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Shadow priest fan revives dying Shadowpriest.com via HowToPriest.com
It was the end of an era when the community-defining website Shadowpriest.com slipped from the hands of a priest/player and began a long, frustrating slide into what eventually became a barren landscape plagued with invasive ads and bereft of updates and regular moderation. It was a sad state of affairs for a website that had once shone as a gathering place and focal point for WoW shadow priests. Then in late August, long-time shadow priest Veiled stepped through the shadows, purchased the site, and transferred the community to a new and growing home at HowToPriest.com. "I can promise you that H2P won't be sold to the highest bidder," she wrote in an impassioned message to former community members. "I won't litter it top to bottom in ads. I will do everything in my power, even if it means spending my own money, to keep H2P alive, thriving, and happy for as long as I possibly can." Dispersing the cold hand of commercialism, Shadowpriest.com lives on in spirit via HowToPriest.com, where Veiled and a collective of priest fans labor to provide a resource and community center for not only regathering shadow priests but priests of all specs. WoW Insider: What an unexpected return for this community resource! Can you give us a look behind the scenes, Veiled, and explain how the changes came about? How did you make this happen? Veiled: Originally, the site was created by Nikitabanana back in 2006. Back then, it was ad-free and it was just a wonderful and thriving community. Here's the history as I know it: Nikitabanana eventually switched to holy paladin and sold the site (in 2007) to Bryghtpath. The company was passionate about the game and actually played a shadow priest, so it wasn't too bad. They had made promises of how things would be run (such as no ads or any monetization goals). Those promises were eventually broken as the site became more popular and more expensive to keep online.
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?
Back in the Day: The week after the TBC launch
What was going on in World of Warcraft this time last year? Back in the Day looks into the past of WoW Insider and brings back posts notable, controversial and sometimes humorous reflecting the state of the game one year ago this week.For the week of January 20 - 26, 2007:The Burning Crusade had gone live just the week before and the race to have the first level 60 Draenei and Blood Elf was on. In less than four days posts were flying across message boards to claim the title of being the first. This feat is either impressive or pathetic depending on your point of view. Either way, the thrill is gone since the pre-60 increased leveling rate introduced in Patch 2.3 made it easier than ever to level up a new toon in no time at all.Debates raged over two new issues brought on by the expansion: should the Draenei heal-over-time racial ability be usable by Draenei Priests in Shadowform and should Blizzard increase the spawn rate of quest mobs in Hellfire Peninsula to deal with the influx of half the player base after the same target? For the first, Draenei Priests felt it was unfair to be cut off from Gift of the Naaru due to their spec choice while priests of other races didn't think it was right for blueberries to get a heal in Shadowform when no one else did. Blizzard didn't back down on this and kept the ability disabled for Draenei Priests shifting into the dark side.
Arcane Brilliance: Statistical battle of the clothies
One thing I've noticed while playing my warlock, and now my mage, is that many WoW players can't seem to tell one cloth-wearing class from another. Anyone wearing a dress is fair game to be asked for healing, water, or (in extreme cases of dumbness) a soulstone. But there's reason behind their madness. Warlocks, mages and (shadow) priests are all meant to be damage classes with some utility added in. They compete for the same clothes, weapons, trinkets, and often the same raid slots. So, when it comes down to it, what's the difference between mages, warlocks and shadowpriests? Who has the most raid damage? Who's the most wanted in arenas? Who do you fear most in world PVP? Join me and my Azgalor-killing mage pal Skwisgaar for ... the BATTLE OF THE CLOTHIES! Raid/Group Damage This is the latest complaint in the ongoing fight between mages and locks. An Illidan-killing lock I talked to suggested I check out two fights for comparison: Shade of Akama for burst DPS, and Teron Gorefiend for sustained DPS. After spending some time on WoW Web Stats looking at the two fights, I came up with a few ideas about damage.
I have to change-- I'm logging out
Kayholder found a level 70 character on the Armory (hi, Subdural from Alexstraza) wearing all kinds of junk, and asks how the guy even got to level 50, much less 70. But the answer from another WoW LJer mentioned something I've never heard before either: "logout clothes."No way. I know players were concerned about being spied on in the Armory when it first came out, but are you guys really putting on a logout set before you exit the game? This guy's a shadow priest, but he doesn't have any arena ratings that I can see, and he's Exalted with the AV faction (not that hard), and only Honored with the other two, so who is he hiding his gear from? Does he not want Magtheridon scouring the Armory to see who's coming to get him this weekend?Seriously, do you guys really do this? Is it that important to hide your gear that you have to carry around a completely separate set to put on every time you log out? And even if you do, can't people see your set while you're wearing it? All they'd have to do, I'd think, is wait for you to log on, and then check the Amory to see what you were wearing (or heck, just go find you in game). Do any of you really use "logout clothes"? And for the love of Thrall, why?
WoW Moviewatch: Shadow Priest Public Service Announcement
Today on WoW Moviewatch we bring you an important public service announcement from your friendly neighborhood shadow priest. Well, at least he's friendly up to the point people start yelling "HAEL ME!!!" I really can't accept blame for anything that might happen after that point.Previously on Moviewatch...
Dealing with off-specs (or being one)
Righteous Fury has an interesting little piece up about off-specs-- you know them, they're the weirdos who play their class to do something other than its standard role in endgame raiding. Feral druids, DPS-adins, Fury warriors, Enhancement shammys, and (perhaps most of all) shadow priests. The convention says warriors spec prot, pallys heal and buff, and priests use +healing gear, but these guys (and girls) choose to buck the curve.What he says rings true to me because the guild I play with has finally reached the point where we're getting serious about raiding. My GM hasn't asked anyone to respec yet, but he's put it out there that we want to beat these bosses and get the gear-- if you can't do the job given to you because you're specced for PVP instead of raiding, you've got to move out of the way for someone who can, or do what's best for the raid. And I'm right there with him. Holy priests are the best healers in the game, so most priests should be holy and healing. Protection warriors have the tanking tools, so if you're MT, you better be prot.I'm not saying there's not room for off-specs-- there's a guy in my other guild who's such an awesome shadow priest (shout out to Gregorus on Thunderhorn-A!) that the whole guild has shadow priest alts just because they've seen what he can do. I main tanked for him in Strat, and when he told us early on that he "tanked by healing," he wasn't kidding-- the mobs all hit him way more then they hit me, and yet he kept us all healed and up with Vampiric Embrace and his +shadow gear. After seeing that, of course I had to have my own shadow priest, and when she hits 60, I already expect that I won't be able to raid with her under normal circumstances. No problem-- I'll melt faces in PVP with her, and raid with my prot warrior.On the other hand, if I need a DPS for a raid, and a shadow priest can roll out as much damage as a rogue or a warlock, then we're talking. But from what I've seen, off-specs can do those things, just not as well. Gear to gear (without extremely expensive potions), can a feral druid tank as well as a warrior? Can a shadow priest out-dps a rogue? Because if not, I'm giving those spots to PVE specced raiders.
Life as a Shadow Priest: Day One
When I first rolled my priest, I planned to do more PvP with it than I had with my other characters. And as I leveled up, I'd usually spend an evening or two a week running through Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and eventually Alterac Valley. But after hitting 60, I found myself wanting to PvP less and less. I've talked a bit about struggling with healing in PvP, and while it's certainly possible, I can always tend to think up more entertaining things to do than venture into the battlegrounds these days.Yesterday, when a friend asked me if I wanted to go to Alterac Valley with him, I replied immediately: "No - all I do there is die over and over. I'm no shadow priest!" My friend had a quick comeback: "Why not respec?" I didn't have any response to that. I'd leveled up with a holy/discipline build that had served me well, but in the past few days respeced several times in an attempt to make solo and PvP a little more fun, without gimping my healing abilities. I hadn't been entirely happy with any of the results, so perhaps this was the time to consider more serious measures. I headed straight for the priest trainer and, after some hesitation, paid the fee to unlearn my talents.I put 20 points in discipline and remaining 31 in shadow. I was now, officially, a shadow priest.
