Step by step: Dishing out Pain as a Priest

Last week I plugged dwarfpriest.com in my weekly digest. Yesterday, she published an excellent flowchart detailing actions for both shadow priests and holy priests concerned with dealing damage.

Players who play with me know I’m utterly hopeless in dealing damage in any kind of environment PvP or PvE. I just might actually have a prayer of a chance in levelling once WotLK is released.

“Playing as a shadow priest in a raid or group environment largely depends on keeping your damage over time (DoT) spells up on mobs while minding the cooldowns of some of your direct damage spells. This is called spell juggling.”

If you’re a shadow priest who wants to perfect your game a little bit or a holy priest who wants to at least deliver a bloody nose to that player that’s ganking you, give this lengthy piece a read. It goes to show that you learn something new everyday.

Healers Spill: White Lies we Tell Tanks All the Time

Wiping sucks. It’s going to happen to any Guild of any size at any point. But there are good wipes and then there are bad wipes. I’ve caused my share of bad wipes (but not in my current Guild, obviously, because I know some of them read my blog). Tanks are delicate creatures and have to be treated in a certain way. Even though some tanks might be shall we say aggro challenged, it is better if we merely nod and admit fault even though it isn’t really ours so that the run can be finished. I’ve seen tanks get emo when their ability is questioned and leave the group hanging. Then the group spends a good hour in LFG trying to find a tank to finish out Heroic Slave Pens. Sheesh!

Anyways, I know I’m safe because I don’t think a lot of tanks read my blog (I think).

“Sorry, lag”

It happens sometimes. Our connections do hiccup and we go offline. As healers, we often blame our ISP. Every so often, it isn’t the ISPs fault. You see, there’s this new file sharing technology called bittorrent that we as healers might have forgotten to turn off…

“It’s not you, it’s me”

The tank happens to take about 18000 damage within a space of 2 seconds. There’s nothing we can do about it. 2 seconds is enough time for 1 spell. Sometimes we just can’t keep up with the damage with 1 healer. You just absorb so much punishment that you NEED 2 extra bodies to keep you alive and going. There’s no way around it. On the other hand, maybe I forgot to use my max rank heals.

“It happens to a lot of tanks”

Tanks are used to dying you say? Well, yeah. All tanks are used to it. They’ve died many times and they’ve got the durability loss to prove it. So what if you died? It’s no big deal. Nos Staminitus is a common affliction that affects many tanks. But don’t worry, there’s a special cure. There’s tons of consumables in the markets designed to help get you up. Er, your health that that is.

“Oh your gear is fine”

You look great! Honest! Even though you can’t seem to withstand several crits or crushings in a row, at least your armor is all shiny and stuff! I guess I’ll have to actually work up a sweat to keep you alive.

“You’re the best tank ever!”

I’ve had to say this on more then one occasion. I swear, some tanks seem to have the largest egos in the world. I guess it’s because they’re needed so often. There are some players in the world who have top end gear and top end weapons. But holy cow they just can’t seem to deliver! And I’m not talking about Taurens, either!

Have you ever lied to your tank? Or even your raid/party? Why and what was the situation?

Special thanks to Trackhoof and others who requested to remain anonymous for their input

PTR Report: Mixing Healing and DPS Items

PTR Report

In the past, I’ve always preached and encouraged players to take loot that’s a minor upgrade for them if no one’s needed it. It appears Blizzard has listened. After checking out the changes on MMO Champion again, something struck me as odd. The best items in the game now appear to be from vendors instead of just as boss drops. The only way to acquire them is to upgrade pieces from boss kills with a Sun Mote.

Confusing? Let me try again.

Old School

You can skimp out on gear from Karazhan and then pick it up at Gruul’s. I’ve long often thought about different ways I could get the best loot faster. For example, in SSC, I would skip out on the T5 legs for 30+ DKP and save it for the T5 helm on Vashj. I’d let the competing classes around me get their leg tokens first because I figured once they all get it, sooner or later I’d get mine at an inexpensive rate. It makes sense because our Guild would kill Fathom Lord more often then they would Kill Vashj.

New School

There’s a bunch of awesome phat loot from Sunwell. However, not all of it’s immediately accessible. There’s an awesome leggings called Pantaloons of Calming Strife. As you can see, it’s meant for Priests. There’s also another pair of leggings called Pantaloons of Growing Strife. That pair is catered towards DPS.

But here’s the catch.

For DPS casters, you have to get a sunmote AND Pantaloons of Calming Strife first before you can go to a vendor and “upgrade” it. Surely those aren’t the only DPS caster pants in Sunwell. But as a player in a Guild using DKP, I can no longer enjoy my monopoly on healing cloth.

Oh well. C’est La Vie!

How Fast can you Kill Curator?

Curator speed

One of the funnest encounters for me in the game is when I get to see big 4-digit numbers scroll up through my screen. As a healer, I hardly ever see that. So it’s definitely a pleasant sight. I posted a cropped version of a kill shot I took of Curator several weeks ago because we killed him in a ridiculously fast amount of time. My personal goal is to see this guy dead before the 2 minute mark. If you’ve ever played Mario Kart, you’ll remember that the game had a function called Time Trial. I wish WoW had something like that. Then maybe we could all get funky titles based on how fast we blitz an encounter.

So how fast can you kill Curator?

Group Makeup

    Protection Paladin (Main tank)
    DPS Warrior
    Feral Druid
    Enhancement Shaman
    Hunter
    Resto Druid
    Warlock
    Mage
    Holy Paladin
    Resto Shaman

General Tips

  • Blow cooldowns at the 10 second to evocate mark
  • Drop fire elementals at the base of Curator
  • DPS down the sparks until the last one, then let it free. Group should be geared enough to withstand 15 seconds of that free spark.

Oh and you know the cardinal rule of bragging and SS or it didn’t happen. Photoshopping doesn’t count either, you crazy people!

Are You Kidding Me?!

Have you seen the test realm notes? Can you believe that they’re doing this to me? This is absolutely outrageous! All that hardwork and then they decide to step on everything I’ve accomplished. I invested so much time and effort in learning my skills!

Of course, I am obviously referring to:

Monstrous Kaliri have learned how to chase players going straight up.

Now I’m really screwed in dailies! Can I get at least chaff or flares or some kind of countermeasures or SOMETHING? Sometimes, I wear my Benediction staff in the hopes that the sparkles that fly out the back end are enough to blind those friggin’ birds.