Thursday, October 14, 2010

It's going to be hard

So finally patch 4.0.1 hit the streets. This time we don't only have to sort headaches caused by non-working addons, but all chars need to respecc, check the gems and glyphs, sort out icons on action bars... this week is going to be very interesting.
If you think fixing a char is a pain, multiply that by 26 (ok, I don't play these 26 always, only 12 or 13 regularly). Grimbol, my inscriber, is threatening to go on strike. And Turnak the jewelcrafter is supporting him.
Ok, so after finally downloading the last 1,2 Gb patch file (that didn't show in the background downloader!) I started fixing things. Only some chars have been specced so far (warrior, paladin, druid, priest, hunter) but still they lack some correct glyphs and gems (specially for the relics, now they have sockets). To spec them I used my own designs but I also used WoWPopular to confirm if some talents were mandatory or good enough to invest points on them (btw I find crazy the most voted disco priest build is not investing a single point in Improved Power Word: Shield when this is the cornerstone of the class!, so take the info with a pinch of salt until things settle down a bit).
Addons aren't causing much ruckus at the moment, either they're up to date or old versions aren't giving much problems. As usual, after some days most of them will be up to date or I'll be used to the errors they yield.
The real test will begin once I start doing some heroics. I don't want to take a char to a PUG run unless it's completely fixed, specially if it's a tank or a healer, so my first impressions of some classes come only from dummy tests.
Paladins look like a new class introduced in this patch with the Holy Power combo point and the new talent trees. I've always found frustrating that they changed holy and prot because ret was "broken". Damn it! Pally tanking might be ultra-boring, but was damn comfortable, like your favourite old pair of shoes. And holy wasn't bad, just lacking some AoE healing. Well, it wil take some time to get used to this, specially for tanking.
Shadow priests seem to run out of mana pretty fast. After unleashing the full debuff pack, some mind flays and mind blasts will deplete your mana bar very quick. Maybe something is wrong with my spec or maybe it's a matter of handling rotations/procs correctly. Or could be that I need to use Shadow Word: Death more to trigger the Masochism mana regain. On the other hand, disco priests seem pretty solid and mana doesn't seem to be a problem. In this spec I have the new Evangelism / Archangel combo and looks nice, although you need to use Smite to trigger it. I see mandatory some kind of tracking system for the Evangelism charges, either as combo points or placing the number in the icon on the action bar, since having to check the buff icon may be distracting. Same for the Shadow Orbs you get as shadow priest.
Not much to say yet about the other classes I specced, since I didn't try them much. Only the resto druid, that seems it works correctly as before, unleashing the full pack of HoTs and then using Nourish (instead of the crappy Heal) when needed.
When I logged in it was 21:00 or so. When I went to bed it was 3:00 in the morning and I still think I didn't do much. Today I'm falling asleep at the office, but I know tonight will be the same again and friday will be harder. But thanks goodness it will be friday :)

3 comments:

  1. I've been using Power Auras to track Evangelism, but it's still a bit brain exploding!

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  2. I've always used EventAlert instead of PowerAuras, since I didn't need any configuration. Let's hope an updated version tracks this, but I'm planning to drop the addon if the default Blizzard announce works correctly. I've seen already some comments out there asking for something easy to track Evangelism charges and surely several addons will appear only tracking this aside the "big ones" (PowerAuras, EventAlert, etc) that will include it.

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  3. Yea i'm trying to keep my playtime down as much as possible, to let the panic die down (and addons get updated)... but it's hard not to try out all the new gadgets and toys :D

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