The 1.50 patch is live!

[mjdoom]

It is easy to turn off, but having to turn it off and then wait to cast my instant casts really throws off my timing.  When I first ran BRD as the only healer, my mana pool was below 5k without a buff.  With a buff it was just over 5k.  Even with getting some new gear, I'm barely above 5k mana without a buff now.  If I expect to be able to heal and not run out of mana all the time, I have to play it close with what spells I cast and when.  If something throws off that casting time, characters die.  I'm sure our other 60 priests won't have an issue with it because they've got their fancy equipment and have "better" specs so they don't have to manage mana as closely as I do, but having to shut off the wand and then wait some more to cast a spell throws it off enough that people will die.  So Aleri doesn't even get to wand in instances anymore.  Hooray!  Really makes it more fun.   :wacko:

I'm glad you enjoy the wand autoshoot though.  It won't be changed again anytime soon so enjoy.
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Fancy equipment aside IMO mana efficiency is always important for a priest. I can't say that I've really played with the new toggle switch but it seems to me like I will be in the same boat as Treesh and not like it.

It seems to me that if I have to cancel (or detoggle) the autoshoot that that is one extra button I have to press in the process of doing my job. I can only expect this to frustrate me at first (mostly because I'm not used to it) and decrease my healing efficiency even after I have gotten used to it, unless I stop using my wand when efficiency is important; this seems pretty silly to me.

People who really felt they needed extra dps on a wand seemingly get it now but it makes it less efficient to intersperse wand shots while healing in an instance. I used to always fire off some extra damage when I could but it was fire and forget thing. If I suddenly had to heal someone all I had to do was go off and hit the button to heal them and it would go off as soon as possible. This now adds an extra step where I have to turn off autoshoot first and then hit the button for what I want to do. I will reserve full judgement until I get to use it more but I fear that I am not going to be a fan.

The most stressful (and also most rewarding) times for a priest IMO are 5-manning the late instances where your effectiveness and efficiency are extremely important. You can't beat things by being overlevelled and in 5-man runs laziness and inefficiency are punished more swiftly. These are the times that having to press an extra button could be the difference between life and death. This would lead me to recommend just ignoring your wand to eliminate this issue. Unfortunately it is in these very situations that priest dps (as a part of the whole) is most valuable because you don't have a huge raid to just overpower the mobs. Every damage source counts to kill the mobs faster which limits the chances of the priest going OOM. It's in these situations that I see autoshoot being a hindrance. Rarely will you have time to fire off more than 1 or 2 shots before you have to toss another heal and thus any additional dps that might be gained through autoshoot is probably not worth the loss of efficiency.

In a raid who really cares? You're usually going to be sufficiently overpowered that most encounters are easy to handle as long as there is some semblance of discipline. Does it really matter to you if your dps number is a bit bigger? If you rolled a priest and you are concerned about doing damage then you are probably specced shadow and your spells are going to be far more damaging than a silly wand anyway. And despite some objections on this forum who here really thinks that a priest is going to be standing there autoshooting someone for any extended period of time in a duel? I obviously play PvE but I have still only won one duel with a weapon hit and that was actually with a staff hit. Having autoshoot is definitely nice there but I doubt that will suddenly make priests stand there and try to send a volley of wand shots your way.

In the end I think there are two ways to look at this:

1) I'm a priest but I like to do damage too. Autoshoot will clearly up my dps and I can handle the inefficiencies inherent in its implementation just fine. This allows me to contribute more damage while still being a great healer.

2) I'm a priest and healing is my main role. DPS is important in it's place of course but healing efficiency is most important. I knew how to use my wand effectively before to add some dps. This possible inefficiency is not worth it for a chance to do a few extra points of damage and now it's harder for me to efficiently add damage as I had done before.

Just my $0.02.

- mjdoom

Edit: Haha, messed up my own handle. :)

[oldmandennis]

/agree

I don't play my priest (I mean my mule/bag maker) much, but I have been spending some time with my lock and hunter lately.

Why is a wand so different then a gun, or a dagger for that matter? I mean, I've played my hunter to 31, and I'm not sure of the precise mechanics of the cooldowns and autoshoot for him. That is a GOOD THING ™, it just works intuitivly. Why can't a wand just be a gun with no ammo requirement, as far as the mechanics go?

This change makes it harder for the casual wand user, though I guess it would be ok if you were going to wand everything to death <snorts>.

[savaughn]

/agree

I don't play my priest (I mean my mule/bag maker) much, but I have been spending some time with my lock and hunter lately.

Why is a wand so different then a gun, or a dagger for that matter?&nbsp; I mean, I've played my hunter to 31, and I'm not sure of the precise mechanics of the cooldowns and autoshoot for him.&nbsp; That is a GOOD THING ™, it just works intuitivly.&nbsp; Why can't a wand just be a gun with no ammo requirement, as far as the mechanics go?

This change makes it harder for the casual wand user, though I guess it would be ok if you were going to wand everything to death <snorts>.
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Sorry, still not getting why this is in any way shape or form a big deal. If you shoot a wand, you wait for the cooldown to finish. Any time during that cool down if you move or click the mouse button, the wanding shuts off. If you want wands to only fire individual shots, it's even easier because you have the both the preshot time as well as the post shot time to shut the thing off. That's somewhere between 3-6 seconds to turn the thing off, depending on how slow your wand is.

You should also be able to build a macro that fires the thing once.

[Treesh]

you have the both the preshot time as well as the post shot time to shut the thing off.&nbsp; That's somewhere between 3-6 seconds to turn the thing off, depending on how slow your wand is.

You should also be able to build a macro that fires the thing once.
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There is only a preshot time on the first shot. After that, it's only the "post shot" time. It is not a 3-6 seconds to shut it off. Or at least with the wand Aleri has. I'm firing every 1.5 seconds (or somewhere around there).

And no thanks on the macro. I hate having tons of macros. You only get so many macro slots per account and if I have only one macro for each of my characters, there's 22 macro slots gone. If I want two macros for every character? I'm SoL so I have to really keep my macros to a minimum. Having one to shoot my wand just once now is a huge waste of a slot.

[MongoJerry]

I keep thinking, "Blizzard just doubled the dps output of wands, and you're complaining?" Yes, it's a new UI that we have to get used to, but we will get used to it. I tend to move around a lot in battles just so I can see everything that's going on (a habit that comes quickly when you play with a lot of those big Taurens), so I'm used to moving in between wand shots as it is. In fact, the biggest thing I'm having to get used to is making sure I stay *still* so that I get the full benefit of auto-shoot. Still, it's all just a small change that we have to get used to -- whether it's knowing to hit the wand button twice in quick succession to only shoot once or knowing to move when we want to stop wanding. Either way, I'm just loving the dps I'm dishing out mana free in instances and raids.

[Treesh]

I keep thinking, "Blizzard just doubled the dps output of wands, and you're complaining?"&nbsp;
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Well gee Mr. PvP man, sometimes there's more to the game than just DPS. Yes, I'll get used to it, but it's still a problem. You also get used to all sorts of bugs in the game (charge bug anyone?), but that doesn't make it any less frustrating for those who are affected by it. :wacko:

[Arnulf]

I keep thinking, "Blizzard just doubled the dps output of wands, and you're complaining?" [...]
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Well, the odd thing about this feature is, that it is so illogical. Why is it so difficult for Blizzard to abort wand shooting when you just want to cast a spell? It certainly works with melee attacking. You can turn off auto-wand-shoot with one click on the attack button (default '1'). Why can't I do that with any other spell?

What is baffling about this is that Blizzard usually does the sensible thing and they improved old and cumbersome user interfaces. They did this with Diablo 2. Why did they introduce such awkward behaviour here?

-Arnulf

[MongoJerry]

Well, the odd thing about this feature is, that it is so illogical. Why is it so difficult for Blizzard to abort wand shooting when you just want to cast a spell? It certainly works with melee attacking. You can turn off auto-wand-shoot with one click on the attack button (default '1'). Why can't I do that with any other spell?

In effect, what you are asking for is to remove the cooldown time on wands. If it acted the way you're suggesting, then you could hit the wand shoot button and quickly hit a spell, like say Mind Blast, and have both a wand shot and Mind Blast come out in quick succession -- drastically increasing the dps of casters even more than auto-shoot already has. I imagine that this is why they did not do what you are suggesting. In the previous version, we had to wait for a wand cooldown before we were able to cast anything, too. The only difference is that in this version, we have to tell the game not to cast the second shot.

[Arnulf]

If it acted the way you're suggesting, then you could hit the wand shoot button and quickly hit a spell, like say Mind Blast, and have both a wand shot and Mind Blast come out in quick succession -- drastically increasing the dps of casters even more than auto-shoot already has.
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There are certainly ways to come around this. Cancel all wand activity while casting/channeling a spell. Resume the wand shooting after global spell cool down. Could be a possibility. Probably there are better ways that I can't think of right now. The thing as it is now is counter-intuitive.

To make myself clear, auto-shooting of wands is certainly a nice feature. But the execution, and especially the user interface part of it is botched in my opinion. Well, it is a minor thing, and overall it does not detract from the great game that WoW is. What confuses me is, that Blizzard, the company that prides itself in devising games with an easy to pick up user interface, did this instead.

-Arnulf

[Kevin]

There are certainly ways to come around this. Cancel all wand activity while casting/channeling a spell. Resume the wand shooting after global spell cool down. Could be a possibility. Probably there are&nbsp; better ways that I can't think of right now. The thing as it is now is counter-intuitive.

To make myself clear, auto-shooting of wands is certainly a nice feature. But the execution, and especially the user interface part of it is botched in my opinion. Well, it is a minor thing, and overall it does not detract from the great game that WoW is. What confuses me is, that Blizzard, the company that prides itself in devising games with an easy to pick up user interface, did this instead.

-Arnulf
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Yep.

What confuses me is all they need to do is just have casting a spell shut the wand off and leave it off. The first shot still has the warm up time so you aren't going to be able to get any extra shots in like that. It doesn't need to keep autoshooting at all. You cast, it shuts the wand off immediately and you have to turn it back on later if you want to. That is what the issue most people have with it is.

So you start your wand auto-shoot, 3 shots go off. You hit flash heal, autoshoot shuts off, the cooldown on the spell runs out and the heal casts. Maybe the heal doesn't cast right away, but at least the auto-shoot should shut off and you just just get the "can't do that right now" message. If you want to turn the wand back on you hit the wand key again.

[oldmandennis]

Yeah, it's not a big deal, it's just annoying and counterintuitive. It would have been just as easy to make it similar to a gun. Here's what I would like, assuming a 2 speed wand.


Imolate, COA, corruption.

Hit the wand key, 2 sec delay.

Wand hits for piddly damage

2 sec delay

Wand hits

1/2 second later, I get tired of jack squat damage, and hit the SB button.
IMMEADIATLY my SB starts casting.

SB crits and makes the mob wish he was dead already

Pleased with the pain I am causing, I decide not to waste any more mana on this miserable lump. I take a step forward to see the agony up close.

2 seconds later, the wand hits for piddly damage

I suddenly feel like training up my daggers, so I run the rest of the way in and start stabbing.

1/2 sec later (2 seconds from the last wand shot), nothing happens, because melee attack toggle cancels the wands.

Obviously, the priests have similar scenarios, just substitute flowers and sunshine for death and destruction. For both classes, it is possible that waiting for the universal cooldown could be the difference between life and death.

Why why why did they have to invent a new and cumbersome interface when the ones for melee and guns work so well already? And please, if I am screwed up and there is a way to get extra dps out of this (like the old wand/dagger combo), point it out

[Icebird]

I love the wand auto-shoot. I hate that I have to turn it off (by moving or hitting the wand button again) before casting.

Imagine if warriors and rogues had to turn off auto-attack before they could use one of their special moves. Or if hunters had to turn off auto-shoot to use one of their special shots. You'd hear howls of outrage.

[Treesh]

I love the wand auto-shoot. I hate that I have to turn it off (by moving or hitting the wand button again) before casting.

Imagine if warriors and rogues had to turn off auto-attack before they could use one of their special moves. Or if hunters had to turn off auto-shoot to use one of their special shots. You'd hear howls of outrage.
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This is an excellent way to demonstrate how I feel about the autoshoot. Better than what I did. ;) Thanks. :D