By now I assume most of our readers here have already heard of the great project that Kevin Michael Johnson and Blue Loon Films have been working on, called The Raid.

Essentially it is a documentary following the lives of a number of different raiders.  It is more than “just a documentary”, its a great film that showcases why we play the games we play, why we enjoy World of Warcraft, why we enjoy the raiding enviornment, and why we become friends with our guildmates. I am very excited to see this.

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In The Burning Crusade we saw the introduction of Haste. Haste was an interesting concept to many classes… it meant shorter cast times, shorter GCD’s, haste caps, and new itemization values.

“Well this item has 10 more spellpower, but it has 30 less haste….”

Enter: World of Warcraft – Cataclysm. With this comes the Mastery stat. Mastery will, inevitably, complicate gearing choices. Couple this with the increased importance to haste (previously outlined here) and you now have a much more complicated process than it currently is for priests.

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Power Infusion can be a baffling spell to one who doesn’t understand it. Even to those who play priests, understanding how it works, when to use it, who to use it on & who NOT to use it on, is a daunting task. It becomes even more difficult for raid leaders who don’t play priests to make sure their raid is set up for it’s optimal usage. With so many new priests, priest alts, & new Raid leaders riding out the expansion, I think a Power Infusion Re-revisited is in order.

Flame on!

Let’s look at the spell: Power Infusion

(Remember that 1% haste = 32.79 haste rating, so Power Infusion grants 655.8)

Some of the confusion comes from the fact the spell didn’t always work this way – it used to be a 20% direct damage boost. Now that’s pretty easy to understand, isn’t it? Everyone wants MOAR DAMAGEZ!!!111111ONEONE. But with the change, it’s no longer a pure spell damage boost – it’s now a haste boost., and who it benefits the most is no longer so cut and dry.

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We finally saw a beta build that had some good news for the Holy Priests out there! The Beta Realms had Build 12759 drop late last night; we have lots of exciting abilities. MMO-Champion and Wowhead haven’t had a chance to update their talent builds yet; but I am sure they will shortly! Disc hasn’t had a major pass yet (so stay tuned), but holy got two pretty exciting previews.

The first change I noticed was the change  to the Holy Tree Specialization Spell. No longer is it Desperate Prayer (which has since been placed back in the Talent Tree for 1 point), they currently have a spell that is Not Yet Implemented (NYI) called “Sanctuary”.

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Haste has played a fairly big role for a number of classes when it was introduced in The Burning Crusade and now in Wrath.  After some initial testing, it seems that Haste is going to be bigger and better in Cataclysm. Before you go rushing out and getting as much Haste Gear that you can in preparation for Cataclysm, let’s remember the basics about haste…

Haste, like crit, requires more to scale as you level. That means, 1000 haste at level 80 isn’t the same as 1000 haste at level 81. For example, at Level 80, I have 29.4% haste (964 Haste)– the second I dinged 81 my haste dropped to 19.1%. Pretty dramatic.

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I’ve spent a good amount of time on Beta for over the last few days since the last build, and I must say I am rather impressed at how well the game looks and runs. For those of you who have done PTR or Blizzard Beta testing in the past, you are familiar with the fact that the world servers constantly crash… that isn’t happening this go around. Point 1:  Blizzard.

After logging in for the first time, I made my way to Stormwind through the handy portals in Dalaran and… OMG… you can mount anywhere in the world now! Standing in the Auction House on a Amani War Bear? Allowed. Sitting in the Inn on your Proto Drake? Allowed. It certainly was a treat to fly from the Mage Quarter to the AH Steps in Stormwind… no more snaking around the canals and realizing you missed your turn! Heck I was inside the Bank on my drake! (Protip: to get to Hyjal, there is a NPC that will port you there from the steps of the bank!).

But enough about flying around Stormwind, that isn’t why you came here— there is more than enough Beta Coverage showing you how the world has changed… lets go into the priest stuff!

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Good news, everyone!

With promises of bacon and my first born child (lol), our friends over at Curse gave me a Beta Key Code!

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I apologize for the gaps in my posts – I wasn’t kidding when I said my RL work obligations& health issues were consuming my time. We have all these great ideas for posts, but the past few weeks, all I’ve had time for is discussions with Derevka, and he ends up piecing together all the ideas in the final posts. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not feeling bad he actually has to do some ACTUAL work during his daily latte routine, but I do feel bad that I haven’t been contributing as much as I want.

That being said, we DO have some great posts coming in the next 2 weeks – Renews & You, Holy Nova How to, Grid For Dummies, PI guide for non healers, Heroic LK25 (finally killed it) & Heroic Halion 25 guides, so you’ll see some great discussions to make up for the down time. We’re just trying to put the finishing touches on them all.

I just thought I would use this post to take a moment and reflect on things related to raiding in Wrath, & give our opinions on them. Beta is currently ongoing (Invites please?), & the current expansion is winding down. I’m not sure how raiding will turn out in Cata, so let’s just look at what was good, what was bad, and what was downright ugly in our current expansion:

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Dark Nemesis was successful in downing Heroic Halion on 10 man Thursday night. According to WoW Progress, it was US 33rd. (not too shabby for having our realm down for 24 hours when RS opened). So today, I am providing you all with some tips on the Heroic Halion 10-Man Encounter – of course a lot of this can be applied to the normal version as well.

If you are bringing only 1 priest, you will want them Holy Spec’d and with Body and Soul – especially for Heroic. I will go into detail later, but Body and Soul becomes invaluable. Personally, I found that Holy proved to be notably superior in the Twilight Realm because of the movement required and our COH, POM (reduced CD), Renew, and Surge of Light were all lifesavers. (PW: Shield seemed to be eaten away too quickly.) Note the links of the abilities in this post are with NORMAL MODE Wowhead data, as the HM stuff wasn’t available yet on Wowhead.

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CYPHAN? Sounds like a venereal disease, doesn’t it? I assure you, it’s not. It’s a new Midwest Scifi/fantasy convention for costumers, collectors, gamers and fans located in the Chicago Suburbs, and it’s happening this weekend.

One of the weekend seminars is a World of Warcraft discussion, and a last minute change of plans (or desperation) has planted yours truly as one of the speakers. It’s nothing hardcore, raiding or even healing related – more of an intro to the game for new and newer players. We’ll be covering such things as choosing a faction, race, and class, leveling, gold making, guilds, dungeons, & etiquette. So if you’re in the area, and need something to do this weekend, come check out the convention! The seminar is scheduled for Saturday at 11:00 am, so come join us and share your experiences with newer players….and you can say ‘hi’ to me. I don’t bite. Hard.

Check it out here and hope to see you there! Oh, and yes – they do server liquor there. That’s the only reason I agreed to do this.