I wasn’t in a real raiding guild in Burning
Crusade. We had several weekly Kara groups, and eventually I managed to get
some action in ZA, but our forays into 25-main raids were fairly minimal. I
always hated the larger raids, not only because (sorry guys) the number of
baddies in that guild was pretty darn high, but also because it felt like a
huge uncontrolled mess. That was due to the bad players,
lack of leadership, not to mention the fact that my computer couldn’t handle so much going on. I’ve since upgraded all of that – a much better computer, a
real raiding guild, solid leadership – and found that 25-man raiding can be
every bit as solid as 10-man raiding.
With WoLK, Blizzard introduced the notion
of parallel raiding tracks for 10-man and 25-man groups. I thought this was
brilliant. I envisioned a world where smaller guilds would progress on equal
footing (sharing equal pride) with larger guilds, and perhaps partner up if
they wanted to do the 25-man versions of content.
It hasn’t entirely worked out that way. Not
many players see themselves as 10-man raiders. Which is why I
wanted to include Sinespe
in this Q&A series. His guild, Fancy
Hat Club, is a “strict” 10-man guild, which is a term that GuildOx uses when ranking guild
progression. It places clear limits on the type of gear one can be wearing to
qualify for their progression chart. I sought his priesty perspective on the
10-man raiding scene, even though he is only a part-time discipline priest (and
in fact, he’s written a fantastic guide for shadow priests,
not to mention a blog for the dark side, called Anathema). Unfortunately, due
to some technicalities regarding alts and 25-man runs, they are currently
disqualified from GuildOx’s 10-man strict rankings, but that will be cleared up
soon.
One last note: Sinespe speaks a dialect
called “Old English.” It’s not his fault, really; he hails from Old England.
I’ve tried to make sure he’s understandable through his thick accent.
PP: How long have you been raiding?
Sinespe: I have been raiding since approximately
June 2007, when I first hit level 70 with my Forsaken Priest. At the start of
my raiding career, I was shadow – and loved it to a fault. My only experience
of healing during TBC was in heroics as holy, at which I was terrible for a
couple of weeks until I learned to down-rank Greater Heal to ranks 1 and 3 for
mana-sustainability. It was there, of course, that I learned to love Prayer of
Mending – well, not just there: there's nothing quite like doing 5v5 arenas
with two discipline priests, especially when you come up against a DoT class
with ADD, who will Curse of Agony everyone and send PrOM flying everywhere.
However, because I was pretty terrible at
everything, hating arenas especially because of how often we screwed up, I
didn't get much exposure to raid healing until after I re-learned my class.
This happened when I made a new priest and re-levelled, and for some reason
just realised all the things I'd been doing wrong previously. I started pulling
1.1k DPS on Nalorakk in Frozen Shadoweave-level gear, causing our tanks to
panic from how close I came to over-aggroing, and our rogue to fight every
second for his top DPS spot; and, on the holy side, I got into the proper
groove of exiting the 5-second rule wherever possible, cancel-casting Greater
Heal 3 when it wasn't necessary, etc. etc..
My real exposure to discipline healing
occurred during 3.0.8; as with TBC, I focused on shadow as my main spec, but I
made serious, early efforts to keep my discipline gear on par so that I could dual
spec and double my utility. Naturally, with the homogenisation of loot, this
was a lot easier than it was in TBC. I loved the emphasis on shields, as well
as the beauty of Penance and the familiarity of pre-Black Temple holy healing;
the holy tree, meanwhile, has morphed into something completely alien to what I
had become accustomed to doing in TBC, so I've left it alone with no real
desire to go exploring its mysteries. Furthermore (although this has changed in
3.3 with haste becoming far more important for shadow than it has been up until
this point), the itemisation of high-end disc play fits in very nicely with shadow
theory: crit/SP gems in yellow sockets enable items such as Merlin's Robe to be
usable in both specs, which lowers the overall gear maintenance requirement of
each spec. As I say, in 3.3 that has changed and I will have to maintain two
different gear sets almost completely; however, I look forward to having two
full sets of Tier 10 with the knowledge that I want every single piece.
PP: Wow. Well that about covers it, thank
you for coming!
Sinespe: ...
PP: Ok, ok. What level of content are you at
now? How many hours per week do you raid?
Sinespe: Fancy Hat Club, raiding eight hours per
week, has managed to down Anub'arak on 10-player Heroic, focusing entirely
on 10-man raids with minimal gear pollution from the 25-man sector, with 49
attempts remaining. We value every hour and use it to its maximum potential,
being able to keep up with guilds who might raid three or four nights a week,
thanks to our efficiency. We'll be looking forward to ICC10H.
PP: Do you raid on any other toons? And what
have you learned from non-healing roles that assist you on healing duties? Was
a priest always your main?
Sinespe: I do have a Blood DPS death knight
with whom I run ToC10/25N and other such casual raids with my guild's wide
variety of alts, but that's really just a boredom killer. The Blood DK and my
role as shadow have one thing in common: insane survivability as a standard
part of our DPS. Blood, every 10 seconds or so, regenerates 15% of the user's
own health through Death Strike, and shadow has the constant
25%-damage-as-healing stream from VE pouring into me. As a result, I've tried
to learn that certain DPS have quite a bit more resilience than healers tend to
give them credit for. It's very easy when you watch Grid to see someone's
health drop by 75% and think “ohcrapohcrapohcrap”, but they might not die at
all within the next 5-10 seconds because the danger of further damage might not
be present.
And, yes, I have most definitely been a priest
all my life. It is the only class I have ever raised to the level cap from
level 1 – death knights skip all the horror of Vanilla levelling, so they get
around the requirement for me to be in love with them in order to level them. I
do have to be in love with my class to haul it through the poorly designed mess
that is 1-58 Vanilla questlines.
PP: How much time do you spend healing versus
shadow?
Sinespe: Since shadow is my main-spec, I spend more
time in shadowform than I do throwing bubbles and balls of light around.
However, I would say that the split is closer to healing 40 : 60 shadow than,
say, 25 : 75. My role becomes more fluid as we start farming content rather
than training content. I anticipate that I will be in shadowform for 90-100% of
my time in Icecrown Citadel, perhaps healing in the last week before a new wing
gets opened up if it is required of me to do so. Ultimately, I like to get a
feel for an encounter as a DPS before considering that I'll be good to heal it.
I'm good at discipline, but it is not yet as instinctual as my ability to DPS.
PP: Your favorite raid? (Before it was on
farm status.)
Sinespe: Ulduar, without a doubt, but Black Temple
comes in a close second. I was still a scrub when I was raiding Black Temple,
but the fights were really well-designed. I went there recently and heard
Mother Shahraz's spine-chilling voiceover without the
hectic noises of 24 other people casting spells. Ulduar has so much depth: the
encounters, in general, are well-designed and the graphics show a lot of
polish. The best thing about Ulduar while training it was the ability to choose
a completely different progression route from one week to the next. One week
you might want to work on Vezax and Yogg, so you'd rush through FL+0,
Trinketscale, and all the non-optional bosses, clearing the keepers quickly;
another, you might want to work on a specific keeper or Iron Council, so you
wouldn't even go into The Descent into Madness.
PP: Why do you raid in a 10-man guild? What are
the unique challenges or opportunities?
Sinespe: I raid 10-man for a number of reasons, but
the chief one is that I feel lost in a group of 24 other people. I very briefly
(i.e., a
single raid) raided Ulduar alongside a good friend of mine, Zicon/Isolde,
in her 25N guild on the Quel'Thalas-EU server.
I did something I very rarely do: I died. This was on Mimiron: he lag-bugged
when he targeted me with his Spinning Up attack. This caused him to turn
anti-clockwise while I was moving anti-clockwise to avoid the incoming beams,
meaning not only that it was impossible for me not to get hit by the beams but
that I also took a few people down with me. Naturally, they killed him without
me needing to be alive. That's what I didn't particularly like, and what I mean
about feeling “lost”: it felt like if I screwed up it didn't matter so much
because one death in 10-man is worth 2.5 in 25-man. The other “lost” feeling
comes on the social side of things: in FHC I'm one voice in 10 rather than one
voice in 25.
PP: How do you feel Blizzard has done in
creating a satisfying 10-man raiding game?
Sinespe: WotLK is the first time they've attempted
to do this, and they've been trying various different ways of implementing it –
I think it's too early to declare it a success or a failure. I am very glad
that they implemented it all the way up to ICC. That's as much as anyone should
be able to expect for one expansion, and I think there will be greater things
to come with Cataclysm and the Guild Levelling system – there's a lot of scope
for 10-man raiding in the future.
PP: The notion of 10-man strict is not a
Blizzard creation. Do you get respect from 25-man guilds for the progression
you’ve made?
Sinespe: Well...I would actually disagree with the
statement that 10-man strict is not a Blizzard creation. It is not enforced
by Blizzard in the same way that it is by GuildOx, but it is certainly
encouraged with and recognised by achievements such as Herald of the Titans and Tribute to Dedicated Insanity.
The “strict” paradigm as it stands with regards to gear restriction is
certainly a GuildOx creation, though, and I think Blizzard does need to implement
some kind of deterrent for hardcore 10-man guilds not to pollute themselves
with 25-man gear. Just to pull an example out of thin-air, a way to do this
would be to force raiders to accomplish the “Glory of the Icecrown Raider (10-player)”
drake-yielding achievements under Herald/Dedicated Insanity conditions.
Out-gearing the 10-man version of the raid is a serious problem for a number of
reasons, although I don't wish to pre-empt my answer to the next question.
My thought about 10-man strict can be
summarised thus: Blizzard encourages it when they should restrict it by such
things as the Herald idea suggested above; GuildOx doesn't do enough to
restrict it in terms of building up a progression table. It is unfair, for
instance, that a 10-man strict guild has the potential to be usurped on the
rankings by a guild who, until 3.3, decided to run ToC25N, but after 3.3
chooses to do 10N/H raids only. GuildOx relaxes the rules on previous tiers of
content far too soon. Once more, I pre-empt a question here by evoking the
example of ToC10 trinkets being appalling compared to their 25-man counterparts
– yet, until a 25-man guild exempts itself from the 10-man Icecrown listings by
clearing the 25-man content, it will be listed as a “strict” 10-man guild, with
all its 25-man trinkets and other gear.
Within my own guild, I'm hoping that the
10-man strict paradigm will be followed more seriously in 3.3. As I said
earlier, we have self-disqualified from it purely because we have alts in FHC
who run ToC25 – even though they don't run with the main 10-man team and have
no ToGC10 experience at all, they cause us to be disqualified from a listing
which will remain disregarded as a serious progression table unless the 10-man
raiders themselves make a conscious effort to make themselves noticed and
competitive. So, to anyone in my guild reading this: please do consider the
setting up of a <Fancy Alt Club> or something, so that our guild's armoury
page doesn't get polluted in 3.3 with irrelevant 25-man kills.
PP: Does it bother you to see 25-man raiders
talking about how easy 10-man raids are…even hard modes?
Sinespe: Yes, it does bother me, because it's not
true. It is a myth which has hung around from TBC when 25-man was the only progression
path available to anyone who wants to get media exposure within the WoW community – and before that, in Vanilla, it was the same with
40-man guilds. 10-man raids are easier only in the sense that they can be
out-geared if you run 25-mans. ToGC10, for instance, is tuned around the
premise that it is challenging but possible (that is, after all, the
definition of cutting-edge content) in approximately 70% 232 gear and 30% 245
gear. If you're raiding ToC25/ToGC25, however, your gear makeup is more likely
to be 40% 232/60% 245, or even more over-geared than that. The problem with
evoking ToGC10, I should note, is the fiasco with trophies only being available
at the end of the damn instance in ToGC10 instead of dropping off each boss (à
la conquest emblems from Ulduar-10H bosses) – an issue which Blizzard
themselves has admitted was a mistake; so, hopefully, we'll see Tier10.264
turn-in tokens dropping from Lord Marrowgar-10H, not from a chest after killing
Arthas-10H.
I fear, however, that this is one of these
issues which is only provable if/when a blue poster comes out to say, “We tune
10-heroic fights to be proportionally difficult compared to 25-heroic: they are
as hard as each other unless you out-gear them.” Until we get a definitive
answer like that, among other things that Blizzard could do for us, we'll be
second-class raiders.
PP: Many people claim that the game is
harder for 10-man guilds. Fights like Sartharion 3-drakes (pre-zerg) had far
less room for error than they do on 25-man. And until the recent addition of drums,
you were less likely to have a full set of raid buffs.
Sinespe: Sartharion+3 10-man was a bit of an
aberration in terms of difficulty. If you were in full-213 gear with no 226
pieces, it's very unlikely that you'd be able to complete it. Herald/Dedicated
are extremely difficult, but I'd say Sartharion+3 10 was nearly impossible.
After the initial fiasco of Ulduar-10 scaling to 25-man values, everything
balanced out somewhat. In terms of encounter tuning, ToGC10 has been very
decent. With another raid night per week, we'd have Insanity by now, without question,
but not without some serious toil. In short, Blizzard is getting better with
the way they're tuning 10-mans as the expansion goes on and it bodes well for
the future in that respect.
PP: Do you find that, other than the obvious
incremental benefit you’d get from slightly higher-level gear, that you are
being left out of some fun or exciting gearing opportunities? Ulduar 10-man trinkets were verygood. In ToC, you have one
10-man trinket that’s
sharded more often than it’s equipped (sorry!), and one 25-man trinket that’s overpowered.
Sinespe: It has felt like Blizzard has given more
than just an extra tier level to 25-man raiders. However, I will admit that
from a discipline
perspective it hasn't been all doom and gloom on the trinket front. Those
Ulduar trinkets, along with the Talisman of Resurgence, provide a good pool of
BiS slot items for discipline
– they make Solace seem not so much of a huge loss: we don't need Solace
to get by in a 10-man setting. On the DPS side of things, however, things are
pretty grim. If I were to make a BiS list of items from purely 10-man loot
lists, Broodmother would be top of the list and then Abyssal Rune / Sundial of
the Exiled, a heroic-accessible trinket, would be below it. There just haven't
been many decent options at all. Really – who designs a spellcaster DPS trinket
without putting spell power somewhere on it? The ToC10 trinket designer needs
to have unpleasant things done to him; and it's a bit of an insult that our
10-man ICC trinket is just a re-hash of something that 25-man raiders have had
access to since 3.0.8. It's not a bad trinket – not at all – but it shows a
distinct lack of imagination or ingenuity.
Similarly, we don't have any legendary
items. Blizzard has said that legendaries are a 25-man only thing for the
time-being, but why? 25N is easier than 10H, but 25N gets access to Val'anyr
and Shadowmourne? What did casual 25ers to do deserve that treatment that
hardcore 10ers didn't do? Form a larger group of people? Irrelevant, surely.
Where legendaries are concerned, it should be difficulty that determines
worthiness, not number of people with whom to compete over the item and cause
guild drama. I would like to see 10-man-H raiding get something unique in terms
of loot, not just in terms of Herald/Insanity achievements.
PP: You can make one change to the
discipline priest. It can be talents, mechanics, cooldowns, you name it, but
keep it reasonable.
Sinespe: New Talent: Reflection of Piety. 20% of
base mana. Instant: Your target receives the
buff Confession, which lasts for
90 seconds. 60% of the healing of your Penance spell is applied also to the
confessing raid member.
Very simply, it is a weak form of Beacon of
Light. I don't at all think that our tank healing is bad. But, especially in
the 10-man raiding scene, and especially in ToGC, paladins are able to
out-perform us to such a huge degree that they pretty much break Anub'arak-H as
an encounter: They are the reason why 2-heal 6-DPS is even possible on 10-man:
because you can leave both tanks to be healed purely by the paladin and have
your discipline priest focus on Pen Cold with super-fast shields and Flash Heals.
It would boost our tank healing in a minor way: 8 seconds would not seem like
such a long cooldown for Penance.
It's also an excuse to see Penance's
animation bounce from one raid member to another. Penance has a gorgeous
animation.
PP: What was your proudest or most memorable
moment in your career? It doesn’t need to be a guild event or boss kill; it can
be something personal, solo or in a pug.
Sinespe: I can't recall one specific time, but I
feel proud every time I out-perform someone, either healing or DPSing, when, on
paper, I shouldn't be able to do so because of gear difference, guild
reputation or unfavourable encounter mechanics. I love being the underdog, and
I love discrediting the opinions of pseudo-elitist gearscore followers – as
anyone who has read my blog knows. I still need to get my BiS blue list
together and get into a Naxx25 raid to show that it's possible to pull 4k DPS
through sheer skill.
My most recent victory is detailed in my blog.
Hybrid power.
PP: Overall, what is your experience of the
discipline priest community?
Sinespe: This is a bit of a generalisation, but it
seems to me that discipline priests fall into two categories: People who get
it, and people who don't. The people who don't get it are not necessarily the
people who cannot perform, but they are the people who complain that we don't
heal as well as a paladin, or that we get schooled on the healing meters at
every turn ... They forget that, while we might be a different kind of healing priest,
we're still a priest: we're supposed to fill multiple roles. “Jack of
all trades” still applies, even if “master of none” does not. The people who do
get it are the people who wouldn't want to heal any other way – or the people
who are dual-specced disc/holy.
PP: Well, I said it before, but this time I
really mean it! Thanks very much for your time.
