This Space For Rent

Struggling, aspiring, or established WoW cartoonists!

I’m headed out of town for a week in late May and would love to give an enterprising WoW comic a leg up with readership. We’re lucky to have wonderful, loyal readers- around 5,000 a day- and it seems a shame to waste the opportunity to promote MOAR COMIQS!

If you’d like to try your hand, email me at disciplinaryaction@yahoo.com with your reasoning. A sample of work would be a delightful and helpful addition.

The winner will be selected based purely on personal preference. Funny, interesting, sad, bizarre- whatever (WoW-related) comic you’d like to showcase is fair game.

Bon chance!

The 4.1 Nerfs: How To (Keep) Disc Priesting

So… So… So…

Your hair looks pretty. And your robes are nice! And… uh… is that a new wand?

There’s not a lot good to be said for the discipline priest changes coming down the pipe in the 4.1 patch. Atonement now procs with and is helped glyphically by Holy Fire, but as SmiteSpec continues to under-perform in raids, this comes as cold comfort to all disc priests. Smite or not, we want any flavor of disc priest to prosper.

THE GOOD

We’re still gear-dependent, perhaps more than any other class in the game. With the new 353 gear dropping in Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman, we have potential to pwn the Magmaws and Halfii of the world. So… yeah. That’s theonlyppositive I could think of.

THE BAD

Inner Will lasts until canceled. Divine Aegis lasts 15 seconds, up from 12. But wait! Why is this categorized under bad, and not mildly good? Because these pathetic buffs made it okay for Blizzard to bitch-slap us with…

THE UGLY

Power Word: Shield to last 15 seconds, down from 30 seconds. To add insult to injury: Power Word: Barrier is now on a 3 minute cool down, up from 2 minutes.

So what does all this mean? Basically, that Blizzard doesn’t want you to use your signature ability, because it just Isn’t Done. How presumptuous of us to depend on it, the spell around which our class is based- particularly given our “alternate spec” is a running joke in raids.

We keep going, because that’s what we do, and we focus with all our might on casting while moving and being in the right place at the right time.

Here’s what we’re going to do: We’re going to make a druid love us, and beg for Innervate early and often. Consider stacking Mastery to a greatest degree than ever before, be positively jealous with your bubbles, ignore the DPS as much as you can in all good conscience do it before they rise up in a Boxer Rebellion of hurt feelings and dangling appendages, and, above all, pray.

You know how to pray, don’t you?

You just put your hands together… and Penance.

WoW Twitterparty: Finalized!

Do you play WoW? Do you have a Twitter account? It’s party time!

Join your Twitter friends Friday, March 4th at 5pm PST/6pm MT/ 7pm CST/ 8pm EST for a party on Fizzcrank – US!

We’ll roll some DKs, terrorize the starting area, and then attack the unsuspecting in Alterac Valley in a massive wave of under-geared PHEAR!

TO DO:

1. Go to Fizzcrank – US
2. Roll a Death Knight with your Twitter name on either faction. (They can look like your main or not, as you’re so inclined.) If you would like to participate in the Alterac Valley PvP Death Knight Attack, please roll an Alliance DK.
3. Meet up at the DK starting area for a fun few minutes or an entire evening of  chatting, /mooning, group-pwning the starting area, and the Alterac Valley DK Sweep.

We’ll will be on Vent and Mumble; both have been volunteered (thanks to Time Wasted Tuesday and Spazmoosifer!). Vent and/or Mumble details will be /whispered to anyone who messages me in-game, to avoid broadcasting the info all over the internets; I’ll be playing Discopriest.

I’ll be there as an Alliance-flavored @DiscoPriest; see you then!

 

WoW Twitterparty

The finalized version of this post is here.

 

Do you play WoW? Do you have a Twitter account? Is it party time?

Join your Twitter friends Saturday, March 5th TBD (see below) at 5pm PST/6pm MT/ 7pm CST/ 8pm EST for a party on Fizzcrank – US.

Take the survey to determine which night we’ll do it at Survey Monkey. We’ll go with whatever gets the most votes!

TO DO:

1. Go to Fizzcrank – US
2. Roll a Death Knight with your Twitter name on either faction. (They can look like your main or not, as you’re so inclined.)
3. Meet up at the DK starting area for a fun few minutes or an entire evening of  chatting, /mooning, or group-pwning the starting area.

We’ll have a Vent or Mumble set up (as soon as someone volunteers one) for cross-faction talking.

I’ll be there as an Alliance-flavored @DiscoPriest; see you then!

PS – Please do feel free to steal the Twitter DK for your own blog or website. I made it, so no one will come after you. My gift to the Twitterverse!

SmiteSpec v. ShieldSpec: Builds & Rotations at 85

I’ve put together this little down-and-dirty guide to discipline priest healing because being a Disc Priest these days is, truly, complicated.

The main source of this complexity lies in the fact that Disc Priests are now essentially two distinct specs: the SmiteSpec and the ShieldSpec.

The variance in style of the two versions of disc priesting is pretty pronounced, so disc priests tend to lean quite heavily toward their favorite version of discipline. It’s created something of a rift in the Disc community. Much shouting and pulling of beards.

ShieldSpec focuses on shielding, doling out standard priest healing spells, and managing a variety of cooldowns (Inner Focus, Power Infusion, Rapture) to return mana. It functions similarly to how Discipline worked throughout Wrath of the Lich King.

Pros: Similar to the Wrath disc healing style and thus familiar to Wrath Discos. Intuitive.

Cons: (Possible) lower mana return. Boring.

SmiteSpec is based on an entirely new healing mechanic for Warcraft. SmiteSpec disc priests use a combination of offensive, DPS (primarily Smite) spells for mana return and indirect healing spells, coupled with more classic Discipline direct healing spells (including Shield).

Pros: New and different way to heal, unique to Discos. (Possible) higher mana return. Wings (WANGS!).

Cons: Focus diverted between DPS targets and healing targets. Minimal DPS damage. Unfamiliar mechanism.

Personally, I’ve been running the two specs simultaneously to see which better fits my needs/playstyle, and I have to confess that I lean more towards the ShieldSpec. However, both are viable and fun Discipline Priest options.

Sample ShieldSpec Build
View Liala’s Current ShieldSpec Build

Click to Embiggen

 

Sample ShieldSpec Rotation

With this build, I like to Shadow Protection/Fortitude everyone pre-fight. The low-cost instants of Inner Will are worth more to me right now than Spellpower (plus I think the increased movement speed helps me stay out of AoE trouble).
For a rotation I generally bubble (Power Word: Shield) the tank, hit him with Prayer of Mending, then watch. If another DPS is taking a lot of damage, I’ll throw another bubble and a Renew on him or her, and then go back to refreshing Prayer of Mending and bubble on the tank. For a big, quick tank heal I use Penance; for a slow, big tank heal I use Greater Heal.

If damage is going all over the place, I use Inner Focus and then Prayer of Healing; if damage is focused on the tank, I use Inner Focus and then Greater Heal. I use Inner Focus on every cooldown religiously.

Sample SmiteSpec Build
View Liala’s Current SmiteSpec Build

Click to Embiggen

Sample SmiteSpec Rotation

[Incoming!]

Disciplinary Action on the Twisted Nether Blogcast

This Saturday (…aturday …rday) Disciplinary Action will be taking on the Twisted Nether Blogcast in a live evening show!

Tune in at 8pm PST / 11pm EST for all the action with Liala and Fimlys and much talk about the comic, disco priesting, and the state of Azeroth as we poise on the brink of a sea change.

A live chat room will be simultaneously rolling for any and all to pose questions (but not that one. OR that one. Ew, or that one, sick!).

See you then!

Elevated Discourse: Professor Putricide’s Playlist

iPutrify

I need serious tunes when I raid in ICC. Ye olde iPod is my DJ of choice, and even with one ear open for Vent I can still get into a nice groove while downing the Lich King and his merry band.

I thought I’d share my Professor Putricide Playlist and throw out an open invitation for others to do the same. Do you have different playlists for each boss? One solid mix that carries you through the whole raid? A strictly enforced aural silence policy?

Bring it!

Professor Putricide’s Playlist

1. Faithless – Mass Destruction

2. Shiny Toy Guns – Major Tom

3. TV On The Radio – Wolf Like Me

4. Peter, Bjorn & John – Young Folks

5. Citizen Cope – Brother Lee

6. Kanye West – Stronger

7. Bloc Party – Banquet

Elevated Discourse: Déjà Vu All Over Again

It's A Burning Question

A number of exceedingly interesting posts this week talk quite a bit about potential changes in Cataclysm (I think this is all pretty spoiler-free, though the posts themselves are not):

”This [varying your main] is one of the reasons why Cataclysm will shake things up, even for people who don’t expect it. You may think you are in a tight knit raid guild right now, but how many of those raiders will decide that actually they’d rather focus on a different alt on a different server when the expansion hits?”
Spinksville

“6. The road gets approval.

7. The loot gets approval.

8. And that gets TOTAL approval. Now we’re angry about the last years of not having it.

9. And that.”
Big Red Kitty

“Blizzard has big plans for gnomes and trolls, with brand new starting areas and questing experiences available for those races when Cataclysm launches. But before that can happen, they need your help! There are some awful baddies that’ve been crashing on their couches, and they’ve been kickin’ around for far too long.”
Michael Sacco, WoW.com

All this speculation put me into a very curious state of wondering what things people (a) expected last time, but didn’t happen, and (b) didn’t expect at all that totally changed the way they play.

As a non-player when Lich King came out, no doubt there were huge, burning issues that became burnier or moot in the actual expansion that I know nothing about.

If you played pre- and post- Lich King (or Burning Crusade, for that matter), how would you answer the two questions above? (Assuming that I’d posed them as questions, natch, which I’m too lazy to go back and do.)

Self Discipline: The Mark Of The Facebeast

... But I Don't WANNA Be Ubiquitous!

Like many, many, many of us, I am utterly nonplussed at having discovered that only through the magic of Facebook will we be able to utilize the cross-realm friends list coming out in 3.3.5.

I do not care for everyone to see my grown-up, official email address – you know, the one that was so secure you used it to log in to your account- just because they happen to be friends of friends of friends of some decent tank I ran with once and friended.

To avert disaster and maintain some semblance of privacy for those I friend and those who friend me, I have implemented a clever workaround (well, I think it’s clever; more likely everyone’s already thought of it and I’m the last one disembarking the short bus as usual):

1. Create a new, anonymous email address from a fine establishment like Yahoo, gmail, or Hotmail
2. Change your Blizzard login email address to the new anonymous one (and get an authenticator, yeah?)
3. Create a new Facebook page with your new anonymous email address
4. Amuse yourself by guessing what your main’s favorite quotes might be

The absolutely immense bonus of this, beyond the simple expedient of protecting your privacy, is that it is THE funniest thing ever to set up a Facebook page for your main character. That alone makes it worth the price of admission!

Those of you who wish to leave slavish messages of love upon Disciplinary Action’s Facebook wall may now do so by searching for ‘Liala Jenkins’.

Holier Than Thou: In Which I Entice You Away From My Blog

Underwear Optional is turning a writer’s block moment into an opportunity to learn more about her fellow bloggers, which I think  is a fantastic idea. She’s verbalizing the very questions I’ve often wondered about my favorite blog authors, and I’m terribly excited to read the results.

The only omission I can see is that she fails to ask what kind of underwear you wear while blogging, but I won’t hold it against an otherwise stellar execution. Head over to her entry and answer the questions in her comments section!

1. What kind of blog are you? (ie. healing, hunter, general wow blog)

2. What kind of information do you usually post about? (ie. raiding, rp, your ingame life, pugs, etc)

3. What type of schedual do you use for your blog postings? (ie. once a week, once per day)

4. How did you decide on your blog’s topic?

5. What do you hope your readers take from your postings?

6. Is there anything else that goes into your blogging behind the scenes?