Mists of Pandaria Talent Calculator Changes: Druid, Shaman, and Priest

The Mists of Pandaria talent calculators were updated yesterday and there are some really exciting changes. There are also some really not-so-exciting changes.


Druid
The first thing that I'm really excited about is that Bear Hug is now baseline, at least for guardian druids. The talent calculator seems to imply it's both baseline for all druids and is also a guardian only ability. We'll see how that error corrects itself. I'm super glad that Thrash is now going to apply Demoralizing Roar on my targets. Symbiosis still looks like and amazing spell that I can't wait to use. I'm still not sure how the new active defense style based around the new Savage Defense is going to work, but we'll see. I'm worried it will devolve to "Herod says, '5'." and then having to store up rage to avoid the insta-death attack.

Talent opinions by tier, from a guardian druid perspective.

1. I'm really excited that Wild Charge is now on this tier, although I'd also love to have Feline Swiftness.
2. All of these look great, but there's nothing new here. I'll likely go with Renewal. 
3. Typhoon is still great, because I'm a massive troll. I'm sure I'll use the other stuff if there is some hard content that need it, but otherwise Typhoon.
4. Soul of the Forest looks like a solid addition for boring fights. Incarnation also looks for fights with hard phases. Force of Nature will be my favorite from a flavor perspective. If Incarnation has a really awesome transformation effect for each spec, then I just might use that one though. We'll have to see what Force of Nature actually does, before we can really pass judgement on it. 
5. I'll probably use Ursol's Vortex most of the time, with Mighty Bash and Disorienting Roar being situational. I like Ursol's Vortex and Typhoon because I'm a massive troll.
6. Disentanglement is the only real option here, because I have no idea when I'd use the other two as a bear. Even then, using it will be very hard. Tier 6 is a big 'screw you' to bears.

Shaman

Grace of Air may have been there before, but I still think it's really neat. It grants nearby players 5 Mastery. Ascendance is the new level 87 ability for shamans. With it they'll take on some elemental aspect that empowers them. Elemental shaman will become a flame ascendant which removes the cooldown from Lava Burst and makes Chain Lightning into Lava Beam. Enhancement shaman will become a wind ascendant, which makes autoattack and Stormstrike deal nature damage and have a 30 yard range. Restoration shaman will become a water ascendant, which duplicates all healing done and spreads it out among nearby allies. I'm incredibly excited for that ability.

I don't really have much to say about the shaman talents, probably because they don't seem to have figured out what they're doing with them, especially since the last tier is absent!

Priest

Nothing here really seemed new to me. Maybe I'm wrong. There was probably new stuff but I didn't notice it/it was underhwhelming to me. I'm hoping I'll get more excited about it as time goes on. If I'm wrong, let me know.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 20 - My last day of WoW

If it were my last day to play World of Warcraft, and not just a temporary unsubscription, I would really want to spend it connecting with people again. I'd run dungeons with my guildmates and say goodbye to all of them. I'd log on to old servers and send mail messages to old friends/seeing if they were online to say goodbye.

After that, I'd give away what wealth I had to those who needed it. If I had friends who were always in need of gold it would go to them. Otherwise I'd just hand it to some low level character who didn't have heirlooms, since they'd be the ones that most likely don't have a high-level character to bankroll them.

My final act would be to move all my main characters to somewhere meaningful to them. I would take my priest to Ashenvale. I have really strong memories of leveling her there and that's where I think she'd want to be, defending it from the orcs. I would log out my shaman at the Throne of the Elements in Nagrand. Being a Draenei and a shaman I think he would want to be there. My very last act would be to log out my druid. I would take him to the Night Elf starting area and log him out next to that initial quest giver, standing by him, greeting each new Night Elf and help new druids as they come.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 18 - My favorite outfit

Druid Tier 6

Since I only recently resubscribed and haven't been working to put any outfits together, I don't have any favorite outfits. I don't have old tier sets collected and I don't have any transmog outfits. But I do have favorite tier sets for each of the classes that I play.

For my druid, I particularly love tier 6. It has a very Tauren feeling, and the Tauren are one of my favorite races. Tier 6's simple look is very appealing to me. I'll take the Tauren themes over the Night Elf themes anyday. Night Elves are overdone. Less elves and orcs, give me the other races please.

Shaman Tier 8

My second favorite is for my shaman, who is the first character I ever had to reach the level cap. As I've said before, I raided Naxxramas with him and I eagerly anticipated the release of Ulduar. One of the things I was looking forward to about Ulduar was the tier set. Shaman Tier 8 has some of the most badass shoulders I've seen.

Shaman shoulders tend to be some of the best shoulders in the game, in my opinion. Big bright things with awesome stuff happening on them? Sign me up. The shaman tier 10 shoulders are also pretty nice, if just for the cool effect.







For my priest, I also enjoy tier 6, but for a different reason. Priest tier 6 fits a shadow priest magnificently. The shadow priest themes appeal to me, their psychic/psionic abilities are so mystical and cool. Since I don't have this, I'm making do with what things I end up picking up. The only piece of gear that I've gone out of my way to get for transmogrification was Whitemane's Chapeau, which I had when I was level appropriate for it and I loved the look when I was in shadow form.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 9 - My First Blog Post

Smile!

Day 9 of the 20 days challenge inquires about my first blog post. Oh lord. I was afraid of this. This was my first actual post on the blog. In it, I was considering watching a very visual anime without any English, as if it were an opera. That's pretty much it. You'll notice that it has absolutely nothing to do with World of Warcraft. It's not even really something that I can imagine someone would want to read. It's devastatingly short, and...I'm ashamed of it. This blog is the first real writing project that I've undertaken, so it's very understandable that the content towards the beginning would be, for the lack of a better word, awful.

My next post was my first WoW post and from the looks of it was about 6 months after that previous post. At the time, my shaman was my only level-capped character and I thought that maybe I could turn this into a shaman blog. So I started what I hoped would be a series of posts on what totems have niche uses in the heroic dungeons that were out at the time. I originally started by doing one dungeon at a time, with The Nexus having the inaugural post.

It's horribly formatted, contains no links to wowhead.com for any of abilities or bosses. It doesn't explain WHY the totems are useful. It's two paragraphs of blech. It contains so little information. Back then I just didn't know how to expand content. Writing papers in school was always tough for me because I couldn't expand the content out. I didn't elaborate on the things I was writing. I was awful. Awful, awful, awful.

The writing got slowly better from there forward. I wrote a 'how to enhancement' post and a few more editions of 'Totems of Note' before I changed to elemental. Later came a post about Shadow of the Colossus and a post about why it's mathematically optimal that the Deeprun Tram not wait for people very long at each of its stations. I'd like to say that I've really come quite a ways from where I was then, and I'm sure I have. I will always write niche content, it's just who I am. I just really need to find a way to frame it so that it's interesting to most people.

I'm really glad to have that stuff behind me. This all brings me to some good questions. What would you all actually like for me to write about? What do you like to read about? Is there anything about my math/statistics/programming background that you would like to hear about or see applied to World of Warcraft?

Preliminary Talent Builds for Mists of Pandaria

There are some preview versions of the revised talents system for Mists of Pandaria at Wowhead. I've taken the liberty of putting together some preliminary builds for my current max level characters.

Guardian Druid (aka, the new 4th Druid spec for Bears)


Bears are getting their own specialization now, making the druid the only class with four. I'm really looking forward to what new abilities this will afford us since we won't be sharing with cats anymore. There are, of course, some holes in the descriptions for these abilities, so I'm excitedly waiting to see how those turn out.

1. Displacer Beast - because as a tank if I'm turning into a cat, I need to do it after I'm put distance between me and what's attacking me. Good for getting out of effects that are happening right on top of you.
2. Renewal - You can't argue with 30% of your health being restored.
3. Typhoon - something about the idea of opening my mouth and knocking away all the enemies with a wave of water is very appealing to me. 
4. Incarnation - You become a better bear. I'm mostly waiting to see how this one pans out. I'm also very interested in the new Force of Nature. Typhoons and Treants and Bears oh my!
5. Ursol's Vortex - This is for more NPC control. We bears have trouble with that. :-(
6. Disentanglement - There are spare moments in boss battles where you can shape shift (especially combined with Displacer Beast) that should make this a very interesting choice.

The theme here is mobility and mob control. I'm really looking forward to playing a new bear. RAWR!

Discipline Priest

Atonement is probably going to become baseline for discipline, which is something that I'm particularly looking forward to. Many of my choices here are about increasing discipline's AOE healing potential.

1. Psyfiend - This was a tough call, as none of them particularly appealed to me. This seemed better than Psychic Scream, because it seems less chaotic.
2. Body and Soul - I use shields often, so this seems like a no-brainer. Although it can often be disorienting for the affected person to be suddenly running very fast, if you have a dedicated group, they'll get used to it. This will also call for more situational awareness on my part, which will be an enjoyable challenge.
3. Divine Star - An AOE heal? Sure, let's see how it goes. I'm also a big fan of From Darkness, Comes Light.
4. Angelic Bulwark - I'll take stronger shields on my self to prevent me from needing a 30% heal or an auto-shield.
5. Serendipity - Combine this with From Darkness, Comes Light to make your spells have this great positive feedback loop.
6. This is a tough tier. I'd pick Vampiric Dominance but there's no way that's going to come through exactly the way it is. If it doesn't get nerfed, then it's definitely the one I'm picking. I'm also interested in Vow of Unity, but I'll have to see how it works out in a practical setting.

Enhancement Shaman

I love playing an enhancement shaman. I also love playing a restoration shaman. One of my favorite things about being an enhancement shaman is being able to contribute heals when they're really needed, so I'm putting some effort into that.

1. Earthgrab Totem - I'm honestly not a fan of any of these. When I tank I hate it when the DPS manipulate the mobs like this, because it makes it hard to build threat/rage. If called for as part of the strategy, these things can be very helpful. Any choice here is good. Frozen Power would be my second choice.
2. Stone Bulwark Totem - I like to defend myself from incoming damage,don't you? Astral Shift also seems like a good choice. It will come down to how each one of them plays.
3. Improved Ghost Wolf - I had to go with the selfish choice on this one.
4. Ancestral Guidance - I also really like Healing Tide Totem. However, I'm kinda expecting this one to scale better for enhancement shaman. I also think it will be a good way to save one particular person who is taking too much damage, whereas Healing Tide Totem is more of a helper, not meant to save anyone in an immediate fashion.
5. Nature's Swiftness - I'm hoping the haste will make up for the damage loss from not taking Echo of the Elements. Throwing down an instant Chain Heal or Healing Rain is a favorite pastime of mine. Will Enhancement Shaman even have Healing Rain in Mists of Pandaria, though? Who knows? Echo of the Elements may very well end up being the better choice.
6. Totemic Restoration - I don't often end up moving my totems. If I PVP'd more, I probably would. I don't know how valuable being able to have multiple totems of the same type will be, but being able to cut down the cooldown of my totems seems very valuable.

One thing I noticed is that the various shield spell aren't mentioned here. Will they go on the chopping block in Mists? It seems like they will since they aren't very interesting, just fire-and-forget.

Overall I'm very excited for these talent changes. They've also stated that they want talent changing to be relatively easy, like glyphs. We might be able to alter our talent builds between boss battles easily, which would be wonderful for me, since I love to min-max for each circumstance that way.