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Spiritual Guidance: Your dual spec questions answered
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Welcome to the delayed, dual spec edition! Dual specs will be here soon! What specs will you be going for? The marching orders have been given. With the green lighting of dual specs in the upcoming 3.1 patch, Priests of any discipline will be faced with an enormous decision that dwarfs the question of going Holy or Shadow (and Disc)! First, a brief history lesson. For the longest time, the healers struggled with questing. Soloing and doing dailies was a monumental effort due to the of our spec to Smite those that would oppose us! In Burning Crusade, our offensive spellpower was raised to so that it became a fraction of our healing spellpower. In Wrath of the Lich King, these become consolidated into one overall stat. We cried out that respec costs cut into our dwindling money pouches. Mistakes in one point were often costly. It wasn't fun having to switch from raiding to PvPing or farming. We ached for a method that allowed us to switch roles without the headache. Blizzard listened and they gave us dual specs! So, now what? How do you, the Priest, figure out what your second spec should be? If you're a tried and true healer who loves the thrill of healing in any environment, then you may wish to consider both a raiding and a PvP spec. If you're the type of player who prefers the ability to do some solo action, then you might opt for a healing and shadow type build. If you're not into PvP or that interested in doing any solo work, then a healing and healing spec may be up your ally.
Raid Rx: Will dual spec affect your healing squads?
Raid Rx has returned from retirement! Every Thursday (usually), Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week I explore dual specs and the effects it will have. The dual spec Q&A was posted earlier in the week and Mike's got a nice summary listed. Let's get right down to it. How does dual spec capability affect raid healing?
Spiritual Guidance: Mana nerfs and Priest buffs
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Spirit nerf's are coming! Is it really doom and gloom for the Priest class? Eliah did a terrific job summarizing the mana regeneration changes that are slated to strike in 3.1. The general feeling I'm seeing right now among the Priest community appears to range from the "OH NO! NO MORE MANA" to the "Eh, guess I better load up on Mana Pots since they're cheap". On a side note, when is the last time you had to pot in a raid? And I don't mean from immediately being revived in the middle of a fight. I distinctly remember running out of juice on Kel'Thuzad a month or so ago. In any case, there are some rumblings abound as to what sort of impact this nerf would have to our playstyle. The better question to ask is what impact this nerf would have to our gearing, gemming, and enchanting choices. The underlying point that seems to jump out at everyone is that Spirit regen is being decreased. Let's see what this implies for the Discipline and Holy trees respectively.
A plea for Divine Plea
Blizzard is going to swing the nerf bat and it's going to hit Divine Plea. With the intended changes to mana regeneration mechanics in Patch 3.1, where Spirit will be nerfed to curb mana replenishment in raid scenarios, Paladins stand to be unfazed. Spirit isn't a useful stat for Paladins, so Blizzard is looking into raising the healing penalty that comes with Divine Plea, a spell intended to help Protection and Retribution Paladins recover mana. Even with the 20% healing penalty, Divine Plea gives Paladins such phenomenal mana recovery that they don't think twice about using it. Used in conjunction with Avenging Wrath, the penalty isn't even an issue. See, that's a problem.Blizzard wants the decision to use Divine Plea to be a tough one for Holy Paladins, not a no-brainer. Needless to say, Retribution Paladins and their 5k mana pool use it every time it's up. But when a Holy Paladin with 20k mana can recover 25% of their mana every minute, it's kind of an obscenity. So Blizzard is going to nerf Divine Plea by raising the healing penalty to 50%. Some people think this won't be enough to stop Holy Paladins from using the spell every time it's up, though. Rohan over at Blessing of Kings thinks the spell should not have a healing penalty but be canceled when the Paladin casts a healing spell.
Changes coming to Paladins in patch 3.1
As I'm sure you've seen already, Eyonix dropped more class changes, Paladins being amongst this latest batch. Not many Holy changes, only minor Ret changes, but a whole crapload of Protection changes. Delicious, delicious Protection changes. A lot of the Protection changes serve a dual purpose- the changes are pretty good steps toward making Protection Paladins PvP-viable like Protection Warriors are becoming, but those same changes make the tree even stronger in PvE than it already is. It's beautiful. Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins. This is very, very awesome. It's a wonder this didn't happen earlier, actually. I think many of us expected this to happen back in the Wrath beta, but instead it was turned into a 5 point talent in the Protection tree. The unanswered question is whether or not we'll get the full 5 talent points baseline, or if we'll still need to spent talent points to improve it. Personally, I'm going to assume we'll get the 10% BoK baseline, it's the only way this would even remotely make sense.
Raid Rx: Help! How do I start organizing my healers?
Raid Rx has returned from retirement! Every Thursday (usually), Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week I explore a few questions that new healing leaders have. This is a question that caught my attention on the Plusheal forums. Julanna just became their guild's de facto healing lead and had some important questions to ask. So, I have become our de facto healing lead. We have very little structure. We need some. I am not sure how to get some coordination going between our healers. How do you communicate with your healers? How much do they expect from you in terms of instructions or advice? Is it before the raid? During? How can you get the raid leader to understand that healing assignments other than "don't let people die" are important and make things go better (especially if it is a tank with a healer alt)? I am not positive about assigning other classes of heals, and I am the only holy priest. Any resources out there I should look at? That may inform me of other classes basic skills, spells, etc? Or any advice you may have from a newb officer, newb healing lead, newb progression raider from a new guild? I'll break up these questions individually and answer them based on my own experience.
The role of the Priest
Well, this is really a first for Blizzard (ever since the game was initially released and the class descriptions written, anyway). Ghostcrawler has noticed that there are a lot of questions saying people don't understand what the role of the Priest is right now. Accordingly, he has gone and written up "what [Blizzard] think of as the role of the priest class." I think it's interesting enough to reproduce in its entirety; I'll go through it one paragraph at a time. The priest is a caster class that uses Holy and Shadow magic. Priests can only wear cloth armor and have a limited selection of weapons, but do most of their damage and healing from range. They make up for their low armor with spells that offer protection and healing. This is obvious enough to anyone who has been a member of the Priest community long enough ("one tough cookie," anyone?). Still, it's nice to see it spelled out, I guess. And it does emphasize that our defenses are more in terms of "protection and healing," instead of in terms of escape skills like a Rogue (for example) has.
A look at the stated Priest changes for patch 3.1
By now you've seen that Eyonix has started announcing some class changes for the upcoming patch 3.1. Priests were actually the first class up to bat this time around, and there are a handful of really cool changes in there. Some of them way cooler than they really need to be, so we'll see how things work out. Let's take a look, eh? Divine Spirit - this spell is now a core ability available to all Priests. Adding Divine Spirit to every Priest's repertoire is, by itself, a pretty fantastic change. Now that Spirit is used by more classes than just the Priests themselves, Divine Spirit has awesome group utility. I suspect Improved Divine Spirit will remain a talent, but even without the improved version of the spell, it's a great little boost. I love this change so much that I'm actively looking for problems with it, so I can curb my enthusiasm. Hmm. Oh, I know! This will make me spend more money on reagents. Ugh, clearly this is just another money sink. How dare they! Slap in the face!Nah, it's pretty cool.
Spiritual Guidance: Secondary stats and what to stack
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Some requests were made recently to help newer Priests figure out what secondary stats are important and what to aim for. Matticus shall help! I know when I started playing World of Warcraft, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to secondary stats. To be fair, stats like Hit didn't exist back in the day. This post is meant for newer Priests who aren't quite sure what these secondary stats do or what they mean. Just to be clear, primary stats are base attributes like stamina and intellect. Secondary stats are things like haste and critical strike rating.
Raid Rx: Are you ready to be the healer leader?
Raid Rx has returned from retirement! Every Thursday (usually), Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Today, it is all about the healing leader and what you need to know if want to do it. Organizing healers is often difficult (and sometimes) a thankless job. Having a healing leader to quarterback and direct the efforts of the other healers in your raid increases the overall survivability of the raid instead of just having healers on free for all healing. I've handled healing assignments in no less than 4 different guilds and it becomes a new experience every time.
Spiritual Guidance: Is Greater Heal on Life Support?
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Is the Priest usage of Greater Heal fading away? Matticus shall answer! An excellent thread on Plus Heal has caught my attention and it's a topic that's also been picked up by Kestrel. It's about the current use of Greater Heal (or lack thereof). Check your meters. Specifically, check your cast sequences. See if you can determine how often you use Greater Heal on a typical night. If you're a player who uses it often, I applaud you. From a mathematical and healing efficiency stand point, Greater Heal has the edge. Under lab conditions. Except raid environments aren't lab conditions. Let's go into detail about when Greater Heal is used in Discipline and Holy after the break.
WoW Insider's gearing up in Northrend guides
We probably have at least an hour (or seven) of maintenance and downtime before realms start coming back up, so this is as good a time as any to make a nice list of the Wrath of the Lich King gear guides we've done so far. Not every class and spec is complete, but progress is progress, right?If you don't see the spec/role you're looking for in our list below, never fear! Our columnists are always working on these things, and the best inspiration for all of our writers is knowing what everyone is looking for. Don't see what you're looking for? Just let us know. Don't be afraid to look at guides for similar classes, either. They might just have the information you need. For example, the Shadow Priest spell hit guide will work for most casters.But enough talk, on with the show!
The Queue: That's a lot of J names
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.Last time on The Queue, I answered a question about potential hero classes. Zoidberg asked about Archdruids, but there wasn't a whole lot to say. It's a rumor, and a rumor without much weight behind it, just an interview comment taken out of context as the WoW community (yes, even WoW Insider sometimes) likes to do. Since answering that question, I've been thinking about it a little myself.Do I, personally, think Archdruids will be the next hero class? Nah, I don't think so. Just the name is the big issue for me. Archdruid suggest Druid+ or Druid 2.0 and that's just not cool. You can differentiate them from Druids as much as you want, Archdruid still suggests that it's a better Druid. That's pretty awful. Even if the new hero class (if there is a new hero class) has all of the features we'd expect from an Archdruid, it'll probably be called something else. Maybe a Keeper or something like that.
Spiritual Guidance: Easy pre-Naxx gear for Holy priests
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Eliah is filling in for Matt Low today. This week we'll take a look at some easy gear to help get you started at 80. Naxxramas and heroic dungeons are where a lot of the players are spending their time nowadays. So much so that it can be hard to even get groups for normal instances, which are (in theory) the best source of gear to get ready for said heroics and raids. What's a healer to do? Fortunately, there are many pieces of gear you have access to without having to get a group for an instance and then hope your item drops, and hope you win the roll against any other casters that might be in the group. This post will highlight pieces you might want to investigate that are crafted or obtained from various factions and quests. This is written from a Holy perspective, but Discipline priests will probably also be interested in many of these items.
WoW Moviewatch: (Holy) Priest
It's like it's song week here on WoW Moviewatch, but today's entry is something I know many of our readers have probably been eagerly anticipating. Nyhm has released his new video, titled (Holy) Priest. (It's a take-off of Notorious B.I.G.'s Hypnotize, if you don't recognize the music.) He dedicates this piece to what he calls one of the most underappreciated, but most needed, classes in the game. And, of course, he's sure to thank them in that dedication also.The video itself is pretty standard Nyhm work, thematically. It has some creative music video shots of himself and Summergale as they sing. (Well, shots of their avatar personas.) The tricks Nyhm uses to create a variety of dance moves and poses are always impressive, and his work really brings the Blood Elf and Troll models to life. While this genre of music isn't my cup of tea, Nyhm uses creative cadence and lyrics to morph the lines of B.I.G.'s song into a great song about the struggles of healing in WoW. There's praise, jokes, complaints, and a little bit of everything else thrown into the song. Check it out, and enjoy!If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
The role of today's Priest
Yesterday, Ghostcrawler got into a discussion with some Priests on the Healing forum. It's in a thread that started out pretty negative, but unfortunately reflected an opinion rippling its way through the Priest 'community.' Many (not all, not nearly) Priest players are getting sort of grumpy about their Healing role, and that's not actually a new sentiment. It's been sort of an everpresent issue since well before Wrath. Priests don't feel they have a role. They sort of exist, without any clear purpose.The issue that came up is that a number of Priests think Blizzard is down on them, they're subpar, the devs don't care, blah blah blah. Ghostcrawler is of the opinion that Priests are actually pretty great (not said in those words) and I gotta be honest, I agree with him on that. On all things? No. On that? Yes. Priests are very, very capable Healers. But capability is not actually the issue at all! It's an issue much harder to pinpoint. Priests, when you look at their spells as a whole product and don't get hung up on any one ability in particular, work great. It's a well rounded class, and operates very well on its own. Holy Priests are great healers, and there's really no situation where they're completely helpless. I am not sure what the phrase "healing dynamo" means exactly, but for some reason that pops into my head when I think of Holy Priests, so it's probably a good thing.
Spiritual Guidance: 3.0.8 for Priests
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Today Matticus looks at the upcoming 3.08 patch. I thought we'd be getting the 3.0.8 patch last week. I guess I need a new magic 8 ball. Hopefully it will come out this week instead. In any case, here's several of the big changes you can expect along with a list of bug fixes. Mind you, most of these aren't game or class breaking type changes. At least, not to me. You may feel otherwise.
Spiritual Guidance: 4 different ways to diagnose your healer
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Today Matticus checks out common problems healers run into that stall them from being effective. Every healer in their life time will experience a situation gone bad where they try to figure out what went wrong. It usually goes something like this: "What's the problem?" "Lack of heals." "Okay, more heals please!" If I had a copper every time I heard that phrase, I would have enough for a mammoth by now. After every wipe or death, the first person that gets blamed is the healer. Big props to all of you right now no matter what class you are for sticking through it and helping your friends, guilds and raids out. I know I put up with a lot of stuff when crap hits the fan.
The Light and How to Swing It: Shine on! A 2008 review
What a great year 2008 has been for Paladins. While 3.0 overhauled the game in general, the class was retooled throughout the year, particularly Retribution, and became one of the most fun classes to play. In fact, Paladin popularity, while never a problem, rose incredibly. Even as I mourn the decline of Warlocks, I shudder at all the Paladins coming out of the woodwork like roaches. No, really, all the Paladins who have now specced Retribution because it's viable but can't break 1,400 DPS even with an epic 2-hander make me want to kick little kittens.But never mind how I feel about that. The truth is that this is all good for the class, if not necessarily the game. I mean, did we ever dare dream that people would actually look for Retribution Paladins in trade or general chat? When you say you're a Retribution Paladin nowadays, nobody flinches. Nobody laughs. Nobody says, "haha, lolret." Or if they do, you Divine Storm their ignorant butts to kingdom come. Seriously, the most badass character in all of Wrath of the Lich King -- the one guy who spanked Arthas' sorry Death Knight butt -- is a Paladin. That feels pretty good. So, 2008. One heck of a year, wasn't it?
The Queue: Plate, plate and more plate
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.Good afternoon, WoW Insider! I have nothing useful to say in my preface today, because I need to go put my new power supply and video card in my PC so I can actually play WoW again. Man, have you seen some of the newer video cards these days? If I had enough of these things I could build a fort capable of surviving a nuke out of them. This thing is a beast.Trech asked... A couple questions regarding DK tanking... How much Defense rating am I going to need at level 80 to hit 540 defense skill. How much base defense skill will I have at 80? I'm levelling Unholy with a DPS build. If I throw on a few pieces of +def gear can I safely go tank Nexus or Utgarde Keep at level 72?
