Repost from PlusHeal: New LFG Tool

I haven't had a ton of time to use the random tool yet, but I was very pleased with it on patch day.

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3.2 Patch WTF?

Well, they're trying to make PvP better. Some of the changes confuse and frighten me, but at least they're trying.

Let's see now...

Battlegrounds
Experience in BGs? Well, I guess that was coming what with Warhammer and some of the other RPGs having ways to level purely through PvP. I think it's only a small subset of people that will do this, and they made it possible for twinks to turn it off, which is good. It essentially makes a "twink bracket" since people with xp turned off will only be matched together. These changes are great for alts that want to mess around in BGs while leveling, but I bet the wait times for the 19,29,39 brackets is going to go way up for those not in the twink crowd. It also lets you start building up your point bank early by doing the BG daily while leveling.

They're trying to get people to defend the flags. It sucks that they have to bribe people not to play like idiots, and I think it's going to backfire. Get ready for the longest turtle games you've ever played. It's a good thing the BGs this applies to have point timers. I can't imagine how long old AV would have taken with this in place...

They added a timer to WSG. Thank god. No more honor farming.

Arenas
They're taking away current season gear for 2s teams. That makes me sad inside. That basically kills the entire 2v2 bracket. I think I died a little on the inside.

They took away the special alchemist "trinket" that allows insta healing in arenas. No more free cookies.

General
Sliding scale for riding, giving everyone riding at lvl 20. They're trying to push people through the old content faster, which I generally agree with, so I think this is cool. Ghost Wolf and Cheetah Form are still useful in that you don't have to slow down to do your farming or run away from an enemy, and in BGs you can carry the flag in form.

All Northrend badges dropped will be conquest badges. Yay, now I can FINALLY get some valorous badge gear running raids that I can fit into my schedule, and maybe even get a little Ulduar badge gear, and high level raiders with nothing to use the conquest badges for can trade them down for artifact gear. This will be patched in with the new raid which will use different badges, so I think this is fair. People doing OS10 pugs still won't be able to have the most current cool gear.

Priests
More mana regen adjustments. They've been trying to make Mana part of strategy again, and it didn't work last round, my mana pool is still basically unlimited in raid gear, so I'm not surprised.

Not a fan of getting my aoe healing reduced, but with the change allowing PoH to go to any group I see this getting abused. Inspiration change basically keeps the buff from getting ridiculous with all the crazy high armor tanks now. No biggie really, again reduces healing power a little but I don't think this will hurt as much as it seems.

Interface
The new shammy bars sound cool. It's about time they took away losing all that bag/toolbar space

I think Blizz is trying to kill Questhelper. It's probably for the best, but I hate to see one of the best addon developers get kicked in the crotch. That must hurt.

Higher potion stacks. Less trips to the bank, woot!

Downloading...

Turns out my IP address changed at some point and my port forwarding was not going through. I've been behind a firewall this whole time.

*facepalm*

My 3.1 Thoughts

As with every other WoW blogger out there on the interweb (ha, I called myself a blogger) I have a whole bunch of opinions on the 3.1 patch. Of course, I didn't print out the patch notes using a work printer, and I would never spend 45 minutes with a highlighter going through the 50 page printout on company time. That would be outrageous!

On that note, as much as I'd love to write an epic novel sized post about the patch right now, I think that's a little much for me now as I do have a crap ton of work to do today.

After I deliver a copy of the notes to my work WoW buddy as a gift of course.

Vacation

I went on vacation, both from work and from WoW. I needed it, though I can't say I was completely offline. I did log in for about an hour one day and ran a few quests with Yoka (now 73), and another hour or so to craft a frost resist set, make my 4 day cloth, and research some gems. I also had Matticus spamming my Twitter with WoW stuff like crazy, so it never completely slipped my mind. It's a good thing I have unlimited texting or I'd be eating ramen for a month.

The Guild Message indicated they were trying to finish off 25 man Naxx with our meaty brothers. From the looks of it they worked on Kel both Sunday and Monday. Not sure if they actually succeeded or not, I'll know later today. I'm looking forward to talking to the guys later tonight. I miss my guildies when I'm offline!

I merged my WoW account with the Battle.net system this week, and I think it was a mistake. I was having some version authentication issues with Wowhead Looter for a while, but it was no big deal. Well, last night at the ungodly hour I came home I tried to log in and it told me it couldn't verify my version. Didn't have any issue with this on the laptop. Maybe it was just a fluke, but I took this as an indication that it was time for a clean install on the beast. I'm still going to port over my addons and preferences from the old install though. I didn't spend 4+ hours 2 weeks ago configuring my UI for nothing.

I installed the first 8 discs of vanilla and BC last night / this morning and left Wrath installing at around 15% when I left for work. I'll have to patch it up before I'll know if it worked or not. I wonder if I could use one of those "try me" Wrath demo DVDs instead of a billion legacy discs. I'll see what's available when I go get GH:Metallica at Best Buy later.

Gotta have something to do while all those patches download. Like work on busting another controller trying to play Metallica songs.

Priest Changes and Fixes

Enough with the QQ you say? Time for some commentary!

Fixes
Guardian Spirit isn't proccing when you get more than one killing blow more or less simultaneously. Slorkuz acknowledges the bug and a hotfix should be coming out quickly.

Please please tell me this is true. I've all but given up on Guardian Spirit being a reliable skill to use as an "Oh Shit" button. I've mostly been using it as a +40% to healing buff when I know I'm getting behind in the heals, and only as an emergency button for bosses. If simultaneous killing blows are the issue, that explains why it doesn't work well on trash but does OK on tank n spank.

Changes
Divine Spirit – this spell is now a core ability available to all priests.

Awesome. Bonus spellpower and spirit FTW. This seems to be way more useful for Holy Priests anyway. I think this is another step moving away from Discipline priests being nothing but fancy buffs and mana batteries.

Discipline has access to a new talent, Power Word: Barrier. (Think of it as Power Word: Shield for your whole group)

One of the really fun things about disc priests is the shields. A big ol' bubble for your whole group with mana regen and damage reflection? Yes please.

Several area of effect (AOE) heal spells have been improved: Prayer of Healing can be cast on any groups in your raid party. Holy Nova's mana cost has been reduced. Circle of Healing now heals for more.

The tweaks to AoE healing are nice, but they are constantly changing these anyway, it seems. Prayer of Healing on any group will be handy.

Shadow priest PvP survivability has been improved: Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.

I don't know anything about shadow except the glowy purple effect looks cool.

Penance – this spell can now be targeted on the priest.

Well, I'm not sure why you would want to channel a spell on yourself, except maybe to get the Grace buff as well, but whatever. Everything should be self castable anyway.


Serendipity – this talent now reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal are cast.

I'm a fan of binding heal so this pretty cool. But does this mean the overheal mana refund is gone? I'm pretty good about overheals so I don't really care but some people will be pretty pissed I'm sure.

We are also working to give Holy additional PvP utility.

Is that all you're giving me? I don't know how this is possible without seriously damaging what is, IMO, one of the best pure raid specs in the game. Especially with all the burst damage that is going on on pvp right now. I'm very skeptical about this one.

Midnight Madness

So I'm out front of my local GameStop waiting for my copy of WotLK. The crowd is a little bigger than I thought it would be, and not as friendly. I though people would be, you know, talking about WoW and stuff. Whatever. Apparently their credit card machine is down but they're still going to run them, I just have to wait longer. As long as the midnight line is not a waste of time I'll be happy.

*edit*

I was home in my chair by 12:40. The DVD installed super fast, now I just have to get all the patches loaded. Woot!