Reader Question: What Should I Play?

An entry a few days ago was linked by both Righteous Orbs and Wow Insider, so thanks to both of those sources for some new eyes. However, the more interesting thing that happened was a handful of e-mails and questions from those readers. Thanks for those, and I plan on answering some of the more interesting questions posted in comments on those websites and/or sent via e-mail. Like Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs, give me suggestions, wind em up, and watch the words roll out on this pink platform.

Today's question comes from Darkdust on the Wow Insider comment board.  Darkdust asks:

I like healing quite a bit, but I've focused primarily on priest healing (both discipline and holy). I'm uncertain whether I'd like druid or paladin healing; can anyone point me to a good comparison of how each healing class / spec "feels"? I can read up on the technical differences, of course, but that's significantly different.

 Well there is one problem with this question, and that is that it is impossible to answer without looking at the technical differences.  After all, the technical differences define how the class plays and how the class feels.  But hopefully I can get you on the right track.

So if you've played priest of both healing varieties, the healing world has completely been open to you. With two full healing talent trees and more healing spells than Blizzard knows how to make useful, you have full utility to be a raid healer, a tank healer, a hybrid healer/DPS, or a PvP content master. Nobody is a master of each of these roles, and I am certain there is some role you enjoy more than any other. The other three healing classes are set up to succeed, but perhaps more clearly in one or two of these roles rather than all four.  These are the limits we play with when there is only one healing talent tree in a class.

As a baseline, the priest class has 18 total healing spells available, of which 8 are single target heals or absorbs (Flash Heal, Power Word Shield, Heal, Holy Word Serenity, Greater Heal, Binding Heal, Desperate Prayer, Smite with Atonement talent), 1 is a heal over time spell (Renew), 7 are area of effect healing spells (Prayer of Healing, Holy Nova, Prayer of Mending, Divine Hymn, Lightwell, Circle of Healing, Power Word Barrier), and 2 defensive cooldowns (Pain Suppression, Guardian Spirit).  So the one thing that priest healers lack is a diversity of options for heal over time spells. Nonetheless, some talents provide a heal over time effect addition to some of the other priest spells, so a small added amount away from these baseline spells is there. It remains the one true non-focus of priest healers though. Absorb spells act similarly to heal over time spells though, so there is that aspect to consider as well.

Turning to the druid, this class jokingly offers you an option to play the best four classes in wow, all rolled into one character. If you are choosing a main alt character, you really cannot go wrong with a druid because all four roles (tank in bear form, ranged DPS in moonkin form, melee DPS in cat form, and healing in caster/tree form). So if you want to have a character that can always do something different including healing, then this is probably the best choice for you although paladin comes a close second. Druids have 9 total healing spells available, of which 3.5 are single target heals (Healing Touch, half of Regrowth, Nourish, Swiftmend), 2.5 are heal over time spells (Rejuvenation, half of Regrowth, Lifebloom), 2 are area of effect healing spells (Tranquility, Wild Growth), and 1 defensive cooldown (Rebirth battle resurrection).

Druids have only half the tools that priests have, but it certainly does not feel that way when you play a restoration druid.  The restoration druid typically builds up one or more heal over time spells on targets that will take damage and then all the talents and spells like Nourish and Swiftmend play off the heal over time spells. Instead of reactive, you generally stay much more proactive in healing.  Thus, if you enjoy the shield capabilities maximized by discipline priests, then this healing style will definitely appeal to you. Furthermore, druid healers are ridiculously resilient and hard to kill in PvP content, so if that is your preference than this is perhaps an even better class than priest. Druids are also well suited to raid heal because the heal over time spells can be spread around and the druid also has excellent group healing spells. Tank healing is possible but not preferable with this class compared to how other classes are built in the raiding context. However, don't let anyone stop you from being a tank healing druid if that is your dream.  But we all have limited playtime, so druid is probably the best choice for raid healers and PvP fanatics.

Next up let's consider the shaman.  Shaman has both melee and ranged DPS offspec, so there's a bit more flexibility than priest but less than paladin and druid. On the healing front, shamans have 8 total healing spells available, of which 2 are single target heals (Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave), 2.5 are heal over time spells (Healing Stream Totem, Riptide, Earth Shield), 2.5 are area of effect healing spells (Healing Stream Totem, Chain Heal, Healing Rain), and 1 defensive cooldown (Reincarnation self-resurrection).

The shaman brings a lot of utility to a party even with other classes getting Heroism equivalents in Cataclysm.  The shaman is more than just a buff class, but the use of various totems can really add a lot of utility even as a healer. However, for straight healing abilities, the shaman has a couple fewer options than the druid.  Plus the class plays completely differently, as the best shaman healing spells are quick one-time heals instead of the heal-over-time build up and weaving style with druids. Shamans are also generally good raid healers thanks to the multiple area of effect abilities, but they can really shine in the hybrid DPS/healer role thanks to the two strong DPS talent trees to accompany the restoration talents. If either of those roles appeals to you, then shaman will be a good style fit.  Note that playing a shaman is probably the second hardest class to get the hang of behind priest, as I've found most people to think druid healing is easier to learn than either.

Finally, there is the paladin. Paladin is probably the easiest or most forgiving class to learn in the game, and provides many options at the end of the leveling curve.  Paladins, like druids, can tank, DPS, or heal. Paladin healing was too simple in the past, but Cataclysm has brought more diversity for the healers. Paladins have 12 total healing spells available, of which 5 are single target heals (Word of Glory, Holy Light, Flash of Light, Divine Light, Holy Shock), 0.5 are heal over time spells (Holy Radiance), 0.5 are area of effect healing spells (Holy Radiance), and 6 are defensive cooldowns (Lay on Hands, Hand of Protection, Divine Protection, Divine Shield, Hand of Sacrifice, Guardian of Ancient Kings).

As over half of these abilities are defensive cooldowns, a paladin normally only has the plurality of single target healing spells to rely on. Holy Radiance adds a nice second dimension to the healing, as Paladins were really limited to tank healing before.  However, paladins are still the kings of single target focused healing, more so than any other healing class.  If you enjoy being a tank healer, this is definitely the class for you.  With Holy Shock, Paladins can be respectable hybrid DPS/healers, and of course paladins are decent at PvP content as well.  All things considered, paladin could be the choice for you if you are looking for the polar opposite playstyle from priests. Paladins are simple and straightforward, but that can be a refreshing change of pace from the hectic priest lifestyle.

So in summary, like a good lawyer, the answer to your question Darkdustis "it depends."  When you move from a priest to some other healing class, you will sacrifice the do-it-all mentality of the priest class.  However, you may become more proficient in one or two fields than being a jack of all trades, so the trade-off is certainly worth it. No matter where you end up, I wish you the best of luck.  Remember, you can always reroll!

Send more questions to the email address above, and see you next week.

Have You Broken The Obsession?

Monday I took a look at crowd control, which is building block number one to learn or relearn as a healer or anyone else wanting success in Cataclysm content.  For those of us who healed in Wrath or even before, the whole "new" concept of triage healing is perhaps more than a little different than what we are used to.  After all, full green bars are good. Full green bars is what everyone expects...that's what we need to achieve as healers because that's what we always do. Top everyone off, even the DPS standing in the fire and the tank who did not use his cooldown. No matter, back to green...

STOP!

This obsession with full green bars must be broken quickly or else you and the poor people you heal for will suffer through countless wipes. The second fastest way to run out of mana on every fight other than the lack of crowd control is overhealing. Every single point of healing that is wasted when a player is at full health is a point of healing that will not be available later in the fight. When heroics are overgeared, perhaps you can go back to obsessing over full green bars. But for the time being, group success depends on breaking this obsession spawned from Wrath and years of overhealing with no real consequence.

The problem is that overhealing and seeing green bars is like a soothing drug after all this time, a shot of nicotine or whatever other drug does the trick. It lures you back in, inciting you to waste your mana on unnecessary heals early in a fight. But you just have to accept that 50-60% or even lower is fine, as long as the players are stable and not at risk of dying based on a random boss or mob ability. Like with crowd control and marking mobs, once again knowing the fights is a great weapon so that you know exactly how much health is an appropriate baseline to keep players alive.  This may seem a bit like Russian roulette, but that's the beauty of triage!

You also need to consider potential attacks or mob crowd control that may take your heals offline for a few seconds. Assuming that the tank will go critical even with a cooldown when this happens, is the rest of the group high enough to sustain themselves in the interim?  Once again, instinct tells us to fill those bars full, but that is not correct.  The full green bar obsession, it is a temptress as always. 

Healing in Cataclysm may seem harder, but the truth is that it is only harder because it requires change. Some healers will adapt and continue to thrive in this new environment.  Others will not and pass on to other roles (tanks please) or other games entirely.  However, these ranks will be replaced by new healers who will probably find it easier because the built-in full green bar obsession is just not there.  Oh, to be one of those fresh new healers without a routine to break!  But the rest of us must grind on against the urge to fill those little green bars.

So remember, the limiting factor in many encounters is a healer's mana bar. Everything you and the other members of your party or raid do in a fight affects whether or not that mana bar will finish the fight at a comfortable 5-15% or a dead 0%.  New healers especially need to know that it is not always you that caused the wipe.  However, doing your best requires that triage healing is fully embraced.  Adios green bar obsession, hello Cataclysm healing.

Crowd Control for Healers

 

There's one primary difference in the LFG pick up groups that work well and those that do not: the use of crowd control! Blizzard has forced the content to be even harder than it was in Wrath so that all those abilities become useful again, including crowd control. Even in the normal dungeons, the amount of damage that rolls through a tank with two mobs active instead of four is a huge difference. This can prevent you from drinking every pull, which slows the group down and may cause impatience (rightly or wrongly). I recommended taking a PUG group by the reins when you queue up and find a tank or group not starting with the right crowd control. But most healers do not know how to do this without having been a tank first, and usually in pre-Wrath days. Information is power, and you need to know what to expect if you are calling the CC shots from the back. 

The first thing to realize is that every class does indeed have some crowd control. However, some are far more useful than others because they last longer or apply to more types of enemy mobs. Hence, the crowd control abilities of hunters, mages, and rogues are highly valued and are a nice extra task for the DPS classes. Let's begin with the DPS classes, which generally have the best crowd control. 

Mage - Polymorph - This ability turns a beast, critter, or humanoid into a small animal (sheep/turtle/etc.) for 50 seconds at maximum level. Generally used with the moon mob marker in most groups, although this assumption is subject to change.

Hunter - Freezing Trap - A freezing trap can trap any mob for 20 seconds, but requires the mob to run into the trap. Thus, the hunter must generally be experienced at positioning this trap in front of a mob that will run towards a pulling tank. The freezing trap can hit any type of mob, and a Survival Hunter has two talents (Trap Mastery and Resourcefulness) that extend the duration and reduce the cooldown of the trap to enable chain trapping indefinitely. Make sure to know whether a hunter can chain trap before assuming they can.

Rogue - Sap - At maximum level, sap can affect humanoids, beasts, demons, and dragonkin. Note that sap must be done prior to combat, so the rogue must lead with this ability. Sap lasts 60 seconds at maximum level.

Warlock - Fear, Banish, and Seduction - Although warlocks have three crowd control abilities, each of them are risky in instances or severely limited. Fear is repeatable to make a mob flee in fear infinitely, but in an instance this will generally lead to accidental pulling of more groups of mobs and a wipe. Hence, fear is very limited in application. However, the Glyph of Fear allows a Warlock to make a mob cower in place rather than run around wildly, which makes this one of the best CC abilities. Banish only applies to demons and elementals, but lasts for 30 seconds. Seduction is an ability only usable with the succubus pet, and it shuts down humanoids for 15 seconds. Enslave Demon is also another option against demons, which makes the mob a pet for up to 5 minutes. Thus, Warlocks bring a nice mix of different abilities to the table.

Turning to healer classes, each class has one primary ability but most are limited in duration or the classes of mobs it can affect. However, these abilities should not be forgotten when the four pure DPS classes are not available or need supplemental crowd control.

Paladin - Repentance - This ability is only available to Retribution paladins, so healadins will not have this ability (but you knew that already if you are reading this blog). However, Repentance lasts a minute and may be repeated indefinitely, and is applicable to humanoids, undead, dragonkin, giants, and demons.  A great ability to have at hand if the Paladin is of the correct talent spec.

Shaman - Hex - Shamans of all varieties can turn mobs into frogs, much like the polymorph ability of mages. However, only humanoids and beasts may be hexed. The ability is repeatable, so the mob can be taken out of commission as long as possible. 

Druid - Hibernate - This ability may only be used on beasts and dragonkin, and lasts for 40 seconds. While hibernate may break early on mobs of equal or higher level, so the druid will need to stay diligent. This means bear tanks typically cannot count on this ability as a useful CC, so this may be better from moonkin and healing druids. 

Priest - Shackle Undead - As the name suggests, this is a repeatable ability that works only on undead mobs. This was great in Icecrown Citadel, and not so much thus far in Cataclysm. Priests also have Psychic Scream, an area of effect fear, but this is even more dangerous than a warlock fear.

Now we have the two remaining melee DPS and tank classes, neither of which have great crowd control abilities. But just in case it becomes relevant...

Death Knight - Chains of Ice - For 8 seconds, a mob's movement is impaired by 60%. The short duration of this ability makes it not all that useful unless a pack of mobs is being kited away. Death Grip could also be used to pull one mob off the tank, but incoming damage to a non-tank melee DPS death knight will usually be a more significant drain on healer mana than just leaving the mob on the tank.

Warrior - Stuns including Charge, Intercept, Piercing Howl, and Hamstring - None of these stuns lasts more than a few seconds, so these abilities are only moderately useful as damage-slowing crowd control. Better than nothing, but not by much. 

So now that you know the types of crowd control, the only other thing you need to know is how to mark mobs. This is a very simple process now. Target the mob, right click on the portrait of the mob, and select the mark from the drop-down menu. Once you determine what 1-2 CC abilities will be used on each pull, the only other important point is to ensure that each player responsible for a CC spell knows which mark applies to their mob. For example, a star could mean rogue sap or hunter trap, but just clarify it at the beginning and then it is clear what you mean with the marks. Also be sure to use skull and X on the first and second kill targets, which should be the highest threats to your group survival after the mobs removed by crowd control.  Studying the mobs of an instance will help you be a better leader and never be afraid to ask for advice from tanks and DPS who may know kill orders better from doing it before. 

Tanks are not the only class that can lead and can mark, directing the group to success through crowd control. Before a train wreck LFG pick up group puts you back in the queue, take the reins and lead the group. The tank will probably appreciate it and things will go smoother for healing as long as the CC assignees do their jobs. Until next time, use the abilities Blizzard gave you!

Why Heal in Cataclysm?

A great statement on healing from World of Matticus

When Cataclysm dropped a month ago, many players raced to 85 on their mains and prepared them for raiding.  As is always the case with a new expansion, players saw this as a perfect opportunity to try something new or switch main characters.  Now that raiding has begun in most guilds, it may be a little late to change a raiding character.  However, this also makes it the perfect time to try something new (perhaps a worgen or goblin) and see if you like it. Most people try out every role in the game within the first year, but many players try healing and leave it forever. With the release of Cataclysm, there are five reasons why you should roll or respec into a healer:

1. The Game Will Never Get Stale - One complaint that seemed to fill the world of warcraft in the twelve months of Icecrown Citadel was how the game was so stale and the same thing every week. Even though there are three new raids and many new instances to try out with Cataclysm, even all this new content will grow stale with time. No matter how thrilling taking down a raid boss may be, after defeating Lord Marrowgar 12 times, the only thing left to do is make bad "Bone" jokes. This happens because the boss abilities do not change. The same strategy the tanks used to manage threat and the same rotations used to maximize DPS applies every week.

By contrast, healing an encounter 12 times will offer twelve unique challenges. No matter how good a raid team becomes, there will always be an off night or a fight that gives a certain player fits, which leads to unexpected damage to deal with. This changes every single week. A common misconception is that healing is more simple than anything else because it is green bar "whack-a-mole." Healing in Cataclysm is not a spam your best spell over and over endeavor like healing in Wrath was. Now the renewed concept of triage healing has forced healers to learn how to use all the tools supplied to them. Especially for priests and druids, choosing an appropriate amount of healing to spread around in a raid or a 5-man dungeon makes all the difference between passing the content and wiping over and over.  And even as Lord Marrowgar becomes completely boring to everyone else, the fight changes every time and challenges a healer in new a different ways.

2. Healing is a Real Challenge - Perhaps all that needs to be said about healing in Cataclysm is that Ghostcrawler's first blog entry for the Blizzard community site was entitled "Why does Blizzard hate healers?" But the gauntlet has indeed been thrown and healers must rise to the new challenge. Thankfully the gear ramps up quickly in this expansion so regular dungeons and heroic dungeons that are nearly impossible at the early levels and right after hitting 85 become more and more manageable after only a small handful of instance runs. Mana will remain an issue throughout this expansion by design, but the 5-man content at least becomes manageable on mana once the other players learn to limit unnecessary incoming damage and the healer learns the art of triage instead of keeping everyone at full health all the time. That being said, healing is the hardest role currently in the game and that makes healing rewarding to those who like a challenge. As Ghostcrawler stated, god mode is only compelling for a short time. A challenging game makes you strive to be better and better.

3. Healing Provides Leadership Opportunities - Tanks have always been natural leaders of groups in Azeroth because tanks dictate how fast a group pulls new mobs and can set up success by marking groups of mobs. To succeed in Cataclysm, a leader must coordinate more than kill order. A leader must make sure cooldowns are managed, healers are keeping up and full of mana before each pull, and DPS with crowd control abilities are using them at every opportunity. Tanks are not the only players who can mark mobs! With healing becoming the glue of most groups in Cataclysm, this is a perfect opportunity to take leadership roles in raids and pick up groups! After all, the healer mana is really the factor that dictates the speed of moving through an instance now. A tank can pull with a healer at half full on mana, but that is a strategy doomed to fail more often than not. So if you are not a natural tank but want to be a leader, this respected role in the game is a perfect place to find your leadership niche.

4. With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility - As I just alluded to, quality healers are highly respected and always have been. However, a poor healer is generally the first one to get blamed whether rightly or wrongly. Healing is a great challenge and provides a huge sense of reward and accomplishment for helping a group survive encounters. But with those great rewards come the high level of responsibility for doing the job well or making the entire group suffer. Gone are the days of multitasking while running heroics, at least until another tier of raid gear comes out to over-gear most heroics. Healing is high risk, high reward. For most players, that scenario is worth the effort.

5. Shorter LFG Queue Times - Leaving this for the end because as shown above, healing in pick up groups is kidn of like playing Russian Roulette with yourself right now. Most players in LFG are truly decent people and decent players, but it only takes one bad seed or one bad player who does not know how to move out of the green stuff on the floor to tear a group apart. Especially when gear is underpowered for the current content, jumping into LFG rather than running instances with fellow guild members can be a recipe for disaster. However, even though this can be a disaster, it is much better to wait 0-10 minutes to get into an instance rather than 20-45 minutes as a DPS. Even if the group ends up being full of fail, the wait for another group is not that bad. Perhaps it is just dumb luck, but LFG has placed me in a fair number of groups with a tank and 1-3 others from a single guild numerous times, and those runs are always the best because guild members are considerate in front of people they know. LFG is a tough place to play right now, but patience is much easier to have as a healer with a short queue time than as a DPS with another 45 minutes of mining or archaeology on the horizon.

This is the perfect time to roll up a new character and dive into all the renewed content from 1-60 and 80-85, and I highly recommend a class that can heal. Even if healing has not worked out in the past, this is the right time to step up to the challenge and become a healer that enjoys a different challenge every single fight but still pushes the group through to survive for another day and another raid. In the words of the television show my daughter is addicted to right now (Yo Gabba Gabba): Try It, You'll Like It!

Cheers!

--------------

On an unrelated note, I finally broke my drive to level two main characters equally. Once again, the priest class called me with her sweet siren's call. And just like that, Ekaterinae is level 85. While she works her way to heroics, the leveling focus is again on Arielae the druid. Also, leveling professions is now also on the docket. But the competition for mining nodes in Hyjal is so fierce. Anybody having any luck mining elsewhere?

Leveling A Priest 101

Happy New Year everyone, and I hope the new year looks as good to you as it does to me. In my travels away from keyboard, I put in some long hours last year and ended up with a sparkling good review and a hefty bump in pay. This will come in handy with daughter number two now being imminent (beginning of February). Looks like some daddy-daughter fishing time will be back in session next month. I might not even be 525 then, so we can ding Illustrious Grand Poobah fishing together.

Also before getting into today's topic, I'd like to share some podcasts I have found recently. As you know, I am a regular listener to The Instance and The AIE Podcast, but I've added Rawrcast, All Things Azeroth, Circle of Healing, and Matticast to my regular playlist. Rawrcast and All Things Azeroth are both similar to The Instance, but it's just a different set of voices and that can be refreshing in a new year. Rawrcast can be a bit NSFW with language, in case that bothers you. Of more concern to this blog are the other two podcasts. Circle of Healing is back again and is trying to be more regular, so I wish them the best in their endeavors to give healers something to listen to every week. And as if Matt Low did not have enough going on (including being a co-host of Circle of Healing), he has started his own podcast focused on healing and that should be very good seeing how he puts his heart into everything he does. If you have any other suggestions for a playlist, the time is open because college football season and sportswriting ended for me this weekend.

So let's say you want to play a priest. How should you level that priest? Although my leveling experience on Ekaterinae from 1-70 was at the end of The Burning Crusade, everyone has relearned the leveling game for Catclysm, even if it is to a lesser extent. Now there are even more options and tools to level your character including Looking For Group and Looking For Battleground. While many of these options are fair alternatives, I believe there is an optimal way to level from 1-85.

Once you hit level 10 and start getting talent points, you should definitely begin in the shadow tree for open world questing. The key to the first two tiers of talents 10-30 is to improve damage output, and the best options you have are in shadow with improved damage-over-time talents buffing both of your key DoT's. Then the real game begins at level 31 with the third tier of talents and dual spec. There are now two approaches you can take.

If you want to be the most efficient, you should choose shadow and discipline as your two talent trees. At level 31, shadow priests receive shadowform, which really ramps up shadow damage output and synergizes the rest of your talents in that tree all the way to Cataclysm content. Discipline will offer you the ability to quest in healer form for something different and also heal. The key to your Discipline leveling spec is the second-tier talents Evangelism and Archangel and (most importantly) two ranks of third-tier talent Atonement. Atonement allows you to heal a party member at the lowest health for as much as you smite an enemy for (half if it heals you), and smite happens to be the go-to DPS spell in discipline spec. Smite also activates Evangelism, which increases smite damage and healing further for each stack, leading to a big Archangel for empowered healing and a little mana regeneration when necessary. When solo questing, the Atonement healing after level 33 will normally be enough with Power Word Shield to make a priest invincible as long as the mana bar stays above 0%. While not quite as fast as shadow spells at killing mobs, the lessened downtime for not having to heal yourself does make a difference towards overall efficiency. Furthermore, discipline is a good low-level spec to heal dungeons thanks to the same Atonement talent (which usually heals the tank as you help the DPS burn down the enemies).

If you want to really hone in on your healing skills and don't prefer questing, then you should focus on holy and discipline as your two specs. For discipline, the same atonement-evangelism plan is in effect. For holy, there are very few early talents that can help your DPS (smite only), but you will power up your healing to extents even more than discipline in the 10-60 range. This will make you even more of a desirable healer if you choose to enter dungeons and battlegrounds a lot. One mid-level talent not to miss is Spirit of Redemption, which only activates on death but can be a group-saver in dungeons and a real force in battlegrounds where you are usually targeted first. Holy/discipline will allow you to hone the skills necessary to be an endgame healer or jack of all priest trades long before you get to endgame.

When you get to Cataclysm levels, I would recommend going back to Shadow/Discipline, which is what I am using now. The same strategy applies as above, although Mind Spike must be picked up immediately upon hitting level 81. With Mind Spike, the rotation changes completely for shadow and becomes even better as the damage-over-time spells are highly mana-inefficient from 80-85. After 81, the rotation becomes shield up, mind spike twice, cast mind blast as an instant spell and then turn to vampiric touch and mind flay, with Shadow Word Death as a finisher to gain back some mana via the Spirit Tap glyph. Shadow Orbs will also help the damage output. The only faux pas to avoid is leading with DoT's because Mind Spike clears all DoT's. That is not a good thing to do, especially when the DoT spells are inefficient to begin with!

I have been Discipline healing some 5-man normal instances during the leveling process as well, and Atonement is excellent because you can improve a group's DPS and therbey lessen the burden on your healing. Always switch back to Penance and Greater Heal when you need to, and keep shield and Prayer of Mending up as much as possible, but jumping from smite-spam and back (using archangel when jumping back to use healing spells to improve healing output) is a fun and different way to play that healing priests have not seen before.

Another tip for leveling: if the varied options already discussed are getting old, take up Archaeology and/or a gathering talent. Each of these professions gives experience for every node/flower picked or every fragment surveyed out of the ground. Especially in the cataclysm levels, a quick dose of archaeology is a good way to see some of the old world and have a chance at nifty rewards like the skeleton fossil pet. With 310% flight, the travel between dig sites is not so bad either. Perhaps not as efficient as leveling via questing (and each of these activities sucks up rested time), but a nice change of pace and a good way to play the lottery or make some major money in the process.

If you want to read further into my personal talent choices, check out Ekaterinae on the Armory. There's sure to be some mistakes, but that is all part of the learning process. Whatever spec or method of leveling you choose, enjoy the journey because even if endgame is "half the game", the first half of the game is worth enjoying.

POSTNOTE - If you wonder what the artwork above means, then stay tuned. The next Illuminati guild event is on the way and one of our more talented artists rendered Ekaterinae and some other guild members for the event. Very nifty work and I look forward to helping Soph bring the rest of the guild something truly entertaining in February (baby duty notwithstanding!)

Merry Christmas! (and Ghostcrawler)

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope your gatherings with friends and family are going well. Our two-year old has finally got the hang of opening presents after her birthday and so it was amazing to watch her tear open things and have trouble putting any new presents down to open more. The best present...a slinky. Amen to the simple pleasures in life. It's a shame many people miss out on the pure joy that the simple things can bring, especially in this season of excess. But to avoid sounding like the sermon I heard last night, I'll move on!

Ghostcrawler Greg Street is the Lead Systems Designer for World of Warcraft, and basically has become the public face of the developers over the past couple of years. Ghostcrawler can be abrasive at times, but he has a great sense of humor and brings a dose of good perspective to the community, which typically wonders at large what in the world the developers are thinking.

In order to open another avenue of regular communication with the players, the developers have decided to start blogging on battle.net. Of course, the first developer posting blog entries is Ghostcrawler. His first entry was about 4 weeks ago, and it focused directly on healers. More specifically, why healing is becoming more difficult in Cataclysm. Now that the entire playerbase is hitting 85 and trying out heroics and perhaps even starting raids, the calls for "why is this content so hard" have come out in full swing. Yet if these masses paid attention to this Ghostcrawler blog, they might have some insight on why Cataclysm is different.

In reality, Cataclysm is a return to the difficulty levels or play style of vanilla and The Burning Crusade:

As a blanket statement, healer mana wasn’t a big concern in Wrath of the Lich King. You could run out of mana sometimes, but it really didn’t affect your spell choice in the way it did prior to Lich King. We think resources should be important, though. A lot of gameplay in a wide variety of games comes down to managing a limited resource, whether it's Vespene Gas in an RTS, ammo in an FPS, or even time in a puzzle game. Managing your resources well makes you a better player.

Obviously the resource that all healers manage is mana, and there were absolutely no mana problems in Wrath of the Lich King. Ghostcrawler explains all the ways this damaged the game by taking half the possible dimensions out of decision-making for healers. When overhealing and mana resources are not a problem, why wouldn't you cast your fastest heals over and over, even if they are inefficient?

In other words, Cataclysm will bring back the concept that healing is a triage operation. You must save who you can with the right heal for the job because if you do not choose the right heal, you will eventually run out of mana and everyone will die. On occasion, this will mean you have to let someone die because they are beyond the point at which you can help them.

For example, think about the marks that Saurfang put on raid members when he reached 100 blood power in Icecrown Citadel. The marks put out a continuous stream of heavy damage on whomever received the mark. In Wrath mode, raids assigned a healer or two to do nothing but counteract the first couple of marks. While the healer would be fully occupied or nearly fully occupied keeping up with the mark damage, mana was not a problem so this was a way to circumvent the penalty for playing poorly (because marks and blood power were a result of not taking care of blood beasts, mainly). In a 25 man raid, I witnessed a raid survive five marks with only losing a couple of players. That should not happen.

So Ghostcrawler says resource management will make healers become better players. However, the tools like Saurfang's mark are there to also force other players to also play better or else they will doom their healers to failure. This is no different than the DPS and healers needing to help the tanks with threat by killing things in order and using crowd control. Everyone has more to do in instances now, but the biggest change is for healers.

But here's the thing: that's just how it should be! A good healer should be able to use all the tools and spells at their disposal like a grandmaster in chess or a conductor of a symphony. Anybody who has ever watched a really good tank manage all of their abilities understands just how challenging and how rewarding this game can be for healers. That's the game I want to play, and that's the magic I want to bring to my guilds and my raids.

Yes, the first few months of Cataclysm will be an adjustment period and will be difficult. However, the payoff for the players who enjoy healing will be so worth it, and the developers should be applauded for looking this problem right in the eye and fixing it the best way they know how.

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In December, Ghostcrawler has issued three more blog entries. Two have focused primarily on threat and tanking, and thus are not terribly pertinent here. However, Ghostcrawler does acknowledge that if a tank is using area of effect threat generation abilities, healing should not pull aggro on a non-focused mob. This is not rocket science though, it is what we expect as a baseline.

The other entry explains the design philosophy behind primary and secondary stats on gear. The game is currently designed so that every progressive piece of gear is designed to give increasing stamina and increasing strength/agility/intellect depending on your type of character. Those statistics are now clearly not intermixed with the secondary stats: haste, dodge, crit, mastery, hit, expertise, and spirit. The developers currently intend these secondary stats to be another way to customize your character, as haste, crit, and mastery all have very different effects if you stack them.

Hopefully this means that there will be multiple ways to have a properly talented and geared character, making socketing gems and choosing enchants fun as opposed to brainless based on what wow-popular and Elitist Jerks say. More on this later, but character customization may have a golden age in the future post-Cataclysm because the developers are thinking about mixing the primary stats into the customization and gearing mix. That would be exciting, and would make gearing nearly as fun as healing!

On that note, have a great Christmas and a happy holiday season.

The PPI Awards of 2010 - My Nominations

Happy holidays everyone! I hope the Cataclysm is continuing to be fun for you and all your friends in the game. This is the time of year when Larisa over at Pink Pigtail Inn takes a look back with her readers and the blogosphere at large as to the biggest happenings in Azeroth in 2010. Without further ado, here is the Healer Trek vote for the 2010 PPI awards.

1. Best Raid Instance - Icecrown Citadel. Since the Cataclysm first tier raids are not eligible and only Ruby Sanctum came out during calendar year 2010, the only remaining choice is ICC. However, that should not take away from one of the better designed raid instances in the game's history. ICC was a nice capstone for the scourge storylines in WOTLK, and the Lich King fight at 80 was a real challenge even at the 30% buff. Defeating Lich King may be my most memorable raid experience ever in World of Warcraft because you really felt like you earned the Kingslayer title. The first bosses were nice and easy but the difficulty ramped up appropriately all the way to Arthas.

2. Least Successful Raid Instance - Ruby Sanctum. I did throw ToC back into the mix here, but Ruby Sanctum was largely played for a week or two and then completely ignored by the playerbase. Considering ICC had been out for 8 or 9 months and nothing else was going on in the game, this instance was a complete flop. I made one attempt on Halion with my guild, but even the mini-bosses were relatively glitchy and difficult to handle. People have no patience for that, especially when the gear is a waste of time late in an expansion. The raid should have given more unique rewards, and then it might have succeeded.

3. Most Longed For Instance - Icecrown Citadel. For over a year, all we saw were short cutscenes and one large Wrathgate story movie featuring Arthas, the whole reason we were in Northrend. Especially after the flop of Trial of the Crusader, an instance with lots of challenging trash and 13 diverse bosses on varying difficulty was just what the doctor ordered. The downfall of the Lich King was certainly the thing everyone looked forward to in 2010.

4. Silliest Gold Sink - Dual Spec (at 1000 gold). One of the worst feelings in the world is paying one price for a product or service and then seeing that same product go on sale shortly thereafter with no way for you to pay less. In 2010, I spent 4000 gold on dual spec for four characters. This happened because I like to heal, but leveling in healer spec is not always a good idea. However, right after buying it on my druid and my paladin, the price dropped to 100 gold. Then again to 10 gold! For those of us who got in at the going rate of 1000 gold, it was money well spent but a gold sink compared to how it is given away today.

5. Biggest Addition to the Game - Looking For Group (LFG) Interface. The runner-up in 2009 still resonates as just as important as Dual Spec. LFG has changed the way we play, allowing instant grouping across servers and basically killing the trade chat groupings PUG'gers had to deal with previously. There's still no replacement for a good guild-based instance group, but when in doubt or during down hours, LFG allows you to play the game you want to rather than be forced to do something else.

6. Best Quest - The Twilight Cultist Pre-Cataclysm Quest Chains. In the final days before The Shattering of Azeroth, the first taste of Cataclysm arrived in some quirky quest chains around Orgrimmar and Stormwind for about a month. In addition to random elemental attacks all over the world, you got to infiltrate the Twilight Cultists and try to undermine their efforts to bring on the end of the world and destruction of the major cities. It was a compelling and different take on telling a story, and a job well done by Blizzard for a one-time event.

7. Ugliest Tabard - Kirin Tor. Maybe purple is attractive to mages and other Dalaran lovers, but it just looks awful with most serious gear. By the time you got good gear, the last thing you wanted to do was cover it up with a big ugly eye. Yet that's just what the Kirin Tor offered. Better than Wyrmrest Accord, but not by much.

8. Favorite Non-Combat Pet - Pandaren Monk. While I personally would never pay real money for an in-game pet, the cash-based offerings have not been disappointing for those who want to give their characters something a bit more special. Perhaps my minor infatuation with Kung Fu Panda colors my judgment here, but seeing that little Pandaren bust out some kung fu kicks always makes me giggle and smile. And that is precisely what a non-combat pet is for!

9. Biggest Community Controversy - Real ID snafus. I really should say the guild cap, but that only affected my guild Alea Iacta Est and a small handful of others. A much bigges issue was the release of Real ID without control over "friends of friends list" and other features, followed by the near disaster that was requiring Real ID's to be used on the official blizzard forums. Real ID is a great tool, but like Facebook, you have to enable users to maintain their privacy and Blizzard just did not consider these items well enough, especially when it came to forum posts. Blizzard employees get hate mail and harassed by forum trolls, so why would they expect the rest of the world to subject themselves willingly to that harassment? Blizzard underestimated the potential downside to Real ID, and the community outcry was just enough to save the day.

10. Most Charming Blizzard Employee - Russell Brower. Sorry if that's misspelled, but Brower is the musical director for World of Warcraft and has done a great series of interviews on The Instance podcast in 2010. Brower always seems more than happy to share as much as he can about musical direction of the game and upcoming patches or expansions. It is great to see someone so proficient and so passionate working behind the scenes to make a critical aspect of our beloved game better. If you are playing Cataclysm without the music on, you are missing something great.

11. Best Podcast - The Instance. Randy and Scott hit 200 episodes a couple months ago, which is simply astounding for a world of warcraft podcast. This is usually the first WoW podcast people run into and it remains one of the best. Special kudos go to Randy Jordan, who must write two hours worth of good discussion content for the show every week or nearly every week. Passion for the game is what makes a podcast great and these two guys managed to keep passion going during a rough summer and autumn downtime for nearly everyone else in the community of bloggers and podcasters. The oldest podcast is the best for 2010.

12. Biggest Blog Facelift - Other than Matticus, who has already won, I cannot think of a real notable facelift of any of the bloggers I follow. I am certain some out there did better than what I did with modifying the header, so I'll leave this category to those who know better. Besides, when pink is available, why pick anything else. Honorable mention goes to arkslaw for an updated banner, even though he updates about as much as me which is to say not often!

13. Most memorable blog post - The PuG and the following entries from Gevlon. Just when it looked like Gevlon had blown all out of steam with his economic take on the world of warcraft, he decided to take on a new project with a bold announcement. Following his success in taking down Ulduar in blues, he thought up a PuG guild where his anti-socialist ways and super efficiency are valued above all else. If you want to see raiding treated like a business, this is a fascinating set of entries to follow that continues to this day. In fact, this is really the entry that spawned a whole new Gevlon.

14. Most Noticed Blogger Breakthrough - Lathere and Cassandri at HoTs and DoTs. Although the sisters from Australia had more entries in six months of 2009 than they had in all of 2010, their fun style has put them on many blogrolls of others I follow. That's as good an indication as any that this blog is having a major breakthrough. And how could you not appreciate the name?

15. Most Solid Content Provider - Matt Low both at World of Matticus and wow Insider. Matt Low is probably the face of the healing wow community, and although he does get some assistance from co-writers at WOM, he still manages to produce multiple quality articles every month. Plus, his perspective on raiding and leading a raiding guild provide valuable insights to other guild officers and even the regular guild members of other guilds who wonder what goes on behind the scenes.

16. Most Hugged Blogger - Tobold. One of the most solid content providers of the past two years has gotten into some battles but keeps blogging and coming back strong because his community supports him well. There's nobody that stands out like Phaelia and BRK from a year ago, but Tobold deserves all his hugs as well!

17. Hottest Blogosphere Topic - Real ID. Not only does it count as the most controversial happening in the community at large, but Real ID set the blogging community on fire more than any Cataclysmic announcements. Whether you were for or against the changes, everybody had something to say.

18. Best Writer - John Patricelli at Big Bear Butt. I'm not a tank, this I accept. Sure I find it fun on the Death Knight from time to time, but my attempt to tank with my druid have been fail fail fail. However, Patricelli explains things so well about tanking that even I feel like I can get it (as a healer). That's a great achievement, and he's entertaining to read to boot. Definitely my favorite read of 2010.