Mad Priests on Madmortem

Ok, I have heard several people moin about how hard it is to get that darn torch juggling game right - and truly so, considering that it took me almost an hour to get the 4 catches right - and the 10 cost me another half hour at deepest midnight!

So, here is the recipe which I managed to cook up:

10% Luck: Well the game does depend a bit upon luck, as does everything in life

30% Solitude: If you got some [insert your most rude swear word right here] that manages to blow up right in the target zone of one of your last throws, you better have a solid steel table (my wood table already shows really nasty bite marks, you know…)

60% Simple Tricks:
Trick Number one: You need to get a bit ahead of the torch (being right where you might think it lands usually does not work, since your FEET need to be at the landing point and you cannot get a real overhead view, it is always slightly tilted.)
Trick Number two: The torches throw shadows… It is much easier to follow shadows on the ground than to follow torches in the air…

Hoping to have saved you a bit of frustration

Impressed?

Ok, enough showing off, here is what might help you get your latency down by a two-digit percentage:

A. Vista Autotuning: This will only make sense if you run vista. Really. Actually it will disable a feature that is supposed to improve bandwidth on highly used connections by reducing the amount of control flow. This might reduce your throughput i.e. when copying files on your local network or downloading larger files from the internet.
In an elevated command prompt simply type or copy and paste (pasting in a command prompt works via right click->paste):
netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

B. TCP Ack Frequency: TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) numbers all data packages that exit your computer. To confirm that a package was received, the other side sends a so called ACK package (from acknowledge) to inform the sender, that everything up to a certain number of packages was received.
Example:
Sender: Sends packages 1-5
Receiver: Receives packages 1-2 and sends an ACK for 2, receives 3-4 and sends an ACK for 4.
(5 was lost)
some time later the sender just resends 5, because it never got ACKed.
Now, the receiver in our example used a tcp ack frequency of 2 - he received 4 packages before sending his ACK - actually this is totally acceptable behavior and reduces the amount of useless garbage on your lines.
In the example, the receiver used the same TCP Ack Frequency that Windows uses - a very good compromise for most situations. However, World of Warcraft depends more upon fast answers than a high throughput, so lowering your tcp ack frequency can very probably reduce your latency - for every second package.

To do so, you first need to determine your IP address for the given network adapter using ipconfig or a similar tool. If you are unable to definitely determine the ip address of the network adapter used for playing world of warcraft, do not continue!
After this, open a little program called regedit by typing regedit into your vista start search (the text box which is in your start menu) and hitting Ctrl+Shift+Enter to launch it elevated. Browse the folder structure on the left as you would browse your local folders.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces.
In this folder, there are several subfolders which all wear cryptic names, and you will need to identify by browsing into the interfaces and searching for the ip you noted in step one. As soon as you managed to identify the wanted interface, look for a key called “TcpAckFrequency” - if none exists create it by hitting Edit->New->DWORD (32bit) VALUE (this might be called slightly different in your regedit, but it will always contain DWORD) and creating this value.
Now edit it to be “1″.

REVERTING A. Vista Autotuning:In an elevated command prompt simply type or copy and paste (pasting in a command prompt works via right click->paste):
netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=enabled

REVERTING B. TCP Ack Frequency: Edit the TcpAckFrequency to “2″ or simply delete it.

Everybody who plays World of Warcraft sooner or later dies.
Especially if you do any kind of Battleground.
It sounds kinda weird to state it like that, but sadly this is very, very true

Usually you get your “Ghost” debuff, swear loudly, sometimes bite into things (You remember that little girl from “A Series of Unfortunate Events”? She played way to much PvP…) and get your ghost to wherever you want to get resurrected - in battlegrounds you usually just wait (for your statistical 15 seconds - and felt 12 minutes) and game on.

If for some reason - like being raidspecced - you got Spirit of Redemption specced - hey, lucky you! Up to 15 seconds (minus lag equals maybe 12 or so of effective use, minus maybe still being counterspelled…) of totally uninterrupted - and uninterruptable - healing.

Bliss.

Oh, of course, you just might get teleported to a graveyard the second your Spirit of Redemption procs….
Although that does not seem to be such big of a deal, it can lead to desastrous consequences:

If this happens (as of yet I had only have it happen to me in alterac valley btw) you will not be considered “dead” - whilst being a Spirit of Redemption (that cannot be hurt or killed…)

And you stay dead.

You might wait for the Spirit of Redemption Buff to wear off - but you will just die and become a dead, dead ghost….

You might wait for the resurrection timer multiple times (remember the statistical 15 seconds? Well, now its up to YOU! Wait however long you want!) but you will stay a very dead piece of ghost…

Ok, Problemsolving 101: Move to a different graveyard!

Problemsolving 102: Notice you cannot move and call a game master.

Problemsolving 103: Realise the game master may be able to resurrect you and teleport you to your starting cave - but he cannot restore your ability to act (”You are not in control of your actions!”, mkay?)… Bite the table and silently cry….

Oh, and in case your GM offers you to take you out of the battleground to end your problems: Don’t throw curses at him, he is only trying to help…

Yeah, one thing at the end: Even if you are alive, get the General’s Warcry and everything…

You cannot even use the fucking 40000 honor insignia to remove the fucking “You are not in control of your actions!” annoyance!

*Ehm* sorry for the swearing to our american friends which will probably have a cardiac arrest at the notion of someone saying the “F-Word” where children below 42 might read it…

Update: Since I had more fun in alterac valley, there are a few pictures in the thread I took today (see above) and an addition down here:

It was suggested my latency might be the issue, since nobody else seems to know of the problem - well, to refute that:

Update 2: Well, happened again - but this time I was fast enough for a screeny!

Also, I had a bit of fun with netmon 3.1 during the time - see the full result on the official forums (german), the short recap:
1 out of 156000 packets was a tcp retransmit…
signal-to-noise ratio seems good (8 db)
Sooo, line does not seem to be the problem!

Several times in the last few weeks I have heard such a statement in our raid. “I have got enough Manareg” or “I will now ditch half a dozen points of Manareg for a dozen points of plus heal, I do not go OOM anyways!”
Well guess what: They were wrong.

Horribly wrong.

Now, why do people make such a statement that obviously will get destroyed in the most obvious and painful way possible?
First, our raid specifically was doing T5 content + the proudmore fights in Hyjal at that point in time - we had people build up more stam before entering BT, which proved to be a good decision, since our first week in BT took 3 bosses’ lives.
However, T5 meant people were overgeared for most fights, so yes, in those fights we had more than enough mana regen. The fights were people were taken to do something they had not done before were all done with the 100% spirit boost…
Combine that with:
Second, the overall situation. The 2.4 Spirit boost had just happened together with improvements to the shaman’s water shield… Yeah, that feels like we are all-powerful and will never, ever go OOM again, huh?

There is just one tiny problem: You can always just step up your healing output, and you will go OOM again!

Oh, and of course: New encounters will force you to step up your output in all regions, healing among them. Otherwise the new encounters would not be any harder than the old ones…

So, if you ever feel like having infite mana again, just remember: The next boss fight is already waiting…

Ever since items like the Primal Mooncloth Set have priests been trained that stamina is just a waste of item points.

And, not to be offensive, this is quite true!
As long as you do neither do pvp nor get past T5 content.

Ouch, that one must have hurt a few people - at least that realization did hurt me when it hit.

Well, first PvP - this is quite obvious since stamina is the single most important stat besides Resilience, after all we priests are first focus for many groups. Anyone who does not realize this, simply should not do PvP ^^

But why would priests need more stamina once we get past T5 content?
Simply, because many T6+ encounters expect you to have a certain hp reserve. Take Naj’entus for example:
Naj’entus has several abilities, which damage the raid, but the most prominant is this (Source: WoW Wiki and own experience):

Tidal Shield : Renders Naj’entus immune to everything, regenerates health, deals 8500 frost damage to all raid members when broken, 60 sec cooldown

Now, 8500 dmg is more than many priests in pmc posses fully raid buffed!
Ergo: PMC priests get pwned by this boss very, very badly.

So, if you ever wondered why T6 and similar items like the itemlevel 141 Sunwell Badge rewards have so much “useless” stamina on them - there you go!

Now, I promised myself I would not repost stupid WoW videos - but this time I just cannot resist

Boubouille (damn I should have used copy&paste, i bet I have mistyped that name) from mmo-champion.com uploaded a really beautiful trailer to WotLK: Video.

There is a little Button titled “HD” on the top right of the video frame - if you can, enable it…

This post is about how you might evade the 5-second-rule as much as possible.

Of course, the short version of this post is: “Do not use any mana”…
But how might we facilitate that?

I mean, honestly, not spending any mana is a) boring and b) quite ineffective if you try to keep a tank alive

Funny enough, having innervate active does not evade the 5-second rule! If, i.e. you finish casting a greater heal 2 seconds before innervate runs out, you will suffer 3 seconds of reduced mana regen (only 3, because during the 2 seconds of innervate being in or outside the 5s rule is meaningless).

The first, foremost and most obvious way is simply using inner focus to get a free cast - this does not trigger the 5 second rule. Exactly the same idea is true for our talent “Holy Concentration” which grants free casts for flash heal, greater heal and binding heal.

All the other options center around items and can be put into one of two categories:
a) Items that generate free heals
b) Items that make your normal heals free

The probably most notorious item for category a) is the Vial of the Sunwell, and although there are several other similar items around, only one other is worth mentioning: The Super Healing Potion

For items that grant us free heals, there are a few options, with Auslese’s Light Channeler probably being the best well known. Auslese’s Light Channeler reduces the cost of any spell cast by 215 mana - so any spell with a mana cost of 215 or less becomes free and therefore does not trigger the 5 second rule.

First to get it out of the way: Yes, gear is an important factor in WoW. Yes, I recognize that no matter how much skill ya got - the goode olde greens in black temple are a mite underpowered.

However, I am going to argue that skill has a more profound impact than many people seem to be currently thinking.

Just imagine the following situation:
You are doing an heroic instance (gotta get some badges for those nifty sunwell isle loots). Standard group lineup, 1 tank 1 healer 3 dds, 2 of them w/ major cc (hunter mage lock for example, the mage und the lock ccs are mutually exclusive for any group that does not sport both demons/elementals and humanoids, which except for magisters terrace seems quite rare to me will only be allowing either banish or sheep).
Now, everyone has read their tactics (or even better experienced them first hand) and nobody is hopping around in greens.
So, what happens is that your tank goes down.
What in my experience would usually happen is that either tank or priest would say “I am taking to much damage” or “I just cannot heal that”. Factoring out a few special tactical parts like the 40k pyroblast kil jaeden does, this is usually blamed on the gear of either tank or healer.

Now, in some cases this might be a valid point. I can imagine doing magisters terrace with only people who have just got their blues together is quite painful. Under most circumstances though, you have to remember one thing:
Everyone who started out w/ heroics in the earlier days of Burning Crusade did so in pure blues, no wellfare epics whatsoever - and that was before the nerfs!

So, maybe, just maybe there is more to the game than getting your epics equipped.
Maybe, just maybe, your priest should use such a random thing as casting greater heal instead of flash heal.
Maybe, just maybe, your tank should start using shield block.

Or an example for those of us who primarily raid:
If gear is 80% of the game, how comes that some dds do about halve the damage other similar equipped dds of their class do? Why in gods name does a mage end up doing even less damage than our feral tank, while offtanking gruul? The bear does not even get any rage in that fight!
This example is actually even weirder to me, because I cannot imagine that the “special tricks” a mage could employ would double their damage versus just chaincasting frobos/fireballs/whatevers…

Whatever you might think about skill and gear now - just remember that tip world of warcraft gives you while logging in:
“If you are nice to other players you might get invited to a group again!” (or some such)
So, even if you are raving internally and generally about people just not cutting it, give them the benefit of saying that of course their gear is the problem - after all there is no chance you could heal through steam vaults hc with only 4 or 5 epics, which have an itemlevel of 141+ each (yay, sunwell isle badge vendors!)

Well, S4 seems to be approaching finally and some things will probably change: There will be rating requirements on most items.

Quoted from mmo-champion.com:

The new Season 4 items will have the below personal and team arena rating requirements:
Shoulders: 2200
Weapon: 2050
Head: 1700
Chest: 1600
Legs: 1550
Gloves: none
Off-hand: none

In addition, some of the Season 4 quality items that will be purchasable with honor will also carry a personal and team arena rating requirement:
Boots: 1700
Ring: 1650
Bracers: 1575
Belt: none
Necklace: none
Trinket: none

Personally I do not think it do be unfair to have rising requirements on many of these very powerful pieces - if you cannot get to 1600, your equip probably sucks that much that gaining S4 would be akin to jumping from greens to sunwell loot - not very appropriate.
Even 1700 should not be a problem for any decent geared player - there are enough twinks & green equipped players to go around.
The 2050 and 2200 are way overblown though. 1850 is not something that gets handed to you - especially not since almost full S3 is pretty much state of the art at that rating already. For 2k you already really have to get to work. 2050 might be achievable - but 2200 is hardly possible for most people who do not play healing druid/warrior…

Aside from all this, there is a more destructive point to this:
Rating requirements stop people from playing arena-pvp!
S3 has a lot less active players than S2 - why? Because people do not seem to think they can ever achieve the needed ratings. This means there are less arena rating points to go around - therefore arena just got harder.
The same thing could be happening with S4 - So many people will stop playing that the entrance hurdle gets very, very high… Because after all the “excellent” teams have to get their points from the “lesser” teams (such as our measly 1900-2000 rated team) - so everybody gets pushed down…

But since priests are absolutely op in pve now, who cares….

So long
hf

I tidied up the enchant and gem guides above