The Daily Quest : priest

Shadow Priest Basics

Celathil — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 02:15:43 GMT

I have played a shadow priest for awhile now (albeit not as long as my holy pally) and have learned a few things. To begin this will cover the basics leading up to ssc/eye because I am assuming that if you are in there you know your class. The basics of what I will be covering are talents, stats, gear, and spell rotation. This stuff is very basic but once you have a grasp of this you will soon be able to come to a raid and not gimp yourself. Before I get into this though I will say I am not a expert, these are solely my opinions and though they may be rooted in fact, you may disagree with a few of my points.

In regards to talents I have to say how utterly disgusted I am with a lot of people who first spec to shadow. The vast majority in my opinion do so in order to “zomg melt ur fac3” and end up dumping way too many talent points into the shadow tree. The most common build and the most balance in my opinion is a 14/0/47 build with the most notable talents including; Inner focus in discipline, and leaving out imp VE. Now for those new they will think leaving out imp VE is a bad thing. But once you start raiding you will see you can’t always use VE let alone the talented version of it. Simply put it is amazing in kara through mag, and from my limited experience on the PTR with Zul’Aman. The real problem is when you have 1k+ shadow damage and are doing fights with aoe damage or adds the healing will cause too much threat. One fight that comes to mind is Void Reaver and A’lar, with void reaver at about 40% (depending on your tanks TPS) you will probably pull agro or be close to it. A’lar is different in that it depends on how well your off tanks are doing, some nights I can use it and other nights I cannot, you just have to use your best judgment. So what I am saying is that it isn’t hard to get your spec, a simple search of the priest forums will give you the exact numbers and talents, I believe it is even stickied on the top of their page. Your stats are quite basic and easy to figure out for raids (a bit more challenging in pvp but I’ll save that for a later blog). Once you get your hit rating cap (99% hit) which is 76 +hit rating after talents. Your next stat priority is damage, now some disagree and say that mp5 is better and that it allows you to go through longer fights, etc. Well you will see why in the following paragraph on why I disagree. Back to stats, going into raiding (kara doesn't count) you should have +76 hit rating, ~880-1,000 shadow spell damage and 7k health self buffed. Now some may look at it and thing that is impossible but it is actually very simple. The only gear that I use right now that is from raiding is Rytssin’s Lost Pendant (+stam, +shadow dmg), malefic girdle, and cloak of dalaran. The rest is tailoring and heroic gear/rewards, and my beloved darkmoon card: Crusade (+80 spell damage) trinket. With the gear listed above, combined with the arena season 2 mace/dagger you can easily be topping 1.1k shadow damage without even setting foot within a 25 man. But we cannot forget that to achieve this we must take up a very costly profession, tailoring. What you will be making is your Frozen Shadoweave, and Spellstrike sets along with (if you know someone in ssc/eye) belt of blasting. In order to make these sets you will either a) have to spend the next 3 weeks of your life farming primals b) use the money you had for your epic flying mount c) get exalted with aldor/scryer and then AH everything but the armaments/tomes and the marks/signets. You will probably cry by the time you make all the stuff and refuse to kill another water elemental again. Now I said I would address the mp5 vs dmg issue in this paragraph. You have the regen while casting talent in disc, VT up all the time, and your gear does not have any innate mp5 on it. The mp5 is nice but it isn’t needed at this point, what you can easily due (which you should be doing on the ssc/eye learning level) is elixer/flask up, bring your oils, food buffs, and bring plenty of pots. Even if you just do your dailies and use the unstable mana pots you get from the skettis escort that will help your gold costs a lot. Now you can have the best gear but it won’t mean anything if you don’t know a simple spell rotation. There are two rotations that depend on the stage of the fight, there is endurance and nuking. The endurance is fairly simple, VT-> Inner Focus-> SW:P-> Mind Blast-> MF-> VT -> MF, etc. What it is, is just keeping your dots up and using MF between Mind Blast cool downs, with a good tank you shouldn’t really even have to watch your threat too much except for at the beginning. The nuking build isn’t as much as a spell rotation as it is cool down management, what you have to do is keep your dots up then; MB-> MF-> SW:D with the spacing between the MB and SW:D you are able to keep MB and SW:D from being up on the same time for a decent amount of time. But please note, if you are constantly doing this a) it will put stress on healers in VE isn’t up b) you will be generating a crazy amount of threat. Now each fight will come down to a different rotation since especially now since the burning crusade, blizzard has done a good job of mixing up the scripting on the fights so there are a lot of variables. Now you are bound at some point in your raiding career to be on the verge of pulling agro, what you need to do is don’t freak out and start running around. If you were playing the way you were supposed to be you should have time to think it out, just go to the endurance rotation. A good tank will be able to generate more TPS than what your endurance build generates so you should just use that rotation till you have dropped comfortably in threat to resume. In conclusion take what I have said with moderation, if you are in ssc/eye you probably know what you are doing. This was for people who just went/new to shadow and have no idea what to do for that kara/gruul’s that is coming up. Just keep your head on your shoulders and use basic game mechanic knowledge to help you maximize your dps. Since remember, the more damage you do the more you are useful to your raid.

5 Ways to Survive Alterac Valley

matticus — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 14:12:00 GMT

Before I played my Priest, I had a 60 Paladin. My first guild was Micro, a PvP group based in Twisting Nether. My time on WoW was spent running organized Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch for hours on end. This was before the battlegroups concept was introduced into WoW. You may consider me a hardcore raider, but I’m no slouch in PvP tactics either. The mechanics of AV has changed. What's the general premise? Beat the crap out of the other team before they do it to you.

Two Methods to Victory

Killing the opposing team’s General -OR- Running their reinforcement counter to 0

As healers, we will often be one of the most sought after targets. Not all of us have full Season 2 gear with 400 resilience. If we want to give our team even a remote chance of winning, we need to survive. If we can survive, we can heal our own knuckledraggers pew-pewers. Remember, every death sustained is one point taken off of our reinforcement counter. With that said, here are 5 easy ways to live and support your side.

1) Use terrain to your advantage

When a player goes out of your line of sight, your spells automatically cancel. No other battleground or arena has much junk to hide behind. If you’re on the frontlines and you know you’re being targeted by range, duck behind a tree. You can move behind a tower. Don’t just stand in the open and give their mages easy Frostbolting action. Line of sight THEIR spellcasters. If I’m healing a Warrior, I will dismount behind a tree. All that crap you learned in Grade 10 math pays off here. Set up a triangle. You can see the warrior. Enemy mage sees the warrior. You can’t see enemy mage, therefore enemy mage cannot see you. Mage blasts warrior, sees heals, tab targets to you, realizes you’re not in line of sight, gets crushed by Skillherald. And all you had to do was park yourself next to a tree.

2) Do not mindlessly charge into the enemy

If I had a copper for everytime I’ve seen this happen, I’d be able to quit school and sell WoW gold for a living. In a game where every player’s life is precious, people who randomly charge into the horde with no support behind them are pissing away reinforcement points. Please do not do this. Do not stay mounted and numlock your way into Frostwolf Graveyard while realizing that there are 4 players of the opposing faction guarding that flag. If you’re going to go in on the offense, tag along with a few other players. Odds of survivability greatly increase with your proximity to other players.

3) Cut your losses

If your offense is stalling and you’re not able to sustain the health of players around you, do not hesitate to cut your losses and fall back. Being able to think on a macro scale and on a micro scale is an asset. If six players are rushing up the ramp into Tower Point and you just capture it, there’s no way you can hold out that long for four minutes. Forty seconds maybe, but not four minutes. Better to drop a psychic scream, jump off the tower and fallback to the IB graveyard. Because if you think about it, you can either lose the tower and two reinforcement points or lose the tower anyway and come back later with some fire power.

4) Maximize your range

What’s the difference between healing at point blank range and healing at maximum range? Whatever your health is. If your at max, you’re not likely going to be targeted because the opposing team is busy with groundpounders that are smashing their face up front. That leaves you free to drop your renews, healing waves, shields, etc. Use the players your side as a barrier. Keep them alive and they will in turn protect you.

5) Stalling tactics

We have defensive measures at our disposal that we can use to evade enemy attacks or make us stronger. When you’re falling back, slow down the other side. Keep using your global cooldowns. Shamans should be dropping earthbind totems and grounding totems as much as possible. Priests should be tossing up shields, screams, and stoneforms (Dwarves only). Tie up the enemy as long as possible. Delay them. Do whatever it takes. If you see a mounted Tauren ride by, frost shock him. This especially holds true when you’re assaulting a graveyard. Don’t fight ON the flag. Fight between the graveyard and the flag so you can tie up and stall the players that are ressing. Think about it for a moment. What is your first inclination when you see an opposing player that is trying to tag your graveyard? You are going to do whatever it takes to get that player off the flag, right? Exactly. The reverse holds true.

Follow these simple concepts and you will help your side see success in AV. At the very least, even if you don't win, you won't die as much.

Matticus raids on a his Dwarf Priest and PvPs on his shaman. When he's not doing that, he maintains his own blog over at worldofmatticus.com. If you like what you read, come by and read more!

Fear Ward Sucks, says Tremor Totem

matticus — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 02:06:04 GMT

The 2.3 patch brought about many sweeping changes for Priests. Fear Ward, a spell once exclusive to Dwarves and Dranei, is now available to all Priests at level 20. Before Burning Crusade, the Horde answer to Fear Ward was Tremor Totem. On raids like Onyxia, the two abilities were the few that helped make fear manageable.

(Definitions courtesy of WoWWiki.com)

Fear Ward

Fear Ward is a spell available to all priests at level 20. This spell renders the target immune to one fear effect. The buff lasts 3 minutes, has a 3 minute cooldown to recast, and is considered a magic effect. The buff is consumed even if the character is already immune to fear (i.e. warrior using Berserker Rage or http://www.wowwiki.com/Death_Wish Death Wish]).

Tremor Totem

Summons a Tremor Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster that shakes the ground around it, removing Fear, Charm and Sleep effects from party members within 30 yards. Lasts 2 min.

Analysis

So the big benefit to Fear Ward is that it is now available to all Priests. The really big downside is that it has a three minute uptime and a three minute cool down. On engagements like Nightbane, Warriors are going to have to be more alert in their stance dancing. You can avoid the first fear easily and it gets nullified. If you have a second Priest, you can mitigate the second one. But subsequent fears will need to be danced.

Enter the Tremor Totem

What about the tremor totem? If a Shaman drops it down, it does not prevent fear effects (THAT would be overpowered). It pulses every few seconds and when the pulse hits, the fear effect is removed (along with silence, charm, etc). Tremor totems can be placed at any time and have a shelf life of only two minutes. When a Shaman drops the totem down, any fear effects that are already up are immediately removed effectively 'cleansing' the players. Bear in mind, totem affects only those currently in your party.

So going back to our Nightbane example, if you have a Shaman, I think this will alter some of the group makeups to include a Shaman. Tremor totem hasn't become stronger. Fear ward just became weaker. It's viability in PvE encounters has diminished. The only downside to tremor totem is that there may be some cases where players run out of range of it's effect (can be lessened if you invest a point to extend totem range).

So bottom line? Advantage, Tremor Totem.

I won't touch the PvP side of things. I'll leave that to my buddy Pwyff to take care of.

Feedback

I've received some comment feedback on my blog about this topic which I wanted to share. The posts I write on my blog I import to Curse the day after.

Athryn says

Ahh, but there’s a significant change you might have overlooked which takes the sting out of the changes somewhat:

Creature AI has been changed to no longer prioritize attacking unfeared targets over feared targets.

This means that even if a warrior misses the stancedance, Nightbane isn’t going to turn around and smack someone anymore. And it means that we can keep using a Druid tank. ^_^

Yes, that is true. Diligent Dwarf/Dranei Priests would have spammed fear ward on everybody. Can't do that now sadly =(. I'm more worried about healers not being able to heal the tanks due to the loss of control. At least when tanks were warded they had a number of options available to help mitigate some of the incoming damage.

But alas! We will adapt! We will prevail!

As always, if you enjoy what you're reading come on over to my blog at worldofmatticus.com and feel free to subscribe. (I can't remember if TDQ has an RSS feed or not)

The 12 Hour Raid

matticus — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 01:41:43 GMT

I didn't really want to do it. It just... happened! Honestly!

12 PM to 330 PM

Keruen and I set up a half Carnage raid to go in to Zul'Aman (We didn't actually start pulls until 1 PM). We spent a few hours in there downing Bear Boss easily within three shots. The Robes of Heavenly Purpose dropped. Unfortunately, I was on my Resto Shaman so they went to Keruen since he was the only healing priest in there. I think we're a few weeks from being able to go for the time trials. We don't have a consistent number of personnel to go in with at the moment. Then we tried clearing to Lynx, but we had a number of players drop out. By then it was around 315 and with our SSC raid starting in a few minutes, we had no choice but to abandon it.

330 PM to 9 PM

Spent the 30 minutes getting something to eat and getting flasks and such (By the way, you know all those Apexis Shards you have? There's a use for them now at the Ogrila Quartermaster as you can use them to purchase Level 55 Potions for 50 shards and some silver).

Lady Vashj started off well enough. We were able to get her consistently into Phase 3. The main things that were killing us was a combination of Static Charges and poisons. After some more minor adjustments, Lady Vashj went down fairly cleanly as evidenced by my new Flickr shot. Her loot? Well, nothing I would be interested in:

Vestments of the Sea-Witch Krakken-Heart Breastplate A Champion and a Defender token

Then we jaunted over to Tempest Keep and here's where the fun began.

Al'ar went down after two shots. Void Reaver apparently has been modified or something. I noticed his bolts now come at us in an arcing fashion. I don't know if that has altered the speed at which they arrive, but we had some issues with him for tonight and wiped about 4 times before we killed him. By this time, it was about 830 PM and that gave us only one shot at Solarian.

We didn't get her down sadly. I really want her Ethereum Life-Staff. It's a fairly sizeable upgrade over my Crystalheart Pulse-Staff. What I plan to do is slap 81 Healing on one of them and Spellsurge on the other. I haven't quite yet decided which for which.

9 PM - 12 AM

My real life friends and I decided to go in and tackle Zul'Aman. This time, I would go in as my Priest. We came, we saw, and we conquered the Bear Boss after 4 attempts. Ironically, the same Robes that dropped earlier in the day dropped for me again and the other Priests were kind enough to pass them (We had four, COUNT 'EM FOUR Priests).

After that, we strolled over to the Eagle Boss. We didn't have a Rogue and could not exploit the gauntlet, but we did discover something intriguing.

One of the Shadow Priests had the brilliant idea of mind controlling one of the spawns that come up behind us. Shortly thereafter, the gauntlet waves stopped. The Troll he mind controlled disappeared. We were initially stunned at first but continued to press forward. Sure enough, the Troll on the steps who we're supposed to kill was not there. Like the Rogue infinite sap technique that GMW informed us about, I fully expect this one to get fixed at some point in the future. It was an interesting bug, to say the least. We didn't let it to go waste either.

Eagle boss went down in one shot. The Mojo-mender's Mask dropped. It went to our Elemental Shaman. Sweet deal indeed. We started plowing on over to Lynx Boss but we alas, we could not complete it due to people having to leave again.

Aftermath

I still had plenty of energy. I haven't done one of these in a long time. I know there's no way I'd be able to consistently do something like this. But it was fun all the same. Most of my work was completed on Saturday so I had the entire Sunday free. All of that just to upgrade my PMC Robes.

By the way, for all you aspiring Priests out there, I made my Primal Mooncloth Robe since the end of March. It is now halfway through November. Those Robes lasted me seven and a half months before I upgraded to the ones I have today. I cannot stress the uberness of those Robes anymore then this.

Sure you can try to gun for the Opera ones, but really the odds of that dropping have been quite minor for me. I have never seen it drop on my Priest. Not only do you need to get the correct boss, there's the item randomness factor. So bear that in mind if you decide to wait.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, we raided Zul'Aman with four Priests. One of them was Discipline specced with Pain Suppression. Amazingly, he worked out great! On bosses like the Bear where tanks were taking enormous amounts of burst damage, he activated Pain Suppression which made healing much easier. There were a lot of clutch moments. His healing wasn't terribly gimped either. I encourage more raiding groups to consider the viability of a Discipline priest until we can fully ascertain it's benefits. But for the most part, it looks good. Real good.

Matticus is currently sitting at school praying he doesn't get snowed in. Read move over at worldofmatticus.com.

Raiding with an Alt character

matticus — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:05:59 GMT

I just received clearance from my GM to raid in SSC with Saphfira. I know the last couple of posts had me express disappointment in my class, but that's not the case. Mallet is my favourite character out of all of them. Let me explain the situation here. It only recently occurred to me that Carnage raids with four active Priests. Three of them are Holy and one is Shadow. I've never really played a DPS class at all throughout my WoW career. Even right now, Saphfira is Restoration specced. We only have one Shaman and she's Enhancement. We've been sharding a ridiculous amount of mail healing gear. Last night in SSC, 3 mail healing items dropped (also 5 of 6 SSC bosses dropped within 3 hours which is a big plus in terms of progression).

Luckily, Maeve understood the point I was trying to make so I didn't have to waste my breath explaining my situation. But here was the argument I was going to make: Three Holy Priests means theres going to be more competition for gear. Having a Resto Shaman would increase the diversity of the raid and not allow healing loot to be wasted. It's basically another group getting totem buffs. Healing power isn't going to go down a whole lot. It's not like I'm requesting to swap Mallet for an Elemental Shaman. So it's a pound for pound trade of healer for healer.

Is this something I really want? No, because I absolutely love playing my Priest. But having three Holy priests in the raid means its going to take three times as long for us of them to get geared up.

But we spent so much time gearing up Mallet and he'll be wasted

Well no, it's not an either/or situation. Mallet is clearly a superior healer in comparison to Saphfira in every respect. I think there may be certain encounters where having a Wrath of Air totem and a Mana Spring might provide some extra punch. It's not like I'm going to stop raiding with both of them. Healing has always been my calling. Even back when I played Guild Wars, I had a Monk/Elemental (In PvP, I'd make an E/Mo which still cracks me up every time I see it). It's also not like I'm going to be competing with another Resto Shaman in raids for gear either. There isn't that much of a loss that's occurring. It will be a huge benefit for everyone else because then I will be spending my DKP twice as much.

That's another interesting ethical question that I've also had to wrestle with. How do I deal with gear? I've always been for progression. There will be mace and shield drops and that there is direct competition against Paladins. I'm fairly certain that I have more DKP then they do. But it wouldn't be right for me to exercise option and bid. Damn all of these morals and ethics courses they make us take for Criminology.

I'm worried that there might be some contempt or that raiding with Saphfira would raise a few eyebrows here and there. I sincerely hope not. Really though, I'd rather prefer to raid with Mallet if I could. But raiding with four Priests made me think that could I not be utilized better if I brought a Resto Shaman instead.

In any case, it will still take some time before she's up to SSC status. Here's the highlights of her gear right now:

3/5 T4 (head, gloves, shoulders)
Nightbane's Healing Staff and Neck
5/5 S2 Gear (Just for the pants)
Netherspite's Mail Chestpiece
Gruul's healing trinket

Saphfira presently sports approximately 1550 +healing. That is nowhere near high enough for Mag+ raids. There are some improvements that can be made:

A better mace to go with the Chess Shield (Essence Focuser)
Honor Hold head enchant
81 Healing enchant to weapon

That should shoot her + healing to around 1660 and should last against encounters such as Mag, and VR.

Has anyone else had similar cases where they wanted to raid with alts? Did your guild shoot you down or guilt you into not using your alt? I'm lucky to be playing two support classes. I'm also lucky to be in such an awesome Guild where the leadership can understand what it is that I'm offering.

This brings up another question. How do Guilds handle alts for loot? Do they draw from the same character (IE, both Mallet's and Saphfira's DKP are cumulative) or are they separate (Both Mallet and Saphfira earn separate DKP and are exclusive from one another).

Matt's bitchin' about lectures where people don't leave early enough. You can read more over at http://www.worldofmatticus.com.

Not... really a nightmare?

matticus — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 23:55:34 GMT

Turns out my response to Leiandra's post garnered a whole slew of responses of my own. I remain vigilantly aware of Blizzard's upcoming changes to our class. Our class evolution has gone from Grand Master Healer to a support medic on the front lines. That's all we are really... a support class. Sure we've got all of our awesome tools at our disposal. When's the last time anyone's really used Holy Nova on a tactically beneficial level? Last time I spammed Holy Nova was against a certain red dragon in Blackwing Lair. But that's when mana was infinite. Pwyff's comments were bang on when summarizing the strength of each healing class.

If we truly were the end all and be all of all healers, there would be no need for hybrid healers like Paladins, Shamans, and Druids. All raids would be filled with nothing but Priests. The reason why there is a sort of parity along the healing classes is because Blizzard wanted to make raiding flexible for a large amount of players. If all a raid needed were Priests, then the other healers would sit out and be unused. There had to be some kind of equality so that classes could be kind of interchangeable.

Anyone like problem solving? I love problem solving. Chances are, if you're playing WoW, you like problem solving. If you think about it, WoW is a big giant puzzle that's meant to be solved. This is one of the assignments I had for homework in my cognitive science class. So here's a puzzle for you<strong>:</strong>

<strong>The scenario</strong>

Three Human Priests and three Orcs arrive at Menethil Harbor, and they all wish to cross to Kalimdor. Fortunately, there is a boat, but unfortunately, the boat can only hold two creatures at one time. Orcs are vicious creatures, and whenever there are more orcs than Priests on one side of the river, the orcs will immediately attack the Priests and slaughter them. You must be certain that you never leave more orcs than Priests on any side of the maelstrom. How should the problem be solved? The foul orcs can be trusted to bring the boat back safely. There must be one creature in the boat to pilot it. If the Kalimdor shore has an Orc, and there is an inbound Orc and a Priest, the Priest will be ripped to shreds even though they're on the boat.

The problem is solvable with a minimum of 11 steps. I'll post a solution later. If you solve it, don't spit out the solution in comments yet, but DO say that you figured it out.

Matticus is wondering how on earth he's going to get the 20 potions, 2 flasks, and other consumables needed for raiding within 30 minutes before SSC tonight. You can read more over at http://www.worldofmatticus.com/.

My Nightmare as a Priest

matticus — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:10:22 GMT

I'm reading Leiandra's post on the different types of healers and their functions. After reading some of the comments there, I felt like this merited a direct post reply on it's own instead of a comment. I wager I'm one of the few players to have rolled all four healer classes. I've only raided with three of them (Priest, Shaman, and Paladin while my Druid is on the backburner somewhere at the early 50 level). Some of the comments I've read made me raise my eyebrow.

Elinor

I know my comparison is somewhat simplistic, but taking away +healing gear (should be the same for priest or paladin) a paladin's biggest heal with appropriate talents is a 2.5 sec cast for 2740(840 mana). A priest with appropriate talents has a 2.5 sec cast for 3062(825 mana). Of course there is a talent for paladins to reduce that cast time by .5 for the next 15 sec, and the 3062 for priest doesn't include the talent to increase it by 25% of spirit. Also a druid has a 3.0 sec direct heal for 3517 (935 mana).

Firstly, that's an unfair comment to make. If you're going to compare healers, the assumption should be made that they are talented to the best healing spec available. There's no point in comparing supposed healing classes without full and complete talents because there isn't a player in WoW who raid heals with no talents spent in their appropriate healing trees. Don't compare base heals or stats either because certain races and classes have a higher advantage over the other. If you're going to compare healing output, then add an arbitrary base healing number that seems fair (like +1500 healing). Please, if you're going to compare one class with another, make realistic comparisons.

So here's the million dollar question. Is there one healing class better than another? It depends entirely on the encounter and on the situation. Let's hypothetically say that there's a 25 man raid team about to engage a boss. It's your standard tank and spank encounter. Nothing special about it. Except for the fact that Crosbane, our boss, hits like a freight train for 30 minutes. Most healers would run out of gas long before those thirty minutes are up. Pally's, not so.

They're the energizer bunnies of WoW. They keep going, and going, and going. It's true that as a Priest, we have the 5 second rule to fall back on and we would gain a crapload of mana back. Realistically, we don't have that kind of option. If we don't heal for five seconds, our assignments are dead. I suppose the best we can hope for is to light up a PoM, a Renew, and a Shield. That would us a few precious seconds to regen our mana. Then the boss crits.

Pally's own us Priests, period. There's a reason why many high end raiding Guilds no longer run Holy Priests as healers. We're a dying breed. Sure we bring a lot of specialist skills like PW:S and Prayer of Healing, but well timed spam heals from Paladins keep everything going. The reason I agree with your assessment about Paladins being the King of Healing is because they would never run out of mana in endurance fights. I'm busy struggling and blowing my potions, yelling for Innervates, Mana Tides, using my Shadow Fiend, and theres Joe Paladin in the corner just spamming Rank 5 Flash of Light over there. Couple 3 Paladins, a Shadow Priest, and a Resto Shaman with buffed mana spring totems and you have a group that can heal indefinitely.

My WWS in Carnage shows our Healers with four Paladins constantly on top all the time. Master Harth, High Priest that he is, leads the way in over all heals so there is hope for us yet.

But you can't expect WWS to illuminate the numbers for us all the time. It only shows us one side of the story. Different Healers are best suited for different encounters.

Take an encounter like Fathom-Lord in SSC for example. There are four bosses that need to be tanked. The Hunter boss spawns a pet every now and then, and the tank that's tanking him needs to draw aggro on it as well. So here is this one tank that's getting his ass handed to him by two Ford F-150's. On top of that, there's a freakin' Whirlwind type thing that comes around and throws me in the air every once in a while. I'm so focused on my raid health that I always seem to miss it coming by. If it weren't for my instant spells, he would be dead. Thankfully, the Hunter boss is the second boss that needs to die. With the damage input that Thor (my tank) is taking, it's impossible to sustain it for more then a few minutes. Eventually, I would hit a time where my potion cooldown is used, my shadowfiend timer is down, and all the innervates have been used. In this short period of time, I would excel in my role no problem. I don't have to keep him alive for an abysmally long time. Just enough to weather the storm.

Compare this to the last boss, the Fathom Lord himself. Initially Lang is over there with a Paladin. This Boss is last on the food chain. Paladins need to be able to keep Lang alive for at least seven minutes. Oh, and they have to heal themselves too. Lang may not be taking as much burst damage as Thor was, but he's taking a beating for a longer amount of time.

Do you see the point I'm trying to make here? It's nearly impossible to compare all the healing classes together. Each brings a different set of skills to the table. With the encounters in end game, I suspect that Paladins are better suited and utilized more often then not. As a Priest, I have enough spells at my disposal to react quickly enough to salvage a raid in case anything goes wrong. A Paladin won't be able to recover as much. But their long term efficiency is so good that there is little reason for raids to go in the crapper.

Sooner or later, our class will go the way of the Dodo bird. Aside from broccoli, that is my greatest fear with Holy Priests rendered inert, useless, and outclassed in every aspect. I guess I better start accumulating Shadow Gear. Good thing I have a Paladin and a Shaman to fall back on.

Matticus is taking a break from studying for his midterm in an hour. You can read more over at [www.worldofmatticus.com www.worldofmatticus.com].

The Last Ditch Effort Between a Druid and a Priest

matticus — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:52:19 GMT

I had the pleasure of ringing for Sinful Intent in their Karazhan run (Carnage demoted it to an off raid night). Going into Karazhan for the first time was so long ago. It's been a while since I ran with a Karazhan team that had not been able to take down Prince within the coveted 3 hour mark. Attumen, and Moroes were easy take downs.

Maiden became an interesting fight. We did not have a Paladin running with us. Our healing Matrix consisted of two Holy Priests and a Resto Druid. No Blessing of Sacrifice. This was going to be tough. I volunteered to run into the Consecrates. Needless to say, it worked. I came very close to death. I think my health even dropped to the double digits at some points. Our only casualty was the Resto Druid who was too far back behind the pillars and out of my line of site. She perished from a Holy Fire. Let this be a lesson guys. If you can't see your other healers or dispellers, they can't see you. When you're executing a take down on Maiden, always move in front of the pillars within that circle.

Big Bad Wolf was rocked with several minor deaths (mine included, but a soul stone negated that effect).

The clear to Curator was very swift and very disciplined. It was perfect. I maintained a 60% plus mana reserve at all times with my shadow fiend. Ghost, after ghost, after ghost fell. Quickest chain pulling I've seen yet. The fight with the big boss bot was interesting. DPS was suuuuper slacking. I think we got up to the 3rd evocate. Someone forgot to eat their Wheaties that morning.

So here's the play: At the conclusion of the 3rd evocate, I think Curator was sitting somewhere around 20%. The other Priest was dry. Our resto druid was dry. I was seconds away from being dry. A quick glance to my timers indicates my Shadowfiend has one minute remaining. My potion has 45 seconds. All THREE innervates were blown (Boomkin, Resto, and Feral). My 2 minute mana regen Shade of Aran trinket had 1:30. One of Curator's minisparks shows up and my screen flashes red signifying that I've pulled aggro. The tank was at 80% health and there was no way he was going to survive the next 6 seconds with all of his healers out of gas in the tank.

Then it dawned on me.

I scream out over vent: "DON"T HEAL ME". I had enough mana for 4 more flash heals... which I dumped on the MT to build up even more aggro. Sure enough, Curator targets me and fires a Hateful Bolt (Remember, no Paladins for salvation). I collapse. The Feral Druid understands what I'm trying to do and before I even call for it, he Battle res's me. I'm back in the game with 33% mana. At this point our tank is nearing death and Curator is at 10+%. I execute my OH $#@& sequence of moves and am able to bring him back up past the point of no return. Curator is now in the single digits. Everyone's wanding and trying to apply as much pressure as possible. Curator at 2%, I'm out of gas again. Tank buckles and dies. Last ditch nuking ensues. Curator... no longer... operational.

That was the most fun I've had for a while yet. There's nothing like the adrenaline rush of a do or die boss take down in WoW.

Matticus is glad he went into Karazhan with 40 Super Mana Potions in hand. You can read more over at http://www.worldofmatticus.com.

Stamina, an overlooked stat for Priests?

matticus — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 02:17:47 GMT

This one's going to be a short and quick post because I daresay the point that I'm trying to drive home will not take long to figure out. Several days ago, a prominent Guild on Ner'Zhul disbanded due to lack of attendance and other factors that kill Guilds (hmm, a good blogging topic). Needless to say, we signed several of their players in the hopes that it might solve a few of our attendance problems. Summer's now over, everyone should be back to a fairly stable schedule right?

Wrong. One of our Feral druid gets hit with an evening shift. Our Paladin suddenly has a life. One of our Rogues mysteriously vanishes (Go figure). Getting those extra players helped a lot. By the way, in other Guild news, Dinosaur disbands and joins Dissonance (both top 20 Guilds on NZ, I think).

Tonight was Serpentshrine Cavern. Since we were shorthanded a player, we opted for Lurker first. Two wipes later, we trekked back to Hydross. A colleague over at Priestly Endeavors published his own suggested requirements for raiding in terms of individual player stats. At first I disagreed with him at the amount of gear and such that was required. But something happened in our attempts against Hydross that made me think twice. For those who are unfamiliar with the fight, Hydross has an attack called Water Tomb in which he encases a player in a bubble of water which does approximately 4500 damage over 5 seconds. Furthermore, players within a certain radius around him will also get entombed but thankfully that spell does not chain past the second player. In addition, Hydross applies a stacking debuff where all players within the raid will periodically take increasingly more punishing frost damage (Water tomb hurts more). One of the new Priests we picked up today just died within the first minute or so of the encounter. His health was approximately 7400ish fully raid buffed. It looks as if he had 5800 base health.

Back to Kirk, it appears as if he is correct to a certain extent. The amount of HP he recommends for his level of raiding is a little more generous. There's no possible way to sacrifice healing and MP5 gear for a little more stamina. You really don't need over 7000ish base health in Kara. It's true there are certain encounters where you will take a lot of damage (For instance, Aran's Poly-Pyro, or Illhoof's sacrifice). But for the most part, you just need above 7.2k using whatever buffs you can slap on yourself. You also need to pray your tanks are able to do their job and hold their aggro. That's not a problem in a 10 man instance like Karazhan because there isn't a whole lot of pressure or damage being applied to you (the priest) or to your raid. But once you get to an instance like SSC, it definitely is a whole new ball game. Maybe the only person who might've been able to save our poor Priest was a player with reflexes equal to that of Martin Brodeur. But I applied my method of raid healing and was not able to restore his health quick enough.

A lot of Priests emphasize the importance of +healing and MP5. Don't get me wrong, I do too. After that incident today, the second stat I would take a long hard look at is stamina. It's one of the reasons why I spent DKP on my Crystalheart Pulse-Staff. Strangely enough, that item dropped again last week and no healer took it so it became sharded. How unfortunate. I guess players really want to go after their Light's Justice/Aran's Sapphire combination instead of spending their DKP to get loot that will help them.

It's midnight, but before I go to bed, just think about this:

What's the point of having all that healing and all that MP5 if you're not alive to utilize it? I know I would get more healing if I stayed with an LJ/Aran's Sapphire duo, but I would not be of any use to my Guild if I was dead half the encounter.

Matticus is busy happily munching away on some Spicy Crawdad that he whipped up earlier in the day. You can read more at http://www.worldofmatticus.com

Healing a Raid: A Priestly Perspective

matticus — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 22:20:18 GMT

To end off the week, I will help all of you budding raiding priests who have never joined any groups larger then 10 (AV an exception). Yeah, you the one who has never once set foot inside MC or BWL or Naxx or Zul’Gurub or any of those old fun instances that we used to do before. By the end of this column, my hope is that you will be able to excel and surpass the expectations of your raid leader.

I wont touch on the spells specifically and what they can do. You leveled from 1 to 70 on your own. If you don’t know the capabilities of the tools at your disposal, then you have no business playing a Priest. But I will guide you on when you should use them.

Your raid makeup could consist of a variety of different healer classes. More often then not, you as a priest would make up several of those slots. Let’s now for the sake of argument pretend that you’ve been assigned the dreaded task of maintaining te health of your raid as opposed to healing a single person. It’s such a daunting task healing 4 other players in a party. Now you’re responsible for 24 others. What do I do?

Let’s check out the toolkit. There’s a reason why Blizzard gave us to much stuff to work with.

Renew: Cast this on targets that have taken hits but are not expected to take damage again. Examples would include mages, hunters, or other ranged DPS (maybe rogues). It’s a relatively cheap heal over time spell where you don’t need to tie up your 1.5s cast time or our 2.5s cast time. But don’t forget to stack these up with Renews from other priests. Our main tank sometimes has up to Renews on him at any given time.

Flash Heal: I tend to downrank my heals a little bit here for two reasons: 1) Reduces mana cost 2) Less overhealing done. I’ll use a flash heal between ranks 4 – 6 depending on the situation at hand. In some cases, I will use a max rank flash heal just because tanks are taking so much damage that my heals are only maintaining his health instead of restoring it up. Used mainly on players taking damage frequently such as the main tank or in an emergency.

Greater Heal: The big brother of Flash heal. This one I keep max ranked. You don’t have to. Its entirely up to you and your playing style. Drop these ones on your main tank or your assigned healing target.

PW: Shield: There appears to be much controversy over the usage of this spell. Philosophically, I disagree with many other priests on how and when it should be used. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Your duty is to the raid. If spamming shields every 40 seconds is the only way to do it, then you spam it and you like it. Usually though, I will cast it if a tank jumps from 100% to 40% (or any number below 10000 health). These bosses hit like a freight train on afterburners. I’ve seen players get taken out with an 8k crit followed up by an 11k special attack. I am one paranoid priest.

Prayer of Healing: Don’t spam flash heal 5 times to heal your party. It’s a huge waste of time. Just drop a Prayer repeatedly until everyone’s back to full. 3 seconds on a prayer versus 7.5 seconds on flash heals. Usually, once the boss executes some sort of AoE damage which nails your group, you’ll want to cast this.

Prayer of Mending: Use in case of an emergency. The amount of damage it heals is a little more then the amount of damage received. But I am referring to a normal hit not a special attack at will knock off a good portion of the tanks health.

In case of emergency, break open glass

You’ll remember the other day I wrote about what Priests should do in the event they have pulled aggro. Here’s the other side of the equation: What to do if the tank has less than 10% health and in imminent danger where he could die and wipe the raid. Follow this process to ensure maximum possible survival.

1 – PW: Shild (Prevent further damage) 2 – Prayer of Mending (Mitigate further damage done) 3 – Renew (Constant heals) 4 – Flash Heal (Fastest way to heal. We’re concerned about time now) 5 - Repeat step 4 until he’s back up. Use shield’s again if your assignment’s health is questionable.

Other Healers

Usually, if there’s other healers on the tank, you’ll have no idea what kind of spell they’re casting. But here, time is of the essence. Drop flash after flash until he’s back in the game. Let other healers drop the big heals. Either way, get your assignment topped off. If you and your other heal happen to both drop big heals simultaneously, there’s a 3 second window where the tank could get critical’d and spontaneously die. You don’t want this to happen so be on the safe side and spam flash.

Exercises

So here, I took random screenshots through the past few raids with our raiders at various stages of decay. More often then not, you’ll encounter such similar situations. Take a look at them and think to yourself what you would do, who you would heal first, and why.

Here is shot number one. Light damage has only been applied to the raid. Matticus (Mallet) is in the uber healing group. Lang is down 25% (our main tank) and Bdon (an off tank) has also sustained hits as well as the rest of the melee DPS in his group. Although you can't tell, I have Lang selected. But it looks like Cheever also has him selected too. So my play here is to deselect and drop a prayer of healing to top off the group. Then I'd probably take care of the rest of the DPS.

This shot was taken too late. But look at the assist window on the right. This shows us who is healing Lang: All five of us. If that happens, just move off of him and take care of someone else, like Bdon.

Ah, our first casualties of the night. Going to save my own skin and heal myself. There's no real danger at this point so long as the tanks are still alive. We lost a healer (with 6 left) and an off tank (with 3 left). No big loss, no sense of panicking.

Again, cursor on Lang shows that I'm not the only one on him. Renew, Prayer, move on. Let the Priest and the Paladin on him take over with flashes and greater heals. Dropped renews on everybody on group 5 and group 3 that was wounded. Keep the shield cooldown on standby in case Lang gets spiked again.

Now we've got some real pressure applied to the raid here. A lot of damage has been done and the raid is in various health states. I included my target of target of target window along with my Nature Enemy Cast Bar (NECB). Seeing how my group is wounded, I light off a Prayer of Healing. Then I noticed Mirri was also in the process of casting and is closer to getting the heal off. I cancel my prayer, and default to healing the tanks starting with Lang and Bdon. Once they're up, I ease off and begin my renew cycle on DPS.

Now we've got some serious problems. We're down a healer and the tanks are taking serious damage (465 doesn't seem like much). When you get to a case where you have multiple tanks with relatively low health, pick one and stick to it until they're topped. I chose Blori and called out in vent "I'm staying on Blori". This cues the other healers and frees them up knowing they don't have to worry about him as much. For example, now Mirri can heal Bdon or Dager can heal Lang without needing to rotate flashing Blori. Communication is important. Let the rest of the healers know who you're healing.

This one was a big giant leap of faith. One of our healers is offline and one of the tanks is under enormous stress. Notice that my target is Maeve. Also take a note that there is only one other healer besides me who has Maeve targeted. Bdon is a hit away from going under. But seeing as the assist window only shows two healers out of six who have Maeve targeted, it stands to reason that the other 4 must most likely be on Bdon. There is no other player in the raid who is prioritized higher then he is. Although there is no way to say for sure (unless I clicked him to determine the assists), I do believe it's a logical conclusion to make.

In any case, you may or may not encounter such situations like that in the future. Just remember, if one person dies, it's not the end of the raid even if it is the main tank. Hopefully, your off tanks are quick enough to jump in and snap up the loose mob. The important thing is to develop your own style of healing and work with the others in your group. Don't panic. Keep your cool and prioritize your targets. Good luck!

Matticus just finished farming up 5000 gold for his epic mount on his Shaman so that he can farm faster and more efficiently. Read more at http://www.worldofmatticus.com.

The Oh $#@& Reaction

matticus — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 02:02:34 GMT

Very sorry about the lack of updates. I've been overwhelmed with school. It's only the first week and I've already been hit with several assignments! But it's okay, because everything is fine now. I've gotten my time back from the hecticness of school. After perusing my daily dosage of blogs from my fellow Priests, here's [http://egotisticalpriest.omen-guild.net one that I want to share.

Ego provides an excellent overview of what to do when you pull a lot of mobs towards you without needing to. Her first rule in a nutshell? Don't move, don't worry, and most importantly don't panic. In a party, getting aggro at worst will wipe the entire group. In a raid, getting aggro at worst will wipe the entire raid, rack up hundreds of gold in repair bills, and http://www.worldofmatticus.com/2007/0.../optimize-your-raiding-time/ lose precious time in an instance]. I want to provide you a list of actions that I execute whenever I gain aggro. If you see my spec, you'll notice that I have zero points in Silent Resolve. That means it is quite likely and possible that I will pull aggro. Usually, I don't but lets say for the sake of argument that I have. Most of these have already been repeated in Ego's post, so I'll touch on it briefly and add one more final step that many players overlook.

If you've taken any kind of logic and reasoning course or if you're into computer programming, it's kind of the same way.

If things go to hell, do this else just heal the main tank.

I know that's probably wrong, but I hope you get the idea. Here's my sequence:

1st Option is Fade: Lowers your aggro temporarily. Problem? It's on a 30 second cooldown. So if the mobs are out for healer blood, you have to live at least that long.

2nd Option is PW: Shield: Damage prevention. While you do this, run towards the tank. Don't make them run after you.

3rd Option is Desperate Prayer: Granted, not all of you Priests have access to such a glorious spell. It is the ultimate Oh $#@& button. Take a few blows, then slam it to shoot yourself back to full. If you don't have the ability to cast this spell, then...

4th Option is Prayer of Mending: It's similar to a low cost PW: Shield. On your next hit, you gain this much health. Most of the time, mobs will hit you for under 1000. This spell guarantees that you will survive that one extra hit.

5th Option is to Die: This is slightly different in context but is still worth mentioning. This happened to us the other day. It wasn't our best raid night, but we were in Voidreaver's Room clearing out trash. One of our casters got caught facing the wrong way and got punted into another group. Instead of running towards the raid group and bringing extra mobs, he did the right thing and ran towards them and sacrificed himself to preserve the raid knowing that we were still under pressure from the initial mobs. In a raid environment, your first duty is to your raid. I cannot emphasize or stress this enough. There is only one main tank. There maybe 2 or 3 additional off tanks depending on the encounter, but there is only one main tank. Typically, there are 7 - 9 healers. If you go down it is not the end of the world. Let the others pick up the slack. So again, I will remind you. If you accidentally pull aggro from another group when your raid is not prepared, unequip your weapons and your wand and sacrifice yourself.

My panic buttons on my keyboard: PW: Shield: 1 Fade: 2 Desperate Prayer: 3 Prayer of Mending: Ctrl+1

I usually never bother with binding heal. I almost never use it because I never find the right situation for it. Or I just forget and drop two flash heals instead. I suppose I should start using that more often. But it just feels so... weird.

I'll have another large update tonight after the raid. I have lots of screens and it's all sorted. Now I just need to upload them. Time for us to do some potential Priest theorycrafting and analysis.

In addition to the Daily Quest, Matt runs a WoW blog where you can find more related articles on Priests, Shamans, Guild Management techniques and more. Check it out at http://www.worldofmatticus.com/.

Forget 28/33, try out 20/41 with Circle of Healing

matticus — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 11:26:43 GMT

Many Priests advocate using the 28/33 build. Heck, my priest has the exact same build. But if all of your Priests have Improved Divine Spirit, then doesn't that kind of render that spec pointless? You may as well change it up and vary it up some. I don't think you really need 4 Priests with Imp. Divine Spirit, do you? If you examine the holy tree, realize that heals can still get boosted higher. So let's check out my proposed build and when to put it to good use.

Here's the overall chart:

Most of these choices are self explanatory, but I'll highlight the important stuff.

Discipline

Silent Resolve: This one's an optional one here. If you have trouble with aggro management (or have a really bad tank), then pick this up. Otherwise, blow a point in Absolution and max out Mental Agility to achieve your 20 points in Discipline. My personal stance on this is that Silent Resolve should not be needed due to 1) A Priest who is aware of his/her aggro 2) A tank that can generate insane threat 3) A raid with enough healers to help even out heals on the tank so not anyone healer is over extending him or herself. If you're somehow catching up to the tank, drop a PW: Shield, Renew, and fade for a few seconds. But again, this is entirely optional and up to you.

Holy

For the most part, the Holy tree is remarkably similar to the standard 28/33 build except for the extra extensions at the end of the tree.

Empowered Healing: 20% extra healed with Greater Heal and 10% extra on Flash and Binding Heal. Ain't that just peachy? Not much else to say about that besides the fact that it IS awesome to increase your healing by a fairly substantial margin. You may not think 10% is much, but 10% additional healing over a 30 minute is a damn lot of healing.

Circle of Healing: Finally we come to the most controversial spell in the Holy tree. A lot of Priests slam Circle of Healing because they don't consider it useful or mana efficient or some other excuse that I haven't thought of. Start thinking in terms of situational healing. Now when would it be a good time for me to ever use a spell similar to Holy Nova, that can be used on any target in a raid, which would heal their party? What class would you surmise takes more damage? That's right, Melee classes. Face it, these poor suckers have to stay point blank staring at the butt of some boss having to repeatedly run out and bandage before being able to go back in because healers can't be spared to keep them alive or topped off.

Remember, this spell is entirely situational. I would not recommend speccing Circle of Healing if you are working your way through Karazhan. It's just not worth it on a ten-man group. But once you get to the 25 man raids, you'll start having heavy DPS groups consisting of classes like an Enhancement Shaman and four Rogues (hypothetically speaking). On a fight like Voidreaver, who steps on players within Melee range for a lot within a few seconds, a spell like Circle of Healing would be a blessing. Why? You've healed about 2500 HP in total. That's almost the same as a max rank Flash of Light. You can't use Prayer of Healing because it only heals players within your party. But Circle of Healing heals any player within the raid and their party. One of my fellow Priests in my Guild does this very thing. Every time we engage a boss where Melee classes are allowed to step in, he assigns himself to healing the DPS because his build allows him to do so without much problem. It's time inefficient to flash heal five times over five players. It's also inefficient to lob 5 renews. Three or four pumps of Circle of Healing can breathe enough life to your specialist group and ensure damage dealt is still maximized.

Us Priests have so many different Healing spells at our disposal. The trick is to discern which is right for what situation.

Fear Ward Changes - Why?

Indelible — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 16:12:31 GMT

So it has been confirmed that Fear Ward is now being stretched out to not only Horde side but to all priests with the coming of Wrath of the Lich King. Many players are rejoicing at this but I'm not one of them. I like to think I think outside of the box sometimes and the first thing that crossed my mind when this was announced was the implications of such a change.

As far as I can see, there are only two ways in which Fear Ward can be implemented in such a way, these two ways being:

1) Fear Ward is made a priest spell and new racials are implemented for Dwarfs and Dreanai.
2) Fear Wards is made a standardised priest ability and other class abilities, like star shards and devouring plaque, are removed from the game.

Let's work under the assumption that (for the sake of ease) it replaces the current class racials. The reason I am using this argument is because we cannot assert what racials Dwarfs and Dreanai might get in the event it is made a spell so we must work with the only one we can work valid projections and implications from.

There are two things that strike me about such a change. Firstly, it is not a nerf. That is not to say it is a complete buff either but I draw attention to this point as it is the first sign that priests are considered to be lacking in some ways. Secondly, it is yet another nerf to fear effects in the game, something that has been occurring on a regular basis for the past few months.

Undead Shadowpriests at this moment in time are, for the most part, the single most unbalanced class/race combination in group PvP for priests. Notice that I didn't say PvP in general? That is because they are not. Dwarf shadowpriests out do Undead Shadowpriests in 1v1 because they have more survivability than Undead Shadowpriests, thanks to deperate prayer and stoneskin. Undead Shadowpriest in group PvP (at this moment in time) should have two ways of breaking fear effects, these ways being:

1) Will of the Forsaken (which breaks fear, charm and seduce effects and grants immunity to these effects for 5 seconds).
2) PvP Trinket (which breaks all effects that cause loss of control of your character).

So what we have is a class/race combo that provides sustainable and high amounts of dps with little threat from fear. That said, however, there is still the time it takes to break those fear effects with these abilities which gives other players time to at least do something.

Now let's add Fear Ward to this combination. This means that, not only do Undead Priests have the ability to, "tank," 3 fear effects (possibly 4 if we take into account the immunity granted by WotF) but that they are completely immune to the first fear effect without risk of even a slight interrupt.

Unbalanced much? This change makes an already simple (but not the simplest) class spec even more simple. The only people who benefit from these changes are the people who don't know or can't be bothered to put the effort into breaking fear with the abilities they have already. In other words, the simple people benefit whilst the people who like a moderate challenge are screwed over by the ever more ignorant machine Blizzard seems to be.

As you can see I have highlighted issues with this change (in the assumed way) in my own class/race combo. Many might be wondering why I have done that and frankly it is because I don't like this change. Shadowpriests as they are now, are where they need to be. Changing them in this way would simply make my race/class combination simple. At the moment, casters give me the most amount of trouble.

As it stands, I am not to happy with the confirmed change. What my opinion hinges on is how they change other classes to take account of this, how they can justify another nerf to fear effects and how the general dynamics in the classes changes with WotLK. Until then, I'm just going to sit in silence and grit my teeth at the prospect of a simple, boring and generally mind numbing play style with my priest and hope and pray they introduce something interesting in the 51-point trees to balance the announced change.

You never know, Fear Wards might be made the 51-point talent - god forbid!