Roxanne Flowers

The best Rogue on the server is the one that cannot be seen.

Indeed. Very humorous. Definitely something I would have never thought of, not being aware of the item at all. For me, it brings to mind the "washing machine Warriors" of Diablo II days (minus the travel while spinning). Still, that's a case where a weapon choice can turn you into a Death Dervish. Funny thing is that at first, I thought you were referring to a Ravager Pet as opposed to a specific type of Weapon. Even if Feign Death "works" every time on Anathema, I wouldn't necessarily expect that to remain the case forever (since that sounds like a bug) owing to the fact that there's a vanilla Talent to reduce resistance to it. What I can say is that in my experience a decade ago, there were times when Feign Death would be Resisted and I'd need to make a corpse run because of it. So even if it is "pretty reliable" in the current core we're using, I'm going edge towards caution in this case and go ahead and invest in Feign Death myself. However, as you say, others might consider that suboptimal and therefore those 2 talent points could be redirected elsewhere. As mentioned, Survivalist is probably the "least pressing" priority (aside from Improved Feign Death), hence my recommendation to invest in it last. Wyvern sting, while admittedly "not great" (or at least, not overwhelming to the point of game changing) did in my past experience offer a measure of "safety" which otherwise would have been lacking when considering taking on groups of 3 (or 4) at once. I always wound up using it more for it's utility, particularly when wanting to do "staggered" pulls where I didn't want to try and tank everything all at once. It can also be a mid-combat surprise if used after Feign Death before resuming combat, which might be a bit esoteric but I like to keep my options open. Very kind of you to say so. As should be plenty obvious already, I am quite the "amateur" when it comes to this sort of thing, but one of my personal interests is looking around for combinations and synergies that other people may have overlooked or discarded in their rush to use the cookie cutters. Melee Hunters have always been "the odd breed" that never really took off in vanilla or in Blood Crusade, so it's just fun for me to noodle around and consider the possibilities of "what if?" like this. And yeah, it took me a couple of days (and a few revisions) before settling on the text you see posted above. Nice to know all that effort wasn't wasted (or worse yet, unwanted). As for a demonstration ... it's going to take me a while before I can get to a Level where I can provide such a demonstration myself, mainly because I'm still under 20 on 8 characters that I'm playing in parallel through all three Alliance campaigns concurrently.

Okay, I can see that one and it demonstrates the channel break in a conveniently repeatable manner. Post the link to this video to the Bug Tracker to aid QA and Development with isolating the root cause of the failure. https://elysium-project.org/bugtracker/issue/2671 Which means I guess we can get every Druid to upvote this bug for fixing ... yes?

Well that's just wrong ...

This video is unavailable. I'm going to interpret that as being unintentionally humorous.

How peculiar then that I've seen Arcane Concentration proc IN THE MIDDLE of channeling Arcane Missiles already on Darrowshire. Likewise, when channeling Arcane Missiles, any individual hit from the spell can be Resisted, but that only affects that ONE "shot" of the Arcane Missiles, while the rest can still do damage (and do actually do damage). That's because unlike Fireball and Frostbolt, which are All Or Nothing spell attacks, Arcane Missiles is actually FIVE attacks sequenced to happen over 5 seconds of channeling. Arcane Concentration - Rank 5/5 Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%. Chance to proc per Fireball: 10% Chance to proc per Frostbolt: 10% Chance to proc per Arcane Missiles: 1-(0.9^5) = ~41% ... because you roll the dice 5 times per 5 second channel casting. Your turn.

Of course ... and the two methods at your disposal for that are Power Word: Shield and Martyrdom. An extra "half measure" for avoiding pushback while in a group is Silent Resolve for reduced Threat generation so you don't pull aggro. Dunno, but I'd appreciate the input/validation of any Level 60 Night Elf Priests out there. It's going to be "a while" before I get there myself. I'm interested in Spirit Tap for a "rolling spell power boost" that can then fuel Spiritual Guidance. Going from 300-350 Spirit to the neighborhood of 600-700 Spirit on every kill (for 15 seconds) and adding an extra 75-87 spell power and healing to what I'm casting for those 15 seconds sounds very appealing to me ... and that's not even including the mana recovery that would come with that boost. It basically means that as a DPS role Priest, rather than as a healer, you want to steamroll and just keep rolling. Your mileage may vary, of course. The threat reduction is because there's more to life than simply soloing and 40 man raids. There's also pickup group parties and 5 man dungeons. The threat reduction is useful anytime I'm in a party because I'm angling to take up a DPS spellcaster slot (with high DPM efficiency), rather than a healer slot, although the build can accommodate both (with the healing role being decidedly secondary).

At the moment I've got only a single talent point spent for it, so 2% chance per hit, but I've already seen it proc a few times. It can proc on any spell hit, not just the first one. Arcane Concentration - Rank 5/5 Gives you a 10% chance of entering a Clearcasting state after any damage spell hits a target. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next damage spell by 100%. Since most spells you can cast only "hit once" per casting, they'll only have one chance to proc Arcane Concentration per casting. Arcane Missiles hits multiple times per channeling and thus gets multiple chances to proc per casting. It's one of the "hidden features" of playing as an Arcane Mage that is all too often discounted or forgotten, and is one of the bigger reasons why Arcane Mages can be more efficient generators of damage per mana spent, as opposed to putting up the highest damage per second results on the damage meters (which is all raiders seem to care about).

Wait ... I've got ... fans followers? o.O; As for whether you "should" build out the Discipline or Holy tree first, that's really a question you need to ask (and answer) yourself, since only you will know the way that you most enjoy playing. Of the two paths, I would consider (for me) the Holy tree to have a higher priority, simply because Spiritual Guidance is such a force multiplier for the build, particularly with Spirit Tap in play doubling your Spirit (and the health and mana you recover). Every 100 Spirit (base) you have is basically an extra +25 spell power AND healing with Spiritual Guidance, which Spirit Tap will double to become +50 spell power AND healing ... on top of all the health and mana recovery, including the fact that while Spirit Tap is up you recover 50% of your mana while casting. That's basically like adding at least 1 if not 2 or 3 (or a half dozen) different items of gear onto your character that simply make every spell you cast more powerful, creating a dynamic where you need to cast fewer times to deliver X amount of damage (or healing). Going through Discipline you'll be able to pick up Martyrdom and Improved Power Word: Shield which can then unlock Meditation for 15% mana recovery while casting, which when combined with a Spirit Tap yields 65% mana recovery while casting. This makes your spellcasting slightly more efficient in terms of net mana consumption, but it doesn't do a great deal for reducing the number of spells you need to cast. My personal preference would be to go Spirit Tap first, Wand Specialization second, and then do straight Holy from tiers 1 to 5 to finish out Spiritual Guidance at Level 44, after which you then pick up tiers 2 to 5 in Discipline and finish up with Divine Spirit at Level 60. My reasoning for this preference is the sense that Spiritual Guidance is much more of a force multiplier than Divine Spirit is, particularly since Divine Spirit is mainly in the build to provide even more Spirit to "fuel" Spiritual Guidance for even greater spell power and healing. If you do go Discipline first, understand that every talent point you spend in Discipline pushes back the Level at which you can complete Spiritual Guidance.

This particular display error is not isolated to Paladin Blessings. Mark of the Wild for Druids exhibits the same behavior. The spell in your hotbar will show correct info, including any talent buffing. The buff icon will show information that does NOT include any talent buffing that could have influenced the casting. For this reason, you have to rely on what you see in the hotbar or in your Spells window, rather than what the buff icon says claims. It's fine if there's no talents improving the buff, but if there are you'll see a discrepancy depending on where you look. Learn to trust which one you should be paying attention to.

Ah ... no wonder I didn't recognize the reference. I've been getting so steeped in vanilla spells and talents that I didn't recognize/remember that from playing Blood Crusade.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070222054107/http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/families/family_owl.shtml Owls can Screech. The only other pets that can use Screech are: http://web.archive.org/web/20070222054502/http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/families/family_carrion.shtml http://web.archive.org/web/20070222054159/http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/families/family_bat.shtml Given the appearance of the respective beasts, the Owl is the best looking appearance, but the most restrictive diet. Other than that, there's the "status" symbol of being a low level Horde who has gotten to the top of Teldrassil, which is a grueling corpse run for a lowbie Hunter, and "stolen" an Owl from the Night Elves. The pet itself doesn't have any particularly exotic skills or potential, so it's not another Lupos or Broken Tooth or King Bangalash.

Huh? How can a Shadow Priest provide a party with mana? If you're talking about Judgement of Wisdom, that's a Paladin spell. If you're talking about Vampiric Embrace, that provides a party with health rather than mana by doing shadow damage ... and if you're then implying that that healing via shadow damage saves your party mana by reducing the demand for healing services, that's a rather indirect argument. But that's mana savings, not providing/gaining/adding mana.

Tribal Leatherworking for Druids. Elemental Leatherworking for Rogues. Dragonscale Leatherworking for Hunters.

Better yet, capture the whole thing on video with an explainer of This Is What We Expect™ versus This Is What Happens™ to demonstrate the easily to replicate conditions that provoke the problem ... and then put it into the Bug Tracker so we can all upvote it. Given the description of the failure condition, it sounds like Tranquility has an overly restrictive "leash" on the spell effect, similar to how with Arcane Missiles or Fireball you only needed the target to be within range at the START of the casting of the spell, but not at the END of the casting (or channeling), allowing you to (continue to) hit things that wandered out of range while casting. Apparently that kind of behavioral "leeway" is not present on Tranquility, prompting the "broken" behavior that has been observed. So gather up a party, channel Tranquility, have someone walk out of range to prematurely terminate the channeling of the spell, record the whole thing on video ... and do something useful with the capture so that Tranquility can be "fixed" to not behave like that in gameplay.

I'm surprised no one has figured out that a slightly lower Horde population means less competition for open world resource spawns (mining nodes, herbs, quest items) in Horde areas. You'd think that players ought to have a fair grasp of Supply & Demand by now ...

With respect to Blessed Recovery, it's only useful if you're being attacked. In a solo situation, this will happen routinely. In party situations it is considered poor aggro management to expect a cloth wearer to "tank" for the group (although it will happen on occasion).

In most cases, your ESL parses better than a lot of native English speakers, so it's not like you have anything to be apologizing for ...

No worries. According to the Wowpedia entry it wasn't until a later Blood Crusade patch that Starshards got modified to have a duration shorter than the cooldown. Hmmm. If this is correct (and I have no reason yet to assume it isn't) then the constant damage per tick I've been seeing on ranks 1 and 2 will "morph" into a progressive damage increase per tick with ranks 3+ ... maybe? Guess I'll just have to get to Level 26 on my Priest to find out. At any rate, it's definitely not something that would be readily apparent when reading the AoWoW database entries. However, I do recall the damage of the spell ramping up like Curse of Agony back in Vanilla so as to create an incentive to channel the spell for the entire 6 second duration rather than letting it suffer pushback/get interrupted/abort early since the damage throughput is essentially "back loaded" into the design of how the spell "works" game mechanically. That then means the spell is most efficient when channeled for the full 6 second duration so as to land the last "big" tick of damage. The thing is, here on Darrowshire, I'm not seeing any ramp up in the damage output on ranks 1 and 2 of the spell. At rank 1, it was 6 ticks of 14 damage each in 6 seconds, and at rank 2 it's doing 6 ticks of 27 damage each in 6 seconds ... meaning there's no variability in damage throughput per damage tick at ranks 1 and 2. This is implied but not clearly stated in the wording of the patch note writeup above noting that the ranks 1 and 2 of the spell have had their durations increased to 6 seconds. If Starshards is essentially a "ported" copy of Curse of Agony, that would explain some of the ... peculiarities of the spell that I've been observing while playing, such as the fact that the spell is not allowed to score critical hits. That's because Curse of Agony is an Instant cast Damage over Time spell, which rightly shouldn't be allowed to check for critical hit chance. Starshards is most likely just taking the exact same code and "filing off the serial numbers" before slapping on the channeled spell requirement and calling it done ... which would then be why Starshards applies a debuff icon to the target that is completely unnecessary (because the damage will just keep happening regardless of the presence of the debuff slot being occupied or not while the spell is channeled). And just to keep everyone up to date on my progress, my Priest is currently Level 19 and getting close to 20, but it's going to be a while before I can get her up to Level 26. In the meantime, I'm certainly enjoying my time playing in vanilla again after all these years. It's all starting to come back to me, although I do need to reference the online databases a fair bit to verify stuff I'm not sure I'm remembering things right. "Elune guide your path."

Mental Agility will help you with the mana cost of Instant spells. Power Word: Fortitude Power Word: Shield Inner Fire Dispel Magic Fear Ward Elune's Grace Divine Spirit Power Infusion Renew Cure Disease / Abolish Disease Desperate Prayer Shadow Word: Pain Fade Psychic Scream Mind Soothe Devouring Plague Shadow Protection I'm probably missing a few spells from my cursory look at the AoWoW database, but you get the idea. If you're using a collection of these spells a lot (take your pick) then Mental Agility will reduce the mana cost of them. If you're not using them "enough" to put a serious dent into your mana pool, Mental Agility will fall into the Nice To Have™ rather than the NEED To HAVE category for you.

Best thing you can do is logout, switch to a different character and interact with NPCs/change zones to "force" the game client to finally log the first character off (there will be a message telling you the original character has been logged off). You can then go back to the original character and hopefully they will be unbugged from getting stuck in combat. Had this happen on my Paladin while in Westfall and it was just damned peculiar. I could zone over to Elwynn Fields to drop combat (as far as my game client was concerned) but I really hadn't dropped out of combat because I couldn't regenerate Health. The real kicker was standing inside the Inn at Sentinel Hill and being forcibly informed that I couldn't logout ... because I was stuck in combat. Wound up needing to power cycle my computer(!) so as to get to the character selection screen to play an alt in order to force my Paladin to logout and correct the issue.

So I scrounged up the 1g for a respec on my Level 17 Priest so as to give her 5/5 Spirit Tap and 3/5 Wand Specialization rather than continuing to follow the 33/11/7 spec plan I'd been working on since the beginning of this thread. Fair warning to everyone following this topic, at some point soon here I'm going to be making a new thread for the 21/25/5 build I've been working on so as to avoid reduce potential points of confusion. Since i've been playing all three Alliance campaigns "in parallel" on each of my 8 characters (yes. it's a project), it was finally time to head out to Westfall and start gathering up Sacks of Oats and burning down Harvest Watchers and hunting for Goretusk Livers and Red Bandanas and all the rest of the "go here, do this" busywork you're given out in Westfall. In relatively short order I'd reached Level 18, put another talent point into Wand Specialization, Hearthstoned back to Darnassus and picked up Starshards (rank 2) and Power Word: Shield (rank 3) and then set about getting myself back to Westfall to finish up the questing I needed to do there before heading back to Loch Modan and grinding my way through a lot of the progression questing there ... after which I'm circling back to Darkshore to finish up the progression questing out there too. Getting to Level 18 (and now 19) and being able to use a rank of Starshards that can finally outdamage my Wand again (didn't even get to MAKE a Wand until Level 14 due to lack of greens to Disenchant for materials) really produced a sea change in how I'm playing. It really does come down to making sure I've got Power Word: Fortitude and Inner Fire up on myself before using Power Word: Shield and then proceeding to either just using my Wand (greys) or using Starshards (rank 2) twice followed by use of Wand if necessary to finish them off (if green) so as to proc Spirit Tap and just recover all that mana back in 15 seconds. Right now, the feeling that I get playing this way is that I'm an almost invulnerable Mage (thanks to the Shield bubble) who is just destroying everything with Arcane (granted, that won't last, but still...). I can burn 130 mana on Power Word: Shield and 85 mana (x2) on Starshards (rank 2) and with a Spirit Tap on a dead green get all of that mana back (300) inside the 15 second duration of Spirit Tap so long as I'm not casting during those 15 seconds. I'm not even bothering with Shadow Word: Pain most of the time right now, because the trash mobs I'm fighting don't live long enough to get good use out of the mana cost. Just about the only time I consider using Shadow Word: Pain is when I need to deal with 3 mobs at once, and even then I won't bother if I'm fighting 3 greys. At any rate, I can certainly attest at this point that the advice of Rayaleith is sound concerning investing in Spirit Tap at Levels 10-14 and in Wand Specialization at Levels 15-19. It certainly makes a lot of difference in being able to sustain use of spellcasting and use of your Wand without ever needing to stop to drink. There is, however, a possibility for an interaction of talents that I'd be interested in learning more about, before I commit to it, which I haven't entertained previously. Specifically ... Discipline tier 2 Martyrdom - Rank 2/2 Gives you a 100% chance to gain the Focused Casting effect that lasts for 6 sec after being the victim of a melee or ranged critical strike. The Focused Casting effect prevents you from losing casting time when taking damage and increases resistance to Interrupt effects by 20%. Holy tier 3 Blessed Recovery - Rank 3/3 After being struck by a melee or ranged critical hit, heal 25% of the damage taken over 6 sec. Now, a lot of the advice/recommendations I've read in these forums concerning both Martyrdom and Blessed Recovery basically amount to "don't bother with either of these" in part because there's a lot of assumption that anyone (who is Anyone™) will already be Level 60 and looking for raiding specs, and in the context of 5/10/20/40 man circumstances, you aren't exactly "planning" on having your Priest be taking a lot of aggro/hits and therefore these talents lose a significant portion of their value. After all, if you're not being hit (because you're not supposed to ever get aggro since that means your Tank is bad) then spending talent points on things that only proc when you take a critical hit make very little sense and offer very little return on investment. That calculus changes however when dealing with a solo context while leveling up to 60. When you're the only one with aggro, mobs are going to be attacking YOU, and sometimes they'll be doing critical hits against you with either melee or ranged attacks. But then ... there's Power Word: Shield and its Absorb function ... which I'm not clear on how that might inter(re)act with being able to proc either or both of these talents. So I'm wondering if critical hits against the Power Word: Shield that get fully Absorbed will still proc Martyrdom and/or Blessed Recovery ... or does a critical hit need to actually inflict damage upon your Priest in order to proc them? I figure that Martyrdom "ought to" proc even while the Shield is up, simply because of the wording used in the talent description, but the wording used for Blessed Recovery leaves an ambiguity in the interpretation depending on the nuances. I'd like to think that Blessed Recovery ought to proc even with the Shield up, but I also thought that Starshards ought to be able to critically hit and it turns out it can't, so ... I figured I'd ask around before finalizing my plans for a 21/25/5 talent spec build. Why? Because I'm thinking that combining Martyrdom and Blessed Recovery might be a prudent choice after all, while I'm breaking all kinds of other "rules" about how to build (and play) an ... Arcane Priest? Anyone out there have experience with getting either Martyrdom and/or Blessed Recovery to proc while Power Word: Shield is still up?

You know that feeling you get when you build something really exquisite and it works perfectly? Gnomes don't. Okay, I quoted that from memory when you read the book(s) that describe what each specialization is like ... Goblins make BOMBS. Gnomes make WEIRDS.

This behavior appears to happen ANYWHERE involving subterranean multi-layering of the world. If there are two possible vertical locations (on the surface and below) the game will apparently try to "double position" your character in both and promptly bug out and disconnect you. The behavior is very similar to the the Hunter's Eagle Eye spell, which would transfer your point of view to a location other than your character's actual location ... and then when the spell terminated the game client would think you were in two different locations simultaneously, bug out and disconnect you. The difference here is that when logging back in, the game client "persists" in its False Positive Of Stupid and thinks that you "belong" in the lower/subterranean location rather than up on the surface of the world where you were supposed to be. This then causes your character to "fall through the world" from the surface into the subterranean location (taking falling damage for your troubles) and bringing all kinds of "Wait, what?" down upon you. This behavior would appear to be happening on EVERY server, and my guess is that there's a coding typo somewhere that is making it happen (someone missed a semicolon somewhere sort of thing). Those are ugly to try and track down. Long story short ... stay away from areas of overland that have subterranean passage spaces "under" them until we receive notice that the Elysium team has found and neutralized this bug.

To be fair, even with the 33/11/7 spec, I was looking at needing to get to Levels 40-ish before being able to have any access to Force of Will (in tier 6) for +5% spell damage anyway. As far as I'm concerned, that's all kind of a wash so far as that goes for "haste" of getting there. Right now, with the 21/25/5 spec, I'm looking at getting up to Meditation before picking up Spirit Tap and then starting in on the Holy tree to get to Spiritual Guidance. Obviously, anyone who might be interested in following in my footsteps isn't obliged to walk exactly the same path that I am ... since the 21/25/5 spec is "loose enough" in its particulars to permit a variety of build strategies through Discipline and Holy in order to reach Divine Spirit and Spiritual Guidance, and they don't exactly "require" you to reach them in any particular order or sequencing. Even taking your recommendation into account, if spending the first 10 talent points in Spirit Tap and Wand Specialization, it'll take another 21-25 talent points to reach Spiritual Guidance, meaning Level 40+ (again) ... so it really depends on which "route" you want to invest in most heavily to get the rewards for faster. Then again, as mentioned in my OP, I'm not exactly "racing" to get to Level 60 in week (or two), so the fact that I won't have access to specific talents at a particular timing sequence is less of a problem for me. If anyone else wants to try this out for themselves, Your Mileage May Vary (as the saying goes). Just to clarify ... the reason why I didn't take Spirit Tap as my first 5 points basically boils down to the fact that once I was able to get/craft my Greater Magic Wand I stopped needing to use spells for damage in the teen Levels, since both the DPS and the DPM of using a Wand was superior to Starshards at this time (since the Wand can crit and Starshards can't, mumble mumble fink grumble...). Concurrent with that, most hostile mobs aren't even managing to inflict enough damage to get through my Power Word: Shield while I'm pouring damage into them, meaning that I'm taking hardly any HP damage and what mana I do use is fully recovered by the time the mob I'm fighting is dead at my feet due to being Wanded to death. Those two factors combined mean that Spirit Tap is largely superfluous to my solo gaming experience while I play my way through all three Alliance campaigns concurrently (Darnassus, Gnomeregan/Ironforge, Stormwind) where the challenge is to complete quests before they turn grey while gaining Faction Rep hand over fist. All of which means that at this time I'm experiencing next to no downtime or need to drink even without having Spirit Tap while getting up to Level 17 (so far). Now, granted, I fully expect the dynamics of that to change, particularly at Level 18 when I can pick up Starshards (rank 2) and finally start getting better DPS than I can with my Wand (162/6=27 DPS vs 17.5*1.25=21.875 DPS) and then Spirit Tap and mana recovery will become "important" again because I'll be casting spells instead of Wanding everything in sight once more ... so you're definitely making a compelling argument on that front. Guess I'll need to check to see if I've got 1g lying around among my 8 characters for a quick respec once I get to Level 18 so as to switch to Wand Specialization and Spirit Tap just like you're advising ... As always, standard disclaimer ... everything I'm writing about is very much a work in progress and I'm learning as I go, simply because it feels like (to some extent) I'm blazing a new trail here and I want to share with the community everything that I'm learning along the way as I (lazily) wend my way towards 60.