Priest Discussion

Discussion about the Priest class.

Guest Post: A Micro Level Look at a Priest’s Trinket Usage

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guest-post This is a guest post from Calogero

Hey all , this is Calogero, level 80 discipline priest from Lothar. A little about me before I begin: I am currently raiding with ‘Legion’, a guild that has pushed through all of Naxx 10 up to Sapphiron in the past two weeks. My raid experience includes everything up to AQ 40 in vanilla, up through Black Temple in BC, and now through most of Naxx and Sartharion in WOTLK. I actually only started playing the priest about 3 months ago, when a friend asked me if I wanted to roll on his server (Lothar). Outside of WoW, I’m a 20 year old guy from New York, I go to school and do data management for a hospital.

Topic of the night: Trinkets

I recently picked up the Spirit-World Glass from Gothik in Naxx-10 and the Majestic Dragon Figurine from Sartharion-10. These two can make a wicked regeneration combo that should not be overlooked for longer fights. Any and every spellcast will trigger the Majestic Dragon figurine. Cheating the 5SR with this trinket can regenerate a lot of mana. In addition, Inner focus triggers the figurine, and all ticks of the following spells will trigger the figurine: Hymn of Hope, Penance, and Mind Sear.

So, in a perfect world, to regenerate the most mana, I’d do the following, assuming I had 10 full ticks from the figurine:

FYI: O5SR means out of the 5 second rule

Don’t cast for 5 seconds, then pop Spirit-World Glass. Stop casting for 4 more seconds, cast Inner Focus, which renews the Figurine tick. Wait another 9 seconds, cast Penance, which renews the figurine tick 3 times. Wait another 9 seconds, cast Hymn of hope, which gets 8% of my mana back, and the last tick will renew the figurine, which gives another 10 seconds of extra mana, O5SR. If this was at all possible to pull off uninterrupted, I could get 12 ticks of mana regen O5SR, which, at my current gear level, gives me about 1300 Mp5 when raid buffed with the Spirit-World Glass in action, and a little less than 1000 without it. This all would come out to around 13000 mana over 60 seconds.

Matt’s included a little diagram to help illustrate this better:

trinket-timeline

Obviously, in a raid situation, it’s near impossible to get all of these off in a row. This is where trust comes in. If you have another trustworthy healer or two, let them know, and see if they can keep an extra eye out. See how much of this you can play with and manipulate to keep yourself out of the 5 second rule, while keeping the Figurine ticks up. You can throw a shield, renew, PoM, and pain suppression on the tank before you start. The penance will heal your target for around 9k health on average. It’s very possible to get a few ticks off if you’re prepared.

Gearing Your Fresh Level 80 Holy Priest: Matt’s Recommendations

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Here it is, Priests. This is the list you’ve been waiting for. Remember, this isn’t the absolutely best gear you can get at level 80 for pre-raiding. This is the fastest way to get gear you can get at level 80. I’ll provide you with quest options and purchase options. Cheap enchants and select gems will be at the bottom.

The goal here is to get your Priest geared as quick as possible without relying on the RNGness of instance grinding (or at least, running them as little as possible). Means it’s going to rely on BoEs and Quest rewards although I will provide a few choice recommendations for some instances.

Head

Cowl of the Vindictive Captain (81 Spellpower): It’s the quest reward from doing the Utgarde Pinnacle quest: Vengeance Be Mine! Lack of Spirit on this one, but doubles as a potential DPS helm. No Crit either.

Frostsavage Cowl (81 Spellpower): Same amount of Spellpower as above. Contains PvP stats like resilience. Not completely optimized for PvE. Does have Crit. Opt for the cowl if possible.

Neck

Titanium Spellshock Necklace (49 Spellpower): First piece of gear with a socket! Epic quality. Downside is that it could cause a dent in the wallet. No Spirit on this one either. Decent amount of Spellpower and crit.

Amulet of the Crusade (40 Spellpower, 10 MP5): Remember those Scarlet Crusade you banged up back in Dragonblight? Here’s the Admiral. Comes from the Icecrown chain quest: The Admiral Revealed.

Shoulders

Mantle of Electrical Charges (60 Spellpower, 51 Spirit): Comes from doing the instance quest in Halls of Lightning: General Bjarngrim.

Back

Wispcloak (59 Spellpower, 20 MP5): Craftable by tailors. The tailor must have run all the normal dungeons and defeated all the end bosses in order to unlock this recipe. Doesn’t have Spirit but has a decent amount of MP5.

Shroud of Dedicated Research (46 Spellpower): Purchasable from Archmage Alvareaux. He’s the Kirin Tor quarter master. Must be Honored with them in order to purchase.

Chest

Moonshroud Robe (105 Spellpower, 89 Spirit): Ouch. Just wait until you see the mats required for this bad boy.

  • 8 Moonshroud
  • 6 Bolt of Imbued Frostweave
  • 1 Eternium Thread
  • 1 Frozen Orb

Moonshroud’s going to be the tough one. It’s going to take Tailors around 16 days from start to finish assuming they blow their own cool downs. You can cut it down to 8 if you do some tactical trading here and there by exchanging cooldowns with other players.

Bauble-Woven Gown (81 Spellpower, 68 Spirit): Comes from the other Utgarde Pinnacle quest Junk in My Trunk. Great alternative to the Moonshroud Robe if you don’t feel like breaking out the coin bag.

Wrists

Ancestral Sinew Wristguards (50 Spellpower, 27 Spirit): Slap on the Wyrmrest Accord tabard and start grinding your rep with them as much as possible. Contains a nifty Blue socket for more delicious Spirit gems.

Gloves

Moonshroud Gloves (76 Spellpower, 67 Spirit): This is the second and final piece of the Moonshroud “set”. Not as expensive as the Robe, but can be pricey:

  • 4 Moonshroud
  • 4 Bolt of Imbued Frostweave
  • 1 Eternium Thread
  • 1 Frozen Orb

Gloves of the Time Guardian (60 Spellpower, 51 Spirit): Comes from the Caverns of Time quest: A Royal Escort. Are you prepared for the “Arthas yapping” boss? Again, another cheapsauce alternative.

Belt

Fishy Cinch (60 Spellpower, 51 Spirit): Make friends with your fish pals, the Oracles. There’s a few dailies you can do start with there. I don’t have the time to work on doing dailies with them yet.

Deep Frozen Cord (61 Spellpower): Plan B is to just hook yourself up with a tailor and make this BoE purchase. No Spirit. Has some crit, however.

Legs

Frostmoon Pants (61 Spellpower, 68 Spirit): Finally, daddy’s got a new pair of pants! This one’s from our tailoring friends. Unfortunately, it does eat some expensive materials.

  • 1 Moonshroud
  • 6 Bolt of Imbued Frostweave
  • 4 Iceweb Spider Silk
  • 1 Eternium Thread

Feet

Aurora Slippers (60 Spellpower, 51 Spirit): Like the Frostmoon Pants above, this will eat up one of your precious Moonshrouds. Again, see your local tailor and skinners.

  • 1 Moonshroud
  • 4 Bolt of Imbued Frostweave
  • 2 Heavy Borean Leather
  • 4 Iceweb Spider Silk
  • 1 Eternium Thread

Rings

Ring of Temerity (54 Spellpower): A blue zero mana regen ring coming from doing the Oculus quest: The Struggle Persists.

Lion’s Head Ring (55 Spellpower, 20 Spirit): Decent spellpower and spirit from running the Gundrak quest: For Posterity.

Weapons (Staff)

Malygos’ Favor (314 Spellpower, 95 Spirit): This is the normal mode staff drop from the Oculus off the last boss.

Sempiternal Staff (314 Spellpower, 53 Spirit): Drops off that Infinite Dragonflight bad boy Chrono-Lord Epoch in Caverns of Time: Stratholme.

Staff of Draconic Combat (408 Spellpower, 69 Spirit): See if you can get your hands on that beauty. It’s a Heroic drop from the Cache of Eregos in the Oculus (last boss). It’s the bigger brother to Malygos’ Favor.

Weapons (1 Hand)

Flameheart Spell Scalpel (355 Spellpower): It feels really weird to use a weapon with hit rating on it due to the waste stats. But there aren’t any alternative daggers from quests or vendors. Purchaseable at Kirin Tor – Revered from Archmage Alvareaux

Netherbreath Spellblade (355 Spellpower, 26 Spirit): However, if you run Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle and get lucky with Skadi the Ruthless, he just might drop this sword-like dagger for you. It makes me look dashing on my Dwarf.

Gavel of the Brewing Storm (355 Spellpower): More reason to make friends with or scaly friends. The Wyrmrest mace is purchasable after hitting Revered. Fail with lack of mana regeneration, however.

Weapons (Off hand)

Handbook of Obscure Remedies (59 Spellpower, 38 Spirit): For the low cost of 25 Emblems of Heroism, you can pick up this sweet offhand from the Emblem vendor.

Wands

Purifying Torch (26 Spellpower): Argent Crusade, at Revered, will give you access to their torch.

Wand of Ahnkahet (33 Spellpower): If you feel comfortable, run Heroic Ahn’Kahet and try your luck at getting this wand.

Rings

Ringlet of Repose (43 Spellpower): All you gotta do is run Halls of Stone. It’ll drop off of Maiden’s little sister who happens to also be a Maiden.

Titanium Spellshock Ring (49 Spellpower): This epic level ring has zero mana regen but it does have a gem slot. You can opt to stuff in a regen gem of some sort or resort to it a spellpower red gem to ramp up your amperage. Up to you.

Spectral Seal of the Prophet (51 Spellpower): Head over to Drak’Tharon Keep and toggle it onto Heroic for a challenge. With luck, this will drop off Tharon’ja (Prophet).

Enchanted Wire Stitching (46 Spellpower): Say hello to Meathook! This ring drops in CoT: Stratholme off of Meathook. Don’t worry, you don’t have to set it to Heroic.

Trinkets

Soul Preserver (75 Spellpower): You’re undoubtedly going to run Stratholme a few times. If you’re lucky, you might be able to get this trinket off the end boss. It will certainly help with the mana problems that most Priests have at this stage of the game.

Mercurial Alchemist Stone (59 Spellpower): Alchemists may wish to consider using this stone. It should last them for a while. In theory.

Talisman of Troll Divinity (73 Spirit): A whopping 73 Spirit on one trinket? Hell yes. I was lucky enough to get this on my first run through Drak’Tharon Keep. The use effect will be a big bonus on fights with enrages or massive damage spikes. The net effect is that your target (or targets) should see a bonus to their healing received by ~290. Usable every 2 minutes.

Enchants and Augments

Helm enchant – Arcanum of Blissful Mending: Another reason to knock out the Wyrmrest Temple rep first. Obtainable at Revered.

Shoulder enchant – Lesser Inscription of the Crag: Sons of Hodir provide this one. Scribes need not worry about grinding their rep here. This area is only unlockable after doing a massive (and epic length) chain quest. With enough dailies, Greater Inscription of the Crag becomes an option.

Chest enchants – Greater Mana Restoration would be the call I’d make here. Mats are a bit on the expensive side so make sure you get yourself a decent chest. Enchant Chest – Major Spirit is a decent and cheap enchant to toss onto a blue for the time being until you replace it.

Cloak enchants – If you can afford it, go for the Wisdom cloak enchant. Make sure you have a damn good cloak to go with it. Otherwise, for the low low price of 6 Infinite Dust, you can get a little extra Speed. Tailors get the option of further enchanting their own cloak with Darkglow Embroidery.

Bracer enchants – Superior Spellpower is what I would consider for a top end Wrath level item. I wouldn’t use it on anything less than an epic quality due to the cost of the mats involved. Go ahead and stick on BC level enchants on your blues for the time being.

Glove enchants – Exceptional Spellpower is a (relatively) cheap glove enchant you can toss onto your mitts. Spellpower gets increased by 28.

Belt – Eternal Belt Buckle: Yes, there is an augment for belts. It is not an enchant but it’s not any less important. Hit up your local auction house or blacksmith and make sure you get one of these belt buckles! It adds an extra gem slot to your belt! This could make or break your meta bonus! Get one!

Leg patches – Opt for the Shining Spellthread first. Once you get a real set of pants, upgrade it to a Brilliant Spellthread.

Boot enchants – Greater Spirit is the main boot enchant of choice. For any sort of resist boots, you may wish to opt for Greater Fortitude.

Weapon enchants – Several interesting choices here at your disposal:

  • Exceptional Spellpower: A good starter choice for Priests in terms of economic impact. Should be affordable for most players.
  • Exceptional Spirit: Slap this on a mana regen weapon of your choice. Or even keep it on your main weapon of choice. You can’t go wrong really.
  • Mighty Spellpower: Exceptional’s big brother Mighty increases your spellpower by 63 (compared to the 50 that the big E provides). 13 Spellpower. Can you justify the mats? If you can, go for it. It’s a tough pill to swallow though, early on in Wrath.
  • Major Intellect: Although it’s an old school BC enchant, I’m wondering if it’s worth putting on a high intellect staff for the purposes of mana regen. Perhaps you could macro a weapon switch with Hymn of Hope so that it could provide a little bit more extra juice.

Gems

There’s a lot more options for gem configurations. I’ll list all of the useful ones first.

Red

Runed Scarlet Ruby (19 Spellpower)
Purified Twilight Opal (9 Spirit, 9 Spellpower) Purple gem
Luminous Monarch Topaz (9 Spellpower, 8 Int) Orange gem
Potent Monarch Topaz (9 Spellpower, 8 Crit rating) Orange gem

Blue

Sparkling Sky Sapphire (16 Spirit)
Purified Twilight Opal (9 Spirit, 9 Spellpower) Purple gem
Misty Forest Emerald (8 Spirit, 8 Crit) Green gem
Seer’s Forest Emerald (8 Int, 8 Spirit) Green gem

Yellow

Brilliant Autumn’s Glow (16 Intellect)
Luminous Monarch Topaz (9 Spellpower, 8 Int) Orange gem
Potent Monarch Topaz (9 Spellpower, 8 Crit rating) Orange gem
Misty Forest Emerald (8 Spirit, 8 Crit) Green gem
Seer’s Forest Emerald (8 Int, 8 Spirit) Green gem

Your gem configuration is going to largely depend on the meta you want to go for. You may have to switch to hybrid color gems instead of pure color gems in order to activate it. The general rule of thumb for entry level Priests is to go for mana regeneration and spellpower. This early in the game, you’re going to want to take a hard look at your Spirit and mana regen so that you have the capability to sustain yourself in raids.

Meta

Bracing Earthsiege Diamond (25 Spellpower, 2% Reduced threat)
Ember Skyflare Diamond (25 Spellpower, 2% Intellect)
Insightful Earthsiege Diamond (21 Int, chance to restore mana)
Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond (8 MP5, 3% increased crit healing)

I’ll pick Insightful Earthsiege. Reports say that the proc gives 600 mana. No doubt it has an internal cooldown.

Sources: WoWHead and WoWWiki

Last updated

November 27

The Reality of Healing Heroics and Tips for Holy Priests

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heroics

Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.
– Newt Gingrich

I’ve scheduled a tentative 10 man Naxx on Saturday. We’re projected to have around 8 players that are capable of reaching that level by then. After that, I’ll have no choice but to pug the other 2 slots.

Since I’ve hit 80, I’ve started working my way through a few heroics to try and get some badges.

Let me tell you, it is not easy.

It has been such a long time since I had to work this hard to heal. I have to drink after every pull. Every cooldown needs to be noticed and taken into account. Every spell cast needs to be carefully thought out. I’m sitting at ~470 mana regeneration with a few quest and instance blues. The rest are filled out with T6. There are times when you have no choice between letting a player die to prevent an overall wipe. It’s absolutely tough.

Over the past few days, I had the opportunity to heal Halls of Lightning and the Occulus (on Heroic since they were the dailies). There’s a few things to remember:

  • We don’t outgear the instance: It’s a fresh start for everyone. The playing field has been leveled. I’ve resorted to using consumables to help finish off my old stock of TBC food. This goes the same for tanks.
  • We’re going in blind: We don’t know the instance. I don’t like going into a fight without knowing what I’m up against. I keep WoWhead open and WoWWiki to understand what abilities bosses uses and develop a counter for it. Two things to watch for is debuffs and any special animations on the ground or spells that the bosses use. Watch for the in game boss cues. It’s a hard lesson to learn every time.

One thing that most Priests (or all healers) will find when healing any sort of high end instance is that they’re running out of mana. Don’t forget that it takes more Spirit now then it did back at 70 to reach the same level of mana regen. The amount of Spirit required to reach ~1000 mana regen is much higher then it was at 70.

Here’s a few tricks to help out:

  • Hymn of Hope: It’s an 8 second channel spell and you’re going to be hard pressed to find time to use it. Observe the boss and find a pattern. See if he has a long cooldown for an ability. Put a shield on the tank, a Renew, and a Prayer of Mending. Top up the rest of the party as best as you can. Hit your Hymn and pray to the highest deity you know that you can maximize the use out of it. You can break it early. I set my personal limit to around 50%. If the tank reaches 50%, I’ll break my Hymn and start healing.
  • Shadowfiend: Since it’s a 5 minute cooldown, this is the first trick in the book I’ll use. In the event we wipe, I should have it up for the next attempt.
  • Runic Mana Potion: I’ll typically blow a potion in conjunction with Hymn of Hope after it’s cast. I don’t try to save it. I try to be liberal with their use.
  • Guardian Spirit: Don’t think of it as a healing bonus spell or a way to prevent the person from dying. Think of it as an instant 50% health return. Gauge how much damage the tank takes roughly per hit. If they take 5000 damage blows and your tank is at around 7500, slap the GS up there and stop healing. Watch as the tank’s health rockets back up to 50% while you spend precious seconds just regenerating mana.
  • Pain Suppression: A lot of beginner Priests like to use Pain Suppression when their tank is really low on health. I don’t advise this since they run the risk of tanks dying. I drop Pain Suppression when tanks have near full health. I can stand there and mana regen knowing that my tank is taking reduced damage buying me more time to get more mana.

I’ve spent an average of nearly 3 hours per heroic dungeon. I’m way in over my element. But hey, that’s how Matticus rolls! I’ve always been a front line player!

Still looking for Mages, Warlocks, Hunters, Shadow Priests, Shamans and other healers! If you know of any that want to progress, tell them to drop me a line!

Circle of Healing Redux

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As you may or may not have heard, Blizzard is revisiting the idea of bringing in the CoH cooldown. I’m not sure where to start on this or how to begin.

Something that I feel has been overlooked is that there seems to be a feeling that raid instances right now at 70 (post nerf) are representative of what raid instances are like at level 80. A lot of players, right now, are a little overgeared for the content that they’re doing (again, due to the nerf).

Path of least resistance (or effort)

I was first exposed to this idea in my first year of psychology. The general premise here is that people, animals, or even machines will choose the path of least resistance or effort in order to get to their goal. Applying this to healing, we’ll see one person taking a shot for 2000 damage for whatever reason. I myself have been known to tap CoH once or twice to bring that one person’s health back up. Is that a loss of mana efficiency? You bet it is. But efficiency goes out the door if your mana regeneration is able to offset the mana loss within seconds.

Could I have used a Flash Heal? Yeah but it takes casting time.
How about a Renew? Yeah but it takes about 15 seconds for the full duration to kick in
Circle of Healing heals that minor damage extremely quickly and leaves me open for spell options without causing me to wait for the spell to go off or eat a channel or something.

This is partly the case because of current nerfed raid content and the way our spells work. It’s a smart heal, it’s the fastest heal, and it’s brain dead easy. I’m sure we can all agree on that.

With the complete gear reset at 80, I strongly doubt we’re going to be able to get away with non-stop CoH casting. I know I couldn’t. I was extremely limited with my mana regen and my overall mana pool. I confess I did start with PvP gear and I encountered some difficulty then. Yet, after daily Naxx and OS runs on 10s and 25s, I amassed a decent collection of PvE healing gear. I still found it difficult and strenuous. As this was largely a pickup group, maybe I was overcompensating in some areas.

The benefit of Circle of Healing is that it can heal a lot of players really fast.
The cost of Circle of Healing should be the fact that it taxes your mana pool.

I’m not quite sure if that’s possible. I can see why they want to include the 6s cooldown because there are a staggering number of players using it (at 70 and at 80 when I played). Maybe if they included a scaling cost with the spell it would be acceptable. The ability to heal a lot of raid damage really fast is an excellent tool to have. But it should come with a severe price or penalty. I don’t think time, a wonderful resource that it is, should be the case. Perhaps base cost + a percentage of healing done in that one cast? I don’t know. I’m not a game developer.

Regardless of what they do, Priests will easily remain the most diverse class. I’ll continue to play mine well into Wrath. Even if they do bring in the CoH cooldown, we still have Holy Nova and Prayer of Healing. Zusterke, on Plusheal, started some preliminary work on Holy Nova and it’s effectiveness.

By adding the glyph of holy nova, the spell has become quite a powerful healing spell. It is able to output more healing than circle of healing, up to a point where it rivals prayer of healing. The recent mana cost reduction boosted this spell even further where it has become a mana efficient spell, in comparison to the priest’s other AoE spells.

He might shoot me if he feels it’s a little outdated. But not much has changed yet so I think he’s definitely in the ballpark (or ice rink).

Plusheal has more great discussion about this.

Priest CoH Cooldown Returns?

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Matticus has no comment at this time. But, I felt that the readers should be aware of this thread. It was tried before in the summer but they removed the cooldown. They’re thinking about bringing it back again (note the dates).

We’ve tried to keep up with all of the several threads that spawned as a result of my last comments. People have made some really good points.
Based on feedback from this forum, elsewhere and our own brainstorming, what we are thinking about right now is something like a 6 sec cooldown for Circle of Healing and Wild Growth.

We’re less concerned about Chain Heal, in part because it’s not instant, prevents movement, falls off with multiple targets, and is the spell that shamans are supposed to be hitting, while priests and druids have many other spells.

At 6 seconds, you would still want to use CoH/WG in the right situations (though hopefully not *every* time they are up), but you’d also want to use other spells during the cooldown. To be fair, a lot of priests and druids are asking to push other buttons. 🙂

This sounds like a potentially scary change because it has a lot of ramifications — one of the reasons we are mentioning it so early is to get feedback. We don’t want Resto shammies to push other healers out of raids. We would change some of the encounters knowing that CoH spam was no longer possible.

And

Yeah, we did. We thought it would feel like a big nerf and changed our minds. But seeing the state of healing at 80 makes us think it might be the right call again. When AE healing is so prominent, it also makes specs without great AE heals (Holy paladins and Disc priests) feel useless.

Assume that we would lower Wild Growth by the same proportion as Circle of Healing. The exact numbers aren’t as important to this discussion as the concept that you can’t hit the button whenever you want.

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