I feel dirty

Yesterday in IA's weekly Sarth run, we had way too many tanks. Rude came up with a very good idea, actually. She decided to get on her warlock alt, and let the pally tank heal instead of her. This meant that healing, we had one paladin and one disc priest. I offered to switch to holy, but they told me not to worry about it. However, after that run, I decided to switch to holy for an Arch 10 run simply because I haven't been holy since I hit level 80. Now. My gear isn't exactly right for it, but you know what? It felt really good being able to top healing charts again. I got too used to announcing to the raid after healing charts were posted that a good deal of my healing comes from shielding. But... I was not geared as well as the paladin, and I still healed more than him by about 10%. So, like the title says, I feel dirty. That doesn't mean I'm shirking my love for disc. Especially because in 3.1, they're phasing out any possible need to use greater heal by allowing us to glyph Penance to take off another two seconds and making flash heal even cheaper with an increased chance to crit. BUT I forgot how much I like holy. ^_^ So... My dual spec will probably be Disc/Holy. Hope my guild doesn't mind.

Argh

So... I suppose I spoke too soon. I assumed that the regen nerf wouldn't affect me and that nerf suddenly doesn't. The nerf to Rapture, on the other hand, does affect me. It's one of those hidden undocumented changes, but for Rapture disc priests can now expect to receive mana from *only* Power Word:Shield and *only* when it is destroyed (completely used up or dispelled). The amount of mana gained is up from a variable amount to always 2.5% of total mana which is a bit of a buff, but the fact that Penance and Divine Aegis no longer affects it is a rather large nerf. Rapture also added the ability to give whoever you cast PW:S on some mana/rage/energy/runic power. On the plus side, a new talent makes PW:S spammable (disregarding "Weakend Soul"15 second CD) and significantly cheaper. I'll write more about the stuff going down if once I get a chance to actually test it.

The History of Myss [COMING SOON]

Myss started on an RP server, and I really adore RP (despite the fact that I never have time to nor do I ever really try I guess). So, when I first created her, I created a whole backstory to go along with her, including the reason she blasphemed the light by specializing in shadow magic. It wasn't until she happened along a night elf druid that reminded her of her sister that she realized what her family stood for and blah blah blah blah blah. To make a long post really short, all of this I wrote was stored on Penelope, so as soon as I get her up and running again, I'm going to post the story on here. Or maybe I'll do something productive tomorrow and just rewrite it on here. ^_^ But it'll be fun nonetheless.

Also! I need to start thinking of a name for my new laptop!!! ^_^ She's being shipped tomorrow and arriving... Sat? Mon? I don't know something like that. Maybe I'll just name her Myssidia, but I wouldn't count on that.

WTB New Laptop

I have bad news. Penelope died sometime last week. She was only about two years old and still seemed to work well until about Tuesday. Before I continue with my post I want to have a moment of silence for my little white Angel, Penelope.

~*~*~*~*~

Okay, now that I'm through being dramatic, I'm going to announce that Penelope is my Macbook. I know! Almost as sad as a real two year old dying (no not really, I just live off of absurd humor). I mean I still have my omg badass desktop that my kind exboyfriend helped my build, but I was using my laptop to play at my new boyfriend's house every now and then (since I'm not home that often). No more of that though, and I'm sad face, so literally I haven't touched poor Myssidia since last Tuesday when we were wtfpwned a million times by Vespereon and Sartharion before I finally put on my big-boy buisness belt and saved the day (overdramatic much?).

This is where all of my 3 faithful readers come in handy. I need a new laptop. Sure, I could get Penelope fixed, but after two years I was getting tired of her anyways. And I'm actually thinking about spending good money on this one. So... I have about two thousand dollars that I'm willing to spend. Anyone want to point me in the right direction for a fairly nice gaming laptop? Preferably one that won't embarass me while raiding like Penelope did?

Priest Changes!

So, I'm going to be fancy and link the posts because I'm so excited, but odds are you've heard of all the really awesome stuff going on behind the scenes at Blizzard. I'm going to start by discussing the changes that affect priests only.

• Divine Spirit – this spell is now a core ability available to all priests.
• Discipline has access to a new talent, Power Word: Barrier. (Think of it as Power Word: Shield for your whole group).
• Several area of effect (AOE) heal spells have been improved: Prayer of Healing can be cast on any groups in your raid party. Holy Nova’s mana cost has been reduced. Circle of Healing now heals for more.
• Shadow priest PvP survivability has been improved: Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.
• Penance – this spell can now be targeted on the priest.
• Serendipity – this talent now reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal are cast.
• We are also working to give Holy additional PvP utility.

I am most excited about two changes: the idea that Disc is getting an AOE bubble (although I would love it even more if it was for the whole raid instead of just the group), and the fact that they're making Prayer of Healing targetable to other groups. Yay! Let's talk about this stuff a little more indepth.

• Divine Spirit – this spell is now a core ability available to all priests.

This is nice because it's something that priests have wanted for a long time. I mean, around the expansion, a large percentage of posts on the official forums where all "GIVE PRIESTS DS AS BASELINE OR YOU FAIL!" It's a very nice buff since so many classes actually use spirit now, and raids seem to actually *miss* it when it's gone.

• Discipline has access to a new talent, Power Word: Barrier. (Think of it as Power Word: Shield for your whole group).

SRSLY?! I would like it better if the spell... say... worked with the raid as a whole instead of just the priest's group. Or like the new Prayer of Healing change (which I will get to) you can target groups. I was thinking something along the lines of what the Death Knight's Anti-Magic Zone was, but physical damage instead of magical damage prevention. I think it just makes me happy imagining a huge glowing golden bubble and all my friends cowering underneath it. I'd probably macro "YOU SHALL NOT PASS" to it. Cuz I'm a dork.

• Several area of effect (AOE) heal spells have been improved: Prayer of Healing can be cast on any groups in your raid party. Holy Nova’s mana cost has been reduced. Circle of Healing now heals for more.

This is really cool, too. Now I'll have to think harder about whether to glyph Prayer of Healing or Holy Nova. Glyphed Holy Nova heals almost as much as Circle of Healing with a lower coefficient, so it doesn't scale as well (I think). Glyphed Prayer of Healing adds a HoT component which could be nicer for chaining Prayers because it allows for the group to still be healed a little while you're winding up that long 2.5 second cast (significantly less with enough haste + Borrowed Time). I'm super happy since I was seriously super fail at raid healing. Now I will be slightly less fail. Something in there for our Holy brothers, too. Grats =]

• Shadow priest PvP survivability has been improved: Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.

... There's a third priest spec?

• Penance – this spell can now be targeted on the priest.

This will only be cool iff (if and only if) the missiles go out a little then shoot back towards me... like a boomarang. My tank would never get healed because I'd be PEW PEWing myself in the face too much.

• Serendipity – this talent now reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal are cast.

Uhm... in lieu of or in addition to the original affect? I personally don't think this will be a good change if it's in lieu of (in light of the upcoming out of 5SR regen nerf), but it could bring the hps up to be more competitive with Disc's (not better, because who can beat Shield->7k Penance->7k Greater Heal in under 3 seconds?). I'm thinking a few flash heals and your greater heal would eventually be the same cast time as a flash heal... and heal like a truck. I don't know. It depends on your playstyle.

• We are also working to give Holy additional PvP utility.

If it's enough to make me not want to destroy the world, then you've got your work cut out for you. GOOD LUCK!

Now... Onto the regen post, which, honestly, I'm not too worried about. Why? Because it's mostly affecting healers who operate primarily outside of the 5SR. This is a long one, but I'm not going to be picking it apart like the last one.

• Regeneration while not casting (outside of the “five second rule”) will be decreased. We think that (1) the ability to cast heal over time spells and then sit back and (2) benefitting from a clearcasting proc that also gets you out of the five second rule both provide too much mana regeneration, even over short time periods.
• To make this change, we are reducing mana regeneration granted by Spirit across the board. However we are also boosting the effects of talents such as Meditation that increase regeneration while casting. The net result should be that your regeneration while casting will stay about the same, but your not-casting regeneration will be reduced. This change will have little impact on dps casters, since they are basically always casting.
• The specific talents and abilities being boosted are: Arcane Meditation, Improved Spirit Tap, Intensity, Mage Armor, Meditation, Pyromaniac and Spirit Tap. Yes this makes these “mandatory” talents even more mandatory, if such a thing is possible.
• Since paladins rely less on Spirit as a mana-regeneration stat, we have to address them in other ways. We don’t want to change Illumination or Replenishment. However, we are going to increase the healing penalty on Divine Plea from 20% to 50%. Divine Plea was originally intended to help Protection and Retribution paladins stay full on mana. It should be a decision for Holy paladins, not something that is automatically used every cooldown.
• In addition, we are also changing the way Spiritual Attunement works. In situations with a large amount of outgoing raid damage, as well as in PvP, this passive ability was responsible for more mana regeneration than we would like. We want to keep the necessary benefit it grants to tanking Protection paladins, while making it less powerful for Holy paladins in PvP or raid encounters with a lot of group damage.
• We are also taking a close look at clearcasting procs themselves. One likely outcome is to change them to an Innervate-like surge of mana so that the net benefit is the same, but healers won’t shift to out-of-casting regeneration so often.
• We balance around the assumption that even 10-player groups have someone offering Replenishment. To make this even easier on players we are likely to offer this ability to additional classes, as well as make sure that existing sources of Replenishment are more equitable.
• These changes are ultimately being done to bring the different healing classes more in line with each other as well as to give the encounter team more leeway when designing encounters, who can balance with these new mana regeneration numbers in mind. In a world with infinite healer mana, the only way to challenge healers is with increasingly insane amount of raid damage, so that global cooldowns become the limiting factor since mana fails to be. An example is the Eredar Twins in late Sunwell. We weren’t necessarily happy with that model, and this change hopefully allows us to move towards giving healing a more deliberate and thoughtful pace rather than frenetic spam.

So... What do I think about all this? I'm laughing a little. This is because, the changes that they are primarily making are changes to do with regen outside of the 5SR. Discipline priests, much like Holy paladins, operate mostly inside of the 5SR where most of our regen comes from Rapture and high mp5. Also, the nerfing of spirit-based regen will affect me little still since I have relatively low spirit (500-something as opposed to my intellect of 1k). Most disc priests seemed to already be leaning towards this conclusion (mp5 and Int is the way to go for good regen) but in light of these changes, discipline priests have no where else to go in my opinion. Also, the idea that Replenishment is a required buff kinda ticks me off, because some guilds don't have a Replenishment buffer (like mine), but I am excited to see that they're adding it to classes and have already announced one class that will be receiving the buff.

• Improved Soul Leech – this talent now provides Replenishment (similar to shadow priests)

That would be a warlock talent, in case you didn't know. I'm not quite sure how this talent is going to work (since the talent an RNG based 30% to proc when casting certain spells), but the bottom line is that this is a buff to small guilds. They, understandably have a smaller number of possible specs to choose from and don't always have a Replenishment buffer. I could see them also possibly adding this benefit to Frost DKs (since they were looking for people to spec into it for DPS) and maybe Enhancement Shamans (because it just makes sense to me for some reason).

Dang. I think this is my longest post ever, and it's actually filled with valuable things. Go me!

lol-Sarth 1 Drake

Apparently I'm more bad ass than I thought I was. This was indeed our guild's first attempt at Sarth and we downed him with an extra drake and only two healers. But that's not all, folks! Half-way through the fight Rude (our really good resto shaman) died due to whelpling nibbles. So there for about 30 seconds when she was trying to decide whether or not to pop her Ankh I was healing three tanks (one for Sarth, one for Vesper, and one for whelplings). It was not fun but surprisingly throwing around shields, renews, flash heals, penances, and prayer of mendings on THREE tanks is somewhat effective. Well... effective enough to give the shammy time to un-die. Also... what'd I get for my efforts? 4 badges. Yay.

On Sartharion, Compliments, and Dentists

Three things to share tonight before it's time to leave work (bur):

1) Tonight we run Sarth
I don't know if it's our first time to run OS. It might be. We were supposed to do Naxx tonight but since my guild downed Kel'Thuzad Saturday night (WITHOUT ME asdfljflksjdfljf!), they decided to change it to OS. Now, this is scary because I don't even know how the fight goes, and if I had known (before the text from an ex (who is also my RL best friend and fellow guildie)) I might have been reading up on the boss fight. You might be asking why I'm not doing that now instead of posting. Luckily I can't hear you so I don't have to answer.

2) I got a compliments!
Okay, well one, so I don't suppose it's a complimentS, but it was very nice, regardless. I was talking the other day and this is how the conversation went. Sameth is our only druid healer. Zimbee (Nickname: Rude) is our shammy healer. Warning: This is how I actually talk in gchat. I find it fun to decode English and turn it into something monstrous.

Myssidia: AMG, Rude, you have teh nice lewts. Can haz, plx?
Zimbee: WAT? No, get your own!
Sameth: DON'T GIVE MYSS THE LOOTS!
Myssidia: WAT?! Y? U don't liek me, Sam? ;_;
Zimbee: He told me he hates you.
Sameth: It's not that! It's just that you already do as good as me and Rude in your subpar gear. I don't want to imagine you in good gear.
Myssidia: ^_^ I do have shitty gear...
Sameth: =P
Zimbee: =p

3) Dentists suck and make me not want to play.

Really... not much else to say. I went to the dentist today and got my FRONT LEFT INCISOR filled because I had a small cavity on the side of it and my face hurts. It hurts so much that I really don't want to play tonight, I just want to go cuddle and watch old episodes of Heroes with my boyfriend. But... I also want to see Sartharion. I despise tough choices. However, I've decided that I am definitely going to go heal as long as they don't leave my behind again. I don't get off of work for another hour and that's exactly the same time they're going to start the raid.

Finally, in honor of Amber's new blog:

PEWPEW
LAZERHEALZ
PEWPEW