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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.
Everything we know about 2.2, 2.3, and the next expansion
EU Forum MVP Schwick has posted a very nice and very thorough listing of everything we know about patch 2.2, 2.3, and the next expansion. As far as I know, there's nothing really new here, but it's a terrifically indepth listing of every rumor, hint, and suspicion that we've heard so far.Some of the exciting ideas still coming are new emotes, a tanking Pally revamp, a new stealth animation for Rogues, and totem timers for Shamans (currently, I use Totemus, and that suits me just fine). Also on the to-do list includes VOIP, guild banks and housing, and speculations for the next expansion include Northrend (I've got my money on this one, because the Scourge have it coming), "Beyond Outland," and the Emerald Dream.I'm sure we'll learn more eventually (expect big things at Blizzcon, I foresee), but until then, this roundup is as comprehensive as it gets. Thanks to Schwick for compiling this all together for us.
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.
Get in line! Rezzing order and you
So someone moved, someone pulled aggro, someone didn't heal fast enough, or you just don't have the DPS. It's a wipe. Everyone's dead on the ground, and the raidleader calls for a Shaman to pop, or for someone to use their soulstone. I'm a resto Shaman, so this happens to me pretty often: I Reincarnate and I'm standing over 24 dead people. Who do I rez first?Obviously, the first people I go for are those who have a rez to use, so we can do some chain rezzing. Priests, other Shamans, and Paladins. But after that? Caralynn lays it out: while your first instinct may be to rez your MT or your friends, you should really be rezzing pet and buff classes before melee.Which makes great sense. Warlocks and Hunters need to drink and resurrect their pets, and that's a lot of time wasted if you rez them last. Mages and Druids use all kinds of mana casting those buffs, so they usually have to drink, rebuff after a wipe, and then drink again. And Warriors and Rogues are easy to refill-- Rage doesn't refill, and I wish my mana filled up as quickly as Energy did.So it's Other Rezzers > Pet Classes > Buffers > and then Melee. There are other schools of thought on this (one player says to rez RL girls first, wink wink say no more), but this plan seems to be the best. Plus, Caralynn points out that this has the added bonus of not having melee standing around trying to pull while clothies are rebuffing. If you time it right, everyone can be ready to go again at the same time. And this time, watch that aggro!
Breakfast Topic: Priest racials
One unique thing about the Priest class is racial spells. Every race has their own traits for all classes, like Dwarves' Stoneskin and the Undead's Cannibalize. However, Priests also have special spells that are only available to certain races (each race gets two of the racial spells). Fear Ward is probably the most infamous; it's a 10-minute duration targetable buff that absorbs one fear effect, and is available only to dwarves and draenei. This leads to the common contention that the best race to roll for an Alliance Priest is dwarf, because Fear Ward is far better than all the other racial spells. Some racials are obviously trash -- my own Priest, being a human, has Desperate Prayer, which is a free instant self-heal on a 10 minute cooldown, and Feedback, a sort of very expensive mana-burning aura. Desperate Prayer is pretty decent, but Feedback is such utter rubbish that I can't even bring myself to spend the money on training it.As you may imagine, this is perceived as a sub-optimal situation by many Priests, including this blogger. However, it's not immediately obvious what the best way to fix it is. Remove racials entirely, possibly making some of them baseline abilities trainable by all races? Keep the lower-powered racials and baseline/remove the high-powered ones? Eyonix recently said it's likely that at some point in the future, you'll see additional improvements to priest racials -- what improvements would you like to see?
Blizz "fairly happy with Priest healing"
Being as how a Priest is my main, it's no surprise that the "big issue" of 2.1 for me is the Paladin/Priest situation. In short Priests were healing worse than Pallies, and then Blizz nerved Pallies. I've come to accept the rhetoric that Paladins were nerfed because they were healing too well, and not to make Priests look better, but it's still a little annoying.Yes, there were a couple of Priest buffs. I probably will use Binding Heal a bit more now. The Circle of Healing buff, on the other hand, was just silly -- 25 points to the maximum rank. Anyway, now that the community has had some time to complain, what does Blizzard have to say? Drysc:We're fairly happy with priest healing where it is, so instead of just playing leap frog by pushing each class above each other until the encounters and content are trivialized ...So there it is. They liked Priests where they were, so they tried to nerf Pallies down to their level. Honestly, as far as 5-mans go, I'm not sure they're wrong to be content with Priest healing by and large. I healed Shattered Halls last night without ever going under half mana, and I can fairly comfortably solo-heal most of the heroics I've tried. As far as the change to CoH goes, again from Drysc:We've made some changes to Circle of Healing obviously, and we're just in the process of wait and see, taking baby steps as we go. Changes to Lightwell are along the same lines, we want to make sure our footing is there before taking the next step. It's generally better to make incremental changes instead of emptying the clip and seeing where things fell, which don't get me wrong, has happened before in some capacity. It's not an approach we generally intend or like to take though.Alright, I understand the idea behind making incremental changes, but 25 -- 5% -- is an extremely small increment for a spell that most Priests consider hopelessly broken. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Lightwell and CoH are not fixable without extreme changes. You can't just retune their costs, values, or durations. If you want many Priests to consider them as viable options, you're going to have to do something major to them. But that's just my opinion -- what do you guys think?
Breakfast topic: Hand out some buffs
theantipoet asks a great question over on Livejournal:If "you could buff any class -- any class but your own (your main or mains if you've got multiple) -- which class would it be and how would you buff them?"I'll say that if you want cool points on this one, you should stay away from any classes you play regularly-- for me at the moment, that'll be shaman, rogue, and hunter. I really like anti's answer of priests-- they are QQing a lot, but there is no reason they should be DPSing while paladins heal in raids.Personally, I'd hook up prot warriors a little bit-- right now, their DPS is such a joke that the only way they can really play is in instances. I'm not saying that we should give them tons of DPS-- that would mess everything up in PvP-- but just a little extra DPS would let them solo, and wouldn't unbalance PvE groups that much (since it's likely that if the group makeup is right, the prot warrior's DPS will still pale in comparison to your regular DPS class's hits).A buff like that isn't really necessary, but it's an interesting thought experiment to see where you might make positive changes that don't actually affect you. So if Blizzard suddenly gave you the chance to buff any class except your own, what would you say?
PTR notes: Not-so-Clearcasting for Shamans
By now, you've probably at least heard (perhaps in haiku form) that shamans are facing a serious nerf in the upcoming patch. As a Resto/Elemental shaman, I figured I'd take a few minutes to lay out for you just what we, your trusty totem-dropping buddies, will be facing.Y'see, there's this ability called Clearcasting. Mages, priests, shaman, and druids can all get it under certain specs-- it basically gives you a mana-free spell every few casts, the percentage of which changes by class. Mages at full spec get a 10% chance, Druids get it as a chance on melee attack, and priests get it as a usable ability (with a 3 minute cooldown).Now, this talent is especially useful for Shaman, since we are notoriously mana inefficient-- supposedly, that's our tradeoff for being able to melee, heal, and cast damage spells. Way back when, the Clearcasting talent (in the Elemental tree) had a standard rate of 10%, but just recently, in 2.0.10, it was changed to anytime we got a critical spell hit.That's huge. But it's also what the devs apparently didn't like.
Build Shop: Priest 35/5/21
Talents in trouble again? Must be Tuesday! Welcome back to Build Shop, where we look at reader-submitted talent builds. This week's build comes courtesy of Hamacus on Sen'jin, and it's an unconventional sort of Priest DPS build, which is why I picked it -- after last week, I wanted something a bit unusual. Hamacus neglected to inform me as to his goals with the build (shame!) so I made some educated guesses. There's no kill count or arena teams on his Armory page, which means he has less than 1337 honor kills, and he skipped the common PvP talent Martyrdom, so I figured PvE is his focus. On the other hand, he does have full Blackout, so I could be wrong. More on that later. He's a Priest, so it's obviously not a solo build. That leaves group PvE.35/5/21. Why does that look odd? Oh yes, it's because nobody ever specs between 5 and 31 points in Shadow: people tend to either put 5 in Spirit Tap for leveling/soloing, or at least 31 for Shadowform (SF). SF is such a tree-defining talent that it's often held up as an example for the other trees (as in "please make our other 31-point talents this good"). For the uninitiated, for one point, SF lets you raise your Shadow damage by 15% and decrease your physical damage taken by 15%. So why on earth would anyone want to skip it? In a word, versatility. When in SF, you can't cast any Holy spells, which of course includes all our heals (even Gift of the Naaru, the Draenei racial, in case you were wondering). And by not investing all those points in Shadow, this build is able to grab some general-purpose talents in the other trees.
Forum post of the day: "The Priest Class: Game Design, Philosophy"
Special thanks to Kamakahema of Shadow Council-US for tipping me off to this thread. Today's thread of the day tackles the question of whether a healing priest is as fun to play as it could be (WoW is a game, after all, and one of games' major goals is fun). Voryk/Kryvor of Matheridon-US approaches the philosophy of the class as a whole and, in one of the best written forum threads I've seen in a while (especially in the unruly Priest forums), determines that at least in a healing role, the class is just too monotonous -- you can only play whack-a-mole for a certain amount of time before it gets dull, generally speaking. Most of our talents are passive, for mana efficiency, extra strength for a particular set of spells, etc.; as players, our job is relatively simple and limited.
Dissension among the priest ranks
Actually, only one priest, and he's sort of a tool. Pawne of Box Lunch on Dentarg says he'll never heal a shadow priest, and in fact refuses to group with them at all, which must make raids interesting. If the group he's in has a shadow priest, he makes the group kick them before he joins. As expected, all the other priests (shadow, holy and discipline) tear him apart for defying priest unity, having bad gear, not being 70, and pretty much anything else they can get their hands on. The Armory really makes making fun of people on the forums a lot easier. The argument then descends into hilarity as the priests call him a bigot and he calls them nerds, as if arguing on a WoW forum didn't make everyone involved a nerd. Since Pawne has also posted that he doesn't like turning into a girl when he dies, I suspect he's either a clever troll or not exactly at the front of the line when brains were handed out. I understand why some guilds don't like having all shadow priests -- you do probably need the majority of your healers to be healing specced if you want to be on the cutting edge of new content. Nevertheless, as a rogue, I love being grouped with a shadow priest, since vampiric embrace heals us when everyone else seems to have forgotten us. If I ever stop being lazy and level my blood elf priest, she'll be shadow until 70. What do you think about shadow priests?
Turning up Fade for Priests
Though this idea was put forth before yesterday's tease of a mystery buff, I still think it's a good one. A lot of priests are supporting the idea that when Blizzard looks at fixing Priest spells, Fade should be front and center.Currently, Fade is meant solely as a PvE spell-- the only thing it does is within the priest's party, so it's useless both solo and in PvP. But Maxx of Jubei'Thos suggests buffing it to make it more viable across the board. Some players say it should, like Feign Death, "untarget" priests who activate it, but Blizzard says that's a no-no because it confuses players without indicating what's happening. Maxx's idea is even better-- make Fade cause magic and physical attacks against the priest to miss 50% of the time (kind of like a Rogue's Evasion).For people who think that overpowers Fade too much, Maxx has a solution: Fade would also give a debuff. Either it would make the priest miss 50% of the time as well, or it could do something like an anti-shadowform-- nothing but healing spells while Fade is activated. I think it's an interesting idea, and it's worth a look by the devs at least-- Fade is useless in everything but PvE right now, and tweaking it a bit wouldn't hurt. A few priests, however, say there are too many problems already to be messing around with Fade, and I agree with that as well. Neth, fortunately, goes right down the middle-- she likes the Fade idea (and is passing it to the devs), and realizes there are issues with, say, Circle of Healing.Especially with all the +healing to be found in Outland, Fade is losing its utility. It shouldn't be the first priority, but making it more useful would help the Priest class all around.
Mystery buff incoming for priests! [Update 2]
Yep, a mystery buff -- doesn't that sound exciting? We have no idea what it is, because the CMs don't have the go-ahead to tell us yet, but Nethaera claims it's "a positive change." And though she's trying not to overplay it, there are a lot of hopes riding on it being something good. Nethaera hopes to have more information for us on Tuesday -- but until then, it's speculation run wild! Do any of you have predictions for the priest's mystery buff?Update: Nethaera is currently telling us that we may get news tomorrow, Wednesday the 28th. Sorry to get everyone's hopes up, but hopefully we'll have some official news soon.Update 2: I believe we have the final word on improvements for priests this patch via Nethaera.
Is there hope for the priest class?
After seeing the latest patch notes, there are plenty of unhappy priests out there. Not only was Vampiric Embrace -- a key talent for shadow priests attempting to maintain group utility and solo viability -- reduced in effectiveness by a forth (and its ability to crit removed completely), but shadow priests also lost threat reduction and holy priests lost Prayer of Mending -- a low-cost instant-cast heal that was excellent for priests trying to heal in PvP combat that is now rendered mostly useless by its new 20 second cooldown. Many priests seem to think that these changes are the death of PvE shadow priests and PvP holy priests. Is there a reason for priest players to have hope? Well, Nethaera says there is. On the priest forums she's reassuring players that their feedback is important and saying that Circle of Healing is being looked at and Lightwell may be looked at. And while I'm happy the class is still under review for possible tweaks, I wonder if they don't need a little more than what Nethaera says Blizzard is offering. And like the many other players who have attempted to post well-reasoned and constructive feedback on the priest forums, I feel ignored, despite Nethaera's assurances that all feedback is read. But if that's the case, I have to wonder why abilities that made life easier for priests are nerfed while complaints on countless other topics produce neither response nor result. Thank goodness I've been leveling a paladin -- with strong healing talents and great PvP survivability, they're everything I used to think my priest could be.
Breakfast Topic: Best class to solo with?
Though I can't find the link, I'm almost sure we've covered this before, but not with the changes after the expansion.Reader Will dropped a tip (thanks!) saying he has almost reached 70 with his Hunter, and really enjoyed playing his way up because Hunters are so good at soloing. I have to agree-- I haven't played anything as relaxing to solo as a Hunter, just send the pet, throw autoshot on, toss in a few arcane shots or stings for good measure, loot and repeat.His guildies say if he rolls a new alt, it should be a Rogue. Personally, I think Warlocks are a great class to be a solo artist with, but Druids certainly have been making headway lately. Will also wonders about builds-- I've had a great time soloing with my shadow Priest, but I've heard holy priests are a pain to solo (my resto Shaman has certainly been more annoying than a few other alts I've had).Because Blizzard has done so much to make almost every class viable solo, I'm sure everyone's got an opinion. Share yours and help Will out here.
AddOn Spotlight: MendWatch
Non-Priests (or Priests that don't heal), you might just want to skip over this one. MendWatch is an AddOn that...well, the author explains it best: MendWatch attempts to track the priest spell Prayer of Mending. A timer bar shows the current target of the Prayer of Mending spell with a countdown of how long the spell will last. When the target gets hit the amount the Prayer of Mending healed for will be shown and the bar will slowly fade away. If the Prayer of Mending jumps to a new target a new timer bar will be shown for the new target.This AddOn fixes my one complaint about Prayer of Mending: it can be a bit hard to track who it's on or whether you even have one out there at all, when the battle starts getting thick. Just like Cloak of Shadows brings a Rogue vs. caster duel from "imba" to "insane," MendWatch brings PoM from "awesome" to "incredible."If you're still reading but not familiar with Prayer of Mending, here's the spell's description:390 mana, instant cast, 40 yard rangePlaces a spell on the target that heals them for 800 the next time they take damage. When the heal occurs, Prayer of Mending jumps to a raid member within 20 yards. Jumps up to 5 times and lasts 30 sec after each jump. This spell can only be placed on one target at a time.
I'm in ur Outlands, holyin' my Priest
The Priests in my guild are falling off to the dark side, one by one. The most die-hard Holy one went Shadow today, after hitting level 64. However, I've refrained, instead having taken the advice of our guild's shadowiest Shadow Priest and specced into dps-focused Holy. As of level 62, I was 14/32/7: Discipline (14 points) 5/5 Wand Specialization 3/5 Silent Resolve 2/2 Improved Power Word: Fortitude 1/1 Inner Focus 3/3 MeditationHoly (32 points) 2/2 Healing Focus 3/3 Improved Renew 5/5 Holy Specialization 5/5 Divine Fury 1/1 Holy Nova 3/3 Inspiration 3/3 Improved Healing 2/2 Searing Light 1/1 Spirit of Redemption 5/5 Spiritual Guidance 2/2 Surge of LightShadow (7 points) 5/5 Spirit Tap 2/2 Improved Shadow Word: Pain And as a matter of fact, I'm now level 64 and haven't figured out where to spend my two more TP.
Circle of Healing or Circle of Terrible?
First Holy Nova. Then Lightwell. As of 2.0.1, Circle of Healing is the top-tier Holy talent for Priests. Notice a trend? All these talents have been considered...um..."less than optimal" by many vocal members of the priestly community. And folks have tried to defend all three of them by pointing out that they are nice to have in certain situations. Well, today Drysc plays the "situationally useful" card with respect to CoH over in the WoW General forums: "[CoH] has some amazing tactical uses; that you can sit (likely well) out of harms way and send heals to a group of players. To equalize some of that ability the healing potency isn't as strong as a normal prayer of healing maybe, but I don't think it's anything to be scoffed at either. I would be surprised if the talent was completely overlooked in strategies for future dungeons and encounters, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was relied on for more than a few".
The final word on priest racial abilities
At last we have full disclosure on the racial abilities for Blood Elf and Draenei priests come the expansion -- or at least unconfirmed rumor from beta testers on the World of Raids forums. I am somewhat disappointed, though, having hoped the addition of new priest-available races would give Blizzard an opportunity to equalize the racial abilities across the factions -- as currently the Dwarf's Fear Ward ability makes some difficult raid encounters much simpler. So when it was announced that priests would have one old and one new racial ability, I had hoped to see a horde priest with Fear Ward. But instead, Blood Elves will receive Touch of Weakness (not a bad self-buff for soloing or PvPing) and the Draenei will receive Fear Ward (no explanation required). Well, perhaps we'll see fewer raid encounters in the future in which fear plays a large part.Update: Eyonix responds to the issue of racial abilities by saying (among other things), "there will be new ways (for both factions) to remove and/or prevent fear in the Burning Crusade. So, in short -- lay down that crutch, you don't need it anymore."
Healing is for the women
Garthar put something out there on the forums that I just couldn't pass up. Healing, he suggests, is for the women. He claims that he's found most women that play the game play healers-- he says most druids and priests he plays with are women. Note that he's not saying that all women play healers necessarily (although that's a conclusion you could take from him), but he's actually saying that all healers are played by women.I'm here to tell you that's not true. I play a resto shaman who heals like a madman (and a shadow priest, although I'm not sure if that counts or not), and while there are some female gamers who play priests and druids in my guilds, the majority of priests are actually guys. In fact, I've played with a surprising (to me) number of women warriors. There's nothing an old-school gamer like me loves hearing more than a female player complaining because the guild is pressuring her to spec out of fury and start tanking. Just more proof that videogaming is a girl thing, too.Sexism aside (of course there are exceptions to every rule), Garthar can't be right, can he? There's no way only women play healers. Is healing as a class more feminine somehow then smashing things over the head with a large weapon? And where do the other classes fall in here? I know a few women that play mages (and play them well), but I have to admit that most of the rogues I know are played by guys. Does our gender have any say at all in what classes we choose to play?
