Patch me if you can!

So the big patch of 4.0.1 is finally upon us and you’ve all spent the past 2 days re-speccing and re-glyphing your chars like mad, frowning over those odd stats and mastery on your brand new character pane and trying to figure out reforging. Maybe you’ve also spent half of Wednesday swearing in front of the computer like me, because that damned patch took a lot more space than indicated, so you ended up re-downloading it all and a second time after that, due to some critical errors. Or maybe you’ve been luckier and the patch just slowed down at the strangest time or then the updater did. Patching….it ain’t easy business!

Syl vs. 4.0.1

This patch is really a 50-50 deal for me so far, meaning to say I have probably never been more undecided about whether I should hate or love the changes before me. I’m generally a bit of a ranter type when it comes to WoW patches, not because I dislike all change but let’s face it, they often really mess things up! I also naturally focus on negative things a lot more, I see the good for the good but then it’s back to the negative for me, because that’s where things still need to improve and we got work to do!

Anyways, I’ll be forcefully un-Syl today and start with the good things: I love what they did to glyphs. I can see how the new glyph system will cause scribe whining, but on a general note it’s a great change because we’ll finally have all our glyphs on us, so a lot more accessible than before. I never bothered to switch glyphs much in the past, bagspace being one of the reasons, but now I can see myself using glyphs depending on encounter a lot more.
I also love the adjustment to mount speed, finally I get to use some of those older mounts again. And the new talent and guild windows are great (yay for the professions tab!), the UI changes seem to be a big improvement altogether.

And here comes the big but (no, not the bear one): I’ve not been looking forward much to the holy priest changes and I can’t say they blow me away. For one, re-speccing seemed already very dull. Then there’s Chakra which is Blizzard’s way of saying that holy priests are the versatile healers of the game, I know – I just don’t feel the whole triple deal in combination with HW:Chastise is such a wonderful, intuitive mechanic. But I’ll get used to that. Oh and note that Chakra is now down to 30secs!

Aside of Chakra, nothing is new for holy really. We can’t spec into shiny wings proc yet like the Discpriests, because we lack the points. That aside, I absolutlely HATE what they did to Surge of Light, taking it off general crits, making it exclusive for crappy Heal (crappy for the moment anyway) and Smite instead….I loved to get my SoL procs from almost every CoH, that was so much extra mobility!
And I really do miss Spiritual healing and Prayer of Spirit, it’s been quite noticeable statwise too…mehhh Blizzard, why did you have to take away all the spirit from this priest?

Priest Tier 11

As for our recently published T11, I’m again on the fifty fifty side:
I love gear and tier sets and once more I find myself thinking “thank you, thank you, whoever designs our sets!” because it’s BLUE! YAY! I was scared to end up with a red and brown, fiery cataclysmic looking set which is great for some classes surely, not so much for a holy healer though. Let’s see what the other colors will be, but this is a great start! It looks very royal with the blue and gold and considering the onion-shaped headpiece and overall theme, it reminds me a lot of some oriental, middle-eastern garment.

Here comes the first but – the shoulders look like those old Mage T2 water dispensers or then the Harvest Festival shoulder-piece. Either way, they don’t seem to fit the rest of the set at all! What’s up with making priests look like football players?

The even bigger but: the female tier model is the only one that comes belly-free….did the tailor run out of cloth or something? Oh, get real already! And not just about the usual stupid male designer touch, but seriously: is this what you think of priests Blizzard? The sissies in the raid that go belly-free because really, they aren’t doing that much so why not flaunt their bellies in combat while everyone else is geared up in their battle armor? Let’s tan our tank a little while some blazing AoE of doom is raining down on everybody?? Wut???

I hope they get a ton of angry emails until Cataclysm! And yes, I will wear a matching shirt!

8 comments

  1. I pretty much agree with everything you said! I also love the new profession filter in the guild window and will gleefully chastise everyone who asks “Any JC online?” or something similar from now on. 😛

    A bit unsure about the tier myself… it could be worse, but I think that like tier 10 it just doesn’t fit a troll at all. :/ And can you imagine a new tauren priest in that outfit? Yegads. Plus the shoulders are majorly awkward, as you said. It looks like we’re balancing bowls of water on our shoulders…

    The bare bellies actually don’t bother me that much on casters, since they are supposed to stand in the back and not get touched, but it looks strange as part of this outfit since it’s so huge and clunky otherwise, so the sudden baring of skin in the middle seems inappropriate.

  2. Bare bellies be a weird obsession fer Blizz. On clothies I ain’t seein’ it as that big a deal, but in T10 was the Warrior and DK wimmenz showin’ skin. And in T8 were the pallies. Is kinda an issue fer thems what be tanking…

  3. @Shintar
    I love trolls (the good ones!), if I was a hordie priest I’d be a female troll deffo. Maybe if you chose the dark blue hair color to match the tier a little? =D
    I’m kinda hoping they will rethink the shoulder design until Cata, but I guess that’s wishful thinking..

    Like you said, it’s not like the rest of the set looks like a soft, cloth garment, makes the bare belly look doubly stupid imo! -.-

    @Rathshag
    The plate bikini in vanilla wow was ridiculous indeed! but I dislike it just as much on a clothie – casters or not, we are in the same combat as everyone else, taking damage from the same stuff most of the time, pff!

    @Anon
    Eeeeeewww…male orc midriffs, no thanks!

  4. Hey now, didn’t you know that women’s ability to fight and defend is inversely proportional to the amount of armor she is wearing? (IE: skimpily dressed = badass!)

  5. I agree complately. I am also not sure about that patch. The most problematic thing, however, is balancing of the numbers. Let’s hope Blizzard gets this done until 7.12.

  6. @Sephrenia
    I actually stopped caring for that shirt, the tooltip/buff is fun but indeed, it’s PINK eugh!

    @Lady E
    I like it how you make things appear in a positive light! =P

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