healing
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Build Shop: Priest 23/38/0
Consider this the beginning of Season 2 of Build Shop. I've given each class a turn (for real this time), and now I'm going to kick things off with another build of my own, this one on my main. Priest is the first class I got to 60, and the first class I got to 70. Although I leveled to 55 or so as Shadow, healing is really what I love on my priest, and I've been various kinds of Holy since then.My current build isn't really original; in fact, it's probably the most common PvE healing build for priests right now: 23/38/0. Take Discipline down to Improved Divine Spirit, and Holy down to 3/5 Empowered Healing (skipping Lightwell and Circle of Healing, in my version). The main alternative builds would probably be 21/40/0 or 20/41/0, and there may not be a clear-cut "best" build out of the three.
Shifting Perspectives: How to group with a Druid part 3
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them, brought to you by David Bowers and Dan O'Halloran. This it the last in a series of features talking about How To Group With A Druid. I've already covered bear tanks, cat druids and Moonkin. Today, I will be exploring what Restoration druids bring to a 5 man group as well as what they don't do. If you feel I've left out any important points, be sure to leave a comment below! We love comments like healers love aggro control. WHAT TO EXPECT FROM A RESTORATION DRUID HEALING: Druids are built to be solid healers in both regular and heroic 5 man instances. They don't have to drop 40+ talent points to be good at it. Don't be surprised if you're druid healer is actually specced 31 points in Balance and 30 points in Restoration. That's more than enough for them to get you through alive. On the other hand, don't be screaming for healing non-stop if you are not the main tank. It's your job to control your aggro, not the healers job to blow half his mana on non-tanks. I understand mistakes happen, wandering mobs appear out of nowhere, the MT gets overwhelmed and loses control of an add or two. But if the healer is dumping more healing on you than the MT for every encounter, you need to scale back your dps or talk to your tank about their taunt tactics.
Spiritual Guidance: Know your heals
Every Saturday (usually), Eliah or Elizabeth will bring you their thoughts on the Priest class with Spiritual Guidance. Whether it's keeping your fellow players alive or melting their faces, you can read about it here!Healing spells are to a priest what fire spells are to a mage. Other schools tend to be more efficient in raids (shadow for priests, frost for mages) and are generally thought superior for leveling, but when you think of a priest, you probably think of heals first, just like when I think of a mage, the first thing I think of is a nice fat pyroblast headed right for me. So it comes as no surprise that we have quite a variety of heals.
Shifting Perspectives: How to group with a druid part two
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them, brought to you by David Bowers and Dan O'Halloran. Two weeks ago I talked about grouping with Feral druids. This week I promised to focus on Balance (Moonkin) and Restoration (Healing) specs. But when I started writing about the Balance druids, the article grew quite large. So apologies to the Restoration druids out there looking for their day in the sun, you will have to wait two more weeks for my next column. Today's article is focusing squarely on the ups and downs of grouping with our Boomkin brothers. WHAT TO EXPECT FROM A MOONKIN DRUID: DPS, baby. And plenty of it. Moonkin spec got a nice, fat dps boost with the Burning Crusade expansion. Their current arsenal includes two dots, two different flavored nukes, an AE damage dealer, 5% crit aura, damage-boosting and crit-boosting talents plus the treant pets if the druid took the 41pt talent. Before the expansion, all this firepower would drain the druid's mana in no time, but the days of Oomkin are no more. Between mana-saving and mana-regenerating Talents plus better itemization, Balance druids can conserve mana with the best of ranged damage dealers. Welcome to the Age of Boomkin. Emergency Healing. Like any other non-healing druid spec, Balance druids are more than capable of off healing in a pinch. They must shift out of Moonkin form to do it, but when the group's health stabilizes, the druid can always shift right back and help with the clean up work. Who wouldn't want a mage who can group heal?
Spiritual Guidance: Grouping with Priests
Every Saturday, Eliah or Elizabeth will bring you their thoughts on the Priest class. Whether it's keeping your fellow players alive or melting their faces, you can read about it here!Priests always seems to be in demand. Exploring or questing in any area of the game, at any level, whether Horde or Alliance, a Priest player can expect to be pestered with whispers for instance runs. Some polite, some demanding, some who need to be put on our ignore lists, and some who don't make any sense at all, but seem to be asking for something. What's a Priest to do when being asked to go here, there, or elsewhere? And what's a player to do when they need a Priest's help? Well, I'm going to try to explain here, in something of a how-to guide for grouping, for the Priests and non-Priests among us. So whether this is your first time partying with a Priest or your hundredth -- keep reading. There's plenty to know about how to act in a group, and we're only going to scratch the surface.
WoW Rookie: All you needed to know about stats, part 3
In today's continuation of our series on what the various stats in World of Warcraft do for you, we're going to be discussing caster stats. And, while a long-time player probably knows everything I'm talking about here, someone who's newer to the game might find spelling all of these things out to be handy. Curious as to how gear with +spell damage helps you out? Not quite sure how useful gear with mana per five seconds on it is for your class? You're in the right place.However, before you keep reading, it's well worth it to check out part 1 (covering the five main game attributes) and part 2 (covering statistics effecting physical damage). Coming up our next installment we'll talk about defensive statistics (armor, dodge, parry, resilience, etc), so stay tuned!
Ask WoW Insider: Best healing class?
Gather 'round for this week's edition of Ask WoW Insider, where we publish your questions for readers to answer. Last week we looked at when it's okay to upgrade an epic, and this week we turn to our second favorite topic after loot: arguing about civilly discussing which class is the best. Sarah writes: I have been playing a NE Warrior since I started the game, but I hated doing instances. I consider myself to be a horrible tank and I'm sure others would agree. A while back I started a BE priest with some friends and found myself loving instances and the thrill of healing. I was also good at it. I love healing so much that I want to make a healer on my main realm where my warrior is. My question is, what is the best healing class? I've heard that paladins are doing well and because they can wear plate, they can last longer than cloth wearers. Druids can be good, but I've heard there aren't a lot of leather healing armor. Priests are well, priests and are meant for healing, but because of the improvements on the other classes, may not be as good as they once were. I don't know anything about shaman healing. Thanks! As Iceman once asked: "Who's the best pilot healer?" Which class would you roll for a purely healing role? Which would you roll for a powerfully healing hybrid who might want to take on other roles from time to time? Relatedly, which healing class is the worst? Ask WoW Insider can only survive on a steady diet of your questions. Please feed us at ask AT wowinsider DOT com!
Loot balance
Alright, this might just be me, but leveling my Rogue in Outland, I noticed one thing: there's a lot more Druid leather than there is Rogue leather, as far as quest rewards go. It seemed like for every Rogue piece, there were three Druid pieces, one for each talent tree. Never one to go with speculation where math would do the trick, I looked through 200 quests available to Alliance in any Outland zone to count the number of rewards for Rogues, Feral druids, Balance druids, and Resto druids. (I chose the first 200 quests in alphabetical order, which should be reasonably random.)If a reward seemed fairly viable for both, I counted it for both -- many pieces would work for Rogues and Feral druids, for instance. I'm only looking at leather armor here, not weapons, cloaks, or jewelry; arguably, this is a bit of a flaw, as weapons are a pretty big deal for Rogues (and a less big deal for Druids). But, well, let's see what the numbers say: Rogue: 11 pieces Druid: 21 pieces Feral: 11 Balance: 10 Resto: 1 So it seems my pre-math impression was a little off -- the ratio of Druid to Rogue is 2:1, not 3:1. But the point that really gets to me about this data is that Balance druids have almost as many rewards available as Rogues as a whole. That's one spec, as opposed to an entire class. Does that seem right to you?
Oculus' uber-oxidised water hastens healing
We've seen self-assembling chips, self-healing panels, and even regenerative houses hit the drawing board before, but California-based Oculus has created a liquid that can reportedly quicken the healing process when recovering from wounds. The firm's Dermacyn topical wound care is an "oxychlorine formulation" using the company's own Microcyn concoction, which is made by "taking purified water and passing it through a semi-permeable sodium chloride membrane to produce the oxychlorine ions," and essentially contains "electrically charged molecules which pierce the cell walls of free-living microbes." The formula is reportedly successful in killing off virii, bacteria, and fungi, and currently, the company is enrolling patients in a Phase II trial to evaluate its effectiveness in treating diabetic foot infections. The company is hoping to start said trial in Q3 of this year, and if all goes well, wants to execute a pair of larger Phase III trials shortly thereafter.[Via BBC]
Hybrid Theory: Healers aren't hybrids?
Each week, Jason Lotito contributes Hybrid Theory, a new column on hybrid classes in World of Warcraft. Healing has long been the widely accepted, much debated, raiding role of most hybrids. Most of the discussions regarding hybrid viability in end-game raiding are on helping hybrids in non-healing areas. This leads to a lot of discussion on the class boards that revolve around making other trees equally viable, or at least making them as desirable as the healing role. The outside audience generally views hybrids as healers first. Sure, the concept of a protection paladin, a feral druid, and a enhancement shaman enter the discussion on occasion, but at the end of the day, the popular opinion is if you have healing spells, you are healing.This very attitude has long dictated many hybrids specs. For many hybrids, the desire to see end-game dominated their desire to play what is known as an off-spec build. These players bit the bullet and went the healing route. This isn't to suggest all players chose their healing spec because of outside pressure. Many healers really did want to heal and enjoy the art of healing.Regardless, the attitude of many hybrids is to look down at those who spec for healing regardless of the reasons. Who's to blame them though? Often these players are playing an off-spec themselves. The retribution paladin or the "Boomkin" have been on the receiving end of these attacks for a long time, and all too often it's the healers making these very attacks.
PTR Notes: Fixing illumination
Over at Blessing of Kings, Coriel has a great explanation of how the paladin's to-be-changed Illumination talent -- which has been happily residing in the holy tree since the game's release -- became such a thorny problem. The talent (as it exists now) returns the base mana cost of a healing spell to the paladin when the healing spell crits. (It costs 5 talent points to bring it to this level of effectiveness and requires 15 points in the talent tree. So a fully maxxed illumination will cost you 20 talent points in the holy tree.) The end result is that, overall, the paladin receives a mana discount on their healing spells equal to their spell crit rate. Prior to patch 1.9, a paladin could boost his or her holy spell crit rate by 5% through talents (priests have a similar talent that boosts holy spell crit), but it was difficult for paladins to get any other spell crit gear. The plate itemization simply didn't exist and there was heavy competition for generic items that a paladin could use like the Azuresong Mageblade.
Why does everyone want to DPS?
You see them in the arenas and in the battlegrounds, looking for groups in Ironforge and Orgrimmar, and complaining on the forums and their blogs. They are ret paladins, balance druids, enhancement shamans, and shadow priests who would like to see their class be able to DPS in raids. But why does everyone want to DPS? Tanks and healers are precious commodities, and DPS are a dime a dozen. I talked to a couple people in-game who had switched from one role to another during their time in WoW. Most of them agreed that DPS was more attractive than healing or tanking and gave a number of reasons:
