Keeping Up to Snuff

I was talking to the Twins yesterday and they were asking me why I like my priest so much.  Holy has always offered variety and challenge as a class.  There's so many different ways to approach it.  healing in general is more about planning and prediction, as opposed to twitch reflexes.  You kids and your FPS make me look like a slug when I'm trying to DPS.  When I told them I was a healer at heart and had been playing holy since level 1 pre-BC they were surprised at how long I've been playing, especially the leveling as a healer part.  Mechanics wise, holy is a lot more difficult and annoying single player, but back then you could do at-level dungeons all the way up.  Not having to depend solely on solo questing made it a lot easier.  And L2Heal in the process.

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Priest Changes and Fixes

Enough with the QQ you say? Time for some commentary!

Fixes
Guardian Spirit isn't proccing when you get more than one killing blow more or less simultaneously. Slorkuz acknowledges the bug and a hotfix should be coming out quickly.

Please please tell me this is true. I've all but given up on Guardian Spirit being a reliable skill to use as an "Oh Shit" button. I've mostly been using it as a +40% to healing buff when I know I'm getting behind in the heals, and only as an emergency button for bosses. If simultaneous killing blows are the issue, that explains why it doesn't work well on trash but does OK on tank n spank.

Changes
Divine Spirit – this spell is now a core ability available to all priests.

Awesome. Bonus spellpower and spirit FTW. This seems to be way more useful for Holy Priests anyway. I think this is another step moving away from Discipline priests being nothing but fancy buffs and mana batteries.

Discipline has access to a new talent, Power Word: Barrier. (Think of it as Power Word: Shield for your whole group)

One of the really fun things about disc priests is the shields. A big ol' bubble for your whole group with mana regen and damage reflection? Yes please.

Several area of effect (AOE) heal spells have been improved: Prayer of Healing can be cast on any groups in your raid party. Holy Nova's mana cost has been reduced. Circle of Healing now heals for more.

The tweaks to AoE healing are nice, but they are constantly changing these anyway, it seems. Prayer of Healing on any group will be handy.

Shadow priest PvP survivability has been improved: Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.

I don't know anything about shadow except the glowy purple effect looks cool.

Penance – this spell can now be targeted on the priest.

Well, I'm not sure why you would want to channel a spell on yourself, except maybe to get the Grace buff as well, but whatever. Everything should be self castable anyway.


Serendipity – this talent now reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal are cast.

I'm a fan of binding heal so this pretty cool. But does this mean the overheal mana refund is gone? I'm pretty good about overheals so I don't really care but some people will be pretty pissed I'm sure.

We are also working to give Holy additional PvP utility.

Is that all you're giving me? I don't know how this is possible without seriously damaging what is, IMO, one of the best pure raid specs in the game. Especially with all the burst damage that is going on on pvp right now. I'm very skeptical about this one.

Nerd Rage

I got mad this weekend. REAL mad. Break my headphones spiking them on the floor mad (this will be remedied at Best Buy after work today). I think it's been so long since I had a new max level character as my main I forgot that Heroics are hard. Let me repeat that. Heroics are hard. Difficult. Frustrating. I think I need to find something soft to put on my desk to chuck so I don't break stuff I need again.

I tried to do 3 heroics this weekend. Zul'Drak we didn't even get the first boss. Violet Hold, we tried it 3 times. Wiped on the second boss twice and the last boss the third time. Got through all the bosses except the last one in the Nexus.

Thinking back on it, maybe I shouldn't have been so mad. We did pretty well considering. But I wasn't really as upset about not being able to finish as I was that I wasn't able to heal as well as I thought I should be. I wasn't sure if it was spec, I am using that Grace and Spirit build I talked about last post. Oh yeah, next time I feel like respeccing, Grace is gonna go. It's annoying. Basically, it's just a weird HoT that needs to be refreshed every 4 seconds, which kills the 5 second rule. I guess I didn't realize how second nature the 5 second rule has become to me until I started worrying about the timing of my heals. I think I'd rather have the extra 4% to all heals from 2 more points in Spiritual Healing. It fits my style better. The rest of it seems pretty good, my normal GH hits for around 6500 and my crits are hitting for 10k+. Tanks are running around 22k right now, so that seems decent. Maybe a little on the low side, but pretty good for a hybrid. I do miss reflective shield for questing though.

Anyway, it was after the failed heroic on Sunday night that I declared (over TeamSpeak) that I would not be doing any more heroics till I had better gear, and proceeded to break my headset. The next morning when Zon came on we did an 80 level heroic, Halls of Lightning. He didn't get the sword he wanted, but I picked up Volkhan's Hood and Raiments of the Titans, both of which were pretty significant upgrades. I put a +12 int gem and a +8 mp5 chant on the robe.

I'm up to 6 pieces of Moonshroud. I'm a little surprised that I've been able to get so much. So far I've paid between 200-350 per piece, which for 4 days worth of play time seems reasonable. I'm resisting the urge to buy up the cloth regardless of price. There's one guy that seems to be trying to set a high price, but I'm hoping if I hold out and only buy it when it's below 350 bid or buyout things won't get ridiculous. Only 2 points of tailoring till I can start making it myself! Looks like I'll have all the Moonshroud I need by the time I reach the tailoring level needed to make all this stuff.

My enchanting is up to 431, which means I got to buy some of the really cool recipes from the Dalaran, namely the top level Attack Power enchants. I've got all the warriors and hunters drooling over the Massacre enchant, but it requires 6 Abyss Crystals. So they're just going to have to wait. Or find some magic source of level 80 epics. I also made my Runed Titanium Rod. Don't need it yet, but I want to be prepared.