2012 January | 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 …

An Update and a Word for Posterity

Its been a couple of weeks since my last post, and that is by no means a sign of anything regarding ToaP… I simply have been busy with a number of things both in and out of game. I’ll keep my personal and professional life out of the blog, however I will make a post regarding the amazing folks of <Edge> on the US-Garona server… On the coattails of Edge’s 5-year anniversary, Edge officially retired as a 25-Man Raiding Guild. Edge slew Heroic Ultraxion, and capstoned an amazing run with 3 years of being top 100 US and 2 years of being in the Top 50 US. I would be remiss not to personally thank all those in Edge, past and present, for an amazing place to call home on Garona. The …

Discipline Secondary Stats and Priority

There is a lot of information out there regarding Disc Priest secondary stats and statweights… a lot of information. To make matters worse, all that information is often contradictory to each other. Mastery is king! No, wait! Haste! No, Crit!!! Add on top of all that contradiction is that a lot of the information is in that “well, it works for me!” category… which unto itself is flawed. I’ve seen a number of these forum threads fighting over this question, and have seen some– frankly, horrible answers. I’ve also gotten a number of emails asking me what I think… so, lets take a look. In my usual fashion, I am going to dive into some of the numbers, but not so many that we drown in pages of formulas and …

Healer’s Addendum – Healing Hagara the Stormbinder (Heroic)

This is my first real foray into voice-over videos, so I am really hoping to get some solid feedback on this. There are some great tutorial videos that focus on the overall strategy and do a great job at it. I must tip my hat to Kina and the folks at LearnToRaid and underscore the goal of this guide is to supplement those types of guides. The purpose of this guide is to provide insight to the Healer Perspective and point out specific points of strategy that healers will want to keep in mind while battling Heroic Hagara. This guide assumes you already have at least an understanding of the basic boss mechanics and abilities– consider this the “Healer Addendum” to a standard Boss Guide. Good luck!!