To Live and Die in LA - Sara's First Blizzcon

To be honest, my brain is sort of a blur about what specifically happened at Blizzcon!  This post will mainly be about who I met (the most important and best part of the con) and then some game impressions.

Your Power Word: What?! bloggers ready to fly!

What is nice to know is that relationships in life aren't different on the game or twitter - those ARE our relationships.  I am going to try and restrain myself from going into detail about the anticipation, excitement, and happiness I felt meeting someone I've sort of fallen for over the last few months, but I will say that meeting everyone was really just awesome.  I certainly won't be able to list everyone here, I seriously met like 9847509 people (and I didn't even get a chance to see everyone I wanted to see.)

Meeting the guild was of course totally great.  Many of us have hung out before (Toronto, and visitors to Toronto) but meeting Sheepeater, Srs, Jack, Shawnelle, Sturm, Kristin, and the rest was great! We were pretty much just like we are in game - tease Sara mercilessly and party hard!  I actually felt really proud seeing us all in the shirts that Kal and Chronis made for us.  It was awesome to have a crew there to watch panels with and sit around with and joke with.  It was nice to be able to relax and not worry about guild stuff or officer stuff or raiding.

Our extremely good looking guild.

The sensation of normalcy was really vivid for me -I think I've talked to some people about how I really like day to day minutiae, routines, and the like.  There was a moment where I was in my hotel room with Sheepeater and Grumdy getting ready to go to a panel or something, and they were just sitting around talking about games and I was standing in front of the mirror putting on make up and chatting with them and it just felt so NORMAL, it really made me smile.

Me and Mr. Jack Lalanne

Meeting almost all of the <Something Wicked> attendees was also a highlight - I have spent a lot of time in game with these folks, in mumble, on twitter, etc. I talk to Esoth just about every day, and he has become one of my very best friends so meeting up (finally, it feels like!) was great - we were the dorks we always are.  He even brought me home brewed mead!

Meeting some EJ folks like Dysmorphia, my swole sister, seeing Hamlet and Perculia again (every moment away from them is hell, have I mentioned that? they are best kind) and other Twitter folks like Kerriodos and Theck, my bun brother, and Antigen and Rhidach and Tass was just so great - putting a face to the names, it was just wonderful to feel like totally not out of place, and nothing was different.  It was time to talk about bunnies and tanking and games and all manner of thing - just like it always is.  BUT getting to hug people like Arielle (and a few other Inc Bears) was obviously better than a retweet!  Freaking out when I spied Vidyala and Voss at the Hilton, squeeing at Jen and Baj at the CTR party (regret not yelling GET SHIT ON though), being too shy to say hi to Absallom and Ataxus (my achievement point idol!), comparing ink with Hestiah, it was all really really good.

@Warcraftjen!

Blizzcon was really a great social setting - I actually didn't feel overwhelmed by having to socialize and meet a million people, I LIKED it!  No one asked me about being sick or unemployed, they asked for a hug and put out a hand and exchanged drinks and wanted to talk about games.  I also feel like I had a nice balance between time spent socializing at large, with my guildies, with my boyfriend, at panels, and at parties.  Although I certainly paid for it - I have never been this tired in my life, I feel like I've been at a rugby tourney, not a gaming convention!

Arielle, myself, and Hamlet - I think this is my favourite picture!
Photo credit to @kristin

So speaking of GAMES, I'm also excited to post about my impressions of the gaming news and events at Blizzcon 2013.

What can I say about Warlords of Draenor?  All my toons are goats.  I'm excited about Black-Temple-Goat-Town.  I'm excited about Draenei NPCs and maybe even some storylines.  I'm excited that I'll maybe get to hang out with Korgath Bladefist and Ner'zhul.  The setting totally does it for me, even though I'm a total lore noob.  I did the Horde starting area and loved it - I can't wait for Beta so I can do a "Sara and her Beta friends" series like I did with MOP - I already met a Frostboar and oh man was he a qtpi.  Really looking forward to exploring vast zones and the new character models!  I would love if Serrinne could narrow her eyes snarkily even more than she does now.

The addition of tertiary stats (and removal of hit/exp/dodge) is interesting for sure - as a healer I never really had this issue so to me, this is just an entire mega bonus (although I suspect we will be seeing changes with Spirit soon.)  I have been dying for run speed in WoW ever since I started playing D3.  I am so thrilled this is being added to the game - I want to be the fastest goat in the west!  I  have always said that sprints/engineering boots/etc are always a raid saver and better than any few points of any other stat you can grab.  So basically this was my idea, right guys?  I am excited to figure out this new system, especially since I think it will make healing (more) exciting.

Thoughts on Mythic raiding?  I think it will shake out just fine - and that's my rational side talking.  I love raiding with as many specs as possible (which is why I raid 25 instead of 10 at the moment) so obviously that'll be sad losing some spots, but all in all I think it won't be bad.  Obviously so little info out at the moment about administration and logistics, so I'll just leave it at my initial impression.

The quality of life changes (like heirloom page!) and Garrisons will obviously be something I love when they go live (I was someone who liked dailies, so Garrison maintenance excites me.)  The "Trial of the Gladiator" arena change absolutely thrilled me - I will get to arena on alts! This is so incredible, and (yes, I know this is horrible) will allow me to play the flavour of the month comps for pvp.  This rocks!

As for the level 100 Priest talents, I think they probably won't go live as they are (at least the healy bits.)

Divine Clarity is akin to the original iteration of Spirit Shell, although I'd be hard pressed to see why I should take this and use it when I already have Power Word: Shield - I suppose we'll have to see how the cost comparisons shake out on live.  This talent seems super sexy for Holy priests - when was the last time you cast Greater Heal, seriously.  The shadow version of this seems odd since we're getting a Cleave stat - I would take this talent if I wasn't that into multidotting (and without snapshots, this might be a good choice.)

Power of the Void seems incredibly fun (to me, at least - I <3 void shift!) but it completely devalues your stat choices since it's based on health percentages.  In my head, I read that talent and thought COULD I STACK STAM AND VOID SHIFT ALL DAY ERR DAY?  Let's hope not - that is just silly.  Shadow version is another dot - unsure about how this would compete with DP as an orb spender, but nice to have an alternative I suppose.

Spiritual Guidance is a very interesting mechanic in terms of introducing a penalty as part of the spell - it is reminiscent of the mana cost increase per arcane blast for mages.  This will be a fun balancing act for figuring out how often you can cast this without crippling your other heals.  Only complaint is that, again, it totally devalues your stat choices since it's based on % max HP.  Shadow version seems awesome, especially since we can bank 5 orbs now (WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!)

And now onto something I may even be more excited for than the WoW expansion:

DIABLO 3 IS GOING TO BE AMAZING SOON!  And that's coming from someone who has played dilligently since release.  Loot 2.0 and the Crusader (both of which I experienced at Blizzcon) are going to be awesome.  Crusader is super shiny and looks great, with some awesome animations.  The new act is totally fantastic, especially if you liked A1 - similar atmosphere with + ghosties.  I also got to try Adventure Mode and I did the "endless" thing where you just kill monsters until you spawn a rift boss guy - exactly what I love about Diablo.  Farmy farm farm time!  I also got to watch Mike play it on PS4 for a bit, which looked absolutely beautiful at that resolution.  Pretty excited for him - he is salivating over that version already.

Overall Blizzcon was an absolutely perfect weeekend, I'm looking forward to many more in my future!

I'll end this off with some thank yous: Kal and Chronis, I wouldn't have been at Blizzcon without you.  Thanks for bearing with my travel woes - I'm not a good traveler!  Thanks to Perculia for all her hard work on the Wowhead Blizzcon coverage - without her I wouldn't have known what I had missed!  Thanks also to Hamlet for organizing a lovely dinner, and for some downtime chats.  And thanks of course to Mike for everything.

One's Too Many, A Thousand's Not Enough - MOP Disc Priest Glyph Choices for PVP

Well, it looks like the "choices! choices! choices!" mind set in WoW development has manifested itself quite obviously when it comes to choosing glyphs for Disc Priest PvP in Mists of Pandaria. Where PvE Holy Priest glyphs are in a famine state, there are (arguably) around 17 choices for glyphs for PvP'ing as a Disc Priest.

In this post, I'm going to go over these choices and explain why having a glut of glyphs might not be so daunting after all.  After all, we're lucky to have so much choice, right?

So the way I look at it is that each of these glyphs are going to be extremely situational and choosing between them will require some planning, data, information, and guess work.  The main thing we're going to have to suss out is what comps are popular for Arena and Rated Battlegrounds - this forthcoming information (i.e. what you end up seeing when you queue up after September 25th) will allow us to set some parameters within which we can decide on which glyphs to use.

I actually dipped my toes into the two new Battlegrounds this week and got absolutely stomped all over.  Couldn't kill anything, couldn't stay alive - I think I'd forgotten that first week of expac PvP is all Glads vs. me in zero resilience.  I bet I looked tasty.  In any case, most of my glyph choices didn't matter because things were...a little crazy.

In any case, here are the glyphs that are looking viable for this season's Disc PvP:

Glyph of Desperation:  This is one of my top choices in any PvP situation, and it has proved to be invaluable, especially in 2s.  An obvious good choice - and after this week's BGs, where I felt like every class has a stun now, I would definitely make this one of my #1 glyphs.  This glyph remains unchanged from Cata.

Glyph of Dispel Magic:  As with the other dispel glyph, these usually are too understated to have any real impact.  I had 362k hp in epic PvP gear at level 90 on Beta - 4.9k isn't much of a dent.  Only pro is that offensive dispels don't have the same cooldown as defensive dispels now have, so it's ostensibly spammable.

Glyph of Fade:  Damage reduction is always good - this is high on my list now that mana burn is out, since instead of burns/cc's, I assume healers will be focused even more now.  In addition, if your arena/RBG team doesn't require you to take a tier 1 CC talent (because you have other CC'ers) then this would be great in conjunction with the tier 1 talent, Phantasm.

Glyph of Fear Ward: Same as in Cataclysm - while this may have been vaguely useable in the past, taking up a precious glyph slot may not be worth it.

Glyph of Holy Nova: I found Holy Nova pretty useful in Arena against Death Knights who were trying to catch me with a Dark Simulacrum!  But, like the Fear Ward glyph, I'd say this probably isn't great at this point.

Glyph of Inner Fire:  In season 11, I swapped from using Inner Will to Inner Fire because, among other reasons, I was having trouble surviving against melee and thought a little armour might help me - if this remains the case in Season 12, this might be a useful glyph but...probably not.

Glyph of Inner Focus: MUST HAVE.  I cannot stress this enough - please glyph Inner Focus.  This is the only problem I have with the new talent system - lots of awesome tidbits that were originally baked into priest talents have been removed, like this beauty.

Glyph of Inner Sanctum: Depending on which comps are popular, the spell damage reduction may prove useful - also this is dependent on you using inner will, so if you don't...don't glyph it.  With the new movement talents, the movement speed portion of this is arguably not required anymore.

Glyph of Leap of Faith: I have been frustrated in the past (mostly in RBGs) that I will LG someone and they won't move because they are under a movement impairing effect - this is, of course, my own fault but I was always of the opinion that Leap of Faith should just freaking move you regardless.  This glyph will give you that.  If you aren't running with a paladin, this one is probably a good idea - it's basically a 2 minute Hand of Freedom for priests!

Glyph of Levitate:  I think for this glyph to be worth of an entire slot, you'd have to be willing to spam Levitate - will probably end up being a waste of globals.  Also after some testing today, this glyph is self only.  Not worth it for that miniscule increase.

Glyph of Mass Dispel:  Obviously, an amazingly useful glyph - reduces base cast time of MD to 0.5 secs.  I have been stuck without this glyph in arena a few times (due to my own idiocy) and sorely missed it.

Glyph of Penance:  This is the celebrity-status new glyph for MOP for disc priests.  Penance while moving?! Yes please!  I think this may end up being a required glyph in arena at 90, although I didn't use it for the last two weeks of arena at 85.  Since Penance also causes Atonement healing when used offensively, this glyph basically triples its effectiveness.  I can't wait to play around with this one!

Glyph of Power Word: Shield:  Kind of a no-brainer - you're going to be shielding people anyways, best to have it give an instant heal as well.

Glyph of Prayer of Mending:  For me, this glyph (and it's Cata iteration) is a favourite - I rely heavily on PoM, and cast it on cooldown.  This glyph makes that very worthwhile.

Glyph of Purify:  Like glyph of dispel magic, I'd argue this 3% is too small to have any real effect.

Glyph of Reflective Shield:   Replaces a talent that no one took anyways.

Glyph of Renew:  Glyphing renew for Disc PvP is something I've always done because I rely on instant heals almost exclusively when Inner Focus is on cooldown.  At specific haste breakpoints, this will still be worth glyphing (see Derevka's Haste Breakpoint Chart and further discussion on the renew glyph at Tales of a Priest.)

I have omitted the Atonement buffing glyphs (Smite, Holy Fire, etc) although things may change as we get more gear with resilience.

And a final note: ABSOLUTELY NEVER USE THE MINOR GLYPH HOLY RESURRECTION IN PVP!  Might as well wear a "Kick Me" sign.

Good luck in the new PvP season!