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Spiritual Guidance: Lightwell vs. Lightspring, plus new priest glyph and talent animations
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. The latest build on the Mists of Pandaria beta allowed players to purchase the newly implemented major and minor glyphs we spoke about two weeks ago. In the video above, you'll find animations for Glyph of Shadowy Friends, Glyph of Lightspring, Glyph of the Heavens, Glyph of Holy Resurrection, and Glyph of the Val'kyr. Is it just me, or does it look like Lightspring is casting mini Penance balls at its target? Perhaps there is a tiny disc priest trapped inside every Lightspring ... Hmm. While we're on the topic of Lightspring, there has been an interesting development since the glyph was first announced. Originally, it looked like Lightspring would heal players for less than Lightwell, a sort of toll for the fact that Lightspring was automated. In the latest beta build, however, it now looks like the HoTs from both Lightwell and Lightspring will heal for the same amount over time. I'm guessing the developers decided there wasn't much reason to reduce the amount of healing Lightspring does per tick since the 5 seconds of downtime between each heal is a limitation in itself. By only allowing the Lightspring to heal once every 5 seconds, the heal isn't any better than a single-target heal from another player, save for the fact that it will work while you're doing other things.
Spiritual Guidance: Lightwell, Lightspring, and the latest on priest healing in Mists
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, we got it. I never thought I'd see the day, but we finally got the Trial of the Crusader Lightwell that shoots heals at allied players instead of requiring them to click. Holy priests will gain access to the new Lightwell, called Lightspring, using a glyph of the same name. Before you get too excited, however, I should mention that there is a catch. Apparently, automatic Lightwells don't heal for nearly as much as a manual ones do, so depending on the fight and your raid members' ability to use the Lightwell in the first place, you may choose to skip the Glyph of Lightspring now and again. Good ol' Derevka has already written up a thorough first look at Lightspring in which he points out many of the spell's limitations. In the post, he points out that Lightspring only heals targets at less than 50% of their health, and it has a 5-second cooldown between heals to prevent it from being used as a raid cooldown. To read the rest of Derevka's write-up and see his comparisons on the numerical output of the two spells, head over to Tales of a Priest.
Click the Lightwell -- no, really ...
I like to think I'm a decent rogue. My DPS is pretty good, I know my rotation like the back of my hand, and I've got orange weapons with which to stab things. More important than that (to me, anyway) is the fact that I use self-heals almost religiously, without thinking about it. I think a good portion of that comes from having been a healer originally and having an understanding about healing and just how difficult it is. I don't want to make it more difficult; I just want to happily stab things. In order to do that effectively, I need to not die. That said, I love Lightwell. It's a nice little spell that priests toss on the ground, and you click it to use it. Earlier versions of Lightwell were a little clunky and difficult to use, but today's version is pretty streamlined. I don't lose my target if I click the Lightwell, and I don't have to be on top of the thing to click it. It's a handy little heal to have, much like a Healthstone or even Recuperate. Since I'd rather be using DPS-boosting potions than healing potions, I'll take any little heals I can get. Oddly enough, not everyone does. And I can't quite figure out why.
Raid Rx: Mists of Pandaria healing changes
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast. You'll notice that there are a ton of new glyphs that have been added for all the classes. That list is by no means exhaustive. I also noticed some slight changes in the way certain spells work. I can assure you it won't be anything too drastic, but these changes are enough to keep you interested and wondering. This week, I'll be rounding up what we know healers will be getting, as well as any other notable modifications. New for druids Cenarion Ward appears to be a Prayer of Mending-like spell without the subsequent charges. Good spell to open with before an engagement. Won't have to pre-HoT as much. Just remember to pre-Ward. Wild Mushroom: Bloom! Hope you love 'shrooms, since you'll be gaining the use of these in addition to your Balance friends. Anticipate a moment where big AoE healing is needed, and plant 'shrooms. Detonate after raid group takes a hit, and relish in the healing spores that explode. Regrowth can be glyphed to remove the HoT component. Benefit? 40% increased chance of a critical heal. I guess you can configure a HoT-based class to switch to a non-HoT direction.
Spiritual Guidance: Monk healing vs. priest healing in Mists of Pandaria
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, I don't know about you, but I'm starting to feel pretty pumped up after Monday's release of the information from Blizzard's Mists of Pandaria press event. Some of the new zones are very striking, the pandaren ladies are absolutely adorable, and monks get an ability called Shuffle, which means we'll have an expansion full of Party Rock Anthem jokes to look forward to. Priests didn't see anything new on Monday, but with all the information released about mistweavers and monk healing in general, I thought I might make some comparisons to get a better idea about what priest healing is going to look like in MoP.
Spiritual Guidance: Healing priests in patch 4.3
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. Like a sperm whale (or a bowl of petunias), patch 4.3 might be hitting live servers this week. Whichever it is, it's going to be a big one, so I figured I'd piece together a small guide for holy and discipline priests that recaps, follows up, and aggregates tons of stuff you might have forgotten or completely missed about the patch. I'll also be addressing that little talent calculator that popped in for a visit in the middle of last week and wiped its feet all over my clean carpet.
Spiritual Guidance: Patch 4.3 holy priest buffs and more tier 13 set bonuses
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. You'd really think after all this time Blizzard would have done the obvious and invented some sort of healing hand grenade for holy priests. It could be the little brother of Lightwell or perhaps some sort of talent upgrade to Holy Nova -- toss the grenade to a specific location on the dungeon floor and in 10, 15, or whatever seconds, an explosion of AOE healing would nuke the area. Wouldn't that be fun? Naturally there'd have to be some witty flavor text on the tooltip, but -- wait, what day is this? Dawn looks at her calendar. Oh! Uh ... Never mind what I just said. Today, we've got to get caught up on patch 4.3 news. We've been up to our necks in priest news from patch 4.3 recently. Last week, we got a first look at our two-piece and four-piece set bonuses for priest tier 13; this week, we got a look at the gear model itself and a hefty list of mostly positive changes. We also (shock and awe) already received a few tweaks to our tier 13 set bonuses, so there is quite a lot to tackle today. First, let's talk fashion.
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: A bitter priest's guide to Lightwell
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. There are few absolute truths in the World of Warcraft. Sure, everyone knows that gnomes are the master race and that all rogues have deep-seated abandonment issues -- but it amazes me how few people know that Lightwell is the best healing spell in the game. Don't agree? "LOLwell," you say? Well then, hater, I've got a post for you.
Spiritual Guidance: Healing heroic Cataclysm dungeons as a priest
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for disc and holy priests, and also likes to knit gloves as presents. Can Fox Van Allen make you a pair of gloves? I intended to write about holy and discipline priest PvP in beta this week, but after spending a few days trying to test out battlegrounds, I think I'd do well to give Blizzard more time to fix things. Between the 100,000-damage rocket blasts in Strand of the Ancients one-shotting players, and randomly getting ported to The Barrens when you're dead wrapped in plastic in Twin Peaks, it all just seems too buggy to fairly assess right now. While we wait for the developers to finish tidying up the battlegrounds and PvP, I figured we could tackle something in the beta that has stabilized for priests: heroic dungeons! Pretty exciting, huh? Yeah, that's what I thought. Word on the street is that heroic dungeons in the Cataclysm beta are way overtuned and bordering on the difficulty of pre-nerf heroic dungeons in The Burning Crusade. While I can't personally deny or confirm the latter statement (I was slow in leveling), I can tell you that heroic dungeons in Cataclysm aren't that bad.
Shifting Perspectives: Beta build 12803
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting feral/restoration druids and those who group with them. This week, we ponder change. Beta build 12803 dropped late Friday, and with it a number of changes to the feral and restoration specs. Some are what you'd expect after some recent forum conversations with Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer), and others came out of left field. We'll take a look past the cut.
Spiritual Guidance: Back to the beta
In 2015, while testing out the latest Keepers of Time expansion, Blizzard Executive Fox Van Allen accidentally ganks his past self, undoing his own existence by causing himself to reroll paladin. Now, stuck in the year 2008, Fox must find a way to undo his mistake or risk losing everything. To do this, he tracks down the only person he knows: Dawn Moore. Unfortunately, she's never heard of him, WoW.com or Spiritual Guidance, and would much rather PvP than heal. I've come to think of the Cataclysm beta as a disease. Each week it spreads further among the general populace while simultaneously mutating into a newer, stronger version of its former self. As the resident healer, it's my duty to try to control and contain the situation by applying my latest analysis, but overall the beta is a very resistant infection and my normal approaches are continually being overtaken. Still, I stand vigilant and celebrate my small victories; I will not leave you ill-informed, my fellow priests! The sound of crickets fill the silence. Yes, well then ... Shall we get started?
Spiritual Guidance: For the love of Lightwell
Of the redeeming traits of Fox Van Allen, it is his unusual ability to sense the migratory paths of arctic terns within a 500-mile radius that has led to his success. Fox Van Allen can also boast that when he cooks an omelet, four out of five of them are not burned. Fox Van Allen also writes the Wednesday edition of Spiritual Guidance. Unfortunately, today is not Wednesday, and instead you will have to contend with Dawn Moore, a young woman whose super powers include predicting upcoming traffic junctions by suddenly feeling worried that she missed them, and an immunity to skunk spray. Dawn Moore writes also about healing for discipline and holy priests. When I was in sixth grade, everyone made fun of me. I'm not quite sure why, as there was nothing particularly noticeable about me at the time. I was very average: quiet, didn't get straight A's and looked about as ridiculous as everyone else at that age. For whatever reason though, I got picked out among the throng of students to be the kid who gets stuff thrown at her in the dressing rooms, has trash shoved into her locker and is called all sorts of names that none of us actually knew the definitions to. The oddest thing about it was that the students who harassed me most were people I didn't even know. I didn't know their names, had never talked with them and only had maybe one class with them -- so it's not like any of them knew anything about me to justify what they were doing. At this point in my life, the only guess I've got is that making fun of me was the cool thing to do at the time. Nowadays, I'm not sure if making fun of me is still the cool thing to do, but regardless, the reason I bring up the story today is because I'll be talking about Lightwell. Don't see the connection? Well the way I see it, Lightwell and I are kindred spirits. After all, Lightwell is the kid no one wants to be friends with, out of fear of suffering the same ridicule by association. Lightwell is so unpopular it doesn't even get the chance to be picked last in gym class; instead, the teachers have Lightwell sit in the office and do worksheets, since the last time they let it play with the other kids they found it collapsed behind the bleachers with a bloody nose. Well, Lightwell, I love you. I see past the trash talk and the ridicule. I see you and your individuality. You haven't given up, and I haven't given up on you either. So today, I'm going to try and make everyone see what I see in you. Mon chéri, je t'aime.
Spiritual Guidance: A new look
Every Sunday, Spiritual Guidance reverts to "lovey-dovey" heal mode by the hands of priestess Dawn Moore. This week she has set aside her differences with Fox Van Allen, her dark counterpart, so that she can peacefully enjoy dumplings and fair weather. She hopes that he enjoys the fruit basket she sent him. The cyanide in the apples shouldn't be a problem for a master of darkness such as himself to digest. Right? As I alluded to in my analysis of the Cataclysm priest preview last week, I will be taking a departure from my typical column this week on Spiritual Guidance. Instead of a guide or current event, I'd like to take some time to examine the priest class with a wider perspective. My analysis from Thursday was a response to the pinpoints of Blizzard's preview; this article, on the other hand, will examine the class from a broad design perspective. My hope in doing this is to get readers thinking about our class and the game differently and, in turn, start an ongoing discussion of where it could go. Why do this? Because Cataclysm is approaching, and now is the time, if there ever was one, to suggest things we would like to see change. Blizzard is most likely to listen to strong and constructive ideas we put forth now, and I think it's valuable to get you guys in on the discussion. Now is the time to speak up!
Cataclysm Class Changes: Discipline and holy priest analysis
By now I'm sure you have read the priest class preview for Cataclysm and, assuming that you have any feelings toward the priest class, felt a multitude of emotions toward it. Whether you stayed up late with the rest of us last night or swallowed it all this morning, the announcements are certainly shocking. I don't think anyone expected us to be cloth-wearing death knights in the next expansion. I will get to that later, though. If you didn't already guess from the title above, I will be providing a full assessment of the class preview for healing priests. Having already browsed at reactions on the forums, I want to assure you that I am going to stay mostly level-headed with my review. I of course do this because I'm in no way bitter about waiting 15 hours for Blizzard to give me a winky-face at 2:58 a.m. EST, saying it's still the 7th of April in Anaheim, California. Anyway, whatever your feelings on the preview have been so far, hit the jump and I promise I won't spare you any variety of perspective.
Spiritual Guidance: A Lightwell primer
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 No Stock UI, a UI and addons blog for WoW. What exactly is Lightwell? How is it used? Why does no one use it? Oh Lightwell. The things you could have been. Misunderstood by many and under-talented by a large number of Priests. Will you ever see raids? Perhaps not. But we can try! Lightwell The first thing Lightwell novices need to understand is the purpose of the spell. It creates a Holy Lightwell wherever you want it that any player can interact with. A player who uses it gains a charge that heals them for more than 4500 health over a period of 6 seconds. It's got a 40 yard placement range. Be sure you pick up the Lightwell glyph for it. A 20% boost to Lightwell ticks go a long way and will help make this talent even more worthwhile. There is a slight downside. If the player under the effect of a Lightwell charge takes a hit that's 30% of their total health, the effect disappears.
Priest Q & A: Healers remain indifferent
The Q & A for Priests just came out. The first section had Ghostcrawler cover a brief history and the Blizzard perspective of Priests. We used to be the absolute top of the line healer many years ago. At the present, we have been balanced to become on par with the other healing classes (Druids, Paladins, and Shamans). The crustacean one is bang on when he states that Priests have a wide variety of spells to respond to nearly any situation. Let's get straight to it then. What do healing Priests have to look forward to?
Are there bad talents?
Tree Bark Jacket, a resto-druid-themed blog that was new to me, has an interesting post up about whether there is such a thing as an entirely bad talent. The author's argument is that no, there is not, the reason being that even talents that are regularly dismissed are still useful sometimes; they're just situational. For instance, Improved Tranquility, while certainly sub-par in 25-man raids, shines in heroics, and Living Seed is nice for healing tanks through chunky damage. On a broader scope, Keeva makes the important point that you can't make all your talent decisions based on Recount or on people's advice from Elitist Jerks (etc.). Everyone's playstyle and raid makeup is different, and every raid encounter is different.
Select Priest glyphs changed in latest beta push
Do you remember when the Shadow Priest glyphs made their rounds, and then we all complained a lot and made suggestions as to how they should be fixed? Guess what, guys. They aren't terrible anymore! I know, it's a shock! The updated Shadow Priest glyphs are all pretty much straight buffs, while some of the Holy ones are buffs, and some are fixed balancing issues. Let's take a look, shall we?Glyph of Lightwell - Increases the amount healed by your Lightwell by 20%.I've played around with Lightwell on the beta quite a bit, actually, and its current incarnation is fantastic. The HoT rarely breaks, and my guildies are generally intelligent enough to know when to use it. At level 77 in full level 70 gear, each tick of LIghtwell currently heals for around 2,200. Each tick healing for 2600-2700 with this glyph is pretty amazing, considering it's a "set it and forget it" heal.Glyph of Renew - Reduces the duration of your Renew by 3 sec. but increases the amount healed per tick by 40%.Sounds good to me. It will be a little more mana intensive to keep the HoT on a tank, but strong HoTs are priceless.
Wrath Beta patch notes: Priest
My main is a Priest. A Shadow Priest, to be precise. While I started out Holy, my Priest has always been my main and probably always will be. The only thing that could possibly draw me away is my Protection Paladin, should my raid ever need another. Obviously, the very first thing I looked at in the Wrath Beta patch notes were the Priest notes. I've talked about what we saw in Alpha, and I was cautiously optimistic at the time. After seeing these notes... well... yeah, I'm still optimistic. I am (dare I say it?)... excited, even!I'll tuck my analysis behind the cut, but here are my three favorite notes out of the Priest notes: New Talent: Improved Spirit Tap (Shadow) - Gives you a 50/100% chance to gain a 50% bonus to your Spirit after gaining a critical effect chance from your Mind Blast or Shadow Word: Death spells. For the duration, your mana will regenreate at a 25% rate while casting. Lasts 8 sec. Lightwell (Holy): Cast time reduced to .5 sec, down from 1.5 sec. Charges increased to 10, up from 5. Now breaks from any attack that hits you for 30% or more of your total health. Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5. Shadowform (Shadow): Now has an innate 30% threat reduction. Now has a shapeshift UI.
