Posts with tag archangel

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.

Do you want to know the greatest and most amazing new thing priests are getting in Mists of Pandaria? It's a squid. Well, it could be an octopus, but I think it's a squid. It's called a Mindbender, and it's our new level 45 talent. The Mindbender is a flying, shadowy squid that serves as an improved version of (read: replacement for) our old pal, Shadowfiend. Our new squid friend does double the damage of Shadowfiend and thus returns twice as much mana. I can only assume the reason he can do this is because he latches onto the heads of our enemies and sucks out their brains, sort of like a Mind Flayer, the squid-faced monsters from Dungeons and Dragons with telekinetic powers. Mindbender, Mind Flayer ... That's right, Blizzard, I'm on to you.

Anyway, I imagine Squiddy will become the prime choice for healing priests in MoP because 1.) mana is mana, and 2.) the other level 45 talents are a bit lackluster. That will unfortunately mean leaving Shadowfiend at home, which is awfully sad, but I've painted up a scenario in my head where Shadowfiend tells me, "Look, Dawn, we've been raiding together for a few years now, and it's about time that I caught up on all the prime time television I've missed. There's Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and I've still only seen one episode of Game of Thrones. I need a break."

"OK, Shadowfiend," I say to it, "you can stay home this expansion."

"Thanks, dollface," it responds with Don Draper-esque charm and winks an eye at me I never knew it had.

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 handles the shadows (and laundry.) Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com, produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

Not a raiding tier goes by where the forums aren't littered with posts from novice healing priests asking why some well-known priest from some high ranked guild doesn't have a cookie cutter talent spec recommended by the community's leading theorycrafters. The post always goes something like this ...

"I looked up Lawliesthesiaspec from on the armory today and I just don't understand why she took three points in Inner Sanctum and only two points in Twin Disciplines. Shouldn't she max out Twin Disciplines for the extra healing? Am I doing something wrong? Should I copy that?"

Sometimes there is an amusing theory about why the priest has taken the talent, or an accusation that the player must be terrible at the game. Whatever the tone of the post, the question is ultimately rooted in the inability of many players to identify one talent spec from another. Today I intend to fix that so you're all prepared for Firelands in a few weeks.

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 loiters around the drugstore, drinking chocolate malted Falcons and giving away free high school. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

Patch 4.1 went live last week, and with a long list of buffs and nerfs in the patch notes, it looked like it was going to be a big event for priests of all specs. Now, almost a week later now, Fox Van Allen still appears to be alive the impact of the changes seems to have varied. Have you acclimated to the changes yet? Are you wondering why hunter pets are acting like they've been chomping on mood stabilizers even when you heal them? Do you want a cookie? Then let me direct you to all the important things you need to know in a post-4.1 patch world.

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 and karaoke at PAX East. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

It's been two weeks since we first examined the upcoming priest changes for patch 4.1, and in that time, many more changes have piled up. To keep things interesting around here, I figured we'd talk about the changes over a plate of cookies.

Previously, we discussed the changes to the duration of Power Word: Shield, the tiny buff to Divine Aegis, and the huge change to Dispel Magic, so check back a couple weeks if you want to read about those changes. This week I'll be looking at a huge change to the mechanics of Chakra, the sort of return of Atonement healing, the nerf to Power Word: Barrier, and the tweak to our four-piece raid set bonus.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for disc and holy priests, and also likes to knit gloves as presents. Can Fox Van Allen make you a pair of gloves?

I intended to write about holy and discipline priest PvP in beta this week, but after spending a few days trying to test out battlegrounds, I think I'd do well to give Blizzard more time to fix things. Between the 100,000-damage rocket blasts in Strand of the Ancients one-shotting players, and randomly getting ported to The Barrens when you're dead wrapped in plastic in Twin Peaks, it all just seems too buggy to fairly assess right now.

While we wait for the developers to finish tidying up the battlegrounds and PvP, I figured we could tackle something in the beta that has stabilized for priests: heroic dungeons! Pretty exciting, huh? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Word on the street is that heroic dungeons in the Cataclysm beta are way overtuned and bordering on the difficulty of pre-nerf heroic dungeons in The Burning Crusade. While I can't personally deny or confirm the latter statement (I was slow in leveling), I can tell you that heroic dungeons in Cataclysm aren't that bad.

If you didn't already know, late Wednesday evening, Blizzard released a new and thorough Cataclysm talent preview for select classes. Among those classes was the priest class, and as WoW.com's healing priest, thus I have been charged with providing you with a talent-by-talent breakdown for the holy tree. (There is also a preview analysis for discipline.)

The preview's biggest highlight is Chakra, but there are a few twists and turns in the tree that are well worth a look. Hit the jump and we'll get down to business.

Last night, Blizzard unexpectedly released an extensive talent preview from Cataclysm for select classes. Priests were among those classes, and as the resident healing priest, I will be walking you through the preview for discipline (as well as holy) talent by talent.

The preview confirms the full details on the long-awaited discipline ability, Power Word: Barrier. A new talent called Archangel was also unveiled. Hit the jump to check it out.

The identity of the free pet that Worldwide Invitational Paris attendees received with a code in their goodie bag has been a closely guarded secret, with the identity not known even at the WWI itself. Yesterday, Bornakk broke the silence on the pet and announced that after patch 2.4.3 goes live, WWI attendees will be able to turn in their pet codes for their own miniature version of Diablo's Archangel Tyrael!

Tyrael, as you may remember, is an angel that assists the Horadrim -- and later the heroes of Diablo 2 -- in fighting back the Prime Evils as they attempt to assault and take over the world of Sanctuary. He is one of the few angels who will directly assist humanity in fighting Hell, even when he is specifically forbidden from interfering by Heaven itself. He eventually destroys the Worldstone after Baal corrupts it at the end of the Lord of Destruction expansion.

So far, his fate after that has not been told, although it seems practically a given that he will appear in Diablo 3 in some capacity, as the official Diablo 3 site features his visage prominently.

We reported yesterday about the new icy splash screen which has appeared on many of Blizzard's corporate and gaming sites. There's already tons of speculation speeding around the web about it, and of course the pot was only stirred all the more this morning when the picture changed slightly: the light in the middle of the cracked ice became brighter, and there's some new detail that can be seen through the ice, including a rune of some sort just to the upper right of the center. we can probably assume that the picture will change more each day until something is announced at the Worldwide Invitational. However, the question remains: What is being announced?

Right now, there's two major schools of thought about it: One school says that this will lead up to the announcement of the WoTLK Beta, while another says that this will be the announcement of Diablo 3. Each side has some pretty passionate arguments, and are bringing the analysis to back it up. Let's look at what we have after the break.