Filed under: Priest

WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore is a discipline priest by reputation, but still enjoys melting faces as shadow and bugging her raid to click the Lightwell as holy.

One of the most interesting things about the new talent system added in Mists of Pandaria is that it encourages priests (and all classes) to choose which talent is best for them at almost every turn. No longer is one talent clearly better than another when examining them in a bell jar. Now instead you have to look at how and where the talent will be used; one talent might shine brightly in certain scenarios but be so utterly awful in others that it's practically unusable. The result of all this? We're now adjusting our talent builds more than ever.

Of course, this isn't a new thing for DPS, who frequently swapped to alternative talent builds on each encounter to get the best possible damage (got to beat those 'locks!) but for healers it's more of a change. In the past, a healing priest might have considered switching between disc or holy, but rarely did that involve altering individual talents in our trees. Usually healers had an all-purpose build that was good for everything; changing around talents was only done on the rare occasion. That makes this new talent system a bit of a shake up for us, since the majority of priests are healers (two healing specs and all). So today I thought we'd look at the new priest talents as thoroughly as we could so it's easier to decide which one you want.

WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore is a discipline priest by reputation, but still enjoys melting faces as shadow and bugging her raid to click the Lightwell as holy.

Since launch, priests have received most of their buffs and nerfs through hot fixes, but the arrival of patch 5.1 still brings some changes for us. Holy priests in particular have received several buffs which will improve their quality of life. One such change allows Chakra to persist through death, meaning the days of seeing Holy Word: Chatise on your bars when you're 2 minutes into a pull, frustratedly wondering why Holy word: Sanctuary isn't working, are over.

Another holy change buffs Chakra: Chastise so that damage dealt by shadow and holy spells while in the stance will now do 50% increased damage, instead of 15%. An excellent change, since prior to the patch, it took holy priests 15*(2^27) Smite casts to kill a mob. Now it should only take about 10.

WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore is a discipline priest by reputation, but still enjoys melting faces as shadow and bugging her raid to click the Lightwell as holy.

A reader contacted me when Mists of Pandaria was first released and asked if I had plans to write a 101 guide for discipline healing. Without thinking about it, I sent back a link to Guide to Mists of Pandaria discipline priests and went about my day.

The reader wrote me back though, and asked if I had planned to write an actual 101 guide, that is, a guide for someone who has never played a priest before. Ohh ... I understood then what she had meant. Be it that I am now telling you this story, it should be obvious that I thought that was a good idea.

WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore is a discipline priest by reputation, but still enjoys melting faces as shadow and bugging her raid to click the Lightwell as holy.

My dear friend Frostheim once proclaimed that shadow was a gateway spec. He warned me that priests who delved into shadow's dark delights were at a heightened risk of one day becoming warlocks. Yes, warlocks.

Of course, nothing has been proven yet. Early clinical trials have only shown us correlation, not causation; so if you're willing to accept the risk, today's guide is for playing a shadow priest in Mists of Pandaria.

WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore is a discipline priest by reputation, but still enjoys melting faces as shadow and bugging her raid to click the Lightwell as holy.

Are you going to be playing a holy priest in Mists of Pandaria? Are you up to date on what's different? Do you know what talents to pick, or what gear you want? If you don't, this guide will explain the changes, help you select talents, and give you suggestions on picking out gear for your character. Let's start with the changes.

• Lightspring You know how priests have always been begging Blizzard to make Lightwell work like that Lightwell in Trial of the Champion? The one that spits out heals at players instead of requiring them to click on it? Well, we finally got it. It's called Lightspring, and you can get it by inscribing the Glyph of Lightspring. It does just as much healing as Lightwell, except it does it over time and only heals players below 50% health.
• Chakra The three Chakra states (Chakra: Serenity, Chakra: Sanctuary, and Chakra: Chastise) have become stances which players can now swap between as they please. Previously you had to activate Chakra states by casting a corresponding spell, but now you can simply bind each state to a key and switch like druids or warriors. Unfortunately, there is a 30-second cooldown on each stance so you can't quickly swap between the stances to maximize your Chakra usage down to the individual spell. You'll still be able to switch Chakra several times during a fight though.

It was the end of an era when the community-defining website Shadowpriest.com slipped from the hands of a priest/player and began a long, frustrating slide into what eventually became a barren landscape plagued with invasive ads and bereft of updates and regular moderation. It was a sad state of affairs for a website that had once shone as a gathering place and focal point for WoW shadow priests.

Then in late August, long-time shadow priest Veiled stepped through the shadows, purchased the site, and transferred the community to a new and growing home at HowToPriest.com. "I can promise you that H2P won't be sold to the highest bidder," she wrote in an impassioned message to former community members. "I won't litter it top to bottom in ads. I will do everything in my power, even if it means spending my own money, to keep H2P alive, thriving, and happy for as long as I possibly can."

Dispersing the cold hand of commercialism, Shadowpriest.com lives on in spirit via HowToPriest.com, where Veiled and a collective of priest fans labor to provide a resource and community center for not only regathering shadow priests but priests of all specs.

WoW Insider: What an unexpected return for this community resource! Can you give us a look behind the scenes, Veiled, and explain how the changes came about? How did you make this happen?

Veiled: Originally, the site was created by Nikitabanana back in 2006. Back then, it was ad-free and it was just a wonderful and thriving community. Here's the history as I know it: Nikitabanana eventually switched to holy paladin and sold the site (in 2007) to Bryghtpath. The company was passionate about the game and actually played a shadow priest, so it wasn't too bad. They had made promises of how things would be run (such as no ads or any monetization goals). Those promises were eventually broken as the site became more popular and more expensive to keep online.

WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore is a discipline priest by reputation, but still enjoys melting faces as shadow and bugging her raid to click the Lightwell as holy.

When you get your priest to level 90, gearing up your character will probably be one of the many things on your mind. Your first inclination may be to run heroic dungeons, but what if your item level isn't high enough to use the dungeon finder? Maybe you're looking beyond that, and wondering what you'll need to queue for the raid finder when it becomes available in the next two weeks.

Or, if you're like me, you're probably scouring Pandaria, trying to find all the best possible items outside of raids, so that your raid leader likes you when you start running normal mode raids in the near future.

Well, whether you're a shadow priest or a holy priest, this is the guide for you.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore is a discipline priest by reputation, but still enjoys melting faces as shadow and bugging her raid to click the Lightwell as holy.

If you plan on healing as a discipline priest in Mists of Pandaria, you're going to be met with a lot of changes this expansion. Fortunately, most of the changes are good and the spec's unique playstyle remains intact. Actually, if anything, discipline is better at doing everything it did before, from dishing out absorbs to Smite healing.

Today's guide will show you how discipline has changed, and how to approach it in the new expansion. We'll examine ways to use the spec's new abilities and talents, as well as stat priorities and gearing your character. To get started, let's look at some new abilities and changes made to old ones.

• Archangel and Evangelism When using Archangel, the spell will no longer restore a percentage of mana per stack of Evangelism. The healing buff Archangel grants, however, is much bigger and can be incorporated into play whenever additional throughput is needed. Something to know: Penance, when used on an enemy target, will now grant a stack of Evangelism just as Smite and Holy Fire already do.
• Dispel Magic and Purify Dispel Magic is now only for offensive dispelling on enemy targets. To dispel debuffs on an ally, you'll be using a new spell called Purify, which removes all harmful magic and disease effects. Purify has an 8-second cooldown.
• Inner Focus This cooldown ability was once used to save mana, now it's a throughput cooldown instead. Use it before casting Flash Heal, Greater Heal, or Prayer of Healing and that spell will automatically strike for critical healing.
• Mass Dispel This spell can no longer be spammed continuously due to a newly added 15-second cooldown, but it now removes all harmful magical effects from allies when cast. It will only remove one beneficial effect from an enemy.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore is a discipline priest by reputation, but still enjoys melting faces as shadow and bugging her raid to click the Lightwell as holy.

"I have a bad feeling about this."

That's what you should be saying to yourself after reading my name in the byline. (If you're smart, that is.) Anyway, if you missed the news, your beloved Fox Van Allen has stepped down from his position as WoW Insider's resident shadow priest columnist. He's moved on to writing about iPods or something, which means you're stuck with me for now. I will do my best to make this as painless as possible.

So Mists of Pandaria is just two weeks away now, and while I'm far from considering myself an expert shadow priest (more on that later) I've leveled a few shadow priests to 90 on the beta in preparation for the race to level 90. In the process I think I've figured out some of the nuance, so I thought I'd share it so you can start thinking about how you'll get your own 85 shadow priest to level cap.

In the interest of providing a fast, easy-to-use resource for every class, we've gathered up our favorite guides, best lists, and most relevant posts into a convenient list. Check back often, because we'll keep these resources up to date throughout the last days of the Cataclysm and deep into the Mists of Pandaria.

Check back as we add more guides, more resources, and the best links. If your favorite is missing, we'll be adding it soon.

Death knight

• Glyphs round-up (and more!)
• PvE frost knights in Mists of Pandaria
• PvE blood death knights
• Unholy death knights by Icy Veins

Druid

• Cat and moonkin talent walk-through
• Cat and moonkin talent walk-through, part 2
• Guardian druid enchants, mods, gems, and buff items
• Restoration druid enchants, mods, gems, and buff items
• Resto druids by Icy Veins
• Patch 5.0.4 for balance and feral druids
• Patch 5.0.4 for guardian and restoration druids
• Video guide for PvP Boomkin and more (warning: language)

When the new 5.0 patch flips over on Aug. 28, will you be ready with glyphs? Blizzard is recycling old glyphs instead of making new spell IDs and charring old ones. Some glyphs are staying the same, some are new, but some share IDs with old Cataclysm glyphs.

Below is our list of new or changing glyphs for priests. This is not a list of changing tooltips, just which glyphs you ought to have if you want to automatically have the new glyphs when the patch flips over.

Priest glyphs are confusing. Priests are getting some brand new glyphs and also some switched-around glyphs, such that old glyphs will need to be rediscovered.

Completely new glyphs include:

• Glyph of Confession
• Glyph of the Heavens
• Glyph of Holy Resurrection
• Glyph of Lightspring
• Mind Flay needs to be rediscovered
• Glyph of Shadowy Friends
• Glyph of the Val'kyr
• Glyph of Vampiric Embrace

Glyphs that are changing into new majors:

• Spirit Tap becomes Dark Binding
• Mind Flay becomes Dispel Magic
• Shadow Word: Pain becomes Holy Fire
• Power Word: Barrier becomes Inner Focus
• Flash Heal becomes Inner Sanctum
• Guardian Spirit becomes Leap of Faith
• Shadow Word: Death becomes Mind Blast
• Divine Accuracy becomes Mind Spike
• Dispel Magic becomes Purify
• Shadow Protection becomes Reflective Shield
• Prayer of Healing becomes Spirit of Redemption

Glyphs that are changing into new minors:

• Fortitude becomes Borrowed Time
• Shadowfiend becomes Dark Archangel
• Fading becomes Shadow Ravens

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests.

I'll admit that I got a bit spoiled using Angelic Feather on the beta. It just makes questing on foot so much quicker. Whoosh! Whoosh! It's great fun and makes errands between the mailbox and auction house so much more efficient. I have another priest to level to 85 before Mists of Pandaria comes out, so I've been anxiously awaiting patch 5.0.4 to go live so I could level in style. Whoosh!

Anyway, with the existing talent system getting tossed out the window, many of your favorite priest talents are moving around or undergoing changes. Many talents will now take the form of passive abilities granted by your specialization. Some talents will actually remain talents but will now be accessible to all three priest specializations instead of restricted to certain trees. The list after the jump will tell you where many of your talents will have gone after patch 5.0.4 hits. If you don't see a favorite talent of yours, keep reading! It's probably one of the new (well, sort of new) talents.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow.

Since its introduction, the new level 45 priest talent, Power Word: Solace, has undergone several changes. First, it had the percentage of mana it returned per cast reduced from 2% to 1.5%. A little over a week after that, the percentage was buffed back up to 2% while the cast time was simultaneously nerfed from 1.5 seconds to 2 seconds. Then just last week, the cast time was lowered back to 1.5 seconds, while the amount of mana returned was lowered to a mere .7% per cast. Pretty crazy for one little spell, right?

As you'd expect, a lot of discussion has come up over the changes, with one thread on the official forums leading it all. In it, the original poster asks for an explanation behind the nerfs, saying that even though he hated using Power Word: Solace with a fiery passion, the talent was necessary for healing priests. Ghostcrawler (Lead Systems Developer Greg Street) responded soon after, explaining that the developers don't want Power Word: Solace to feel like the only option healing priests have, and they will nerf it until priests consider Mindbender and From Darkness, Comes Light viable alternatives.

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests.

Imagine my delight when I realized that the raid finder in the Mists of Pandaria beta was available for testing. The only instance available at the moment is Mogu'shan Vaults, but heck, who cares? I've been dying to get more practice in. I must've waited around 50 or so minutes before we had enough players to jump in. There were times where we had two tanks, six healers, and 11 DPSers. Other times we had 17 DPSers, 6 healers, and no tanks!

The raid finder for Mogu'shan Vaults has been split into two parts. You can't access the second half of it until you clear out the first three bosses in the first half.

There are some spoilers after the cut. Consider yourself warned!

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

I've decided that playing a healing priest is a lot like being a pregnant woman. No, really, let me explain! OK, so admittedly I don't know what it's like to be pregnant, but I've observed enough friends and family going through the process to have come up with this analogy. Here it goes ...

So you know how when a woman is pregnant, people will start inviting themselves into awkward and personal conversations with her, or they'll randomly put their hands all over her stomach as though it had been declared a national park? Well, that's what it's like to play a healing priest. Here's how it happens.

You'll be healing away in a raid or a 5-man, minding your own business, when someone will invite themselves into a one-sided conversation with you where they tell you what spec you should be playing and why. If you're disc, they'll tell you to go holy; if you're holy, well, you get the idea. In these conversations, your reasoning and expertise will always be deemed irrelevant because you're clearly in the wrong spec to begin with and because this random person has a really, really good reason for suggesting you change specs. (Never mind that it's almost always based on some broad generalization or the performance of the spec five tiers ago.)

Try to tell them no, and you'll get accusations of being selfish or stubborn. Don't you know that if you change specs, every single problem the group is having (including the fact that everyone is standing in fire) will cease to happen and the boss will immediately drop dead and explode in a shower of epics?

Anyway, the reason for telling you all that is because I want to start talking about how disc and holy have been playing in the Mists of Pandaria beta right now. I've had a lot of outstanding thoughts about both specs during the past month and a half, and it's time we discussed them. There's a lot to talk about, though, so I'm going to break it up over two parts. This week, we'll talk about discipline, then holy in two weeks. Holy priests shouldn't feel completely left out, though, as I also have some news items to go over for them.