Patch 5.0.4: One Week Later

It's been a full week now since Patch 5.0.4 dropped and I've had a chance to play around with some of the changes a bit. Here's my impressions and opinions on the changes.

Paladin
Retribution—I feel like a n00b again. The rotation doesn't feel smooth or even like a rotation at all, more like awkward mutton mashing. Having 5 charges of Holy Power is great. And even feeling newbish, my dps is still through the roof. I think with time and practice it will feel more fluid again.

Holy—Pretty much the same. I miss being able to AoE stun the adds on Mannoroth with Holy Wrath, but healing is smooth and doesn't seem to be too much of a mana drain. Just is odd not to have to use Judgement EVER and not having to recast Beacon of Light on the tank. Overall, I like it.

Shaman
Restoration—RIP Telluric Currents as I knew it, and with it my mana regen. Heals them selves are great and Healing Tide Totem provides great AoE healing. Mana is a HUGE issue. Glyph of Riptide removes the CD on RT and thus makes it a huge drain on mana if you try to keep a rolling HoT on more than 2 people. I still love my Shaman, but right now I'm worried about her.

Elemental—Amazingly fun. Everything I loved about Ele they kept. Rotation feels fluid and with Glyph of Telluric Currents you will almost never go OOM as long as you can cast Lightening Blot. I actually switched my OS back to this because of how fun it was.

Enhancement—Feels pretty much the same. Still capable of high damage, but CDs on abilities leave downtime. Not quite as much fun as it used to be in Wrath.

Priest
Discipline—Atonement has been buffed! Smite healing is now one of the largest heals you can do. Pennance is affected by Atonement as well. This is even better news! But wait, Body and Soul is now a talent we can choose and finally the speed boost that was formerly way down the Holy Tree belongs to the "bubble" spec. Overall really enjoying it as it plays pretty much the same as before.

Holy—Three words: Glyph of Lightspring. Now you never have to worry about your healing suffering from people NOT clicking the Lightwell as your Lightwell is now a Lightspring and emits a smart heal to players with low health around it.

Mage
Fire—Glyphed, Fireblast now spreads your DoTs every time you use it. Combustion only explodes your Ignite and Pyroblast DoTs, not your Living Bomb. Sadly Flame Orb is now gone, but the Fireblast Glyph more than makes up for the AoE. All in all, play is a lot like before and feels solid.

Druid
Balance—Insect Swarm has been replaced with Sunfire that is now a separate spell from Moonfire. Changes to the way solar and lunar power are generated makes it easier to have more Eclipse uptime. You can now mount in Boomkin form! Overall, enjoying changes to Balance.
Restoration—Healing Shrooms. Nuff said. No, there's more, but that's a huge change as our Wild Mushrooms now have healing functionality. Glyph of the Treant allows us a "perma-tree" cosmetic form.

That being said these are the only classes and specs that I have played since the patch and even then some I have had a chance to play more than others. I'm not too worried about my favorite classes in the long run as I know high levels and more of our stats will even things out, just makes me a little worried in the short term.

Tearing Up The Charts Again

It's been awhile since I last posted. I'll admit I've been a bit distracted by real life, but I'm still addicted as ever to WoW.

I can gladly report that I am once again running on Mirax as a Retadin for raiding. In fact, I've been consistently the highest DPS in guild for all of my guild's 4.3 raiding. The best part is that I'm actually loving Ret once again. With the introduction of Holy Power in Cataclysm, Retribution changed completely from it's incarnation during Wrath. It took some time to become comfortable with these changes and I was decent at playing my class, but not as good as I could have been. A lot of that had to do with me healing more often than not during both 5-man dungeon runs and raids.

In a previous post I noted my decision to be a main spec Holy Paladin for the remainder of the Patch 4.2 lifetime. True to my statement, as soon as Patch 4.3 came out I went back to being Ret and have kinda put my foot down on the swapping specs for raiding. In fact, I haven't even healed on Mirax since 4.3 came out. Sure, I've gotten some upgrades for her healing gear, just I haven't made that my gearing priority. One thing that has helped me in being able to stay as Ret, are some real-life friends, Rolo and Ruckis, who x-ferred to my server and joined my guild. I have to say they are far better raiders than half the people in guild, and I respect their talent and insight into class and raid mechanics. They've also been supportive of "not making your highest dps heal," as one of them pointed out a few weeks ago when the RL was going to ask me to go Holy and then started looking for a new melee dps even though I had not agreed to heal. Since that time I've proven myself to be a consistantly high dps and being one of the two dpsers in guild who can hold their own against the PuGs we bring in to fill out raid team out, the other being Ruckis.

I'll admit, I'm kinda of missing playing Holy a bit. But ow that I have an equipped ilvl of 390 for my Ret set and average close to 30k dps on boss fights, I think I'm ready to start working on my Holy set and playing Holy again. That's part of why I've been logging out in my Holy gear so I can check it out on Mr. Robot and get it all itemized properly. I don't think I'll be going back to raiding as Holy any time soon, but I won't mind switching into it for a final boss attempt or two if a healer leaves early. This happened two weeks ago and I brought my Shaman, Rhysati, in to heal thinking that we wouldn't down Ultraxion. Well, Rolo and I two-healed it and while I have credit for the kill on Rhys, Mirax doesn't. I don't want my alt to end up farther along in progression than my main again just because the alt is the healer.

Mirax and Ruckis at the Faerie Circle in Tirisfal.

New Favorite Alt

When is it time for you to move on from a character to another?

This is a question I have been pondering for awhile now. For the most part is in regard to my druid, Ineri, but these days I almost wonder if I shold start asking the same about my paladin, Mirax. The question about benching Ineri comes fro the fact that I feel as though I suck at playing her. Of the three characters I have leveled to 85 in this expansion she has been by far the hardest to gear and run with. Just transitioning from regular dungeons to heroic dungeons was painstaking and I didn't feel comfortable running those with her until she practically outgeared them. I have talked about her restoration and balance specs with the main resto druid in guild. He helped me with my spec and things have become a bit easier, but I still feel that druid healing and I do not belong together. I do love playing bear, but I am a horrible tank with the exception of one boss fight in Violet Hold. For some reason I can kite the kite boss perfectly in there but cannot tank anything else successfully. thus my inepitude at the druid class makes me wonder if I should stop playing a class I once enjoyed so much.

This brings me to the topic on benching Mirax. She is my first character and the main one that I play. I'm not sure I could ever truely bench her for that reason alone. Lately however, I feel as though I am not able to play her to her full potential. Other retribution paladins kick my ass when it comes to dps. Other melee classes that are less geared than I make me efforts look silly. I have been wrestling with making her a holy paladin as her main spec, and while I do well at healing on her I still feel as though I do not play her to her full potential. This combine with the amount of time I have spent leveling my two discipline priests, Elscol and Ayella, I feel as though I am almost more proficient at playing them than Mirax. I'm constantly getting complimented on my healing skill as a disc priest and the insane things I can heal through. Heck, Elscol pulls the same HPS at level 72 that Ineri pulls at level 85. And with my current drive to get Ayella to 85 I'm not sure what I'm going to do in terms of the character I play most when she gets there and gets geared up. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

Time for a Main Spec Change?

I'm seriously considering changing my paladin's main spec from retribution to holy. Don't get wrong, I love ret and am one of the few people in game who can still play it well. (There is a perceived notion that ret pallies are "broken" and unplayable by all the former facerollers.) I've already gotten her her up to honored with the Avengers of Hyjal, have her decked out in her new belt and cloak and managed to get my hands on the Apparatus of Khaz'goroth on the first night of release. I'm starting off on a great foot as a raiding ret paladin in 4.2. Yet, I keep getting asked to heal and well, my healing set isn't too shabby either plus I'm not totally failing at it.

I always considered my paladin to not be the greatest healer due to the fact that I didn't really play a holy pally the way you were intended to. Until now. With the changes to holy pallies that came out with 4.2, holy paladins now play the way I play mine. Thus I'm not failing as badly as I could. that and it makes playing a holy pally that much more fun. I have a tough decision ahead of me.

I think my decision to switch up the main spec on Mirax is going to come down to the fight mechanics of the Firelands itself--how much melee dps do we need? My guild currently has only a handful of active raidiers which include a feral druid tank, a rogue, an enhancment shaman, a restoration druid, occasionally an elemental shaman and me the ret paladin. With this makeup I've gotten stuck healing more often than not when we pug out to fill the spots of our 10 man raids. I don't mind too much because I'd rather be playing my off-spec than sitting the raid out. Both of the shaman have resto as their offspec although the enhancement shaman has been talking about picking up elemental as an offspec to help with our low amount of ranged dps. Firelands should be interesting in terms of our raid group make-up and the changes to it that are coming.