Dueling Guide: Priest vs Priest

The mirror match usually comes down to mana regen. Most priests mana burn each other oom, and then wand. Toss in a psychic scream here and there, a few renew dispels, and you have a funtastical time.

Some really quick tips that might help you though.

1. Use Rank 1 spells. Use Rank 1 Renew to see if the other priest dispels it. Rank 1 Shadow Word: Pain is also good for this.

2. Try to save your Shadowfiend for after the other priest uses his. That way you know he has nothing left. When the other priest uses his Shadowfiend, shield yourself so he doesn't get any mana back. If he does the same thing for your shadowfiend, dispel the bubble.

3. Try to stay out of the FSR for as long as possible. By the end, keeping a renew on yourself and wanding should get you back some decent mana, and hopefully you have more regen than the other priest.

If it's a shadow priest, try to bait out a silence by casting Greater Heal sooner than you need it. Once the silence is over, try to fear him and then get a heal off. (Hopefully you don't get blacked out.) Dispel the dots if you can, but sometimes it isn't worth it since they have so many. Shadow priests typically don't have the best regen, so if you're a holy priest and you are both oom, you should win the regen duel.

Keys: Mana burn, dispel, rank 1 spells for a dispel happy priest, save your shadowfiend for when you really need him, fear when you can, and regen as much mana as you can.

Dueling Guide: Priest vs. Warrior

I've decided to start writing dueling guides for the different classes, since I have nothing else to write about. So on with the dueling guides!

Vs. Mortal Strike Warrior

Our one true nemesis. They can get out of fears. They can slow us down. They can reduce our healing. So how do we beat them?

To tell you the truth, I do not know. I have fought a well geared warrior several times now, and it seems that they all just outlast me. I am good at playing the outlasting game usually, and this is one time when you cannot do it.

So technically this guide is "how do I survive against a warrior beating on me in PVP?"

The simple answer is "kite him." How do you kite a warrior once they have piercing howl or hamstring on you? You don't. So you don't let them get one on you. If you are in arena, mount up. Keep out of line of sight. If you see them in battle stance, have a teammate hit them to get them in combat so they have to use their zerker charge. If you can manage to kite the warrior, he will start hitting something else probably.

However, if you have a warrior on you, you have to stay alive somehow. Obviously your fear isn't going to do diddly squat. thanks to Death Wish and Zerker Rage. But you can reduce the number of things he does to you. Most warriors aren't a fan of Mind Control. It has a 3 second cast time, but they will likely pummel you. If they don't, run them away behind an object if possible. Hopefully you have a renew on yourself so you can heal.

The key is to keep them out of rage! You ask, "How? When they take damage, they get rage." This is true. But a DOT or a Wand doesn't give them much. Forcing them to pummel you often, keep hamstring up, and keep Mortal Strike up is quite rage intensive. Yes MS hurts, but it takes at least 30 rage.

The short answer is, I can't beat a warrior (or a rogue). Ask someone who can. But I can keep them somewhat ineffective. Shield, POM, and Renew yourself as much as you can, and try to run. After they've pummeled your Mind Control, try GHealing. See if they burn their fear.

If anyone has any other suggestions, please let me know...I don't think it's possible unless you have a ton of +damage/resilience gear and a disc. spec build.

Leadership

Just wanted to post a random thought here. It relates to WoW, but it doesn't have to. It's about being a leader. You can be a leader in just about anything. Every group must have a leader. Any communistic/anarchy group will inevitably end up splitting up. Sides will be chosen, and the group suffers from splitting apart.

As such, the #1 job of the leader is to promote unity. A common ground to stand on. We all stand, or we all fall. This attitude makes some of the closest-knit groups even stronger. You mess with one person, you mess with us all. This applies in WoW too. I remember when I got ganked by hordies back at level 60 outside of AQ, the whole raid came over and ganked them back. That shows a lot of unity.

There are a lot of things that can break this unity. As soon as two people feel that things should be done differently, there is tension. If person A wants to do one thing, and person B wants to do another thing, the leader can get stuck in the middle of a bad situation that he shouldn't even need to be in.

Here is where a bad leader will try to step away from the situation, figuring it will end up OK. If he doesn't take sides, everyone will be happy. This is totally and utterly wrong. The leader has to take a stand. Even if it's directly between the two, he must take a stand and defend his position.

Some of you remember way back in MC when there was tier 2 loot issues with a double priest leggings drop. I had about 30 seconds to decide in a nutshell who got the leggings. I made a decision that I still regret to this day. I lost sleep over it that night. But I had to defend it. I made my decision, and my decision stood. Some people see this as stubbornness. But this is what a leader needs to do. Changing one's mind is not the way a leader does anything.

Try to remember this when you're forced to choose between two things. Two ideas, two people, whatever the choice may be. It's always a tough one. It's easy to try to meet halfway. But in the end, you need to make your decision and stick with it. That is what truly makes a good leader in the end. All leaders will make bad decisions at some point...the good ones will make them less frequently. But you'll know exactly where the leader stands, and sometimes that matters more than anything else.

Which Abilities are the Highest DPS for You?

It's a hard thing to determine for some classes. For others like mages, they know it's just one ability that they spam. For warlocks however, you start to wonder. Does Siphon Life actually do enough damage on a boss to make it worth using? Should I get Unstable Affliction or Ruin? How much of my DPS is in Shadowbolts?

I found out last night that a lot of a DOT lock's DPS is in Shadowbolts, which totally changes my perspective on how to itemize them. It means that +crit is more important to them than I originally thought.

These are the things that using a tool like Wow Web Stats can do for you. Want to know which spec does more DPS? Find out! What to know which of your abilities are doing the most DPS? Find out! What to see if you need more +hit? Find out! Go to www.lossendil.com and see for yourself how you can determine your DPS and your abilities' effectiveness. Seeing your stats can truly open your eyes.

Heroic Shattered Halls Frustration

Last night, Wynri, Rubix, Dyrella, Rondyn, and myself went to heroic Shattered Halls. It went very well until the last boss, who is a beast. We got him down to around 80% before he even did his AOE whirlwind chargefest. The problem was, almost always someone died during the whirlwind, and I was powerless to stop him. I couldn't ever predict when he would do it, so I couldn't have an AOE heal on the way or anything. And if he ever bounced from person 1 to person 2 to person 3 to person 2 again, person 2 was dead. That's how much cleave damage he does. It was insanity.

We had the DPS. Our first attempt, we got him to 10%. After that, we never got close. Someone died way too early every attempt, and it was usually me. If anyone has any tips on how to kill this guy, please let me know. He's a lot harder on heroic mode than on regular.

On a brighter note, it's almost the weekend!

True Damage Meters / Fight Analysis

Everyone likes to keep a set of damage meters, but everyone knows that not everything is accurate. No more. By typing the following commands, you will be guaranteed to get accurate damage meters.

/console SET CombatLogRangeParty "200"
/console SET CombatLogRangePartyPet "200"
/console SET CombatLogRangeFriendlyPlayers "200"
/console SET CombatLogRangeFriendlyPlayersPets "200"
/console SET CombatLogRangeHostilePlayers "200"
/console SET CombatLogRangeHostilePlayersPets "200"
/console SET CombatLogRangeCreature "200"

That changes the range of your combat log from 40 yards to 200 yards. You won't miss any action that way.

But there's also an amazing utility called WOW Web Stats (just Google it). It will give you a summary of what goes on in a given fight.

Here are the simple steps:

1. Go raiding, type command /combatlog in the chat window to start logging, and type /combatlog to stop logging at the end of the night.
   
2. Click here to launch the WWS client
3. Go to the Logs & Report tab, add log /logs/WoWCombatLog.txt
4. If it is the first time you use WWS, go to the Actors tab, click Auto-update
5. Go back to the Logs & Report tab, click Generate report, and here is your report !

It will show details for the entire night. If you want to actually show one boss fight, you can trim the logs from Moroes to Moroes. It will include everything from the time you see Moroes until the time you last see him. Essentially just the boss fight if you didn't wipe. (For Attumen, you'd set from to be Midnight, and to to be Attumen). It's a really great tool to tell you how much damage your different spells do. Wonder how much DPS you get out of a particular spell/ability? This will tell you that. It's really great for a DOT lock to see where most of your DPS is coming from.

Hopefully looking at this utility will help you analyse what you're doing, and help you make better decisions in combat.

Calling all Vets - Help the Noobs

Last night we ran Karazhan with 2 new people, and 1 person who was relatively new. Chloes the warlock, and Doofis and Zalphrin the hunters joined us. As a result of having so many new people, we struggled to down Moroes initially and wiped once on Curator as well. While we didn't down Shade, we downed Nightbane, which means we only have Shade, Illhoof, and Prince (and Netherspite) to go on Sunday. Not bad. We also got Chloes and Doofis some good gear. I think Doofis got 2 items and Chloes got 2 as well. Zalphrin got 1.

I will not call Zalphrin a noob since he knows a lot about being a hunter. He needs some gear and some experience, and could perhaps use a pointer or two. Doofis and Chloes are very new to the game. They leveled their characters, but most of you know how easy it would be to level a hunter and a warlock. Send the pet, cast a spell, they be dead. However, I believe that the warlock is the most difficult class to fully learn and understand. There are so many different options and ways to do damage that to truly master it, it takes a lot of time and research. Hunters are similar...everyone knows that bad hunters exist and that good hunters are hard to find. Why is this? Hunters and warlocks are hard to learn how to be good.

So what does this mean for our friends Chloes and Doofis? They improved drastically just last night. Chloes asked me for a decent talent build, and I gave him the popular 40/0/21 since he wasn't a fan of Unstable Affliction. He was hesitant at first because he'd always had his stamina increased by 15% from demonology. However, after last night, he told me that he LOVES his spec. He learned how to drain life tank. He learned how to use Curse of Doom on Curator. He remembered to give out Healthstones and a Soulstone regularly. He got a lot better. Doofis also did a great job, although I don't know enough about a hunter to know how much better he did.

What I'm asking for is for the vets of this game to take some new people under your wing. Chloes needed me to tell him how to spec. How to use Drain Life. How to use his curses. Now that he sees and understands why I had him do that, he is really enjoying Karazhan and his spec. However, he has a long way to go still. This is what we need to work with him on still, and it is gonna take a full time warlock and not a full time priest to get him where he needs to be. Same thing with Doofis and all of the other people.

So I'm asking if you could take some time out of your playing to talk to all of these new faces. We'll probably be seeing them in Gruul's Lair tonight, and you'll start seeing them crop up in Karazhan runs very soon as well. I'd like to see Chloes and Doofis in 2-3 weeks time and not have to call them noobs. Noob is a derogatory word meaning inexperienced. Gear and experience are only half of the battle. The other half is being able to think about your class and make decisions for yourself about how you want to play and how to be more effective. But they need a little help getting there. Please help them out whenever you can. They will truly appreciate it, as will I.

Brief pondering

Many times I'll take what the people on the forums say seriously, but a lot of the time, whiners have no perspective.

The following two concepts are pervasive on the forums:

1. Spirit is less effective than MP5 for a priest by far, and is not worth itemizing.

2. Paladins can heal for much longer than a priest can during raid bosses and are not worth having around.

Do you suppose the two are related?

Team Talents

Everyone has team talents in their talent trees. It doesn't matter who you are. Mages, warlocks, druids, priests, we all have talents that are usually ignored since they are marginal. Some of the ones that are really useful, like a paladin's Blessing of Kings and a priest's Divine Spirit, and those you'll find in almost every group.

But what about an affliction warlock picking up Shadow Embrace or imp COE/COS? What about a moonkin druid picking up imp Faerie Fire? What about a warrior picking up imp demoralizing shout? Mage grabbing Magic Attunement? (imp dampen/amplify magic) These are mostly ignored, for understandable reasons. In a 5 man, each of these abilities is very marginal, and hardly useful at all. For 2-5 talent points, I can drastically improve my DPS. Why should I get these?

The reason is for 25 mans. In a 25 man dungeon, everything is scaled a lot bigger. The little things make a huge difference. Shadow's Embrace would be like adding 3500 armor to a well geared warrior, and even more than that for a bear druid. Imp Curse of Elements or Curse of Shadows means 3% more DPS for anyone casting that school of magic. Imp Faerie fire means that melee DPS is doing perhaps 3% more DPS. Imp dampen/amplify magic means an extra 120 healing on each target, or an extra 60 magic damage reduced, in certain fights. Imp demo shout means an extra 120 AP reduced on a boss, which reduces crushing blow damage by quite a bit.

So you're wondering if you should pick these talents up. Before you do, you should answer yourself a few questions:

1. How many talent points does it take, and what can you afford to lose? If you're trying to be a hybrid, such as going 40/0/21 as a warlock, your points are a lot more precious than someone just going 51/0/10. The deeper you go in a tree, the more chances you have of being able to grab that talent. If you have to decide between 10% more DPS for yourself and 1% DPS for 8 people, it probably isn't worth it.

2. How many raiders will benefit? Obviously imp COS/COE will be more useful if you actually use those curses. In addition, if you have a severe lack of mages, moonkin druids, shadow priests, and warlocks, maybe you shouldn't bother with these points.

3, Does anyone else in the raid have these? If someone else does, then perhaps you shouldn't bother. But if no one else does, try to think of the benefit for everyone.

4. Finally, is it enough of a difference to mean victory instead of defeat. The one I'd like to point out here is imp thorns. It increases thorns and entangling roots damage by 75% for 3 talent points. This means an extra 300 damage over the course of entangling roots, and an extra 18 damage when someone is hit by thorns. Honestly, this is so marginal, it would really only be worth something in a really long fight where every little bit hitting the tank makes a difference. So most would think, "why bother?" Well, what's the trade off? There are only a few other things you could spec instead. You could get 2 points in some PVP talents, and 1 point further down the tree that would be useful. If you don't do PVP, it would probably be worth putting 2 points in there and putting the single point further down where the extra DPS talents are.

Use your best judgment when making decisions about these talents. Having talents have affect a group of people allow and entire raid group to become much better, and could sometimes be the difference between a 1% wipe and a clean kill.

What stats are best for you?

Part of the problem that most people have when they are looking for upgrades, is they don't know what they are looking for. For example, as a priest, there are so many stats that I could be looking for. Spirit, Intellect, Stamina, +healing, mp5, +crit, armor....which ones are what I need?

A lot of it depends on the situation. Some fights require more stamina than others. If I'm not getting hit, then I don't need stamina. So should I get gear that has stamina or not?

If you think about it, each item that you have chance of getting has an item level associated with it. This item level dictates a limit as to how many stats it can have on it. Items from Karazhan have a higher item level than items from 5 mans. So what does this mean? It means that based on what instances you are running, there is a limited number of stats that you can have at any given time. This means that you need to pick and choose your stats wisely.

So what gear is best for you? The first thing that you need to realize is that there are several variables that come into play. First is talents. Everyone who's a feral druid knows that cat druids should stack strength. Why? Because they get 2.2 AP for every 1 strength that they have. This means that if Item X has 50 Strength, and Item Y has 50 Agility, the cat druids should go for Item X. Rogues should go for Item Y. So a lot of it is figuring out what stats do what for you. Arcane mages should go for Intellect. Survival hunters should go for Agility. Holy priests should go for spirit. Holy paladins should go for +crit on spells. Every talent spec has one or two stats that affect them more than it affects their counterparts. This helps to dictate what gear to wear.

Another thing to take into consideration is the encounter itself. Some fights have AOE damage. In these fights, having stamina is crucial. I have an entire stamina healing set for these kinds of fights. I have a low stamina set as well that focuses on spirit, +healing, and regen. It doesn't hurt to have multiple sets...only on the bag space.

Finally, there is a piece that comes into play beyond anything a formula can give you. Playstyle does dictate some itemization. If you like to stack +crit, then there may be certain gear that would be better for you. If you feel that you don't want to crit and would like your white damage to hit for a lot, then go for AP or spell damage. Sometimes your playstyle should affect your talent tree, so I always recommend to every DPS class to actually figure out the theme of a talent tree and decide based on that what is right for them. For example, warlock trees are very specialized. Afflication is based on DOT damage, which means +damage is perfect for them. Demonology is a survival build, and stamina and int are the way to go for these. Destruction is a crit based build, so stacking +crit is huge for destruction. Try them all out to see which one fits your style best.

Then use Kaliban's loot list to find gear that's right for you. Give it a shot...you won't be disappointed when you end up being extremely high on the damage charts because you've itemized and specced correctly.

Healing Part 5: Teamwork

So now we've seen the 4 different classes that can heal. We've learned who can heal in what situations best, who benefits from what statistics, etc. So what do we do with this information? We build a strong raid group.

Knowing that druids and shamans are great raid healers and that priests and paladins are great single target healers helps the class makeup of a raid assign their own positions really. Having a druid/priest/shaman on the MT is huge, because if you have earth shield, renew, rejuv, lifebloom, regrowth, and prayer of mending on you, you probably aren't going to die anytime soon. Paladins are excellent for providing a solid stream of healing for long periods of time, with the occasional burst here and there. Priests and paladins are great for bringing a low target to full quickly, while druids and shamans are excellent for any "oh shit" times on a main tank with Natures Swiftness. Understanding these essentials makes a raid more powerful. It shows that people can learn to heal together and work out their strengths.

This also should be considered when looking at loot as well. If a neckpiece with +healing and MP5 on it drops, the pallies and shamans should have first dibs, since they get very little returns from spirit. Same goes for priests and druids when it comes to spirit gear. Obviously if mail drops and no shammies want it, paladins can grab it up if it's an upgrade. Remember though that mail should go to shammies first, and paladins second.

One final note about teamwork in regards to healing. It takes time. Every player's style is different. Healing with shaman A may be totally different from healing with shaman B, based on their healing styles. It takes time and practice to get enough synergy so that not too many heals are overheal, and less mana is wasted on a given fight.

If there's one thing that I hope you've learned from this series, it's that no healer is the same, no healing class is the same, and there are reasons people get assigned to certain roles in raid fights. If you don't think you belong in that role, tell your healing assigner why you think that way, and see if you can help the raid by figuring out your best place. But ultimately it comes down to learning how to heal in a given situation, and learning how to maximize the worth of you and your class's healing style.

Healing Part 4: Shamans

And you thought I was done. I give you....Akime/Jhur/Whitestone

All shaman, regardless of spec benefit from flexibility. Because the other hybrids (druids and paladins) have trees for DPS, healing AND protection and shaman ONLY have DPS and healing its much easier for a shaman to cover the 2 roles. Proof of that is me writing this post for Tryst. Akime is and always has been Enhancement spec. Yet, I've been the 2nd healer in Kara more then once -- and not just on boss fights but through the entire instance a few times. Another pre-breakdown thought is that Shaman in general is a class built around pre-planning anod NOT reacting. Do you want to focus on totems or shocks? Are you healing one target here or a group? Know what totems you're dropping before you even engage. 90% of what a shaman does in EVERY fight is decided long before the pull. People who like shaman like strategy games like CIV and Axis and Allies over games like Halo or God of War. Its all about planning, theorycrafting, building, and examining the results when you're a shaman. I might even make my own blog post on this later, but for now lets look at HEALING!! (yay?)

Strength:

Shaman have 2 primary strengths. One is their flexibility, and breaking that down for a Resto Shaman it means they're equally good as single-target healers or small group healers (ie- the melee, or the casters not 'party 3'). I'll break this down more later.

Our other strength is that our tree gives us more bang for our buck then any other healer. Our heals are all overpowered if built right, and they're all extremely mana efficient (with the small exception of Earth Shield in arenas).

Weakness:

There are three here, so bear with me. While we're good at many things, we're not the best at any. Paladins are better single target healers, druids are better raid/party healers, and priests have better 'oh crap' recovery, Jack of many trades, master of none.

Shaman have the highest healing-threat of the 4 healers, and we have absolutely no safety net (bubble, bop, fade, barkskin, fear, bearform) short of a little totem that will get one-shot by any elite in any 70 instance.

Last, and this is for Trystery, shaman have the absolute CRAP for mana regen. Unlike priests, we get manatick per 5 spirit instead of 4 and of course Pallies have their awesome mana-back-per-crit ability. I know everyone says 'you have totems!' but allow me to math that for you. Mana SPRING totem costs 120 mana for 2 minutes and maxes at 17.5 mana per 2. So, for the two minutes its down we get about 1050 mana back. Mind you, the minute its gone we drop 1-4 more totems. The average totem is actually 250-350. If you drop 3 250 totems its 750+120 for your mana totem so 870 of the 1050. Now, to be fair, usually you'll only drop 2 and a Mana Spring, but at best you'll actually get circa 500 mana in 2 minutes which is really not a lot when you break it down. (You're looking at 1 Chain heal or Healing Wave every 2 minutes.) Mana TIDE is a little better because you get about 24% of your MAX MANA POOL from it, but it has a 5 minute cooldown. Use it during boss fights when you're at about half your mana. In the end though, the totems are really more for buffing others much more then for buffing you. Don't get me wrong, they DO help (especially now that they last 2 minutes) but the real money for a shaman is in efficiency.

Vital Talents:

Okay, one minute here to explain these talents before I start referring to them all over the place. Note, most of these reference my early comment of our tree giving us the best bang for the buck.

Improved Healing Wave + Healing Way: makes your strongest one-target heal a 2 second cast, and the second makes a stackable buff on the target giving each following cast 6-18% more heal. Absolutely vital combo for single-target healing.

Totemic Focus + Totemic Mastery: 25% cost redux on your totems, and an increased range for your friendly totems for just 6 points. I honestly think EVERY shaman regardless of spec needs these two talents.

Purification + Improved Chain Heal: Purify increases all your healing spells effectiveness by 10%, and I.C.H increases Chain Heal by 20%. Now, here's the best part: the two stack. That means CH gets 30% making the most mana-efficient heal in the game also the most powerful. Oh, and both also stack with Nature's Blessing which gives you more damage AND healing by an amount equal to 30% of your intellect.

Common Talent Builds:

I'm very guilty of many posts on many forums complaining about our talent tree's needing a serious rehaul. HOWEVER, I fully believe of all the trees Resto is by FAR the best end game tree for a shaman. Having said that, I now say expect to spend almost ALL your talent points in the tree. Its not unheard of to see 0/0/61 though 0/5/56 is more common (for the extra 5% max mana found in enh. tree). If you want a little more bang, you might stretch for 10/0/51 to get the top 2 talents in Elemental. Dipping further then that RARELY happens though, because Resto shaman will want almost EVERY ability found at the bottom of their tree, and nothing in the other 2 trees will ever help them that much anyway.

Basic Strategy + Spell Rotation:

Okay, for this I'll cover both single target and group targetting. First, single targetting:

For a single target begin with them having Earth Shield. Two reasons: first, its a self-proc HoT and will allow you to sit on idle for a good 20-30 seconds to start the fight so you can mana-back after dropping your first round of totems. Second, the ES procs actually add threat to the person it procs on instead of you. If thats a tank, then the proc recieves BONUS threat according to that tanks talents. Nice, huh? Important thing though: ES is expensive, so really the one cast pre-fight is all you'll use even in a boss fight unless you need to cover for an 'OH CRAP!' situation.

After the first 20-30 seconds, ES should be about half-burned (it has 10 procs) so you'll start building you're Healing Way stacked buff. Cast a Healing Wave, wait for at least 8 seconds (11 if you can) and then cast again. Rinse and repeat the rest of the fight with the exception that when ES drops you'll probably need to cast every 8 seconds. Remember, Shaman get a LOT of power out of their heals so you can afford to wait 8 seconds. SHAMAN DO NOT SPAM!! On a single target (who's usually a tank) you're going to start healing when they hit about 80%.

Multi-Target Healing:

Okay, this is a little different in that you use a completely different pair of heals. Ignore ES completely, you won't need it for a multi target. (I do recomend putting it on a tank between pulls but don't use it in fight when you'll need that 900 mana).

Begin with rounds of Lesser Healing Wave. Spot heal anyone that falls to about 80%. This should jump them up to about 90-95 depending on their HP. After a while, you will fall behind regardless of how on top of it you are. When this happens, take a breath and use the BEST HEAL IN THE GAME! Chain Heal 1-2 times quickly to top everyone in your small group back up. Ideally, a Chain Heal should start when 3 or more people are around 60-70% and continue till all (or all but 1) are back to 90+%.

To give you an idea of the pace of this... if I'm watching all the melee I'll use 2-3 LHW then wait about 6 seconds, hit a Chain Heal, wait about 6 seconds and start over. Again, do NOT spam. If you're falling behind, then drop the LHW not the Chain Heals. Cast 2-3 Chain Heals, then wait 6-7 seconds, cast another 2-3 if you need to. This strat also works well for bosses with large, timed AoEs such as Void Reaver.

Best Stats:

After a lot of reading and theorycrafting I've come to believe Shaman only need to worry about 2 stats. INT and +HEAL.

INT does 2 things for a shaman. First, it gives you a larger mana pool. Since our regen is pathetic and our key is efficiency the more mana you have at the start means the longer you're going to last. Along with that our best regen is Mana Tide Totem which gives back about 24% of your MAX MANA POOL.

The other thing INT does comes from the talent Nature's Blessing. Increases your spell damage and healing by an amount equal to 30% of your INT. Quick note: EVERY resto shaman will take and max this talent because its a prereq for Earth Shield. That being, you might as well maximize its use by stacking up the INT.

That leads to the +HEAL stat. Your +HEAL affects everything, including your Healing Stream Totem, your Earth Shield, and your second/third targets from Chain Heals. Everything that heals. Again, our regen is crap so SHAMAN DO NOT SPAM!! The only, only, ONLY way to avoid being a spammer when you're not a druid is to get the absolute most healing out of your heals.

The more mana you have and the less you have to spam the less reliant you are on Spirit (which again is bad for Shaman) or your mp5. However, if you're going to pick one I personally suggest the mp5 as you have no talents in your tree that influence or are influenced by Spirit. I wouldn't completely ignore Stamina - but if you take the 2 talents for threat redux and you don't spam then you shouldn't fear aggro too much. I would not take high stamina gear over high INT or +heal myself.

Final Comments:

1. SHAMAN DO NOT SPAM!! Can't say this enough. Max out your healing and mana pool and ease off the throttle. Do not spam: not a heal, not in /trade, not for gold. DO NOT SPAM!

2. Realize what your role is in a fight, and use your abilities accordingly. If you're a single-target healer why would you Chain Heal (short of 'oh crap!' situations). If you're in charge of a melee, then don't waste an Earth Shield on just one of your 5 targets. Being a shaman, regardless of spec, is all about thinking in ADVANCE and then acting out a PLAN. We're not a reactionary class - leave that to the priests.

Healing Part 3: Druids

Without further adieu, I give you Murien the druid.

Druid Healing

Druids can serve as a very different type of healer than that of a priest or paladin. We are equipped with a variety of spells, and most notably, three are Heals over Time (HoTs). In my opinion, there are two different specs to go with as a resto druid, if putting only 41 points in the resto tree. The first focuses on improving healing touch, our largest available heal (not a HoT). The second focuses on improving the HoT spells like rejuvenation and regrowth. I am a druid specced to improve my HoTs, and have the most experience from that point of view. However, I will cover all the options a resto druid can take.

There are numerous advantages and disadvantages to being a healer that depends on HoTs. Druids are the best available off healers when utilized correctly. A druid can cast all their HoTs on a target, and use the time the heals are ticking to regenerate mana without concern of getting behind on healing. I usually only get one or two ticks outside of the five second rule when trying to regen mana, but these add up and lengthen my effective healing time. Also keeping HoTs on the tank(s) really helps out other healers in a raid setting.

The big disadvantage as HoT druid is that we lack a heal that instantly heals for a significant amount. Swiftmend and Natures Swiftness are designed to serve as the instant heals but they present small problems. They have cool downs of 15 sec and 3 min respectively. Also, if the target you are trying to “save” does not have a HoT spell currently active on it, Rejuvination must be cast before Swiftmend. This option forces the druid to wait on a global cool down before getting the results. Natures Swiftness does not cause a global cool down, but the 3 minute cooldown on it eliminates the possibility of relying on it. As a result, the druid is not as effective at being a savior as other healing classes when battles have their little “surprises.”

Speccing to improve healing touch over the HoT spells increases the druid’s utility as a main healer. A druid with the potency of improved healing touch offers a solid healer comparable to priests. The problem I have with this spec is that the usefulness of tree form is practically eliminated.

In Tree Form, a druid cannot cast Healing Touch, decurse/depoison, or malicious spells. However, everything you can cast has a mana reduction of 20%. In addition, group members that receive healing get extra healing based on the druid’s spirit. Tree form makes sense to be in as a HoT druid when a battle is going to be mana intensive, or in raid scenario. A healing touch druid loses a lot of their improvements from talents. I have not tried speccing on this way, mainly because I have accompanied Trystery as the offhealer. However, I would consider not getting tree form, and trying natures grace instead, or maybe even one point in moonglow or lunar guidance depending on your needs.

I have found that there are ways to be a more effective main healer even if you are in tree form. As state above, a druid cannot rely on having Nature’s Swiftness and Swiftmend available. A third thing they can use is Lifebloom. Lifebloom stacks up to three times, and heals for a fair amount once the spell expires. I try to keep 3 stacks lifebloom up on the tank if I am the mainhealer (manaintensive, but effective) and, if I need the extra healing, the lifebloom often expires soon after I get swiftmend off. So main healing is possible, we just aren’t the best.

Many might question whether to get spirit or mana per 5 as a druid. I think it depends on your playstyle. If you are an offhealer a lot of the time, and can rest out of the 5 second rule for a lot of time, bring on the spirit. If not, go mana per 5. I suggest you DO NOT only get one or the other though, there are fights where both will be useful to have.

I think that since druids must spec into swiftmend and natures swiftness, even a well geared feral or balanced druid are at a healing disadvantage. Do not expect them to be successful main healers, but they can still have HoTs up on targets if you need the healing during certain battles.

I hope this summary gives an idea of what to expect from a druid, and how to utilize them in groups. Remember that druids are fantastic off healers, can be main healers if specced for it, but consider your spec (consider the healers you run with in the raid when deciding). We cannot heal a tank like a paladin can, or pump out the sheer volume of healing that priests can in battles, but count on a druid to keep the raid health topped off, HoTing the MT, and essentially keeping the pallies and priest from needing to lose focus from their jobs.

Healing Part 2: Paladins

And no I won't talk about paladins, because I am not one. So I've brought in a guest speaker who most of you are familiar with. Ladies and gents, lets give it up for Saro!

Strengths:

The strength of the paladin is above all else, endurance. They're a
nightmare to kill in PvP. They're extremely good at surviving in PvE.
And that same endurance applies to their healing. Generally speaking,
they can cast more heals, more often, more efficiently than any other
healing class. They also have the Cleanse, which will remove the widest
selection of debuffs (magic, disease -and- poison). They also have
somewhere on the order of 4-5 times (or more) armor than the cloth and
druid healers. Lastly, their heals have a built in threat reduction
that is flat out better than any classes - There is a full 50% reduction
in heal agro on all their healing abilities. This was put in place to
prevent a paladin from tanking via spiritual focus and concentration
aura (105% uninterrupted casting) and just spamming heals on themselves
to generate the hate needed for tanking.


Weaknesses:

With the exception of the long cooldowns and the very long cooldowns,
they are essentially one trick ponies. They have a flash heal and a
main heal. That's it. No HoTs. No quick cast shields.


Common talent builds:

Generally speaking, there's two main decisions with the Holy tree. One,
do you want the 41 point talent or not? It's a 15 second period where
your heal spells cost half mana. It's usable every three minutes.
There's a fair amount of debate over whether this is actually useful or
not. It's nice, but is it worth giving up the 21 point talent somewhere
else? I suspect a paladin can survive and heal quite well without it,
but for people still working on their crit gear, it certainly would add
longevity during a heal spam phase.


The second isn't in the Holy tree - it's what support tree you go for.
Do you want to serve as a five man tank or do you want some soloing
based talents in the Ret tree (Seal of Command, for example).
Generally, you will want a minimum of 34 points into Holy. Holy Shock
may be mana inefficient, but it's the only instant heal you've got.
Light's Grace will cut your cast time for your main heal down to 2
seconds if you are chain casting. These are very much staples.


Basic strategies:

The goal for paladin healing is pretty much this: Spam. If you're
working with another healer on a boss fight, you'll typically want to
slam out flash of light. On a reasonably geared paladin, that's 1200+
healing every 1.5 seconds for a rather mana efficient cast. You can
typically keep it up non-stop for 5 minutes with a modest amount of crit
(25% or so on Holy).


If you are the only healer on target, you can still get by with
spamming. You will most likely want to use a main heal to activate the
2 second cast from Light's Grace and simply recast one at some point in
that 15 seconds to reset the fast cast period. Depending on how much
damage your target is taking, you can add more main heals as needed.


If you're raid healing for some reason (not a paladin's best role), let
the amount of damage people are taking be your guide as to which heal
you use. If someone is being pounded and you know you cannot save them
in time, use your ranged taunt. Up to three mobs attacking them will
beeline for you. With the armor and HP, you can handle it until the
tanks get them under control. Blessing of Protection is another option
for melee damage - it also dumps the agro of the target while it's
active, so it can be used as another tool to help a tank get under
control.


Special abilities: The second major strength of the paladin is the
special support abilities. Divine Intervention, Lay on Hands, the auras
(get used to changing these mid-fight as often as needed!), and of
course the blessings. The blessings allow you to boost a target with
surgical precision. You know them, you love them, you can live without
them - but you'd rather not. I don't need to go into more details on
them.


Best stats:

Crit. Holy crit is far and away the most bang for the buck. With 60%
of the base cost of a spell returned to your mana pool on a crit, you
can go for quite a while. There are two talents that boost either your
holy crit or your crit with your two heals - both are mandatory. Your
gear priority should look like this: Holy Crit, Spell Crit, +heal,
Mp/5, Int, Stam. Spirit is generally worthless for a Paladin. You also
don't need to large a mana pool. 10k buffed should be plenty, assuming
you're hitting 30%+ spell crit (not that hard to do if you've geared
specifically for it as you climbed to 70). Ideally, you want around 40%
crit. It's a pain, but doable, especially since you'll pick up 11% crit
from your talents.


Final comments:

Paladins make fantastic single target healers and passable raid healers.
They shine at removing mass debuffs (ala Molten Core) and have a few
tricks to help keep someone up in an emergency via BoP and taunts.
Overall, if you want a LOT of healing over an extended period, stick a
paladin on the target and let them spam. This will allow other casters
to take advantage of the five second rule and watch other members of the
raid as needed.

Healing Part 1: Priests

The time has come to explore the wonderful world of healing. There will be 4 posts, one for each healing class, discussing strengths and weaknesses, popular builds, basic strategies, and best spell rotations. We'll start off with the priests, since they are by far the most difficult class to master :-P

Strengths:

I mean this is a serious tone somewhat. Most people think that paladins can be better single target healers than priests. This can be somewhat true. Paladins are excellent single-target healers. But so are priests. We get a HOT, which means extra healing for that target in case we get silenced, CCed, or have our attention diverted temporarily by a rogue who pulled agro. We also have a mana efficient heal in Greater Heal.

Priests are also excellent at healing a raid. With Renews, low ranks of Greater Heal, and Prayer of Healing, we can efficiently heal a group.

Finally, we have the best threat mechanics of any class. We can get 20% reduction, but we also get spells like Prayer of Mending which cause no threat and Binding Heal which causes half threat. We have an arsenal of heals like no other.

Weaknesses:

So what are our weaknesses? We cannot, and should not, spam heals. Priests are most effective when timing their heals to be bunched together, leaving maximum time for mana regen. We are kinda a jack of all trades as well. If you need an unassigned healer to just heal anyone who takes incidental damage? Talk to a druid. A single target healer? A paladin or a shaman. We are good at lots of things, but not the best at all things. This is why most high end guilds have priests going shadow.

We also have an unreliable method of getting mana back. Druids get innervate, shamans get mana tide totem, we get shadowfiend (which is great for some fights, crappy for others).

Common talent builds:

There is really a range of builds, and they go from 28/33/0 (PVP healer) to 18/43/0 (PVE healer). The highlights of most builds are Meditation, Divine Spirit, and Improved Healing. Most raiding priests go 23/38/0 that I've seen. It's the least diversified healing class since the important talents are spread out among two trees. You won't see any 0/61/0 priests.

Basic Strategies:

The most important strategy for a priest is to REGEN MANA. Priests get an incredible amount of mana from their spirit. Druids and priests need spirit to last as long as a paladin or shaman healing. What this means though is concentrating on your spell rotation...

Spell Rotation


Most priests focus on using Greater Heal, Renew, and Prayer of Mending, with a Prayer of Healing if needed in a group.

Here is the key. Don't spam any of them. I almost always follow this cast sequence. Greater Heal -> Renew/POM. Wait. Greater Heal -> POM/Renew Wait. This will usually keep a tank up for most fights if you have enough +healing. It also maximizes your regen. Sure your Renew may be ready to be applied again before you cast it. But that extra regen time makes a difference. Try to make it so that your Greater Heal gets the tank to full. If it takes 2, then cast 2. The worst thing that can happen is to need to continuously heal a tank with Greater Heals. This means that you should think about acquiring more +healing. Having the ability to regen your mana in between GHeals makes a huge difference when in a long boss fight.

Best stats:

My favorite stats are spirit (MP5) and +healing. Spirit is great for long fights and regen. Plus you can get talent points that increase your +healing based on your spirit. MP5 helps for those times when you need to spam heals, say when the tank takes a string of crits all at once.

+Healing follows spirit, because the bigger your heals are, the less frequently you have to heal. Also, remember that if your heals get too big, you can always downrank.

After this comes intellect (more mana pool), stamina (gotta stay alive), and potentially +crit if you have inspiration especially. But spirit and healing are the big ones. MP5 goes with spirit. It's a huge one as well.

Final comments:

Again, the priest class is the hardest to master imo, because of the importance of knowing when to cast what spell. When to regen and when to heal. What gear to wear for what fights. The biggest key that I tell people is to try to stick to a rotation. If you find yourself deviating too much, then either itemize differently, or try a different rotation...everyone's is different.

Balanced druids?

I was talking to Dyrella the other day, who is seriously looking at her talents and is trying to determine what would be the best ones to get. She wants to get certain things like imp thorns and imp faerie fire, but doesn't want to nerf her damage as well. I told her that it will take some experimentation to figure out what points she really needs, but for the most part I explained that she needed to figure out what her weaknesses are.

Not all people have the same problem. Some people don't have enough DPS. Some run out of mana too quickly. This is where talents, gear, and playstyle need to mesh. The perfect spec for one person may not be the best one for another. The only true way to determine what's right for you is to try things out. Use others and the forums as a rule of thumb and a starting place. Then find out where you need to go from there.

And always be looking for ways to improve. As you get more gear, your ideal spec may change. The two are interrelated. If you have a lot of +healing and not much +spirit, then put points that increase your bonus +healing. If it's the other way around, take points that give you more +healing based on your spirit.

At any rate, looking seriously at everything together, theorycraft can only do so much. You need to see it in action. Try it. You may use a lot of gold respeccing, but it's the only chance you'll get to see if it's truly effective.

Diversity

Most serious WoW players have heard that the top raiding guilds such as Nihilum are "purists" so to speak. They use each class for a defined role. Priests are all shadow priests. Druids are all resto druids, except for perhaps a single feral to get the Leader of the Pack. Shamans are all resto.

Why is this? Well, when you break it down to the numbers, certain classes outperform others. When you look at a moonkin druid, for the most part you're looking at a DPS caster. There are several DPS casters, such as mages, warlocks, and the like. Most people disregard moonkins from the raiding arena based on the inability to outperform a mage in DPS. Mages tend to have more DPS and last longer in a fight.

So what is the problem with this? I personally feel the problem is with diversity.

Murien, the one-time feral druid, is now resto. And he says that this puts an entirely different perspective on everything. He has learned how to truly play his class by changing specs. He now uses barkskin, bandages, potions, and the like since he has learned 2 different roles of his class.

The same thing went for myself when I switched to shadow for a small while. I started to learn some of the great things about shadow priests, and I see why they are generally preferred in a raid setting. The end raiding guilds have a single disc/holy priest for Prayer of Spirit, and the rest are shadow.

But I personally feel that even if I cannot outperform a holy paladin in the context of a single target heal, I feel that I understand my class well enough to be one of the best healers around, no matter what class. I've learned the threat mechanics, how to survive (some of you may chuckle here...), how to not run out of mana early, how to properly gear myself. As a result, I feel I'm a very strong healer and that I could compete with the efficiency of a well geared paladin.

I think one of the things that these people are missing out on when they don't have moonkins, elemental shamans, and protection paladins are some of the best people to have in certain situations. Nermal is a prime example of a "poorly specced" druid, and yet she is consistantly high up on the damage meters, and can still do an amazing job healing. It's because she's learned her limitations, and has learned how to be the best mookie she can be.

These purist guilds may do a great job at progressing the raid. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that if they come across a fight where a moonkin helps a lot, they will have one of their resto druids respec for that fight. Pity.

DOTs are affected by resilience, no gear swapping

Well, they've finally implemented it. Every 1% chance you have of avoiding a crit, DOT damage on you will be reduced by 1%.

Thanks to all of the shadow priests and warlocks that have owned me to this point.

Another change that probably needed to happen was the inability to swap out gear once an arena started. This means no more swapping back to PVE for massive heals and regen for me. Same with a rogue, who could have started out in full PVE gear, then vanish if focused and pop on arena gear.

These changes should balance things a lot more. Now if only they'd nerfed warriors....

Be Yourself

I know I haven't posted yet. Tough. I'm busy.

I wanted to post very briefly about an experience that I had with heroic Mana Tombs. I've run that place 3 times and cleared it successfully each time. Everyone who's done it knows what a pain the last boss is. I've been told that you essentially have to just burn the boss down and ignore the adds. The first time I was in there, I was in there as the only specced healer (Nermal the moonkin was with us). Tough fight, but we had enough DPS to get the job done.

Second time I went in there was with Murien, a resto druid. We get to the last boss, and we decide that since it's a DPS race, Murien would help DPS. We wiped miserably. We tried him healing and me DPSing to no avail. Finally we decided that we'd be totally crazy and try having only 2 DPS and 2 healers. Well, it was a crazy fight, but we did it. The 3rd time we were in there, we used that method again. One shot.

In closing, a lot of the times, people will say "you need X to do this." Or "you need Y to do this." We've beaten the odds before. We've 2 man healed Curator. We've done Maiden with 1 dispel. We've done Nightbane and Prince with 1 specced healer and 2 offspecs. It can be done.

Don't try to make your group fit the strategy. Make your strategy fit your group.

Shadow Priest and Mage vs. Holy Priest, who wins?

From the title, you're probably expecting an amazing PVP feat. It's only slightly true...there's a caveat. Gullkurack and I went into our first 2v2 for the night against a shadow priest mage.

The first thing they did was sheep me, of course, and beat on Gully. Well, I was dumb enough to think that I could wait out the Poly. So 8 seconds into it, I realize Gully's going down, and I trinket out. Then I'm feared for 8 seconds. Boom, Gully dies. I'm left in there against a mage and shadow priest. So I do what I'm good at, I kite. I kited them around a pillar, got off some lucky heals here and there, a lucky fear or two.

Now the mage spellsteals everything that I have. I dispel it back off of him, and it left him OOM. Eventually, we were all out of mana. Now mind you, the priest used his shadowfiend very early on, and the mage used his evocate after the spellsteal episode. Instead of trying to get out of combat and drink though, they proceeded to come after me with wands, maces sometimes, etc. They were almost playing with me. When they both run toward me, I fear them, run around the pillar, bandage, and drink when I'm out of combat (PS: get the arena water from the accessories quartermaster in Stormwind) I make sure they stay in combat by dotting them up. The priest is too dumb to even dispel it.

So they are both oom, the priest is still in shadow form, and now he has around 2500 HP because of my DOT and wanding. I think this is the moment that they both began to panic a little. I hit the priest with a smite and a mind blast, and got sheeped. Fortunately, I had a DOT on the priest when he bandaged. He was at 600 HP and I got a last SW:P on him. Amazingly, both the priest and mage are still mostly oom. They were burning fireblast and shadow word death, and everything they could, but my renews were keeping me at full mana (hello, have you ever heard of dispel nub?). So the shadow priest dies. I fear the mage, mana burn the last 1K mana he has, and begin wanding him. He starts using mana shield. Mana shield. WTF. Why would you use mana shield when you're oom and the only way you'll kill me is with mana?

Anyway, to make a long story short, I killed them. We got 15 points. I was proud. Gully watched the whole thing. Rubix watched the whole thing. I really wish I'd fraps-ed it. That fight goes down as perhaps my best wow experience of all time.

Thanks for dieing so soon Gully, and for keeping viper sting up. You ROCK!

Empowered Healing vs. Imp Divine Spirit

Well, my respec to 40/21/0 failed miserably. Not only did I still get pwnd by MS warriors in PVP, but my GHeals were about 800 smaller. So, I switched to a 21/40/0 build. Yes this means that all you DPS and healing classes who got at most 60 +damage and healing (with 600 spirit) from my buff are out of luck. Don't worry, this post concerns this decision.

I decided to forgo the Imp Divine Spirit in favor of an additional 8% healing effects added to GHeal and 4% added to Flash Heal. But then I got to thinking....which one actually gives me more +healing?

I sit raid buffed at approximately 1643 healing and 572 spirit. If I had gotten the 10% to spirit, it would have been 57 damage and healing. Since I went for the + 8% to healing on GHeal, it would be around 131 +healing. So this is a pretty sizable benefit. However, several things must be taken into consideration.

1. I currently get 16% of my GHeal increased. The 8% would be what I would lose. So if I'd had the extra 57 damage and healing, it would mean a grand total for all 4 points of 193 +healing on GHeal versus 263 +healing on GHeal. The difference is a little smaller.

2. Itemization of +healing and +spirit is different. If we take the socket gem conversion rate of 18 +healing being = to 8 +spirit, we're talking 2 +healing extra versus 1.44 +healing. More spirit at the same conversion rate means more bonus. However, as I get better gear in the future, will it have more +healing or +spirit?

3. This calculation is not counting Blessing of Kings. With BOK, I'd have an additional 57 spirit, and an additional 6 +healing. Imp Divine Spirit would add another +6 healing easily, whereas the extra from the other buff would have been marginal.

4. This bonus healing only affects GHeal, Flash Heal, and Binding Heal. What about POM? What about Renew?
These aren't receiving this bonus.

So, I still have to decide between these points. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I'm leaning toward Imp Divine Spirit, because I'd be one of 2 priests (Grumps) with it in a 25 man, so just in case he can't make it.

Taking Requests

For those of you who follow my blog, it's about that time. I've run out of topics for now. My brain won't work this morning. So if you'd like to see a post about any topic in particular, please let me know. I'd love to do some research about something that I don't quite understand.

For now.....it's breakfast time.

Respec possible, can't beat a warrior

Well, last night Azi and I spent about an hour just dueling. We worked on mechanics against a warrior. I didn't beat him in a single match, but I learned a lot. We learned that against a paladin, the only way to win is to run him oom. Fortunately, Gullkurack picked up a pet that stacks poisons. We beat a warrior/paladin team last night twice. Mind you they weren't geared exceptionally well, but I got a great trinket off at just the right time during one of them, and the other time I got lucky with some kiting. Gully did a great job of running the paladin low.

I am considering respeccing a few points to make myself a lot better. I'm thinking of moving 2 points from Meditation (4% mana reduction to instant cast spells) into Imp Mana Burn. A 2 second cast is incredible compared to a 3 second cast, and I should be able to beat any DPS/priest combo this way. I'm also considering moving some points from threat/dispel reduction into Martyrdom (when I'm crit, I have 6 seconds of time when spell pushback doesn't occur, and I get 20% resistance to interrupts). I don't think I'm going to go way out on a limb and get the faster Mass Dispel, but I'll be thinking about it.

I wanted to mention one final note that I find interesting. I've often thought to myself that if I focused on PVP, I would be better off. We won one game last night that we shouldn't have in the end. It was a warlock/shadow priest. About 2 minutes into the fight, we were all oom completely. Against a warlock, it's likely that we'd lose since the priest can renew the lock and he can get some mana for DPS. However, I tossed on my PVE gear. Now there were a few times that if they would have fear-locked me, I would have been toast. However, I started to regen mana a LOT faster than they did. Ultimately, this led to us having a lot more healing than the other team did, and we eventually killed them slowly. It makes me feel good to know that having good PVE gear CAN make a difference in arena, even if it's only one match.

Hunter and Priest 2v2, A good match? Or a death wish?

Gullkurack and I have been doing 2v2 PVP for a long time. We really only get 10 matches in a week, but it's been for a large number of weeks. I think we're starting to get to know each other very well and how to complement each other.

Last night we had a frustrating night. Our first game was against a rogue hunter. They burst me down and had me stun locked just about the entire first 15 seconds. Cheap Shot, Kidney Shot, Intimidation, Blind at 20%, one shot for the kill.

Then we went up against a warrior pally three times. Each time there was nothing we could really do to win. Viper sting doesn't work, because pallies can dispel them. Frost traps work against the paladin after they trinket out of one and bubble out of another. But by then I'm usually dead.

I do a pretty good job of kiting a warrior usually. I stay mounted as long as I can. Usually he ends up charging Gully and then coming after me for a zerker charge. If I could stay away from him indefinitely, then we'd be fine. The problem is, eventually the paladin will stun me and the warrior will catch up. Then I'm toast. The warrior gets hamstring on me. Even if I trinket out of it, he'll zerker charge me again and hamstring again. Then, if the warrior is doing a sick amount of damage (most are), I can't heal through it. I can't fear the warrior away because of a warrior's amazing anti-fear abilities. So I'm stuck with a mac truck pounding away at me, while my healing is 50% gimped.

Paladins have a much easier time itemizing for PVP. I have excellent PVP gear. I have 10K HP, 300 resilience, and a 9K mana pool. Paladins always have over 10K mana, and they have plate, so they are much better against a warrior/rogue/hunter survivability-wise.

So I'm totally frustrate with being a priest last night. Very depressed.

However, I read world of ming articles all the time. I read this one this morning: http://www.worldofming.com/?p=541

It's an article about a dwarf priest and dwarf hunter doing exceptionally well in arena. Now unfortunately, I'm not a dwarf. This makes me vulnerable to poisons and fears, which are a huge part of PVP. However, the warrior/pally combo can be beaten by a good hunter/priest combo, according to them. I have yet to see how personally. They are saying that we can do it if Blessing of Freedom is dispelled, and the warrior is Frost Trapped the whole time. I still don't see how this makes the whole Hamstring into Berzerker charge a non-issue. Maybe it isn't a non issue, but one that needs to be looked at in more detail. Nevertheless, it gives me hope. Gully, we need to get you a pet that poisons! That way your viper sting can't be removed.

Holy Nova and Lightwell - Worth 1 Point?

I had an excellent discussion with Yimii concerning priest talents. She brought a lot of things back into my brain for me to keep in mind. I don't think I'll be respeccing anytime soon, but for next time, I'll keep it in mind.

A player only gets 51 talent points to use or abuse. Talents are truly where a player gets to customize their character. They can completely change who they are through their talents, and what their role should be. It's amazing to me to think of how important some of these talents are. I was thinking about it one day, how truly impossible it would be to have no talents at all and to see how the game would end up. There are too many essential talents though to even consider this.

As such, it would seem that you can't waste a single point. Even one point can make a huge difference in one's game plan.

Yimii's point was that Holy Nova and Lightwell are so situational, why even take them? Holy Nova is incredibly mana intensive, and it really doesn't do all that much. Lightwell is also very situational...I admit I really only use it for Attumen and Maiden, and we don't even really "need" it for these fights. SO why should I waste my talents on them? Instead of getting Holy Nova, I could get an extra 1% chance to crit on my holy spells. Instead of getting Lightwell, I could get 10% mana reduction on Prayer of Healing and Prayer of Mending. So why do I get them?

I think the reason is for utility. There are certain situations where there is no alternative but to use Holy Nova. Let's redefine what sucks about Holy Nova:
1. It's mana inefficient
2. It doesn't do very much damage.
3. It's mana inefficient
4. Like any other AOE spell, it breaks crowd control easily.
5. It's VERY mana inefficient.

However, there are times when it becomes very useful.
1. Priests have NO AOE otherwise. While mana inefficient, it can become useful if the mage dies and you absolutely need some AOE. Sure you won't be killing guys with 5K HP, but you can kill some things with 1K HP, like bugs and snakes. Holy Nova is huge in a BG or arena against a hunter that knows that snake trap means death for a priest trying to cast anything. Holy Nova those suckers and they are dead.

2. It's a spammable instantcast spell. Sure it's mana inefficient, but if you're trying to kite something, and your Renew is on you already, and your shield and POM are on cooldown, you don't have much of a choice. Holy Nova is your only other option (unless you have Circle of Healing, but no one has that.)

3. It does no threat. There are plenty of times when a mob does AOE, and I know threat is an issue. Prayer of Healing is a great spell, but it becomes an agro machine if you use it and everyone needs healing. Holy Nova is a way to heal everyone a little and generate no threat at all.

These three things make it worthwhile to me.

On to Lightwell, which will be shorter.

First of all, I need to remember to use it more often on trash pulls, and not just for bosses. I've been running a lot with Patricles lately, and tossing a Lightwell his way is just like Nermal or Murien tossing an innervate my way. He can refill his health and mana and I don't need to waste my mana healing him. Another nice thing it's used for is a DPS rogue who knows that just before he dies, he needs to get away and bandage. Usually bandages only go so far. A lightwell + bandage can usually fill a rogue up. This is why Maiden fight is very useful to have a Lightwell in. Healers don't have to worry as much with the melee classes.

As such, I personally feel that these spells are worth spending 2 of my valuable points. I'm not losing anything completely critical, and I'm getting some utility out of them. I hope I can keep thinking about every one of my talents and their value, because things change as people get different gear even. If I get more +crit, I may think about putting points in Inspiration. Until then, I'm content the way I am.

Why not go Disc?

I was asked this by Patricles a little while back. I'm not positive if he was referring to PVP, but I decided to take a serious look. What I found was I suppose not completely startling to me, but I was amazed at how much healing I would probably lose.

I would lose the following if I went 41/20/0

+5% Spirit
Improved Death
25% of my Spirit giving me +damage and healing (buffed around 150)
10% of healing increased (before +healing applies, but it's still around +200 healing on my GHeal)
6% chance on Greater Heal, Flash Heal, or Binding Heal to have a free next Greater Heal, Flash Heal, and Binding Heal (this is how I base my regen periods for boss fights, and is probably the most critical of all these points.)
Lightwell
An additional 12% of my +healing added to Greater Heal, and an additional 6% added to Flash Heal.

That's a lot of healing. My heals would probably be 80% of the size that they are now without all of that above. What would I gain? Mostly stuff for PVP and lolsmite. While I enjoy a good lolsmite build, right now I'm focused on my healing in Karazhan. Back in Molten Core, it wasn't a big deal for 1/40th of the raid to be an offspec. Now, being 10% or 6% of a group makes me feel far more important and essential. Sorry disc, I knew thee once, but I love my PVE spec.

Healing Intense Fights - Out of Practice?

Now that we're complete with the Theorycraft series (you won't see the last of the Theorycraft) I can start commenting on where I'm headed. I just hit exalted with the Aldor today, so now I can make the better spell thread, and get the better shoulder enchant. I'm also 4 days away from the final piece of Primal Mooncloth. That'll be nice.

So being 4 days and 15 Primal Lifes away from an additional 54 +healing, 5 stam, and 1 mp5 (losing 12 int and 7 spirit) is nice. This may seems like a marginal upgrade, but the 3 piece Primal Mooncloth bonus will also add approximately 25 mp5 (5% of 500 MP5 outside of FSR). This will be HUGE.

It's a good thing too, because healing today in Karazhan was ROUGH. OK, I admit, we downed Nightbane, Prince, and Illhoof successfully. We one shotted Nightbane, who really isn't all that hard surprisingly. Then we wiped again and again on Prince and Illhoof, until we had a little luck in both cases and got them down.

I have the feeling I know what made the difference between tonight and other nights. No Murien. Seriously, he's that important to our group. We survived without him, but it was tough. I went through 3 mana pots for the successful Prince attempt, and was OOM and let Wynri die at 1%. I went through a mana pot for the last successful attempt on Illhoof, which we were helped through because Yimii was sacrificed three times and Iceblocked out of 2 of them.

Nermal is an excellent healer for being a moonkin. Akime is a good healer for being enhancement specced. Orelon is out of practice a little. But we made it through with their quality healing, despite them not being totally specced that way.

As a result of my being the only specced healer, it was very mana intensive. It got me thinking that I really need to look hard about my methods of getting mana back. Chuckles is awesome, but that's a 5 min cooldown. I love my trinkets, especially my Darkmoon card when it procs. But I think I need 2 trinkets that I have to proc for mana. Random chance just isn't enough for reliability. Mana on demand is what I need.

So I'm looking really hard at the Shade's trinket. It rewards me for spamming spells. The more I cast, the more MP5 I get back. I have enough shorter cast spells to make good use of it. If I cast 10 spells in the 20 second window, that's 210 MP5 for 20 seconds. That's a grand total of approximately 1260 mana since for the original 20 seconds you're getting around half of the regen. That's a lot of mana on demand.

So here's the cool part. I have a trinket that rewards me for not casting at all. This would give me a trinket to reward me for casting a ton. If I have them both on, depending on the situation, it would be nice to have them both available.

The darkmoon card has done well for me, but I hope soon I can retire it and get something that I can use on demand.

Caster DPS - An analysis of crit vs. +damage, DPS of a given spell, and more

Last night Rubix and I went into a journey of trying to decide how much crit rating is worth how much +damage. In the end, we made a spreadsheet of how you can determine what a +damage is worth to you, and what a crit rating is worth.

The spreadsheet is here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pcYUlbKT9HT8hBLLK_njQXQ

All you need to do is view it (I think you may need a gmail address to view it...they may have changed it) download it to Excel, and use it. It's a lot simpler than the one I made for healing long ago.

Some quick notes:
1. This will tell you how much +damage is worth crit rating, but solely based on DPS purposes. It's usually safer to go with +damage, because it's more reliable. If you crit a lot at the beginning of the fight, you run the risk of pulling agro. Additionally, you may have a dry spell of no crits when you really need some damage. This being said, it's up to your discretion.

2. This does not take into account mana efficiency or threat efficiency. It is solely based on DPS maximization.

3. If you have any questions about it, or feel we should post something in the TN forums, let me know. If you find any errors let me know (I think it works alright.)