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Spiritual Guidance: Priest gear in patch 5.2 and Throne of Thunder
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. Priests have a tremendous amount of gear choices available to them in patch 5.2. There are several valor point options tied to the Shado-Pan Assault faction. Epics can also be obtained in a new, single player scenario, Troves of the Thunder King. And, well, obviously upgrades can be found in the latest raid instance, Throne of Thunder. To get started, let's take a look at the new tailoring gear priests can pick up. In patch 5.2, tailors have a chance to learn ilvl 522 cloth armor patterns from their daily cloth cooldown. The new crafted gear is BoE, so if you're not a tailor you may be able to purchase it from the auction house or commission it from a guildmate. These items require Imperial Silk and Haunting Spirits, though, so expect them to be costly. Head Falling Blossom Cowl (hit/mastery) 6 Imperial Silk and 8 Haunting spirit Falling Blossom Hood (spirit/mastery) 6 Imperial Silk and 8 Haunting spirit Feet Falling Blossom Treads (hit/mastery) 4 Imperial Silk and 6 Haunting spirit Falling Blossom Sandals (spirt/haste) 4 Imperial Silk and 6 Haunting spirit
Spiritual Guidance: The 10 best weapons for shadow priests in patch 4.3
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the shadows to bask in your loving adoration. All jokes removed to achieve SOPA compliance. When we met here last, I spent a great deal of time calculating the power of trinkets, partially because it's an important subject and one that's not easy for a shadow priest to unravel without performing their own research (or reading someone else's). The real reason: WoW Insider data shows you guys absolutely love reading about trinkets. And why wouldn't you? Trinkets are the most compelling gear slot to fill. Instead of relying on boring, flat stats, they offer compelling procs. But trinkets aren't the only pieces of gear that offer compelling procs -- not anymore. Game designers at Blizzard are finally living up to a promise they made way back in February 2010 to "make more proc weapons in the future." The future is now, but that presents a new challenge to shadow priest. What exactly are those neat new procs worth? And what's our best-in-slot weapon?
Spiritual Guidance: The 7 best shadow priest trinkets in patch 4.3
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the shadows to bask in your loving adoration. He loves Lisa Simpson, and when he grows up, he's going to marry her! I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Gearing in Cataclysm is a no-brainer. Blizzard finally gets the needs of different classes and seems to be making gear that we actually want. Spirit plus haste gear is all over the place. So is mastery plus haste gear. And since almost everything worth getting has red sockets, we don't even need to do the math on what gem to use. And even with the "wrong" gear, reforging can make it almost as good as a best in slot. There's one place where gearing up is still somewhat of a challenge, and that's the trinket slot. Instead of flat secondary stats, trinkets typically rely on procs with unspoken internal cooldowns and hard-to-theorycraft bonus damage.
Spiritual Guidance: New patch 4.3 shadow priest gear
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the shadows to bask in your loving adoration. Gear. It makes the world go round. And though we like to say that we mess around in heroics and raids for the thrill of victory, let's face it -- if we didn't get those shiny new purples, we wouldn't obsess over victory so much. If such virtual treasure fuels you, today's column is for you. Whether you prefer to run the new 5-man heroics, mess around in the Raid Finder, or even just shop around on the Auction House, there's some terrific new gear out there.
Spiritual Guidance: Patch 4.3 and shadow priest transmogrification
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen's takes a brief respite from writing articles about how he refuses to date Magic: The Gathering players -- long enough, at least to write this entertaining nonsense. Despite the fact that Firelands of patch 4.2 is the latest and greatest raid, if your guild is anything like mine, you've been seeing pleas in guild chat to run places like Black Temple, Sunwell, and Serpentshrine Cavern. The reason, of course, is simple: patch 4.3 and the soon-to-be-implemented transmogrification feature. We've been talking shadow priest raid strategy this past month, and we'll finish that series up soon. For this week, though, follow me to the fitting rooms -- we're about to talk shadow priest fashion.
Spiritual Guidance: Gearing up a shadow priest in Patch 4.2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Every Wednesday, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen rains sheer purple destruction down on all who oppose him (and even those who don't, provided they drop shiny purple epics on the way down). To some, patch 4.2 represented a great new opportunity to explore new content, including an "interesting" new quest chain involving "World-Shaman" Thrall and a new daily questing hub/zone, the Molten Front. To others, it was a chance to make money hand over fist on the auction house. To us shadow priests hoping to be the best we can be in the new Firelands raid, however, patch 4.2 means grinding. Hyjal dailies. Firelands trash. ZA/ZG runs. Sweet, familiar, awful grinding. For the most intrepid of grinders, your pain-inducing effort has finally borne fruit -- some of us already have the valor points saved up to buy an item at our faction's vendor in Stormwind or Orgrimmar. But what exactly should we be buying? Is the Molten Front grind worth it? And where exactly do you find the best pieces of equipment for your patch 4.2 shadow priest?
Spiritual Guidance: Patch 4.2 shadow priest trinkets
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen rains sheer purple destruction down on the growing list of WoW Insider columnists who oppose him (and sometimes, even on those who don't). I've said it before and I'll say it again: Gearing in Cataclysm is boring. It's not that there aren't best-in-slot pieces -- there absolutely are -- it's just that reforging makes getting those best-in-slot pieces a lot less important. After all, if you need more haste or more hit, you can always reforge other stats until you have as much as you want. Simple. There's one slot that's absolutely compelling, though, and that's the trinket slot. Trinket bonuses are so specific that it's often impossible to tell what's an upgrade and what isn't without a calculator or spreadsheet. And while those new i378 boots are almost guaranteed to be better than that i359 pair you currently have equipped, the same can't be said for the new trinkets. So, which of the new patch 4.2 trinkets make the cut ... if any? Is the Darkmoon Card: Volcano still king? And further, what the heck are our new stat weightings in patch 4.2 going to be so we can figure these answers out?
Spiritual Guidance: Gearing a shadow priest for Cataclysm heroics
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Your host for the Wednesday edition, Fox Van Allen, always brings you the latest in shadow priest news, the latest in shadow priest controversy, and the latest shadow priest tactics -- all with the level of maturity of an episode of Maury. After the break: a paternity test, a lie detector test, and you won't believe who we're sending to boot camp! Eight months ago, I wrote one of my most viewed and read articles here at WoW Insider. It was about GearScore and item levels. Most of us know, of course, that each weapon or piece of armor we equip has a numerical value behind it that approximates how powerful it is. Back then, far too many people were using item levels and GearScore as the sole arbiter of who could and couldn't team up with them in pickup raid groups. Sorry, you seem like a lovely person and all, but I've determined your entire worth as a raider boils down to a four-digit number. Unfortunately, the four-digit number assigned to your worth is slightly lower than the four-digit number I arbitrarily came up with as the requirement to participate in the outdated raid content I wish to be carried through. In the piece, I explained that item levels and GearScore provide you with a general idea about whether or not a piece of gear is good, but in the end, having the right stats matters more than item levels. That still holds true in Cataclysm -- stats matter. An item level 333 blue can be better than an item level 346 blue. Despite that, though, measures of your "gear score" matter more than they ever have before. Cataclysm instances and heroics are gated behind strict minimum average item level requirements. Blizzard has become that guy. We won't spend our time today discussing whether that's right or wrong; instead, we'll be productive gamers and figure out how and where to get gear to clear that item level requirement, get yourself into heroics, and eventually, get yourself ready to raid.
Spiritual Guidance: Hitting the cap
Welcome to Spiritual Guidance, usually brought to you by Matt Low of World of Matticus. This week, resident Shadow Priest Alex Ziebart steps in to make your day a little darker. We're getting to the point in Wrath where more than just the hardcorest of the hardcore are raiding. Not everyone is there (and not everyone is interested), but the time will come. On the way there, you're going to have to visit an old friend: The hit cap.In Wrath of the Lich King, the hit cap has moved from the original 16% to 17% hit. Why? Prior to this expansion, there was a baseline 1% chance to miss with spells that you could not remove. No matter how much hit rating you had, you were stuck with a 1% chance to miss. In Wrath, that's gone. It can be overcome.
