War-Crafting

Game mechanics, add-ons, play styles, guides, explanations and how-to’s.

Prayer of Mending Generates Threat for Priest (Same with LB, Earth Shield)

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Yeah, you read that right. Threat is now being slightly changed. As it stands right now, Prayer of Mending when activated generates threat for the player it is on. This change now means that every time we cast Prayer of Mending and it activates, threat is generated for us.

The same effect applies to Lifebloom and Earth Shield for their respective classes. Wonder what the Paladin equivalent is.

Source: This blue post

PS, the life of a blogger. One window open on an RSS feed for blue posts, one open in GMail for contacts, one open in Twitter for breaking news and one on course notes for my exam Monday :(.

EDIT: And one messenger window open for my favorite enhancement shammy to fast track me interesting stuff!

Regrowth 3.0: The New Hotness

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It’s no secret that the nerf bat has hit restoration druids hard. Perhaps it was even a rabid nerf bat!

However, we are left with one shining ability whose awesomeness might just help fill the gap left by a formerly useful Lifebloom and the once-OP Flourish, the much-overlooked Regrowth.

This spell, once a joke, shines in 3.0 and beyond because of a perfect storm of talents that all combine to buff it into a surprisingly spammable Flash of Light equivalent. So it seems that priests are going to mix Flash Heal into their rotations now, but we healers of the leafy persuasion will be going one step farther. Regrowth will go from being an extra hot on a tank to a high-frequency spell for druids, no matter what their healing assignment.

Talents that Affect Regrowth

Improved Regrowth
Living Seed
Moonglow
Nature’s Splendor

With Improved Regrowth, and with Natural Perfection for extra credit, Regrowth simply crits all the time. Add that to the crit on level 80 gear, and a crit on Regrowth will be practically guaranteed. Living Seed will almost always be active for us, which is an exciting prospect.

In addition the Glyph of Regrowth makes the spell even more spammable. I suspect that we’d spam it anyway, but the Glyph sweetens the deal by upping the effectiveness of the spell when the hot is still active. When I use the spell now in live, I’m likely to reapply it on my tank just before the old one drops. This isn’t exactly spamming, but I’d still be getting the effect from the glyph even with my current playstyle. And guess what! If we’re not spamming Regrowth, the extra duration of the hot portion that we’ll gain from Nature’s Splendor will make it easy to reapply before the effect wears off.

It does leave the future of Nourish, druids’ new level 80 heal, in doubt. The devs don’t seem to realize they’ve created a lackluster competitor for Regrowth.

Yes, Ghostcrawler. If values stay the same, Nourish won’t make it onto my spell bar.

Regrowth is simply going to be awesome post 3.0, at 70 or 80, with or without the Glyph of Regrowth. However, most of the druid community believes that a nerf to Regrowth or its Glyph is upcoming–I sure hope not, because we need at least one spell to cheer about!

My take on Guardian Spirit

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Did a quick Skill Mastery: Guardian Spirit writeup based on the various experiences I had from a raiding stand point (Find it on WoW Insider). Check it out! Would love to encourage some more discussion from non-betaers and betaers.

At school, can’t write much now. WTB powerpoint lecture slides that don’t suck.

Healing Naxxramus – Loatheb (10 man)

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loatheb

Loatheb looks slightly complicated but after a few tries becomes easy to understand. It requires people to look outwards and pay attention. You only need to have one tank on him for the entire encounter.

Gimmicks

Everyone gets a 16 second debuff that reduces healing by 100%. After that, you have a 4 second window to heal players up before the debuff gets reapplied.

Secondly, something else that makes this fight that much easier is a different debuff called Fungal Creep. There are going to be periodic mobs called Spores that will spawn. When you destroy them, they give 5 players the Fungal Creep debuff.  It increases your critical chance by 50% and your spells cause no threat. The Spores die relatively quick and should take no more than 4 spells before they spontaneously combust.

Positioning

Set up shop on the central platform.

Healing Makeup

Matt’s group:

  • Resto Shaman
  • Holy Paladin
  • CoH Priest (me!)

You’ll definitely want an AoE healer for this fight. Try to time your heal around the warnings that appear. We tasked the Paladin to do nothing but heal the main tank on this fight. The Resto Shaman would heal group 2 while I was parked in group 1. The mechanics to Chain Heal has changed slightly so that if you target the initial player with the spell, it will only jump to other party members instead of going raid wide. With the Glyph, it will bounce to 4 targets total.

3 seconds before the debuff wears off, light up a Prayer of Healing. You want to time your heal so that it lands just as it wears off and it sets you up for 2 or even 3 Circle of Healing taps on the 2nd group.

What about the debuff phase?

At this stage, all you need to worry about is wanding and doing DPS. Keep an eye on your mana. Be sure you don’t DPS more than you have to. Your Power Word: Shield will still work. Don’t hesitate to throw that up there whenever you get the chance on your tank.

Changelog

9/23/08 – Original post

Guardian Spirit Boosted to 50%

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Just in case you missed it, here’s the blue post.

Great improvement, in my opinion! I’m writing a WI Skill Mastery post later on about this tacky spell after getting used to it in the various Wrath raids. I’ll place a link here later on when it’s up and live for you to take a gander at.