discipline-priest
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Resto druids vs. the world 2: War harder
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we may hate numbers, but oh, they add so much to our lives. Story time! I first got a lesson on how to read healing meters while raiding Serpentshrine Cavern. One of our healers, an otherwise very competent holy priest, consistently ran OOM early on Morogrim Tidewalker and was next to useless during the final phase of the fight. The head of the heal team took an hour to look over the logs, and decided to give me a lesson on how to read them while doing so. It quickly became apparent that the priest was unwittingly covering for a resto shaman, who not only wasn't pulling his weight, but also seemed to take an unusual amount of damage. "Why aren't you doing anything during the add phases?" asked the head, a paladin. "Because our off-tank can't hold aggro for s$#t and I'm tired of dying to murlocs." This was actually true. Our head healer pondered for a moment. "Can't you just Chain Heal after he's already gotten all the murlocs?" "No, I die that way too. And we have to save BoP for the clothies who have to AOE the murlocs." Also true.
Breakfast Topic: Have you ever wanted to make your own machinima?
Most people know that I play a discipline priest in World of Warcraft. I play holy and shadow a lot too, but nothing really beats hopping around, casting bubbles on people, and preventing near death experiences. In League of Legends, I pretty much do the same exact thing, minus the hopping. In League I play a support champion named Janna, and most of what she does is float around, cast bubbles on people, and prevent near death experiences. I guess I just like bubbling things. I've always suspected it had something to do with the fact that the first game I ever owned as a kid was Bubble Bobble on the NES. Want to know what you do in that game? You hop around blowing bubbles at things. Anyway, ever since Wrath, I've wanted to make a video where my disc priest starts out shielding the raid on the heroic Lich King encounter, before accidentally falling through the platform and into a 2-D platform game (similar to Bubble Bobble). There she would have to use her bubbles to navigate levels and fight monsters. The problem is I don't really think I have what it takes to make machinima. Sure, I can hit the record button and film my character running around on a live server, but I don't think I have the patience or artistic talent to do stuff like Percula or the Hackleman Brothers. What they do is closer to animation, and animation is pretty intimidating to a second-rate artist like myself. Still, it doesn't stop me from dreaming. Maybe one day ... What about you? Have you ever wanted to make your own machinima? If so, what would it be? A short spoof, a feature length movie, or an ongoing series? Furthermore, what would it be about? Would it be the love story of your blood elf mage, or an epic war drama starring your human paladin?
Resto druids vs. the world: Healer balance in tier 14
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Today, it isn't enough that mistweavers are taking our gear -- now they're taking our jobs. The beginning of an expansion is usually a bad time to write deep, meaningful, and typically pompous posts on the "state of the class" and whither the druid and all that crap. For that matter, the beginning of Mists of Pandaria struck me as an especially bad time, because so much of what we were used to in WoW got changed and sent everyone scrambling. Toss in a brand-new hybrid class (the monk), and you've got the perfect storm of elements that make evaluating healer performance a dicey proposition at best. I poured myself a nice cocoa, kept an eye on World of Logs and Raidbots, and watched as the numbers rolled in and a legion of holy priests tore their garments and cried out in despair. Given that patch 5.1's now live, it seems an appropriate time to swirl that cocoa, take a look at how healers did in tier 14, and ask what's likely to change. As of now, it seems apparent that: Holy priests were actually right. Monks kicked your dog, seduced your mom, stole your XBox, and drove off in your car. Paladins are still topping the charts on certain encounters, but they're no longer dominating all of them. Shaman have improved a lot from their lackluster performance in Dragon Soul. Resto druids are back in same boat we were in at the beginning of Cataclysm, and it's not a very nice boat. Just for fun, here's a Shifting I wrote almost a year ago on healer balance in Dragon Soul, if you'd like to see how classes fared in the last tier of raid content.
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: 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: 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: Preparing disc and holy priests for patch 4.0.1
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, after contracting a team of gnomish engineers, Dawn has gone inside Fox's mind to plant an idea deep in his subconscious. The idea? Healing > DPS. Things are crazy for priests lately. New and dramatically different talent builds are appearing each week like cannonballs, mercilessly destroying everything from the previous week. This week, I was hoping to get everyone ready for the upcoming patch 4.0.1, but that's easier said than done, since build 12984 was just cannibalized by build 13033 on Thursday evening, before mutating into build 13066 on Saturday afternoon. All the same, I'm going to do my best to achieve my original goal James Stewart style, and if this all becomes irrelevant six ways before next Thursday, then it does -- and I hope you'll be patient with me while I reconstruct everything before the next storm. Cutting to the chase, I've got a talent by talent write-up to get everyone caught up on what's possibly going to go live in the next week (or three), some recommendations for talent trees, and details on glyphs.
Spiritual Guidance: Priest changes in build 12984 and Life Grip video
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 has been training an infantry of super-perceptive aerial assault sheep to counter the Dark Shrine she spotted Fox warping into WoW Insider HQ earlier. The latest build for the Cataclysm beta was the big news yesterday, thanks to ol' B at MMO-Champion. The news hit sometime in the night while most priests were nestled all snug in their beds, but High Priest Matticus and I were up late drinking chocolate malts and playing wall ball, so we got a head start on the information ... which we promptly used to write about pets and shaman. Last week, I said I'd be finishing my Cataclysm roundup this weekend, but since there were quite a few changes in this latest beta build (which I'm guessing will affect the release of patch 4.0.1), I think it's better if we discuss the details of the changes before we try to summarize them. There was also a super-exciting (though entirely superficial) change with this patch as well ... Leap of Faith, also known as "Life Grip," got a brand new animation! Check out the video after the jump.
Addon Spotlight: Bati's Healer Grid layouts
Addon Spotlight focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. This week, Grid gets some pre-made loving thanks to Bati! Thursday is here! Thursday is here! Excitement abounds in my secret addon lair for many reasons. First, my original vanilla WoW character is back in action. Originally, as many of you have read in my past columns, priest was my class of choice. Healers tend to be my forte because of group desirability -- selfishly and selflessly, I always rolled healer to get invited to groups and be there to support the healerless masses back when this was a thing. After a stint in Warhammer Online, tanking became my new love and, after a quick respec and some forum threads, my Burning Crusade healadin became my Wrath tankadin. After almost three years in the freezer, my priest has emerged from cryo-stasis.
Addon Spotlight: Helpers for priest healers
Addon Spotlight focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. This week, Addon Spotlight gives priest healers some suggestions for awesome healing helpers! Since there is still no beta addon news to cover and most of the user interface changes have been well documented, I continue to hang my head in shame, waiting feverishly for new word about addons in Cataclysm. Instead, I have taken to occasionally playing a human priest named Helicopter. Back in vanilla WoW, I was a raid-healing priest who basically played like the speeds of a tractor: a turtle for "slow" and a rabbit for "fast." The entirety of my existence consisted of picking one of two heals for the job, and that was that. When I popped into beta, rolled up a priest and set to work, I had no idea what I was doing. This week's Addon Spotlight is all about the things that I wish I had in beta -- an amalgamation of some awesome healing priest addons that can hopefully help out all you aspiring holy and discipline priests. Shadow, I don't hate, I promise. You'll have your day in the ... shade? You get enough tough love from your majordomo already, anyhow. Healer priests, this one's for you, with some vanilla priest stories thrown in for fun, of course.
Spiritual Guidance: Discipline 101
Every Sunday Spiritual Guidance is liberated from the shadows by Dawn Moore, while Fox Van Allen is busy massaging the many tired tendrils of Alfonz, Dawn's loyal Shadowfiend. Dawn will reflect on the intricacies of priest healing for discipline and holy priests, while forwarding Fox's address to her gnomish allies. It was sometime in early 2009 that I was sitting in Dalaran, reading trade chat when someone asked "can disco priests heal?" Someone replied "lol, disc priests?" to which the original poster said, "yeah, disc. Can they?" I smiled when I saw the mistake. Then a few months later when I applied to a guild, I filled in my spec and class as Disc(o) Priest. In response this, one of my future guildmates told me he expected the 70s to be in full revival during my trial: I provided. I might have gone overboard since, but I was born for this. So here it is, Discipline 101. Just as was the case with the holy 101, this is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to every nuance of the discipline tree. Instead it will cover the basics of how to get started with gearing and playing a discipline priest in a PvE environment, and hopefully get you asking more questions that I'll be able to answer in future articles. If you are a veteran discipline priest please provide the newbies with any tips or tricks of your own in the comments.
Spiritual Guidance: Discipline and ICC raid buffs
Every Sunday (and the occasional weekday) Spiritual Guidance offers holy and discipline priests advice on how to wield the holy light and groove to the disco night. Your hostess Dawn Moore will provide the music. Last week, Blizzard activated the first stage of the scaling raid buffs in Icecrown Citadel. When entering ICC now, you'll see either Varian Wrynn's hair (and the rest of him, attached) or the conglomeration of cliches we refer to as Garrosh Hellscream. Each NPC grants a faction specific buff to your raid party which increases your health, healing done, and damage done by 5%. Periodically, the strength of these buffs will be raised a notch by Blizzard, thus allowing guilds of various commitment levels to see all of Icecrown Citadel. So, what does this little news item have to do with priests any more than the next other class? Well, if you're a discipline priest and your lip gloss be poppin' bubbles be poppin', you'll notice that they are not poppin' with any more oomph than they did the week before. That's because, for whatever intended or unintended reason, the buff does not apply to Power Word: Shield. Don't have a panic attack, disco priests. In this article I will be addressing the issue, particularly for non-priests who might have misconceptions about the validity of a disc priest. I'll also be rehashing some older arguments. That's right folks: it's that time again! When all of Azeroth asks! *Cue game show music* What good is a disc priest? Update: Blizz has announced in the notes for patch 3.3.3 that Power Word: Shield will now benefit from the ICC zone buff. While that makes portions of this article obsolete, keep reading to learn more about the benefits of bringing a discipline priest to your raid.
Spiritual Guidance: Disciplined raid healing
Every Sunday Spiritual Guidance offers Holy and Discipline priests advice on how to wield the holy light and groove to the disco night. Your hostess Dawn Moore will provide the music. I decided to take a break from gems this week to discuss a style of priest healing that is becoming popular among raiders: discipline raid healing. Though the concepts behind it are extremely simple to understand and execute, this style of play seems to have slipped under the radar of many players despite its amazing potential. Tag along with me after the jump and I'll fill you in on the basics and benefits of disc raid healing. Holy priests, I'm talking to you, too.
Spiritual Guidance: Making an Insightful meta choice
Every Sunday, Spiritual Guidance offers Holy and Discipline priests advice on how to wield the holy light and groove to the disco night. Your hostess Dawn Moore will provide the music. For my introductory article I dreamed of writing a stunning opener that would be attention grabbing and witty. After an hour of contemplating bad diamond clichés such as Earthsiege Diamonds are forever, or Lucifron and the Skyflare Diamonds (which really makes no sense), I decided I'm just going to come out and say it straight: I hate the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond. Despite my loathing, according to Armory Data Mining, the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond is the most popular meta gem selected by level 80 priests, both holy and discipline. So, I am going to shed some light on this mysterious meta gem by explaining its pluses and minuses, as well as discuss some alternative options should you choose to switch.
The Queue: Prelude to drunken frivolity edition
Welcome to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Allison Robert is your hostess today.I think the title is fairly self-explanatory, n'est-ce pas?Radioted asks...With the recent implementation of faction change thinning the walls between Horde and Alliance all the more, has there been any talking bubbling up of implementing cross-faction mail, even if only fore stuff like heirlooms?Battle.net 2.0 will allow cross-faction chat, but we haven't heard anything concrete concerning cross-faction mail. Wryxian has mentioned that it's something they'd like to do, however. Heirloom items do transfer with your character if you switch them from Horde to Alliance and vice versa, and right now that's the only way to get an heirloom to your cross-faction toons.
Raid Rx: What's a good raid healing makeup?
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related. What's the ideal raid healing team for 25-man raid groups? As your guild starts acquiring better and better gear, you'll soon come to the conclusion that you can scale down the amount of healers that are needed in a raid. On several boss fights, your raid can get away with as low as 5 healers. In fact, 5 healing a raid is the norm now. During Burning Crusade, a majority of raids set up healing teams of 6-7. In Wrath of the Lich King, there's been more of a shift towards increasing the DPS. Nowadays, healers are far more equipped to handle the different forms of incoming raid damage.
The Daily Quest: It's always sunny in Dalaran
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. European folks can win a trip to BlizzCon in Blizzard-EU's costume contest. OutDPS takes a look at the Freya encounter. While not strictly WoW related, many of you will like to know that D&D Online is going free to play. Lodur over at WoM looks and Friends and Raiders: Raider Accountability. Holyform writes the Complete Idiot's Guide to Discipline Priest Spells. Our friend Medros of All Things Azeroth has a new podcast out called Group Quest. Check it out! Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Forum post of the day: Be disciplined about healing meters
Mellere of Wildhammer posted a brief lament about her guild leaders treatment of a Discipline Priest. The discipline priest was below a Retadin on HPS. Without understanding the role of mitigation as a healer, the Raid Leader told him to go holy to bring up his HPS. The OP expressed disappointment in the RL at this action.Several responders posted that this is partly the fault of Blizzard as they don't take into account shielding and mitigation to healing scores in the combat log. Daerilla of Spirestone intimated that she did not want to see mitigation included in healing figures, because then people would take notice of how overpowered Disc Priests are in raids. There were some less-than-kind comments about the Raid Leader's competence.
BobTurkey updates Priest theorycraft
Disc Holy MP5 1.0000 1.0000 Spirit 0.3317 0.6397 Intellect 0.7853 0.7480 SP 0.6000 0.6000 Crit rating 0.3564 0.3763 Stamina 0.2000 0.2000 Haste rating 0.2925 0.3059 I love theorycraft. One of my favorite things about WoW is the fact that you can do math about it, and that math can help you play better. One of the better examples of theorycraft out there was MK, author of A Dwarf Priest, who did some seriously cool work on Holy gear ranking for Wrath. However, MK hasn't been seen around lately, and hasn't updated the information for patch 3.1, with its big changes to spirit and to Priest talents. Fortunately, a blogger named BobTurkey has stepped in and thoroughly reworked all the numbers, at great and interesting length. It's times like these that I really love the WoW community.
How to decide who's getting Val'anyr
With Ulduar due to hit in the near future, Tales of a Priest addressed a pretty timely subject for 25-man raiders yesterday with a blog post on Val'anyr and how you're going to assign it. As it's a constructed Legendary like Atiesh rather than being a dropped item like the Warglaives and Thori'dal (sudden thought: why do the caster Legendaries have to be assembled, whereas the melee/ranged Legendaries just drop?), you're going to have to put some time and thought into which one of your healers is going to get this baby first. It's not exactly the world's most comfortable question for a guild leader, but I like how Derevka lays the issue out so matter-of-factly, and then goes on to address an interesting point concerning Val'anyr's proc. Your ideal candidate is a good healer with great attendance who plans on hanging around for a while, but then there's the question -- which class gets the most use out of the proc?
