Priest Discussion

WI: Healing at Level 80 and Other Matt-like Distractions

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Almost 3000 words. It took 32 oz of coffee before I finally finished this mammoth of a post. It’s finished and you can find it on at WoW Insider.

Are you on your coffee break?
Don’t have much time to read it?
Want to know what I have to say in 30 seconds?

Here’s a shortened version of the post in slide format:

Raid Healing at Level 80

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: world of)

Why Slides? I have a presentation to deliver in another month. I wanted to get familiar with Keynote. I’ve been dying to try out Slideshare for the longest time. I only spent about 90 minutes on this TLDR version (Too Long, Didn’t Read). There’s even the option of synching audio tracks with slides. Screw podcasts! I might just start a slidecast!

Nothing fancy, mostly images and words (90 minutes, right?). Presenting and public speaking are two important academic skills. I do have a presentation to give next month in front of my peers (It’s Criminology related). I’m going to need time to learn and design accordingly.

Some other non-WoW related presentations

THIRST

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design crisis)

What The F**K is Social Media?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialmediamarketing marketing)

Brain Rules for Presenters

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: reynolds garr)

Blocked at work?

For when you get home:

Price of Level 80 PvP Gear and Priestly PvP Goodness [Screenshots!]

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Relatively slow day today. I’m busy hard at working trying to answer all of the wonderful questions I’ve received in regards to Priests, healing, roles, raiding, gear, mana regen and so forth. I will pack all of this information in an easy to consume format and also produce a TLDR version of it as well. The most anticipated blog post by Matt will arrive on Sunday. 😀

For the mean time, I decided to take a break inside Strand of the Ancients (the new BG). Hopefully I can answer a few pre-emptive questions with some screenshots below.

honor-80 bonus-honor

The (tentative) price of Honor gear at level 80. Also displays my raid pimping goodness. As you can see, I’ve ran the 25 mans more than the 10s (Valor is the 25 badge vs the Heroism which is the 10s). Note the amount of honor on the second shot. I believe that takes into account bonus honor from BGs and me killing other players and healing and all that stuff. Also note my pro Killing Blowness. Megan ain’t got nothing on me!

 

honor-door WoWScrnShot_100308_114719

Top: Honor vendors are no longer instanced.

Bottom: shows Horde armada offloading troops. Also shows a valiant Matticus attempting to hold off said invaders. With a Holy Fire.

WoWScrnShot_100308_113635the-line-1 

Top: Me sitting in a passenger seat attempting to overheal a mage because I’m a moron for not de-selecting and activating the auto-self cast. Bottom left health bar shows the health of the vehicle. Contains 3 seats (shown on the far right of the shot). Has 6 speaker setup, all terrain capabilities, GPS tracking, and sports 30 miles to the gallon. ABS needs some work. No iPod support.

Bottom: Screenshot shows the gates being breached. We’re trying to stop the Horde offense from breaking in. We have to hold out for a minute.

the-line-2 the-line-3

My ancestor, King Matticidus once said the following:

“Give them nothing! But take from them… everything!”

And take from them we did. We held them to a draw. I suspect more honor would be gained if one side won both Offense and Defensive roles.

Priests: Matt Needs Your Help!

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My bosses at WoW Insider have commissioned me to write a piece on how Priests will change in Wrath. Specifically, how we can adapt to all the changes that are going on. But, I need your help. I’ve played Naxx and Obsidian Sanctum extensively. I’ve done a few 5 mans. Things have become second nature to me now.

Ask me questions. I’m giving myself 72 hours so I can have this piece for your Sunday morning consumption. 24 hours right now to gather as many questions as possible, another 24 to pick out the ones that I think are the most important, and another 24 to go in game, get the shots, get the techniques, and get the evidence I need to share with you what I’m doing and why.

Paladins, Druids, Shammies sorry, I can’t help you here. But feel free to ask anyway! Maybe you have some questions about synergy between other healing classes. It doesn’t have to be just Priests.

I’ve dedicated myself to helping this community. But I can’t do it alone. There’s no such thing as a stupid question.

I’ll be pulling questions from this Plusheal thread that Doug started and from any comments that I garner from here as well.

My Love/Hate Relationship with Heroic Naxxramas

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naxx-kel

Last night, I had the pleasure of working with some of the most skilled players in beta and we were able to clear out Heroic Naxxramas (otherwise known as 25 man Naxx). Let me tell you about my initial impressions, what I love, and what I hate.

I love…

the fact that the number of tanks needed for Naxx don’t seem to have changed. Our main tank was a Warrior. No fusses about class here. The reason he was the MT was because he was the most geared (he ran Naxx, Obsidian Sanctum, etc. every day). Prot Paladin was the second tank for any massive AoE related pulls. Feral Druid was third although he would switch up with the Prot Pally depending on what the job was. Didn’t have the pleasure of working with a Death Knight. I’m happy to say that I had no problems healing any of them on the various bosses or mobs. Druid tank had the most with 34k while the Paladin and Warrior clocked in at about ~31k. I made sure to address this first, due to a question I got from Twitter:

@honorshammer Are you seeing much disparity in healing tanks of various classes?

Hope the above question helps! Love your blog by the way ;).

I hate…

my mana regen. I took a look at one of the other Resto Druids and he was sporting a jaw dropping 1500 mana regen while not casting. In my PvP gear plus other assorted PvE epic items, I hit around 600+.

I love…

how Priests will be virtual requirements for Heroic Naxx. You can get away without having other classes at all, but you need Priests for 2 of the encounters because we have to Mind Control certain mobs in order to successfully do them.

I hate…

Sapphiron. He’s the 2nd to last boss in Naxx and he’s going to be a huge headache.

I love…

how the bosses drop between 4 – 6 pieces of loot (some of them are tier bosses).

I hate…

how people complain about not getting the loot they want because its freakin’ beta and you don’t get to keep it anyway!

I love…

that while most players were still wearing blue PvP gear to raid, we were still able to 1 shot almost every boss in the instance. We didn’t over gear it. All of us were on par with or were what could be considered slightly undergeared. This proves to me that if you have a large number of skilled players going in, you won’t have a lot of difficulty. There are a few exceptions:

Instructor Raz: 2 shot
4 Horsemen : 4 shot
Sapphiron: 5 Shot
Kel’Thuzad: 1 shot

I hate

the fact that it took us a little over 7 hours to clear. But there are a few important factors to keep in mind:

  1. Pickup raid
  2. Boss explanations are complicated
  3. Some people had to leave and we had to pull in replacements

If it’s a Guild run, I can see the time knocked down to about 6 hours or maybe even 5. Obviously if you over gear the place, then I wouldn’t be surprised to see it drop down to even 4 and a half. But suffice it to say, I suspect most guilds will take at least 2 days to clear the instance and learn it.

I love

Death Knights. Look at this screenshot below:

op-dks
The top 5 players are all Death Knights. Number 6 is a Rogue. The numbers ARE slightly inflated since Thaddius has a little mechanic about him that increases DPS. Here’s a slightly better representation:

naxx-dps1 naxx-dps2

DPS order by class on Noth:

  1. Death Knight
  2. Hunter
  3. Death Knight
  4. Death Knight
  5. Ret Paladin
  6. Ret Paladin
  7. Mage
  8. Death Knight
  9. Death Knight
  10. Rogue
  11. Boomkin
  12. Feral Druid
  13. Boomkin
  14. Mage

Your mileage may vary. We only had 1 Rogue and 1 Warlock. Our raid was stacked with an abundance of Death Knights as you can see above and all of them made up the top 10.

I love

the DPS averages. Again, scroll back up and look at the DPS on the side, not the damage done. You should be pushing over 2000 DPS when you enter Naxx. Of course, I might take that statement back later. Who knows? But I’m just going by what I’ve seen thus far.

I love

these crits:

heal-crits

Repeat after me: MASS OH PEE. That’s a Resto Shaman above me there and my own Prayer of Mending.

I hate

this whole loot homegenization thing but I understand it. I started a discussion on Plusheal about how to tell whether or not you should roll on certain cloth gear or to pass on them. Wyn will be exploring this topic at some point later on, as well. It feels weird for casters to roll on gear. But I accept it and I understand it will be better in the long run.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be doing detailed healing guides for the normal and heroic versions of Naxx and Obsidian Sanctum. You’ve seen a sample of them earlier when I published a few of the 10 man ones. They’re not designed to replace WoWWiki or Bosskillers guides. What they’re meant for is to provide you (the healer) with the knowledge that is relevant to you in order to keep your raid alive. I’m most likely going to miss out on a few abilities but I’ll be sure to nail all of the ones that are important including all major boss mechanics.

Yesterday night, I took a boat load of screenshots, recorded vent when the raid leader was delivering explanations, and I have a plethora of notes all across my desk with diagrams, and post-its scattered all over the place.

By all means, if you’d like to savor the learning experience yourself, go for it. I’ll be here if you need a quick pointer or two to help you out.

Which is what this blog is for.

Questions? Comments? What else would you like to see? Will the Canucks make the playoffs this season? Will Brady get usurped? Do you require more Vespene gas? Are you, in fact, a hollahback girl? Will I ever stop beating myself up over the 7 questions I know I for sure got wrong out of 50?

Big shout out to Totodile for having to put up with the various morons in the raid, as well as organizing and quarterbacking the whole show!

Healing Naxxramas – Patchwerk (10 man)

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patchwerk

Post is about the beta raid and is subject to change at any time. Changelog at the bottom.

Patchwerk is one tough Abomination. You won’t have to worry about raid damage. Your main focus is going to be on the main tank and the off tank. Do a quick check of everyone’s health totals. Make sure your MT and OT have the largest and 2nd largest health pools respectively.

Upon first pull, Patchwerk will latch on to the first person who gains threat on him and stay on him for the duration of the encounter. He does a Heroic Strike attack which will hit your OT for about ~7000 damage. Important: The OT is determined to be the player with the most health after the person with Aggro.

Therefore, if necessary, tell players to click off Power Word: Fortitude (like Death Knights).

There’s also a river of slime nearby. If you jump into it, you can knock off about 50% of your health instantly. Use at your own risk.

Patchwerk has a rough enrage timer of around 5 minutes. Have your tank blow Shield Wall around 15 – 20%. If you’re specced for Guardian Spirit, use it the moment Shield Wall expires.

Healing

Tough, tough, and really tough. You’ll be working your stopcasting here often. Holy Priest on the MT, Resto Shaman on the OT, Paladin with Beacon of Light on one tank and healing the other to cover the bases. Flash Heal for maintenance healing. When your tank drops to 60% or less, queue up a Greater Heal and keep your finger triggered on the stopcast button. If someone else catches him, hit it. If not, let it go.

I want to emphasize that the raid should not be taking much (if any) damage at all.

Bust out the Hymn of Hope early on while eyeing your group. Make sure all the mana users can get the most out of it. When you get low again, bust out the Shadowfiend. Your last line of defense is the Runic Mana Potion.

I did this fight with about 477 MP5 while not casting. I felt a lot of pressure towards the end. However, I did this with blue PvP gear. We should theoretically have an easier time with the various PvE gear we’ll get access to.

spirit-deathWhen you kill him…

See the green slimes above in the screenshot I posted? Those mobs aren’t targettable via mouse. However, if you get in close range of them, you will explode pretty horribly.

Don’t understand? Think of it as a mini-Frogger.

So when you do get him down, don’t forget to sidestep those oozes or else you’ll end up like Matticus with a faceplant on solid concrete.

Changelog

9/24/08 – Original post