I wrote previously about earning Battle for Azeroth Keystone Master: Season Four for doing all +15s, but I wanted to recap a little more about m+ this season. I ran a few m+ in season 3 but didn’t seriously start until this last season. I know I was late to the party, but I think mythic+ is a fantastic addition to the game. It’s great getting challenging content that can be done in small chunks of time as well as with smaller groups of people than raids.
I mainly played disc priest, but I also used shadow a little. As for other classes, I did m+ on demo lock, holy and ret pali, resto and ele shaman, and a little bit of guardian druid and frost mage. This was my first expansion playing multiple classes as end game, and I had such a blast. Yes, it was stressful dealing with a weekly chest, assaults, and horrific visions on a bunch of toons, but actually playing them was so much fun.
I’m not sure which one to even talk about. The lock was by secondary most of the expansion, but I really enjoyed learning to heal dungeons on shaman and paladin. Holy paladin felt quite different since it’s played in melee. The most challenging past of holy paladin was hunting for glimmer on Azerite pieces. I think resto shaman was awesome, and I enjoyed using elemental when doing solo content. I really enjoyed the feeling of saying “you know, I think I’d prefer to heal this on my resto shaman rather than disc priest.” I had never tanked end game before, so trying my hand at guardian druid was exciting and nerve-racking. I couldn’t have done it with guildmates guiding me, but I might try tanking more in Shadowlands. I think if I do it from the beginning, I’d actually learn routes myself. Setting the pace and routes seems like the biggest hurdle to tanking. While my mage never got super geared, it was fun really learning frost. Even at low gear levels, it became so apparent how powerful Glacial Spike was. Mages can certainly bring the DPS, but they’re also definitely glass cannons!
In the end, here’s the raider.io scores I reached:
Priest: 2017.3 (bestkeystone.com put me above 90% of m+ players that season)
Warlock: 1329.7
Paladin: 1199.4
Shaman: 937.7
Druid: 491.3
Mage: 250.8
You can see how I tapered off. The priest was strongly my main, and then I played the next three for most of the patch. The final two classes were late additions.
Now if only I could figure out which ones I want to play in Shadowlands!
I might be emotionally scarred from the amount of Horrific Visions and accompanying assaults I did in 8.3. They were neat content, and I really enjoyed the challenge of pushing myself to play better on multiple classes, but I also felt completely burned out by the end of the patch.
By completing both the Horrific Vision of Orgrimmar and Horrific Vision of Stormwind solo while all five masks are activated (the hardest version), you earn the Mad World feat of strength, which rewards the title, The Faceless One. I found that it was significantly harder to do this on cloth characters than any others. I really pushed myself to master my mage and warlock, while it felt like the other classes came easier. In the end, I earned Mad World as a discipline priest, demonology warlock, retribution paladin, elemental shaman, and balance druid. Five classes down!
I also managed to save up the 100,000 corrupted mementos from Horrific Visions to purchase the Wicked Swarmer, shown at the top. It’s a really great mount I think. The color looks good, it’s a cool model, and it’s small enough that it isn’t annoying when using it. I decided to save up for it on my warlock so that my priest, my main, could spend the corrupted mementos on sockets.
After performing a solo 5-mask run in the Horrific Vision of Stormwind last week on both my shadow priest and demonology warlock, I did a solo 5-mask run in Horrific Vision of Orgrimmar this week. This was a big goal for me, and while I’ve been working toward it for a while, I’m also kind of surprised that I managed to do it. Now I have my Mad World achievement and “the Faceless One” title! Later in the week I’ll give it a go on my lock!
Last week I managed to solo a 5-mask Horrific Vision of Stormwind for the first time! There was something about the madnesses that week that made me think that was the week to do it. It did take my shadow priest a few attempts (maybe 4 or so), but I managed to do it. There wasn’t really any magic trick or breakthrough, although I did use Potions of Unbridled Fury and drums for lust. My priest was ilvl 466 in shadow when I managed to do it.
Next I set my sights on my warlock. My demonology warlock is only ilvl 460, and I don’t play it as well as my priest. This took a lot more attempts and a lot more breakthroughs. I think I ended up trying 8 times last week. Like with my shadow priest, I used pots and drums. This isn’t really some big innovation, but I didn’t use those when I wasn’t seriously thinking I’d be able to solo 5-mask.
I also really struggled with Umbric. My first time on Umbric, I use an orb on pull, so not only was I at max sanity, but I stayed at max sanity for the first few seconds of the fight while in the orb. I still lost all my sanity during the fight. I get polymorphed and then wander in circles, leaving void zones on the ground and walking through them. My felguard’s stun wasn’t so helpful. I also tried using the felhunter for silences. What I found worked best was using my imp. It removes harmful magic effects on a very short CD, so it can break me out of polymorph. That was the ticket to defeating Umbric!
And then I went back to felguard for Alleria and lost to the same problem. On my successful run, I had to use my imp on both Umbric and Alleria, and I had to be sure to have my self-resurrect for Alleria. You can see it activate near the end of the fight with Alleria in the above video. Glad I had it!
These were challenging, and I’m not super confident that I’ll be able to do it this week in Horrific Vision of Orgrimmar. I’ll give it my best shot though!
World of Warcraft: Legion, the next WoW expansion, was announced last week at Gamescom. After having a few days to think about the information, I wanted to talk about my initial thoughts. I’ll admit, I might not have anything completely novel to say, but I think it’s important for the community to be vocal. Plus, I enjoy the writing too!
Here’s a brief recap of what Legion’s offering:
The Broken Isles
Level 110
Honor system 3.0
Artifact weapons
Class Order Halls
The Emerald Dream and Emerald Nightmare
Demon Hunters
Queen Azshara
The invasion of Azeroth by the Burning Legion
And we can’t forget this teaser:
Story
The tomb of Sargeras is opened, and Azeroth is faced with the largest invasion of the Burning Legion ever. Okay, that’s cool. I don’t really have a strong reaction either way to the Broken Isles themselves, and while I would have preferred to fight the Burning Legion on a different world, this works too. Throwing Queen Azshara and the Emerald Nightmare into the mix seems like overkill a bit, but I assume it’ll be integrated nicely. I’m honestly a little surprised, but Blizzard has been getting better at running concurrent stories. In Warlords, I felt like we had separate stories that pieced together for a single narrative, and I predict (and hope) Blizzard’ll be even better at it in Legion.
Honor system 3.0
The new honor system is kind of strange. You gain honor to move from rank 1 to 50, unlocking PVP abilities. This allows PVP to be tuned separately from PVE. That’s cool I suppose, but does that mean that I’ll have abilities on my bars that only work in PVP? That kind of sucks. The ones I’ve seen have all replaced current abilities or are passives. If that’s the case, I’m good with it! It also introduced prestiging. Once you reach rank 50, you can prestige, earning cosmetic rewards while resetting your rank to 1. I like that system in general, but I wonder how that’ll change competitive PVP players. If you do arenas, you can’t really prestige back to being weak, right? That doesn’t matter to me, but I’m sure it matters to a lot of people.
Artifact weapons
Artifact weapons are special, lore-heavy weapons that every player will get. There’s one for each spec, and there will be no other weapon drops. You can increase their power through the expansion through something that looks reminiscent to the Path of the Titans (and to Final Fantasy X’s sphere grid). This actually sounds fairly exciting to me, but it has some interesting ramifications. In Warlords, I was the commander and eventually called a general by Vol’jin. In Legion, I’ll wield some powerful lore weapon. What happens next? Does this keep getting upped? Some examples they gave were frost DKs using the shards of Frostmourne to build two swords, ret paladins getting the Ashbringer, and enhancement shaman using the Doomhammer. Um, why isn’t Thrall carrying the Doomhammer? Why doesn’t Tirion have the Ashbringer? Are these characters going to die? Also, I have to add that Matticus on World of Matticus brought up the idea of priests getting Fearbreaker. Yes, please, please, please! That’d be pretty awesome.
Demon Hunters
I’m not all that excited to be a Demon Hunter, but I’m pretty excited to see their story. Of course, that means playing through their intro, so yes, I’m excited to play them in that sense at least! I think the Demon Hunter lore is pretty interesting, and Illidan has always been a fan favorite. This should be really awesome, I think.
Class Order Halls
Class Orders are the most exciting part of the expansion so far. Each class will get a class order hall, sort of like Acherus: The Ebon Hold was for Death Knights. It’ll be shared, but in the story, the player character will be the leader of the Class Order. This sounds incredibly neat and will really give flavor to each class. I love being a priest, and I never really felt like I had Horde priest lore figured that my character would respect and strive to emulate. I guess now that figure is me. While garrisons had way too many followers and only a few that seemed cool, Class Orders will have far fewer and much more important followers. Each class will have a different name for their “followers,” with champions being the paladins’ followers for example.
This seems like the progression of garrisons, although maybe more accurately the progression of Vol’mar and Lion’s Watch. Vol’mar is a shared location, but inside, the NPCs treat me as their leader. Regardless of how you see the evolution or whether you see them as related, Class Order Halls are what they are, and they sound fascinating.
Class identity is supposed to play a much bigger role in Legion, and I’m all for it. Even spec individuality is going to be explored. I think this is a fantastic idea, but one small thing seems odd to me. During the discussion of the new PVP system, Blizzard said that when you think disc priests, you think dispels – or something along those lines. If that’s the the most iconic part of being a disc priest, I wonder in what direction they will take discipline. To be fair, if many specs are getting overhauls, I’m not against the idea of switching to holy. We’ll see!
It really sounds like they’re giving us a lot. They’ve already dumped a lot of other interesting information that I didn’t even mention – Dalaran run by Khadgar and now floating over the Broken Isles? I’m really hopeful and expectant that the story is going to come together better than ever, and I can’t wait to see it unfold.
Patch 6.0.2, The Iron Tide, brought a number of changes and a bit of new content.
Iron Horde Invasion
The Dark Portal turns red, and the Iron Horde begins to attack. The Horde and Alliance settlements in the Blasted Lands fall, and we’re tasked with cleaning up. It was interesting, but it seemed to lack zest. It was just a bit anti-climatic. I never really got the feeling that we were in much danger. The questline did more to introduce mechanic changes than anything else. For example, quest objectives are clearly marked on the map and are outlined differently in the world. This includes locations that are targets for items; instead of going to where you think you need to plant a flag and clicking it, you right-click the outline of a flag. I like it. Still, I would have liked the event to feel more important. I think what I liked most was Thrall’s new model. He’s finally integrating the aspects of being a shaman and a warrior. Awesome.
Updated character models
I didn’t care previously, and I still don’t think this is a big deal. I’m looking at numbers. I’m watching health and mana, looking at buffs and debuffs, and tracking adds. I’m not looking at my cloak. At first, I certainly did. My troll runs stupidly. Honestly it seems normal now though.
Upper Blackrock Spire
It’s much more straight-forward, but it didn’t seem like it was anything special either. I suppose that could make sense because it’s only the first half, but why show us the first half if the first half isn’t awesome?
Mechanics
Flexible raids are great. Losing Renew and Void Shift sucks. Having to choose between Spirit Shell and Power Infusion sucks. Losing Heal wasn’t a big deal.
Stat Squish
Now we’re even more OP in earlier content. That’s cool.
Void Storage and Toy Box
Oh, goodness. This was awesome. With a whole new Void Storage tab and the nifty Toy Box, I actually have free bag space again, allowing me to go do past raids for transmog. It’s wonderful. I don’t understand why they didn’t try to patch this in a couple months ago so we could actually do something in WoW. I can’t say enough good about this, although I know I’m going to fill it up soon. Mmmm old tier sets.
My progress
What have I done in the patch? I did the questline and UBRS of course. Besides that, I’ve mainly been going after old tier sets. That’s what I was doing months and months ago before I filled up all my bags, so it’s nice to be able to continue it again. I also got my heroic Siege of Orgrimmar heirloom – the staff. Unfortunately, I was hoping for the mace or offhand. The mace is shaped like a Horde symbol, and the offhand is a book with the Horde symbol on the cover. Maybe I’ll get one of them in normal mode!
I recently decided to try some other characters. First, I wanted to see the Worgen starting zone. I created a Worgen hunter named Eadgar, and I thoroughly enjoyed his starting experience. I especially loved the building pictured above. After finishing the starting zone, I created a Forsaken warlock. He’s currently level 7 or so; the Forsaken starting experience is definitely not as cool as the Worgen’s!
My Death Knight was in the very low 70s, so I decided to try him again. I did a couple dungeons, and then decided to try my hand at tanking. I was extremely nervous, but it went well. I told the group I was new to tanking, and that I really only heal. They told me I was going a little slower than normal but that I was doing fine. Great!
I also wanted to check how I could mage, so I swapped characters and computers with Moogle for two boss fights in Throne of Thunder. Amazingly, it went really well. I’m confident I can DPS in a raid setting.
Following that, I decided to get a shadow spec for my priest. I created the spec and a set of offspec gear based on what I already had. Sadly, I went into LFR to test it and I was already in the top three or four on DPS. I would expect to be worse than that, but I forgot that you can never underestimate LFR.
If Blizzard added your main as an NPC in WoW, where would they be located and what would be their function? Give us a shot illustrating the fact.
I play a troll discipline priest named Devee. If Blizzard added me as an NPC, I’d hopefully be in the Valley of Spirits in Orgrimmar. As weird as it sounds, I’d like to offer quests only to troll priests. I know that’s limiting, so sure, we can open it to all Horde priests if you really insist. It would make sense to place me in the hut to the right in the background of the one pictures in my screenshot because that’s where the caster trainers are; however, I find it ugly. It either needs some more trees, or I’m planting my NPC right here! However, I definitely want to be in Orgimmar and not on the Echo Isles. Despite my disagreement with the politics of Garrosh, Orgrimmar is the center of the Horde.
Priests of different playable races use varying lore for their class mechanics. Some use the Holy Light. The Forsaken have twisted the Light into their new religion, the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow. The Darkspear use loa and spirits. I’d like my NPC to reconcile the traditional troll views with the Holy Light.
It could begin with a quest to put to rest the spirits of trolls who died during the Liberation of the Echo Isles from Zalazane. Unlike quests that usually urge players to kill undead spirits, the quest would task you with healing aggressive spirits, putting them at ease and finally letting them rest. The spirits would be hostile but immune to damage. Only healing can stop them. Bwonsamdi, the loa representing the spirits of the dead, could walk slowly through the area during the quest.
The next quest would send the troll priests to Stranglethorn Vale. This was the ancestral home of the Darkspear tribe. The quest would have players seek knowledge about the loa and honor their ancestors. Rather than being about combat, it would send players to locations in the zone, causing the spirits of ancestors and loa to appear and talk to them. Players will discover that the strength of benevolent loa spirits as well as the love, honor, and respect of and for the spirits of their ancestors empower troll priests.
The final quest would send players to Shattrath to talk to A’dal and Grand Anchorite Almonen. Currently in the game, Almonen gives a speech that includes the following:
It has been made known to me that inside each of us, the Light resides… that it is a gift, given freely to all naturally born beings. It manifests itself as a feeling, small at first and easily ignored, that confirms truths and subtly prods one to do good. Simple kindnesses, charitable deeds, service to those in need. These are all fruits of the Light. It rewards those who heed its promptings with blessings, both seen and unseen. Personal reservoirs of hope and faith are strengthened, and one’s capacity for greater light increases. Over the course of time, through obedience to the Light’s guidance, one becomes more sensitive to its voice, and its power. Great is the healing and blessing power of the Light’s most diligent followers.
I’d like Almonen to expand on this to the players on the quest. He’ll note that the Light doesn’t require worship, and that the Light doesn’t necessarily refuse people who gain power from other means.
The lore implications would be that the teachings regarding the Light don’t conflict with Darkspear teachings. Troll priests will end the questline knowing that there’s great power in the Light, but that they can continue their racial traditions as well. It’ll be implied that through interactions with the spirits and even the discipline flavor of overpowering minds, they could still be following the Light.
First, my evening started with good news. Fiirnok wants to do LFR again this week with us! No one else in the guild seems to want to do it really, so we decided to do it together on Friday. Then, Darth got online! I haven’t seen him in over a month, so I’m glad he came back around. He plans on getting raid-ready this week and rejoining the raid team next week.
Next, some bad news. There weren’t enough people to raid again this week. We need every active raider to be available to be able to raid pretty much thanks to some drops. Oh well.
Then back to good news! I spent the evening working on transmog! You can see the front of it above. Below, you can see the back.
I was trying on all sorts of random things from the AH and not really finding anything I liked. Then, as I was looking through Mooglegem’s tailoring, I saw the Runecloth Robe. It was so… priestly! I’ve always thought that most gear I’ve had looked too aggressive. When I saw that robe, I knew I had to use it! Then I just had to match some pieces to it.
Head: Heroes Crown of Faith
Shoulders: Mantle of Prophecy
Back: Wrap of the Great Turtle
Chest: Runecloth Robe
Hands: Sanctified Crimson Acolyte Gloves
Belt: Vestal’s Irrepressible Girdle
Main Hand: Incineratus
Off Hand: Bioluminescent Lamp
Wand: Crescent Wand
The set can be improved by finding white gloves and by getting rid of this darn dagger. Daggers do not look good for a priest. As soon as I get a mace, I’ll have plenty of transmog options. Just you wait!
Set bonuses were just updated a couple minutes ago! I’ve been sitting on this draft, but I’ll go ahead and post it before it gets more dated!
As with all tier gear, the priest tiers this expansion have both good and not-so-good set bonuses. With the T13 bonuses revealed recently, I thought I’d take a chance to offer my opinions. However, keep in mind I haven’t actually acquired 4-piece of either T11 or T12.
Tier 11
(2 Set): Increases the critical strike chance of your Heal spell by 5%.
Considering where they intended priest healing to be when Cataclysm was being planned, the two-piece made sense. However, Heal just doesn’t work as a spell. It heals a sliver of health on tanks. It’s true that I do use it if the person needing healing isn’t taking much damage, but quite often other heals work better. If someone’s in immediate danger and likely to receive more damage, he’ll get a Power Word: Shield and Flash Heal. If the tank is taking prolonged heavy damage, he’ll get Greater Heals. If a DPS takes damage but isn’t standing in fire or doing something else stupid, a Renew and possibly Power Word: Shield will take care of him. Heal’s just not a good spell right now.
(4 Set): When your Penance spell heals a target you gain 540 Spirit for 10 sec, and being in a Chakra state grants you 540 Spirit for the duration of the Chakra.
The four-piece is nice, but it’s always up for Holy priests and usually up for Discipline priests. Seems unfair.
Tier 12
(2 Set): Casting your Flash Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, and Prayer of Mending spells cause you to regenerate 2% of your base mana every 5 sec for 15 sec.
Pretty much every spell I cast causes me to regenerate mana? Yes please!
(4 Set): You have a chance when you cast a helpful spell to summon a Cauterizing Flame at the target’s location. Each sec the Cauterizing Flame will heal an injured party member within 20 yards for 9250 to 10750. Lasts 5 sec.
As I don’t have four pieces of T12 yet, I don’t know just how smart this smart heal is. It sounds good though!
Tier 13
(2 Set): After using Power Infusion or Lightwell, the mana cost of your healing spells is reduced by 25% for [10|15] sec. (10 sec for Discipline, 15 for non-Discipline.)
This seems disappointing to me even though I know other bloggers have praised it. As Discipline, I use Power Infusion in two situations – whenever it’s up for the mana or during “oh shit” situations. This new two-piece set bonus works for both of those I believe. However, as Holy, I put down Lightwell whenever it’s off cooldown. Okay, that works. Except for the initial cast. Lightwell lasts for the same amount of time that it’s on CD. Because of this, I always cast it before the pull. This way we can use as many of its charges as we need (all of them if the need be) in a shorter amount of time, and then I can recast it. I don’t really need cheap heals before we pull, but the earlier I put it down the better in my opinion. Ten seconds before the pull doesn’t help that much, but a minute and a half before the pull means a minute and a half into the fight I can put down a new one.
(2 Set): After using Power Infusion or Divine Hymn, the mana cost of your healing spells is reduced by 25% for [10|23] sec. (10 sec for Discipline, 23 for non-Discipline.)
You did it! Thanks, Blizzard! Now it’ll do what you intended it to do. I like it.
(4 Set): Your Power Word: Shield has a 10% chance to absorb 100% additional damage, and the cooldown of your Holy Word abilities is reduced by 20%.
(4 Set): Your Power Word: Shield has a 10% chance to absorb 100% additional damage and increase the mana granted by Rapture by 100%, and the duration of your Holy Word abilities is increased by 20%.
This seems really awesome for both healing specs. Power Word: Shield is a fantastic spells for Discipline priests, and I’m sure they’ll get a ton of use out of it. As for Holy, both Holy Word heals are great. I’ve heard the single-target heal referred to as the tank heal and the ground-based AOE one a raid heal, but I don’t think it’s neccessarily like that. I’ve learned to switch Chakras depending on the mobility of the fight at that time (some fights lend themselves to one or the other, and some require me to switch). In any case, a shortned cooldown on these abilities is a welcome addition!
In all, I’m excited about the T13 set bonuses. The two-piece is underwhelming to be sure, but it is a two-piece after all. And after that terrible set “bonus” that was two-piece T11, this is quite welcome! Now we’ll have to wait and see if they get changed before 4.3 goes live.
Well, my T13 was finally revealed. Ihonestly don’t know what to think about it. It’s exciting, and I’m happy about that. I’m glad it’s not something boring. I just don’t know if I like it.
Its base reminds me of Wrath. The belt looks similar to a belt I had at the end of Wrath except recolored, and the robes remind of the Argent Crusade’s tabard. The headpiece and shoulders… wow. It looks like priests are going to be walking constructs of the titans. I suppose that’s cool!
I was hoping for a set that I want to continue using in the future – something looks appropriate for a priest for me to use in the future for RP purposes. Still, it could have been worse, and I’m looking forward to seeing it in higher quality!
Oh, and hunter T13 was revealed. *shrug*
Update: Okay, it’s really grown on me already! It has this proud, ancient, powerful vibe that might be hurt when displayed on a hunched over troll, though.