Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Patch 2.1 Impressions

Or the alternate title: Why Coriel Will Never Get an Epic Flying Mount.

So with patch 2.1 out, I decided to respec. I was having a really hard time choosing between 0/49/12 with the new Improved Holy Shield, or 0/19/42 as discussed in the previous post. In the end I decided to try out Retribution.

I respec, which costs me 35g. I accidentally assign the very first talent point to Improved Devotion Aura instead of Redoubt, ruining the build. So I respec again, 40g.

The build is really nice for soloing, questing, and killing single mobs. Even with my pathetic Ret gear, stuff was dying really fast. I really like the new Vengeance. I only have around 15% crit, but I was achieving perma-Vengeance easily (well, on elites and mobs that actually took some time to kill). The build is less survivable though, especially when taking on groups of mobs.

As well, the new debuff timers are pretty spiffy. Very nice for reapplying debuffs. I can't wait to see them on my warlock.

Right before Karazhan, one of the officers contacted me and told me that two of our healers would not be able to make raids for the next little while, and would I mind respeccing. I went back to Stormwind and respecced quickly to 50/11/0, 45g. Ironically, I ended up speccing Improved Devotion Aura. I wasn't expecting to spec to Holy, so I didn't have a good build in mind and ended up tossing 5 points in Improved Seal of Righteousness. I completely forgot about Improved Blessing of Might, which is my standard use for the extra 5 points when going Holy.

Heh, I'll probably end up respeccing Holy again, but this is sufficient for now.

I healbotted the raid. (Yay, #1 on the healing meters. Boo, #1 on the overhealing - 18%, I'm out of practice.) It's really hard to tell the actual effect of the Illumination nerf with the new spec and improved gear.

I must say that healing is surprisingly more fun when giant green numbers are popping up over the heads of other people. It's feedback that you are affecting the actual game, and not just the interface.

I'm not too thrilled by the new "greying out" of buttons. I very often have the mob as my main target, then press the button (while the previous heal is casting), then choose my target for heal. I find it's a good tactic for melee-healing, and for watching what the boss is doing and who he is targeting. But it means that a lot of buttons are always greyed out, which is silly.

Other than that, I think the Blizzard raid UI is finally up to a decent standard, with the introduction of Main Tank windows, and showing people's targets. I'm probably going to ditch sRaidframes/oRA2/CTRaidAssist, and just use the default UI.

I haven't had much of a chance to check out the new quests. I'm looking forward to those, but right now all the early areas are so crowded.

3 comments:

  1. Heh, I've done similarly, ironically enough.
    I started BC as 10/41/0 and leveled to 20/41/0. I stayed that way until last week. I decided I wanted to get ret gear, so I respecced to 41/20/0 to heal Kara/arenas/PvP and get honor/points/gear quicker. Over the weekend I was needed to tank a heroic, so I respecced back to a heavy prot build. Then Karazhan on Monday, I was needed to main heal and we were doing Aran and Malchezaar, so I respecced back to Holy. Good thing too, I was the only healer alive at the end of both fights, and Light's Grace/Holy Shock saved a few lives. I spent close to 150g in respecs this week, along with a ton of money leveling my engineering (and I'm still only 370!).

    Yar, boo to gold sinks and respec costs!

    -Baelor
    70 paladin, Runetotem server

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  2. I haven't respecced yet... I completely forgot to make some changes. However, I also spent the entire day updating mods and I got 'x-perl unitframes' which took a chunk of the day to figure out. Not to mention Argent Dawn was down until like 9 PM EST or later... so... yeah, I'm not going to be able to test out 2.1 stuff until Friday when I have free time. Oh well... :(

    I dislike respec fanatics, why can't you just stick with something and like it? :p However, I feel your pain with goofing up, I did that with a LOT of my characters with my 'free' respec I got when TBC was live... so much for free.

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  3. I was almost dumbfounded trying to keep up with how much times there you spec, respec, respec again.. Gee. I can understand why you say you may never get that Epic mount. Feels for you having to change your spec that much even if its for your guild. I'm wondering why is it that a person can't just choose a spec, love playing the spec and stick with it maybe and just enjoy the game.

    Agrees with Sylvina above. Its a almost fanatical to change specs that often, in the same day too. I've had same spec since started WoW and in the exact same core tree. I think i went to the trainer once to not respec but to tune my spec in the same tree, because i wasn't paying attention and placed talent point in wrong place so had to change it. Only time i ever did a spec change or spec tunning i would say.

    Thats a lot of gold to keep respecing.

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