Tinymanz Posted November 18, 2012 Report Share Posted November 18, 2012 Hey guys! I always hate writing these things...feels like writing a coverletter, however, after speaking to Ashin today I realized that I've put this off enough and it's time to get down to business. Forgive me if this is long, but there's a lot to say. Guild and Community My name is Nathan, I'm a 27 year-old chef from Canada and (somewhat obviously) I play a priest on Stormreaver. Throughout Cataclysm I spent my time guild hopping, always trying to find the right mix of community and progression -- the two things that matter most to me when it comes to this game. Prior to applying to South of Heaven, I joined Vs the Universe alliance side late in the cataclysm expansion and prior to that I had been raiding 25man heroics with a reasonably competent guild on another server. That guild managed to get Heroic Warmaster killed at 10% but shortly after that and before we could start work on spine the guild fell apart for numerous reasons. Eventually, I joined my roommate at the time on stormreaver and bounced around small guilds until being taken in by vs the universe as a main healer for their core group and finally managed to get my heroic madness kill...sadly well after I had wanted to and too far into the progressive nerfs to be considered much of an accomplishment at all. That said, I return to my original mention of Community. None of the guilds I had been in prior to writing this (Firelands and T11 are another topic) had had much of that community sense or, indeed a sense of discipline among the raiders who, it seemed, never quite realized that for a working adult raiding at such a high level was a significant time commitment. When I began my search for guilds come MoP I spent ages researching, reading what they had to say about themselves and talking to guild leaders; I do not want to repeat my Cata experience...I want a stable community that I can invest my time and effort into tackling the challenges of an expansion, knowing that it's not just going to up and end one day when people stop logging in. When I found South of Heaven I started to get excited; the fundamental principals that SoH was built around and have kept the guild together on so many fronts for so long, resonated strongly with me. The understanding that we all have jobs, that we all have families, that we all have obligations outside the game so that the time we spend playing is valuable--the clearly outlined expectations of performance dedication and discipline so that raiding can be done at a high level but the element of fun which is so key to this isn't lost. A guild is a community and a large part of that, for me, is getting to know people--to be able to talk to them, joke, have a good time but still be able to sit down and work at maintaining that same high level of gameplay that we've enjoy all at the same time. If that makes utterly no sense...well, there's a reason I'm a chef and not writer Gameplay I love healing, I love the challenges and different style of play it requires from that of a pure DPS or tank class. For me, Priest was a natural choice. They have always been a fundamental class in World of Warcraft and are, in many ways an unparalleled healing class. Priests have a versatility beyond that of simply healing or DPS, to me they seem to showcase the best of all the healing classes. From absorbs to a continuous HoT mechanic introduced with holy priest mastery (Echo of Light) they are almost always viable to bring to any encounter. In the last expansion with the introduction of mastery and the changes made to critical heals, priest versatility and healing output or damage reduction have made people rethink how healing should be done. It's no longer a simple game of keeping the squares at 100%; it's become a game of prioritizing where and how to spend your mana (the management of which has always been the trickiest thing about playing the class) and how to use the different mechanics granted to the class to their greatest effect. Some people say, not without justification mind, that priests are a little bit TOO versitile; able to many things but none too well. While this is not without justification, I feel that that statement is largely due to a poor understanding of the design intent behind the class and an unfortunate focus on 10man raiding. The priest holy spec was designed as a raid healing spec on a very large scale. With powerful AoE healing ability as their primary claim to fame, they are not without the ability to single target heal very well making them useful even for phases when there is little raid damage or when your primary tank healer runs into some flavor of crisis (though not to the same degree as a shaman or paladin). Disc, I feel, is slightly more nebulous in intent. While the spec could swing either way, to tank healing or to raid healing, I think that's an oversimplification of what they're meant to do. Discpline, more and more it seems, is designed to act as a damage buffer--to provide an instant where no damage is taken by a given target. This, in turn provide their co-healer with a chance for the raw healing of HoTs or long cast time direct heals to take effect without losing a certain amount of effectiveness to ongoing damage during the cast or HoT duration. Shown in that light, priests become a class that brings stability to the raid, be it through continuous out put of group-wide AoE healing, multi-target or single target smart healing (CoH and Atonement) or through the continuous buffer of a constant HoT or mass absorb (Echo of Light or Divine Aegis) all while being able to switch track and cover the duties of the secondary healing class during a dynamic raid encounter. Yes, the class has its faults and some are more pronounced at the moment that others but I strongly believe that the benefits of the class will always outweigh their faults when played skillfully. I understand that this is perhaps more esoteric than what you were looking for...I can talk numbers up the wazoo, but for healing above all, I think an understanding of what the design intent behind the class/spec is just as critical as knowing why it's better to go with 80 stats to chest over 200 spirit based on the average time of encounters. As for shadow...I started playing shadow with the greatest intensity at the start of this expansion and I'm a little unsure about what you'd expect to hear from me in this regard. I know there might be an issue that I haven't stacked pure haste until 7584 (goblins FTW) however, after doing some research I came to the conclusion that it benefited me more to gem for int rather than pure haste. The added spellpower and crit is a DPS increase over stacking pure haste (I gained ~2300 spellpower and a sizable amount of crit) until my gear alone can support haste rating to my break-point. Additionally, I've been aiming for crit over mastery as my secondary stat because I've found it helps with my dps on single-target fights. Eventually I hope to be able to run two sets of DPS gear if I am required to be a full time DPS: one stacking mastery the other stacking crit so I can tag them out for fights with tons and tons of adds where mastery pulls ahead of crit or single target where the weight is in favor of crit. Shadow Logs: http://www.worldoflo.../?s=8101&e=8436 --Somewhat outdated spiritbinder log from oct 16th (I don't have that many so I'm grasping at straws). http://www.worldoflo...e/?s=798&e=1362 --Recent Will of the Emperor Kill with vs the universe. (NOTE: my connection was giving me trouble for the previous part of that raid logged on Tuesday, I would ask you to disregard the truly abysmal performance on the first 4.) Holy Logs: http://www.worldoflo...rong> </strong> From Oct 16th UI: http://i47.tinypic.com/23jr5f9.jpg It's old, but I had it on hand...Really hasn't changed at all TBH. For shadow, I use weakauras for Dot and internal CD timer tracking. Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormreaver/Tinymanz/advanced Finally...outside the game, I'm a bit of a workaholic...but I manage to find time to play both badminton and in a recreational dodgeball league here in Toronto. THAT, I must say, is something I think EVERYONE needs to look into...it's really quite fun. Dodgeball was never a child's game. I SWEAR! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tinymanz Posted November 18, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 18, 2012 Jesus...this got really, really long. I"m sorry >< Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Feja Posted November 18, 2012 Report Share Posted November 18, 2012 I'm glad you picked Cascade over the other priests' Divine Star. Per HPCast Cascade is like 10x better than Divine Star. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tinymanz Posted November 18, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 18, 2012 Lol...divine star is trash. Cascade is a bloody beast, especially in 25man. I know i didn't talk too much about specifics or anything. If you have questions please ask and I will answer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mily Posted November 18, 2012 Report Share Posted November 18, 2012 Hey! Welcome to the forums, Tinymanz. I think you'd really like it here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryus Posted November 18, 2012 Report Share Posted November 18, 2012 welcome to the forums, I think you just started your writing career here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merriwhizzle Posted November 18, 2012 Report Share Posted November 18, 2012 Hi! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
09753 Posted November 18, 2012 Report Share Posted November 18, 2012 Just curious - what's that disco dance floor on the bottom left of your UI right above your keybinds? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tinymanz Posted November 18, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 18, 2012 Part of the decursive grid thing. you can click on one of the squares and it dispels everything that's on that target. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abragale Posted November 18, 2012 Report Share Posted November 18, 2012 Part of the decursive grid thing. you can click on one of the squares and it dispels everything that's on that target. You probably don't need that addon anymore, with the improvements to the blizzard ui. Unless you're trying to save a keybind. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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