16 Suggested (and Unlikely) Priest Glyphs

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Image courtesy of Lucretious

We’ve seen evidence of what a few of the new Glyphs look like (lucky Druids). But what exactly would Priest glyphs be? Join me today as I use a combination of mad 8 ball skills, crystal balls, and fuzzy dice to predict what our class Glyphs could look like.

  • Glyph of Strengthened Soul: Empowers a Minor Glyph to reduce your Weakened Soul debuff by 3 seconds.
  • Glyph of Renewed Vigor: Empowers a Major Glyph to return 3% mana of your overall Renew cost per tick.
  • Glyph of the Matrix: Empowers a Major Glyph to grant your Greater Heal a chance to increase a player’s dodge rate by 25% for 3 seconds.
  • Glyph of Angelic Intervention: Empowers a Major Glyph to increase the effects and duration of Power Word: Shield, Prayer of Mending, and Renew by 20% if all 3 spells are present on a target.
  • Glyph of Certainty: Empowers a Lesser Glyph to increase the cast speed of your Flash Heal by 15%.
  • Glyph of Light’s Reach: Empowers a Major Glyph to increase the number of targets healed by Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing, and Prayer of Mending by 1.
  • Glyph of Penance: Empowers a Minor Glyph to increase extra the duration of Shadow Word: Pain and Holy Fire by 6 seconds.
  • Glyph of Admiral Ackbar: Empowers a Major Glyph to increase all healing effects done by you by 75% if Power Word: Shield is active.
  • Glyph of Fortification: Empowers a Minor Glyph to increase player’s armor by 2000 in addition to the Stamina increase.
  • Glyph of Uncertainty: Empowers a Lesser Glyph to decrease a players movement speed by 20% if affected by Psychic Scream.
  • Glyph of Death’s Grip: Empowers a Lesser Glyph to grant a 3 second stunning effect to Shadow Word: Death and increasing the damage taken by the Priest by 50%.
  • Glyph of Mortal Recognition: Empowers a Major Glyph to grant your healing spells a 50% chance to ignore the Mortal Strike effect on a player.
  • Glyph of Focus: Empowers a Minor Glyph to avoid interruption, ignore silence effects, and reduce silence durations when casting Flash Heal by 20%.
  • Glyph of Veritas: Empowers a Minor Glyph to prevent the next 1000 damage a player absorbs if your Greater Heal or Flash Heal brings the player to full health.
  • Glyph of the Crouching Tiger: Empowers a Lesser Glyph to increase damage done by your weapons by 500%.
  • Glyph of Purity: Empowers a Minor Glyph to allow Dispel to remove an additional debuff or buff from friendly or enemy players respectively.

Don’t forget, these aren’t the real deal (yet). But these are Glyphs I’d love to see for Priests when they’re released although I admit some of these do seem a bit over powered. What about you? What Glyphs would you like to see for your class? Are they serious or just for kicks?

Myth: It Doesn’t Matter As Long as the Boss Dies

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It’s time for a good, old fashioned rant.

“It doesn’t matter, as long as the boss dies.”

Oh, but it does matter. It matters a lot.

It matters if you AFK trash.
It matters if you wipe on a farm-content boss.
It matters if people die unnecessarily.
It matters if the fight drags on for double its usual length.
And it matters because “as long as the boss dies” is the dumbest quote EVER.

Think about it. I understand the need for bio breaks, and taking an announced absence is a perfectly legitimate way to get a drink of water, relieve yourself, and be that much more focused when you return. But when you have a couple of raiders who consistently AFK their way through everything that doesn’t drop loot, it adds stress and resentment to the pressure cooker that is a raid. It’s lazy and inconsiderate. Worse, it sets a terrible example for not just new recruits but everyone else in the guild.

Anyone who’s ever wiped on a “Farm” boss can tell you that it is infinitely frustrating when that happens due to sloppy mistakes and lack of attention. It wastes valuable time, leads to full-on burnout, and can make a guild feel stunted and unsuccessful. Slacking off here can cause major problems, and even if the boss dies on the third try, that’s 30 minutes to an hour of 25 people’s time. Not to mention repair bills, wasted consumables, and loss of morale and momentum.

Okay, so say you didn’t wipe. Say the fight just lasted 12 minutes instead of 7. That’s only 5 minutes extra (Nevermind that it’s really 5×25.) Wrong. When fights double in length, the impact is the same as a wipe, just on a smaller scale. Consumables, cooldowns, and resources are STILL wasted, and more likely than not, players will die needlessly. Not to mention that’s 5 minutes worth of Arrows and Bullets. And you now have a raid-mentality that knows it’s in for a rough night, since the bosses aren’t dying smoothly. Beyond that, if you’re a guild in the position of both farming content AND making progression runs, the sooner you can get the old content finished the more time you can spend on the new stuff. Eating up minutes and hours when you have 14 bosses to get through before you can even get to the fun stuff is “srs biz”.

More than anything, I hate that this quote as it seems to embody the ultimate in epic-greedy laziness. As if there’s no difference between the boss dying in an unspectacular way vs. dying efficiently, with everyone putting out 100%. The reality is at the other extreme – the only thing the two events have in common is the dropping of loot. And if loot, rather than progression and improvement is your focus, I want you the hell out of my raid, out of my guild, off my server, and away from my game. Go play EverQuest with Jimmy.

Luv,
Wyn

Confessions of a Raid Healer

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Image courtesy of bluegum.

Most bloggers and writers, when they have their ideas, write their posts first before adding a title. I’m a wee bit different. I come up with the title first before the post. My reasoning has always been that it’s the post title that draws initial interest to the post. This one happened to occur to me while I was listening to one of Madonna’s CDs.

Consider this post an archive of all the mistakes I’ve ever committed in WoW and the regrets I’ve had from Hakkar to Illidan.

  • The Raptor boss: Moving and doing things when he gazed at me. I found out quickly that this was not the smartest thing to do. Any actions you make causes him to rip you to shreds. And yes, I moved while the ZG Raptor boss gazed at me.
  • Panther’s staff drop: Before I became the raid item optimist that I am today, I was a selfish Dwarf. I wanted every possible upgrade I could get. By being the best Priest I could be, I felt that I could contribute that much more to my raid and my Guild. I had farmed extensively for an Eye of Shadow and I was on the brink of getting Benediction. Yet I rolled on the staff even though are Resto Druid would have benefited more. I did not get Benediction until 5 weeks later.The penance for my greediness, I suppose.
  • Baron Geddon: He’s the inspiration behind Solarian. I can’t remember the details, but I was really bitter that day for some reason. What’s a Priest to do when they’re in the mood to kill and just get out of MC? I purposely did not move when I got the bomb buff. Anyway, right when I was hit with the bomb debuff, I feigned a disconnect (closed vent, stopped casting and stood there). The resulting explosion was spectacular!
  • Observing a ninja: Our Guild at the time had to merge with another Guild so that both could survive. We were working our way through Blackwing Lair. Razergore was the first boss. When we killed him, the loot was set to free for all. At the time, there was a bug where master looting didn’t properly work. You guessed it. One of the Paladins quickly looted all the items, left the raid, and bubble hearthed. I could not help but laugh out loud. Remember that I had just joined with several others. I never would have gotten loot that day regardless. But at least we killed Vael after.
  • Dotting CC: I like to contribute as much as I can to a raid whether through healing or through my limited arsenal of offensive spells. I Shadow Word: Pained a sheep too many times (because I made the unfortunate mistake of assisting a mage). Heck, I even dotted my own shackle more than once. I’m too eager to help and I end up damaging the wrong one. Oops! Sometimes I do it when there’s multiple Priests in the raid. This was before Big Brother was around so the real culprit was hard to find (and I’d pin it on the other guys as a joke).
  • Letting my tanks down: It still happens to this day. I end up misjudging the time or I’m too slow or something. I made a wrong decision and the tank died leading to a prompt wipe. I could have prevented it if I had focused more. Sometimes, I wonder if we might be further on progression if I haven’t screwed up so often.
  • Blew a Flame Wreath: My streak of not triggering a flame wrath halted a month or so ago. I was playing on my Paladin but I was only partially paying attention. The other half of my brain was focused on the Detroit/Pittsburgh playoff game. I thought I had time to move but I didn’t. I wanted to cancel a heal to get a different player instead. At the time, I didn’t use stopcasting macros and relied on movement to cancel my spell casts. Sure enough, I moved too late and triggered the detonation and went flying after nuking the entire raid. Not all was lost. I did wind up going to Wyn promptly thereafter and made her help me out with stop casting macros (while gritting my teeth, I might add. You should see what else she’s talked me into doing).
  • Missing my Lurker jumps: It took me a disappointing amount of time to master the transition from water to platform and back again. I was positioned on the exact opposite side from the main tank to maximize the amount of time I had to get in. Even after that, I’d still get spouted by Lurker even though I had so much advance warning. The problem was fixed when I bought a new computer. I haven’t missed a jump since.
  • Cratering: Today another streak was broken. I belonged in the ever elusive Archimonde no crater free fall club. Today I was expelled from the fraternity. I am ashamed to say that I cratered after completely mistiming my Tears.

Everyone screws up. I’m only human. A good healer makes minimal mistakes but a great healer learns from the ones that they do make so they don’t make them again. Usually, most of my first mistakes end up being my last. There’s a lot of things I’ve done in the past as a gamer that I’m not proud of (but I’ve never cheated). Looking back now, I get a good laugh out of reminiscing.

Your turn

What’s the most colossal mistake you’ve ever made that you’re willing to admit to?

WoW Insider Post Up and WTB Resto Druid

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Finished my WI piece for the week! I have this unfortunate habit of writing late. I take a lot more care and time writing for WoW Insider then I do for my own blog! It takes me around 6 hours to pump out one of these posts. I wonder if my other WI colleagues have the same issue. Or maybe I’m just too much of a perfectionist. Anyways, go check it out! It’s about how to measure a Priest (hint: you can’t).

By the way, feel free to ignore the following images:

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*cough*

Need a Resto Druid

I might’ve mentioned earlier that we’ve lost our resident Resto Druid for a few months. I’m looking for one to help us out on our raids. We’re mostly concentrating on Black Temple at this point and gradually rotating Hyjal out of our raiding schedule. Our hours are extremely PST and EST friendly so you’re welcome to ask for more details (contact me or leave a comment).