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Going Priestly in Patch 2.4: Things Adam Holisky of WoW Insider Forgot to Mention

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priest-forgot 
Photo courtesy of Carey Tilden

A couple of days ago, WoW Insider had a quick summary article on Priests and what they can look to expect in 2.4. Although Adam Holisky was able to nail some of updates that were made to the Priests, there were a few things that he might have glazed over. But don’t worry! Matticu^ will save the day!

The Technical

  • The amount of players that can be Mass Dispelled has dOubled. Unfortunately, I don’t believe the radius has improved in size any. At least during phase 2 of the Zul’Jin fight, you’ll only need one Priest to Mass Dispel now.
  • Power Infusion: Perhaps this is the one change that could very well fly under the radar. Discipline Priests are still considered a rarity in raids. Unfortunately, it can’t be stacked with other haste-like effects (IE, Heroism) but with the proper coordination, I do think it can be chained one after the other for longer periods of heavy fire power. Is it possible to PI a mage, then pop Heroism, then blow Icy Veins or some such? To my Knowledge, there are no drawbacks or debuffs. Lucky mage that would be, I think.
  • Silent Resolve: Nice. It now affects more spells. Too bad most Priests I know don’t spec into Silent Resolve. Why? Because real PvE Priests know how to manage their aggro. If you’re PvPing, I totally understand.
  • Kirk broke this news first courtesy of an email he received. Now I may be Asian but my math skills are T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E. He’s calculated that with the rigt talent points in the Disc tree (namely, Enlightenment) there is a potential for 33% mana regen to continue in combat.
  • I notice I don’t have to drink as often during raids. Before, I topped out at around 296 MP5 while casting with consumables. Now I hit about 340ish with full ‘onsumables.

The Gearical

  • When (and I do mean when, because I know everyone’s going to want to hit exalted) you manage to grind your way up, there’s a nice neck piece just waiting for you. It’s the Shattered Sun Pendant of Restoration. It goes for a c0ol 23g. The only stats it has is Stamina. So you don’t get Int or Spirit. It’s also got some healing on it. For some reason, I smell Holy PaladiN trinket, but I could be wrong. Anyway, it has a chance on heal to proc a different effect depending on whether you are Ald0r or Scryer. The Aldor proc is known as Light’s Salvation which increases healing done by 220 over 10 seconds. The Scryer proc is known as Arcane Surge which instantly heals a target for 618 – 682 (Source comments: WoWDB, WoWHead, WoWWiki). This item is listed as level 115 which is supposed to be on par with Shining Chain of the Afterworld. I’m going to assume that there is a hidden coldown of some sort, but I have yet to find out what it is. I won’t be replacing Lord Sanguinar’s Claim, that’s for sure.
  • Finally there is now a purchasable blue 1H for freshman 70 Priests to use. You won’t have to rely on the auction house to pick up the Essence Focuser. For a nominal fee of four daily quest rewards (43g), you can have K’iru’s Presage.
  • Vial of the Sunwell. Obtainable in Heroic Magisters Terrace. It’s got nice MP5 on it, and it’s a guaranteed 2000 heal every 2 minutes. I’m not too sure about this one, to be quite honest.
  • Start saving up or pumping out Primal Mooncloth. You’ll need it for both the Robe of Eternal Light and Hands of Eternal Light. They require 20 Primal Mooncloh and 18 Primal Mooncloth respectively in order to craft. The items are bind on pickup. Sweet deal for the lucky Sunwell Raiders.

The Face Melters

  • With the changes made to haste, I think Shadow Priests are going to take a good hard look at that as a stat to invest in since it alters global cooldowns. Hey! Shadow Priests! Is haste changes good or bad? Educate me so I can educate everyone else! I don’t have an idea!

No doubt I’ll have forgotten a few important other important things. Suffice it to say, this latest patch does have a few things all of us varsity Priests or otherwise can look forward to. Any other substantial, earth shattering changes that raiding Holy Priests might stand to be aware of?

SRETCARAHCNEETHGIETSOPEHTNITIDIHI?ELZZUPEHTEVLOSUNAC

Weekly Digest: New Loot, Handling Raid Hangover, 20 Questions with… Matticus?

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What’s Happening in WoW

We killed Gorefiend a week or two back. In the next two weeks, I picked up an Amice of Brilliant Light, Angelista’s Sash, Boots of the Divine Light, and a Cowl of Benevolence. Those are big stamina upgrades for me. I rotated out my wings in favour of chain heads on my shoulders. With the exception of the Amice, the boots and cowl have been gemmed and enchanted to provide an additional boost of stamina in the event that extra health is needed in favor of healing. Now I’ve got two sets at my disposal depending on the circumstances.

Picked up Vindicator boots for my Ret. Paladin. This brings up my hit rating to 97. Think that’s a bit much? I’ll have to find someone with the Surefooted enchant to place on them boots. No point in putting on Boar’s Speed or Cat’s Swiftness since I already have the talent speed increase.

What’s Happening with the Blog

I’m working on a new version of my blogroll that I mentioned yesterday. Maybe just some more cosmetic changes and I’ll leave it at that. I’m at a complete loss as to how to even organize the entire thing.

Oh, and I apparently hit the 500 post plateau a few days ago. Here’s to more posts for the rest of the year =)!

Latest Blog Posts

5 Barriers of a Raid Healer

My 5 part series for this month looks at the problems that new raid healers may come across.

  1. Indecisivity is Bad
  2. Dealing With Criticism
  3. Recognizing Tunnel Vision
  4. Handling Overconfidence

20 Questions by Matticus

The week before, I interviewed the blogging queen herself, TJ. Last week, Kestrel flipped it around and interviewed me.

Past Hits

Past columns I have written that still hold true to this day.

One Step Closer to the Blogroll Answer

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I’ve been working on this little project of mine for the past few days and I think it’s time for me to display some of it to you guys. At the moment, my blogroll consists of nothing more than a select few blogs that rotate upon refresh. How my new look blogroll will work is that it will examine the feed URL of any blog and pull the last 5 recent headlines to appear on that blog and display them. You might’ve seen something similar from pages like Alltop or popurls. I won’t deny that I was definitely inspired by those two sites. I’m debating setting up something similar purely for WoW. Of course, there’s several obstacles in the way of that (how the heck do I sort these, how do I determine who gets listed and who gets the shaft, etc.)

But for the time being, you can find a working version of it up live on my blog.

I also need a name for it. It’s not really a blog roll, really. Matt’s ‘Marks? Allwow? Hah, right. Any ideas on names would be appreciated.

Oh by the way, those of you with your blogs listed there, let me know if you want me to take it down. I probably should have asked for permission first but if you do have a problem with me posting nothing more than your recent headlines that link to your blog then I will take it down with no questions asked.
Siha made a nice point that sorting by class may not be the right thing to do as there are numerous bloggers who write cross class. I might just give up and not worry about any kind of categories at all and just throw everything up as a mixed bag.

So, thoughts? Good idea? Bad idea? Could be executed better? Any coding wizards out there that might be interested? Design enthusiasts?

Dealing With Raid Hangover in 3 Easy Steps

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“I can accept failure, but I can’t accept not trying.”
Michael Jordan

Does this sound familiar to you? You spend some time cutting through progression content. After a couple of extra shots, those bosses are considered farm content. But here’s the kicker and I guarantee you that it’s happened to every guild at one point or another.

One week, you find yourself wiping on a farm boss repeatedly.

Dealing with raid hangover is crucial because if it is not dealt with, the confidence your Guild has in it’s own ability is going to waiver. If it continues, it’s going to lead to Guild members questioning the Guild itself. The worse case scenario would be those same members leaving the Guild altogether.

And no one wants to lose players because of something that could’ve been prevented.

Step 1: Go back to the basics

Some players take shortcuts during the encounter. They do things that they would not have done if it was a progression boss. On Netherspite, for instance, we’d find ourselves wiping after a couple of phase 2’s because of badly timed netherbreaths. They would wreck our raid and we would give up after 2 attempts and move on to Chess and Prince. Keep in mind that this is just an alt Karazhan run supported by a few T6 players. Naturally most of us were upset because this was a boss that we should not have any trouble with in terms of execution. We eventually changed up our play by running to the far side of the room during phase 2 instead of staying in for his breaths because it was clear that we could not handle it for whatever reason.

We fell back to a strategy that we used the first time we learned the fight many months ago. Even though it took longer to kill Netherspite, we still got the job done.

Step 2: Reassurance and motivation

Supportive words can go a long way in a raid that’s pushing the limit. Your raid leader should be emotionally in tune with the raid to be able to detect the frustration they have and the words to say in order to help encourage the raid to keep going. Simple words like:

  • We did this once, we can do it again
  • Keep your chin up
  • Remember all the phat loot that drops off this guy *links random loot*

On the other hand, I tend to rely on other methods of motivation. If you can push the right buttons, you never know what kind of results you get. In my case, I get super annoyed when my healing ability is called into question. But that’s when I curse loudly and shut up the rest of the raid by being clutch. Coaches use this all the time to stir up their team in order to get them going. The same can be said true of raids. But you can only berate a couple of players so far before they get outright annoyed and leave the raid saying that it’s not worth their time to wipe AND get criticized. I suggest using that sparingly and even then only on players you’ve known for a while.

Step 3: Be like Nike and just do it

You know what you have to do on this boss. You’ve gone over your roles a dozen times with other players and leaders. You’ve killed the boss already and you know it’s no fluke. You have the tools to get through the encounter successfully. Whether or not the boss dies in style is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if the raid is down to 15 players or 5 players. The perception of a raiding Guild lies in their ability to kill bosses. No one’s going to care that it took three healers, a main tank, and that geared Shadow Priest who doesn’t speak an ounce of English to kill Kael. The only thing other players will remember is the fact that you downed a boss.

So what are you waiting for?