Posts with tag Priest

WoW Archivist: Launch classes' 9 biggest aggravations

by Scott Andrews May 10th 2013 at 9:00AM

WoW Archivist Launch classes' 8 biggest aggravations FRIDAY

WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold?

The launch of WoW was a magical time -- everyone who played the game back then would agree. The concept of questing rather than grinding was fresh and exciting. The world felt immense, full of secrets and adventures.

Classes, on the other hand, were very raw compared to today. While many players yearn to play on vanilla-only servers, I doubt that most of those players would prefer their class to return to its vanilla version. Though some were better than others, every class had its problems. In this column, I'd like to highlight the biggest aggravation, as I see it, with each of the original eight classes -- and how Blizzard has since fixed every one of those issues.

Filed under: WoW Archivist

Where does the pressure lie in healing?

by Anne Stickney Dec 8th 2012 at 8:00PM

I used to be a healer, once upon a time. It was in the days of vanilla, when being a healer consisted largely of staring at 40 bars, pressing Flash Heal, and occasionally mixing it up with a bubble or Heal Rank 4 while swigging potions like they were going out of style. It was a very different time, and healing was by and large much less complex than it is today. My guild didn't use Vent, so I did all the healing rotation calls via macros on my keyboard -- that's how easy healing was. I had time to press macro buttons and pay attention to calling things.

But at some point that guild fell apart, as guilds are wont to do on occasion. And since server transfers weren't even a possibility at that point in time, I simply rolled another character on another server, vowing to take a break from any and all raiding. It lasted until paid server transfers were added as a feature, at which point my priest was promptly moved to my new server and I began healing again -- this time, in battlegrounds. I helped a lot of friends by healing them while they tried their hardest to get High Warlord in the original honor grind.

So what happened? Well ... healing happened.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Mists of Pandaria

Hotfix incoming for select priest healing spells

by Olivia Grace Oct 10th 2012 at 7:00PM

While he says he doesn't want to get into the habit of it, everyone's favorite blue crab, Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street made this announcement today:

@venaliter It may not be live if you haven't seen it. I don't want to get in the habit of announcing hotfixes on Twitter. +25% PoH and PoM.
- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) October 10, 2012

Now, while he says it "may not be live yet", it seems from follow up posts from Nethaera on the official forums that "yet" is code for "in the next batch of hotfixes". Nethaera says:

Nethaera

Quote:

When will this buff go live. Because it was not there last night. Checked my logs from last week PoH is still the same.

I don't have an ETA for you as of yet, but we'll make sure it gets updated in the Hotfix notes when it happens.

source

Keep an eye on Ghostcrawler's twitter, you never know when he might let another hotfix creep into his feed! And I'm sure priests will welcome the changes to Prayer of Healing and Prayer of Mending.

Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

Filed under: Mists of Pandaria

Priest glyph changes in patch 5.0.4

by Megan O'Neill Aug 28th 2012 at 12:00PM

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:

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

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!

Filed under: Priest, Mists of Pandaria

Raid Rx: Recap of recent healing changes

by Matt Low May 25th 2012 at 1:00PM

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 Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast.

There's been some large changes to healing for some of the classes in recent builds. This week, we'll recap and go through the classes to see what's new. You might be interested to know that at level 89, my priest has 250k mana. Who wants to wager that 300k mana is the maximum cap at level 90? Remember with the new intellect and mana system coming in with the expansion, intellect stats no longer raise the mana pool anymore. Your mana regeneration is governed strictly by your spirit levels.

Priest

Lightwell receives a few tweaks to the healing numbers. More importantly, it now has a glyph that completely changes the functionality of the spell. Glyph of Lightspring turns Lightwell into an automatic healing ability with a catch. Lightwell will only heal players with health lower than 50%. It will only perform the check once every 5 seconds. That is a fair compromise to me. I've never been truly satisfied with Lightwell since my experience has shown me that most players never click on it when it really matters. At least this glyph helps remove control from them and I gain the knowledge of my Lightwell kicking in when it'll be needed.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raid Rx (Raid Healing), Mists of Pandaria

Mists of Pandaria: Priests get an optional Shadowfiend upgrade, Zoidberg approves

by Matt Low May 1st 2012 at 2:00PM

Getting tired of your Shadowfiend, priests? After having served us faithfully over multiple expansions, your Shadowfiend will be able to be talented into an upgraded Shadowfiend. Enter the Mindbender!

The Mindbender is a floating, squid-like creature that'll leech mana off opponents just like the original Shadowfiend --not just that, but the Mindbender hits harder and you get more mana back. Mindbender can be talented into at level 45. (That spot used to be blank before.) At level 87, my little minion was doing around 12,000 damage with possible crits up to 30,000 against the raider training dummies while I was in a healing spec.

Pretty cool facelift for the little guy! It'll be an interesting choice between Mindbender, Archangel, and From Darkness, Comes Light.

Too bad we can't give these pets names. I'd name mine Zoidberg.

Filed under: Priest, Analysis / Opinion, Mists of Pandaria

GuildOx player analysis highlights the warlock decline

by Matthew Rossi Apr 27th 2012 at 12:00PM

The folks at GuildOx have gone through their database and done some simple filtering that reveals some fascinating things about who is raiding heroic Dragon Soul. GuildOx started with level 85 characters, filtered for characters with ilevel 400 gear, and then filtered out anyone with PvP gear. What you see in the chart above is the result of that work -- a representative sample of who out of the over 13 million level 85 characters in the GuildOx database is raiding heroic Dragon Soul.

If you remember the post about the complexity of systems and player retention that I made a couple of weeks back, you'll remember that I mentioned Cynwise's excellent posts about the warlock decline. Well, here it is again reflected in GuildOx's data. Warlocks are the least played class in heroic raiding.

Warriors aren't doing much better, really. Most other classes seem fairly healthy, with classes that have healing specs doing fairly well and rogues absolutely ruling heroic raiding despite being one of the least-played classes in the game overall. It gets even more interesting once we get to look at the GuildOx spec-by-spec breakdown.

Filed under: Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Death Knight, Cataclysm

Shadow priest takes down solo heroic Alysrazor

by Chase Hasbrouck Apr 23rd 2012 at 3:00PM

Proving once again that anything is possible with creative use of game mechanics,Shantál on Al'akir (EU) has successfully soloed the heroic version of the Alysrazor encounter. I've done some soloing myself in the past, and I can say that this is one of the most impressive individual feats I've seen, especially from a non-tank class. To my knowledge, this is the first heroic tier 12 encounter to be soloed, period.

According to Shantál, many hours were spent "figuring out the tactics, pushing DPS to the limit, and not going crazy after dozens of near kills." For a full strategy explanation, check out the thread on MMO-Champion.

Filed under: News items

Raid Rx: Mists of Pandaria healing changes

by Matt Low Mar 26th 2012 at 1:00PM

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. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast.

You'll notice that there are a ton of new glyphs that have been added for all the classes. That list is by no means exhaustive. I also noticed some slight changes in the way certain spells work. I can assure you it won't be anything too drastic, but these changes are enough to keep you interested and wondering. This week, I'll be rounding up what we know healers will be getting, as well as any other notable modifications.

New for druids

Cenarion Ward appears to be a Prayer of Mending-like spell without the subsequent charges. Good spell to open with before an engagement. Won't have to pre-HoT as much. Just remember to pre-Ward.

Wild Mushroom: Bloom! Hope you love 'shrooms, since you'll be gaining the use of these in addition to your Balance friends. Anticipate a moment where big AoE healing is needed, and plant 'shrooms. Detonate after raid group takes a hit, and relish in the healing spores that explode.

Regrowth can be glyphed to remove the HoT component. Benefit? 40% increased chance of a critical heal. I guess you can configure a HoT-based class to switch to a non-HoT direction.

Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Raid Rx (Raid Healing), Monk, Mists of Pandaria

A priest's guide to class romance

by Dawn Moore Feb 14th 2012 at 4:00PM

It's a troubling yet underpublicized fact that four out of five shadow priests respecced shadow for the first time after experiencing a romantic break-up. Recent studies show that priests are 63% more likely to respec shadow within 72 hours of a break-up, while a separate poll found that 78% of healing priests had seriously considered respeccing to shadow after having an argument with their spouse or significant other. To the tenderhearted healing priest, shadow probably seems like a quick way to steel yourself and mend a broken heart; unfortunately, too few priests realize the two points they're putting into Masochism 'til they're staring down into an empty bottle of Volcanic Potion and wishing they could do the same DPS as a warlock.

The simple way to avoid all these drastic courses of action is, of course, to skip getting your heart broken in the first place. Easier said than done, you think? Perhaps, but knowing the battlefield of love will certainly help you avoid the more obvious pitfalls. Want to know what your best match is? What about your worst? This week, I've got the answers in a special guide to the classes.

Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance

How to look like a priest with transmogrification (even if you're actually a mage)

by Dawn Moore Jan 12th 2012 at 4:00PM

In high fantasy, the archetype of the priest is a patient, powerful figure whose strength comes from his vigilance and his faith. This iconic archetype exists in World of Warcraft as well, manifesting in the form of inspiring heroes like Tyrande Whisperwind or Prophet Velen. Want to follow in their footsteps? Well, you'll have to roll a priest ... At least, that's what you had to do prior to patch 4.3. Now, thanks to transmogrification, all cloth wearers can finally "take the cloth."

This week, I'll be showing you how to create the look of a traveling, battle-ready priest. With the draped hood and cloth foot wraps, I want to call on the idea of a medieval monk or friar sent to a far-off land on a divine errand. The set is wearable by all cloth wearers, so even mages and warlocks can get in touch with their holy side. Most of the key pieces come from a recolored version of the Absolution Regalia (priest tier 6), with a few twists to make the outfit look less crisp and uniform.

Filed under: Transmogrification

What might Mists of Pandaria mean for healing?

by Joe Perez Jan 3rd 2012 at 8:00PM

Mists of Pandaria is something of a scary thought for the future of many healers. The introduction of another class that is capable of tanking, DPSing and healing marks a potential destabilizing factor. While it is scary, it is also exciting to a lot of players. Shaking things up isn't always a bad thing, and it has the potential to introduce some very different playstyles. The most important question, though, is what the addition of another healing class could potentially mean for how the other healing classes play and are balanced.

The introduction of the monk class has the potential to trigger a series of changes that could wind up being seen across all of the healing classes -- that is, depending on the reception it receives. These changes are things that some healers might not have considered or further expanding of particular mechanics that are already in game. With that said, it's time for a bit of speculation!

Filed under: Monk, Mists of Pandaria

Raid Rx: Healing the Spine and Madness of Deathwing

by Matt Low Dec 23rd 2011 at 7:00PM

This is it. This is the final encounter of the expansion. Everything you've ever worked for and fought through has led to this point. This is the moment you get to help rid the world of Deathwing. First, we need to ground this oversized lizard. Immediately after the conclusion of the gunship (part two), you'll be parachuting onto Deathwing's back. We'll go over the different obstacles and what you and your healers need to do to get over the proverbial raid hump. (To the raiders who do 10-mans, you'll have to adjust the numbers a bit. I'm not as well versed on 10s, so you'll have to bear with me as I draw up assistance for the 25-man version.)

To attack the Spine of Deathwing, we need to peel off those metal plates on Deathwing's back so that we can really weaken him further. Our healing goal here is to ensure that our tanks live. Apparently, Deathwing has all sorts of little defenses that he'll use to try to shake us off; there are several threats on this fight that healers need to be aware of. You're on an extremely narrow field of battle here, so movement's going to be really limited.

What did you expect, though? You're fighting on the back of a former dragon aspect.

Filed under: Raid Rx (Raid Healing)

BlizzCon 2011: Screenshots of the new Pandaria talents for all classes

by Matthew Rossi Oct 21st 2011 at 7:52PM

If you wanted to look at the new talents that will be debuting in Mists of Pandaria, I would hope you followed our liveblog of the talent system overhaul. The short version is you get to pick 1 talent from a pool of 3 talents every 15 levels. By the time you hit the new level cap of 90, you will have 6 talents. Each set of talents does the same thing, more or less, in different ways.

Now, for your perusal, we present a class by class gallery of the new talent system as it stands today. Remember this is subject to change, alot, before Pandaria, launches.

Make no mistake, this is a significant game changer for everyone. This is the dawning of unparalleled flexibility in personal customization choice. Arms warriors with Shockwave, fury warriors with Bladestorm. This is the biggest change to the game since reforging.

There are no tree examples for the upcoming Monk class yet. Galleries of each class's talents after the cut.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items, BlizzCon

Patch 4.3: Official preview of priest tier 13

by Mathew McCurley Sep 28th 2011 at 12:30PM

The recently datamined priest tier 13 set has now been officially revealed by Blizzard, and it looks gorgeous. The Vestments of Dying Light are designed in a Venetian carnival style with creepy eyes, reminiscent of the mask that Ed Norton wore as the King of Jerusalem in Kingdom of Heaven. It's a very beautiful tier set. Blizzard states that priests are one of the harder classes to design badass armor sets for, but I think with this round, the design team definitely hit the mark.

So far, tier 13 armor design has been less about the instance and the game itself and more about the free-form ideas that the class and armor designers want to play with. Artists are having a good time coming up with all sorts of crazy ideas without having to necessarily be set in any motif. I think it's a great exercise and is providing some of the coolest, potentially most iconic armor sets to date.

Check out images from the priest tier gear retrospective in our gallery.

Gallery: Priest tier 13 and armor retrospective

Filed under: Priest, Cataclysm

WoW Insider Show

Subscribe via iTunes for our latest show.

Hot Topics

Upcoming Events

Event	Date
Call to Arms: Deepwind Gorge	5/21 - 5/23
Call to Arms: Twin Peaks	5/24 - 5/27
Call to Arms: Eye of the Storm	5/28 - 5/30
Call to Arms: Silvershard Mines	5/31 - 6/3
Darkmoon Faire	6/2 - 6/9
Call to Arms: Alterac Valley	6/4 - 6/6
Call to Arms: Temple of Kotmogu	6/7 - 6/10
Call to Arms: Warsong Gulch	6/11 - 6/13
Call to Arms: Arathi Basin	6/18 - 6/24
Midsummer Fire Festival	6/21 - 7/5
Call to Arms: Strand of the Ancients	6/25 - 6/27
Call to Arms: Isle of Conquest	7/2 - 7/4
Call to Arms: The Battle for Gilneas	7/9 - 7/11