Saturday, December 26, 2009

Wtf...Really Late


Reflective Shield Proc Surge of Light!

If you don't have this talent in your Smite leveling/solo/farming spec, go to your nearest trainer and learn it asap. And yes, I just found out about this today while farming */facepalm*, it's late but as Ensidia say, "better late than never".

In other news, I'm currently farming for dual spec on my main account using the seven day anniversary subscription given by Blizzard. The new looking for group system is...interesting. In general, the folks from the other servers are skilled. As for my "wtf we got two healer" spec, I received mixed reviews. Some embraced it, claiming they have no problem carrying me with their leet 5k dps. Others...well, let just say the name calling doesn't really stop. "Yo gimp dps, click on Arthus" "L2 queue noob" "Shaman, switch to element, let the disc heal" "I HATE slow runs, WTF?" "/leaveparty" etc etc etc. Surprisingly, most angry comments came from people from my own server...

I can understand the hostility, but those who are often hostile does do pretty good dps so no complains there. I haven't had a party break up so far so the badges are coming in slowly. Nor have I ever gotten kicked via vote...at least not for 5 man. The new Gear Score system pugs use to select players make it pretty hard for me to join any 10/25 at the moment. I think my GS's seating at 4400, maybe less.

Dummy DPS:
Peak: 2300
Avg: 2150

Base Stats:
25.39% Holy Crit
2081 Spellpower
8.14% Haste
(1.75 sec Smite)

Armory Link

Monday, December 21, 2009

Leveling Oom

My school session finished last Friday, so now I have two weeks of free time to do whatever I please...at least to a certain extent, my work schedule changed from one day to six days a week after my boss found out about my holiday schedule (ops...), but at least I don't have to puzzle through problem sets or write lab reports so no complains there.

I figure it's not really worth the money to resubscribe again only to play for maybe a few hours a week for the next two weeks before completely locking my account until the summer. So instead, I opened up a trial account to test out my leveling theory crafting. With no gold, no party invite privileges, no glyphs, and battling server lag due to streaming, I managed to get to level 10 on Day One. Many will do better than that, since I spend half the time enjoying the scenery. Indeed, I miss Azeroth very much.

So enter Falaris, Night Elf priest on Illidan (US, PVP).

The first 3 levels are relatively easy to get through. Smite casting time is only 1.5 seconds, and it does good damage, so a mob is usually dead within 3-4 casts. Mana and health regeneration is insane, between looking at quest logs and finding the next mushroom, an empty mana bar is usually restored back to full. No drinking required.

At level 4, Shadow Word: Pain is learned. Although it costs a good chunk of mana, this spell does do good damage. At this point, my mana regeneration can still sustain casting this spell, so I went ahead and used the following cast sequence:

Smite -> SW:P -> Smite until 5% -> Weapon damage until dead

The trick so far (due to lack of wand), is to grab a fast weapon, rather than a high damage one. This means that if a quest offers you a mace and a staff, you take the mace unless there are green stats offered by the staff. My reasoning is this: when you attack a mob a level above you (most of the times), you will miss sometimes due to lack of hit rating. It's better to fail at a short small damage then to miss on a big hit that takes forever to execute.

At level 6, Power Word: Shield is learned. This spell is expensive, and with rank 2 Smite coming to the picture, your damage spells are no longer cheap, so you need to save mana as much as possible. Comparing with Lesser Heal, PW: Shield recovers less hp but it does prevent spell pushbacks so it's worth the mana. Rank 2 Smite surpasses SW: P in damage while costing less mana. So what I recommend from here on is to stop casting SW: P and simply go with the following rotation:

PW: Shield -> Smite until 5% -> Weapon damage until dead

Note: If the mob runs, Smite it down before it aggros another mob. Weapon damage only when you feel it's safe to do so.

At around level 8 ~ 9, you will reach a point where if you fight mob one on one, there is no chance of dying from their damage. To save mana, stop casting PW: Shield and simply Smite (yes single button faceroll) until the mob is dead.

Some quests will require you to fight an Elite. In that case, your goal is to bring down the mob before it kills you, so bubble up, dot up, and Smite away.

I think I'm fuzzing too much over the early levels, but I think 1-20 is probably the most painful period in any priest's leveling experience, so I hope this helps.

Edit: Don't forget to buff Power Word: Fortitude.