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Spiritual Guidance: Holy and discipline tier 12 set bonuses
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen fraternizes with cultists and buys Justin Bieber albums. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Information about patch 4.2 has been coming in nonstop this past week, and our favorite dataminers at Wowhead and MMO-Champion have dug up a first look at the class set bonuses for tier 12 gear. As usual, the community has been chatting up a storm since the release, especially the priests. Today I'll be joining that discussion to examine what holy and discipline priests have to look forward to in the next content tier -- or not look forward to, depending on your perspective. Either way, let's take a look.
Spiritual Guidance: The aftermath of patch 4.1 for holy and discipline priests
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen loiters around the drugstore, drinking chocolate malted Falcons and giving away free high school. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Patch 4.1 went live last week, and with a long list of buffs and nerfs in the patch notes, it looked like it was going to be a big event for priests of all specs. Now, almost a week later now, Fox Van Allen still appears to be alive the impact of the changes seems to have varied. Have you acclimated to the changes yet? Are you wondering why hunter pets are acting like they've been chomping on mood stabilizers even when you heal them? Do you want a cookie? Then let me direct you to all the important things you need to know in a post-4.1 patch world.
Spiritual Guidance: Macros for healing priests
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Some time last year on Spiritual Guidance, I wrote an article on macros for healing priests. Overall, it was a simple approach to the topic, touching on some basics like binding consolidation, communication, and a couple of utility macros. The article generated a lot of discussion, and several readers submitted some quality macros for their fellow priests. Since a few of those macros are now outdated and I've added a few new macros to my spellbook in the interim, I thought now would be a good time to revisit the topic and look at what I've dug up in the past few months. Since these were accumulated over time, I haven't kept track of all the original authors of these macros, so if you see something in here you wrote, feel free to shake your fist at me.
Spiritual Guidance: Priest healing strategies for Cho'gall in The Bastion of Twilight
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. I've had this idea for a social experiment in my head for the past few weeks, where you lock five priests together in a room with nothing but Highland Spirits and force them to have a round table discussion about Lightwell. While I work on my hypothesis and proposal -- and find a way to bait Fox Van Allen into this possum trap -- you guys can finish reading up on the finer points of healing Cho'gall as a holy or discipline priest. Seeing as this is the last boss of The Bastion of Twilight, this will be the final installment of Spiritual Guidance's priest healing guides for this tier.
Spiritual Guidance: Priest healing Ascendant Council
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. During the past couple of months, Spiritual Guidance has tackled priest healing in Blackwing Descent and taken a peak inside The Bastion of Twilight at Halfus Wyrmbreaker and the twin dragons, Valiona and Theralion. This week, we'll be heading back into The Bastion to take a look at how to heal your way through the next encounter, Ascendant Council. This encounter is extremely chaotic and will be sure to keep discipline and holy priests busy.
Spiritual Guidance: Priest healing strategies for Maloriak and Nefarian
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow and runs a counterfeit penny operation out of his basement. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. It's a very special occasion on Spiritual Guidance today; spring has come, which means for the first time in months, you get to read about priest healing while simultaneously anticipating that the weather is going to be nice soon. What? That isn't exciting? Okay, fine, whatever ... I tried. I'm just going to go use the last of my Blossoming Branches on Fox right before the tank pulls so I can screw up his DPS rotation then. No! Okay, seriously, today on Spiritual Guidance we'll be finishing up Blackwing Descent with the last two bosses in the raid instance, Maloriak and Nefarian. As you know, we've been steadily working through all the tier 11 raid bosses and examining how to heal for them as a holy or discipline priest. After you've read this, you'll be able to heal your raid to victory and finally stop dealing with that damn elevator.
Spiritual Guidance: Patch 4.1 to usher in big Chakra and Atonement healing changes
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow and karaoke at PAX East. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. It's been two weeks since we first examined the upcoming priest changes for patch 4.1, and in that time, many more changes have piled up. To keep things interesting around here, I figured we'd talk about the changes over a plate of cookies. Previously, we discussed the changes to the duration of Power Word: Shield, the tiny buff to Divine Aegis, and the huge change to Dispel Magic, so check back a couple weeks if you want to read about those changes. This week I'll be looking at a huge change to the mechanics of Chakra, the sort of return of Atonement healing, the nerf to Power Word: Barrier, and the tweak to our four-piece raid set bonus.
Spiritual Guidance: Healing Chimaeron and Atramedes as a priest
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow and decorative cross stitching (who knew he was so crafty?). Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. This week on Spiritual Guidance, we'll be returning to Blackwing Descent where, after meeting sudden and untimely deaths at the bottom of an elevator shaft, we can respawn and face our next two healing challenges: Chimaeron and Atramedes. You may recall that not long ago, we examined two other bosses in Blackwing Descent, Magmaw and the Omnotron Defense System. If you can handle those two, these bosses are just a tiny step up in difficulty and should be no match for your priestly prowess.
Spiritual Guidance: Understanding the recent priest changes
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. The last week has been a bit of an adventure for priests of the healing variety. Hotfix nerfs and buffs were implemented to address the overuse of Power Word: Shield in the aftermath of patch 4.0.6, and before long, everything was upside down. Discipline priests quickly found their mana pools drained for using multiple shields, even at ideal times, and in a weird twist of fate, holy priests were able to pick up the mantle as shield spammers. The community writhed and waited for new hotfixes to come. But would they be the last? Given these events, I thought it would be appropriate to explain exactly what happened this past week before moving back to our weekly boss strategies.
Spiritual Guidance: Playing your holy or discipline priest in patch 4.0.6
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Patch 4.0.6 is live, which means we're taking a vacation from the raiding guides to talk about how priest healing has changed since the patch for holy and disc priests. Overall, life is great right now if you're a healing priest. There may be some people who disagree, but I think it's obvious that we've got it all right now. Our spells are strong, our cooldowns are amazing, and we have the best spell in the game, Leap of Faith (or Power Word: Barrier, if you want to be serious.) The posts complaining about priests being overpowered are at an all-time high, sweeping through the forums like a refreshing spring breeze; it's like Trial of the Crusader was just some bad dream.
Spiritual Guidance: Priest healing tactics for Omnotron Defense System and Magmaw
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow and shovels his way out of a snow storm that Dawn has absolutely nothing to do with (the cookies are in the mail, Christian.) Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. So at this point, you've probably restored the world pillar, been solely entrusted to protecting Hyjal by a demi-goddess, and made off with several dozen pigs (or pumpkins) from the poor farmers of your faction's capital city. You've probably also ventured into countless enemy strongholds and slain everything from wind dragons to rock monsters -- or at least had a panic attack trying to heal the guys doing the slaying. You sure are amazing, and everyone knows it (except the Guardians of Hyjal reputation vendor), so it's not surprising that about now you've been called upon by other heroes to delve deep into the deepest, darkest lairs of Azeroth so you can fulfill your destiny of spamming Prayer of Healing on groups 1 and 2. Sound good? Excellent. If you haven't guessed already, during the next few weeks, the healing side of Spiritual Guidance will be taking a tour of tier 11 raid content and discussing how to best approach it as a holy or discipline priest. If you're ready, let's get started.
Spiritual Guidance: Valor point and raid gear for discipline and holy priests
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow and screams at the heavens for truth. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Late last month, Spiritual Guidance examined the many options for discipline and holy priests who were looking to gear themselves up through normal and heroic dungeons. Now that it's been a while, I'd assume that many of you have quite a few valor points saved up from doing your heroic daily and have maybe even dived into a little raiding. That undoubtedly means you'll want a convenient list of all the things you want to keep an eye out for in raids, and possibly some recommendations on how to best spend your valor points. So that's what's on our agenda today.
Spiritual Guidance: Patch 4.0.6 for discipline and holy priests
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow and attacks hunters. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. I could have sworn the expansion only just came out, but despite the newness of it all, there already appears to be a major patch on the way. Before you get excited, though, patch 4.0.6 won't be bringing anything too new -- it's a patch aimed at balancing a lot of little things about the game. Priests in particularly are getting a lot of tweaks, and with each passing day, the pile of changes we can look forward to in the next patch grows a little bigger. Before it becomes too much to keep up with, let's take a look at it all and examine what everything means for holy and discipline priests.
Spiritual Guidance: Pre-raid gear guide for holy and discipline priests
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for disc and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. So you've gotten your priest to level 85 and now you want to get geared up to heal raids, huh? Not sure what dungeons to run or what tabards to wear? Not sure where to start or too lazy to go to Wowhead and find out the information yourself? Spiritual Guidance is here for you! This week I'll be listing off all the gear you can get your mitts on before you can get into raids. Before we get started, you should know that when you first hit 85, you'll only want to run a handful of normal dungeons to get your average item level high enough to queue for heroic dungeons. Those normal dungeons are Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, and Lost City of Tol'vir. The other normal 5-man dungeons only drop 308 and 316 item level gear. Once you can queue for heroic dungeons, you'll see level 346 gear in all the dungeons. Normal mode raid gear is 359, but you can get a handful of 359 gear without raiding, either through crafting, reputation, or drops. Got that? Okay, let's get to the priest-specific stuff now.
Spiritual Guidance: Priest PvP concerns in Cataclysm
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests ... at least, when she's not AFK. A couple of weeks ago, I promised that I'd return to priest PvP once the PvP-related problems on the Cataclysm beta were resolved. Things still aren't perfect either for balance or testing, but I have more information now than I did two weeks ago, so I'm willing to take a stab at it ... /bleed. Or take a stab in the kidney or something. Overall, I'm going to say things aren't looking too great. I don't think you should panic, granted, but things are pretty rough for priests right now. Mana is a nightmare, options for spell selection suffer due to mana restraint, dispels are essential but you can't afford to cast them, and interrupts and crowd control run rampant. I'll elaborate on all of these in a bit, but before I get started, I want to take you guys back to December 2008. Wrath had just come out, and the start of Season 5 was on everyone's minds. When at last it came, there was a deafening thunder as tens of thousands of priest bodies crashed lifelessly to the ground. Playing a priest was like not playing at all because of how fragile we were (unless you were one of those cheap holy priests who exploited the Glyph of Spirit of Redemption for a short while.) The outcry from the community was one of the more unified responses to priest class balance I have ever seen, as both novice and gladiator turned to Blizzard and screamed a resounding, "WTF?!"
Spiritual Guidance: Levels 80 to 85 as a priest, plus recent beta changes
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests and makes the occasional StarCraft 2 reference. If you ask her, she'll tell you disc priests are like sentries and holy priests are medevacs. There is a lot to cover in Spiritual Guidance this week, so I'll be diving right in to the content. I was going to outsource my creative introduction to Mr. Fox Van Allen, but he wanted to be paid entirely in red M&Ms, so we'll just have to do without. We'll be covering two topics today. The first will be to cover the latest build released on the Cataclysm beta earlier this week. There were some large changes made to AoE healing that affect both holy and discipline priests in different ways. Second, I've written up my advice on leveling from 80 to 85 as a healing priest.
Spiritual Guidance: Healing heroic Cataclysm dungeons as a priest
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for disc and holy priests, and also likes to knit gloves as presents. Can Fox Van Allen make you a pair of gloves? I intended to write about holy and discipline priest PvP in beta this week, but after spending a few days trying to test out battlegrounds, I think I'd do well to give Blizzard more time to fix things. Between the 100,000-damage rocket blasts in Strand of the Ancients one-shotting players, and randomly getting ported to The Barrens when you're dead wrapped in plastic in Twin Peaks, it all just seems too buggy to fairly assess right now. While we wait for the developers to finish tidying up the battlegrounds and PvP, I figured we could tackle something in the beta that has stabilized for priests: heroic dungeons! Pretty exciting, huh? Yeah, that's what I thought. Word on the street is that heroic dungeons in the Cataclysm beta are way overtuned and bordering on the difficulty of pre-nerf heroic dungeons in The Burning Crusade. While I can't personally deny or confirm the latter statement (I was slow in leveling), I can tell you that heroic dungeons in Cataclysm aren't that bad.
Spiritual Guidance: Adapting to 4.0.1 priest healing
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Sundays, Dawn Moore covers healing for disc and holy priests and fails to play the heartstrings of young priests. Some people just aren't cut out to be teen idols like Fox Van Allen. I was hoping to be done talking about 4.0.1 (mostly because I'm sick of typing out all the little periods), but it seems there are still a few things to be said. At this point I've talked specs, talents, new abilities, glyphs, gems and reforging -- and now the last thing I seem to have missed is the part where I tell you how to play. Or at least how to adapt. Or ... something. Either way, I suspect it's one thing for me to tell you guys how to play in a theoretical sense, two or three weeks before the patch, and then another thing to tell you exactly how to play when the patch is actually out. I had one reader ask, "What abilities should I be using?" I had another ask for a flowchart. Pft! Do you think I'm funny enough to make flowcharts? Silly readers, I leave flowcharts to the pros. Anyway, I thought on this relevancy vs. redundancy idea for a while, mostly because I'm extremely paranoid that I bore you guys at every second. (Dawn puts on a silly hat. Are you not entertained!? /Paranoidparanoidparanoidparanoid ...) I eventually decided that the best thing to do was in fact leave it to the pros -- though I'm still not giving you guys flowcharts. Instead I've got our regular priesty friend Kinaesthesia on board to give a full testimony on playing holy right now, as well as a new name you guys may not know, Mr. Raegx of Vigil. Raegx approached me a few months ago, asking if I needed any help, and I stuck him in a file box. He's out now, though, so let's see what the two of them have to say.
Spiritual Guidance: Reforging, gemming and GCD tactics for 4.0.1 priests
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Sundays, Dawn Moore covers healing for disc and holy priests while simultaneously battling her shadow priest rival, Fox Van Allen. This week, Dawn has been practicing her peacock pose so she can challenge Fox in Wii yoga. Now that Blizzard has announced when Cataclysm is being released, we finally know how long we've got left in Wrath of the Lich King to finish what we want to get done (or twiddle our thumbs and play more StarCraft 2). The past two weeks, I've talked about getting ready for patch 4.0.1, and since we've got a bit more time than I expected to cover Cataclysm healing, leveling and more before the release, I'm going to go ahead and tidy up the last of my 4.0.1 advice by updating my recommendations for priest gems, and tackling reforging. I'll be paying some specific attention to the soft haste cap and GCD (global cooldown) so you'll know how to stay min-maxed for the last two months of the expansion.
Spiritual Guidance: Finishing Wrath raids as a 4.0.1 healing priest
Every Sunday at WoW Insider, you'll find Spiritual Guidance, a guide to healing as a discipline or holy priest. Priestess Dawn Moore will bring you the latest in news, discussion and advice for priests in the World of Warcraft while simultaneously battling her shadow priest rival, Fox Van Allen. This week Dawn is able to take a break, since Fox is busy promoting the musical tour of Foxlight, his Hannah Montana-esque alter ego. Previously on Lo -- Spiritual Guidance, I assaulted your eyeballs with monoliths of text describing what's going to be happening in patch 4.0.1. This week, in response to a couple of emails I got, I'm going to scale it all back and talk less about the nitty-gritty and more about how to apply the patch to whatever it is you're still doing in the game. Working on heroic Lich King? OK, we'll talk about that. Halion? Sure, we'll do that too. Farming Invincible? Err ... Well, I guess I could draft up some sort of farm content. ICC drinki -- An ESRB rating falls on Dawn's head. Yes, well, let's get to it, shall we?
