Open Pandora's Box !

A new huge and shiny and so-powerful trinket appeared on the PTR after the first downs of heroic, 25-Man, Mimiron.

Pandora's Plea
Trinket
+108 Intellect
Equip: Your spells have a chance to increase your spell power by 850 for 10s.

I'm still using the jewelcrafting one myself (Sapphire Owl), just for the intellect with 2 yellow intellect gems (+16int) the trinket gives you +74 intellect, and a 2340 mana regen each 5mn which I really enjoy up to now.
Pandora's Plea is a clear winner on a power perspective, with 34 more intellect, and a spell power boost (probably 45s hidden cooldown, as most proc trinkets now).

There is another trinket for healers that drop on Kologarn, the Spark of Hope, it gives a 100 spirit bonus. Clearly the spark is itemized towards Druids and Holy Priests, the Pandora's Plea being more a Paladin and Disc Priest thing.

Now, with the changes of 3.1 towards spirit, expect a lot of people to need on Pandora's Plea. And here come's the root of the name.

Pandora's Box is an old greek legend that has already been used in a lot of video-games, you can read the article on wikipedia. Pandora's Box is said to contain evils to be unleashed on mankind and finally hope.
Now take Pandora's Box and Divine Plea (the so contested and already two-times nerfed in fight mana regen ability of paladins), and you get Pandora's Plea (you could get Divine Box but that's for a future item :p).

If this item is clearly by it's name targeted towards Holy Paladins, expect a lot of fights over it as many many people will want it, from healers to mages or warlocks. My fellow paladins, we will be hated for the loot fights over this one, as we are already for all the kills our ret brethen have made in PvP during the 3.0 overpower period. Evil will happen before this item gives hope to a raid. You can mark my words ...

Patch 3.1 Ulduar PTR testing, part 12, a healing paladin view

Now for some updates of the PTR, from a healing paladin point of view.

Several new bosses have been tested this weekend, that were delayed before. And the Flame Leviathan was submitted to more testing too.

Hodir

Hodir Testing - World of Raids, MMO Champion

Hodir seem to have been tuned down (sigh) since the first tries on him, he was downed by several guilds both on 10 men and 25 men, and even on hard mode. He has a 9mn enrage timer. The hard mode is to kill him in 3mn ... don't tell me a 9mn fight is tuned well if it can be done in 3mn !

The friendly adds encaged at the beginning of the fight seem not very useful, frozen in ice at each Hodir's Flash Freeze, they seem to be roughly worthless (sad mechanic, I hope more tuning there).

Overall I'd say I'm disappointed in Hodir, he seems to be too easy, and the friendly adds were an interesting mechanic but end being not worth dealing with ... tuning Hodir up and changing the adds to be effective would be much more interesting. It's a little harder on the adds AI, is Blizzard not able to do it ?

Now things I hate as a raiding Holy Paladin. Frozen Blows (the switch of Hodir to frost damage on the tank) was changed to that:

Physical damage reduced by 70%, but attacks deal 40000 additional Frost damage. In addition, all enemies suffer 3000 Frost damage every 1 sec. for 20 sec. This is cast randomly now rather than it being predictable.

I guess you can see what I don't like there. "In addition, all enemies suffer 3000 Frost damage every 1 sec. for 20 sec." That means a lot of raid damage, just not a nice mechanic, which is the reason for the nerf of spiritual attunement
for paladins (more on that in another article). Raid damage is bad for a healing paladin, greatly increasing the utility of other healers again over us. Add that "This is cast randomly now rather than it being predictable." That is just bad, unpredictability for damage pushes healers to be spammy to prevent this unpredictable aspect to kill anyone. And spam healing is just a bad thing, no brain, just power.
Let us play a game, and not mindlessly push aoe healing buttons ...


Auriaya

Auriaya Testing - World of Raids, MMO Champion

After some delay she was finally tested this weekend for the first time.
This seem to be a strong adds fight and will most probably require at least 3 tanks (one for Auriaya and two for the adds, at least in heroic).
I like the Sonic Scheech mechanic, but I hope it won't be too buggy. These original positionings are fun gimmicks that make a boss encounter different one from another.
Let's see what this fight becomes with further builds.


Mimiron

Mimiron Testing - World of Raids, MMO Champion

This is a 4 phases fight, where we will have to fight Mimiron big robot construct. Phase one is the legs, phase 2 the body, phase 3 the flighing head and phase 4 the whole robot.
The thing I found the most interesting is one of Mimiron's achievements:

Force Mimiron to combine the parts of his greatest creation within 20 minutes on Heroic Difficulty.

This will be a long fight, yay for that !
There will be some aoe raid damage in this fight too sadly: Hand Pulse: Deals 7069 to 7931 Fire damage in a 5000 yard radius (pretty much unavoidable). But only during the last phase at least.
According to MMO Champion, Mimiron could loot his aerial combat unit as an epic (310% speed) flying mount. That would be sweet.