priest-spells
Latest
Spiritual Guidance: Holy and discipline priest healing (if you've never done it before)
WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore is a discipline priest by reputation, but still enjoys melting faces as shadow and bugging her raid to click the Lightwell as holy. A reader contacted me when Mists of Pandaria was first released and asked if I had plans to write a 101 guide for discipline healing. Without thinking about it, I sent back a link to Guide to Mists of Pandaria discipline priests and went about my day. The reader wrote me back though, and asked if I had planned to write an actual 101 guide, that is, a guide for someone who has never played a priest before. Ohh ... I understood then what she had meant. Be it that I am now telling you this story, it should be obvious that I thought that was a good idea.
Spiritual Guidance: Shadow Priest 101
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, the shadow-minded Fox Van Allen takes over for the discipline-oriented Dawn Moore. Fox -- the Reagan '84 to Dawn Moore's Mondale; the communion wine to Dawn's flavorless communion wafer; the Charlie Sheen to ... that other boring guy with the fat kid. When I tell people that I write for WoW Insider, they often have a lot of questions. "What does Mike Sacco's hair really smell like?" "What's Tyler Caraway's deal?" "Can I have Dawn Moore's personal cell phone number?" I answer them all, of course (seriously, it smells like strawberries; he's overcome with Fox-induced hero worship; and no, you can't!). Today, though, I want to answer the one that comes up most often: "Do they let you write about whatever you want?" In short, yes. My employers are gracious folks, who seldom resort to physical violence against their writers. Every once in a while, though, the editorial gods issue an edict from their digital version of Mount Olympus. Three months ago, that edict was "now that Cataclysm is out, write a [your spec here] 101 article." You see, lots of World of Warcraft players are interested in reaching out and trying new specs, but are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information they need to get started. They want to know all about talents, gems, and what the spec is all about, but they don't want to sift through 50 articles to get the information. They want the Cliff Notes version. And that's precisely what the 101 series is all about. All my fellow writers here finished their Not as Cool as Shadow 101 articles back in December or so. Since I was too busy staring at my own reflection to get it done in time ... well, here it is, three months late: Shadow 101.
Lost Pages of Taborea: Spam heal is the enemy of strategy
Last week, I spoke a bit about whether Runes of Magic was too easy or not. In that article I harken back to the mana strike that players held to remove part of a patch that added a percentage-to-cost modifier on all spells for all classes. This week I wanted to flit around the same subjects, but from the viewpoint of healing and strategy. I want my readers to be well-versed in RoM 101. Just like I set out to do with my community guide for new and old players, I want to educate players today on the fine art of button-mashing. Let's start by covering what spam healing -- or spamming any skill -- is, and why it's not always fun. I'll put this into the context of dungeon-running, cover some fun strategy that results from not being able to spam heal, and give my opinion on how well (or not-so-well) all this works in RoM.
Spiritual Guidance: Spells we forget
This Sunday, Dawn Moore has called a temporary truce with Fox Van Allen so the two of them can take Spiritual Guidance on a group trip to Disneyland. They almost made it through the entire Space Mountain line without a fight on what was better, healing or damage. Later, Fox got a stomach ache and dispersed while riding the tea cups, and Dawn had to go back to the hotel to lie down before the Hannah Montana concert. Once upon a time, an off-tank coughed. At the time, the off-tank was zoned into Trial of the Crusader and thoroughly engaged in a battle against Anub'arak. His raid was just transitioning out of the first phase 2, and he was moving to his position to pick up adds. Unfortunately, as the off-tank coughed, he shifted ever so slightly, causing a poorly placed cup of cherry Kool Aid to upturn. Not a second later, the off-tank's raid was audience to a colorful soliloquy about a different type of penetrating cold. As the above events transpired, a disco priestess noticed that she had suddenly acquired threat from a newly spawned bug add. She strafed momentarily before hitting the key for her Fade spell and in doing so, saved herself from unknown peril. The bug, having lost its focus, immediately turned its attention to another priest in the raid named Calvin. Calvin, it turned out, was specced holy. Before things could get worse, the off-tank managed to pull himself together and resumed his tanking duties; he taunted the large bug and the panic in the raid subsided. Surprisingly, the battle continued without incident, and in the end the nerubian king was slain.
