Holy Roller – Priests vs. Shaman and Lunar New Year Achievements

In a recent discussion with my guild master, his take on the design correction of Circle of Healing when compared to Chain Heal was that Shaman were built around aoe healing, whereas Priests were originally more single target. In WotLK, they’ve supposedly toned down the absolute necessity for immense raid healing. While it is true that there are only a few raiding instances where quick AoE heals are a necessity, I stand by my original hypothetical response of “If you need to fill a healing spot, why not bring the class with the spammable AoE?”

I’ll end my QQing there for the moment. On a side note, I have tried a PvE holy build post 3.0.8. I healed the Arachnid and Military Quarters with a standard 14/57 build, and I’ll confess that the CD on CoH does not by any means break the spec. My healing was about as effective as before, but if you’ve played a CoH priest before the patch you can really feel the 6 seconds now. I’ll cross my fingers that they reduce the CD by just a little, as it feels less rewarding healing and waiting for that spell to become available again.

I picked up a Spirit-World Glass over the weekend, and I need to make a macro to ensure that I use it, as I’m terrible with on-use trinkets. Until I find something better, this is what I’ve hacked together:

#Showtooltip
/cast Inner Focus
/use Spirit-World Glass

The idea is that if you’re playing as Holy, you’ll be casting Inner Focus anyways when you want to stay outside of the five second rule for maximum mana regen, and since IF doesn’t put you back inside 5SR, you can get the most out of the 20 second spirit bonus from the trinket.

The Lunar Festival has begun, I encourage everyone to complete these achievements if they want the Violet Proto-Drake. The majority of these achievements involve a lot of leg work, so if you want cords for each elder you will need to visit, I recommend looking it up on a database site like wowhead. Some general advice:

• You do not need to have the tag on Omen to complete the quest. Simply running into his body will give you the buff you need. You do not need to turn in the quest with the buff on, as long as you get the buff the quest should complete.
• You may speak to and gather coins from elders while you are in a raid group.
• When attempting to get the Elders of the Alliance/Horde achievement, try to do it during off-peak hours for your server. If your schedule is negotiable, going right after a server restart will increase your chances of getting in and out of the city without incident.
• Gundrak is the only dungeon that you need to run on HEROIC in order to speak to the elder. Trust me, I learned this one the hard way.

Raid resets are almost here this week.

/cheer

Patch Day

It looks like patch day is upon us. Rather than dwell on its Priest-nerf laden content just yet, I thought I’d highlight something fun in the notes.

A new pet collecting achievement has been added for 75 mini pets, and the reward is a baby fawn pet. For those wondering how on earth you wrangle that many pets, I’ll direct you to warcraftpets.com. By their count, there are 110 pets currently available, however that includes special promotional pets and one time event pets. While there’s speculation that a 100 pet achievement is coming down the road, the numbers don’t exist for this yet unless you’ve bought every collector’s edition, won every contest, and attended every special convention. Expect to see more vanity pets added into the game throughout this year.

Addendum to Proto-Drakes

Galadria was kind enough to point out some corrections about Proto-Drakes in the comments on the post from the 14th.  I’m still a bit skeptical about the Violet Proto-Drake as the only 310% flying mounts Blizzard has offered up in the past have been top prestige, and Wowwiki and Wowhead have conflicting data on the mount’s speed.  If true however, the violet would be the most “casual” way to get a 310% flyer.

A Drake for Every Occasion

As a follow up to yesterday’s post on Proto-Drakes I thought I’d just remind everyone that there are several recolors of the netherdrake mount model available in WotLK. I’ll talk about 3 of the easiest ones to get if you’ve always dreamed of riding around on the back of a benevolent dragon. If dragons aren’t your thing, check out Wowwiki.com for a comprehensive list of available mounts.

The easiest to collect of the new netherdrake model mounts are:

Red Drake – Bought from the Wyrmrest quartermaster at exalted reputation. Expect to pay 2000 gold for the privilege of this noble creature. Reputation grinds are easier in WotLK, make sure you buy the faction tabard for Wyrmrest and equip it when running level 80 and heroic dungeons. There is also a daily quest for rep gain at the temple in Dragonblight and in Coldarra.

Albino Drake – A White drake rewarded for completing the achievement Leading the Calvary (collect 50 mounts). Not impossible, but it will take a little work grinding factions and gold to get this one. If you get discouraged, just remember that the requirements used to be 75 mounts.

Bronze Drake – Drops from the Infinite Corruptor in heroic Culling of Stratholme. This boss is only available in heroic difficulty, and will despawn 25 minutes after you start the event. If you’ve been playing the game for awhile, think shorter Baron run. The mount is a 100% drop, however there is only one drop per kill. Personally, it took me 3 successful runs before I won the mount.

Some tips on beating the timer:

• Don’t loot any of the trash. You may be able to get away with an occasional click or two while you’re waiting for your teammates to catch up, but don’t go out of your way. Trust me, there are no fat loots on those zombies, and losing the drake isn’t worth picking up that Shimmering Scale Scepter of the Whale.
• Bring a class with replenishment. This is going to be a Survival Hunter, Retribution Paladin, or a Shadow Priest. The less down time you have to spend drinking, the better.
• The more dps you can get the better. I’d hope that it goes without saying; the more dps you have, the faster the run is going to go. On the smoothest run I’ve done so far, all three dps players were averaging about 2k. Note that this is not a minimum requirement benchmark.
• Determine the loot rules prior to porting to Tanaris. You certainly don’t want to waste valuable time bickering over blues off bosses, and more importantly, when the time comes you don’t want to be the only one who hit greed on the bronze drake, when everyone else hit need. Likewise, you don’t want to be the guy who hit need if everyone else greeded. Personally, an “All Need” rule on the drake is preferable, as it eliminates accidental clicks.
• Don’t stress the non-elites. As a priest, one holy nova is enough to knock them down. Substitute that with any other class aoe, and this is really a non-issue.
• Make sure you talk to Arthas after the second boss is killed. Arthas will come running up to the Town Hall and stop just outside it. In order to advance him again, make sure you click on him and activate his dialogue option. I’ve wasted a lot of time with groups just staring at him once he gets to the door. Conversely, I would recommend leaving him behind after you kill the third boss. In the alley leading up to the Infinite Corruptor, there is a gauntlet full of undead and I’ve found that Arthas tends to either develop a superman complex and pull too many elites to you, or turn into a weight around your neck. If you leave him behind you can set your own pace, however you will also have to clear back through the alley and fight respawns again in order to reach him if you want to finish the run with Mal’ganis.

Some loose time benchmarks: You should be fighting the first boss at 20 min, and you should be at the Alley with at least 5-6 min left. Anecdotally, I’ll tell you that from a healing perspective it will be easy to tell if your group has what it takes or not. If the tank is dipping 50-60% in hp on elite trash, you likely won’t be able to keep up with the amount of incoming damage at the pace you’ll need. If your mana pool is fine, and the tank isn’t having a problem, but you’re way off that first time benchmark (ex, you kill the first boss with 17 min left), you likely don’t have the dps to make the time limit. Finally, if you’re the healer, and you feel that your healing output or regen isn’t high enough, then you might want to think about tabling this goal and coming back to it when you’re more prepared. I’m reluctant to give any healers any meter comparisons for output, as that is going to be different for each group, so again I’ll just cite some anecdotal experience as a holy priest. On a good run, you should only need to drink after boss fights, so for a timed run about 3-4 times.

I hope that helps everyone, good luck finding the mount that’s right for you! I will be looking at the mind control spell soon, as it is an often overlooked priest ability that has become needed for several WotLK encounters. Expect that in the next few days

Proto-Drakes, Oh My!

Gryphons and Wyverns:  who needs them, right?  Some players are perfectly content to settle with the default giant mystical flying mounts provided in game, but for those of you wishing to darken the skies with additional flair, you’ve no doubt spotted the massive proto-drakes by now.

BigRedKitty has already posted a summary of the in-game proto-drakes for WoW IGN here, but if you’re still deciding whether you want to attempt to obtain one of these creatures or not, I’d encourage you to test fly one using the Ice Crown daily Vile Like Fire!  If your heart has already been set to stalker levels of coveting, then let’s look at a break-down of the feasibility of each drake:

Blue Proto-Drake – You don’t need to do anything special to snag this beauty other than be able to defeat Skadi in Utgarde Pinnacle.  I’d try to keep your lust in check though, as this is going to be a rare random drop that even the most dedicated can only farm once a day.  If you like running heroics, then just run UP every once in awhile and consider it serendipitous if it drops.

Green Proto-Drake – Reputation Reward from the Oracles in Sholazar Basin.  It hatches from an egg you may buy at revered, however the egg is unique (read: you can only hold one at a time) and will only hatch after 7 days.  Even after it hatches, there is no guarantee that you will get the mount.  Out of 6 known items hatched, 4 are non-combat mini pets, so if you fancy some company on your travels it doesn’t hurt to carry an egg to hatch with you at all times.  Again, like the blue drake, I wouldn’t spend too much time pining away for this one.

Time lost Proto-Drake – As far as I know, this is a 100% drop from a rare elite spawn in Ice Crown with 18900 HP.  People are claiming that it’s solo-able by any class, the trick will be finding him.  For the dedicated player willing to devote a day or two to exclusively hunting this drake, this may be the option for you.

What’s black and red and plagued all over?  Achievement drakes!  Four drakes can be obtained as achievement rewards.  Here they are from most challenging to benign:

Black Proto-Drake – Rewarded after achieving the meta achievement Heroic Glory of the Raider.  This one is not for the casual gamer, as you not only must have a 25 man group capable of clearing Naxx, OS, ect, but they must also be willing to run for the achievements.  Those brazen enough to go for this drake will be additionally rewarded by the fact that this is the only Proto-Drake with a speed of 310% (the fastest mounts in the game).

Plagued Proto-Drake – Rewarded after achieving the meta achievement Glory of the Raider.  This is attainable if you have a 10 man raid willing to run for achievements.

Violet Proto-Drake – Rewarded after achieving the meta achievement What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been.  The achievements that make this meta up are relatively easy, the only problem is that it will take you roughly a year to earn it due to the seasonal quest schedule.

Red Proto-Drake – Rewarded after achieving the meta achievement Heroic Glory of the Hero.  This meta consists of a long list of heroic dungeon achievements.  It will probably be your best bet if you like to run instances with a consistent group, or want to find pugs daring enough to try for achievements. 

I must confess that I’m currently working on getting the red drake.  I’ll post some of my experiences with the achievements in the future.