Once again, it gives me great pleasure to introduce another of my blogs for Eurospective! It’s been a hectic week, indeed so. For one thing – I was approached by a professional esports company which I choose to leave unnamed as a potential new blogger. Thanks to Yiska for finding me the opportunity. However, one demand they made would be to stop writing for Eurospective. And HERE I AM!

 

So, I’ve got another, hopefully interesting, blog in store for you today.

 

 

 

Playing the Healer – Choosing your RACE

 

Now, I’ve decided that I’d be the first one to hit this hard. There are two very topical reasons for this. Firstly, something Orangemarmelade said in his arenacast interview (here) got me thinking. He stated that against Beastcleave and PHDK teams Numberone had gone NElf because shadowmeld helped against sap. Me and some guildmates were discussing this last night, and we decided – if there’s an ideal race AGAINST some comps, there’s an ideal race for some comps. This of course is increasingly significant with the introduction of a race change service. I don’t expect a swarm of people changing race (except people thinking will of the forsaken makes them skilled, as Ming claimed). However, especially with the upcoming WOTF nerf, I don’t think it’s as simple as “Go undead or suffer”.

 

I’m therefore going to look at the ideal race for each healer (except druids, who are stuck as either night elf or tauren, depending on faction. While changeable, the other members of your team may insist on being horde/alliance, warriors wanting to be gnomes or orcs for example. Similarly, don’t expect me to talk horde paladins for much the same reason, nor alliance shaman).

 

 

 

Well, then, the healing class with the most choices – Priests.

Choosing race on priest truly is comp-dependent. If I was running RMP, I’d want to be undead or dwarf dependent on faction. WOTF, even post nerf, and stoneform are still going to be the ideal general racials for an RMP team (except against certain comps, where for example being Night Elf as orange said may be useful for guaranteeing the sap).

However, if I was running 2healer with a shaman or a paladin (i.e. double dispeller or heavy control based), I myself would take another approach. We’ve all heard about the human priest using 2x Solace of the Defeated, and that’s probably going to be unbeatable in terms of playing human. However, there’s one racial that is massively underestimated – Berserking. I’d take it as a priest in 2healer, or probably as a mage in RMP, because it’s simply another power infusion or icy veins on a three minute cooldown, furthermore, that stacks with power infusion and/or icy veins.

Similarly, in Wizard Cleave as a priest, I’d likely take Berserking as Horde, and Stoneform as alliance because the other racials are just inferior (except will, but you should have enough control for that not to make as substantive a difference, while the extra healing thoroughput from Berserking could save yours, or a teammate’s, life).

As Cleave, though, I’d be quite tempted by Arcane Torrent, particularly if I was running with a feral and a rogue. On alliance, I’d likely take stoneform, but that’d be a much more defensive style of play. Now, I may be criticised for wanting Arcane Torrent, but as a cleave priest player myself, I’m playing very aggressively, lining up the fears carefully and hugging our nuke target as much as possible to dispel and assist dps. The range on Arcane Torrent is 8 yards, and the range on fear is also 8 yards. This means that Arcane Torrent would give another AoE CC in the same area that also helps with another of the Priest class’s main problems – mana regeneration.

 

 

Next up: Shaman

As a horde player myself, I feel it’s quite easy to say that there’s two viable shaman races – Tauren and Orc. To me, Berserking is an average to bad racial for a shaman, and the other two racials give much more to the shaman class. The other troll racial of note, “Da Voodoo Shuffle” gives a decrease to movement impairing effects, but with the new Ghost Wolf it’s not that significant. Similarly, with the burst of arena games at the moment, it’s unlikely to save your life.

Right then, RLS first. Personally, I favour Orcs in RLS, the additional stamina that Taurens gain along with warstomp aren't so important in such a controlling comp, while the decreased stun duration can help keep your partners up, and Blood Fury is good for assisting dps. Really, your choices can be summarised as this – Taurens have greater survivability, Orcs are better for assisting dps and against cc. Therefore, in two-healer I’d go Orc, while in Cleave and Wizard Cleave you’re likely to be nuked to try and end the game quickly, so I’d go Tauren. However, I wouldn’t change between the two races. They’re both excellent or at least, on a level.

 

 

Finally then, Paladins

To me, the Blood Elf racial might actually be the best racial a paladin can have. It gives a degree of control the paladin class lacks, as well as slightly more regeneration to assist when your pleas are being dispelled. However, seeing as I’m looking inside factions rather than cross faction, that’s your only choice as horde.
As alliance though, the picture is rather different. On the whole, I’m a strong advocate of going Human if you PvE, and going Dwarf if you don’t. Draenei racials just strike me as all-over terrible (sorry alliance shaman). I really cannot divide this by comp, because the human racial is only exceptional if you PvE, and it’s probably worse than stoneform otherwise.

 

 

 

PTR Changes

 

I don’t want to dwell on these, because not only have I spent my entire blog on the WOTF change, but Zilea wrote an excellent blog on the paladin changes. However, I would like to say one thing about the Sacred Shield change that he didn’t really touch upon – just how brutal it is to retribution. Although I haven’t played retribution since TBC (gogo ret/fire mage 2100, woooo!), I’m reliably informed that it’s damaging to one thing ret lacks – defensive abilities. Now, everyone enjoys laughing at ret, but this is a pretty odd change, although necessary to destroy Proly as a healing spec. You can find some opinions here.

 

 

Ghostcrawler - "As you can see, we are trying some different things with some paladin mechanics.
The Aura Mastery change (to 6 sec duration) is one we think is appropriate. If I had to guess, this one will stick.
We are trying some things with Sacred Shield to make it more of a Holy tool and less useful for Ret and Prot (without being totally irrelevant). I don't have a lot of faith that the implementation on the PTR is the one we'll go with for a couple of reasons, but our overall goal is to make Ret less tanky and the Holy tree feel like it's the right one to focus on for healing. I would expect a Sacred Shield change of some kind though.*snip*
The paladin class isn't just supposed to be for support anymore, but at the same time, the original intent for many paladin abilities was to help the group. Over time however they have contributed into making the paladin into a "one-man army," able to play offensively, defensively and heal without say the stance changing or shapeshifting or sometimes event talent specialization required of other classes. Many of the LK balance problems we've had with the class are because of that core issue.
With that said, we're just not sure a Lay on Hands change really accomplishes much from a balance perspective, while it feels bad to lose such an iconic ability. We just don't think the bang for the buck is there on this change, which is why we reverted it. But I'm not going to promise we won't touch it.
In fact, I'm not going to promise anything with this post. Please don't dredge it up later to try and argue against any upcoming changes. I'm just trying to clear up some confusion. "

 

 

Well, Yiska is really angry. And when the blogfather is angry, things must be done. Ret should be less tanky, apparently. Yet, at the same time, it's a plate armor class with less defences than any other plate armor melee dps. Why does it need MORE survivability nerfs?

Holy is already the right tree for healing, his comments about that are a no-brainer to be honest. By and large, I enjoy playing against Prolydins now.

The Aura Mastery change I have no problems with, it was far too good in wizard cleave. It's a slight nerf, but can be played around.

 

 

There’s also one change that Yiska mentioned in a recent blog, which he asked for my opinion on. This was the new extra resilience set bonus from wearing 5part PvP, to reward players for not wearing PvE gear.

“If everyone was running around with 30k health, survivability would be much much greater. A good way to think of it is that resilience x stamina = survivability. While a massive oversimplification, having 1200 resilience and 20k health is worse than having 30k health 500 resilience is worse than having 25k health 850 resilience. I.e. increasing stamina would definately slow the game down. Healing is as powerful as damage (well, just about), maybe 5% behind at most. What makes the game SO bursty is the lack of stamina that EVERYONE has. I'd say a good PvP health pool would be 32k when people are critting 7-8k on plate with physical attacks.”

 

 

Druids - Gone from Hero to Zero?

 Druids have now completely fallen off the SK100 radar. While not a large sample size so one can argue that it’s not a good way to judge balance, it’s generally indicative of arena trends. Furthermore, even in S5, Druids were still represented on SK100. More evidence, then, that Druid buffs to all three specs are necessary?

Last season, people called Druids a Hero class. They were called the most op, the best class in game, and some slightly less polite things. And they were - in 2v2. However, there is a reason that druids don't win tournaments in WotLK. That's simply because they aren't good enough in 3s or 5s. I've spent a lot of time on Druids in my last few blogs, but when everything is good, there's not much to write about. Conversely, when it's all going wrong, there's everything to talk about.

I maintain my opinion that what druids need comes in two parts - one: more survivability. Barkskin is a terrifically powerful CD, but for Druids to play correctly, we need to be able to kite. However, against cleave now, they either have JoJ or more snares than you can feasibly shift out of and stay alive. So either another defensive CD, or preferably something along the lines of "You become immune to movement impairing effects (not nova etc) upon shifting forms".
I'd also like to see something done about Dispell Spam. Ideally, they'd revert the lifebloom end coefficient change, but they won't admit that mistake. Another idea is making the glyph of rejuvination cause 50% rejuv healing when dispelled. Potentially OP? Yes. Makes it possible to heal through dispell spam? Yes.

Finally, I’d like to apologise to anyone offended by remarks in my last blog. It was very much a test run on whether or not people would be interested in hearing MY opinions on changes on the PTR to all classes, rather than just those I specialize in. If you disagree with me, I may be wrong, I make no claims to infallibility, (unlike KuroRP). I just hope you enjoy reading what I write.

 

Finally, I’d like to thank you all for all the welcome and support you’ve shown me. This is my fourth blog with Eurospective.com, and I’d just like to say that me and Yiska have been blown away by how well my blogs so far have been received. Thanks!