Cataclysm/4.0 Priest Glyphs (Disc & Holy)

Last update: 18/12

TL;DR - Summary at bottom.
As I am writing this the 4.0 patch hasn't been implemented onto the EU servers yet (it will be tonight). It has been over at the US servers however so us on the other side of the pool of water are getting some small reports on what things seem to be like. Most people are actually too busy figuring out back from front to report anything useful it seems. We all need a week or so to let this sink in, run some raids and gank some alliance (or horde, if you play it that way, ahem) before we can say A or B or "THIS IS SHITE!". Hopefully you've been keeping yourself up to date with all the changes and have some general idea on how to reforge your gear, respec, regem and reglyph. There are plenty of blogs out there with more or less comprehensive guides on how to do this. I myself have written guides on what I think you should talent as a disc or holy priest.

But speaking of glyphs, it might actually be worth mentioning what we should get ourselves. First of all, we're getting a new set of glyphs, the Prime Glyphs. They've also changed how glyphs work, so that you learn them now instead of sort of "gemming" them onto your char as they've worked before. Once you've learned a glyph you know it, and won't have to buy it again. Instead you can pick and choose from a list whenever you need to replace glyphs. You do need reagents to remove a glyph however, something called Vanishing Powder or similar.

I've been giving the glyphs a looksie and I can say, our picks are actually rather simple. The obvious choices are just many enough to fill the slots we've got. Only in a few cases does it boil down somewhat to how you want to play, so I'll take you through them and give you suggestions. In some cases you can choose what works best for your playstyle.

Discipline Glyphs
Prime
There are actually only 3 prime glyphs worth taking for the disc priest, so the choice is really simple.

Penance - Oldie but goldie. One of disc priests best and most important spells. Even if it probably will be used less now that alot of other heals have entered our arsenal, the potential of Penance has always been great and increasing it further is a smart thing to do. Penance delivers when you need it.
Power Word: Shield - The disc priest signum, the shield. This has long been one of the best glyphs for disc priests, and even if I think we might move away from shield spamming somewhat come Cataclysm (at least I really hope so), this will still be a really important part of our healing style.
Power Word: Barrier - A completely new spell that I've had no chance of testing at all yet. The alternatives to this glyph however aren't especially good, so it still seems like we'd get the most from glyphing this.

Major
The majors glyphs allows us to improve Smite. The lack of other proper disc priest glyphs just increases my suspicion that Blizzard really intend to make Smite-healing raid-viable. But we'll see! Actually right now disc healing and smite healing sucks pretty much when compared to holy healing. But glyph wise there isn't much of an option. If you've got the Evangelism-Archangel-Atonement combo, you should use the glyphs below. Otherwise you can use Dispel Magic, Mass Dispel and a free choice.


Divine Accuracy - Will provide us with all the hit we need to actually be able to do some damage with our smite (even though that actually is a secondary component of us using it). This means we won't have to stress dpsers out by needing on hit gear, or even worse, reforge some hit onto our healing gear.
Smite - This glyph will increase the damage of Smite if the target is afflicted by Holy Fire. I am ambivalent about this glyph. I don't think we should see it as forcing us to use Holy Fire in our rotation. I think we should see it as giving us an extra bonus every time we have the time to put Holy Fire into our rotation. Although Blizzard wants us to be pew pew priests, there is still alot of healing to be done that Atonement won't cover. Using a gcd for Holy Fire every 7 seconds might not be something we've got time to do. Remember that increased damage on Smite equals increased healing with Atonement, so this is still a very good glyph. EDIT 16/10: I wrote this after testing it some - "I have some questionmarks regarding Holy Fire though. The dot isn't up as long as the cooldown of the spell, which means there is a gap where the dot isn't applied and the spell still isn't available. Also, we don't have any hit affecting this spell which means we might (and probably) miss with this spell alot. It makes me wonder if Glyph of Smite is worth taking. But as I argued in my post about glyphing, it's more of a bonus than anything else, and there really isn't much of an alternative either."
Dispel Magic OR Mass Dispel - Simply because there is nothing else to have. 3% healed when dispelling isn't awesomely much, but neither do we cast Mass Dispel that often. I think both of these glyphs are about equally good in a pve setting.

Minor
Same old boring unfortunately!

Shadow Protection - If you already have a priest designated to be the Shadow Protection user with this glyph, you might not want it, otherwise it's a decent minor glyph since it increases the duration of Shadow Protection by 50%.
Shadowfiend - In lack of better glyphs, this is a good one (generally better for pvp though).
Fortitude OR Levitate - Fortitude is great in that it saves you mana for when you're rebuffing people mid combat. Levitate is great in that you don't have to run around with a bunch of Light Feathers all the time (and die when you thought you had one but didn't). If you never move outside the raid you might not need levitate as much though.

Shackle Undead? - There is a questionmark around this. It isn't useful in the current content, simply because we don't ever cc things. It is quite possible this will change in Cataclysm however. Actually most things point at cc becoming rather important come Cataclysm. It still won't be for 4.0 though, so you can leave it for now. There aren't many undeads in Cataclysm, and the times we will have to use it are extremely limited. You'll probably never have much use for a glyph like this.

Holy Glyphs
As with disc our choices are fairly obvious. But there are some questionmarks worth mentioning.

Prime
Renew - Renew will still be our most important heal, so this one is a no-brainer.
Guardian Spirit OR Prayer of Healing - I'd say Guardian Spirit is better for instance healing and Prayer of Healing is better for raid healing overall. If I had to choose one I'd go with Prayer of Healing as it is now. I use that far more often than GS.
Lightwell - Now in Cata the content actually requires people to use a skill like Lightwell, and to my experience they're generally quite good at doing this. This is a really strong glyph, increasing the total effectiviness of the Lightwell by 50%, and I strongly recommend it.

Flash Heal? - I don't use Flash Heal that much when holy healing today. Increasing the crit chance of the spell by 10% on targets below 25% sounds a little weak in my ears, although it does synch with Inspiration.

Major
Very few strong Major glyphs forces us to take a couple of weaker glyphs instead.

Circle of Healing - For the raid healing priest this has always been a great glyph, and will surely stay that way in 4.0/Cata.
Dispel Magic - See above.
Mass Dispel - See above

Spirit of Redemption? - IF you are taking this talent, this is probably a good glyph to go along with it (just replace either of the dispel glyphs). You really shouldn't take this talent however.

Psychic Scream? - If you feel like you need to help out with the cc in heroics, this could be a good glyph to keep handy.

Holy Nova? - I've long been wondering if Holy Nova might not be used as a really nice aoe-heal. Problem with it is of course its very limited range. If you find yourself in many situatuions where people are huddled together, the effectiviness of Holy Nova could actually become better than PoH (especially in a 25man raid).

Minor
See above for disc priests. Holy will use the same ones.

So to conclude, for 4.0 I'd use;
Disc
Prime: Penance, Power Word: Shield, Power Word: Barrier
Major: Smite, Divine Accuracy, Dispel Magic
Minor: Fortitude, Shadowfiend, Shadow Protection

Holy
Prime: Guardian Spirit OR Prayer of Healing, Renew, Lightwell
Major: Circle of Healing, Dispel Magic, Mass Dispel
Minor: Fortitude, Shadowfiend, Shadow Protection

ICC Field Report - On Feral Cats, Body & Soul and Putricide HC

Priest healer Zinn reporting from ICC! Putricide won't let us do the macarena anylonger...
Time for another wrap up of my recent raiding shenanigans.

Where are all the feral cats?
Love is a very lonely cat. He has since he started out playing rarely got the opportunity to play with someone else as serious about feral cats as he is (which might be because he's kinda manic dedicated about it). No one in our guilds has ever mained a feral cat (and raided) so Love has always had to have his nerdrages and hobby theorycrafting to himself. Sure, he tries to involve me sometimes, but feral druids are one of the few specs I've really never given much time to get to know. In Vanilla, feral cats weren't even a real spec (just as boomkins weren't) and so he had to go healing most of the time. In BC we lacked decent tanks and so he focused on that part during that time. It's first in Wrath he's gotten the chance to really get into feral catting, and found himself very lonely in this position. Where are all the feral cats? That is the matter for another post however. We can now rejoice that Love has finally found his match as another, very good, feral cat recently joined our guild. Now Love has someone with whom to compete every fight and best of all, with whom he can analyze fights and catness afterwards. Someone who, just like Love, loves to whine about everything that is wrong about feral cats (and yet clings to the class for some reason), muses over what was, could be and will be. Finally my ears can rest...

Wait, wasn't I supposed to head the green ball?

Body & Soul again
On another matter entirely I've respecced my holy spec into Body & Soul (among other things). I did mention it in some post some months ago, and I have always been divided in my stand on whether Body & Soul is a good talent or not. Well actually it is an awesome talent, but just as with Lightwell I was afraid it was so situational or difficult to use it might not ever get the possibility to shine. Only one way to find out, right? I specced it, along with Serendipity and removed some talents from Empowered Healing, since I rarely cast flash heals anyway (and never Greater Heal). Come to think of it I wonder why I spent talents into Serendipity? I did use it once before but removed because it didn't synch with my healing. I basically only use Flash heals when I get Surge of Light procs. The rest of the time I spend spamming renews, poms and coh. Getting a full stack of Serendipity wouldn't occur often and it would only be good for using Prayer of Healing, which I don't use that often either. Ok, I will have to go and fix that. Back to Body & Soul. The problem/good thing about it is that it requires perfect timing. I don't mind having to practice this, I'm just worried I won't even get the opportunity to get this into my backbone. Like I mentioned last time I rarely get to go holy as it is, but there are some fights where B&S is really useful. Like whoever is chased by the orange goo on Putricide HC for example. And the diseased one in the first phase of LK. And probably in many other fights too. I want to give it some proper testing!

DIE PUTRICIDE DIE!
Speaking of Putricide, he's the main reason we've not had a shot at LK hc for a couple of weeks. We have one shotted Putricide on hc. In fact we had one evening where we oneshotted every hc fight in the instance (except Deathwhisper which we did on normal, and well LK of course). It therefor feels odd that you can go on a horrible wiping streak on the same boss just the week after. It takes its toll on raiding morale. People wonder of course what has changed. And we have had a couple of new recruits lately. They're definitely not bad players, but they do have to learn how this guild handles the fight, which always takes a couple of wipes generally. But people get grumpy when something is oneshotted the one day and then causes us to wipe for three hours the next day. Understandable. When I joined the guild Putricide was currently the progression boss to kill. He went down fairly fast after my joining (totally not coincidental) and we had little trouble with him the following few weeks. Instead we could focus on Sindragosa hc, which we then eventually downed too and we went on to LK hc. And suddenly boom! We get stuck on Putricide again! Damn that old fart.

It is a tricky fight. Our troubles seem to revolve around two major issues, the handling of the disease and the killing of the oozes (which might sound kinda obvious, but it's always one of the two). Last time we did those parts perfectly though, but then we had trouble killing him fast enough in phase 3 instead. The debuff quickly goes up to doing 20-25k damage to everyone in the raid every other second, and the healers (namely me & Co) just can't handle that for very long. After all the Tranquilities and Divine Hymns have been used, we wipe. Last week we got him to 1%. A couple of times. And just yesterday to 0,4%. But we just have to go at it. Ganbatte us!

To renew... or not to renew
Recapping from last time -  did I notice any difference in the gain of 300 spellpower and what did I think of the renew glyph? Unfortunately I haven't got much possibility to use it. We haven't got to LK hc since my last post in this matter so I haven't been able to test myself against the other disc priest yet. I am mildly positive about the glyph however. I can't say I notice a huge difference, but I suppose a glyph won't be game breaking. Faster, bigger ticks are better of course, but only if you can meet two "ifs". It's better IF you can keep it on as many targets (or enough targets to still be useful) as before. Because it is a hot you really want it spread around. And it's better IF you have the mana to recast it all the time.
So let's look at these two "ifs".

Reducing uptime from 15 to 12 seconds does give 3 seconds less for me to cast it before I have to start recasting it. That means I have in reality about 1-2 less targets I can keep this up on. Will that make much of a difference? Again I have to use the evil word "depends". You're focusing your healing onto a lesser amount targets, whom will receive a little more of your healing love. Sometimes that is good, sometimes not so good, it depends alot on who else you're healing with and what you're healing. You'll still be able to keep renews on little less than half the raid at any given moment. But don't forget we want to use some gcds for Poms, cohs and Surge of Light procs too. In the end you might be able to keep renews on about 10 targets, at best. This won't differ much from what you'll be able to without the glyph.
So did mana turn out to be a problem? In the few fights I got to try holy I didn't notice much of a difference here either (that was Putricide normal, Sindragosa normal and LK normal). Mana wasn't more or less of a problem than it always is when you're holy (not a huge problem as with shamans, but definitely not non-ooming like druids or disc priests).

So what kind of conclusion can I give about this glyph? If you're healing content where continous, huge amounts of raid damage is a problem, this is a great glyph. For heroics or normal raids, where massive aoe damage is less of a problem, this glyph might be less necessary. The alternatives are Glyph of Prayer of Healing or Glyph of Flash Heal. One doesn't use Prayer of Healing that much even when it's healing intense (because of its mechanics in only healing the targetted players group), so I'd probably go with Glyph of Flash Heal in that case. I'm actually thinking Holy Nova might be a better heal than Prayer of Healing... Must look into this as well.

Stay tuned for more raiding updates!

PS. I got Love to roll a warrior tank, and he completely loves it. He's a sucker for the whole 1-man army thing, which is why he mains a druid I think.

How to! Warrior Tank - Level 80 - Glyphs

As a finisher on yesterdays post let's look at some nice glyphs for tanking raids and instances.

The thing about glyphs are that many of them usually are pretty good, but since you're only able to use 3 major and 3 minor, there are some that have to be discarded because they're simply not good enough.

First out the Majors

Glyph of Devastate vs Sunder Armor
These two glyphs are good examples of a raid vs instance glyph. Glyph of Devastate will apply two sunder armor stacks with one Devastate, which means you'll get faster threat on one target. Glyph of Sunder Armor will apply Sunder Armor on two targets at once, which means you'll get better aggro on several targets at once. It is probably quite obvious which glyph suits which raid setting, but I'll tell you just in case - Glyph Devastate is for raiding, and Glyph of Sunder Armor is for instancing, and I recommend having at least one of these. As with many other things, the raid glyph works better in instances than the instance glyph works well in raids.

Glyph of Shield Wall & Last Stand
Definitely raid glyphs. But wait, Glyph of Shield Wall makes Shield Wall reduce damage by 40% instead of 60%, that can't be good? It will however actually increase your overall damage reduction, since it also reduces cooldown on Shield Wall by half (if you've already got Improved Disciplines), which is more than the damage reduction reduction (sounds weird). And evenso, being able to use Shield Wall twice as often makes it less sensitive to exact timing and therefore easier to use. Just as with Glyph of Shield Wall this glyph will increase your survivability. If you intend to raid I strongly recommend these glyphs. They're not particularly necessary if you don't raid though.

Glyph of Shockwave
The whole thing about Shockwave is that it does aoe damage and also stuns, properties that are less valuable in raids. Therefore this isn't a raid glyph, but definitely very useful for when doing instances.

So Majors for raiding should focus on the damage reduce glyphs - Glyph of Shield Wall and Glyph of Last Stand, and to top it off, a nice threat glyph with Glyph of Devastate.

Majors for Instancing could focus more on the threat and less on the damage reduce skills. Glyph of Shockwave, Glyph of Sunder Armor are a good pair. Final glyph could be anything you like, but I'd probably go with Glyph of Devastate.

Over to the Minors
The minors are more about utility and none is crucial for raiding or instancing. One glyph I think is really nice whether you'll mainly raid or do instances is Glyph of Command. Since Commanding shout gives alot of hp, not having to think about it while fighting (and accidentally forget about it mid fight) is really nice. Other nice minor glyphs are Glyph of Thunder Clap, Glyph of Charge and Glyph of Bloodrage. So go with Command and grab two of the other three and you're set!

That's it about glyphs today, it's a short post partially due to the fact that I'm in the middle of a raid at the moment, and partially since there just isn't much more to say about glyphs :D

But woot, that might actually mean that my project is over, finito, finished. As far as I can remember I've said everything I wanted to say about warrior tanking. Luckily, things always change in WoW, and there will always be something more to say. So don't worry, my warrior tank won't disappear completely. She'll do her instances, hopefully get some nice gear, do raids, and nerdrage over people who can't behave. So thanks for this!

Maybe I'll have to start another project now...