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Spiritual Guidance: More priest's notes for healing The Firelands
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, I'll be finishing up my notes on the bosses of the Firelands. Pretty good timing, since some of patch 4.3's content was just announced, don't you think? Yeah, yeah, yeah -- I know you're too busy trying to figure out your transmogrified outfit, right? Well, don't forget there is plenty of good-looking gear in the Firelands, too! I know that I'd definitely rank looking like a giant oven mitt in my top five. First, I wrote about the first four bosses (Shannox, Lord Rhyolith, Alysrazor, and Beth'tilac) last week. This week, we're wrapping up the final three. All my boss guides assume you know the basic mechanics of the fights already.
Spiritual Guidance: Besting Baleroc (and other shadow priest alliteration)
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen's soaks all Baleroc's Torment, while inflicting Torment of his own onto the heads of certain boomkin bloggers. If you ask me, variety is what makes a good raid. You have different, unique bosses, with different, unique mechanics. Some have adds; some don't. Some send you soaring through the skies. Some have weird vehicle mechanics. And some encounters, bless their hearts, are Patchwerk-style simple. That's sort of the niche Baleroc the Gatekeeper fills. There are some mechanics you need to know, of course -- it's not a mindless stand-and-DPS fight. There is one phase and there is one key DPS mechanic. And as far as that mechanic goes, we shadow priests are stars of the show.
Spiritual Guidance: A priest's notes for healing The Firelands, part 1
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. Well, class, I'm back. Mr. Matticus said you all were very well-behaved in my absence, and from what I understand, you got through all the work I left with him. Unfortunately, we've still strayed away from the curriculum, and there's quite a lot of catching up to do if you're to do well on your heroic assessment tests. Now, I've put together this study guide for healing through the first four encounters in the Firelands. Does anyone know what those are? That's right: Shannox, Lord Rhyolith, Alysrazor, and Beth'tilac. We'll be having a practice test at the end of the week so I can see what sections we need to work on.
Spiritual Guidance: A shadow priest's guide to Alysrazor
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen's steals all your feathers to become a soaring blur of purple. Fox encourages all potential prey to follow him on Twitter. Last week, I talked about the gimmickry involved in the Lord Rhyolith fight. It's interesting and unique, but for us shadow priests, largely irrelevant. If only there were a fight with a super-cool gimmick that puts shadow priests on center stage and ... ... oh, wait, there totally is a fight like that: Alysrazor! The fight against Alysrazor is absolutely hectic, but in a fun way. Shadow priests get a stacking haste buff that will have you frantically mashing keys to maximize your DPS. We get a crit buff that guarantees near 100% Shadowfiend uptime. And, oh yeah -- we friggin' fly through the air. That's right, Alysrazor is all about the z-axis. It's time to go grab your Super Nintendo out of the attic, shadow priests, because it's about to get all Pilotwings up in here.
Spiritual Guidance: The shadow priest's guide to Lord Rhyolith
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen's massive legs obscure your entire field of vision. Fox encourages all potential prey to follow him on Twitter. We beat Shannox. We took down Beth'tilac. Look out, Lord Rhyolith -- you're next. For shadow priests, Firelands boss Lord Rhyolith isn't an especially fun fight. He's way too big, so if he gets anywhere near you, he'll take up your entire field of vision. He's heavily armored (at least at first), so you get to see some pretty sweet 500-damage Mind Flay ticks if you attack him directly. And while he's got an interesting gimmick, shadow priests typically don't play a part in exploiting it. Still, even if it's not the most exciting fight, there's still plenty for us to do, plenty of stuff to avoid getting hit by, and (best of all) plenty of epics to find inside once you crack him open like an egg.
Spiritual Guidance: How to play an Atonement priest
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore isn't here this week, and Fox Van Allen is just being his usual shadowy stuff. Instead, you're stuck with Matt "Matticus" Low of World of Matticus and Plus Heal! Playing a discipline priest is all the rage these days, it seems, especially now that many raiders are busy messing around in Firelands. There is a small selection of discipline priests who exercise the Atonement and Evangelism style of healing to great effect. In the past, I wasn't really a fan of it at all because I felt that there were better options. The buffs Blizzard made to Atonement back in patch 4.1 involving Holy Fire made it increasingly more attractive. Maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance. So the past few weeks, I've been trying to master this style of play. It isn't easy, and I definitely wouldn't recommend it for a priest who is new to the game or new to raiding. This week, I'll share with you a few tricks about what I learned and picked up.
Spiritual Guidance: Beth'tilac and proper shadow priest AOE
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes out to trap and inject his prey with sweet, warm, shadowy poison. Fox encourages all potential prey to follow him on Twitter. When I was just a little Fox kit, my parents bought me a pretty bitchin' Fisher-Price castle playset at a garage sale. It had a little drawbridge, a prison, and even a trap door. It also had a dungeon to put a dragon in. It was the most awesome thing ever. I used to play with it all the time down in our basement. One day, I had just reached my hand into the castle to grab one of the misshapen figurines when I felt a weird, hair-raising tingle. My hand had just collided with a spider web teeming with newly hatched spiderlings. I freaked the hell out and spent the next 10 minutes scrubbing my hand with soap. Twenty years later, it's time for revenge. The second boss of the Firelands raid, Beth'tilac, is an ugly spider that spawns massive amounts of Spiderlings. This time, though, I've got a solid AOE strategy. I'm ready for them -- and you can be, too.
Spiritual Guidance: Shadow priest's guide to Shannox
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen rains down sweaty, sticky, uncomfortably warm destruction on all who oppose him (especially Tyler Caraway). Fox encourages you to follow him on Twitter. It's pretty miserable here in Boston today. I'm sweating, and not in the sexy, glistening skin way -- in the wring out a T-shirt way. It's, like, 90-something, which to a New Englander is damn hot. And to all you people who live in Las Vegas (Oh ho ho, it's 129 here today, you wimp!), shut up -- you chose to live in a place that's awful year round, not me. Anyway, this uncomfortable sweatiness has me starved for revenge. Beings of fire, you shall face my wrath! Over the next few uncomfortable, sweat-stained months of summer, we'll be taking on the bosses of the Firelands right here in Spiritual Guidance in seek of precious relief (and purples). This week: vile hunter Shannox and his adorable flaming skeleton pets.
Spiritual Guidance: Should a healing priest learn to shadow?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore isn't here this week, and Fox Van Allen is just being his usual shadowy stuff. Instead, you're stuck with Matt "Matticus" Low of World of Matticus and Plus Heal! Greetings, minions of the light! As you can tell, resident priestess Dawn Moore is not here this week. That means you are stuck with blessed with my presence for the day! As a priest, you have the luxury of blowing stuff up or healing damage. Your leaders may periodically ask you to switch roles because of the nature of the encounter or composition in a raid. I have recognized the usefulness that the flexibility offers, but I also understand that my lack of shadow skill can be detrimental to the team. So just how important is it to learn how to DPS? I'm also going to add a minor comment about priests in Firelands and the dominance of discipline over holy.
Spiritual Guidance: What's the best race for a Horde shadow priest?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen rains down sheer purple destruction on all who oppose him (but he does so with love!). Fox encourages you to follow him on Twitter. A few weeks ago, I ran an article called "What Alliance race is best for shadow priests?" And man, did I get my ass flamed for doing it. A whole bunch of you complained that I was too hard on Team Blue, that a Horde sympathizer such as myself had no business writing such a thing. Just a small sampling of the fun comments: Wow arent you a tool. Why not throw in some Justine Bieber, George Bush, McDonalds, and whatever else is popular to hate bashing in there to get the fanboy juices really flowing? To answer the question, yes, I am a tool. That still doesn't change the fact that gnomes are the worst thing to happen since that time I saw Justine (sic) Bieber and George Bush eating at a McDonald's. With Gary Coleman? In a Suburu? Remember that, Lois? Anyway, follow me after the break. There aren't any Family Guy cutaways, I promise. We do kill off and eat a weatherman, though. So there's that.
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?
Want spirit cloth gear from Firelands? Bad news ...
If you're a priest, you might have noticed that patch 4.2's Firelands has very, very few pieces of cloth gear with spirit on them. You may have thought this was a bug or perhaps an oversight, since it means that it'll take you considerably longer to gear up in this tier due to having to use valor points for non-set pieces, buy BoEs, or wait for Hyjal rewards instead of getting lucky with random drops. Well, Blizzard heard your cries and has responded! It's not good news, though. Cloth gear had the spirit burnt off in FL Stat balance on gear should be looked at via much more than just boss loot tables. We consider reputation gear, tailor gear, Valor gear and the tier sets when examining what's available to you. If you wish, you can have Spirit on every slot but your belt (which can still be reforged). The priest tier set has Spirit on all 5 slots. Having said that, the mindset that only cloth with spirit is priest healer gear (and cloth with no spirit is never priest healer gear) is a mindset to be resisted. If that is allowed to set in, then all the fun of looking at a potential new piece of gear and deciding for yourself whether it is an upgrade for you is removed entirely. Along those lines, something to keep in mind is that there is more to improving the healing you do in cloth than simply stacking spirit. As you increase spell power, haste, and crit, and your tank increases health, armor and avoidance, boss damage negates less of your mana in the first place. source So, no, there isn't any cloth gear hiding. No bugs. No oversights. It was a calculated decision to force priests to reexamine their gearing strategies. Blizzard is right in that a gearing strategy of "stack this one stat forever" is pretty dangerous (hello, armor penetration), of course, but having only select items with spirit on them actually reduces your gearing options, since you can't switch a tier piece out for another non-tier item that doesn't exist. Wait, I have an idea! Just let priests wear spell plate. That solves everyone's problems. The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new tier 12 armor!
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 basics of shadow priest PVP
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen regularly insults normal people, so you should never take his writing seriously. Fox encourages you to follow him on Twitter. I've been writing the shadow version of Spiritual Guidance for over a year and a half now. In actuality, it seems like forever -- like I've covered every topic multiple times. And yet, in all those columns, there's one topic I've never really taken the time to address: shadow priest PVP. There's a reason, of course. PVP in and of itself is a damn complex subject. With a PVE encounter, there's some randomness, but it's all contained within a predetermined set of variables that you can research on a resource such as Wowhead. You may not know when Onyxia is gonna use her Deep Breath ability, but you know it's coming. PVP is different. You don't know what your opponent is thinking (if he's even thinking at all). Some battleground teams head into battle looking for a street fight, hoping to win with raw brutality and no real strategy. Other teams choreograph their movements and communicate through Ventrillo or Mumble, approaching each battle like amateur Douglas MacArthurs. There's no algorithm that tells you how your opponents will act and react to what you do. I'm far from a PVP expert myself, so I can really only offer you some of the PVP basics to get you started. If you're looking for top-level strategy, check out Blood Sport. If you're looking to get your feet wet and start exploring the other side of the World of Warcraft game ... read on.
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.
Spiritual Guidance: Applying to a raiding guild, healing priest edition
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 handles the shadows (and laundry). Dawn hates Battlecruisers. Anyone who knows me moderately well will know that at any given time there is a 50/50 chance that I won't be in a guild. Why? Because like Romeo searching for love, I am constantly trying to find the perfect guild for me. I'm an incredibly volatile person (in every sense of the word) and in the wrong environment I'm not a particularly happy person. If I'm not happy, I don't play well, and if I don't play well then I'm not bringing anything to the raid. Thus I'm always searching, always writing applications, and always redoing my ugly UI every time I crash land on a new server with bright eyes and hopes that I'm finally in the right place. This month I am once again looking for a new guild and thought I'd let you guys in on the process. So if you've ever thought of taking your raids and PVE a little more seriously, I've got a lot of good information for you. If you also happen to be a healing priest, I have some specifics on what you'll need to be mindful of.
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: Progression vs. farm, identifying the right raid spec
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 handles the shadows (and laundry.) Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com, produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Not a raiding tier goes by where the forums aren't littered with posts from novice healing priests asking why some well-known priest from some high ranked guild doesn't have a cookie cutter talent spec recommended by the community's leading theorycrafters. The post always goes something like this ... "I looked up Lawliesthesiaspec from on the armory today and I just don't understand why she took three points in Inner Sanctum and only two points in Twin Disciplines. Shouldn't she max out Twin Disciplines for the extra healing? Am I doing something wrong? Should I copy that?" Sometimes there is an amusing theory about why the priest has taken the talent, or an accusation that the player must be terrible at the game. Whatever the tone of the post, the question is ultimately rooted in the inability of many players to identify one talent spec from another. Today I intend to fix that so you're all prepared for Firelands in a few weeks.
Spiritual Guidance: Priest healing tips for tier 11 heroic mode raids
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 is busy looking in the mirror instead of playing a proper spec. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com, produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. In previous weeks, Spiritual Guidance has tackled how to heal the various raid encounters in tier 11. This week, we're going to revisit each boss on heroic difficulty. Once more, I'll be examining which spec is better equipped to handle the fight while also examining the differences in the new encounter and how to deal with them. We have a lot to talk about, so let's get started. First, I want to point out that a major difference between any heroic and normal mode encounter is that abilities in heroic do an increased amount of damage. In order to avoid being redundant, please keep in mind that when I point out the differences between modes that the need for more healing will be assumed. If the increased damage significantly impacts the strategy of the fight, however, I will explain how.
Spiritual Guidance: On the subject of Shadow Word: Death
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Every Wednesday, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen provides stellar, thoughtful advice ... when not sabotaged by Tyler Caraway. Over the past few weeks here at Spiritual Guidance, we've been talking a bit about the simple mechanics of shadow priests, ultimately exposing them as anything but simple. In April, I put the inner workings of shadow priest mastery on display, spending over a thousand words to explain a concept that some other specs can wrap up in a few sentences. Last week, we talked about shadow priest spell haste and DOT mechanics, something so complex that even I messed up a bit when explaining. Today, we're giving Shadow Word: Death the same treatment. No other single spell generates so many questions in the shadow priest community, because no other single spell has so many complicating modifiers. You can improve it through three different talents and two different glyphs. The spell's effect changes depending on whether the target's health is above or below 25%. And, if that wasn't enough, the effect also changes depending on whether the target dies as a result of your SW:D cast. Oh, and unlike all your other spells, Shadow Word: Death can kill you. That seems important to work in there somehow.
