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? Are there a section of the fight where a Potion of Focus would fit? (eg. Phase Transitions with Elegon)

3. Hymn of Hope – is there a place where you can cast it, maximizing the number of healers who will benefit?

… and perhaps the most important question:

4. Am I getting spirit from the most appropriate sources and sacrificing throughput stats appropriately to do so?

Hamlet, of EJ Druid fame, wrote an interesting post on this topic (here). While I don’t agree with 100% of the finer details on his post, the fundamental point and the spirit of the post is true:  Just because you think you need more spirit doesn’t mean that really is the case; you could just need to play better. I think that Hamlet, in very much his fashion (and is why I like him), is very matter of fact and delivers this important message in a manner that could be expanded upon and discussed. So let’s do that…

What Hamlet briefly touches upon, but I think needs more expanding and really is the crux of the argument we should be understanding is “itemization budgeting”. Gems now have an itemization budget with a 1:2 ratio of Primary Stats to Secondary Stats. This means that a gem with 160 Intellect, could be budgeted at 320 Spirit. (ie. Brilliant Primordial Ruby vs Sparkling River’s Heart). There is, at least, some reward for using a secondary stat over a primary stat: double the stat. Does that mean this is inherently superior? No. This can make the decision to gem one way over another a bit clearer– or, perhaps more explicitly, whether or not you want to break or match a socket bonus. Weigh your options.

Other items, such as food, do not enjoy that 1:2 budget. Mogu Fish Stew vs Steamed Crab Surprise are 300 to 300. In situations where it is a flat trade off, the answer is less clear. Is a 1:1 trade off worth the lost intellect?

Hamlet makes a good point and boils down his flask choices to additional mana over the course of the fight. Lets look at that example in another way: A 300 spirit food, grants you ~170mp5. Over the course of a 10 minute fight, that is an additional 20,400 mana. Which is about 3 more Renews over the course of the fight. Or 300 intellect impacting every single one of your spells— more importantly your efficient  and low overheal spells.

Of course, little spirit gains (from foods or flasks) here and there can add up,and over the course of a fight can result in thousands and thousands of additional mana… but at what cost? A lot of the answer revolves around gameplay. Are you playing your priest as well as you can? Are you overhealing a lot? Can you be more efficient? Can you improve your overhealing? Those answers alone could mean you could gain raw throughput (via Int or even Haste/Mastery in some situations), improve the spells effective healing, and actually heal for more per cast allowing you to use the existing mana you have more effectively.

The answer is even less clear for Discipline Priests since Rapture’s impact on PW: Shield’s HPM is directly correlated to the amount of spirit you have. One PW:S per Rapture is incredibly mana efficient… that is clear, even with very little spirit.  The real question is, what happens to your HPM if you cast a 2nd or 3rd PW:S within that Rapture CD?  This answer does vary depending on the fight (if the Shields will be fully absorbed) as well as your Mastery and Intellect levels since that too, affects the HPM by increasing the amount the shield absorbs for.

Now, by no means am I saying to NOT gem and gear for Spirit– this is where Hamlet and I diverge in opinion. Keep an eye on the budgeting and the throughput that the spirit costs you.  Know when and where to pull back from spirit. Know what the COST for using a spirit gem/food/flask is. Me? I am still using my Spirit Flask, however, now that I am Pandaren I have started using 300 intellect food. (Epicurean also grants me an additional 300 intellect from that… so I am comparing 600 spirit to 600 intellect). Why? Because the gained throughput, is outweighed by the regen from that 600 spirit.

Are you starting to feel comfortable with your regen or perhaps are you feeling like you need more oomph in your output? That is when you should be pulling out of low item budget spirit sources such as your food and flask– and, likely, before that point.

It is a fine line to walk… and this has always been our trade off as healers: Regen vs Throughput. I urge you to read the post Hamlet put up however please keep perspective when gemming, buffing, and gearing your priest. There is a certain amount of “gear your priest to preference and playstyle” involved here—- but that perhaps begs the biggest questions in this post:  Could you be playing better?  Are you working the best you can with the resources at your disposal?

“It’s not the size of your mana pool that matters.  It’s how you use it.” – @HamletEJ

Mana Regen vs Throughput is a post from: Tales of a Priest

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 charts. Let’s first, however, recap what each of the core secondary throughput stats do for us.

Haste – Increases the speed at which we can cast spells, increases the number of ticks certain spells have (see previous post), as well as reduces the length of our Global Cooldown (GCD). To gain 1% haste, it would require 128 haste rating from gear or gems.

Critical Strike – Increases your chance to critically heal. Critical heals heal the target for 200% and apply Divine Aegis buff on the target. To gain 1% critical strike chance, it would require 179 crit rating.

Mastery – For Discipline, Sheild Mastery increases the amount your sheilds (Divine Aegis, and Power Word: Shield) absorb. For each point of mastery, you gain 2.5% additional absorption. All Disc Priests have a baseline of  mastery based added absorption.  To gain 1 point of mastery, it would would require 179 mastery rating.

Help!! What stats do I use?

Haste > Crit > Mastery

Haste -
Haste is a direct HPS improvement, and is the cheapest stat to increase (128 rating per 1%) compared to the other two options. Further, haste scales well… haste gains are multiplicative. Adding in the Shadowpriest or Moonkin arura isn’t simply adding an extra 5%, its multiplicative. This means if you have 15% Haste, you’re casting at 115% speed… if you then add in the Shadowpriest aura, you are casting at 120.75% (note: not 120%)

Regardless if you are casting POH, or nuking the tank with GHeals and Penance… faster casting speed is a direct HPS increase. Even if you are spec’d into SoS, you’ll be resetting Weakened Soul faster by nature to the fact that you are casting GH/Heal faster. If you are Atonement Healing or even just weaving in Smite/HFire for AA throughput, you’re able to get those smites off faster— direct output increases.

Critical Strike -
With 200% crits introduced, this was a an additional 30% increase to our Divine Aegis creation.  This was discussed in my previous post regarding Tank Healing and the importance of crit, but it also applies to raid healing and our biggest, and best raid healing spell: Prayer of Healing. (Keep in mind, both on 10 and 25s POH represents most of our healing) (Don’t forget, with the new crit meta discussed in my previous post we gain even more! (And atonement double dips))

Due to the fact that Prayer of Healing has a guaranteed DA, POH double dips DA when you critically heal.  Non-Critical POHs will likely hit for  approx 7,000 and create 2,500-3,000  DA (assuming baseline and certain amounts of unavoidable mastery). A Critical POH would hit for  approx 14,000 and provide a 11,000- 12,000 DA. No amount of mastery stacking is going to match that…

Of course, crit is an RNG stat… so in theory you could go on a crit drought. However, over the course of a full fight, the added crit will outweigh mastery. There are plenty of places to simcraft this such as the EJ SS  and other Simcraft sheets if you want to plug in your toon’s numbers.

Crit is fairly easy to acquire from either reforging or through gaining additional Intellect. Remember Dragon Soul gear is dripping with Intellect and red gem sockets! With this in mind, getting crit to healthy levels is very easy. With minimal effort you’ll probably land yourself in the unbuffed 15-20% crit range. (not to mention Inner Focus’s contribution).

Critical heals increases the HPS/HPM of every heal we have by doubling it; while mastery only affects PW: S and DA.

Mastery -
Do not stack mastery as your primary stat! Stacking mastery is best for PW: Shield spam. PW:S spam died with Arthas– don’t do it. There are niche situations during certain fights where spamming PW: Shield is an option, but it should not be your main spell.

• Morchock: Pre-Stomp; particularly when you have have shard soakers eating Stomps in quick succession.
• Heroic Yor’sahj:  when you have a Mana Void coming out, and you’ll have the Healing Debuff out. You can pre-spam the raid before the drain and buff’s application.
• Heroic Warmaster Blackhorn:  Quickly getting PW:S on folks who are eating Twilight Barrage

Tuning yourself for these niche situations, is a waste of the stat and really undertunes yourself for the rest of the encounters.

PW: Shield is a good spell; I am not saying otherwise. It has its uses… however for the most part it will primarily be used for Rapture Regen, the above noted niche fight mechanics, as well as those emergency “instant protection” on a target. I think it is easy to agree, you’d not want to stack a stat to improve a spell you’re using in mostly in those situations.

You also have people in the camp of: “Well it works for me!”. Be that as it may, it doesn’t mean it is the most optimal for you to use– 10 or 25 man. Yes, you may be casting more PW:S in 10′s than you  would in 25′s, but you really are selling yourself (and your stat’s short).

Mastery, in fact, is not a bad stat. It just doesn’t increase our output as well as the other stats we have.  There will be items that are direct upgrades for you (eg. Valor Point Ring), or tier certain items that have mastery. You will always have some innate amounts of mastery that will increase your rating… look at this as just a free bonus on your DA/PWS, and not a stat to chase.

Alternatives and Commentary

There is of course some art in healing, and often requires some removal of the science and math. Healing, unlike DPS, is truly an art… it isn’t a pure “If you do rotation A B C D A B C D, you will do max DPS.” (or HPS in this case) Could you prioritize Haste > Crit=Mastery, yes of course you can… and I know a number of priests who do. However, ultimately the game is a numbers game, and the math will provide you with the ability to put out those bigger numbers and people who have an ‘opinion’ doesn’t mean the math works out to make it into fact.

Some people hate Elitist Jerks because they ‘do too much math’ and that isn’t how you heal… I will agree with that statement to a point, however, there is a reason that the EJ forums have been around for so long and are so active: math doesn’t lie and optimization is often critical in this game. (especially in heroics)

Discipline Secondary Stats and Priority is a post from: Tales of a Priest

The Burning Crusade came and so did our introduction to the Tier Token System. It was simple.  A token type would drop, of either Vanquisher, Conqueror, or Protector and each token type had 3 classes that were a associated with it–easy! Nice and even distribution. This method simply made loot systems easier to manage. Can you imagine doing a loot council with 25 people all interested in a single Chest Token?  BC also introduced us to the Badge/Point system. This system allowed raiders to purchase raid quality gear for a number of item slots–Tier Gear was not available in this manner.

Then we had Wrath of the Lich King, where we moved from Badges/Points not buying Tier Gear to becoming a huge part of gear progression.  Additionally, WOTLK included the introduction of Death Knights. DK added an interesting complication to Tier distribution as we no longer had 3 classes per Tier Token, since we had one Token with 4 classes associated with it. This caused a change in the RNG aspect of loot drops because one of the tokens was meant for 4 classes and affected the weighted average of the drop rate.

Fast Forward to 4.3. The Tier System is getting turned on its head… again. The ONLY way to get Tier 13 gear will be through raid boss drops – no Valor Point Tier purchases. Further, in a statement that Bashiok posted, we learned that the VP drop rate was being throttled to 100 per raid boss kill. This means, for purposes of Tier Gear progression, the only way to upgrade Tier 12 to Tier 13 is to hope for good RNG from the Token Gods. Additionally, off-set VP gear would be more difficult to save up for as the VP accumulation rate is being slowed. Bashiok stated that the purpose of this  VP change was to put greater emphasis on killing a boss to get the gear, not just saving your points.

This “new” method of acquiring Tier Gear is anything but new…we’ve seen it before, as discussed, in The Burning Crusade. This method will likely slow down progression and artificially gate content by throttling how fast raids can gear up.

A number of people in the WOW community had a knee jerk reaction regarding the VP change: “Big Deal! I’m a raider! I’ll be getting my token drops and VP gear isn’t even good!” You even saw some people go so far as suggesting the VP gear was “welfare” and “scrub loot”.

I believe that these statements are exceptionally short sighted and really off-base. Arguably, VP gear is important to everybody; especially to the hardcores. “Hardcore raiders”  use every strategy possible to min/max their character. Compounding this is the fact that there are a lot more options available from the Valor Point vendors this go around… not just rings and the occasional trinket.

Why is the VP gear important? I make these suggestions because these VP items, coupled with Tier Token RNG, really affect how gear progression will work in 4.3.  Depending on the importance of set bonuses, the increased stats from these VP items, boss strategy and mechanics, they could be superior– especially if you have all 5 Tier items from T12, and have the flexibility to pivot and  maintain your set bonus while still upgrading offset items via the VP upgrades. (Protip: if you can get all 5, do it… just for this reason alone)

Lets pretend your raid has been having a Conqueror Token drought… this means Priests, Paladins, and Warlocks likely have not been able to upgrade much of their T12 Gear to T13 Gear yet. Keeping that in mind, and progressing through content, you’ll eventually reach a boss that has a critical healing or DPS check (ie. Ultraxion). Doing this in lower Item Level gear, while possible, could be easier with the pure stat increases from the new Valor Items. These items are iLvl 397, which is on par with Heroic Ragnaros loot — nothing to scoff at.

Personally, I dislike the current Token System based solely on the method of distribution.  In theory, they should be equally distributed via RNG, but that is drastically dependent on your raid composition.  Throughout T12, my raid was typically represented by over half of our raiding core residing on the Conqueror token. This can provide a artificial gear gate when high demand tokens don’t drop. Is the simple answer to this problem to have one universal token? Perhaps… but that isn’t the point of this article.

Play smartly. Plan your upgrades. Make a loot list. Evaluate your loot options through the Valor Point vendors. You’ll need to figure out which items will be your biggest upgrades, while trying to not not affect your set bonuses… THEN move to items that require either a Tier Upgrade or a Pivot from 5/5 T12. Obviously, if you are raiding, you might be upgrading non-tier items through boss drops as well— but this is nothing new, its the gear progression we’ve always known.

Gearing in 4.3 – Valor Points and the Token System is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Gearing your priest for Holy will be daunting at first and you’ll need to prioritize the stats you want to get. Generally speaking, if you have just hit 85 and are fighting your way through 5 Man Normals and Heroics, you’ll want to gear for regen. This means Spirit. Lots and lots of Spirit. (Remember you can reforge those dual stat items from Crit/Haste to include Spirit!). Once you have gotten to a point where you are comfortable with your regen and you are keeping your raid alive, you can start seeking out other stats. In starter Heroics, I started to feel comfortable in the 1800-2000 Spirit range. However, if you are going through your first dungeons: any upgrade is likely an upgrade. Of course, more Spirit is better… regen will be a huge part of our gearing strategy, however it is not the “end all be all”” stat. You also need to keep your other throughput stats at the appropriate levels… but at the appropriate times.

What do I mean when I say “at the appropriate times”?  Well, when gearing you need to prioritize the order in which you get your stats. So if you are chasing Spirit, Haste, Mastery, and Crit all at the same time… you’ll be below what you need on all of these stats, when with some simple reforging you’d be at the necessary levels for perhaps one or two.

Holy Priest Gearing & Stat Priority is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Thanks for reading! See you next week!

What, you actually want an in depth answer? No one wants an in depth answer any more ! No one wants to THINK! If they did, we wouldn’t have this WUTS UR GS mess in the first place.

Fine, be that way. First, let’s look at how the GearScore mod actual works:

The Forumla for Gear Score

G is the calculated Gear Score
j is the slot index
i is the attribute index
V is the associated attribute weight

Items are assigned an ilevel, relative to the content they drop in, and have a stat allowance based of said ilevel. GS mod assigns a number based on ilevel & item ‘rarity’ (ie blues vs greens vs purples) and adds them up. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Now, the full mod actually has an armory like page that lays out stats for viewing, but there’s a few issues with that:

1) No one uses it. Most players’ knowledge of GS comes down to the little tooltip number that pops up when you mouse over a player, without any clue to its meaning. I’ve seen it all: Naxx weekly groups wanting a 5800 GS to join, ICC 10s requiring 5000, TOTC wanting 5500 – do you know what it means? I don’t. I’m sure they don’t either – they’re just pulling numbers out of their ass.

2) Most of these players don’t understand their own stats and class; you can’t expect them to know someone else’s too. Now some can understand the hunter with spellpower is bad (and I say some – not all), but how many would catch the 800+ haste or 20% hit? Or the priest gemmed for pure sprit? The DK in shield block gear? Anyone that has pugged lately knows the answer is depressing.

I know what you’re going to say: Gearscore is just a tool to evaluate a player’s potential based on gear – and I’m sure that’s what the original mod author had in mind. And in the hands of a competent pug raid leader and equally competent players, this certainly would apply. Unfortunately, in the land of “Faceroll Ur Way To Epix”, one or both is a rare occurrence.  Which brings me to my first point on Why Raiding Guilds Don’t Care About Your GS:

1)      Your gear doesn’t play for you. Maybe in the next expansion it will, but for the time being, your output is still determined by the hunk of meat behind the keyboard. I really don’t have to go into detail about the player in 5700+ gs sets that couldn’t outdps a wet paper towel, or the healer that couldn’t keep a plastic plant alive – we’ve all seen it, multiple times. In fact, you see it so many times that it completely negates any redeeming value GS may have. With gear so easy to obtain, many players miss the step of learning how to play to acquire it. Gear doesn’t automatically grant you situational awareness, spec/ gear understanding and how to adjust it based on raid comps, reaction times, or numerous other things that are required of a progression raider. You lack these and other things, all the gear in the world won’t make you raiding material.

2)      Gear is easy to get. Anyone can get gear. Anyone. However, finding a smart player – that’s the tough part. However, for smart players who don’t have access to decent raiding guilds, they are at the mercy of PuGs and random rolls for loot, and may not have that awesome gearscore. Or maybe they’re amazing players, returning to the game after a break. Whatever the reason, regardless of gear, the smart player will understand how to spec accordingly with his current gear level and be able to explain his or her choices. The player in T9 that says “I take <talent X> to compensate for my low levels of <stat>; I would run a <x/y/z> spec once I acquire <gear a,b,c> is going to get way more consideration than the app in full ICC gear that equipped whatever he could get his hands on &  copied his spec off EJ without understanding why. A player that understands what gear he or she should be getting, how to spec, glyph and gem based on content, gear and raid make up is invaluable, and gearing them up in a raiding guild is a non issue.

3)   Higher iLevel gear does not mean it’s the CORRECT gear. I’m still amazed how many people don’t grasp this. You can’t have blinders on when evaluating gear & focus on just one piece – very rarely can you just do a <item x> vs <item y> comparison. Your OVERALL gear is what matters. What stats will you be losing/gaining if you equip a new piece of gear? Do you lose good set bonuses? Are you wearing gear with the stats you need? Hell, I didn’t replace my Pandora’s Plea until well into ICC for some of my setups, and we still go back and try to get Reign of the Unliving for some of our casters. Raiding guilds want you to equip the gear that is going to give you the most potential, and that is not determined by an item’s ilevel.

Toot toot! All abord the FailBoat!

4) Your Gearscore tells us absolutely NOTHING about how you perform as a player. This is probably the most important one. As explained above, the gearscore number doesn’t mean you’re a good player with a high number, or a bad player with a low number. But it doesn’t tell raiding guilds ANYTHING specific. How many times have you heard “I do 12K DPS” or “I’m the top DPSer in my guild”? How can you consider those metrics to determine skill? We don’t care what your DPS is on a target dummy, that you did the most healing in a PuG, or that you were the highest DPS with the guild <WEBREAKFORFATCHICKS>. That’s like saying your 1993 Ford Escort smoked a bunch of 1974 AMC Gremlins – not exactly impressive.

We want to see APPLICABLE information. We want LOGS. Raiding guilds LOVE World of Logs – it details EVERYTHING that occurs in a raid. All of the sudden, Mr 5900 GS with the 12K DPS becomes Mr “12K AOE DPS on trash, but didn’t do more effective damage than the tank on LDW”. It also shows that even though your guild as a whole didn’t progress very far, the applicant was doing the job correctly. It shows the spells, rotations, targets, damage taken (yes, we can see you standing in BAD SHIT!!!!!) and so much more. It allows a raiding guild to parse information and verify what you’re doing is correct based on what you were raiding with. The best part is ANYONE can run these – the basic account is free and keeps logs for 30 days. Parsing your own logs makes YOU a better player by helping you understand why things went wrong (or right!) and what you can do to fix or improve on it.

Now, it’s not a deal breaker to some raiding guilds if you don’t have these, but obviously, you can see why they are REALLY appreciated.

The Gearscore reliance has really gotten out of hand. It keeps lesser geared, good players (and their alts) out of runs, and has led to absolutely ABSURD PuG requirements (5500 GS for ToTC? Naxx? Really?). This forces people to be more concerned about boosting an artificial number than using the correct gear, and led to a mentality that if your gear is good enough, you don’t have to understand what you’re doing. In short, it’s making for a horrible player base with a huge sense of entitlement, and it’s making recruiting a nightmare.

Back in vanilla & BC, it was always the raiders accused of being elitist – the raiders didn’t want Joe Casual having raiding gear. I find it amusing that now, real raiders won’t touch this crap with a ten foot pole and Billy Baddie & Freddy Stand In Fire are using this to look down their nose at everyone else. It’s funny how things work out.  But not “haha” funny. Take a look around the next time you see some guild recruitment spam, or browse recruitment sections – the raiding guilds are not asking for GEAR scores. The ones that throw in “we have vent and 5 bank tabs”, are.

I’ve hung on to this cartoon for years ( I don’t remember where I got it, so props to the original artists – Edit: it’s from Dark Legacy Comics, thanks Golane!) – I think it’s pretty appropriate for the gearscore junkies, don’t you?

I'M A RAIDUUUUUUUURR

Why Raiding Guilds don’t care about your Gearscore. is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Unfortunately, not this time.

To review, the current T10 4 pc set bonus looks like this:

Your Circle of Healing and Penance spells have a 20% chance to cause your next Flash Heal cast within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.

According to the latest patch notes, it’s being changed to this:

Priest Tier-10 4-Piece Healing Set Bonus: Redesigned. This bonus now increases the effectiveness of the caster’s Power Word: Shield and Renew spells by 5%. (source)

I’ve been hearing mixed reactions from the priest community regarding this change, but I’m pretty sure the change itself was a direct result of a large pool of priests complaining about the T10 bonus without even understanding how amazing it is. The aggravating part is the people who don’t like the current version seem to have the same common line of thought: “The bonus didn’t seem worth it, so I didn’t get it”.

Wait, what? You’re complaining about something you have no first hand experience with? I’ll be the first to admit – when I first heard about the set bonus, I also thought it would suck. I got out my favorite stolen pen & my ratty notebook, and I did the math…yup, it seems it sucks. But that’s the problem with theory crafting – it’s all theory until applied.  So before blasting how awful it was, Derevka & I put our badges where our mouths were, & tried it out.

Holy Shit (Pun intended). Derevka acquired T10 before I did and wrote a post about singing its praises for holy here. In a nutshell, the increase in his healing output was far and away above any expectations. I, in my infinite procrastination, hadn’t gotten around to posting about the Disc applications, but my findings were similar – it was amazing. I can understand how many priests that take a casual approach to raiding and don’t tend to push content or heroic raiding might find it worthless – they don’t get much of an opportunity or a need for this.  But as a healer that downed LK 25 a few weeks ago, and has been pushing hard modes ever since, this set bonus is amazing and the numbers are in the logs.  I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gotten 3,4,5 even 6 procs of this in a row….and when your tank is taking 50K hits on heroic  Saurfang, the raid is taking massive damage on Heroic Princes, or even getting rocked on Normal Mode Lich King, you tend to appreciate that.

I continually see comments that all discs are good for are raid bubble spamming and are mediocre tank healers, and that’s so far from the truth it’s not even funny. I think a lot of that misconception comes from the damn recount meters & inability to understand how disc works – but that’s a post for next week. When you look at your WoL logs & see how much damage a disc priest mitigated in addition to the healing, you tend to change that line of thought.

Regardless, even “bubble spammers” benefit from this bonus, although not as much as tank healers. A raid healing disc priest relies on shielding the raid – but that is NOT all you do.  We utilize a ‘weaving’ technique – many ICC fights and ESPECIALLY hard mode ICC fights have intense raid damage. If you’re just bubbling, you’re not working to your full potential.  Use your flash as filler to top people off, dump your penance on someone who needs it (and they WILL need it) and spread your DA love around without simply relying on the shield glyph for that.

So why the hate towards the current set bonus? Well, as I mentioned, lack of understanding and first hand knowledge contributed to a lot of it. It’s also more simple to understand – flat 5% bonus SOUNDS better than a 20% chance at something, even though the math reveals otherwise – trying to understand how the current proc works without some basic mathematical knowledge &/or trying it out for ones self can confuse people. Another part that I can acknowledge is that it can be an a difficult  proc to use. I had to make a Power Auras code to make sure I noticed when this procced – otherwise I’m pretty sure I would miss it. I’m not sure I agree with the idea you need an external mod to fully utilize something – it’s a non issue to me, but to others, it could be a big issue and seem more trouble than it’s worth.  Another complaint I have is I wish it reset the GCD of the CoH/Penance after you apply the flash heal. It’s awkward and results in a lot of clipping & button mashing.

However, those issues are minor as a trade off for such an amazing bonus. It almost makes me wonder that if people had an easier time acquiring access to the bonus, and had a chance to use it themselves, would they change their mind? Maybe blizz should shitcan our lackluster 2 piece bonus for this rather than eliminate it all together?

Perhaps I wouldn’t be so depressed if the new bonus wasn’t so shitty.  Again, without getting into the math here (if you would like more info the formulas & how to use them, let me know) at current 25 man raid buffed spellpower levels this translates into a whopping 450  increase to our shields, on average. 450. Hey, maybe that’s worth something if end game was current 5 man heroics, but in ICC/TOGC, a trash mob’s fart is more than that.  With Aoe Damage that can approach 4 digit ticks and tanks getting hit for 30,40,50K a pop in 25 man heroics….it’s worthless. Make it more than 5% please.

The renew is slightly better HOWEVER – as disc, you are not using renew much. An occasional filler, but that’s about it. It’s slightly better for the renew holy spec, but again, let’s squash some misinformation that I see : Renew is not a staple of most raiding holy priests outside of a ‘renew’ spec, and definitely not of  disc priests. A renew spec also pales in comparison to a decent druid, and in most ICC raids, the ability  for a holy priest to let loose with massive amounts of healing in a fraction of the time that renews do is the selling point. Many progression raiders I know favor flash over renew as holy, even just for the selling point of a serendipity stack. So this also pales in comparison to the huge output a string of CoHs offered from our current set bonus.

It’s pretty apparent we feel that this is a huge nerf to our set bonus. It’s currently an amazing bonus, & the new one is extremely lackluster, boring, and no where near as beneficial. I really think that if many of the naysayers had tried it for themselves, they would think differently. I refused to try cauliflower as a kid – my mother would yell “How do you know you hate it if you haven’t tried it?” Saying “I just know” didn’t work well with her, and it doesn’t work well with me on most things either. I’ve since found out I really like cauliflower, but I’ll be damned if I admit that to her.

Why I think the T10 4 pc set Bonus Change Blows Goats is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Ever…

But, I think I might have prejudged the Priest Tier 10 4-piece bonus a little bit. Especially when you consider how RNG it is – but on the other hand COH is one of the most powerful spells in our arsenal. Hmm…

“Your Circle of Healing and Penance spells have a 20% chance to cause your next Flash Heal cast within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.”

At first glance my opinion was along the lines of, “So What? COH is only a 6 second cooldown, and I have to cast a Flash Heal in there to reset the cooldown anyway – I don’t want to give up 2pc T9 for something so RNG on an already short CD ability! ” And I think many priests out there would agree with me…

In theory, this all makes logical sense. Why would I trade off a 20% buff to a spell that is doing incredible amounts of healing for a chance to reset a CD when I cast a different spell?

In practice, however, I’ve found that trading the 2pc T9 & T10 for 4pc T10 has been well worth the trade off, especially as holy. With my playstyle and my role in my raids, having the ability to quickly (and in many cases instantly) reset a smart AOE instant heal has proven to be incredibly valuable.

Points To Consider:

20% buff on POM is Mostly Overheal

I noticed, after looking more closely at my logs, that on many of the fights in ICC that constant POM bouncing was doing some great healing; however a good chunk of it was overheal. Losing a 20% T9 bonus to it would gimp the total healing it was doing, but not enough to really break the overheal.

Tier 10 4-Piece Has No Cooldown

This surprised me greatly: Every COH/Penance you cast you have a 20% chance of triggering the set bonus with no cooldown. This means, as Holy, I can cast COH and then immediately cash Flash Heal (and in most raids, I likely have a Surge of Light proc ready) to immediately cast COH again. Breaking it down even further: I just healed 13 targets in only 3 GCDs. My “longest chain” was COH FH COH FH COH FH COH during Phase 3 Putricide – while it is RNG, it certainly pumped out some massive healing.

Now, the trick of maximizing this set bonus is to not miss a chance to reset it. I use a Power Aura’s Notification when I proc the buff “Flash Heal!“. This lets me know I have 6 seconds to reset my COH early. Here is the import code for my Power Aura for this ability. (remember, you may need to edit this to work best for you and your existing Power Auras)

Version:st3.0.0E; gcd:bofalse; b:nu1; anim1:nu6; g:nu1; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Spell_Holy_BorrowedTime; size:nu0.31999999284744; torsion:nu1; r:nu1; y:nu76; x:nu0; customname:st; groupany:botrue; isAlive:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:bofalse; raid:bofalse; texture:nu1; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:st; symetrie:nu0; owntex:botrue; isResting:bofalse; duration:nu0; mine:bofalse; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1.7000000476837; anim2:nu0; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; InactiveDueToState:botrue; threshold:nu50; exact:bofalse; textaura:bofalse; sound:nu6; wowtex:bofalse; groupOrSelf:bofalse; customsound:st; combat:nu0; id:nu12; inParty:nu0; HideRequest:bofalse; Active:bofalse; aurastextfont:nu1; buffname:stFlash Heal!; inRaid:nu0; tooltipCheck:st; customtex:bofalse; stance:nu10; spec2:botrue; isSecondary:bofalse; thresholdinvert:bofalse; spec1:botrue; Debug:bofalse; beginSpin:bofalse; Showing:bofalse; UseOldAnimations:bofalse; begin:nu0; off:bofalse; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:bofalse; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; finish:nu1

Now, let me be clear: I am not suggesting breaking 2pc T9 for 3pc T10 – even if it is a “stat” upgrade. I suggest only breaking it for 4pc T10- and wear 2pc T10 and T9. I know I personally hate looking like I don’t match… I know the Alliance version of T9 did not match base T10 very well at all!  It could be worse, we could be wearing gear that from another Troll Instance! *shudder*

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4 Piece Tier 10 – A Pleasant Surprise is a post from: Tales of a Priest

There’s no denying that both leveling and gear acquisition has become drastically easier over the years. It’s become the norm for most players to have one or many alts – hell, I’ve got 6 80s myself (4 of them healers *flex*) . With BoA gear and the RaF program, I have friends that swore they would never play an alt, much less a healer, coming up to us the second they hit 80 on their priest and asking what they should do now. Really, the answer to that question can be simple or complicated, but who likes simple? NOT ME!!! So I’ll try to lay out the basics, and try to provide some guidelines based on what I’ve learned over the years.

Remember– there’s a million different ways to answer these questions based on gear, raid make up, raid content and playing ability, but I’m writing this for the newbies so I’m trying to keep it simple. I’m also staying away from in depth mechanics explanations right now – I’ll expand on things like how mana regeneration works in a future blog; again, keeping it simple. So, first thing’s first:

1) PICK A SPEC:

Discipline or holy? Discipline is a very strong single target healer that uses mitigation (shields) in conjunction with healing. Holy is a very strong AOE raid healer, capable of hitting many players at once with large amounts of healing (please note that both specs can do both roles, but we’re keeping it simple here). Evaluate what you will be doing: Do you plan on doing alt raids with your guild? Will you be mainly sticking to 5 mans? I’m a big fan of Disc in 5 mans – you have strong, quick single target heals, the ability to shield your group, and even some good group healing, using a shield to proc your borrowed time and pop off a fast Prayer of Healing.

A good starter 5 man Disc build would look something like this:  Most of your Disc staples are taken, as well as Focused Will to compensate for the low crit levels of a recent 80 – it’s up to you it take it or not later as your gear improves. If you won’t be spending much time in raids &/or you choose to utilize Gheal (something I personally don’t support as a raiding disc without huge haste levels) replace the 5 points in Spell Warding for Divine Fury. Keep your target shielded (add the ‘weakened soul” debuff to your raid frames), and don’t forget about your Prayer of Mending (PoM) – it’s a powerful spell for both disc and holy, and you should use it every time it’s off cooldown! You also want to make sure you are maximizing your Divine Aegis time on your target(s) – a huge benefit of a disc priest. If you plan on attempting raids, I recommend putting those 2 points in Improved Healing and adjusting to this raiding spec.

Now if you want to heal as holy, you have many more options, as this is much more customizable. If you still will be focusing on 5 man groups or 10 man regular runs, I suggest “the Gheal spec”. Now if you’re reading this, you know how Derevka and I feel about Gheal as holy – we think it’s silly. But the content we’re doing is vastly different than what the recent 80 will be doing, so it has its uses here. Make sure you’re keeping a full stack of Serendipity up at all times with Flash or Binding heal so you can quickly rip off that gheal. However, if you plan on focusing more on 25 man runs, I suggest focusing on a pure aoe raid healing role using as spec such as this or this – it’s where holy shines! Again, keep a full stack of Serendipity up at all times to let those Prayer of Healings fly. Why the one point in Empowered renew? That sucks, it doesn’t heal for much, right? Right – but what is DOES do is give you a cheap and fast chance to proc your holy concentration, and that’s GOOD SHIT.

You’ll notice that I recommend Healing Focus and Spell Warding for both specs when hitting 10/25 man raids, especially if you plan on attempting hardmodes. With the amount of AoE magic damage that is prominent in Ulduar and up, these spells become invaluable. Inspiration is another talent you should NEVER over look as either spec as well.

Another thing people always ask about is Desperate Prayer: Should they take it? That’s your call. It’s a great little “Oh Shit” button, and could come in handy as you learn the fine art of self targeting and healing in general. Personally, I’ve found that if I’m in a situation where I won’t have time for quick shield or Binding Heal, a warlock cookie works just as well. The same thing goes for Inner Focus – if you feel you need it, work it in, but it is by no means a ‘must have’.

And of course we have to talk about Lightwell. While they have made slight improvements, and I do see some priests sing it’s praises, to us, it’s still garbage. The whole drawback is you have to CLICK IT to utilize it. And training DPS players to pay attention to their health, stop what they’re doing, and click a lightwell is about as easy as teaching a hamster to fetch you a beer. Now in some raids, you can probably get them to do that…eventually. But as you progress into hard modes, where many fights can be a tight DPS race &/or have lots of movement, stopping to click an object just isn’t an option. Try it out and see if you can find a place for it, but if you ask why we don’t take it, that’s why.

2) WHAT GEMS DO I USE?:

Well, here’s where you have to use that head of yours and do a little thinking. The short answer? Gem for Spell Power and Intellect. The long answer? It’s a balancing act. First, your meta gem: +21 intellect & chance to restore mana for both disc and holy – the Spell power/2% int is only better at EXTREMELY high levels of intellect. Our fellow healer Etherjammer has a great breakdown on meta gems over at Duct Tape and a Prayer for a more in depth explanation.

Red – Spellpower

Yellow: Intellect,   Spellpower/Intellect,  Spellpower/Haste, Spell Power/Crit

Blue – Spirit/intellect, Spellpower/Spirit

Unfortunately, there really is no definitive answer as to how to gem. You need to evaluate your stats and socket bonuses as a whole, and guide your gems & gear in that direction. Your first goal should be to reach an ideal crit level (33-35%) and acquire a regen & intellect level you are comfortable with based on the content you will be doing. After that, it’s up to you. I personally favor stacking SP/Crit for disc (I weave my shields to utilize Borrowed Time – my haste levels from gear alone have me at adequate haste), and Spellpower/Haste for holy.

Another thing to note is to evaluate your socket bonuses. I tend to not bother with them unless I feel they are worth it. For example, when playing Disc, I could care less about +4 spirit, but +7 SP might be worth it. Evaluate your stats as a whole, make sure you’re not giving up more than you could gain with the socket bonus, and don’t get tunnel vision on one piece of gear.

3) WHAT GLYPHS DO I USE?:

Disc: (Major): Glyph of Penance, Glyph of Flash Heal, Glyph of Power Word: Shield

Holy: (Major): Glyph of Circle of Healing, Glyph of Prayer of Healing. The third one is up to you, so feel free to experiment. Just starting out, you may wish to use the Flash Heal glyph instead of Circle of healing, since it doesn’t do you much good in 5 mans. Glyph of Guardian Spirit is a great glyph that I use on a regular basis during raids.

Minor Glyphs: These are up to you. Personally, I recommend Glyph of Fortitude – it comes in handy when someone is combat rezzed, anhks or uses a soulstone during an encounter, and you can rebuff them without a huge mana loss. I take Glyph of Levitate purely as a matter of personal convenience, and Glyph of shadowfiend in case my stupid little friend dies – which in all fairness, doesn’t happen as much as it use to.

4) WHAT GEAR SHOULD I GET AND HOW?

I know the dilemma: How do you get the gear you need for heroics and raids, when the people running the heroics and raids want you to have the gear? Well, people are fucking stupid & you can’t fix that since Darwin’s Theory of Evolution isn’t applied to PuG groups, but there are few things you can do. First, get the Ulduar boots (Savior Slippers or Spellslinger Slippers)  & belt (Cord of the White Dawn) and the ToTC Chest (Royal Moonshroud Robe or Merlin’s Robe) & Bracers (Bejeweled Wizard Bracers or Royal Moonshroud Bracers)  crafted. Also, when you hit 70, do the random dungeon daily, as you are rewarded with 2 triumph badges for completing it – depending on how fast you level, you should have enough for at least one piece of 232 level gear as you hit 80. Also, the Boots (Sandals of Consecration) and Pants (Lightweave Leggings or Leggings of Woven Death)  from the ICC recipes are a top notch option, but be prepared to pay out the ass at this time – rape your alts of frost badges for saronite, and start collecting mats on your way to 80 if gold is tight. If you need a cloak, the Wispcloak is a good choice to start with as well.

If you’ve got the gold to spare (or a scribe and a lot of time), the Darkmoon Card:Greatness is a excellent option for trinkets – it will last you quite some time. The Darkmoon Card: Illusion is also a good, and cheaper option. Je’Tze’s Bell is another good one. If you’re an alchemist you can craft an Mercurial Alchemist Stone or a Sapphire Owl if you’re a Jewelcrafter.

Also, start with some of the “Upper Tier” five man regular dungeons: Trial of the Champion (ilevel 200 gear), Pit of Saron, Forge of Souls, & Halls of Reflection (ilevel 219) – they drop some excellent gear and allow you to get a good feeling on how to heal with a bit of a challenge, but still allow some wiggle room for learning.  After that, hit the random heroics to start collecting badges. Start looking to join any weekly raid quest groups you see – it’s usually lower tier content and most players outgear it. It will be a quick 5x Triumph and Frost badges and maybe you can snag an upgrade. Also, Ony & VoA 25 groups are fairly forgiving, considering you can get ilevel 245  gear from them.

5) WHAT ADDONS SHOULD I USE?

We’ve done many, many blogs on addons that we use as raiding priests, including how to configure them, so I won’t go into much detail on how to use these; I’ll simply state some of the mods I use that are more specific to priest & raid healing – I won’t get into general raid mods.

- GRID : I enjoy the extreme customization of this mod, as well as the ability to bolster its functionality with addons such as GridStatusHots & GridStatusRaidDebuffs. I actually use it for all my healers, and even as my raid frames on DPS and tanks characters. Some people have mentioned they prefer Healbot, but I can’t really comment on that – I tried it at 70 and hated it. Most raiders I know seem to favor GRID, but experiment and find Raid Frames you are comfortable with. Look for a future post in AddOn Corner about Grid.

- Clique: an invaluable mod for assigning hotkeys. Extremely easy to use & set up. Derevka talked about it in a previous blog.

- POM Tracker – Tracks who your PoM has jumped to, and how many charges are left. The developer has abandoned the project, and I’m not sure if someone is picking it up, but for the time being, it is fully functional for 3.3. Just keep in mind that you may have to find a similar mod soon if no one takes it over. Look for a future blog on how to use a PoM Tracker mod like this soon.

-Guardian Spirited – nifty little add on that announces cooldowns, their consumption, ect. We also have a previous blog entry about this and how to use it.

- Quartz – Another mod that has uses beyond priests. It’s a casting bar addon that allows you to see casts, global cooldowns, buffs, debuffs ect of your target, focus target and more as duration bars. A huge plus is it displays latency and the duration of the lag.

- Peggle: Shit, Didn’t mean to put that there. Hope my Raid Leader doesn’t read this.

- PowerAuras – Yet another mod that should be used by raiders everywhere. Extremely helpful in preventing “healer tunnel vision”. I like to use it so show my Holy concentration and Surge of Light procs, among other things. Again, see our previous blog entry on how to use it – this one’s in video format, which is great for people like me that hate being bothered with words & reading. Wurds R Dum.

5) TO SUM IT ALL UP ……

Playing a priest is an enjoyable experience, and in my personal opinion, one of the more diverse and complicated healers. We have so many tools at our disposal, and so many ways to react to situations that no guide can even begin to teach you how to play a priest. Healing is different from DPS – we don’t have rotations – healers have to be able to predict and react quickly using the best spells for any given situation, and that’s something you’ll only learn from experience.

We could probably write an entire book on specs, builds, glyphs & gemming options for specific encounters and raid/party makeups, but all that would do is leave a new player very, very confused. This post was meant as a starting point to get you thinking – the only way to truly learn is to get out there and heal shit. You’re going to make mistakes, & you’ll probably wipe a group or raid – everyone’s done it, and if they say they haven’t, they’re lying. The key is to learn from your mistakes and build from them. Learn the class. Experiment with your talents and gear – there are many ways to do things, and I ALWAYS advocate understanding why you spec and gear the way you do – copying someone’s spec without truly understanding it might actually hurt you in the long run, as the content and raid makeups they do can be vastly different from yours. When you understand WHY you do something, you can adjust and plan for any situation – and THAT is what makes the difference between a good healer, and a great healer.

Good luck! If you have any questions, feel free to ask me via Twitter, Gchat or AIM – I’m always looking for excuses to avoid work.

Ding! I’m 80, Now What? is a post from: Tales of a Priest

In Naxxramas and Ulduar we had Slot Specific Tokens. For example, Gauntlets of the Lost Conqueror would yield Tier Gloves for Pally/Priest/Lock. Then came Trial of the Crusader, where we had a whole new system: Universal Tier Tokens – Trophy of the Crusade.(Almost reminiscent of original Naxx40′s system) With TOC, you didn’t NEED a Trophy to get your Tier gear. You could buy an an iLvl 232 Tier item for a given amount of badges, you could turn in badges and a Trophy of the Crusade for iLvl 245, or alternatively you could turn in a “Grand Regalia” token.

As you upgraded your Tier 9 gear from 232 to 245 to 258, the badges you used were somewhat ‘lost’ on the way — you didn’t need the prior version to upgrade; you could go straight to T9 iLvl 258. However, TOC’s system could wreak havoc on DKP Economies with Universal Tokens often favoring certain classes that had minimal gear competition on non Tier items. (Plate Spellpower gear, for one example)

Now, enter Icecrown and its Tier 10 system. To get a Tier item you first must purchase the base item with Emblems of Frost. This gives you the iLvl 251 version of the item. Then, you upgrade that item by turning the item in along with Grouped Token (Pally/Priest/Lock) to upgrade to the iLvl 264, and again to iLvl 277.

This system impacts many aspects of the game: it requires you to first purchase the iLvl 251 version (thus burning Emblems of Frost) and slowly work your way up. In TOC I skipped iLvl 232 and started at 245 since my guild did well in TOGC 25 and 10; Trophies became available quickly. People spent their first cache of Badges on non-Tier items, picking up Rings and Trinkets. In Icecrown, I think you’ll see people waiting to get Cloaks and Trinkets (unless they are in desperate need for that upgrade), and holding out for T10 shoulders first. (60 Emblems of Frost).

Of course, this new upgrading system plays an interesting role on the DKP economics of the Token drops. In your first few weeks, you’ll probably see Token drops going fairly cheap since people will only be able to upgrade once they have amassed enough Emblems first, then you’ll see the prices go back up as more and more raiders have enough Emblems to purchase and upgrade. The demand for the upgrade (people with the ability to upgrade since they already have their 251 item) increases; but the supply stays fairly static. (Only Saurfang drops them— that is until the next wing opens)

As I mentioned earlier, initially I didn’t like this new Tier System– but now, I think that it’s quite brilliant. It balances Casual Players and Hardcore Raiders well. One of the biggest complaints casuals voiced was that they had very little access to Tier gear. Casual players didn’t get to walk around and utilize the Set Bonuses that Tier Gear offered. To respond to that problem, Blizzard enabled Tier items to be attained solely with badges with the launch of TOC. While only the hardcore raiders were able to attain the highest iLvl version of these Tier Sets, they didn’t provide any visual distinction – there was no immediate visual recognition that their higher iLvl item was more difficult to attain. As catty as that may seem, many Hardcores struggled without that distinction. With T10, each increasing iLvl has the same look, but a different color scheme. For example, the Priest Crimson Acolyte set starts Green, then upgrades to Purple, and finally upgrades and caps at White. This methodology not only does this help distinguish raiders who get access to the ‘upgraded’ versions, but also allows the less hardcore players access to T10 and the set bonuses provided.

I really look forward to seeing this new system in action. Granted, I still don’t like the popped collar priests have to wear. Stay tuned! Maybe you’ll see Ava and I cameo on an episode of the Jersey Shore on MTV! What do you think about the new Tier System? Annoyed by the badge requirements? Like the fact that you get ‘use’ out of your old gear to upgrade?

The New T10 System- More Than Popped Collars is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Orange Loot! Not purple epics… Orange Legendary!

Now that we know through many sources that Val’anyr is going to be a Legendary Healer Mace, many guilds need to start thinking about how to distribute this mace.

When deciding if you are going to use a /random 100, lifetime DKP totals, pure DKP, or loot council, here are some considerations your guild should weigh while making the decision.

General considerations –

1. Attendance – Not only because Val’anyr is a legendary item, so you want a person who will be using it often, but also due to the fact that it requires 30 Fragments of Val’anyr. What you don’t want is the person who is getting it to be missing Fragments because they missed a bunch of raids, so you then have 2-3 people with 10 Fragments each, which is a major waste.

2. Flight Risk – You don’t want the person who gets the mace to be a major flight risk and take all your guild’s hard work off server or to a competing guild.
3. Skill - this is a tough one, and can have some political issues when evaluating. You generally want the skill of the player to be reflected in the use. Don’t assign the mace to your highest attending person, especially if they aren’t a very strong player. Attendance is greater than skill.

Throughput Considerations -

Throughput is a bit tricky to weigh into this decision. As it can be very difficult to gauge. Simply put Val’anyr is a legendary HEALER mace, meaning that the mace likely will have high stats, spellpower, not to mention the proc. Putting the proc to the wayside, it will likely be a best in slot Healer Mace… period. (As a legendary should be)

The equip effect of Val’anyr gives a 10% proc chance to apply a buff to yourself, that allows you to heal and create shields. Very much like the Disc Priest Divine Aegis.

The equip effect clearly states: “Your healing spells have a chance to cause Blessing of Ancient Kings for 15 seconds allowing your heals to shield the target absorbing damage equal to 15% of the amount healed.” This means the proc, in all likelihood, will be triggered by direct heals AND heal over time spells.

The question that remains is: is there a specific class that dramatically benefits over another?

Dramatically? No. However the synergies that exist with some classes/specs do exist. Pallies are traditionally a Main Tank healer, and if they can be aware of the Proc can provide good shielding by chaining big heals and high HPS during the proc. Shamans and Druids have Swiftmend or Riptide to have a surge of healing coming in during the 15 second buff as well as decent direct heal options to help maximize the shield created. And priests, especially Disc have naturally spec’d talents and spells that operate similarly such as PW:Shield, Aegis, and a fast big heal (Penance or a Serendipitous GHeal).

Throughput considerations, ultimately, come back to the player not the class. Will the PLAYER be able to respond to the proc? Will that druid be able to react to the proc and use Swiftmend and get a big sheild up. Will that pally be able to squeeze in that Holy Shock with 1 second left on the buff and get a little bit more healing in? Will that Priest chain a PW: Shield on the target? Will the shaman stop casting Chain Heal and move to Direct Heals?

Bring the player – not the class.

At the end of the day your guild will need to decide who will get your guild’s first Val’anyr. It is not an easy question to answer, but with some though, preparation, and hopefully not too many upset raiders… your guild will have a good augmentation to your healing team. Don’t forget, loot is just loot, but your healing teams strength should be the ultimate goal here.

GOOD LUCK!

Related Posts
3.1 Specs – What Are You Doing?
My Musings On Val’anyr
PTR Trinkets, Trinkets, and More Trinkets!!

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Val’anyr: Loot Assignment Woes is a post from: Tales of a Priest