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Test a spec for free or try a new class on the PTR
When the Public Test Realm is up, any player who has had an active account since November 2006 can copy their character over to help test the new update. During the Patch 2.1 Public Test phase, I copied my L64 feral druid over and respecced to Balance. Fortunately, I had a decent set of Balance gear with me and was able to give the spec a good test drive. I enjoyed it enough that I eventually went Balance when I hit L70 on the live servers.With Patch 2.2 currently on the Public Test Realm, Blizzard is allowing players to copy up to 4 premade L70 characters to the Test Realm. This time, I decided to see what it was like to play some other classes I long admired, so I copied a shaman, a priest and a rogue. Each toon starts out with a full set of raid gear and PvP gear for different specs as well as plenty of trinkets, rings, weapons, drink, bandages and gems. They also get epic mounts, both land and air. They have none of their talent points assigned, so you can spec them immediately, but you will have to find a trainer to get the higher levels of any spells/abilities you pick up in your talent tree.Read on for my impressions on each class after the jump.
WoW Moviewatch: 40 Priests vs. Onyxia
Though after seeing Onyxia 5-manned post-Burning Crusade, it seems like 40 players of any class would be able to take her down, I wonder who would tank in a 40-priest raid. (Apparently a shadow priest holding aggro with Mind Blast.) Watch the power of 40 Shadow Word: Pains!Previously on Moviewatch...
Spiritual Guidance: Priest sets (part two)
Every Sunday, 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!The archaic stuff out of the way, in part two of this two-part series we turn to the hot new stuff: the Priest sets from the Burning Crusade. BC made one tremendous improvement in the way class sets were handled: raid gear for off-specs. For us men and women of the cloth, that means Tier 4, 5, and 6, as well as Arena gear, are available in versions befitting both healing and shadow priests. As before, I'll start with the epic raid gear, T4, T5, and T6, pictured above from left to right. They really went crazy with the shoulders, didn't they?
Phat Loot Phriday: Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian
Veteran readers of the blog will remember when the world first of this baby dropped, but now that everyone's 70, maybe you too can get a raid rolling in Naxxaramas, and obtain for yourself the legendary (literally) weapon of Medivh.Name: Atiesh, Greatstaff of the GuardianType: Legendary StaffDamage/Speed: 130-243 / 2.90 (64.4 DPS)Abilties: There are actually four different versions of the staff-- Warlock, Mage, Priest, and Druid. You can see all of them over at WoW Wiki-- they all increase spell damage and/or healing of the equipper (the Druid one increases AP in feral forms as well), but they also have a party bonus, too. The Druid gives 11mp5, the Mage increases spell crit strike of the entire party, the Warlock grants 33 spell damage to the party, and the Priest gives 62 healing to everyone in the party. Additionally, all of the versions will do something very special: create a portal to Karazhan. Nowdays, players go to Karazhan all the time, so it's not that big a deal, but back when this staff came out, no one had ever been there, and so cracking open a portal was pretty cool And the staff grants various amounts of Stamina, Intellect or Spirit, depending on the version you have. Unfortunately, the stats are no longer that great-- they're incredible for level 60, but at level 70, it's pretty easy to come by equivalent (or even better) stats, and therefore, not really worth the trouble to obtain the staff. But then again, there is an immense amount of value in the lore of this item, considering that it was owned by Medivh himself. Why, might you ask, does something so awesome look so plain? Don't judge a book by its cover, son-- that model, though plain, matches the models used in Warcraft 2 and 3. This is a legendary item, and real power is inside. Also, spectral birds sometimes appear flying around the staff. So that's kind of cool. Also, the Shade of Aran (who is of course Medivh's father) will be kind of surprised if you show up to fight him with this thing on How to Get It: In many ways, this is the final goal of shipping WoW. To get the item, you have to first collect 40 Splinters of Atiesh, which drop from different bosses in Naxxaramas, which means you need to run the place a few times. Then, once you've got those together, you can combine them to make the Frame of Atiesh. Once you've got that, you head off to Anachronos, the great big dragon near the Caverns of Time in Tanaris.He'll send you in search of the Staff Head of Atiesh, which Kel'Thuzad has gotten his grubby little hands on. He's trying to put the staff back together, and the Argent Dawn is fighting against him, so if you can nab the Head away from him, more power to you. And the Base of Atiesh is the other item you'll need, and it drops from C'thun, the end boss of AQ40. See what I mean about this being the final goal?After you've done all that, Anachronos will reassemble the staff for you, but wait! It's corrupted! (Figures.) You then take it into Stratholme, and run an event in which you can vanquish the evil spirit from the staff. Along the way, you can pick up another legendary item, a 1h sword that's freakin' awesome, but disappears after only a few minutes. After you defeat the spirit, you're then allowed to claim the staff, giving you the world's phattest loot-- of 2006.Getting Rid of It: The Greatstaff of the Guardian! The staff of Medivh himself, shattered when Archimonde destoryed Dalaran! Reassembled from shards dropped by ancient demons and cleansed by the most powerful of Azeroth's heroes! And a vendor will give you 18g 45s 58c for it. Go figure.
The latest on Priest racial abilities
Starting its life as a brief comment at Dungeon & Raids panel at BlizzCon 2007 ("We are going to do something about Fear Ward for the Horde."), we're now getting some interesting news on the future of the Priest's racial abilities. Says Drysc, post-BlizzCon:I think the general consensus among the designers is that ultimately priest racials were ... a poor choice to make... I'm not sure how many remember, but priest racials were created because there was player concern over how an Undead could appropriately wield the healing powers of the light, and the racials were added to give flavor which could back up some of those player concerns. Aside from some probably poor decisions on what that flavor should be, ultimately it was a concern that players would ultimately have benefited from if we had simply ignored it. It could be addressed any number of ways (everyone is given everything, or it's cut down to a small pool of abilities which everyone has access to, or only specific abilities are passed to different races, etc.), and I don't believe a final decision has been made at this time.So it looks as though Priests are looking forward to a future without distinct racial abilities. And while I'm sure that some Priests are happy about that, I'm thinking that those who picked their race for a specific skill (Dwarves and Draenei, in particular) might not be. Which side of the camp do you fall on -- are you glad that Blizzard is addressing the issue, or wish they'd just leave it be?
Spiritual Guidance: Priestly racials
Every Sunday, 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!Priests are an unusual class, because they're the only class in the game that has different skills available to them depending on their race. Each race gets two racial skills, most of which are minor, making minimal impact on your gameplay, but some of them are great skills that you'll find exceptionally helpful as you level up -- or at end game. The fact that some of them are useful and others are -- well, to be nice we'll just call them "less useful" -- is a point of contention amongst Priests. Priests who picked a race with a poor selection of racial skills complain that the skills are unbalanced, while Priests who selected a race with useful skills say that complainers simply lacked foresight when first creating their character.Today we're going to look over the different racial abilities available to Priests and discuss whether the selection is really fair to Priest players.
A spec guide for classes that aren't yours
Nowadays, you lucky kids have the Armory, and you can, on demand, look up the point-by-point spec of any player in the game. You can see who's Fire, who's Affliction, and who's Resto at a moment's notice, and gone are the days where you had to guess what spec a player was from the spells they cast.Or are they? I'd hazard a guess that most players don't have the Armory on quick dial, and yet all players still encounter different specs of classes every single time they play. In an Arathi Basin, by the time you've looked up the other guy's spec on the Armory, the game is over.So it's still valuable to know specs just by glancing at the spells players are casting, and this is a guide to help you do that. Want to know at a glance whether your main tank laying down Mortal Strike is really specced Protection as he says, or if he's got a few extra points in Arms than he should have? Want to know if that Warlock who sent a Felguard after you in the battlegrounds is specced Demonology or Destruction?I've put together a handy guide to spotting specs of classes that aren't yours-- there are a few telltale spells in each class that will giveaway a player's spec at a glance, and save you the momentary trouble of having to punch their name into the Armory. I've also given you a short brief on what each spec can and can't do for you (so you're not asking priests in Shadowform to buff you with Divine Spirit). To check it out, hit the link below.
Spiritual Guidance: Priest sets (part one)
Every Sunday (yes, we've moved), 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!Alright, I admit it. This post is just an excuse to look at all the pretty armor we priests get. And if you ask me, we get some of the best sets -- reminiscent of neither Power Rangers nor...um...whatever this is, priestly gear tends to look priestly. In this two-part series I'll be taking a look at our class sets, from Dungeon Set 1 (a.k.a. Tier 0) right up through Tier 6, with stops to comment on the graphics, stats, and set bonuses. This post will cover the PvE sets prior to the Burning Crusade, and part two will take on the rest of them (including Arena gear).
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.
Reader WoWspace of the week: Crumbs
This week's Reader WoWspace was sent in by Crumbs, who has managed to fit twice the geeky goodness and a whole lot of desk space into one nifty corner of his office. As Crumbs told us here at WoW Insider, he had been playing a Hunter "forever" but when Burning Crusade came out, he decided to make the jump to a new character. He has since switched to a L70 Draenei Priest named Chilee of the guild <Epitome> on the Thrall server that he's been enjoying raiding with.For more cool pictures and details of Crumbs' WoWspace, check out the information after the jump!
Spiritual Guidance: Our top class concerns
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!Priest is, in all honesty, my favorite class to play. I couldn't quite explain why, except to say that I've tried other classes and none of them resonate with me on the same level that Priests do. However, the class isn't perfect -- I've got to say that there are some legitimate concerns about the classes' abilities. So today we're going to discuss the Priest's top class concerns.
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.
Class cooperation tricks players may not have thought of
Recently, we took another look at the best and worst class combinations you can make with your friends, and you all had many insights on how to choose classes that match each other well. It occurred to me that there are some special tricks that two classes can pull off in pairs or small groups that would be impossible to do on their own, and that this might be an interesting thing to try if the trick strikes your fancy.The most obvious one may be that rogues and druids can sneak around together as a stealthy mini-party all of their own, and that's the sort of thing that many people know about. But for me, I remember being very surprised to learn from a friend how powerful a mage and a priest can be together when leveling through PvP content. I saw the mage gather up many enemies together and use arcane explosions on them while the priest healed and shielded her. They completed quests faster than anyone I'd ever seen before. Later they invited me to level new triplet alts together with them -- two mages and one priest. She taught me how she and I could gather up many monsters and kill them all without getting hurt by alternating our frost nova and blizzard spells, while at the same time having the priest's healing for tricky spots, mistakes, and emergencies.This is a fast way to level cooperatively that I never would have thought of on my own, and it took my friend's ingenuity and research to make it happen. Have any of you found similar class-cooperation tricks that you think many people might not have heard of?[Exciting fan art by Sara Forlenza]
Around Azeroth: It's all in the braids
Reader Whiskerwing sent in an entire gallery of screenshots, but out of all of them, I chose this one to post. Why? I just love the way the Dwarf braids fly up when casting spells. It's a minor detail, to be sure, but it's a detail I haven't noticed in any other race. Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from Around Azeroth. %Gallery-1816%
Breakfast Topic: Priests, we love you and fear you too!
To follow right on the heels of the warriors, today is Priest Day! Our healing friends make adventures possible for us, always encouraging and supporting their friends -- although priests can just as easily send us running away in fear too! Do you play a priest? You probably have a friend who does. Remember fighting a great priest that really did make you scared? Today is the day to speak loving power words for priests: yourself, your friends and even your enemies!
Spiritual Guidance: Leveling your priest
Every Saturday, 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! This post may not be terribly useful to old-school Priests -- it's for up and coming priests or people who have been through one too many attempted instance runs that were abandoned after an hour of "need healer for Ramparts, PST!" (That's the reason I decided to roll my first Priest -- we could never find healers for our groups!) And, while I'm certainly a fan of the class, I'll be the first to say that they aren't the easiest class to level. But there are some tricks and talents that can make the process easier for you -- and, since I'm in the middle of leveling up my third Priest, that's what we're going to talk about today.
I have to change-- I'm logging out
Kayholder found a level 70 character on the Armory (hi, Subdural from Alexstraza) wearing all kinds of junk, and asks how the guy even got to level 50, much less 70. But the answer from another WoW LJer mentioned something I've never heard before either: "logout clothes."No way. I know players were concerned about being spied on in the Armory when it first came out, but are you guys really putting on a logout set before you exit the game? This guy's a shadow priest, but he doesn't have any arena ratings that I can see, and he's Exalted with the AV faction (not that hard), and only Honored with the other two, so who is he hiding his gear from? Does he not want Magtheridon scouring the Armory to see who's coming to get him this weekend?Seriously, do you guys really do this? Is it that important to hide your gear that you have to carry around a completely separate set to put on every time you log out? And even if you do, can't people see your set while you're wearing it? All they'd have to do, I'd think, is wait for you to log on, and then check the Amory to see what you were wearing (or heck, just go find you in game). Do any of you really use "logout clothes"? And for the love of Thrall, why?
Pandemic wins again at WSVG Louisville
WSVG's Louisville event took place this past weekend, and the results say that Pandemic has done it again, winning the 5v5 3v3* tourney and taking home the big prize of $10,500. Nice work if you can get it!Pandemic, you'll remember, won it all in China as well. They definitely look like a winning arena team-- Warrior, Paladin, two Priests, a Shammy and a Mage. Strangely enough, both Priests are Disc/Holy, which might not surprise you arena vets, but it surely surprised me. Their Paladin is Holy, too, while the Shammy is a more reasonable Elemental, and their Warrior is specced Arms.Grats to Pandemic for that one-- the next WSVG WoW arena event will be in Dallas on July 5-8 (and if you haven't signed up yet, they're giving away Blizzcon tickets to a few lucky participants). Will Pandemic three-peat? Considering their arena season 2 score is 22-1, it seems a pretty safe bet.Full list of this weekend's winners and their prizes after the jump.*Update: My fault, this was a 3v3 tourney, not a 5v5. The team on the Armory may or may not have been the team that played, or if it was it's likely they switched players in and out. Thanks, commenters evo_dragon and Den!
Gamers on the Street: Attunement changes
Hello all, and welcome to Gamers on the Street! In this column I will be logging into a different server each week to create a character and ask completetly random gamers of both factions their opinions about things that are currently impacting players in World of Warcraft. In this way we hope to reach out to the community and give some everyday gamers a chance to talk about some of the things going on in game.This week, I picked the Gnomeregan server by asking someone in the <It came from the Blog> guild to name a server for me. It was the first one that was given to me. I rolled my two characters -- a Gnome Rogue and a Troll Rogue, which I dutifully leveled past one so nobody thought I was a gold spammer -- and headed for the major cities nearby to ask my questions. Amusingly, getting anyone to talk to you at level five (Alliance) or three (Horde) was difficult to say the least...
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.
