By now, you’ve almost certainly heard about the change to itemization whereby the +Healing and +Spell Damage stats are being retired for the less specialized Spell Power stat. What, exactly does this mean, though, and what can you expect at the release of Patch 3.0?
Patch Night Raids and Intensity Impressions
Published on November 14, 2007 by Phaelia 
Spells and Talents 
15 Comments
I logged on last night and quickly realized that I was being "that guy" after not checking the "Load Out-of-Date Addons" box. A couple of minutes later, I was Ms. Responsible again, noticing all the kinks in my updated interface (Pitbull dims my character portrait out like I'm out of range, for instance). Monday-Wednesday are scheduled 25-man content and unfortunately we kept to that schedule this week, despite the release of Zul'Aman. I stopped by Zangarmarsh when winging my way to Gruul's Lair, fished two pools of Steam Pump Debris, and nabbed my copy of [item]Weather-Beaten Journal[/item] (I'm enjoying the ItemStats integration — can't you tell?). I'm pretty excited about that since Phaelia doesn't have a gathering tradeskill and isn't a Dwarf so has never had the option to display pretty gold circles of loot-potential on her minimap.
We had a particularly rocky start in Gruul's Lair last night, due partially to the change to Fear mechanics that causes the Warlock Ogre in the Maulgar fight to continue beating on his tank after he fears. Once we changed our strategy to have two tanks on him, one taunting when the other was feared, we got him down immediately. At about this point, we started having server issues though, likely due to the plethora of guilds exploring Zul'Aman (/jealous) and crashing the instance server. Once the instance server came back up, we cleared to Gruul and downed him on our first attempt. And then the server crashed before we could loot him. T_T Raiding on Patch Night for the lose. In a way, I think it's better that we didn't get to see what Gruul would have dropped for us before the server crashed. Seeing the item you want rot because of in-game issues would have been heartbreaking to someone. At least now we can all assume he dropped [item]Pocket Lint[/item] and Warlock loot.
The best part of last night's raid was experiencing first hand the changes to Intensity. I should have checked my pre-patch mana regeneration while casting, but it seemed to have substantially improved last night. Where I was once using one [item]Fel Mana Potion[/item] per Maulgar attempt and one [item]Super Mana Potion[/item] and one [item]Fel Mana Potion[/item] on Gruul, I didn't have to use a single one all night. I even finished Maulgar at 60% mana, having only used Innervate on myself. Vonya is also enjoying the changes to Meditation (the Priest version of Intensity). Of course, it might have also had something to do with my shiny new [item]Drums of Restoration[/item]. On that note (har har), I've been trying to come up with a good party-say or emote to tie to their use. Here are a few possibilities under consideration:
- Phaelia rocks out to the tune of 25 MP5 for her party.
- Phaelia beats on her drum. You feel energized by the rhythm.
- /p "Pa rum pum pum pum! 600 Mana from my Drum!"
- /p Bah! Who needs a Shadow Priest when you've got Drums of Restoration? (Me, that's who.)
- /p "I'd like to dedicate this one to Elune. 25 MP5 coming right up!"
- /p "BAM BAM BAM!"
Anyone have any better suggestions?
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I am excited that BRK is back, though!
/cry I love you, ty for everything.
My guilds ZA teams did very well for alot of the people being new to the instince last night. =) Believe me, you will love the instince. The boss fights are very well done. Even alot of the trash is well done. I don’t want to spoil any of it for you so i won’t go into details.
You can submit a GM ticket to get your gruul loot btw. Just tell them about the realm crash and such.
I can allso see an increase in my mana regen as well (at least i think i can…) I had the same wish that i could have catalouged my pre patch mana regen. hindsight is 20/20 =/
“I don’t wanna heal, I want to bang on my [Drums of Restoration] all day..”
“Drum, drum, drumming on Resto’s door”
Of course then you might need to bust out with a wicked guitar solo…which could potentially cause a wipe….at least you’d look amazing doing it, haha.
“And the beat goes on…”
“Keep on going and going and going…”
“/me shows what she learned from the pink bunny”
I was actually dps’ing last night because we had a plethora of healers and the Intensity changes made my Doomkin mana last so much longer!!!! I loved it!
And as to the drum emote, I’m not feeling all that creative at the moment, but I would definitely say stick to something in party chat. My little heart rejoices whenever I see that light-blue Mana Tide Totem text on my screen. ^^ All the other emotes/raidchat just blur together in the middle of the battle rush.
Maybe /p My drums, my drums, you luv my resto drums… >.> <.<
Oh, and also, so jealous of your fish tracking!! I fished for like 4 hours this morning, lots of crates and whatnot, NO JOURNAL!! :’(
Nice lines everyone! My imagination is currently dry, only to point out some “boring” technical facts such as 600 mana (and health!) over 15 seconds *NOT* being the same as 20 MP5… 20 MP5 means 20 mana per 5 seconds. This is more 200 MP5…
All awesome suggestions – thank you guys so much for the great ideas! I particularly like the takeoffs on the Energizer Bunny. Oh and “My drums … my drums … you love my resto drums … ” hahaha … That reminds me of Alanis Morisette’s remake of Lady Humps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y3PvlVRYRw ^_^
@Adarel: Wow, I figured it wasn’t particularly rare given my incredibly quick pickup. Are you fishing the pools of crates in Zangar? I was shocked at how much more fun it is to go fishing when you don’t have to hover near the water looking for pools. I actually fished Mudfish and Bluefish tonight (something I NEVER do otherwise).
@Someone: The drums are on a 2-minute cooldown. Therefore, 600 mana / 120 seconds = 25* MP5. =D
Edit: Bad maths. 600/120 = 25, not 20. Thanks, Zhero!
600 mana/120 seconds = 5mana/1 sec = 25mp/5?
Putting it this way, it makes me realize how good it is actually. I was always searching for a nice 2nd profession for my druid, I might go the leatherworking way.
Regarding PitBull, in the general configurations you have an option to select the various modules in use (exact naming escapes me), one of it is the CombatFader, which I suggest to untick in case you want to stay with your own and your party / raid Unitframes always active and un-dimmed.
Gwaendar
altitis.blogspot.com
The intensity changes really are nice. This begs the question. Do I need to go Tree as much as I used to? Since the real benefit of Tree is the mana conservation, if I am not having mana issues thanks to the changes, I may be better off staying in caster form and keeping an Insect Swarm up for the 2% hit decrease and maybe an occasional moonfire.
The day before the patch I resocketed every gem I had to +18heal (well, my T5 leggings slot as a royal nightseye with the intent of getting a +11heal +2mp5, since with socket bonus that’s a tradeoff of 3 heal for 2mp5). So ya, I’m still using treeform. Oh, and fyi, my mp5 went from 119mp5 to 166mp5. I love it.
I spent some time in ZA past few days (though the guild downed Zul’jin without me, /cry) and with regards to whether or not tree form is useful it depends.
The changes to intensity are super nice, but I cannot emphasize enough how mana intensive ZA is to the healers. The fight composition varies a lot too; here are fights that are endurance grind tests, high mobility mights, and there are fights where keeping insect swam up is a must. So using tree form or not really depends on the fight, be prepared to adapt.
ZA overall is a really great place to be a tree. It’s our guild’s consensus that where Karazhan emphasized dps (think Aran, nightbane skellies etc.) ZA emphasizes strong healing (and tank mitigation) We’re taking 2 tanks, 3 healers, and 5 dps and my guild leader (amazing resto shaman) thinks that four healers is required for zul’jin. Be prepared to use a lot of regrowth even with a triple lifebloom and rejuv up. HPS is king, don’t be afraid to pot early and pot often.
I was without a resto shaman, so I was assigned to raid healing along with keeping a triple lifebloom up on the MT. It worked really well, and was a nice change of pace.
@Gwaendar: Thanks for the tip! Worked like a charm.
@Zhero: Unless you absolutely have nothing better to select from, I recommend against Leatherworking. I’ve had it for three years and worn nothing that’s self-crafted aside from resist gear. You can get much better returns from a variety of other tradeskills. I am considering dropping Leatherworking for Inscription come Wrath of the Lich King. I guess it depends on whether they decide Leatherworkers are as worthy as production love as Tailors and Smiths!
@Bullar: I know I’m personally going to be using Moonfire and Insect Swarm when I can, particularly in Heroics. I might even get a little craaaaaaaaaazy and throw some Cyclones around (this is actually a lot of fun – 10 seconds is often long enough to burn down a mob in a large group, and it can be leveraged very well against casters since you can let them begin casting something before you lock them back down). I say if you’re not in need of the mana not to use the form. Unless, of course Chubby Checker shows up. /twist
@Bigtoy: Thanks for the advice for Zul’Aman. I’ve acceded my spot to other guildmates the past two nights, figuring they’d rather go more than I do, but I think you’ve piqued my interest!