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 healing done to them by 10% for 8 sec. ”

While Disc only gains a greater amount of targets hit with the heal and buff when compared to the 4.2 Hymn, this gain is much more substantial for Holy Priests. The increased impact is due to their ability to cast it multiple times in a standard encounter as well as 100% increased healing if a Holy priest is specced into Heavenly Voice. Additionally Holy gains increased throughput from Chakra: Sanctuary, and Holy’s Mastery being a guaranteed application. (Sidenote: the icon for Heavenly Voice has a rather ironic likeness to Rebecca Black— HA)

Hymns and Haste

Now, we aren’t talking up upping the tempo in a song here, nor are we talking about making some weird Hymn of Hope dubstep. (/waves glowsticks) We’re talking about the impact that Haste has on both Hymn of Hope and Divine Hymn.

By now we all should be familiar with how haste affects spells with HOTs/DOTs, but its important to understand that it also affects Channeled spells. Some spells (ie. Mind flay and Penance) cannot gain additional ticks of themselves, but can reduce the overall channel time. How do we know how much haste affects the total number of ticks? Well… here’s the formula:

ROUND (Base Spell Duration / ( Base Tick Time / (1 + Haste %)))

That said, the breakpoints for these spells are:

12.5% (5th tick)
37.5% (6th tick)
62.5% (7th tick)
87.5% (8th tick)

Woah there buddy… now before you go chasing these breakpoints, I am displaying these more on an academic level. Haste, as a general rule, is a great way to increase your output based on the fact that you’ll be doing things faster. (Faster cast times, channels, GCDs, etc).

That said, any haste beyond any of these breakpoints will simply shorten the channel time but retain the amount of any additional ticks. For example, if you had 37.4% haste, you would have only 5 ticks (Meeting the 12.5% breakpoint but not the 37.5%) however your channel will be substantially faster (actually as fast as possible without gaining an actual tick).   While having exactly 12.5% haste would keep you at the longest possible channel(8 sec), and still 5 ticks of the Hymn. The overall healing that the spell did is the same, but the HPS is higher for the shorter channel (as you are getting the same amount of healing out in a shorter period of time)— more importantly, sorter cast times free you up to move or begin casting a new spell sooner.

How should you leverage haste when you are channeling your Hymns? The easy answer is for Discipline: always cast hymns when you have Borrowed Time.  That is immediately a free 14% haste included in your channel.  Holy Priests, since they do not have a on demand Haste ability, can leverage either Haste Trinkets or Heroism/Bloodlust should they line up to be used at an appropriate time. Protip: Your tick gains and haste calculations are made at the START of the channel. So if you start a Hymn with 1 sec left on Hero/Lust, your channel is cast under those higher haste assumptions. 

To provide an example, on the PTR I have 18.34% Haste, unbuffed. As Disc I can leverage Borrowed Time and cast a Hymn with 34.90% Haste (Remember: Haste gains are multiplicative, so you just don’t add haste together). As Holy, I won’t have access to Borrowed Time, however, I could use Shard of Woe (despite its regen nerf in 4.3) and cast with 33.75% haste.  (For those curious:  Shard, Borrowed Time, and Power Infusion I landed at 82.97%. )

It should be noted, however, that the tooltips for both Divine Hymn and Hymn of Hope both state “Maximum Targets”. (4.3 PTR Divine Hymn: 20; and Hymn of Hope: 12). For several patches now, this bug has simply allowed for additional ticks to be gained. If it is ever “corrected” (a la the HW: Sanctuary 6+ targets “bug”); we should still continue to value Haste for these Hymns if anything for a decreased channel duration. (bug confirmation)

Disparity Between 10-Man and 25-Man

Purely based on the total number of targets available, a single Hymn (Hope or Divine) will have different results in 10 and 25. Taking range out of the discussion, a 10 man raid will be much more likely to “double hit” (or Triple) a single target with a Divine or Hope tick… while a 25-Man raid might have more “equitable distribution” of each tick. Further affecting our hymns, is the fact that each hymn provides a lingering buff, that makes subsequent ticks even better– and in turn making the impact of raid size disparity difficult to really gauge

Leveraging Our Hymns

How and when should we be using Hymn? Say it with me (again) know the fight. The more you know the boss encounter, the better you can plan and time your cooldowns.  This is particularly important for Holy Priests, as they can leverage their shortened cooldowns to get multiple hymns cast in a single fight. For example, in the Dragon Soul fight against Zon’ozz, a Holy Priest can time their Hymn to be available for every other round of Black Blood of Go’rath. (Depending how many ‘bounces’ you do of the shadow orb).

Of course, we should also use Divine Hymn as a “OH CRAP!” panic button when the raid takes a sudden surge in damage. (Just remember, this may adjust your cooldown rotation and your raids should be prepared to handle that)

Hymn of Hope is always a little tricky, since it can be a 8 second (non-hasted) period of pure altruism! The casting priest is not guaranteed a regen application. On Heroic Ragnaros, I have trained (or attempted to!) our Warlocks to Lifetap before I cast HoH; this helps in getting the mana to the folks that really need it. (A bit of my soul dies when I see my HoH buff sitting on a Prot Pally on Grid)

8 Second Channels are a long time to be casting a single spell… get the most out of it, and you’ll be really pushing your output to new levels.

4.3 Hymns, Leverage, and Haste is a post from: Tales of a Priest

QQQQQQQQQQ

I bet that’s what you were expecting to read when you came here. Your blood is already pumping, preparing to blast us for for subscribing to the “only 25 man raiders should get exclusive loot” school, and and tell us to tuck our pathetic virtual e-peens away and quit the game.

Man, are you going to be disappointed when you read this. So take a deep breath and let me explain what us “elitist pricks” have to say about all this.

When the raid changes for Cataclysm were announced today, I saw twitter go apeshit. I saw people in all walks of guilds from the most casual to the spreadsheet fanatics go at each others’ throats. Casual scrub this, Entitled elitist that..it was kinda disgusting. I tried to voice my opinion, but expressing your thoughts in 140 characters when people are chomping at the bit for a fight was a lesson in futility.

First off, let me start off by saying I am REALLY tired of the elitist label and how raiders are accused of having some false sense of entitlement. That’s as much nonsense as the unemployed basement dwelling virgin stereotype, and it’s just as silly as saying casual players or ten man guilds are all bad and lazy. Are there exceptions to all those? Sure. But they’re simply exceptions – not the norm.  When these changes occur, I watch in fascination – it instantly becomes a casual (aka scrub) vs an elitist (aka no life loser) debate. But have you ever looked closely at the people making these accusations? The self proclaimed elitists? They’re usually just better geared morons that haven’t managed to do anything noteworthy. They’re the ones insisting to see your gearscore, insulting you when it doesn’t hold up to theirs. They’re the ones that measure their worth in pixels. And THEY’RE the ones that don’t want you to have what they have.

It’s very rare when 10/25 man progression raiders act like that. You don’t see them asking for your gearscore. They certainly wouldn’t write those handy boss & class guides, or Fraps & Ustream fights for everyone to view if they felt this way. They certainly wouldn’t take time to help you with your questions and run sites like EJ or Tankspot or PlusHeal. If you look, you’ll be very hard pressed to find any raider that said people should not have access to raids nor gear. The complaint you’ll hear about this change from raiders, 10 and 25 man alike, is the fear that challenging fights will be going the way of the dodo.

If you remember a few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the Cata priest changes. If you recall, I summed it up as “we have no idea how this will work, so don’t worry your pretty little head about it”. It applies here as well. Let’s take a little trip down the tubes of time, shall we?

EXCELLENT!!!!!!

Vanilla, the raid size reduction is announced. Death and Taxed proclaim raiding is dead, and thus the game.

Burning Crusade, the changes to buffs and spell/healing power are announced. We were advised to say goodbye to our friends, raiding was finished.

Then we had the 10 & 25 man raid announcements. Contrary to popular belief, Raiding went on, & Hell is still pretty fucking hot.

See a trend? Maybe – just MAYBE – this change won’t be the end of raiding. You want to know what this Elitist prick thinks? I think this change could rock. Yes, you heard me right. Do I have concerns? Yup. But’s look at the possible positives:

1) No need to run both 10 & 25 for gear. I am sick of being a 25 man raider, and having to raid 10 mans on my offnights. I signed up to raid 4 nights a week, and having to raid 5-6 because , for some bizarre reason, some gear I need comes out of tens. With the gear being the same, I no longer have to do that. And ten man guilds don’t have to put up with atrocious PuGs to get 25 man loots. Yes, many guilds will adopt multiple “mains” like they do now to get around limited attempts, but so what? That’s how they enjoy the game, so what’s it those of us that don’t want to do that?

2) Less Burnout Due to Shared Lockouts. This kind of ties in to point #1 – having to raid in both ten & 25 man raids, being visually the same damn thing, is both boring and time consuming. I’ll be more enthusiastic about raiding again because I won’t have to give up almost all my free time to do it. I do see a downside however- it will eliminate a person from running one with their guild, and then a separate size with friends. But having an alt or 4 is pretty much the norm now, so maybe that won’t be a big deal.

3) Difficulty changes may go UP: This is the main concern of raiders I see misinterpreted.  Many, myself included, are afraid the difficulty of raids will be scaled down to follow the current “Everyone Gets a Trophy” mantra. But when I started thinking about it, I came to a different conclusion: We all might get challenged again! Think about it:. Currently, regular ten & 25 mans are lacking challenge – they are nothing a group of competent people find difficult. Right now, most of the difficulty comes from the poor people that have to drag mouth breathers along. What if hand holding wasn’t possible? What if the raids are tuned UP, forcing people to understand their gear, their specs and choices? It certainly makes sense, doesn’t it? Gear stats are being simplified, buffs are obtainable by multiple classes – it certainly would play into the “Bring the player, not the class” theory that Blizzard has been pushing. Yes, the 0/0/71 Death knight, the Resto Shaman gemmed for Spirit, & the hunter in spell power gear will be shit out of luck, but why is that a bad thing? Isn’t that what we’ve been asking for? Reward for effort and ability?

4) Shorter raids. I have mixed feelings on this. I actually enjoy a long epic raid. I loved Ulduar & ICC. They were broken up in wings so you could divide your time and they have an immersion you can’t get from short raids like Eye of Eternity or ToTC. Depending on the challenge level, many guilds could be out of things to do once they’re on farm. I don’t think you should have to resort to alts to keep yourself amused. Without knowing more, there’s not much I can say. It certainly makes things easier on guilds that only raid 3 hours or so a night, so that’s good. Maybe I’ll actually get my fat ass to the gym…..nah.

Jesus Says "These changes could kick ASS!"

I do have some concerns, of course: How the HELL do you tune 10 and 25 mans to have the same difficulty? I’m not getting into 25 s are more difficult than 10s here, so let’s not turn it into that. My point is I can’t even imagine how to tune it so both maintain the SAME difficulty to justify the same gear. Is it possible? If it is, this will be an amazing change. I just hope they can pull it off.

So why raid 25s if the gear is equal? Believe it or not, some people DO enjoy raiding with the people in their 25 man guilds. I see so many people say they won’t join 25 man guilds because they don’t want to put up with 24 other idiots just for loot, and it makes me sad. In these times of 3 day server transfers, and faction changes, there is NO excuse not to find a guild you enjoy. That also goes for 25 man players who want to raid ten mans – now there is no reason not to find a guild you’re comfortable with. I think, coupled with the upcoming guild “achievements”, might actually once again put an emphasis on guild camaraderie & loyalty, since there’s no need to settle for a guild you don’t like to get gear. When you enjoy the people you play with, you realize why so many raiders actually do it.

25 man guilds are not better than 10 man guilds, and 10 man guilds are not better than 25 – I’ve seen the elitism from both. Both, for the most part, are looking for a challenge because that’s what we find fun. We raid for a challenge and tackling those challenges with people we enjoy spending our free time with. If these changes play out the way I’m hoping, both guild sizes will get what they’ve always wanted – a challenge and rewards that match it. Maybe then we’ll see the end of these False Entitlement Casuals vs Selfish Elitist arguments & shit slinging that goes along with it, & Billy Baddie will have to learn to play and stop asking “WUTS UR GS?”

We all want the same thing, guys. Let’s just all try to listen, keep an open mind, & see how this plays out.

(PS we’re recruiting – look at the column on the right and come help us kill Heroic LK25)

Thoughts on Cata Raid changes from an “Entitled Elitist” is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Ava did a great post last week recapping the Priest preview for Cataclysm – I agree with most of what she said. While, personally, I hate the current design of Leap of Faith. I sincerely hope the current incarnation isn’t implemented as described – where’s the throughput? Threat dump? Healing Bonus? Anything? It needs just a little SOMETHING else to it. Or the fact that the level 85 spells are supposed to be our ‘shiny new toy’… I don’t want to get too distracted by it. Aaaaanyway…

One of the more interesting changes is the concept of Chakras. I really have mixed emotions about this proposed ability. One one hand I can see the whole ‘Wow! It’ll be great to be able to hit our stride and then be better at what we are focused on doing at that point in time!” but then on the other hand, I keep noticing holes or concerns I have with the ability.

The idea behind the Holy “cast three in a row” talent (it’s called “Chakra”) is that we’ve always positioned Holy as a versatile healer. This talent lets you shift into different modes. If you need to be a tank healer, cast three single target heals and your single-target healing is now better. Cast three area heals, and you can be a temporarily specialized group healer. We’re going to try to play this mechanic up with a cool UI to try to get that “I’m almost in the zone” feel. We’ll let it apply to as many types of spells as we can, perhaps even Smite for those times when nobody’s taking damage.

Ok, buffing spells by casting spells. Sounds interesting – sounds possibly exciting. (and I better looking freakin fantastic when I trigger this ability – WTB Valkyr form!)

But wait… didn’t Blue also say that they didn’t want healing to feel spammy, and that not stopping casting heals isn’t what they want the healer experience to be? They did. Doesn’t that seem slightly counter to what Chakra is about?

Chakra sounds like it is going to reward healers for casting the same spell in a row (three times) to then buff that same spell (or type of spell) that is subsequently cast. Lets put this theory in practice: You cast Prayer of Healing… 3 times in a row, to then buff your fourth (and fifth, and sixth…) Prayer of Healing after that. First of all, even on heavy Aura damage fights in Heroic ICC25 you don’t do that… not to mention in the new world that is Cataclysm where they seem to not want healers to spam or chain cast the same spell. It just seems slightly counter intuitive to the new mana mindset that is Cataclysm.

Some people feel it would be better similar to the Grace talent in the Discipline tree. Letting it build up when you are focused on a certain task (or on a certain tank). But, what happens if I cast two POH’s then cast 2 renews… am I building up POH Chakras or Renew Chakras? Just like Grace, if you switch quickly to heal the offtank, your original Grace stacks are gone.

Speculation is speculative!

Now, I am not saying I dislike Chakra. I actually really do like the concept and I will reserve my judgement until I get a chance to see it in action. (Pssst, Blizzard…. Beta key! Over here!!!). The ability to be better at the task that I need to do is always good. I just have some reservations mainly regarding the theory behind it… and I am hoping we don’t become the whole “Jack of All Trades Master of None” healer without being in an appropriate Chakra mode; and the spam to trigger it seems awkward given Blizzard’s new opinion of healer mana and spam casting.

The UI interface sounds interesting… for some reason I am seeing this meter that tilts towards Hots/AOE/Direct heals based on what you’ve already cast. Hopefully Blizzard pulls through and executes well on this. I am betting the Chakra UI interface is similar to the Eclipse interface that they hinted at for Boomkins. I am hoping Chakra isn’t overly complex where just having it being a cooldown ability. (Ie. Chakra is a buff that is consumed by your next spell, and based on the consuming spell does X, Y, or Z – consume it with renew to buff hots, consume with POH/COH to buff AOE heals, or Consume it with GHeal to buff direct healing spells).

At the end of the day, this sounds like a really interesting ability — and if executed properly will be a great tool in our arsenal! Time will tell, and early beta information is ALWAYS subject to change… and the promises of a Ghostcrawler pony.

Chakra Khan or Chakra Can’t? is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Every expansion, one can assume there will be class mechanic changes, especially when new content & levels are being added. It would be a rather boring expansion if NOTHING about our classes changed, don’t you think? And LOTS is being changed – stats are being ‘simplified’ & how we receive benefits from them are being changed, we’re getting 5 more levels and talent points and new toys & spells to play with.

But like all the other class announcements, anything we see or read is PURE SPECULATION. We can’t possibly know how these things will work, or the situations they will work in. Not a single one of us has played with it.  I’ve seen how blizzard was going to “ruin” the game going from Vanilla to BC, and how healers were going to “get screwed” with the Healing/Spell Power changes going from BC to wrath- nothing played out how the negative nancys screamed it would. I won’t go as far to say all changes worked out as planned or even great; I’m simply saying we have no way of knowing. All we can do is discuss & theorize – who knows? Our thoughts may have someones ear. Nothing is set in stone yet. So 2 – 4 -6 -8 COME ON HEALING BUDDIES, LET’S SPECULATE!

New Priest Spells

Heal (available at level 16): While priests already have a spell called Heal, the existing version becomes obsolete at higher levels, which is something we intend to change in Cataclysm. Introduced at a low level, the “new” Heal spell will functionally work much like a down-ranked Greater Heal did in the past, adding more granularity to your direct-healing arsenal. If you need to heal someone a moderate amount and efficiency is an issue (making Flash Heal the incorrect spell for the job), then Heal is what you want to use. Heal is intended to be the priest’s go-to direct-healing spell unless they need something bigger (Greater Heal) or faster (Flash Heal). We will be following a similar philosophy with all the healing classes.

Interesting. With the removal of down ranking our spells, I can see this being fairly handy. Currently, my flash heals can hit for around 11K and I forgo the use of Gheal altogether as disc or holy, so this certainly adds a nice ‘in between’ heal. The best part of priest healers is our healing arsenal – we’re not three button healers, and more options can’t be a bad thing.

Mind Spike (level 81): Deals Shadowfrost damage and puts a debuff on the target that improves subsequent Mind Spike damage. The intent of Mind Spike is to fill a niche missing in Shadow DPS, though it may be occasionally useful for healers as well. Mind Spike provides a quick nuke to use in situations where the priest doesn’t have time to set up the normal rotation, such as when adds are dying too fast or you have to swap targets a lot. Spamming Mind Spike will do about as much damage as casting Mind Flay on a target afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain. The idea behind the debuff is that when you cast Mind Spike, we expect you to cast a lot of them; we don’t intend you to fit it into an already full Shadow rotation. It also provides Shadow with a spell to cast when locked out of the Shadow school. (School lockouts will no longer affect both schools for multi-school spells.) 1.5-second cast. 30-yard range. No cooldown.

I don’t have a clue about shadow things. The closest I’ve come to dps on my priest was a raid saving smite for my first Sindragosa kill. I’ll leave this one for more knowledgeable people to discuss.

Inner Will (level 83): Increases movement speed by 12% and reduces the mana cost of instant-cast spells by 10%. This buff will be exclusive with Inner Fire, meaning you can’t have both up at once. Inner Fire provides a spell power and Armor buff; Inner Will should be useful on a more situational basis.

Now this I REALLY like. I could have seen many uses for this in current content. Fights requiring high mobility will certainly see this used. I’m glad they’re getting rid of the ‘charges’ too. I never understood the point, and it was just one more thing to monitor.

Leap of Faith (level 85): Pull a party or raid member to your location. Leap of Faith (or “Life Grip”) is intended to give priests a tool to help rescue fellow players who have pulled aggro, are being focused on in PvP, or just can’t seem to get out of the fire in time. Instant. 30-yard range. 45-second cooldown.

Here’s one I have an issue with. In PVP, sure, it sounds great and deliciously annoying. But in PVE? You shouldn’t be pulling aggro.  You have a million tools at your disposal to monitor this, and as a DPS player, one of your jobs is to keep your aggro in check. You also shouldn’t stand in BAD SHIT – not standing in BAD SHIT is Raiding 101. Avoiding tunnel vision in any role is a huge part of the game, & I see alot of blame shifting to the priest for not pulling a DPS out of these situations, rather than blaming the offending player in the first place. That’s the last thing I think we want. Also, this had better include some sort of Aggro cancellation, because if I DO LoP an aggro gaining player, I forsee a VERY pissed of tank trying to run after a boss that’s now coming our way.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

All HoTs and DoTs will benefit from Haste and Crit innately. Hasted HoTs and DoTs will not have a shorter duration, just a shorter period in between ticks (meaning they will gain extra ticks to fill in the duration as appropriate).

What’s not to like about that?

We want to bring back Shadow Word: Death as an “execute” — something you do when the target is at 25% health.

From what little I know about shadow, I see our Spriests use this currently as part of their rotation, instead of just a finishing move. Hopefully they handle this better than the functionality of a Warrior’s Execute, which at this point is almost not worth breaking your rotation for.

While we want to keep the priest’s role as a well-rounded healer, we also want to make sure the class is a viable tank healer, which is something priests moved away from a little in Wrath of the Lich King. Greater Heal will probably be the tank-healing spell of choice, though we’ve also discussed giving Discipline a second shield so that they have a small shield to cast on lots of different targets, and a big, more expensive shield to cast on a tank or anyone else taking a ton of damage.

This baffles me. While I agree holy isn’t an ideal tank healer, Disc is still a fantastic one. What bothers me about this is losing a niche or identity between our specs. When each spec can do everything equally, it usually ends up not doing anything spectacular – a jack of all trades, but master of none, if you will. This is one we have to watch how it will play out.

Divine Spirit and Prayer of Spirit will be removed from the game. As Spirit will be the primary mana-regeneration stat, we don’t want it to vary as much between solo, small group, and raid play. Blessing of Kings and Mark of the Wild will not boost Spirit either.

I can see this being good. Early 80 players or ones that focused on smaller content suffered in the regen department, and the disparity between gearing/gemming for Mp5 vs int/spirit was a huge gap.

Mana will be a bigger consideration for all healers. We aren’t trying to make healing more painful; we’re trying to make it more fun. When the cost of a spell isn’t an issue, then casting the right spell for the job is less of an issue because you might as well just use your most powerful spell all of the time. We are, however, getting rid of the five-second rule, because we don’t want to encourage standing around doing nothing. We’re also going to cut back on the benefits of buffs such as Replenishment so priests (and all healers) don’t feel as penalized when those buffs aren’t available.

Again, I can see this. While mana management can be a issue in the hardest heroic content, it certainly wasn’t in normal raids. Much like the CoH cooldown seperated the good from the spammers, This will force more healers to learn to quickly adapt and choose the proper spell – right now most raiders don’t take that into consideration.

New Talents and Talent Changes

We want to improve Discipline’s single-target healing capacity. One key is to make sure shielding isn’t always a more attractive option than healing.

I really think this perception comes from people not understanding the strengths of a disc priest. If all you are doing is bubbling the raid, you are doing it wrong. While there are certainly fights where are points where you will be doing that, that is not ALL you should be doing. While your mitigation is a huge part of the disc style, you SHOULD be healing as well. You’re not working to your full potential, and honestly, you’re forcing the rest of your healers to work more.

That being said, I would hate to have our shielding and mitigation focus moved to the secondary. A way to encourage people to understand how to use the two TOGETHER is certainly warranted, however. Making the damage absorbed more easily seen without the use of secondary mods would be nice. I think half the problem is you can’t ‘see’ mitigated damage, thus to the average player, it looks like the disc is doing less. It’s all perception. When you have access to logs, and you can visually see how a disc priest actually ranks (it’s not uncommon to have numbers on par with a holy priest or pally) you realize this, but Joe Casual or PuG groups don’t have access to these. Another ‘wait and see how it plays out’ preview.

We want to improve Holy for PvP healing. One way to do this is to make sure that Heal’s throughput is similar between both specs.

See above.

We want to improve Shadow for short fights and reduce its susceptibility to school lockouts.

Again, I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no shadowz. Go ask the experts.

Discipline will finally be getting Power Word: Barrier as a talented ability. Think of it like a group Power Word: Shield.

Woot. Something similar had been promised for a long time, and we actually expected to see it for the Wrath expansion. I can definitely see something like this move the perception that all disc is good for is bubble spamming, since covering groups more quickly will allow shifting focus to pure healing. However, I think it will require a high mana cost &/or a cool down, much like CoH, to discourage mass bubble spamming, and to encourage people to use it effectively. I hear it won’t work as a group targeting like PoH however, and more like a ‘zone effect’, similar to a Death Knight’s Anti Magic Shield. Interesting mechanic, has huge benefits for shielding melee groups that stand in BAD SHIT, or chef hat wearing death knights.

We want to make Holy a little bit more interesting to play. One new talent will push the Holy priest into an improved healing state when he or she casts Prayer of Healing, Heal, or Renew three times in a row. The empowered state varies depending on the heals cast.

Again, this baffles me. I think holy is hands down the most interesting healer to play. You have so many tricks and procs to manage, coupled with a large healing output, I’m not sure how this is boring. I am hoping this ‘improved healing state’ is obtained by a combination of heals, much like our serendipity stacks from flash OR binding heal. I rarely, if ever, cast 3 PoHs in a row. I’ll at least try to pad with a FH/BH or two to stack up the hasted effect. If I’m going to cast three in a row, the resulting state better be phenomenal. Which can be an interesting way to strategize – you know a phase with intense healing is coming up, you cast 3 PoH in a transition in preparation. The most powerful form of a bonus healing state probably should be harder to obtain – otherwise, healers will constantly sit at that.

I also demand a kick ass visual for this.

Since the Shadow tree has a lot of passive damage-boosting abilities — something we’re trying to avoid in Cataclysm — we will need to replace several of the tree’s talents. One idea is to play off of the new Shadow Orbs mechanic (see Mastery section below), possibly allowing you to consume an orb to increase damage from Mind Blast or reduce Mind Spike’s cast time.

Misery will no longer affect spell Hit chance. We want players to be able to gear themselves around a Hit cap that isn’t variable depending on group composition.

Durrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Discipline

• Healing
• Meditation
• Absorption

Absorption: Improves the strength of shields such as Power Word: Shield, Divine Aegis, and Power Word: Barrier.

Holy

• Healing
• Meditation
• Radiance

Radiance: Your direct heals add a small heal-over-time component to the target.

Not much is known how this will work. Set bonuses that gave a Radiance like effect always were lack luster and ended up being mostly overheal. Absorption is nice – perhaps that will encourage more interesting tier set bonuses like our original T10, instead of the current yawn fest we have now. I like the concept, but there’s still not much to comment on.

So that’s my brief thoughts. I’m not up in arms, I’m not upset, and you shouldn’t be either. We have a loooooooooong way until we see how these play out, or, if they play out at all. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a proposed change didn’t see the light of day, and we have very little details how things will work, much less any indication on how we should apply them. So sit back, and ride the easy epic train that always pulls into the station before an expansion (I know my alts are loving it.). We’ll be getting more and more information as the weeks & months go on. When we see something concrete, THEN we can bitch.

Also, Derevka will have a follow up post in a day or two with his insights. Right now he’s holding a Starbucks hostage, screaming something about idiot melee & babysitting. When he’s sedated, I’m sure he’ll have some great thoughts.

That being said, what do YOU guys think? Anything you want to add? Musings, comments, insult my gender &/or heritage?

THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!! (AKA Ava’s thoughts on Cata Priest Changes) 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

The new 2x Emblems of Frost are given out much in the same way you received 2 Triumph badges for doing the Daily Heroic Dungeon previously, except now it’s even easier. Hit your ‘I’ button to bring up your dungeon finder, Select “Random Lich King Heroic”, choose your role (Tank/Healer/DPS) and hit the JOIN button! That’s it! Go back to questing, farming, watching Maury Povich find out which one of those 7 men are the baby’s daddy….whatever. Blizzard’s dungeon finder does the work for you, filling a group of 5 based on the roles you chose. When all 5 are filled and accepted – BAM –you’re transported to a random dungeon.

These PUG bingo cards were linked the official forums and were made by Cruce of Scarlet Crusade – they’re a fucking genius and I love them. Also, please feel free to share your PuG stories in our Scrub PuB - laughter is the best medicine!

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"You feel lucky, Punk?" – 3.3 Random Dungeon Impressions is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Well, it is finally here! Icecrown – Tuesday we all marched towards that taunting little sonofa… *cough* The Lich King. (by the way, doesn’t the 3.3 Logo look like it says Fail of the Lich King to anyone else?).

I must admit I really was looking forward to 3.3 – for more than the fact that I have been really tired of TOC. But, 3.3 is not just all sunshine and smiles, it certainly has its flaws in my eyes. So I do want to take some time to discuss both the thumbs up and the thumbs down features.

Lag and Server Stability at Launch – This baffles me every patch. Back in Vanilla WOW, patch days were pretty smooth and had minimal issues. Ever since TBC, every single patch seems to be this cycle of ‘reboots’ and ‘Loading Character Screen’ – and the infamous boss: The Blue Bar. *shrug* status quo… but irritating none the less. Thumbs down.

Icecrown Graphics – Visually, the interior of Icecrown is very impressive. The designers clearly spent a good deal of time on the interior (albeit eerily similar to Black Temple). Thumbs up.

The Ashen Verdict – A new patch means new reputations! 3.3 is certainly no exception. Not only does the Ashen Verdict sell the new crafting patterns, but they also provide your choice of “Path” for a rather snazzy ring! Mirroring the same format that the rings from Mount Hyjal in TBC, these rings scale and improve as you move up the reputation ladder. Clearing 25 man and the first boss in 10 man grants you your friendly ring. (or visa versa). Some guilds, and players have gone even so far as rep grinding and resetting the instance (by dropping and reforming the raid) to gain higher rep sooner. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet – but the spellpower proc the rings offer at Revered is mighty tasty. (and another gem socket at Exalted!). Thumbs Up.

Tier 10 Gear – What?! You mean I won’t look exactly like a Warlock or a Mage anymore? Nice! While I understand the whole fact that Tier 9 was meant to look identical, so we all appeared the same as we charged like a Military Force into Icecrown – it doesn’t mean I liked it! — A cop out in my eyes — However, the new T10 gear is here! I can even get over the fact that the Priest T10 looks like we have a Popped Collar and perhaps we should be putting in too much hair gel and hanging out at the Jersey Shore with spray on tans. (/pump fists!) Thumbs Up.

Tier 10 Purchasing – At first I wasn’t a fan of how we had to purchase T10 gear, and slowly upgrade it. However, this may just be an ingenious solution to catering to the Casuals and the Hardcore players alike. One of the biggest complaints Casuals had was that they had very little access to Tier Gear. Then enter TOC and Badge Tier Gear: the Hardcores now had minimal visual distinction over the casuals. (QQ I know, but I’m of that group!!!). With this color scheme in T10 – casuals have access to Tier Gear and their bonuses, and Hardcores can walk around like a proud peacock in their color distinct T10. Not only does this help distinguish, raiders who get access to the ‘upgraded’ versions, don’t feel like they wasted Frost Emblems on the lower level version of T10, since it will be required to upgrade. Thumbs Up.

Forced Pacing – Blizzard has always rolled bosses out slowly. TOC was one every week, Ulduar was similar – just like Sunwell. But, when Hardcore raiders found out we had to wait nearly a month for a new boss: jaws dropped. My guild, Dark Nemesis, is a progression guild. We competitively kill – so forcing us to wait is a bit irritating. Blizzard promises the pace that they roll stuff out will increase after the first wave. With the holidays coming up, I kind of like the fact that I can miss a night of raiding to spend a night with family or friends this Holiday Season, and not feel like I am leaving 24 other raiders high and dry. Now… come January that might change. The verdict is still out on this one – if Blizz drags it out too long, I fear they will lose players more than they will keep people craving more. Neutral.

Normal Boss Difficulty – The bosses in Icecrown that are currently open don’t seem to be too difficult. For a point of reference, US-Bloodhoof has 2 guilds with Heroic: Tribute to Insanity in TOGC 25 my guild and one other. We cleared all available bosses in ICC25 all the first night it was opened, another 4 guilds who cleared through all four 25-man Icecrown bosses the second night they were available, and an additional 3 guilds cleared all new content before the weekend.

I understand, especially with Arthas, the desire to expose more players to content – but this seems to be a bit under-tuned. (feel free to call me an elitist raider that is just ranting – but it does seem a bit off). I am hoping the Heroic counterpart offers a bit more of a challenge. Looking at the Wowhead data-mined boss spells does seem like it will be a bit harder (particularly the damage output and DPS requirements), but how will that scale with gear upgrades from ICC25? I’m going to have to give this a Thumbs Down.

Looking For Group System – This seems to be a hot topic on the blogosphere. There are a number of posts out there exclusively on this topic, as well as Twitter discussions. This new LFG system is kinda great for healers and tanks – I enter the LFG toget my daily 2 Frost Emblems, and no more than 30 seconds later – BOOM group. Now, the wild card is the group make up. (I was in a group with 3 DKs and a Ret Pally – I’ll let you draw your own conclusions with that one…) Frankly, I like it. yes, its a PUG… but no one is asking you to PUG ICC25. Thumbs up.

The New 5 Mans – From a lore perspective these are fantastic. The attunement requirement to do the 2nd and 3rd is something a little new, but I do like it. The storyline about the Lich King is something that everyone should experience and understand. Difficulty is a bit more difficult than the existing Heroics, but the rewards are equally improved. Then, we can add in the Quel’dalar quest item and quest line… loreriffic! Big Thumbs Up!

Overall 3.3 has a few things I would have liked to have seen done differently, and a few things that I have some lingering concerns – but that is mainly because I am an end-game raider. Let’s hope the remainder of 3.3 lives up to the expectations.

Coming this Tuesday: Icecrown Healing Tips!

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Initial Icecrown and 3.3 Impressions is a post from: Tales of a Priest

The PTR notes have been posted, and I am sure they will change at least once, twice, several times. So let’s approach these changes with the perspective that, in all likelihood, we’ll be seeing several changes in these notes before they actually go live.

With the flurry of posts, forum topics, and guild chat discussions about 3.2 I figured it was about time I put my 2 copper in on this topic. I’ll be doing analysis over the next few days putting attention on each of the major changes. Today I want to focus on the changes made to Prayer of Healing.

Prayer of Healing: The percentage of spell power this spell gains in healing (per target) has been reduced from 80.7% to 52.6%.

The Prayer of Healing change screams nerf, and with no question, it is. First it is important to remember that this isn’t a pure 30% cut. It is a cut in the Spellpower Coefficient, which means it will be a nerf to more to those with higher SP. To first understand the change we need to look at the numbers:

The formula for Prayer of Healing (assuming Spiritual healing for a 10% bonus) is:

[ProH Base Heal + (Spellpower * Coefficient)] * 1.10 = Per Target Heal

Let’s plug in the Live/PTR Numbers using the average base heal for Prayer of Healing as the benchmark [(Min Heal 2091) + (Max Heal 2209)]/2 = 2150 Average Base Heal

As you can see the size of the nerf goes up as your Spellpower scales. (Which makes sense since this is a coefficient nerf). So all being said and done this shoudl be around a 17% nerf to ProH, and in turn the Glyph of Prayer of Healing as the heal itself is based upon the healing done by the base spell. Obviously, none of these numbers take critical heals into account which should represent a good number of our heals since most Holies run at 30-35% holy crit, then add in 2-piece T8

Looking back at my logs for even Hard Mode IC and Hodir fights, the nerf is at or below my average overheal for the night on ProH. While, of course, that overheal does include people who were at 90% health getting a 5k heal and someone at 30% health getting a 5k heal– I think the overall nerf to the spell isn’t going to hurt as bad as people assume it will. Yes 17% is substantial, of course, but I think at the end of the day the number of deaths caused by the learning curve from the nerf would be minimal. Now, if it was a mana cost increase… then I’d be screaming QQ. Let’s see how this plays out in a raid setting, but I think we’re going to find it to not be nearly as bad as people are assuming. We will still be using ProH as we’ve always used it — for raid stabilization.

Up Next: Penance Change, and Inspiration Change…

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3.2 PTR Part 1 – Prayer of Healing Changes is a post from: Tales of a Priest

With 3.1 officially released, tonight will be a big night for many End-Game Raiding Guilds who are aching for new content.

Download it!
Find a mirror if you haven’t already pre-downloaded it using the Blizzard downloader.
Wowwiki has a great list of mirrors located here.

Update Your Essential Mods
Notice how I said essential… your non-essential mods you likely can live without on release day, and you can configure the updated (if applicable) versions later in the week. (That is, of course, assuming your guild is on a fast push into Ulduar).

• Not a TON of mods were broken, but if you use the Curse Updater be sure to update your mods to get the most recent version.
• Note that WoWMatrix will no longer be supported, so get the WoWInterface or Curse Updater!! Details on news is available here.
• DBM may need to be installed separately if they don’t release a 3.1 version. (I have the Beta/PTR version installed)
• No Stock UI has a great post about Mods for 3.1

Specs, Glyphs, and Gems
Your Talent Points are going to be refunded and Dual Spec’s will be available. Be ready to

• Research your specs and be ready with a RAID VIABLE spec.
• Priests I highly reccommend reading my post about 3.1 specs here.
• Certain specs will need to change glphys. I know I am stacking a bit more Int than I did in the past to harness mana restoration, and try to offset the Spirit Regen nerf.
• New Glyphs will be available, befriend your guild Scribes! (WTB – Glyph of Penance pst!)

Read Strats
Many guilds will be pushing hard in 3.1, I highly recommend reading www. ulduar.com (Stratfu’s site)

Raid leaders and guilds should read the bosses after Flame Leviathan as you will need to choose who you want to go after next!

GET READY TO RUUUUMBLE!
- Create your iTunes playlist
- Bring focus
- Consumables
- Sign up for the weeks raids
- Bring patience to raids, learning new encounters can be frustrating.

GOOD LUCK! And enjoy Ulduar!

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

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Derevka’s Survival Guide to 3.1 Release Day is a post from: Tales of a Priest

All classes will have their Talent Points refunded, which means its time to respect. And for most of us: Dual Specs. While some of us will be going Healing/Shadow as our specs, I do think a good many priests will be going Holy/Disc, giving them the ability to swap specs mid raid to adapt to whatever healing assignment they are given.

Derevka’s 3.1 Disc Spec – 57/14/0

With this spec I am able to get all the goodies that I want to in the Disc tree, while still being able to go deep enough into the holy tree to get Inspiration.

• Soul Warding is worth it just for the Mana reduction, the cooldown removal is just gravy
• Mental Strength – More intellect = more crit and more mana. More mana means more mana restoration from replenishment, Shadowfiend, and Hymn. Int is king in 3.1
• Improved Flash Heal – This talent when combined with the Glyph of Flash Heal makes this spell our bread and butter.
• Focused Will – Formerly the PVP Stepchild, is now a 3% critical chance increase.That’s 3% more crit than you had before, which allows for different gear itemization. Perhaps introduce some more haste from your holy set?
• Focused Power – Stronger heals is really the reason to take this. Faster Mass Dispel isn’t the selling point.
• Rapture – While not nearly as strong as the prior version, the ability to restore mana/rage/RP/energy to our targets is always a welcomed addition.
• Grace - While the mechanics on this ability is a little weird, and Blue has already stated it might need to be corrected, a buff to healing is still a buff.
• Renewed Hope – Pretty much a raidwide Blessing of Sanctuary: yes please!
• Pain Suppression – Oh $#*(& Button for the tank or overzealous DPS.
• Power Infusion – WTS 20% Haste buff pst. Buffing your high DPS players means the fight is over sooner, just remember it doesn’t stack with Heroism/Bloodlust. Keep an eye on Omen too, you don’t want to waste it if they are threat capped.
• Aspiration - Reduced Cooldowns means your spells are ready sooner, always a winner.
• Borrowed Time – Faster heals when you need them most AND more potent sheilds, a must have.
• Penance - Fast, big heals ftw.

Crit is still a Disc Priest’s friend, however haste will become more important now that your baseline crit will be higher.

Glyphs:
Glyph of Flash Heal – a MUST have, no questions, the end.
Glyph of Penance – another MUST for a Disc priest, it brings the cooldown to 6 seconds (with Aspiration). The hard part of this glyph is finding it on your server once 3.1 hits. Pray for lots of scribes in your guild!
Glyph of Power Word: Shield – not a spectacular glyph, but as Disc and considering how often you’ll be casting PW:S, it is really your only other option.

Derevka’s 3.1 Holy Spec – 14/57/0
I’m going to skip a lot of the talent explanations on this spec as some of them are too obvious to require clarification. (Spiritual Healing, Spiritual Guidance, etc…)

• Improved Renew – for the most part a semi-optional talent for deep holy specs pre-3.1, however with Empowered Renew, this is a very strong talent. Glyphed, your renews will rival druid HoTs.
• Holy Reach – With Hymn, COH, and ProH being affected and considering the SIZE of most of the Ulduar boss rooms… a good talent.
• Healing Prayers – Since Prayer of Healing is now targetable, having a 20% mana cost reduction really makes this spell quite potent. I’m banking that this spell will likely see a nerf.
• Surge of Light – 50% chance for a free, instant flash heal? Of course! (PowerAuras is fantastic for managing these procs).
• Holy Concentration – now is a blanket increase to your regen on crit. It makes it a bit easier to manage, since you no longer have to actively change the way you heal when it procs.
• Serendipity - Haste improvements on ProH and GHeal initially didn’t impress me, however on the PTR i found it VERY handy; especially for a targeted ProH.
• Empowered Renew – Very powerful spell, will take most priests a little while to get used to bringing this spell into their arsenal correctly, but it is quite handy.
• Divine Providence – 10% bonus to our AOE heals, and nearly worth it alone for ProM cooldown.
• Guardian Spirit – Win.

Glyphs:
Glyph of Circle of Healing – an extra target, smart healed? Um, yes.
Glyph of Flash Heal – efficiency FTW, especially since deciding if GHeal or Flash Heal is needed.
Glyph of Renew – Provided you get into casting Empowered Renew more often, a stronger per tick heal will be very beneficial.
or
Glyph of Prayer of Healing – If we wind up using this quite a bit more for AOE damage, this glyph will be quite powerful.

We have lots of changes to many of our talents, however, I don’t think there will be a lot of strategic changes to the way we heal. There will, of course, be a little bit of a mana conservation learning curve, but I don’t foresee major changes to the WAY we heal. Disc will still be all about keeping shields up and using Penance on every CD. Holy will still be a high HPS strategy, using Flash Heal and GHeal when big damage comes in (Serendipity will make that even easier).

The biggest changes to strategy will be Holy using Renew/Empowered Renew correctly and Disc using PW:S to restore mana and keep up Renewed Hope.

Here are some Tips for Pre-3.1, so you will be ready to head into Ulduar full steam ahead!

• Stock up on Glyphs and Inks. You’ll need to reglyph your second spec, and prices will increase
• Befriend a Scribe and pray for lucky procs for their Northrend Inscription Research. (read: Penance glyph)
• Stock up on gems if you think with your new spec you’ll need/want to regem. Prices will go up.
• Be ready to need mana potions, with the regen nerf you may be chugging these more often.
• Get your guild ready, strategies, specs, and logistics. (ie. Flame Leviathan, the first Ulduar boss, uses the Vehicle Interface. Your vehicle’s HP is based on your average gear iLvl. Stop sharding stuff off KT!)

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3.1 Priest Specs – What are You Doing? is a post from: Tales of a Priest