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5.2 Discipline Guide – Thunderstruck!

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

Holy and Disc Best Practices

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

Keep Calm and Keep Healing

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

Mana Regen vs Throughput

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

Mists of Pandaria: Initial Impressions

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

Stay Healthy During Mists of Pandaria

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

Holy Word: Sanctuary – Scaling in Mists...

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

Chakra and Why You Should Be Concerned

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

26 Acts of Kindness — In Azeroth

I so very rarely post about non game related things— but I am feeling moved to do this today. Let me explain… Earlier this week NBC reporter, Ann Curry, said, in remembrance of the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut: “Imagine if everyone could commit to doing one act of kindness for each precious life lost. An act of kindness, big or small — are you in?” (or click here) I responded and said, “Yes, I am in…” This “movement” as taken the internet by storm on Facebook as as well as on Twitter via the hashtag #26Acts. In real life, I did a #26Acts at the Starbucks I frequent every day… and treated 26 strangers to their morning coffee (picture). I then got to thinking… what if I could bring this into Azeroth as well- we can make an …

New MoP Glyphs, Lightspring, and Spirit of Redemption

The latest beta build gave us an interesting peek into some of the new changes coming our way via glyphs. While a number of these are purely flavor and vanity glyphs (and you guys know me, I love my shiny toys!) it does give us the opportunity to evaluate these glyphs. More importantly, it does raise some interesting questions about the spells these glyphs are tied to. Beta Build #15689: Glyph of Holy Resurrection Glyph of Confession Glyph of Lightspring Glyph of the Val’kyr It is worth mentioning that as of build 15689, these glyphs are not yet available in the beta. They are data mined tooltips, and no Glyph Vendor, nor Scribe/Inscriptionist has them. (Some) Show up in our Character’s Glyph Menu, but you cannot learn/equip them yet. Consider this …

Disc at 80 at 4.0 and a Bunch of Other Numbers

(Note: This is based off PTR build v4.0.1.13033) Hey kids! It’s me! Ava! Remember me? You do? Shit. I still don’t have a beta key, so all you’re going to get from me is PTR scraps. And if you’re looking for awesome videos of me talking, like Derevka does- sorry, won’t happen. I’m usually too drunk for you to understand what I’m saying, and talking into a mic requires me putting down my beer glass. So today’s musing is Disc at level 80 when 4.0 hits – what to do, what to spec, what to freak out about…kidding, kidding. This is the WoW community – you should freak out about everything! Let’s start with the 33/3 build, and the one I’m planning on starting with. With the changes to Archangel …

Cataclysm Contest! Curse Client Craziness!

This post title has far too many C’s in it (Yay for alliteration!?) It’s time for another contest and giveaway here at Tales of a Priest! As many of you know, I am a little obsesed with my UI… I love mods;, I love seeing what they can do to improve my gameplay. One of the most annoying things about having a UI that you love: is keeping it updated. The Curse Client is a great application that lets you search for mods, read the description, install them, and helps you be sure you have the latest and greatest version. If that was all that the Curse Client did, I would be happy. But wait –– There’s more!! The Curse Client also helps you keep your mods synched up across …

A Dark Nemesis Gratuitous Self-Congratulatory Post

Before I dive into this brief post/update, one thing we did learn about blogging is that your reader is smart enough to know- so don’t try to fool them: When you are doing gratuitous self-promotion, tell them. Consider yourself notified. That being said, we’ve been busy. We completed Glory of the Icecrown Raider on 10-Mans and got our very sexy Frost Wyrms. They’re almost as frigid as Derevka, but way cooler.

Power Word: Fail! Podcast Now Available

The podcast you’ve all been waiting for is now available for download! Ava and Derevka had a blast recording this show— albeit a bit racy (Fingers of Frost!!!), we had some great conversation and some great topics were discussed. Thanks for the questions! Hopefully more discussion and podcasting will be in the future. You can download the podcast via iTunes or through the many options by following the link below.

So you want to join a Raiding Guild?

WoW has a lot to offer many different spectrum of players. As many of us have found, it’s easy to spend “just a few more minutes” to finish a quest, or do “one last 5 man”. And with Blizz’s new raiding vision of making end game more accessible (love it or hate it, we’ll talk about that another time) I’m sure you’ve joined a raid pug or two, or maybe are even part of a guild that tackles some of its own raiding. Now Raiding guilds themselves are also diverse. You can have the casual raiding guild that shows up for a few hours a week to tackle some 10/25 man content when there’s enough people on, or maybe a guild that has a set schedule & some hard mode …

Character Re-Customization

Well, I think I may have broken the hearts of some of the dwarf priests out there… I paid for a Character Re-Customization. Derevka is now male. I originally rolled Derevka back in the day when Dwarves were wanted because of fear ward to help make Ony, MC, and BWL fears more management. I chose female mainly because I didn’t like the way the male dwarves looked. However, after nearly 4 years of staring at the same backside and the same animation I sadly, grew tired of Derevka’s look. Many guildies and friends server wide have PM’d me or emoted me /gasp when they see my new look. Perhaps to them I will always be the short little female dwarf with freckles, not the bushy bearded, bald-dwarf man.

Circle of Healing and Cooldowns Part 2

Incoming! Since my last post on COH and Cooldowns, it is now even further expanded upon. AoE Healing NerfI feel the need to post here in the hopes of alleviating player confusion. The first FAQ was a link to my quotes attempting to explain our concerns about Circle of Healing and Wild Growth. This FAQ by contrast is written from a player POV that this is a shaman issue. It isn’t in our minds. We looked at the three main AE heals and found that CoH and WG were being used too much in too many different situations and making AE healing too easy. CH is supposed to be used in more situations, because the shaman arsenal is smaller. It isn’t as easy to use as CoH and WG. Shamans …

Another WOW Blog, or is it?

I’ve always somewhat been the anti-blogger, I’m more of a forum troll myself: Guild forums, mmo-champ forums, Blizzard Realm/Class forums. But after reading a lot of the other blogs out there, I’ve decided to make the leap. Don’t get me wrong, I really like the content that is put together at a lot of the other priest blogs, but, perhaps, if I focused on only Healing (which is what I do, I don’t raid shadow) I could work on a great Priest Blog. There is always room for more blogs out there. I think I’d like to apply my write ups with a more live raid healing perspective, provide some insight that may (or may not) be missing out there. I’ll leave the shadow analysis to my DPS brothers and …

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