The Classic Dungeon Experience

 So far Classic WoW has been pretty much exactly the way I remember it, i.e amazing. There has been one notable difference though, at least to me, and that is the dungeon experience.

While I do recall having fun with dungeoning back in the day, I struggle to remember why or how that was possible, because most of my memories are of it taking way too long and people both playing and behaving very badly. The playing badly part I don't mind so much as long as there is a level of effort put in, and I know for a fact I was far from great myself. And to be fair, it was to be expected. Back then the game was completely new to all of us and even those with previous MMO experience (unlike me) still didn't know anything about tactics, best gear or best talents.

Unrelated picture of a scared priest.

This time around though I rarely find a player who seems to be completely new to the game. Either they have played a lot of retail, Vanilla or both. And in either case they mostly know what needs to be done and I've had a blast going through dungeons so far. I don't need people to play perfectly and I don't need people to be social geniuses, as long as everything is done in good effort and politeness.

So I managed to play a year of Classic and umpteen low and mid-level instances before I ended up having one of those experiences. One of those that took me right back to all the memories I have of everything taking just too long and nothing ever really clicking. Like, I can't even point at any one person and say "this failed because of you" but the group effort failed all together.

Ok, in this particular case there were definitely some warning signs early on. The fact that it takes almost an hour to assemble a group is not one of them though. A lot of instances are literally half an hour of running away and without Dungeon Finder Tool you're left to having to wait for the right person to show up at the right time, that's just the way Classic works and I'm fine with that.

I found a group for SM Graveyard and Library on my alliance priest (whom I have a lot to say about by the way, but that is matters for another post) and had to run myself from Wetlands, through Arathi, Hillsbrad and Tirisfal to get to the instance. I was the last one there and everyone had patiently waited for me without complaining. Off to a good start. 

Unrelated picture of a priest in Darnassus.

Except that when we were going to start our hunter wasn't present. Well, that's fine. He had probably gone afk without telling us while waiting, that's understandable. We cleared the first boss in SM GY before the hunter finally shows back up, at this point we had waited at least 15 minutes for him so that's a pretty long afk, but ok, we had done fine without him.

It was going to turn out there was a reason for that as he was ending up to be more of a hassle than gain for the group. He would stand around just not doing anything for minutes at a time, often not going in to action until prompted by someone asking for his attention in party chat. "Bad lag" he says. With lag that bad it's a wonder you can play this game at all, I think. But then again, he was playing a hunter.

Fortunately SM GY is not a difficult instance and we get through it without trouble. Off to SM Library, and the first half is fine, except for the hunter still being mostly afk. He runs around with Aspect of the Cheetah until I tell him and has full mana after every fight he actually does engage in... but I choose to keep my mouth mostly shut, and so does everyone else. We're still doing fine, after all.

After the first boss problem starts to arise though. The hunter starts "lagging" in to extra mobs, pulling more than the tank can comfortably handle. We have our first wipe. No one is complaining, but we're telling each other to be careful not to pull extras. The warrior turns out to be one of those who doesn't bother corpse running but just waits for someone to res him instead. The mobs in SM Lib are fairly tricky actually, with a mana burn I try to hide from as much as possible and a nasty kick that will silence you if you're not careful.

Unrelated picture of a priest running.

That kick will be the cause of our next wipe, just before the final boss. No one is to blame really, it is one of those breakdowns of team effort I described earlier. Or maybe rather an accumulation of mistakes that breaks the camels back. Even though I use Fade I get aggro from mobs throughout the instance, and getting my spells silenced means the tank dies. The first problem might be that the tank doesn't pull the mobs in to a safe spot, but forces us to fight them where they can more easily aggro more mobs. This also means the hunter often stands in places where he more easily aggros more mobs. The paladin or warrior don't use their cooldowns to save us when shit hits the fan and I forget not to cast a heal when I have aggro from one of the kickers. So we wipe.

We all made mistakes, any one of them miniscule but all together too many to keep the group alive.

The second time we wipe we come back to the instance fully respawned. We had literally been about three mobs away from finishing it, and now we have to clear it all over again. But we decide to do it. And through everything we manage to somehow keep our calm and not start yelling things. I just get mildly annoyed when the tank druid starts needing on cloth caster gear. I mean come on dude, that's just not cool. But I also remind myself that this mid-level gear is a drop in the ocean and it doesn't matter. It really doesn't.

But in the end everything took way longer than it needed to and some have been very much carried by the efforts of others. While it didn't leave me angry, sad or even particularly frustrated it definitely left me extremely mentally drained. And I don't know, was it even fun? In the end I probably feel like I could've been without that experience and that is probably a first in Wow Classic for me.

Disc Priest Q&A - MoP Edition

Q: So what is this?
A: Just a little Q&A to get some grip on what priest healing means in MoP. These are typical questions I've had and needed answers to, and I thought I'd compile a little list of information for anyone else curious about these things.

Q: What is this not?
A: This won't be a complete guide to everything priestly, nor will I sport any fancy spreadsheets on mana regen and gains from this or that stat. This will mainly aim at giving you a fairly straight answer, from my point of view. If you want more number crunching I suggest you check out these sites instead (to mention a few).

Elitist Jerks
MMO Melting Pot
Type H for Heals
Tales of a Priest

So let's get started!

Q: I'm totally confused, how has disc priest healing changed from Cata to MoP?
A: The good news are, not much. We've got some new spells, we've got some talents as baseline - but in essence, if you knew how to heal before MoP, you will know how to heal after MoP.

The thing to remember is that healing is always forced to change somewhat when going from the end of an expansion to the beginning of another. Regardless if you've been hardcore heroic raider or just strolled in LFR every now and then, your stats will change drastically when going through the leveling process from 85 to 90, most notably your stats will suddenly decline very quickly and you will probably notice that you're ooming quicker than you used to. Add to this that Blizzard decided to change our mana pools from int-based to fixed, meaning that you might have been collecting stats that are now a lot less valuable.

If you play a disc priest (and I dare say you are if you're interested in this post) you will find that all that juicy intellect you've been stacking is worth way less now, and all that spirit you've scorned suddenly is your new best friend. Until you've had the chance to remedy this by getting new gear, this change will be noticeable by the fact that you just don't have the mana and/or mana regen to go on healing (aka shield spamming) like we could at the end of Cata.

What does this mean? Remember how we were forced to heal in the beginning of the last expansion? If you don't, here is a quick rundown;

• Renew will be used a lot more than previous, even for raiding.
• Shield should yet again be considered more of an oh-shit-skill, and to get Rapture procs (less important until you've stacked a decent amount of spirit, I'll get to that further down).
• Back to Heal spamming, rather than Greater Heals
• Be pro-active, start healing before the damage is done - Renew, Heal and PoM can always be out there.
• Because Evangelism and Atonement are now baseline, if you hadn't specced them earlier you should now consider using them. If you had them in Cata, not much has changed. Try to keep up an Evangelism buff to pop for Archangel when shit hits the fan. This doesn't mean spam Smites, just the occasional Holy Fire is enough, since you have more mana efficient heals than your Atonement skills. Getting profficient at when and how to use your Atonement skills, will make a difference for harder fights.
• Our new skill, Spirit Shell, should be considered a preparation skill. If you know one or more people are going to take a lot of damage, you can "prepare" by throwing on some Spirit Shell shields in advance. A skill with very high potential in other words.

Here is a hobo-list of my estimations of the hpm of some of our skills. Remember that this is based on my specific stats and healing style, but they will at least give you an idea of which skills are mana-drainers and which are less so. I give no guarantees as to its correctness (especially regarding Holy Fire and Smite).


Shield - 4hpm (not taking Rapture into account)
Renew - 6,2hpm
PoH - 2hpm (per target)
Penance - 2hpm
Heal - 5,9hpm
Flash Heal - 3,2hpm
Greater Heal - 3,8hpm
PoM - 1,8hpm (per target, my healing style, not taking glyph into account)
Smite - 3,5hpm
Holy Fire - 1,5hpm (with dot)

Q: What talents should I choose?
A: I've got to hand it to Blizzard, talents have never been as much up to whatever you prefer than now, but there are definitely some talents that are more worth having than others - as always this does depend on what kind of content you're playing. This is the talent spec I choose for heroic instance healing, and I will discuss some of the talent choices;

Void Tendrils - I've found it quite useful to be able to root down any enemy that's attacking you. This might be mostly useful when doing dailies, but also occasionally in heroics, because if the tank doesn't get those adds off you, you want to make sure they hit you as little as possible. The other talents feel less useful in this regard.

Body & Soul - The choice here is really between B&S and Angelic Feather. For heroics I'd definitely recommend B&S, because Angelic Feather requires more cooperation from your team mates to actually do any good, and good luck with that in a pug. In raids however, Angelic Feather can turn out to be a good choice when properly incorporated in a tactic, and should be chosen whenever the raid group finds good use for it. As it is now I mostly use B&S to quickly move myself out of bad stuff, or if I know someone needs a little extra boost somewhere.

Mindbender - Early calculations showed that Mindbender was the best at overall mana return. It only has two drawbacks, one big and one minor. The minor one is that you have to remember to use it every cooldown to get the most out of it, the big one is that the Mindbender, being a pet, does live a life of its own and doesn't always do what you want it to - pretty much what we're already used to from the Shadowfiend. Since Mindbender replaces Shadowfiend you could argue that it's best to have the Shadowfiend and an additional option of mana return, personally I just think the other two choices are so unpractical that unless they change them or I end up in a fight that really works with those mechanics, I am sticking with my little Mindbender (and it is so cute too!)

Angelic Bulwark - This is not a talent where I will tell you one choice is better than the other, because I think AB and Desperate Prayer are pretty much equal in terms of usefulness. DP has the benefit of being an actual heal, AB on the other hand comes automatically after heavy damage which means you don't have to think about it (which might be useful right after a big aoe where you'll probably be busy doing other things). In the end it is really up to what you feel the most comfortable with, and I think personally I will swap between the two depending on fight.

Power Infusion - Out of our choices in this tier, I prefer Power Infusion, simply because of the freedom it gives me to choose whenever I want that extra output. Twisted Fate relies on targets being on a very low health to be useful, somewhere people will rarely be in heroics. In raids TF will probably be more useful, but unless I know the raid will be on very low health for a big portion of the fight I would still choose PI over TF. Divine Insight is more useful for holy than for us disc, and just doesn't provide enough troughput for me to want it over PI. If I knew I was focusing on tank healing, maybe - but probably not even then.

Cascade - All three of these choices are quite interesting and in terms of throughput they balance out ok. In terms of practical usefulness however, it's quite different. Cascade is probably your best choice for heroics. Halo will have you aggro mobs from all over the place since it is basically a 30 yard wide aoe. In my personal opinion, Halo is almost unusable in heroics but could prove to be quite the cooldown in raids depending on fight. Divine Star is too weak for heroics if you ask me, especially considering the very limited amount of targets. Yet again, it could prove to be quite useful for that little extra aoe healing in raids, depending on fight. Overall my recommendation is to use Cascade for heroic instance healing, and for raids choose among the other ones depending on what works for the fight at hand.

That being said, as Grimmtooth pointed out in the comments, Blizzard want us to swap around between skills like never before. This is something you should try and make the most out of, so don't hesitate to change to a different talent if you think it'll work better in a fight!

Q: What should I glyph?
A: Glyphs have a lot less impact on your healing now than they've ever had, but I still have some recommendations.

• Fade - Especially good for raiding, if you remember to use it.
• Inner Sanctum - That extra movement speed or spell damage reduction is handy in any situation.
• Holy Fire - Very useful if you want to sustain an Evangelism buff for oh-shit-moments.
• PW:Shield - Probably more useful in heroics, where you might want weaker shields for Rapture procs, and extra healing is more important (since there is no one else there to do it for you).

Occasionally useful;

• Penance - Whenever you know you're fighting something with a lot of running or knock-backing, this could come in handy.
• Levitate - If movement is crucial, this could be worth gold if used the right way.

Just as with talents however, changing between glyphs is something that Blizzard encourages, giving us a lot of possibilities to tailor ourselves for certain fights.

Q: What are our stat priorities now?
A: The biggest change, as already mentioned, is the one to intellect. Since it now "only" gives us spell power and crit, it is a lot less important than the go-to stat it was in Cata.

Initially, you're most important stat will without a doubt be spirit. Once you feel comfortable with your mana regen, for whatever content you're healing, you can focus on the other stats. Personally I feel like around 9000 combat regen works for me for heroics, try getting over 10k combat regen for raiding.

After spirit, mastery is our secondary stat that scales the best. This does not mean that mastery is better than haste and crit, this heavily depends on your healing style. For heroics, and probably initially in raiding, you will rely a lot less on absorbtion mechanics than you might later on. Because of this, mastery will probably be less valuable to us since it only affects our absorbs. Take a look at your own meters and find out how much of your healing is affected by mastery and work with that. Remember this includes the DA procs from any critted regular heal.

Haste doesn't affect your shield (or PoM, Cascade, Halo), but it does affect all your other heals and is therefor a potentially very useful secondary stat. Crit is a lot more valuable to us now than it was in the first half of Cata, this is nothing new but pretty much the same since they buffed the healing bonus from crits. For disc even more so because a crit means a Divine Aegis proc, but crit is still unreliable in that there is no guarantee but only a chance that you'll get something out of it.


This is further complicated by the fact that the more haste you have, the more valuable crit is, and the more crit you have, the more valuable mastery is.

Personally I am trying to find a balance between mastery and haste (with a slight favoritism towards haste). At the moment I am reforging crit into haste, while leaving mastery alone, meaning my own stats look like haste -> mastery -> crit. Looking around the interwebs you'll probably be recommended to go Spirit -> Mastery -> Haste/Crit, but I must repeat that there is no point to overstack mastery just for the sake of it.

Again - haste, mastery and crit are pretty much equal, and you must find a stat balance that suits your own healing style.

Where does intellect fit in all this? Int is, as mentioned, not the all-powerful stat it was back in Cata. It is still something we want, but not at the cost of every other stat. You can probably forget about the pure int-gems for now. The easy way to think about it is that int is about as valuable as the other secondary stats (except spirit, which is more valuable until you are comfortable with your regen). You don't want too little of it, but don't want to sacrifice too many other stats for it either. Try getting mastery, haste and crit to points that work for you (for instance go for the haste breakpoints) and fill out the rest with intellect.

Q: What should I gem and enchant?
A: Simple answer is to gem and enchant into the stats that you are looking for. Lists of proper gems and enchants can be found here.

It only got worse from here

Q: I've dinged 90, what gear should I get?
A: JP gear is now available without having to do daily quests, so I definitely suggest you start out there to fill out any gear you've gotten in normals while leveling. If you're lucky you won't need much to be able to do your first heroics, where you will probably get most of your gear. The next step is, unfortunately (depending on how you feel about it), to gather rep through dailies and buy VP gear. If you have a lot of money, you can always buy craftables. I could post a list, but other people have already done a much better job than I could ever do, and they deserve the attention - Here is a great list for gear to check out. Tobeume of Nonchalant Priest has written a nice list of gear that you can collect from heroics - check it out here.

I hope this sorted out things a bit. If you have any further questions don't hesitate to ask! All creds for the links go to the original authors, thanks a lot for the work you put in for us in the priest healing community!

Impressions of Disc 5.0.4 - Hopes before an expansion

And all the priests rejoiced and lived happily ever after.

That is how I would like to end this post. And I might, read on and find out!

So I finally did a proper 25man heroic raid to test out the new disc, which in a way is kind of like stomping around in a new pair of hiking shoes at home, because it doesn't give you an idea to whether they'll be any good when actually hiking or not, but it does give you a general idea to whether they fit or not. Too weird a metaphor for you? Yeah maybe. My point is, whatever place priest healing happens to be in right now, it's not until we're actually healing an actual MoP instance/raid that we know whether this is a good or bad place, but at least we can get an idea to whether we like these changes or not.

So do I like it?
Hells yeah I do, in essence and if you want the tldr version of this post - I feel like Blizzard has finally dared to steer disc towards proper absorbtion healing the way I had always hoped we'd be. In the beginning of Cata I was head over heels with the idea of dpsing while healing aka Atonement. That did not turn out the way I hoped, which I've written numerous posts about already. Now, I am head over heels with the new Spirit Shell and how it allows discipline to wield complete control over when to heal and when to absorb, with any spell (!). I'm not going as far as to saying that this is completely op and awesome (but not far from), but I definitely love the idea and the way it makes me feel special about disc healing.

But there was something about mana issues...
I heard a lot of concerns regarding mana, or rather the lack thereof. I had a couple of comments on my previous posts venting some thoughts that definitely had me worried. I can see where these concerns are coming from, more often than not I was struggling with mana on fights I usually had little trouble with before. But I could easily ascribe those problems to me getting acquainted with my new best friend the MindBender (which totally makes me think of Bender in Futurama everytime I say it) and the fact that my gear is so not statted (that's an adjective right?) towards the Rapture change. I see one third of the mana return from Rapture to what I used to, of course that is going to be noticed!

Yes, I had mana issues. I even had to chug mana pots like back in the beginning of Cata! And that is exactly it, the mana issues I have now don't feel anything like the problems we were facing back then. I remember playing discipline and not being able to cast more than two-three shields in a fight without ooming. We're talking about not being to play the class the way it's supposed to be played because of mana issues, and discipline were so incredibly bad back then (because even when you did cast shields, they sucked ass). That is not the case now. I am struggling with mana, but only because I am throwing shields around me like crazy like I used to. Clearly Blizzard wants us to use Spirit Shell to cushion the raid before a big hit rather than spamming out shields, and I like this change, this is exactly the kind of healing I was looking for regarding discipline. Rather than putting all the absorption eggs in one basket by spamming shields, we know have some options.

You keep going on about this Spirit Shell.
Yes, I am, and because it is awesome. With risk of repeating myself - it is awesome because it allows discipline to be all about what discipline always should've been all about - absorptions. The problem with absorptions has always been that in many ways they're better than regular heals. They're preemptive which allows you to brace for impact rather than remedy the damage afterwards. Being able to reduce the damage taken has usually always been considered a better alternative than healing up damage afterwards and Blizzard has always struggled with balancing discipline around this. They nerfed our shields some ways into Cata for this very reason, and then some more. With Spirit Shell they have given us a powerful tool that is totally about absorptions but without being too op (at least I don't think so). Because it is "only" a 15 second shield it still requires pretty minute timing, and choosing what spells to use to shield people up. But with good timing and aligning it with other cooldowns it has so much potential. I am really looking forward to finding good places to use this in upcoming raid fights.

Examples of when it's useful in DS include;

• Before a stomp/crystal on Morchok
• In the black phase or on the tank before Psychic Drain in Zon'ozz
• On someone standing out for Twilight on Ultraxion
• On tank before Frenzied Assault or during Frost Phase (if you stand in the middle) on Hagara
• Before Amalgamation explodes or before running into Grasping Tendrils on Spine
• Before Elementium Bolt explodes or on tank before Impale on Madness

And this is just off the top of my head.

Sounds great, but what about everything else?
Everything else, yes. Fortunately now we really do have everything else. I've always chosen not to use Atonement/Evangelism (see above), but now I get it for free. With the neat buff it has gotten it should totally be used, giving yet another level of tactic to playing Discipline that I really enjoy. Make sure to have that 25% extra healing before something nasty hits your raid and you will do wonders. Spirit Shell isn't affected by archangel, which is a major bummer. I don't understand how, because the tooltip of SS implies it is based on the healing of the skill, basically turning the heal into a shield instead. Bigger heal should equal bigger shield right? Simples, but apparently not. Be that as it may, it still gives us two good cooldowns to make the most out of.

The rest is pretty much the way it has always been, meaning that the core of discipline healing looks the same, but we've got a lot of things to tinker with. Throw in some well timed Archangels, Spirit Shells and Inner Focuses and I doubt you will be bored or have trouble at the meters. For myself I had some issues at the beginning of the raid, and completely smashed the meters on Madness, a fight I normally do the worst at (and because I'm a 'tard I accidentally deleted the logs, you just have to take my word for it). This just shows that Discipline has still got it and it just needs us to adapt and get comfortable to, to get the most out of.

Final Verdict then?
What, hadn't you got that yet? Discipline looks extremely promising! And I am not the only one who thinks so. Blizzard have handed us a bunch of tools that I am eager to learn how to use as good and as much as possible. The problems I had I could easily write off as me not being completely knowledgeable, still trying out new things and styles of healing, and bad stats due to spell-changes. The only threat I see to discipline healing at the moment is the possibility that all the other healers are even more powerful. Shamans did seem to have a field day with Healing Rain, but paladins and holy priests seemed pretty much the same as far as the meters go. Now remember I've only really done one raid to base this on, but at least that raid gave me a lot to look forward to. I'm not worried at all regarding discipline healing, and just hope that Blizzard doesn't c*ck this up somehow before MoP is released. I want discipline to be pretty much exactly the way it is now, and would only like to see some tweaks to some underperforming talent choices (like PW: Solace). Blizzard gets two thumbs up from me for now, and it will be very interesting to see how things turn out in MoP.

Sooo... everyone lived happily ever after?
I don't know! That remains to be seen. But if we're talking for the reminder of Cata, then sure. Now I will have to take a look at holy, for which I think things are not looking as peachy. But those are matters for another post.

Patch 5.0.4 Healing Priest - This and That

After a week abroad (I always seem to time my holidays with the release of new major patches) I come home to a completely revamped talent system (again), new skills everywhere and a sense of dread of having to relearn everything from the ground up (again). So what has this patch in store for us, and what should we think about the priest changes?

First things first, as far as changes go healing wise not much is different, so you can all take a deep breath of relief if you were as worried as me that healing would change as much as it did between Wrath and Cata. Admittedly we're "only" looking at the patch preceding the expansion so much can still change, but the way it looks now I am healing pretty much the same way I have the last couple of months. Holy looks and works pretty much exactly the way it has whereas discipline has been tweaked a little more towards the absorbtion style healing, which is very welcome in my book. Spirit Shell that was long said to be a Heal-version of shields has now turned into a cooldown which turns all your healing into absorbtion mechanics instead for 15 seconds. This is an awesome cooldown, that when used at the right time can cushion your raid just before a big hit - the way discipline used to do it back in Wrath.

Although healing looks and works about the same, things have changed of course. What the new talent system means, in essence, is that your spec of choice comes with preset skills suitable for that spec. Rather than making people play slightly different discipline or holy specs, they're throwing in all the good and/or necessary skills for that spec (like Train of Thought, Strength of Soul, Rapture for discipline). The choice comes in the new talent tree that works differently enough for me to not want to call it a talent tree really anymore (not in the way we know it anyway). Think Diablo 3 style - it will alter your pre-existing skills, or add a few new skills to change, or fit, your playstyle.

A perfect example is the choice between Mindbender and Power Word: Solace. On the one hand you have a mana return-skill that allows you to heal while gaining mana, but with a cooldown. On the other hand you have pretty much the opposite - a mana return-skill that requires you to dps to regain mana, but that can be used anytime. What you choose will not only depend on your playstyle, but probably also on the fight. A fight that requires heavy mana usage for short periods of the fight would probably work better with Solace, whereas a fight with steady mana usage throughout the fight will prefer Mindbender (I've chosen Mindbender for now).

The fact that you can change skill anytime simply by using a Dust of Disappearance and some clicking makes me think that Blizzard want us to swap playstyle within a spec more than ever before, and I am welcoming the idea.

Other changes of note include;

Hymn of Hope being holy priest exclusive. I've discussed this change before, somewhere, but essentially it makes total sense. With the 8 min cd it had for disc and shadow it didn't seem like it was something Blizzard really wanted us to use (it normally wasn't up for two consequitive tries for instance) but didn't really have the guts to remove either. They've finally made up their minds about this.

Rapture being based on spirit rather than intellect. I don't mind this change because hopefully this means that holy and discipline will move even closer stat wise, making it fully viable to swap between specs without gimping out too much on either one because of lack of a stat. As someone whos preferred discipline throughout Cata I've been intellect heavy and spirit weak, which gimped my holy healing somewhat. I've seen my Rapture procs half in mana return this patch. This means I will have to re-gear, but since I will do this anyway in MoP this isn't a problem at all.

Dispel now has an 8 sec cd. A change I do not mind, possibly to prevent the solo-dispeller syndrome we've seen in Cata, where a few healers are set to do all the dispelling throughout the fight (most notably on Spine).

Glyph of PoH has been changed. A lot of glyphs have been changed, but this one is one that strikes me the hardest because it has been completely removed and I really liked that glyph...

On the other hand we've finally gotten the Lightspring I have been nagging about since Wrath. It only heals people under 50% but I can still see it being a lot more useful during tense situations than the current Lightwell is, even in the click-friendliest of raids.

There are a ton of new glyphs that look potentially good - Will Glyph of Holy Nova finally bring Holy Nova properly into the game? Probably not. Glyph of Penance looks really interesting, allowing us to run while casting Penance but with the drawback of an added 20% mana cost, could be awesome in the right setting.

For the time being I've chosen
Glyph of PoM, Glyph of Lightspring and Glyph of Fade in my holy spec and
Glyph of Pom, Glyph of Inner Sanctum and Glyph of Fade in my disc spec.

All of which obviously is open to change at any point, a lot of things still need to be tested before anyone can say anything.

If you're curious about my talent choices (or whatever I should call them);
Void Tendrils, Body & Soul, Mindbender, Angelic Bulwark and Divine Insight in my holy spec.
Void Tendrils, Phantasm, Mindbender, Angelic Bulwark and Power Infusion in my disc spec.

My real struggle was between Twist of Fate, PI and Divine Insight as they all look very useful and good. I've chosen two differently to test them out, but I think they all come down to fight mechanics. ToF seems mostly useful for very intense healing fights, PI can come handy in any kind of fight and Divine Insight can come handy where you either want to throw a lot of shields on one target (disc) or need that extra push in aoe-healing (holy). Overall I am leaning towards PI being more useful because you can choose when you need that extra output (not to mention mana cost reduction), but on the other hand PI comes with a 2 min cd. A tough choice indeed.

I am looking forward to doing the first raid with the new skills, and even more to seeing how healing will change further in MoP. What do you think of the new changes?

MoP Beta Class Changes

It's my favorite time of the year - beta time! That's basically like Christmas in the WoW-world, with each news of changes is like opening presents - some you love, some are like those knitted socks you get from grandma each year. I haven't signed up to check out the beta myself, I never do, but I love reading about all the changes that are made. I love pondering about why Blizzard do the changes they do, so eventhough things are far from definite and probably will change a lot more before we actually take our first steps into Panda-land, there are few things I enjoy more than checking out what Blizzard has in store for us priests.

But no, I am not going to comment on the Tier 14 preview, because I am hoping it will change a lot before that goes live. It's not as bad as tier 11, but horns? Not sure if want. Ok, so I did some commenting on the Tier 14 preview.

Naaahhh....

What's up with the spell cost nerfs?
First thing I notice is that a butt-load of our spells have gotten their mana cost severely nerfed - we're not talking just a few percentages here but some serious drops, just look at this;

Power Word: Shield: Now costs 6% of base mana, down from 34%.

or this one;

Holy Word: Sanctuary: Now costs 7% base mana, down from 44%.

At a first glance I thought this was true for most casters, it seemed like both dps and healer alike had gotten an overall reduction to their spell costs, but then I saw that they had done the opposite to holydins by increasing the cost for a lot of their spells. For priests however, we are looking at a nerf leaving the mana cost for most of our spells at roughly one fifth of what they are now. It of course makes me wonder - why?

My first thought was that Blizzard might do something to mana regen. I might even be wild and crazy enough to think they're going to remove mana regen all together, leaving us with an -actual- mana pool, similar to what we had back in Vanilla (when mana regen only existed out of casting, and was quite limited even then). It would simplify things, and maybe Blizzard want to give us more "mana returning" skills like Rapture and Revitalize to work with instead. It would be a huge change to healing of course, but in all honesty I really enjoy the idea of such a mana using system. As a discipline priest I am already basically in that system, relying far more on mana returns like Shadowfiend and Rapture than combat regen. Combat regen isn't an interesting feature if you ask me, more like a necessary evil (similar to getting hit/expertise as melee). It is passive and revolves around balancing gear rather than making interesting choices mid combat (should I use Hymn of Hope now or save it? Should I stack my mana return with that of the shamans or not?). Reducing the cooldown on Shadowfiend points in this direction as well. Although I don't see how they could do something similar with hit/expertise, I would welcome a change to the current mana regen system.

But I am just speculating wildly of course, in reality these mana changes probably has nothing to do with that. It's a shame really.

So what else is there?
Let's look at some of the other changes...

"Vow of Unity New. You create a Vow of Unity with a friendly target for 15 sec. Whenever one of you receives healing, the other is healed for the same amount. Whenever one of you takes damage, % of the damage is redirected to the other over 6 sec. Vow of Unity cannot be cast on Tank specialized players. Instant, 2 min cooldown."

This is now specified to not be castable on tanks, which basically turns it into a pvp talent. Unless raids will be completely different in MoP, making dpsers more of tanks than they are today, I don't see any reason to use this in raids when compared to the options in this talent tier.

"From Darkness, Comes Light: New. Surge of Light - You have a 15% chance when you Smite, Heal, Flash Heal, Binding Heal or Greater Heal to cause your next Flash Heal to be instant cast and have no mana cost. Surge of Darkness - You have a 20% chance when you deal damage with Vampiric Touch to cause your next Mind Spike to be instant and not extinguish your Shadow damage-over-time effects from the target."

More than doubling the proc chance of Surge of Light might get it back in from the cold. It will still be far from as overpowered as it was in Wrath, but that is acceptable because no one likes overpowered skills except the wielder (which was me, nyahahaha!). The shadow priest portion of this talent looks interesting too, making Mind Spike more part of the rotation than it has now.

"Archangel: Archangel (Evangelism) Consumes your Evangelism, increasing your healing done by 5% for each Evangelism consumed for 18 sec. 30 sec cooldown. Dark Archangel (Dark Evangelism)Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay, Mind Spike, Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death by 25% for 18 sec. 90 sec cooldown."

Archangel gets a nice buff (25% extra healing instead of 15%) and I am glad to see that Blizzard don't intend on scrapping the idea of dps-healing in MoP. It's definitely a concept I like, eventhough you probably all know by now I was somewhat disappointed by the end result. I just wish it was a little more practical and made more of a difference than it does, but on the other hand I am glad that I'm not forced to spec into it - bitches will always be complaining about something.

"Angelic Bulwark: New. Anytime a damaging attack brings you below 30% health, you gain an absorption shield equal to 20% of your total health lasting for until cancelled. This effect cannot occur more than once every 90 sec."

When I first saw this talent, it increased the effectiviness on shields cast on yourself by 30%. I liked that idea, I am not too sure about this one. I am looking at it and thinking "lasts until cancelled = good. Procs after the damage has been done = bad". Most of the time when you want some way to prevent damage, you want exactly that - something that prevents damage. I am not sure how useful a skill that protects me after I have been taking shitloads of damage will be, unless we are looking at continuous heavy aoe which isn't uncommon but still rarer than that huge blast (that might of course change in MoP raids). The way it works now, it looks more like a pvp talent than a raid talent to me. Yeah it would protect me from dying after that big blast, but I would rather have something that protected me from that big blast to begin with.

"Spectral Guise: New. Your shadow blurs into the darkness, leaving your true form behind. As a shadow you are invisible, but remain in combat. Lasts 6 sec or until your true form is hit by 3 direct attacks. 30 sec cooldown, Instant cast."

This could've had so much potential! As I understand it, it basically works by giving you a buff that will "remove" the damage of the next three incoming direct attacks. Direct being the keyword. If only it would've worked with any attacks, which on the other hand probably would've made it OP. Right now this too looks more like a pvp talent, since I don't think priests will be taking much more direct damage in pve in MoP than they have been for the last 7 years.

There is also a possibility that this rather works like a version of stealth, in which any damage done to your "true self" still is directed to you only you'd be able to move about without anyone actually knowing where you are meanwhile. But yet again, I can't see how that would be of much use in PvE.

"Vampiric Dominance: When you deal damage or healing, 15% of the amount is healed to up to 3 low-health nearby allies. 40 yd range. "

This talent still looks the same as it did when I first saw it back in November. As a discipline priest I definitely welcome the possibility of some passive off-healing, since that is one of our weakness at the moment, and I can only hope that this makes it all the way to live and without being too much nerfed.

"Inner Focus: No longer works with Binding Heal."

Aww. I wonder why. No, I really do, was it too good?

"Dispel Magic: Now removes all Magic and Disease effects."

Finally priests don't have to be the last healer around having to use different spells to remove different debuffs. Opens up one more slot on my keybinds, yay!

"Spirit Shell: New. Creates an absorption shield on the target for [5231 + 50.3% of SP] damage lasting 8 sec. When the shield expires, the target is healed for 80% of the remaining amount. 40 yd range, 2% of base mana, 2.5 sec cast."

Holy doesn't seem to be getting anything new, or any changes at all basically, at the moment. No change there, Blizzard seem either very content with the way holy works or they just happen to be last on the list of a work through. Discipline is looking at this baby however, Spirit Shell, which basically is something as awesome as a shield and a heal in one. I am definitely looking forward to using this one, and I wonder how I didn't think about this combo before myself? The closest we've been is the healing glyph on PWS, but I definitely like the idea of this one. I recall that the fact that shields don't actually heal being one of the major issues I had when healing as a lowbie discipline in early Cataclysm. Absorbtion effects are really good, and in a raid I enjoy the fact of being the "preventer" while my fellow healers are the "repairers", but this way we will be able to do a little bit of both even better than we already have.

"Vampiric Embrace: Now has a 3 min cooldown. Fills you with the embrace of Shadow energy, causing you and your allies to be healed for 50% of any single-target Shadow spell damage you deal, split evenly between them. Lasts 15 sec."

I don't normally say much about shadow skills, simply because I play shadow priest so rarely (and poorly), but this looks like a really interesting change to VE, changing one of the longest lasting spriest skills into what could be a really handy raid heal cooldown. I am glad to see spriest being given something to help the raid with because I wasn't very happy with how VE was working. Making it stronger would make it too good, making it weaker (or the way it was) didn't make it very useful at all. Timed well, this could be a good cooldown indeed.

But as always, we can expect things to change a lot and often when there's a beta. And that is half the fun.

Priest Healing - A Cataclysm Review

Hey look guys! It's a new year! And don't tell me it's been two months into it already, I don't count January as a real month anyway. It's really only the time we spend trying to sort out the mess we got ourselves into during the drunken New Years Eve hazes, and squiggle out of all the stupid resolutions we made (mine was to be nicer to everyone, that took about 3,141 seconds to break). And February? It's not even a full month!

The good thing about a new year is that we can take a look at the year that has passed and ponder some of the really important questions in life - how did priests develop over the months? What changes were made? How did disc fare contra holy? What bosses were the most fun? Can we be the flavor of the month healer, ever? Things we all need answers to. Fear not, I have been doing the tedious work of reading my own posts from the last year, and I have them.

At the beginning there was darkness...
It didn't start out too good for us priests. At one point we were so bad that people actually specifically asked to not get priests whenever they needed a healer for a group. We had weaker mana regen and weaker heals than every other healer, and enough for it to be a major issue. I started out playing Cataclysm as holy, and I noticed some major changes in the effectiviness of some of our spells. They nerfed Surge of Light into near uselessness (yes, I still think so). But what really bothered me were the changes to Renew. I realize we're not meant to be some sort of wannabe druids, but suddenly Renew felt like a fart in a tornado, and definitely not worth the gcd. That meant every talent related to Renew, like Divine Touch and Rapid Renewal, became pretty useless as well. Problem was, Holy did not scale well with gear, and considering the healing style is somewhat of "lots of small heals" instead of "few big heals", we had a problem. Our small heals were just too damn small, and we didn't have powerful Shields, Penance or other big spells to compensate. This is an issue I still think holy is struggling with, but nowhere near the way they did in early Cata. I still think Renew could use a little more oomph, holy is all about good aoe healing, and to me Renew is a big part of that.

I also went from undead...

Those problems were nothing compared to what discipline was going through however. Holy had weak spells, but at least they had plenty of them. As discipline our spells were too slow and insignificant to feel like we could actually keep people alive, things got even worse when more than one person was taking damage. Holies aoe healing wasn't strong, but at least they had some. As a discipline you were stuck with spamming a far too weak Prayer of Healing or far too expensive Shields. If Renew was weak as holy, it was completely out of the question as Discipline. Back then I wrote;

"I refuse to use renew, it's a waste of mana with its pathetic ticking (about 1,5k). So after shielding them I have to start using Heals or Greater Heals. And when you've got 5 people below 50% hp, dying quickly, those heals seem very lacking. My best aoe heal is Prayer of Healing which not only will oom me, but requires for everyone to stand fairly close together."

Blizzard had told us that they wanted mana to matter, unlike the spam-happy healing we had in ICC, and no one felt that change more than discipline priests. Shields, Greater Heal and Flash Heal were too expensive to be used regularly, which left us with weak Heals, Prayer of Mendings and Prayer of Healings.

"When I did an instance yesterday the tank was kind enough to tell me that it seemed like priests were the only healers right now that oomed after every fight."

Atonement, Y U NO work?
It didn't exactly help things out that the new cool feature about discipline - atonement healing - wasn't much good either.

"Archangel reduces the cost on a Smite by about 500 mana, through mana return, which still puts it above Heal. Considering the speed and slightly bigger healing it might be worth it. But in tight situations I can't count on it to actually heal the people I want to heal enough to want to use it. Its biggest flaw is the range. I can for the love of god not understand why Blizzard have limited its healing range to 15 yards. It's not awfully bad, but it has to be at least 30, preferrably 40 yards before I feel like it even begins to be usable in an instance. Right now there are plenty of situations where the tank, or any melee, is too far away from the center of the mob to get the heal."

Funnily enough, this is still one of my major concerns with Atonement healing and ever since it's implemention and up until now I consider Atonement to be mainly used for any group that needs the extra dps, rather than because it's a good healing tool.

When I eventually decided to write a post on how to heal heroics I didn't exactly have good news.

"Should I mention how hard the mobs hit? All the cc that is needed? What gear you should have to even dream of keeping people alive? How fast you'll oom?"

I do sound a lot more negative now than I did then though. Healing wasn't easy, but I didn't ever think it was as bad as some doomsayers made it out to be. Both discipline and holy could keep people alive in heroics, but it definitely wasn't a dance on roses and I can only imagine the horror any new priest healer must've felt when even a veteran like me panicked on occasion. Fortunately, changes were coming.

to goblin...

The prodigal Shield returns
With patch 4.0.6, Blizzard basically doubled the effectiviness of Shields and only slightly increased their mana cost, making shield hps suddenly sky rocket. Another major buff to discipline was making Grace able to affect more targets than one. These changes suddenly bumped disc from the least good healer to the bestest healer in one stroke, and I remember the glee I can only imagine holydins (and occasionally druids) feel every day of completely owning the healing meters without having to actually work for it. Holy saw a major drop in the mana cost of Renew and a doubled effect of the mana regen from Holy Concentration. Clearly Blizzard were acknowledging the problems priests had with too weak and expensive skills, but they also seemed to think our aoe was too strong (which it totally wasn't). A nerf to Prayer of Healing and Circle of Healing was soon implemented, a change that had many holy priests cry themselves to sleep although it really turned out to be a major nerf to discipline priests rather than holy priests. My own maths showed that the nerf was about 1% less healing the way I was healing as holy back then, but nearly a 10% nerf for my discipline priest. Prayer of Healing simply made out way more of my total healing done as Discipline (including the DA) compared to how much I ended up using PoH and CoH overall as holy. Now, discpline priests saw their aoe healing further gimped, and it wasn't very good to begin with.

Then came 4.1
The 4.0.6 buff to Shields made them good enough to even have holy priests glancing over at the discipline part of the spell-book, and I read blog posts suggesting speccing Improved Shields as holy and turning holy priests into shield spammers. Blizzard knew they had to make changes before things got out of hand and everyone knew a nerf was coming, many suggestions were made but the ultimate change was a decent one.

"There seems to be a heated debate going around the priest community (debates, yay), the question being - are discipline priests too good? Or rather, have our shields become too good? "

People were concerned about Shields (and DA) making out more than 50% of discipline priests healing done. Apparently so were Blizzard (which is interesting considering what they've done to Holy Radiance). Personally, I didn't think our shields were a major problem, but I could see why people were concerned. The Shield is a very good heal. It is instant, it is big and it actually counter-acts damage, rather than just "repairing" it afterwards like conventional healing. Making the shields too good would eventually remove the need for healing, or so many other healers seemed to fear.

With 4.1, Blizzard decided to make some interesting changes to discipline healing by upping the duration of Divine Aegis by 3 seconds (12 to 15) and halving the duration of Shields from 30 to 15 seconds duration. The latter change was major enough to have a huge impact on how to heal as a Discipline priest, making pre-shielding way less of an option than it used to be, a change that is still affecting our play-style.

"We know Blizzard aren't happy with how Shields turned out to be used. They want them to be good, but not too good. They don't want us to start spamming it again. Renew doesn't have this issue because the hps of one Renew is pretty low in comparison to the Shield. The "problem" with Shields are that they have so many pros, and few cons. The only thing holding shields back at the moment is the Weakened Soul debuff, which we can lower on target with Heal/GH/BH. Blizzard tried to slow us down further by increasing the mana cost on the spell, but like I mentioned before this is only delaying the inevitable spamming that will come when we get better gear (and mana becomes less and less of an issue)."

The changes turned out to be less of a nerf than people feared, but it was definitely noticeable on any fight where I was used to being able to pre-shield the raid. Looking back at it, I don't mind the change much. It does bother me on fights like Spine where even the tanks occasionally take too little damage for Rapture to proc within the 15 second duration, severely nerfing my mana regen since it kind of completely relies on Rapture. But overall, I can definitely see where the nerf was coming from.

Barrier got some hits with the nerf bat as well, upping the cooldown from 2 minutes to 3 minutes and the damage reduction from 30% to 25% in an effort from Blizzard to put it more on par with other healers raid cooldowns.

Atonement saw changes coming to it pretty much every other month, and some really made a big difference. Including Holy Fire into Atonement, Glyph of Divine Accuracy and Evangelism should've been obvious from the start, and I can only hope Blizzard doesn't consider Atonement to be finished the way it is now, it still needs some improvements, although it definitely has come a very long way since its original implementation.

to dwarf!

Good girl holy
And all the while Blizzard were tugging Discipline back and forth with the nerf bat, not much was being said about holy. This pretty much remained the case, even when changes were needed, all the way up until Dragon Soul and 4.3. Blizzard were concerned about some healing classes lacking good raiding tools, and gave resto shamans the spirit link Totem, completely forgetting about holy priests suffering from the same problem all through Firelands. Holy Priests did see a slight buff to their aoe healing in 4.1 when Blizzard upped the effectiviness of Sanctuary, made some much needed tweaks to Chakra, but overall Holy remained a neglected spec throughout the year.

The big silence
4.1 implented new changes to the game at lightning speed. Shields worked one way at the beginning of the week and another way at the end of the week. One day I wanted to use Renew, the next I preferred straight up healing. At the end of 4.1 and the release of Firelands at the beginning of summer 2011 Blizzard seemed to be pretty happy with where priests were at healing wise. Discipline had seen buffs and nerfs to shields, holy had seen buffs and nerfs to aoe healing. Both specs had seen buffs to mana regen. But at that point, when Blizzard seemed to wipe the sweat of their brows and congratulating themselves at a good job done with balancing all the healers, they actually missed to see the trouble holy had in Firelands with being the only healer without a raid cooldown. Holy was still doing fine for most normals, and even many of the heroic modes, but at the end of the day, most guilds decided to pick another healer for the aoe healing and yet another for the raid cooldowns. Blizzard refused to see that there was a problem, and the fast changes that had taken place during 4.1 were completely gone. When Blizzard released an Ask the Devs healing edition, this was one of the questions raised;

Maladi asks;

"Are there any plans to give Holy Priests access to a viable 3-minute raid cooldown? There are concerns that without a cooldown along the lines of Power Word: Barrier, Spirit Link Totem, or Tranquility, we may need to play disc a lot in firelands. Maybe simply an improved Divine Hymn? "

"(...) we feel the Holy priest toolkit overall is strong, that they provide meaningful contributions to raid healing, and are well represented in actual raid groups."

Eventhough I was on Blizzards line initially, I did change my mind as soon as I got into more advanced progression raiding. Holy priests had to struggle for months, and wait for a new patch to be released before changes were made, a change that put holy priests right back on track again. Such a simple thing to do that could've been done long ago.

And now?
Priests have gone through a lot of changes, at least at the beginning of the expansion and up until Firelands. Maybe not as many as some of the other healing classes, and holy less than discipline, but it has still been somewhat of a roller coaster going from being shit, to overpowered and eventually actually levelling out on what resembles the position priest healers have been holding since forever - the allround healer. As I wrote in my last Field Report I feel like priest healing is really good at the moment. Holy is diverse, interesting and challenging, discipline has its niche healing working well. Both specs have good cooldowns and a fun healing style, and I am enjoying priest healing as much as I ever have. I played holy at the beginning of Cata, switched to discipline around Firelands and have mostly played discipline ever since, but I'll probably go back to maining holy before long, the way I've always switched between the specs. MoP will change everything again, I am sure, but we'll eventually settle into position as always and I am sure I will never tire of my little priest.

Warmaster Blackhorn 10hc Disc Priest Guide

Here is my guide on how to heal Warmaster Blackhorn as a discipline priest. This is definitely one of my favorite fights in Dragon Soul, I just love the combination of having to think of your positioning and the mix of healing needed. Interesting enough, I didn't feel like the healing was that much of an issue - we mostly struggled with handling the small swirls and not getting fire all over the place. The kill was a beautiful one though, especially compared to all the tries we had before.

Hagara 10 hc Disc Priest Guide

This is my guide to healing Hagara 10 man hc as a discipline priest. I like this fight since it requires you to use most spells in your arsenal, and Flash Heal more than anywhere else (that I've tried so far). Brings back memories.

Ultraxion 10 hc Holy Priest Guide

Here is a texted guide to healing Ultraxion as a holy priest. I don't normally play holy and I only swapped for a couple of tries to see what difference it would make. I have healed this without much trouble as a discipline too, and the difference normally isn't great - if you have the dps for it you can swap around (assuming you have both specs) and see what you think works better for that setup.

The interesting thing about this fight is that it really puts your quick thinking to the test, you will have to be able to make fast and good decisions about which spells to use and who to use them on to be successful on this fight, more so than in most other fights imo.

Yor'sahj 10 Man Heroic Holy Priest healing Video Guide

Here is my guide to healing Yor'sahj 10 Man Heroic as a holy priest. You have a few aces up your sleeve as a holy that are quite handy, as opposed to discipline, but I am sure this fight isn't too much trouble as discipline either. First of all you have the Lightwell for people to use during the mana void, also there is the stronger aoe healing during the aoe-damage phases, which can get quite intense. Overall I didn't much enjoy this fight as a healer, there are gaps of not much to do which I spent "helping" with the dps, and even the tougher parts of the fight weren't much of a challenge. Since I had just come from lots of wiping on Zon'ozz, a really challenging and fun fight to heal, I was somewhat disappointed by this. I think Hagara will prove to be more fun though.

Warlord Zon'ozz 10 Man Heroic Disc Priest Healing Guide

Here is my texted video guide to healing Warlord Zon'ozz as a Discipline Priest. I really enjoyed healing this fight, it is very intense without being too unforgiving. I tried a whole lot of tries as holy, and it does work if you get into the Black Phases with a good start, otherwise the point healing does get very difficult, which usually means a whole lot of Flash Heals and going very oom. Discipline worked a lot better for me.

Morchok 10 Man Heroic Disc Priest Video Guide

Here is my texted video guide to healing Morchok 10 Man Heroic as a Discipline Priest. If you intend to heal it as a holy priest instead, the big difference will be having to use a lot of Flash Heals instead of Penance/Shields. The fight is fairly simple overall though, and a good opener to the heroic modes and the nasty healing that is to come in figths later on.

And here is another good video guide from a Resto Druid PoV (25 man), made by Beruthiel of Falling Leaves and Wings.

First impressions on Dragon Soul and Priest Healing

My guild hurled itself headfirst into the new Dragon Soul instance the other day, and I was lucky enough to be among the ten people picked to do the first clearing (thank you guys!). So how was it? Awesome! So how about a short run through on my initial thoughts?

I know I said I would read up on tactics like never before. I lied. Well it wasn't a lie really, I definitely had the intention of doing so. I even started watching a couple of videos and reading some tactics, so I can't say I went in blindfolded - but not far from. Fortunately, it worked anyway. We did of course have the usual bunch of people who had read up on everything and who gave us the tactics (bless you guys), but in most other cases the healing part of the fights were pretty self explanatory. I usually only fail with this way of approaching new raid content when I miss out on knowing about some crucial healing tactic, like not to dispel the disease on Grobbulus *ahem*. For Dragon Soul it went just well, and I only did major mistakes a couple of times - mistakes I am sure I would've done either way. some things just take a try to get the hang of. We managed to clear the place in one night, although we stretched it for 30-40 minutes in the end when we felt we really had the hang of Madness of Deathwing and just needed to get it right. Last pull of the night was a server first kill! I won't attempt to write actual guides this time around, this is just an initial observation of how the fights felt, overall and healing wise.

Morchok
This fight reminded me of Slabhide in Stonecore. Overall the Morchok fight was extremely easy, and I seriously mean extremely. We went in with three healers just to be prepared for anything and I don't think I'm exaggerating it if I say that a decent healer with some Firelands gear probably could've solo healed it. He has a raid wide aoe-stomp and an ability where you have to hide behind some pillars. As long as people hide properly there is basically nothing to heal but the stomp, and on normal that did very low damage. There isn't much to say about this fight other than that it went by really fast.

Warlord Zon'ozz
The funny thing about a progression guild like ours is that we usually have people that study up on the boss fights really carefully, but don't bother with reading up on how the trash works. Because of that we usually have a fairly easy time with the bosses (at least the first ones) but can wipe horribly on trash that we just can't figure out fast enough. That is what happened on the trash before Warlord Zon'ozz. Fortunately I lagged behind for the first pull and when I got there the raid had wiped allowing me to do a mass res. we had loads of people die on the next pull as well, but we slowly but surely figured out how to deal with those tentacles.

Warlord Zon'ozz himself was also very straight forward as a healer. As it would turn out to be on most fights in Dragon Soul (and this might be something that will annoy me later on) it is a whole lot about aoe healing. As a disc priest that unfortunately means spamming Prayer of Healing basically, which also was a huge contributing factor to why I want my holy spec back. There is this huge ball going back and forth between the melee group and the ranged group and there is some aoe damage. That was about what I gathered from the fight. Sometimes someone would shout out "move a little more to the left" and I would take a couple of steps to the left, all while keep on spamming Prayer of Healing.

Yor'sahj the Unsleeping
Yor'sahj is where things started getting a little more interesting. I really enjoyed the concept of getting to choose your own debuffs through the blobs, and it was also one of the few fights I had actually studied up on in advance. And it will be really interesting to see how it changes for the heroic mode. It still wasn't particularly challenging on normal with even more - you guessed it - Prayer of Healing spam.

Hagara the Stormbinder
What I liked about this fight is that eventhough you don't have a clue about the skills (like me) all of them were pretty self explanatory (although, in lfr people seem to manage to fail even with the simplest and most obvious things). Don't stand in shit basically. This is the one of the few fights where I've so far tested holy too, and yes, it is even more aoe healing - which holy is doing really well at the moment.

Ultraxion
Healers are supposed to get a buff here, it's simple enough as it is called out and a huge crystal spawns which you have to run to and click. I didn't quite get what that buff actually did, I know it boosted my healing somehow (differently depending on crystal) but I didn't notice a major difference. Something that will matter a lot more in heroic mode no doubt. This fight was, yet again, basically only about spamming aoe healing. Fortunately it had one other aspect which I really enjoyed - having to save yourself from certain death by clicking the dream button. It's basically a skill you get that shifts you into the "dream", saving you from Ultraxions big killer. He also puts a debuff on two (in 10 man) random players which kills them unless they shift. I liked it because it wasn't just mindlessly spamming the button, you actually had to time it properly and this too is something I hope they have taken to the next level for the heroic mode. Perhaps even preciser timing or more skills where the shifting has to be used? It puts more responsibility in the hands of the player, where they themselves are the only ones responsible for whether they live or die due to those skills - something I was wishing for in my previous post (albeit in a slightly different way).

Blackthorn
GUNSHIP! Basically. Some people loved that fight, some hated it. I was among the ones who really liked it the first couple of times, especially the general concept, although it did turn into "lootship" fairly quickly. Because of this I enjoyed the idea of Blackthorns ship as well, and something I particularly liked was having to take the bombs with your face - everyone gathering for the big bomb and anyone close enough for the small ones. It gave a sense of teamwork that I really enjoyed and also a sense of success when you managed to detect and properly move to a small bomb to make sure it didn't land on the ship. It was also (finally!) one of the few fights where it wasn't all about aoe healing, except just after the big bomb had landed. Properly moving from charge and Shockwave was fun too.

Spine of Deathwing
A messy fight. One of the few where I did a major mistake, twice (!) moving out of the tendrils too soon and being swept off for the Barrel Roll. It was insanely fun to heal though, us healers had to roll mana management cooldowns, raid cooldowns and overall micro manage our healing teamwork on the go. We had nothing set up in advance and it was a blast to have to communicate our way through it. That is what healing is supposed to be all about! We shouldn't have to set up the entire rotation in advance, and play it through like some kind of ballet, we should be able to just deal with it off the top of our hat and with proper skill be able to deal with the situation. We did wipe on this a couple of times, but I haven't had that much fun healing as a proper team in a very, very long time.

Madness of Deathwing
It was a fun fight, I'll say that at once. Real fun. But it wasn't an epic end-of-the-expansion-finally-killing-that-bastard-Deathwing kind of fight. In that sense it was actually a disappointment. Not Spine of Deathwing nor Madness of Deathwing actually made it feel like you were fighting Deathwing. It should be said though that I don't think this fight is the end of it. It is clear something is around the corner and SPOILER BE HERE that we'll probably (hopefully!) get to fight an Old God in whatever raid comes next. There will be another raid right? The Old God fights are always some among my favorites, and I totally love that aspect of the Wow lore (being somewhat of a Lovecraft nerd). But back to the fight in itself - yet more aoe healing, as a healer in fact not that interesting of a fight except when you had to save some cooldowns for the bigger damage. The final phase turned up the heat somewhat, especially since it took back the "save yourself by clicking this button"-mechanic that I enjoyed from the Ultraxion fight.

Healing on our Madness of DW kill.

Overall
So far I am quite pleased with the Dragon Soul raid, although I have only done it once. I will probably have completely different attitude towards the fights once I've done them a couple of times and once we get started on the heroic modes (next reset) which should prove to be hard nuts to crack. On the downside normals turned out to be a lot about aoe healing. Fortunately that doesn't have to be a huge problem since aoe healing as a holy priest is quite interesting and fun (more about priest healing soon). On the upside I am quite pleased with the general concept of the fights, the way they managed to (at least for normal modes) make teamwork really fun and rewarding for the healing group. I want more of that!

Priest healing
So what about priests in Dragon Soul? I am pleasantly surprised actually. I topped meters (and we all know that is what matters *cough*) against the other two healers (druid and paladin) throughout the raid, without being more oom than they were. This never happened during Firelands where I was a happy third (or second, since we usually duo-healed) for pretty much any fight. Enter Dragon Soul and boom, my healing just rocks ass. I don't have a good explanation for it. Either they really buffed Prayer of Healing, or they've nerfed paladin/druid throughput/mana regen. I know they have made some buffs to holy healing, like changing Divine Hymn to be similar to Tranquility (finally, thank you) and my initial feeling for holy is very positive. The big issue with holy versus discipline right now doesn't actually seem to be the healing throughput bit, but the mana management bit, since the loss of Rapture usually is noticeable. I have sacrificed quite a lot of spirit for other stats, since my mana wasn't an issue at all towards the end of Firelands. It always is for new content however, and on Spine of Deathwing and Madness of Deathwing I had to struggle with mana towards the end. A talent like Veil of Shadows is worth its weight in gold (hmm... that can't be right) for those situations, and knowing how to properly time your cooldowns will matter - like combining a Hymn of Hope with Borrowed Time and a Shadowfiend. Calling out before you use a Hymn of Hope to allow your fellow healers to prepare for it is another good idea.

I have been able to give holy a try, nothing too fancy really - some of the new dungeons and two LFR-fights - but my initial impression is definitely positive. Divine Hymn is actually a cooldown now! No longer is it a button we push and pretend it actually makes a difference (or in my case, a button to press whenever I want a couple of seconds without having to think too much). I used it twice (omg twice in one fight?!) on an lfr-Yor'Sahj, and it was second on my healing done. Sanctuary my friends, was first. And it wasn't too heavy on my mana, although the fight really dragged on way longer than it should. To me that is plenty of proof that Holy at least has picked itself up from lying down and is ready to give the other healers a fight. I requested a clear niche for holy healing, and we've got it - aoe healing. I did notice neglecting tank healing in a way I rarely do as disc, and I could get whiny about how holy healing now seems to be all about aoe healing while we're still weak on the point healing area - but I won't. I don't mind being really strong in one area alone, especially not since it seems that will turn out to be an important thing to get right in this content. Now this is only my initial impression, and holy could still turn out to be the weaker when compared to discipline. What worries me is the mentioned mana management and the point healing, but for now I am just so happy that there at least seems to be hope, not to mention how much fun holy still is! I am so looking forward to being able to give it a proper go for our raids next week.

We will start doing heroics next reset, and for the first fights I'll probably go discipline. It is the spec I am the most comfortable with at the moment, since I haven't really played holy at all since pre-4.2. But I will try to sneak some holy healing in there as well, both so that I and the rest of the healing team can get the hang of it.

Transmo-what? Tier 13!
No I haven't transmogrified anything yet. Quite honestly, I think the tier 13 for priests looks completely smashing, and although all I have so far is one piece through the LFR (meaning it's actually a downgrade from my heroic t12, since I break 4-set), I can't be arsed to go throught he hassle of getting my perfect gear for transmogrification when all I really want is to be able to run around in t13 already. I have been looking at the set bonuses some and they look decent enough. They're not entirely fair of course, since I can use Power Infusion every 2 minutes but Divine Hymn only every 3 minutes. That's quite a big difference, also considering Power Infusion already lowers the mana cost of spells, disc yet again seems to come out a lot stronger on the mana manegement area. The 4 set bonus doesn't seem fair either. There is a lot to be said about it, but lets start with the discipline bonus. Getting 100% extra absorbtion on your shields doesn't automatically have to be a good thing - it also means it will be trickier to get that Rapture proc. Fortunately, this will probably turn out to be a small issue considering the general damage that goes around in a raid instance is enough to blow even a double-shield. Looking at the holy one I have other questions however. Increasing the duration of Holy Words, in what way would that be good for Holy Word: Serenity? I assume that would simply increase the duration of the crit heal bonus buff you get on your target, but is that really worth much? Increasing the duration on Holy Word: Sanctuary will be awesome however, but it makes me wonder how often we'll end up wanting to use Serenity - forcing holy priests even more into the aoe corner. But like I said, I don't mind standing in that corner if I do it damn well, and so far I definitely think holy priests are getting there.

Field Report - Firelands in Retrospect

As Firelands probably is coming to its end quite soon (pre-post edit, I actually wrote this just days before they announced 4.3 would be released), I thought this would be as good a time as any to share some thoughts on What I've thought it's been like.

Ironically, because everything that has gone on around me, I'm probably among the people who dislike the place the least. I never had a good chance to get into it, which also means I've not really had a good chance to get utterly bored with it either. It started out "bad" as it was launched while I was on vacation, so I didn't have a chance to get right into it as I have with basically all the other raids since BC. Then when I got back I had a huge mess with my guild, which meant I had to switch, joining a guild that was far into heroic modes already whilst I had barely even touched normals. I've written about all those issues already so no need to get into any length about it again, but it does mean I've had a very special raiding relationship with Firelands.

It meant having to jump straight into the heavy shit, without the warming up that normals often offer. This wasn't just stressful out of a skill point of view, it also meant I had a lot less good gear and experience overall to tackle the situation. It hasn't been all bad though, as it did give me an entirely new experience on raiding and a possibility to evaluate myself as a raider as well, with new insights to what I could improve. I have often relied on normals to actually learn a fight, not bothering much with reading tactics and watching videos. Don't get me wrong, I always prepare for a fight by reading up and watching vids, but definitely not as much as probably most other serious raiders do. What I do is get the general idea of the fight in advance, then I actually learn the fight by doing it. Normals are usually well tuned that way, allowing me to get into the "mood" of the fight before stepping it up to heroics which usually introduce a butt load of mechanics that require me to think about more than just the healing. This time I had no such breaking in and it forced me to learn how to tackle the fights in a whole new way. I can't say I liked it, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Firelands to me has been a lot like what Trial of the Crusader was in Wrath of the Lich King. I really liked that instance, but I can't say I really got it. What was it about anyway? To me it felt like a "filler" raid to keep us satisifed until Blizzard could release more content that was actually connected to the expansion. I am not saying that is the case with Firelands, but that is how it felt like to me since I had such trouble getting into the raid. With all previous raids I've eventually ended up doing each boss a trillion times and know them all inside and out, and that just never happened with the Firelands raids. Since I got into a group that had so much more experience than me, I didn't get to learn it with them, but rather tag along and do my best as they did their thing. It means I still haven't fully understood some, very important, aspects of some fights - like how the healing really works on Baleroc. How is that even possible you might wonder? Well, I just walked in there, got my assignment carefully explained to me and did just that. I didn't need to understand the buffs and debuffs, and I haven't had to since. And since I haven't been able to become an important part of the raid team in my current guild in this particular content, I just couldn't really be bothered with it either. It is handicapping, and I don't like it, but it just turned out that way.

I've felt more isolated in my playing throughout Firelands than ever before. Like a child put in a corner with some toys, told to do this part but not move anywhere and just trying to behave as well as possible. I am not saying this to throw blame or complain, I have been enjoying myself in raids. But it has also been a completely new, and quite odd, experience to me, and it has made all of the Firelands raiding also seem quite unreal. Not something I have dedicated myself to like with previous raids, but something I've just gone and done because... why not?

It has left me quite ambivalent. Objectively (as much as I can be) I quite like Firelands. I think the fights are interesting, well designed and varying. I think some of them have become a little too faceroll after the nerf, removing a lot of what was once considered the sole challenge - I remember our first kill on Staghelm, with three healers and taking 7ish stacks in each scorpion phase, that actually made that fight fun and challenging. Then when we realized how much easier it is done with only cat phases it is so much faceroll we can basically fail on everything and still not wipe. I know this is an inevitable path that raids have always gone, but it has affected me more than before since I didn't really get a chance at the fights as they were originally. I only got to see them a handful of times before the nerfs, and I don't feel like I know much about Firelands at all. If someone were to ask me explain the tactics of any fight, and actually follow my advice, they'd probably die very fast. I have never been this ignorant and out of the loop about raiding and it feels odd.

I have the same ambivalent feelings regarding the role of the priest healer. Disc priests have been good enough this tier, and loads of fun to play. I feel like many fights are well designed to pick out the strengths of disc healing and eventhough some fights have been a lot about spamming my PoH button, I still feel like disc priest healing has been kept versatile and interesting this tier. On the flip side we have holy priests who have ended up pretty much in the opposite corner. I am happy to hear that there are holy priests out there who think they do a good job in this Tier, but the area in which they can shine has become very specific. Preferrably 25 mans and preferrably normal modes. I never thought it would be an issue, but Firelands has been so much about raid cooldowns that not having one has become quite noticeable. Add to that that holy priests can't really compete with druids for aoe healing or paladins for point healing anyway and you've got a priest that is decent at everything but good for nothing, a place I feared priests might end up in eventually - they've managed to stay out of it for all this time, being (according to me) probably the best designed healer for years, so it was bound to change around sooner or later.

It's difficult to say what could've saved holy priests this tier. A little more oomph overall probably. Some cooldowns that actually were useful and just a tad bit more healing output. Firelands was not designed for holy priest healing, or maybe it's actually rather the other way around - holy priests were not designed to work well with Firelands.

A little addition since I now know that 4.3 is coming out - it will definitely be interesting to see how Blizzard will have managed to bring holy priests back into the game, which I pray they have. I would really like it if they moved away from the big raid cooldowns and focused more on personal cooldowns, leaving more into the hands of each player instead of having one player saving everyones ass. It's a nice idea, but it usually means bringing that player (or class rather) is quite vital for the raid group, kind of like how shamans always have been able to join simply because of their Bloodlust. Right now I am getting kind of sick and tired with the big raid-wide cooldowns and would definitely like to see more personalized and individual cooldowns, especially cooldowns like Power Infusion, Dark Intent and Focus Magic that can (or must) be cast on other players but still only affect one or two players and not the entire group. It does require more teamwork and not just good timing, and I would love to see more of that.

This time I am going to throw myself headfirst into the new content as I normally do, reading up on priest changes, checking out fights and tactics and planning my play style well in advance (maybe more than I usually do actually!). I am keeping my fingers crossed that the fights will be as versatile and fun as the Firelands ones were, but that the raid cooldowns will take a step back in favor for more personal responsibilities. I doubt that will happen, but one can always hope.