2011 November | 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 …

Mists of Pandaria: Official Priest Talent Preview (Take 1)

Well, Blizzard launched their official Mists of Pandaria Talent Calculator today… just in time for Thanksgiving. The question is: will we have anything to be thankful for? Cursory looks suggest that we might be in for an interesting change, based solely upon the spells we get for specific specs. I will say they put in a good amount of effort into breaking down the core spells and abilities for each of the two healing specs we have. That probably was a difficult task, as they want and need to be able to keep each of the trees viable in a PVE and PVP setting, while having enough core differences to make them feel unique. Unfortunately, there does seem to be a number of (accidental?) omissions in the first round of Talent Previews. …

Gearing in 4.3 – Valor Points and the Token System

To fully understand the impact of the 4.3 Gearing System, you need to understand how gearing progression has developed over the years. If you have been playing like me, since Vanilla, you remember the days when loot dropped and it was specific loot only– this included tier gear! There were no Valor Points. There were no Tier Tokens. You simply had to hope the boss dropped the item or Tier piece you needed. To make a parallel, it wasn’t dissimilar to the way the Baradin Hold bosses work today. Pure random loot drops. In fact, I remember the times when my guild (Alliance) would get Shaman Tier drops. (Remember, in Vanilla the Alliance didn’t have shaman!) The Burning Crusade came and so did our introduction to the Tier Token System. …

Flash Heal: Healing and Sound

You hear this joke all the time: “Oh the game has sound?” or “I haven’t had game sound on in years!!”. I know a LOT of folks play the game without the sound on, and I understand that the game does have a good deal of superfluous sound effects and/or sounds that really do not contribute to your gameplay. I have to admit that there is a certain amount of satisfaction hearing your Prayer of Healing go off, or the BWONG of a Prayer of Mending bounce, or the thwump, thwump, thwump of Penance… but does it really provide added benefit to your performance? No, probably not. Does it add to the immersion aspect of the game? Yep! However, the biggest benefit that audio cues can provide healers is likely boss mods and …

4.3 Hymns, Leverage, and Haste

With 4.3 comes a substantial buff to Divine Hymn– baseline. With this improvement, we probably should spend some time to discuss how to work both of our Hymns to our advantage. First let’s take a look at this Divine Hymn buff — In 4.2, DH was actually a HPS loss (For both Disc and Holy) when compared to YAWNPOH(POH/COH) spam. Once 4.3 drops, we’ll be turning that completely on its head. 4.2 Live Hymn: “Heals 3 nearby lowest health friendly party or raid targets within 40 yards for 4009 every 2 sec for 8 sec, and increases healing done to them by 10% for 8 sec. ” 4.3 PTR Hymn (Build 14976 – Release): “Heals 5 nearby lowest health friendly party or raid targets within 40 yards for 4009 every 2 sec for 8 sec, and increases …

The Rise, Fall, & Rise of Disc Tank Healing

Today, I really want to take a look at the history of Disc Tank Healing, why it works, how it works, and how to Disc Tank Heal. Ever since 4.2 dropped, Disc Tank Healing has become a very powerful tool for many guilds and as a result, they are using Disc as a primary tank healer. This isn’t the first time we have seen this… Discipline Tank Healing was something that had a good run (albeit brief) in Wrath of the Lich King. We saw this in Naxx 2.0 and Ulduar, it wasn’t until Trial of the Crusader and ICC that this started falling off. Why did Disc Tank Healing fall off towards the end of WOTLK? Scaling for one – Disc simply didn’t have the throughput that Holy Pallies …