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Spiritual Guidance: How to increase your HPS as a holy priest
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Remember last month when I talked about increasing your HPS as a discipline priest through an aggressive style of healing? Well, this week I'm going to do it again for holy priests. So if you've be looking to climb up the healing meters and make other healers hate you, stick around. The philosophy behind increasing your output as a holy priest is quite different than that of a disc priest. It's still very greedy but it's not nearly as competitive, since it doesn't require you to directly snipe heals from other healers. Instead, you'll be searching for every half second where you can utilize your most powerful spells and do so before other healers have the chance to do something similar. Just like with disc priests, you'll be milking your mana bar for all it's worth and spamming your regenerative cooldowns whenever you can.
Spiritual Guidance: Mists of Pandaria and the existential crisis of the healing priest
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. At BlizzCon 2011, I sat down in front of the Mists of Pandaria demo and took a long look at the character creation screen before me. At the time, I was there to try out the newly announced monk class, but I couldn't help thinking that there wasn't much point in my doing so. I stared at the silver staff on that intimately familiar icon and wondered if maybe I should just roll a pandaren priest to preview the new casting animations. I knew then that I'd never put any serious time into playing a monk, even as an alt. Why? Because I'm totally playing a priest in Mists of Pandaria. The reason I recall this story now is because of how dramatically the priest class may change in MoP. Everything is under development, but already things are looking radically different as the foundation (or at least the infrastructure) of our class is torn out and redone. We looked at some of these changes last week, and this week, I thought it would be good to wrap up the loose ends of the discussion.
Spiritual Guidance: Priests, shields and AoE healing in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. If you recall, last November when Blizzard released its official talent calculators for Mists of Pandaria, I declined to make a full comment. At the time, the calculators seemed incomplete, with various abilities absent from the level-by-level breakdown for each spec. Without a comment from the blues on the matter, I didn't want to speculate on all of it until I felt I was looking at something more concrete. Well, last week it seems we finally got something more concrete. The calculators don't seem that much different, mind you, but a few comments from the developers answer a lot of questions priests might have had about the direction of the class' design. Let's take a look. Question: Why didn't the priest tree change? Answer: We are still in development. It is a challenge, when giving players a sneak peak at work in progress, to decide when to release what we have versus waiting to accumulate even more changes. Question: Do Discipline priests have Prayer of Healing or not? Answer: Our current design direction is this: Holy does AE healing with Prayer of Healing, and Discipline heals with (a much more powerful than today) Holy Nova. Divine Aegis would work with Holy Nova under this model. However, please see the question above. The priest tree is still in heavy development. source
A priest's guide to class romance
It's a troubling yet underpublicized fact that four out of five shadow priests respecced shadow for the first time after experiencing a romantic break-up. Recent studies show that priests are 63% more likely to respec shadow within 72 hours of a break-up, while a separate poll found that 78% of healing priests had seriously considered respeccing to shadow after having an argument with their spouse or significant other. To the tenderhearted healing priest, shadow probably seems like a quick way to steel yourself and mend a broken heart; unfortunately, too few priests realize the two points they're putting into Masochism 'til they're staring down into an empty bottle of Volcanic Potion and wishing they could do the same DPS as a warlock. The simple way to avoid all these drastic courses of action is, of course, to skip getting your heart broken in the first place. Easier said than done, you think? Perhaps, but knowing the battlefield of love will certainly help you avoid the more obvious pitfalls. Want to know what your best match is? What about your worst? This week, I've got the answers in a special guide to the classes.
Spiritual Guidance: How to increase your HPS as a discipline priest
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. I received an email three weeks back from a discipline priest who told me she thought her performance on the healing meters was too low. Though there wasn't any pressure on her from her guild to change what she was doing, she was bothered that her peers often outhealed her by a significant amount -- even another discipline priest with worse gear and a laggy computer. She told me she'd first noticed it at the start of Cataclysm, despite the fact that her performance on meters should have gone up with the change to combat logs (which allowed absorption from Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis to register on meters). She kept up with her assignments regardless, and none of her targets ever died, but something just didn't seem right to her. The priest linked me her armory but said that she didn't think it was anything to do with her gear choices, which I agreed with upon my own inspection. She also described what she was casting, none of which seemed horribly egregious to me. What could be wrong?
Spiritual Guidance: Top healing trinkets for priests
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. There were five potential healer trinkets added in patch 4.3, some of which have their pluses and their minuses. If you're a holy or a disc priest and you're not quite sure what trinket you should be taking this tier, let me help you narrow it down. I'll give you a hint, though -- they're the trinkets that everyone else will try to kill you for. Watch your back! Windward Heart As far as healing throughput goes, this is currently the best trinket in the game. Many healers are reporting its doing up to 5% of their healing in a fight, and since the heal is a smart heal that will target the most injured member of your party, you know it's never going to overheal anyone. The internal cooldown is 20 seconds, meaning you'll see the proc going off constantly as long as you keep healing. There is some debate on whether holy or disc will benefit from this trinket more, since holy priests are typically healing more targets and thus more likely to get a critical heal, while disc priests are known to have more crit because of talents like Renewed Hope. First off, it doesn't really matter who benefits from the trinket more, because it's best in slot for both specs. Second, who it benefits more has to do with your raid role, not your spec. It's true that a holy priest is more than likely going to be acting as a raid healer, but disc priests will occasionally fill that role too, just like holy priests may occasionally tank heal. Because raid roles change from fight to fight, I would encourage you to not be that jerk who tries to make a case for it by waving his spec around.
Spiritual Guidance: Priest healing the Madness of Deathwing and heroic Dragon Soul
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. This is it -- the last priest healing boss guide of the expansion! (After this, it's pandas or bust, baby!) Are you excited? You should be, because the last boss fight of Cataclysm is a loot piñata that's actually easier than the second to last fight a lot of fun! Hopefully, you all remember the drill from last week ... You want to familiarize yourself with the mechanics of this fight before progressing further into this guide. LearnToRaid.com has a nice video guide for Madness of Deathwing, and Icy Veins has an excellent written guide. Priests of either spec should know that cooldown management is the key to succeeding in this encounter as a priest. The encounter as a whole is not particularly difficult, but using your regen cooldowns at the right time will pave the way for you to hold onto just enough mana from start to finish. I recommend using your first Shadowfiend after the Mutated Corruption dies on the first platform, and your first Hymn of Hope just after jumping over to the second platform. Your second Shadowfiend should be used as soon as it becomes available, which will allow you to pair your third Shadowfiend and second Hymn of Hope together (just like we used to always do it in Wrath -- cast Shadowfiend, then immediately follow it up with Hymn of Hope). From there, use everything on cooldown, and you should be sitting pretty for mana the whole fight.
Spiritual Guidance: Healing priest strategies for Warmaster Blackhorn and Spine of Deathwing
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Assuming you survived last week without turning into a puddle of priestly sludge or quitting your guild (cough, cough), it's now time to move on to the sixth and seventh encounters in Dragon Soul, Warmaster Blackhorn and Spine of Deathwing. Just like last week, I want to remind you that you'll need to be familiar with the basic mechanics of these encounters to follow along with my priest healing guide. For Warmaster Blackhorn, try checking out LearnToRaid.com for a video guide and Icy Veins for a written guide. Warmaster Blackhorn is a pretty straightforward fight as far as healing is concerned. The key is to keep your eyes open to what is going on instead of staring intently at your raid frame the whole time. Much of the healing required will be in response to effects you'll see on the ground first, so if you're good at clicking players instead of health bars, you'll be way ahead of the game.
Spiritual Guidance: Priest healing for Dragon Soul's Hagara and Ultraxion
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Picking up where we left off the other week, today's Spiritual Guidance will cover the fourth and fifth bosses in Dragon Soul. The first up is Hagara the Stormbinder. Before we jump right in please make sure you're familiar with the basic mechanics and strategy of the fight; I will be examining the fight specifically from a healing priest's point of view. For Hagara, I recommend getting acquainted with the fight through the video guide at LearnToRaid.com or the written guide at Icy Veins. Healing priests of either spec should be mindful that Hagara's ice phase is probably going to be where players are at the greatest risk of death. Fortunately, Leap of Faith is the perfect way to intervene, provided you remember a few things. The obvious one first is that you should make sure you're well ahead of the Ice Wave before you use it. It's easy to get caught up in the wave yourself if you try to stop and cast, and the extra second required to orient yourself properly for a life grip could be a second too long if you're not careful. Next, take care to ensure you're not pulling your ally into an equally treacherous spot when you use Leap of Faith. Pulling someone away from the Ice Wave just so they can be hit by an Icicle is cleary counterproductive (although somewhat comical, depending on who you're saving).
Spiritual Guidance: Healing priest strategies for Dragon Soul's first 3 bosses
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. This week, we'll be looking at how to heal on your priest through Morchok, Warlord Zon'ozz, and Yor'sahj the Unsleeping. If you haven't read one of my boss healing guides before, let me give you the same ol' disclaimer I always give ... This guide focuses on the specifics details of how to heal as a discipline or holy priest within a given encounter. It assumes you have a basic understanding of the fight, and it will not typically explain mechanics or general strategy. If you are unfamiliar with a fight, please review the links at the beginning of each boss subsection. I also think it's worth mentioning that these guides will seem a bit excessive to players experiencing these encounters exclusively through the Raid Finder.
Spiritual Guidance: Healing priests in patch 4.3
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Like a sperm whale (or a bowl of petunias), patch 4.3 might be hitting live servers this week. Whichever it is, it's going to be a big one, so I figured I'd piece together a small guide for holy and discipline priests that recaps, follows up, and aggregates tons of stuff you might have forgotten or completely missed about the patch. I'll also be addressing that little talent calculator that popped in for a visit in the middle of last week and wiped its feet all over my clean carpet.
Spiritual Guidance: Patch 4.3 raid gear for holy and discipline priests
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. I've always hated patch day, and not for the reasons you'd think. The servers' being down doesn't bother me, and neither do broken addons or occasional lag. What bothers me is that after spending a few straight months piecing together a good-looking outfit, I'm suddenly forced into a situation where all my gear will inevitably start to mismatch as I acquire upgrades. That's why this upcoming patch is so amazing ... Transmogrification means I can transmogrify my new gear to match what I'm wearing until I have enough pieces to swap over to a new outfit. I know that's not as exciting as transmogrifying all my gear into a cool RP outfit, but after thinking about it for a while, I think I'd prefer to keep all my RP gear in my bags for special occasions. That way they're always special, since people will only see them once in a while. Anyway, a new patch is right around the corner, which means shiny new priest gear is on its way too! In preparation for this, I've made a gear list for priests to reference as we progress into the newest content in the coming months.
Spiritual Guidance: Further thoughts on priest healing in Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. A few weeks back at BlizzCon 2011 when the Mists of Pandaria talents were first unveiled, I spoke at length with fellow priest Oestrus about her thoughts on the new talents. One of the things she proposed was very interesting to me, that the new talent system might spell the end of the strong distinction between disc and holy. The idea was that since holy and disc priests would be able to use each other's talents now, it might blur the edge between discipline and holy to a point that we'd start thinking of ourselves more as healing priests, rather than disc priests or holy priests.
Spiritual Guidance: A first look at healing priest talents in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Just over a week ago, Blizzard unveiled its plans for the next expansion, Mists of Pandaria, and with it will comes a new talent system to simplify things dramatically. In the case of healing priests, it looks like we might be changing the way we view ourselves from now on, since only our spells will distinguish us from one another, not our talents. Before you know it, discipline priests will be tank healing with Serendipity and holy priests will be casting Power Infusion on themselves to call down torrents of healing. It's ... [Pandemonium joke goes here]. We better take a look at the talents before things get too furry.
Spiritual Guidance: Minor glyphs for discipline and holy priests, plus some pre-BlizzCon silliness
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Whenever I'm scoping out priests on the Armory or even in my own raid team, I always like to see what glyphs they pick. Mind you, there doesn't actually tend to be much variety from priest to priest. The best glyphs usually stand leaps and bounds ahead of the competition, especially with major and minor glyphs, so there isn't usually much difference between one priest or another. So why do I check? Because I'm looking to see if the priest has Glyph of Shadowfiend equipped.
Spiritual Guidance: Patch 4.3 holy priest buffs and more tier 13 set bonuses
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. You'd really think after all this time Blizzard would have done the obvious and invented some sort of healing hand grenade for holy priests. It could be the little brother of Lightwell or perhaps some sort of talent upgrade to Holy Nova -- toss the grenade to a specific location on the dungeon floor and in 10, 15, or whatever seconds, an explosion of AOE healing would nuke the area. Wouldn't that be fun? Naturally there'd have to be some witty flavor text on the tooltip, but -- wait, what day is this? Dawn looks at her calendar. Oh! Uh ... Never mind what I just said. Today, we've got to get caught up on patch 4.3 news. We've been up to our necks in priest news from patch 4.3 recently. Last week, we got a first look at our two-piece and four-piece set bonuses for priest tier 13; this week, we got a look at the gear model itself and a hefty list of mostly positive changes. We also (shock and awe) already received a few tweaks to our tier 13 set bonuses, so there is quite a lot to tackle today. First, let's talk fashion.
Spiritual Guidance: A first look at tier 13 set bonuses for holy and discipline priests
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Over the weekend, Blizzard released a preview of tier 13 set bonuses, which for priests means despite not having any idea what priest tier 13 is going to look like at the moment, we now at least know what it does. Exciting, huh? So as you can expect we're going to take a look at the two-piece and four-piece bonuses today and give the lot of it a little analysis for discipline and holy priests. Let's have a look, shall we? Two-piece After using Power Infusion or Lightwell, the mana cost of your healing spells is reduced by 25% for [10|15] seconds (10 seconds for discipline, 15 for non-discipline). Four-piece Your Power Word: Shield has a 10% chance to absorb 100% additional damage, and the cooldown of your Holy Word abilities is reduced by 20%.
Spiritual Guidance: Discipline priest stat weights revisited
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Holy talent trees, it's September! That means we're closing in on a year since Cataclysm was released, and it's about that time when priests start feeling really insecure about their gear and stat choices. (It also time to stock up on those Midsummer Ground Flower fireworks I like so much. The Harvest Festival vendors sell them.) Who knows what causes it, but it seems like whenever six months goes by without major community discussion on stat weights, everyone starts thinking they're doing things wrong. My mailbox is testament to this strange phenomenon and admittedly, even I'm feeling susceptible to it this time around. Therefore, I decided that I'm going to be revisiting priest stat weights today so we can take a look at how things have (or more truthfully, haven't) changed since Cataclysm was released. I'll also be examining at how those stat weights play out in a few standard healing playstyles that have developed since the expansion launch. This week, I'll be covering discipline first because I have to maintain the myth that I hate holy priests; then next week, I'll release an almost identical version for holy priests.
Spiritual Guidance: Raid and pre-raid gear in patch 4.2 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 and babysits Fox Van Allen on weekends while his warlock parents go to the cinema. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. "Oh, no! There's no spirit cloth in Firelands! What do we do?!" Calm down. I don't know why, but there has been some serious fear-mongering in the priest community this past week regarding the lack of spirit cloth gear in the Firelands. All over the internet, priests are screaming for their lives, running in circles, drinking Kool-Aid from the Twilight Council, and sending me really weird emails. (Apparently, they even sent Fox some emails too. Go figure.) Though I have no idea how this all started, I'm going to lay this out so it's easy to understand: You do not need to freak out about the lack of spirit cloth gear in the Firelands. If you'll give me your undivided attention for the next few paragraphs, I'll not only explain why, I'll walk you through all the pretty gear you can get from the Firelands, daily quests, and then some.
Spiritual Guidance: The healing priest's guide to raiding guild application trials
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 shadowy cohort Fox Van Allen makes her a sandwich. Last week, I talked about the application process of joining a new raiding guild and all the little things priests have to keep in mind when venturing out in search of a new guild. This week, I'll be finishing the series with advice on how to seal the deal and become a full-fledged member of your new, dream raiding guild. To do that, you'll need to complete and pass a trial. A trial is when you play with your potential new guild and show off your actual skill at the game, rather than just your shiny application. It is your one chance to show under their scrutinizing eyes that you're capable of slaying internet dragons with them. For a healer, this is a very stressful time, because it's not as simple as showing up and beating everyone else on the DPS meters. Even if you make no mistakes, it's hard to assess healers if other players around you are equally skilled. Let's discuss some of the finer points of showing others you're a worthy healer, and as the headline implies, put a priestly spin on it.
