Dear Mister Direbrew,
I think you misunderstood my last letter.
But I won’t complain. Thankyou!
Love,
Sailan and Mr. Sheepy
Infusion of Light Not Finished Either
Ghostcrawler just posted on the Paladin forums, confirming that Infusion of Light was nerfed for arena balance (which, let’s face it, we all knew anyway). She followed up with “I know it can be frustrating when a PvP concern ends up making a talent less useful for PvE. We have some ideas of what we’d like to do with it though.”
This is heartening; I just hope that however they change IoL – or the Holy Tree in general – ends up giving us some mobility back. My favourite suggestion so far is to have IoL proc an instant Flash of Light instead, or for it to reset the cooldown on Holy Shock. Either would be fine; it’s the division between “instant” and “1 second cast time” that’s the important one, not the division between “1 second cast time” and “2 second cast time”.
(Tangentially, I’d happily give away all PvP content in WoW to stop PvE stuff getting balanced around it.)
Post Your Bank!
A week or so ago, Pike challenged us to post our banks, revelling in the messiness that is one’s bank.
Click to see a larger image.
You can see why I’m looking forward to Patch 3.0.2 so much!
- 12 soulbound non-combat pets (plus one in my inventory) will disappear into my Companions panel
- 3 mounts (plus two in my inventory) will disappear into my Mounts panel
- 5 stacks of tokens (Badges of Justice, and 4 types of BG Marks) will disappear into my Currency tab
Now, if only they had a tabard-storage panel…
Inscription Changes in 9014
Unsurprisingly, build 9014 has changed some things for Inscription yet again.
Of particular interest, a lot of the glyphs that were previously green when learnt are now orange, meaning that skilling up from 200 onwards shouldn’t be as painful or costly as my guide suggested. On the other hand, many inks have doubled in cast, so the lower levels may be more expensive.
Obviously, this sort of thing is destined to happen – if I waited til Inscription wasn’t going to change any more before posting the guide, it’d be useless because Inscription would be live.
I’ll be updating my guide and posting a new iteration of it, as soon as I’ve had a chance to re-do Inscription on the PTR. Expect it within a couple of days.
The New Hotness
I’d like you to observe something that many paladins don’t know about.
Old and busted: Lay On Hands in Live.
The new hotness: Lay On Hands on the PTR.
See that? See the change in cooldown? See the change in mana cost? That is going to be a damn fine addition to the healing arsenal, instead of the “omg emergency!” button it has been until now.
Drama and Woe Averted in Healadin Land
So, beta build 9014 landed on us overnight, and the paladin forums exploded in a storm of weeping – and pretty justified, too, I feel. Heck, people were upset enough that the main forum thread about it grew 16 pages overnight.
The two key changes were:
- Infusion of Light no longer gives instant Holy Lights. Instead, it reduces cast time by 1 second.
- Divine Plea is now confirmed to return 25% of mana, last 15 seconds, and reduce healing by 100% while active.
Infusion of Light is still nerfed – which is very disappointing, because it was the only talent that really felt fun – but Ghostcrawler has just posted that Divine Plea will be changed to a 20% healing debuff, instead of 100%, but DP will now be dispellable to compensate for it which seems like a pretty good tradeoff to me.
Somehow I managed to get the first response on the thread, but as I posted further down, I think it’s a pretty smart change.
Until now, the premiere healing spec for paladins post-3.0 has been a Holy/Ret hybrid build, 37/0/34, which goes deep enough in Holy to get Infusion of Light and deep enough in Ret to get Judgements of the Wise. This is largely because anything deeper in Holy is fairly average – the 51-point talent, Beacon of Light, is situationally groovy but not a must-have (it’s hideously expensive, and doesn’t proc off overheal), and everything between Infusion of Light and Beacon of Light ranges from ho-hum (Divine Illumination) to downright awful (Sacred Cleansing).
Making Divine Plea suddenly pretty awesome for healadins is a very smart choice. It means we’ll be regenning a decent chunk of mana in PvE every minute. Which means we don’t feel compelled to take JotW any more, because we won’t have mana woes that necessitate it. Which means we’re more likely to go deeper in Holy to take Beacon of Light (or Bacon of Light, as Ghostcrawler calls it) because JotW doesn’t look so ridiculously awesome next to it any more.
Scribes and the Glyph Slot
I alluded to this in my last post, but I felt I should make it clear for people who didn’t read behind the cut:
A lot of information around the net – including my own Inscription guide, currently – says that Scribes will be getting an extra Major Glyph slot that no-one else gets.
This is no longer true – at least as far as I can determine. The trainers no longer offer it as an ability, it’s been deleted from WoWhead’s WotLK subsite, and there’s been no official reference to it for a long time.
Unless it’s put back in in a late-breaking change, I think it’s fairly conclusive that the extra glyph slot for Scribes has gone the way of the dodo.
There’s a new version of the Inscription Guide, Version 1.1, available for download, updating the above information and adding a few other refinements and clarifications.
Professional Advantages
Note: this post contains information on Wrath of the Lich King.
So, you’re wondering what professions will serve you best at level 80? Here’s a super-quick rundown of the crafter-only advantages of each profession, to help you pick.
In addition, I’ve listed the major epic items that each profession can make, even if they’re BoE, as there’s likely to be a lucrative market in providing crafted epics.
Current as of WotLK beta build 8982.
In which I put on my Pimp Hat!
I just wanted to take a moment to recommend a new blog on the scene, Hunters Rhok, by regular commenter – and much-valued guildy – Phyllixia. Phyl’s a great player and loves doing absurdly challenging things in-game, like soloing things that were never meant to be soloed. She’s a few posts in now, and her blog is turning out to be as interesting and informative as I expected. Thumbs up!
Fix your UI in advance!
Patch 3.0.2 is close on the horizon – if it’s not here within the next couple of weeks I’ll be surprised – and your UI is going to break. That’s right, all those lovely addons you use are going to stop working!
…well, most of them will.
And the big addon sites are always hammered on Patch Day; UI-Breaking Patch Day will just be that much worse. You can forget playing with your preferred UI if you haven’t done something about it in advance.
So! Download and patch the PTR client, transfer your most important characters over, and set to work rebuilding your UI now. Sites like WoW Interface make note of addons that are WotLK compatible – which means they should also be Patch 3.0 compatible.
You’ve got two ways of doing it:
- Copy your WTF folder and the contents of your Interface/Addons folder to the equivalent places in the PTR client folder, and try to fix it a bit at a time, replacing addons as you establish that they’re broken.
- Start with a blank canvas, no settings files, and download brand-new copies of appropriate addons from your download site of choice. Build the UI from scratch.
The second option is the method I’m going to choose myself, and I’d recommend it in general, just to make certain there are no legacy files persisting to cause incompatibilities and grief down the track. (The exception is ItemRack; I have a lot of different sets with only a few differences between them, and I really don’t want to have to make all those gearing decisions again.)
Step 1: Think!
When you do it, first identify what kind of addons you’ll want.
- a unit-frame mod?
- an action bar mod?
- a raid-frame mod?
- a threat meter?
- a DPS/performance meter?
- a gear set changer?
- a map mod?
- a boss mod?
Those are the common mods most people are likely to want; have a think about other key features of your UI – whether stylistic (like a reskin, font replacer or viewframe mod) or functional (like a DoT timer, a chat manager or a combat text mod) – and whether they’re absolutely essential or whether you can afford to install them later.
Step 2: Research and Download!
Once you’ve made those decisions, you’ll be better-equipped to navigate the “WotLK Mods!” sections of your favourite addon sites to try and find mods that will do what you want. Don’t be surprised if your favourite mods haven’t been updated for WotLK yet – many mods get abandoned around expansion time, and others are slow to be updated. You might have to get creative when looking for addons that will do what you want – remember that many addon names aren’t very informative, so check out anything unless you’re sure you don’t want it.
Step 3: Profit!
And then, once Patch 3.0 goes live, rename your WoW Addons and WTF directories and copy the equivalent folders over from the PTR client – everything should work fine, and you’ll have a minimum of downtime. (Just don’t delete your old addons and wtf folders until you’re sure everything’s working perfectly, just in case.)
Happy interface-overhauling!