There is a downside, though. I’d gotten used to glancing at my buff list constantly, keeping an eye on my 2-minute Seal so I could refresh it. This also let me keep on top of my 10- and 30-minute buffs and refresh those. Now that I don’t have to worry about the Seals, I find I lose track of the other buffs. More than once I’ve been happily playing along only to find that I haven’t had Blessing of Might up for some time. There’s Glyphs that change Blessing of Might and Wisdom to 30 minutes if you cast it on yourself, but I also use it as a timer to know when to rebuff my partner.
Still, it’s all good. I’ve never felt underpowered as a Retribution Paladin, even while playing alone. A little slow, perhaps, but strong.
Heck, I’m a protection paladin, which is super low on the DPS (it starts getting better when you get to the high 60s, when you get a sudden infusion of attack spells.)
I don’t really find it “slow” to solo as compared to my mage or hunter; you just need to understand how better to manage your combat choices. Paladins can’t kill something as fast as hunters but can take on multiple mobs where other classes cannot, and sustain continuous combat longer than other classes, because of their ability to absorb preposterous amounts of damage.
Heh. I’ve been all about the DKs since 3.0 came out, so I missed that change. Nice! Once I get Kassandrin to 80 (she’s 75 right now and questing in Zul’Drak), I’ll have to decide whether to level a different class or do all the stuff I missed in the old world (since there’s no good reason to do old world stuff at 58 when you have Outland and its much better drops, rewards and gold acquisition at hand).
I have been doing outlands and northrend on weekends, and in the evenings during the week doing old world - exploring the zones, and running the instances and quests. It is helpful for my corp, as I toss the green and blue drops for the lower levels into the guild bank, and after a few days if nobody claims them our enchanter DEs them and puts the mats in the bank. I also toss in the lower level craft mats so people can use them to skill up. For some odd reason, we have a lot of new players in the corp =) so it works out nice. I drag them through the level appropriate instances,m they get xp quests and drops, win win situation=)
I never considered that, but that’s because I’m a soloist, generally. None of my characters belong to a guild (except for the gnome warlock who is the only member of the guild she formed…haven’t played her in over a year), and I rarely group. Almost never do instances for embarrassment reasons (“What if I really don’t know how to play my class in a group?”) and for time reasons (I already get dirty looks over how much I play…if I ever started grouping instances in any kind of numbers supervenusfreak would probably stage an intervention).
Oh good it’s not just me then. I have an add-on that flashes an icon when a buff ends which is proving useful, also let’s me know in combat when I can recast my judgement.
I had similar reservations on group play, not so much playing with my mate but joining others. I have only done two instances, Deadmines and Stockades, but both times the groups were understanding even when I got killed as the Healer due to my own stupidity.
Maybe starting to do them at a low level helps? At least then there is a chance others will also be new to grouping. And though I am specced retribution I found playing a different role an enjoyable change even if I made one rather drastic error.
It’ll go out on a Tuesday, but this coming Tuesday seems to soon considering the number of changes they want to make. My guess would be mid-month, maybe the 17th.
Yeah, considering that they just put it on the PTRs last week, I’m guessing it’ll be another week or two before they release it live. But who knows? Maybe it was a paragon of coding and there weren’t any bugs at all.
BWAHAHAHAAHHAAA! I’m sorry…I couldn’t keep a straight face that long…
For the most part, my impressions from about 3 years of playing match up with yours, but I do have a few other comments (for perspective, I play almost entirely solo PvE):
Mage: My first toon, and I still play him the most. Your problem with mana is really quite controllable, partially with talents and partially with gear. I play frost, because of the incredibly high survivability. If he’s out in the open with room to move, he’s darned near unkillable – except by some big elite that can one-shot kill him 'cause he’s squishy.
As I was doing most of my leveling, I had gear specced with intelligence and spirit (later intelligence and mana/5sec). With high mana regen, over 10K base mana, and the evocation spell, he rarely had to stop and drink. In the last week, I’ve replaced most of his gear with +spell damage, +hit, and +crit. He runs out of mana faster, but he can also drop the mobs much faster. If he can toss the initial frostbolt from max range, most melee mobs are dead before they get close enough to touch him. At level 78 with mostly green gear, he’s still throwing frostbolts for 2K+, and a frostbolt/ice lance combo against a frozen target is 6K.
Priest: I disagree wholeheartedly about their solo capabilities, especially at higher levels. My level 72 priest survives quite well, and he’s a blast to play. What’s really fun is questing/grinding with my priest and a warlock. By the time I throw out Vampiric Embrace & Vampiric Touch and toss shadowbolts until the shadow vulnerability stacks up, I can increase the warlock’s DPS by 10% or more, and we’re both regenerating health and mana as we fight.
Warrior: I was just starting to get into tanking when Wrath of the Lich King came out. My warrior was level 30. I created a death knight and completely lost interest in the warrior. It seems like everything he can do, the frost DK can do better, and the DK got to start at level 55.
Hunter: It took me a while to get the hang of playing a hunter, and I’ve been so focused on using my limited time to get the mage and priest leveled up lately, I haven’t played my level 30 hunter in a couple of months, but I group up with my son and his hunter fairly often. The combination of feign death and having a pet is awesome.
Warlock: I confess. I screwed up. I started a gnome warlock. Got her up to level 30-something and gave up. Not a bad class, but with the gnome I can’t see anything! My voidwalker is always in the way, and I can’t see over or around him. I can’t even see over the damned weeds in the plains. It completely ruins the class for me. I think I’ll kill off the gnome and try a blood elf 'lock instead.
Death Knight: Fun to play. I don’t know whether he’s really that overpowered, or whether they nerfed Outland that much, but he can rip through 3 or 4 mobs higher than his level and finish the fight with 2/3 health. My mage and priest never could have done that. He took down an elite two levels higher than him (and almost managed to kill two elites his own level at once), which my warrior never accomplished.
Shaman: I’ve only played a shaman up to about level 20, but it’s really a fun hybrid class to play. Slap down a couple of totems, pull with ranged DPS, and melee the mob to death. Somehow, though, my shaman dies more often than anything else I’ve played. I’m probably just not playing him right.
Druid, Rogue, and Paladin: Never played one over level 15, so I really don’t have any basis to comment.
**aruvqan **and Pleonast, thank you for taking the time and trouble of sharing your UIs! It’s fascinating to see how others view and negotiate the same world, and there are lots of good ideas there.
**aruvqan’s **reminds me of being inside some huge armored vehicle with a complicated dashboard, maybe like driving inside the heads of Megazords from Power Rangers. I don’t know if I could personally feel immersed in the environment with that setup, but it’s cool, and the UI doesn’t obscure the view.
Pleonast’s is more how I would enjoy playing, but I wonder whether having the icons and chat screen stacked so high would obscure any sparkly things in the foreground that I’d need to see. Nevertheless, I’m going to look back to see which addon Omencaller is using. I’m just glad Bipp wasn’t saying something salty in chat when the screenshot was taken.
I play a Holy Priest, and I also have to agree that Priests are fine for soloing. This use to be true, at least the Holy Priests were bad at soloing, but the Spell Power change made it a lot simpler without having to carry around a completely different set. Even as Holy, my DPS may suffer, but healing and mana regen make up for it because I have virtually no downtime. There’s a large number of group quests that I soloed that many other classes cannot simply because I was able to DOT up the mob, wand or throw a few Smites, and heal myself through the damage where a DPS class wouldn’t be able to do enough damage fast enough to kill the mob before they needed to heal themselves.
The only real concern I have for soloing is the pending Spirit nerf that will hit my OOFSR regen pretty hard and probably add some downtime. Of course, hopefully I’ll get some quick upgrades in Ulduar that will make up for that and increased damage will make up for that.
Anyway, Priests have come a LONG way over the years in terms of solo viability. Sure, they aren’t at the level of a Hunter, but it’s not longer slow and painful.
Thanks for the updates on the Priest class. My comments reflected my Priestly play about 2 years ago, and obviously things have changed. And I didn’t mean to imply that Priests couldn’t solo, but after playing my Hunter for a few months then switching to the Priest, the difference in tempo was noticeable.
I’d still like to get back into both the Priest and Mage classes, but probably for groups. My Hunter with Aspect of the Viper (as needed) and cat (with Lick my Wounds) simply flies through the XP with zero downtime.
I haven’t tried a Death Knight yet, but after reading all the praises heaped upon them, I’m sure I’ll prefer the DK to my Paladin. I have respecced my Pally out of Retribution and into Protection, and plan on using him as a grouping utility player.
Sorry, I do a lot of theorycrafting so I sometimes lose perspective, but for the sake of completeness I’ll just cover the whole thing.
OOFSR is short for Out of Five Second Rule. Every class that has mana has two mana regen states, one while casting (Inside Five Second Rule, or IFSR), and one while not casting (OOFSR). The casting/not-casting terminology is misleading because the mana regen rates don’t depend on whether or not you’re casting but how recently you’ve used an ability that cost mana. That is, if you’ve used an ability that costs mana within the last five seconds, you regen mana at the IFSR rate, otherwise you regen at the OOFSR rate.
Now, this isn’t an important distinction for most classes since DPSers are pretty much always casting, and many other healing classes, most notably Paladins and Shamans, are spammy healers. Priests (mostly Holy) get a lot of bonuses out of Spirit and, thus end up with a lot of it, and one of the things that Spirit does is it increases your OOFSR regen, but doesn’t affect your IFSR except for a talent. However, because Priests aren’t as mana efficient as most other healers, they rely heavily on mana regen.
This is where the OOFSR nerf is important. Yes, other classes are affected by it, notably Druids and Discipline Priests, but both of those classes are generally mana efficient enough to be able to cast constantly and not go OOM, and the abilities they do have to get similar return while IFSR keep casting (ie, Innervate for Druids and Rapture for Discipline). Holy Priests, however, have to this point depended heavily on ways to manipulate the FSR to get OOFSR regen at times while still being able to heal effectively.
One method that a lot of Holy Priests used in BC, though less now because mana is so cheap these days, was a concept called pre-casting. If healing a single target, one could always try to have a heal landing for a certain amount, but that’s what Paladins and Druids do; they mitigate constant damage. Instead, when Priests single target heal, they are often chosen to do so to mitigate burst damage. As such, a Priest begins casting Greater Heal, then before it lands, if it’s going to be mostly overheal, he can cancel it and restart the cast, but if it’s needed, he can let it land and repeat. If a Priest goes long enough without needing it, he’ll go OOFSR occassionally and get some nice regen ticks in there. Meanwhile, he still always has a big heal on the way with a guaranteed faster reaction than “OMG, the tank is in trouble, I better cast Greater Heal on him”. So, it’s win-win.
A more dramatic example would be with chaining procs. For instance, Holy Concentration grants a free Flash Heal, Greater Heal, or Binding Heal when it procs. A Holy Priest that is carefully watching his buffs could notice that, and switch to pre-casting. When he finally does land a heal, it was free and, since it didn’t cost mana, it doesn’t trigger the FSR and he continues regenning at the OOFSR rate. He can then chain it with more pre-casting of Greater Heal with Inner Focus which grants a free heal with 25% great crit chance. Again, he gets another heal off without losing his OOFSR regen. If he’s lucky, he gets a crit and has a chance to proc Holy Concentration again or Surge of Light, either means more free heals and more time OOFSR. If he’s really slick, he could have even used the Inner Focus ability for a free high crit chance Circle of Healing or Prayer of Healing which is virtually a guaranteed Surge of Light Proc.
When chaining procs successfully, I have easily maintained my OOFSR regen for at least 15-20s with minimal impact on my healing throughput (and possibly even doing more if I use Inner Focus and get some nice crits). And in BC I had the Earring of Soulful Meditation and I currently also have the Spirit-World Glass (which I only bother with on more mana intensive fights), both of which have uses for large amounts of Spirit on use. If you know you will have some OOFSR regen, or if you’re starting a proc chain (ie, you’re using single target heals, you need mana now or soon, and Inner focus is up), you can activate the trinket and get some very nice OOFSR regen, and if I can get a full 15-20s of OOFSR regen with the trinket up, that’s on the order of 1000 MP5 more than you’d usually be getting, and counting the several free heals, it’s 6-8k mana regen pretty quickly.
So, clearly a 40% nerf to OOFSR regen hurts Holy Priest regen significantly for anyone who was using those mechanics. But it’s even worse than it looks because it will now be more difficult to get to that point. Holy Concentration is being changed to increased regen from crit which encourages more chain casting to get more crits. Pre-casting will also be significantly less useful because it will definitely be a large HPS loss because a FHx2, GH with the new Serendipity will be considerably more HPS, which means not only are you getting less regen than you would now, but you’re also losing HPS and, thus, possibly having the tank die on you.
Ahem… sorry if that’s wordy, but I tend to be when it comes to theorycrafting. Anyway, I hope I explained it well and you’ll see why a lot of the Holy Priest community is upset about the change because it is a pretty fundamental change in the mechanics.
wonderlust, I’m glad you liked the FloTotemBar/FloAspectBar rec. It’s been really nice for my shaman/hunter so I know what aspect or totem I’m using and how long I have before the totem dies.
I never thought I’d like PvP until last night – been straight PvE so far.
One of my guildies said in /g that several Allies were ganking the quest givers in Tarren Mill. I finished dragging a second guildie through his quests in the same area and headed over to have a look. It was… fun, actually. Since they started it and kept coming back, I didn’t feel bad about fighting them along with my fellow bored Hordies.
The result was us pushing the higher-level Allies almost all the way down to Southshore. They kept rezzing and trying to ambush and break past us, so we shrugged and routed them further down the road each time. (That rogue could run) Took about three or four attempts before I wandered off. And, it turns out, they had more goes after I left. Good times.
Given this, I may ask the other PvP’ers in guild if they’ll take me into a bg sometime to see what that’s like.
Blaster Master, you imply the answer during your post, but I’ll ask it explicitly anyway. You say, “That is, if you’ve used an ability that costs mana within the last five seconds, you regen mana at the IFSR rate, otherwise you regen at the OOFSR rate.” So a spell that costs 0 mana due to talents or gear (if such exists) doesn’t trigger the IFSR rate? Like for instance, putting full ranks in Improved Hunter’s Mark reduces the already negligible mana cost of Hunter’s Mark to 0. Does it suddenly become invisible with regard to regen rates?
Currently, no, it will not trigger the lower rate. However, I believe this is one of the changes they’re going to make.
By the way, on Shaman boards, they are mostly neutral about the Spirit regen nerf, mostly because it brings other healers closer to current Shaman regen. We depend on our shields and totems to regen mana, not Spirit.
Yes, sorry if I wasn’t clear; if you can reduce the mana cost of an ability to zero through any method (trinket, talent, buff, proc, ability, etc.) then that abilitiy is invisible to the FSR.
So, to carry the hypothetical with an Improved Hunter’s Mark–sorry if it’s not too accurate since I don’t play a hunter–if you put up a free Improved Hunters Mark and you’re already OOFSR, then you’ll stay OOFSR, and if you had cast Steady Shot 2s beforehand such that you’re 3s from going OOFSR, you’ll still be IFSR, but rather than being 5s away from OOFSR regen, you’d still be 3s away. If it cost even 1 mana, then whether or not you were OOFSR, you’d be IFSR and 5s away from going OOFSR. Of course, FSR isn’t something hunters generally worry about between Replenishment, Judgment of Wisdom, and the occassional Aspect of the Viper since Auto-attacking trying to regen mana with the pitiful amount of Spirit that Hunters have is sp much of a DPS loss for the small amount of mana regen as to not be worth it. Pleo, they’re not changing the FSR, just nerfing how much Spirit regen gives outside, while adjusting upward how much it gives inside such that OOFSR regen is reduced, but IFSR remains the same. And, the Shamans should be neutral to it since it has virtually zero affect on them. In fact, the nerf really only hits Holy Priests since the other Spirit using Healers barely go OOFSR, while the Holy Priest class has been doing it since the MC days, so they’re effectively balanced around it.
I suspect they’ll either not nerf it as hard in the end or make some more changes to Priest regen since Holy is getting hit hard, and my mana regen isn’t nearly as much better than Shamans as the magnitude of the nerf would imply. And, quite frankly, I’m disappointed because I enjoyed the FSR dance because it was one of the things that made playing the class an interesting challenge and helped separate the good players from the bad ones.
