Well done Blizzard for finally taking some action on this pernicious topic.

Ultimately, however, the majority of priests will probably view these changes as a missed opportunity. I blogged a few weeks ago about a suggestion on the forums for a faith-based system, which would have enabled priests to choose a distinct path for themselves using the racial spells as a basis. that was just the latest in a long line of requests for faiths. It would have been a much more interesting and creative way of ending the perceived imbalance and irritation of priest racials.

This doesn't rule out a faith system at a later date of course, even if it does remove the impetus to implement one. Perhaps it's something we may one day see in a future expansion. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy my newfound disease.