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Spiritual Guidance: Choosing the best priest talents for you, pt. 2
WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore is a discipline priest by reputation, but still enjoys melting faces as shadow and bugging her raid to click the Lightwell as holy. Last time on Spiritual Guidance we began a thorough look at level 15 and level 30 priest talents and considered when and why you would take one talent over the other. This week we're continuing that discussion with level 45 and level 60 talents. From Darkness, Comes Light For healers, this talent serves as a regen talent by saving players mana instead of returning it. The performance of it is very dependent on your spell usage, which means the regen cannot be easily quantified down to a simple number. From Darkness, Comes Light can only be triggered by a handful of spells (Heal, Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal, and Smite) making the talent practically useless to some players. For example, a holy priest who spends most of her time raid healing her 25-man raid (that always stands in fire) could go a whole fight without seeing a single proc from this talent. On the other hand, a 10-man disc priest who spends most of his time swapping between healing the paladin tank and spamming Smite heals could expect several procs during a fight.
Spiritual Guidance: From Power Word: Solace to Power Infusion, the latest on 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 dabbles in shadow. Since its introduction, the new level 45 priest talent, Power Word: Solace, has undergone several changes. First, it had the percentage of mana it returned per cast reduced from 2% to 1.5%. A little over a week after that, the percentage was buffed back up to 2% while the cast time was simultaneously nerfed from 1.5 seconds to 2 seconds. Then just last week, the cast time was lowered back to 1.5 seconds, while the amount of mana returned was lowered to a mere .7% per cast. Pretty crazy for one little spell, right? As you'd expect, a lot of discussion has come up over the changes, with one thread on the official forums leading it all. In it, the original poster asks for an explanation behind the nerfs, saying that even though he hated using Power Word: Solace with a fiery passion, the talent was necessary for healing priests. Ghostcrawler (Lead Systems Developer Greg Street) responded soon after, explaining that the developers don't want Power Word: Solace to feel like the only option healing priests have, and they will nerf it until priests consider Mindbender and From Darkness, Comes Light viable alternatives.
Spiritual Guidance: Thoughts on playing a discipline priest 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. I've decided that playing a healing priest is a lot like being a pregnant woman. No, really, let me explain! OK, so admittedly I don't know what it's like to be pregnant, but I've observed enough friends and family going through the process to have come up with this analogy. Here it goes ... So you know how when a woman is pregnant, people will start inviting themselves into awkward and personal conversations with her, or they'll randomly put their hands all over her stomach as though it had been declared a national park? Well, that's what it's like to play a healing priest. Here's how it happens. You'll be healing away in a raid or a 5-man, minding your own business, when someone will invite themselves into a one-sided conversation with you where they tell you what spec you should be playing and why. If you're disc, they'll tell you to go holy; if you're holy, well, you get the idea. In these conversations, your reasoning and expertise will always be deemed irrelevant because you're clearly in the wrong spec to begin with and because this random person has a really, really good reason for suggesting you change specs. (Never mind that it's almost always based on some broad generalization or the performance of the spec five tiers ago.) Try to tell them no, and you'll get accusations of being selfish or stubborn. Don't you know that if you change specs, every single problem the group is having (including the fact that everyone is standing in fire) will cease to happen and the boss will immediately drop dead and explode in a shower of epics? Anyway, the reason for telling you all that is because I want to start talking about how disc and holy have been playing in the Mists of Pandaria beta right now. I've had a lot of outstanding thoughts about both specs during the past month and a half, and it's time we discussed them. There's a lot to talk about, though, so I'm going to break it up over two parts. This week, we'll talk about discipline, then holy in two weeks. Holy priests shouldn't feel completely left out, though, as I also have some news items to go over for them.
Spiritual Guidance: Mindbender vs. Power Word: Solace
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. It's just my luck that two days after I wrote my last installment of Spiritual Guidance, a brand new level 45 priest talent appeared on the Mists of Pandaria beta. The new talent, called Power Word: Solace, is a damage-for-mana ability that players can cast on enemy targets to receive 6,000 mana in return. It has a 1.5-second cast time, costs no mana to cast, doesn't have a cooldown, and always returns mana, even if the damage portion of the spell misses its target. The arrival of a new talent like this always raises a lot of questions. How does Power Word: Solace stand up to the other level 45 talents, Mindbender and From Darkness, Comes Light? Is it better or worse than either of those two talents? As a healing priest, what talent will I want to choose? Well, first off, it's important to remember that the new talent system is specifically designed to put an end to cookie-cutter talent specs. Talents will now be balanced with one another in such a way that no one talent is better than the others overall. One talent might end up being better than another in a specific scenario where the mechanics of the situation complement it or just clash with the other two options. In that sense, Blizzard is right on mark with Power Word: Solace. Let's compare it to Mindbender so you can see how.
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: The return of Devouring Plague, and our new shadowy friend
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On alternate Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the shadows to bask in your loving adoration. In case you haven't noticed, the shadowformed Spiritual Guidance is a once-every-other-week thing now. Normally, I'm cool with that. But man, these past two weeks have been killing me. Last week, there were changes. Big changes. Huge changes! And this week -- more huge changes! Groundbreaking changes! Stunning, jaw-dropping changes! Unbelievable ... Okay, I digress. But there's no exaggeration here. The changes over the past two weeks have been huge. Old friends are making a comeback. New friends are on the way. Shadow priest PvP is changing forever. And shadow priest mastery has been completely overhauled -- twice. We've got a lot of catching up to do, kids. I'll introduce you to our new friend in just a bit (not that Dawn Moore and Matt Low haven't already let the cat out of the bag), but first, an old friend has been waiting to say "hi." Ladies and gentlemen, make our oldest of friends feel welcome -- a round of applause, please, for Devouring Plague.
Mists of Pandaria: Priests get an optional Shadowfiend upgrade, Zoidberg approves
Getting tired of your Shadowfiend, priests? After having served us faithfully over multiple expansions, your Shadowfiend will be able to be talented into an upgraded Shadowfiend. Enter the Mindbender! The Mindbender is a floating, squid-like creature that'll leech mana off opponents just like the original Shadowfiend --not just that, but the Mindbender hits harder and you get more mana back. Mindbender can be talented into at level 45. (That spot used to be blank before.) At level 87, my little minion was doing around 12,000 damage with possible crits up to 30,000 against the raider training dummies while I was in a healing spec. Pretty cool facelift for the little guy! It'll be an interesting choice between Mindbender, Archangel, and From Darkness, Comes Light. Too bad we can't give these pets names. I'd name mine Zoidberg. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Spiritual Guidance: Shadowfiends retire, more priest talent news from Mists beta
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. Do you want to know the greatest and most amazing new thing priests are getting in Mists of Pandaria? It's a squid. Well, it could be an octopus, but I think it's a squid. It's called a Mindbender, and it's our new level 45 talent. The Mindbender is a flying, shadowy squid that serves as an improved version of (read: replacement for) our old pal, Shadowfiend. Our new squid friend does double the damage of Shadowfiend and thus returns twice as much mana. I can only assume the reason he can do this is because he latches onto the heads of our enemies and sucks out their brains, sort of like a Mind Flayer, the squid-faced monsters from Dungeons and Dragons with telekinetic powers. Mindbender, Mind Flayer ... That's right, Blizzard, I'm on to you. Anyway, I imagine Squiddy will become the prime choice for healing priests in MoP because 1.) mana is mana, and 2.) the other level 45 talents are a bit lackluster. That will unfortunately mean leaving Shadowfiend at home, which is awfully sad, but I've painted up a scenario in my head where Shadowfiend tells me, "Look, Dawn, we've been raiding together for a few years now, and it's about time that I caught up on all the prime time television I've missed. There's Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and I've still only seen one episode of Game of Thrones. I need a break." "OK, Shadowfiend," I say to it, "you can stay home this expansion." "Thanks, dollface," it responds with Don Draper-esque charm and winks an eye at me I never knew it had.
