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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: 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: Further changes on Patch 4.2 PTR to consider
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 tries to go back to the future -- or the past, or something. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. It's been another exciting week for healing priests who have their sight focused on patch 4.2 and the next raiding tier. First, Blizzard announced that it was going to go ahead with its plan to change how critical heals worked. Previously, Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) explained that the developers were looking to increase the value of crit for healers, since most classes were ignoring it in favor of other stats. Now that they've gone ahead with their plans, we'll need to examine the impact this will have on discipline and holy priests. But before we do that, we have to look at the most exciting news for priests this past week: Our set bonuses got changed! If you missed it, last Thursday Zarhym hopped on the forums and announced that the developers had made some changes to the set bonuses of several classes. Priests were, of course, on that list.
Spiritual Guidance: Holy and discipline tier 12 set bonuses
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 fraternizes with cultists and buys Justin Bieber albums. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Information about patch 4.2 has been coming in nonstop this past week, and our favorite dataminers at Wowhead and MMO-Champion have dug up a first look at the class set bonuses for tier 12 gear. As usual, the community has been chatting up a storm since the release, especially the priests. Today I'll be joining that discussion to examine what holy and discipline priests have to look forward to in the next content tier -- or not look forward to, depending on your perspective. Either way, let's take a look.
Spiritual Guidance: The aftermath of patch 4.1 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, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen loiters around the drugstore, drinking chocolate malted Falcons and giving away free high school. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Patch 4.1 went live last week, and with a long list of buffs and nerfs in the patch notes, it looked like it was going to be a big event for priests of all specs. Now, almost a week later now, Fox Van Allen still appears to be alive the impact of the changes seems to have varied. Have you acclimated to the changes yet? Are you wondering why hunter pets are acting like they've been chomping on mood stabilizers even when you heal them? Do you want a cookie? Then let me direct you to all the important things you need to know in a post-4.1 patch world.
Spiritual Guidance: Macros for healing priests
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. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Some time last year on Spiritual Guidance, I wrote an article on macros for healing priests. Overall, it was a simple approach to the topic, touching on some basics like binding consolidation, communication, and a couple of utility macros. The article generated a lot of discussion, and several readers submitted some quality macros for their fellow priests. Since a few of those macros are now outdated and I've added a few new macros to my spellbook in the interim, I thought now would be a good time to revisit the topic and look at what I've dug up in the past few months. Since these were accumulated over time, I haven't kept track of all the original authors of these macros, so if you see something in here you wrote, feel free to shake your fist at me.
Spiritual Guidance: Priest healing strategies for Cho'gall in The Bastion of Twilight
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. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. I've had this idea for a social experiment in my head for the past few weeks, where you lock five priests together in a room with nothing but Highland Spirits and force them to have a round table discussion about Lightwell. While I work on my hypothesis and proposal -- and find a way to bait Fox Van Allen into this possum trap -- you guys can finish reading up on the finer points of healing Cho'gall as a holy or discipline priest. Seeing as this is the last boss of The Bastion of Twilight, this will be the final installment of Spiritual Guidance's priest healing guides for this tier.
Spiritual Guidance: Priest healing Ascendant Council
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. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. During the past couple of months, Spiritual Guidance has tackled priest healing in Blackwing Descent and taken a peak inside The Bastion of Twilight at Halfus Wyrmbreaker and the twin dragons, Valiona and Theralion. This week, we'll be heading back into The Bastion to take a look at how to heal your way through the next encounter, Ascendant Council. This encounter is extremely chaotic and will be sure to keep discipline and holy priests busy.
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: Patch 4.1 to usher in big Chakra and Atonement healing changes
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 karaoke at PAX East. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. It's been two weeks since we first examined the upcoming priest changes for patch 4.1, and in that time, many more changes have piled up. To keep things interesting around here, I figured we'd talk about the changes over a plate of cookies. Previously, we discussed the changes to the duration of Power Word: Shield, the tiny buff to Divine Aegis, and the huge change to Dispel Magic, so check back a couple weeks if you want to read about those changes. This week I'll be looking at a huge change to the mechanics of Chakra, the sort of return of Atonement healing, the nerf to Power Word: Barrier, and the tweak to our four-piece raid set bonus.
Spiritual Guidance: Healing Chimaeron and Atramedes as a priest
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 decorative cross stitching (who knew he was so crafty?). Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. This week on Spiritual Guidance, we'll be returning to Blackwing Descent where, after meeting sudden and untimely deaths at the bottom of an elevator shaft, we can respawn and face our next two healing challenges: Chimaeron and Atramedes. You may recall that not long ago, we examined two other bosses in Blackwing Descent, Magmaw and the Omnotron Defense System. If you can handle those two, these bosses are just a tiny step up in difficulty and should be no match for your priestly prowess.
Spiritual Guidance: Understanding the recent priest changes
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. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. The last week has been a bit of an adventure for priests of the healing variety. Hotfix nerfs and buffs were implemented to address the overuse of Power Word: Shield in the aftermath of patch 4.0.6, and before long, everything was upside down. Discipline priests quickly found their mana pools drained for using multiple shields, even at ideal times, and in a weird twist of fate, holy priests were able to pick up the mantle as shield spammers. The community writhed and waited for new hotfixes to come. But would they be the last? Given these events, I thought it would be appropriate to explain exactly what happened this past week before moving back to our weekly boss strategies.
Spiritual Guidance: Playing your holy or discipline priest in patch 4.0.6
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. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Patch 4.0.6 is live, which means we're taking a vacation from the raiding guides to talk about how priest healing has changed since the patch for holy and disc priests. Overall, life is great right now if you're a healing priest. There may be some people who disagree, but I think it's obvious that we've got it all right now. Our spells are strong, our cooldowns are amazing, and we have the best spell in the game, Leap of Faith (or Power Word: Barrier, if you want to be serious.) The posts complaining about priests being overpowered are at an all-time high, sweeping through the forums like a refreshing spring breeze; it's like Trial of the Crusader was just some bad dream.
Spiritual Guidance: Priest healing tactics for Omnotron Defense System and Magmaw
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 shovels his way out of a snow storm that Dawn has absolutely nothing to do with (the cookies are in the mail, Christian.) Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. So at this point, you've probably restored the world pillar, been solely entrusted to protecting Hyjal by a demi-goddess, and made off with several dozen pigs (or pumpkins) from the poor farmers of your faction's capital city. You've probably also ventured into countless enemy strongholds and slain everything from wind dragons to rock monsters -- or at least had a panic attack trying to heal the guys doing the slaying. You sure are amazing, and everyone knows it (except the Guardians of Hyjal reputation vendor), so it's not surprising that about now you've been called upon by other heroes to delve deep into the deepest, darkest lairs of Azeroth so you can fulfill your destiny of spamming Prayer of Healing on groups 1 and 2. Sound good? Excellent. If you haven't guessed already, during the next few weeks, the healing side of Spiritual Guidance will be taking a tour of tier 11 raid content and discussing how to best approach it as a holy or discipline priest. If you're ready, let's get started.
Spiritual Guidance: Valor point and raid gear for discipline and holy priests
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 screams at the heavens for truth. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Late last month, Spiritual Guidance examined the many options for discipline and holy priests who were looking to gear themselves up through normal and heroic dungeons. Now that it's been a while, I'd assume that many of you have quite a few valor points saved up from doing your heroic daily and have maybe even dived into a little raiding. That undoubtedly means you'll want a convenient list of all the things you want to keep an eye out for in raids, and possibly some recommendations on how to best spend your valor points. So that's what's on our agenda today.
Spiritual Guidance: Patch 4.0.6 for discipline and holy priests
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 attacks hunters. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. I could have sworn the expansion only just came out, but despite the newness of it all, there already appears to be a major patch on the way. Before you get excited, though, patch 4.0.6 won't be bringing anything too new -- it's a patch aimed at balancing a lot of little things about the game. Priests in particularly are getting a lot of tweaks, and with each passing day, the pile of changes we can look forward to in the next patch grows a little bigger. Before it becomes too much to keep up with, let's take a look at it all and examine what everything means for holy and discipline priests.
Spiritual Guidance: Pre-raid gear guide for holy and discipline priests
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for disc and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. So you've gotten your priest to level 85 and now you want to get geared up to heal raids, huh? Not sure what dungeons to run or what tabards to wear? Not sure where to start or too lazy to go to Wowhead and find out the information yourself? Spiritual Guidance is here for you! This week I'll be listing off all the gear you can get your mitts on before you can get into raids. Before we get started, you should know that when you first hit 85, you'll only want to run a handful of normal dungeons to get your average item level high enough to queue for heroic dungeons. Those normal dungeons are Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, and Lost City of Tol'vir. The other normal 5-man dungeons only drop 308 and 316 item level gear. Once you can queue for heroic dungeons, you'll see level 346 gear in all the dungeons. Normal mode raid gear is 359, but you can get a handful of 359 gear without raiding, either through crafting, reputation, or drops. Got that? Okay, let's get to the priest-specific stuff now.
Spiritual Guidance: Discipline priest 101
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for disc and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Cataclysm is out, you've leveled your priest up to 85, and now you want to start playing your priest as a healer in dungeons and raids, huh? Hopefully, by now you know you have two options you can take as a healer, discipline and holy. This week at Spiritual Guidance, we'll be covering discipline, or disc, as it's frequently shortened to. In Cataclysm, discipline uses primarily single-target healing and damage-absorbing (or -reducing) shields to keep a party or raid alive. The spec is less versatile than the alternative path of holy but brings strong single-target healing, first-response heals, and general raid utility.
Spiritual Guidance: New priest races and racial traits in 4.0.3 and Cataclysm
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests. She enjoys grating carrots. So 4.0.3 is out now, and all the little Holycows are running about Mulgore, grazing on the succulent young grasses. Pocketheals the gnome priest is strafing across Dun Morogh, avoiding those who would punt her. If you haven't heard, 4.0.3 has made it so that tauren and gnomes can become priests now. In another week, we'll also be able to play worgen and goblin priests too! That means every race in the game but orcs (poor orcs) can now be a priest. That makes it a good time to talk about racial traits for priests then, doesn't it? So if you want some extra insight on making that new priest you've always wanted, hit the jump. And if you don't want a priest, maybe you should reconsider that, huh?
