2010 August | Tales of a Priest

5.2 Discipline Guide – Thunderstruck!

Now yes, we know 5.2 is just riddled with tons and tons of AC/DC references all over the internet… so why not one more? Sorry! I have updated my 5.2 guide which can be found in full as well as discussion over at HowToPriest.com here. The Holy Guide will be updated in the next 24-48 hours, although it has minimal changes from 5.1! (Grrrr….that irritates me on a number of levels. Holy’s shortcomings being overlooked). Hope everyone is enjoying the Throne of Thunder, stay tuned for the Holy update, as well as a State of the Union 5.2 in the next week. Keep calm, and keep healing.

Holy and Disc Best Practices

Inspired by a post by my good friend Vixsin, I’ve decided to do a quick “Best Practices” post. In the interest of full-disclosure, she did toss me an email while I was at a work conference asking for a “best practices” quick hit-list… and I promised her I would do it…. several times. But, I simply let work get ahead of me and forgot to email her back… so, my dear Vix, I apologize! Hopefully this helps somewhat! But before I dive into the meat and potatoes of the post, I will provide a brief update on myself: it has been a chaotic January for me. Work has been quite busy with a lot of travel, my SO and I are on the property hunt here in Boston (Rant: SO …

Keep Calm and Keep Healing

Despite having a crazy busy month both in game and out, I’ve spent some time reading at the official forums, the HowToPriest.com forums, Twitter, and a number of emails I have received… and there is a very large negative cloud over the healing priest community right now. These negative statements seem to mostly revolve around our output (both as Holy and Disc) as well as our mana regeneration. First let me just say… In all seriousness, people need to KEEP CALM. The state of the priest is not as dire as some of the forum posts I have seen might suggest. Perhaps the biggest question I am seeing all over forums (official forums, H2P, and otherwise): Why are priests so under-powered and horrible right now? This. Is. A. Fallacy. I am sick of …

Mana Regen vs Throughput

Mana management is a huge part of our game now in Mists of Pandaria. Gearing, gemming, enchanting, and spec choices will be pivotal in how your longevity impacts these first few raids— particularly since so many of these fights are much longer than we have typically seeing in Cata and even WotLK. Endurance will be just as important as our raw output– or will it? To find out that answer you should be asking yourself these questions: 1. Am I spec’d into the most appropriate regen model for this fight? Are you struggling to find gaps to fit your PW: Solace in? Are you getting fewer than (in aggregate) 8 Solaces per minute? Would Mindbender work better for you? What about FDCL? 2. Are you using your potions at an opportune time? …

Mists of Pandaria: Initial Impressions

First I am excited to say that my Goal of Hitting Realm First! Priest was completed! That was only one-upped by the fact that I also shared Realm First! 90 as well. My friend, guildmate and hunter, Esoth, was Realm First! 90, but delayed his final quest turn-in nearly 40 minutes while my 5 man team struggled with some of the final gather X# of items quests and were getting screwed with the RNG drops.— and we all dinged 90 and shared the Feat of Strength within 30 seconds of each other. Overall the grind to 90 was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the excitement in guild chat, mumble, and my 5 man team. We were done in 13-14 hours if I recall– not too bad. (I didn’t look at the time …

Stay Healthy During Mists of Pandaria

Yes… I am planning on staying up until I hit 90. I am going for Realm First! Priest with a few of my other guildies going for their realm first classes as well. Being a Bostonian, this means Mists launches at 3:00 am local time for me– certainly a daunting task. I will, however, be sleeping a full 7 hours before launch, so I should be IRL “Well Rested”. How much XP will we need to burn through? As of a few days ago, the total XP you needed to go from 85 – 90 is: 97,500,000. (source)… yikes! What is most important if you are staying up late (or as the case may be: early) to grind to 90 is to take care of yourself! Expansion launches are often a time …

Holy Word: Sanctuary – Scaling in Mists...

Holy Word: Sanctuary has been a spell that has been in flux since its introduction at the start of Cataclysm… and that continues to happen even on the Beta– HW: Sanc has undergone a few changes in preparation for Mists of Pandaria, one of which Ghostcrawler commented on from a question I posted in the Beta Class Feedback Forum. ”Sanctuary should scale with haste like Efflorescence. It just adds more ticks.” Well, I must say I was pretty darn excited! It didn’t make sense that it didn’t scale from haste previously. I quickly logged into the beta to test out the breakpoints I had previously calculated and to see these additional ticks at work… But wait… they added Haste scaling, but took away mastery’s scaling from HW: Sanctuary. Noooooo! I …

Chakra and Why You Should Be Concerned

I don’t like writing posts like this – and by that I mean posts where I completely disagree with the direction the development team is going with the priest class. That said, I do believe and trust that Blizzard can develop and balance their game correctly. The development team for Mists of Pandaira has been really good at communicating this beta, and the number of blue comments on the beta forums seems much greater than before. (GC has been great at engaging us.. as well as the CM team on Twitter as well. I have to tip my hat to them there). However, it doesn’t mean I love every change that they make… and sometimes, its important for us to point out changes that could be missed… and I do …

The Raid Pre-Screening Giveaway & Blizzcon Event!

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.

Cataclysm Beta – Mastery Preview & Thoughts

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.

Re-Revisiting Power Infusion in Wrath

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. 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 …

A Beta Build With 20% More Priest Love!

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”.

Cataclysm and Haste

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.

The Cataclysm Beta Journey Begins!

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 …