Heroic AN is still a headache without poison cleanse

By Zejus on October 23, 2009

About six months ago I posed the question to the WoW forums asking whether or not Blizzard will ever add more gear to be purchased with Emblems of Heroism. I don’t raid because of time constraints, but was logging on nightly to do a heroic or two with a steady group of friends. After having every possible emblem upgrade, and plenty of heirloom items for alts, I began losing interest in playing my character because I was out of upgrades. I enjoyed running heroics but there wasn’t much of an incentive from a progression standpoint.

My forum thread was full of players saying that it was doubtful because Blizzard doesn’t want a repeat of the latter stages of Burning Crusade, where Hiijal/SSC-geared players were forced to slum heroics for gear upgrades. I was discouraged and eventually wound up leaving my priest alone to level alts.

Fast-forward to now: Blizzard made Emblems of Conquest drop from heroic dungeon bosses, and Emblems of Triumph are now the reward for completing the daily heroic quest. Beautiful! They’ve given my priest room to progress!

I logged on last night hoping to find a group for The Headless Horseman. He drops a ring that is an upgrade to one of my holy spec rings, and I enjoy the fact that the seasonal bosses are quick and don’t require hours of time. It appeared as though my guild had already killed him, so I hiked to Scarlet Monastery figuring that there’s bound to be a group spamming General chat for a healer.

I kind of just stood in the lobby of SM, toying with the level 31 mobs. Fifteen minutes went by and I saw no promising groups that were looking for a healer. One group did need a healer, but I was turned off by their message: LF 1 more, healer, must have summon and must summon first!” No thanks. I’ve been burned too many times in this game to roll the dice with that situation.

There was a group in the LFG channel that needed a healer for heroic Azjol-Nerub, the daily heroic dungeon. I was hesitant to volunteer because my 3-month-old daughter had just fallen asleep next to me and could wake up at any time, but I took a chance. The group sent me an invite and I headed to Star’s Rest.

The group composition was solid: A paladin tank, a warrior, a death knight, and a mage. The melee would compliment each other well, and the mage provides water, intellect, and possibly Replenishment. The tank had 38k health, which is always nice to see as a healer.

Upon entering the instance it was evident that the tank was in a rush. I had to hurry and eat for food buffs, and he started the first pull while I was out of range and only a half bar of mana. Call me old school – I know that at this stage of the game just about every level 80 player can out-gear heroics with a trip to the auction house, but I hate taking heroics for granted and wasting time running back to corpses because we’re caught off guard.

During the pull right before the first boss, the mage pulled aggo from an add, and died. As I was resurrecting him the tank pulled the boss, which interrupted my rez. The tank, once again, lost control over an add and it skittered over and killed me. Thankfully the graveyard is a short run from the instance and we were both able to make it back to the boss before the tank died.

The remainder of the run was fairly smooth. The second boss seemed to take forever to kill. I had to use Shadowfiend, a mana potion, and Hymn of Hope. I checked Recount and the dps was doing 3200, 1800, and 1350 dps, which didn’t seem extremely low for a heroic.

The final boss is an annoyance for one reason, poison. In fact, that is the problem with the entire instance for a priest healer. We’re the only healing class that cannot cleanse poison. So when Anub’arak’s adds are spitting acid that ticks for 3,500 hp every few seconds on two different players, instead of dispelling it, we have to watch it tick down and heal through it. Again, at this stage of the expansion, it’s nothing more than a moderate annoyance, but it made the fight interesting.

He dropped the wand and, since it was a side-grade to my wand, I passed so the mage could have it.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in | 4 Responses

Coolest Looking Boss I’ve Ever Seen!

By Zejus on October 22, 2009

I just saw a screen shot of one of the Icecrown Citadel bosses, Festergut. He’s considered an abomination, and rightfully so. I’ve never seen a boss model that’s more repulsive than this handsome devil. Keep up the good work, Blizzard.

Love the rat face coming out of his head

Love the little rat face coming out of his head above his left shoulder

Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in | 1 Response

How to PVP Heal as a Priest, and Survive

By Zejus on October 21, 2009

I’m not great at PvP. I’ve played on an arena team with my brother, who plays a hunter, and we didn’t do great. But I’ve definitely improved and wanted to share a few things that I learned along the way. For the sake of me not sounding like a total moron due to lack of experience, I’ll be talking mostly about battlegrounds and Wintergrasp.

Stay Alive

If you’re queuing for battlegrounds, there’s a good chance that there aren’t many healers in your group. This makes your life extremely valuable. Keep yourself alive first and foremost. That rogue who’s ‘fan of knife’ing everyone may not get your healing love immediately if you’re busy trying to stay in the fight, but he won’t get heals at all if you’re dead.

Healers are tanks in PvP. We draw the most attention, and are (or at least SHOULD be) gunned down first. Prepare to use all of your defensive abilities at any moment. Also, make sure you pick up the Pain Suppression glyph, which allows it to be cast while stunned. This translates to: “take away some of the rape pains induced by rogues”. In PvP, you’ll become the healer and the tank. The situation is rarely a priest standing in the back while healing the warrior who’s taking damage in the melee pile, as you may be use to in PvE. It’s more often a priest dragging three enemy players in circles while the warrior hacks them down one at a time. Your effectiveness as a PvP healer greatly depends on your survivability.

The disc priest has a nice arsenal of insta-cast spells that will allow you to stay alive on the move:

  • Prayer of Mending
  • Renew
  • Desperate Prayer (talented)
  • Power Word: Shield.
  • Pain Suppression
  • Psychic Scream

Use them all.

Gear is important. If you’re just beginning your PvP career, you can find some half-decent blue gear with resilience on it in the auction house. Buy a lot of it. Gem/enchant for resilience and stamina in certain slots early on. If you walk into Warsong Gulch with PvE gear and 17k health, expect to spend a lot of time with the spirit rezzer.

Purchase a PvP trinket as soon as possible…one of those that, when used, removes all movement impairing effects. You’ll need it to survive stuns and to get you un-sheeped in order to heal your teammates.

Annoy

As a priest you have some great and annoying tools at your disposal. Not only are they effective, but they can be a lot of fun.

Mass Dispel removes beneficial abilities from enemy players and debuffs from your allies. It is of the AoE variety, so cast it over melee piles when you can.

Mana Burn is arguably the Disc priest’s signature PvP spell. Talented, you can reduce the cast time. Triggering Power Infusion will make the cast time even shorter which means a lot of enemy mana burned in a short period of time. I mana burn whenever no one needs healing. Just remember that it also costs mana to use, so don’t go overboard.

Psychic Scream is a lot of fun to use when clumps of healers are together.

Mind Control, while situational, can be a lot of fun; particularly in Alterac Valley on the bridge, or in Eye of the Storm near the flag. Most times it will be interrupted, as it requires a long casting time, and other times players will immediately trinket out of it. But when the stars align and you can control a player to make him jump to his own death, it’s freakin’ hilarious.

Fear Ward: While not necessarily annoying, it’s a great spell to cast on your teammate non-warrior (warriors can break fear without your help) melee classes, especially rogues. If I survive a stun from an enemy rogue, the first thing I do is bubble and then fear to get him off my ass. If he resists my fear, it’s game/set/match. So always keep it on CD. Cast it on melee who are out to terrorize enemy healers.

Heal

Healing is different in battlegrounds than it is in an instance or raid. There’s no telling who will take a massive amount of damage in a short period of time. Disc PvP healing is like tank-healing a raid that switches tanks mid-fight, unannounced. Sometimes more than one party member is taking critical damage. For this reason, your heals will have to be quick and explosive to match the damage. Penance is your best friend. With a shield/Penance you can combat just about all damage that a single target can inflict. Shield/PoM/Penance works even better at times.

I rarely bother with Greater Heal (see: never), since the cast time is too long. Chain-casting Flash Heal works much better for when Penance is on cooldown. Oh and use the Glyph of Penance.

Get the mod called Healbot. It shows a health bar for each party member in your raid, and will dim all of the bars belonging to members who are out of range of your heals. This way you’re able to determine who you can actually help, and not bother wasting time trying to heal someone who is on the other side of the map.

So there you have it. I don’t have any one-on-one strategies for countering other classes, and I’m far from a PvP expert but I hope these tips help some priests trying to find their way in battlegrounds or Wintergrasp. There are nights that I swear off PvP for life because I get sick of being chain-stunned and focus-fired down. But I enjoy the intensity of playing against another human player, the unpredictability of of it, and continue to have more fun as my gear improves.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in , | Tagged , , | 3 Responses

Successful Heroic Culling of Stratholme Timed Run

By Zejus on July 18, 2009

Last night a friend and I decided to do H-CoS  just for the hell of it. His name is Zikthar and he’s a great paladin tank. I’ve grouped with him many times before, including when he’s invited me into his guild Naxx runs.

It’s unbelievable the difference a great tank can make over a sub-par one. We breezed through the instance and got to Infinite Corruptor (the timed boss) with almost five minutes left to spare.

Something worth mentioning: this was the first 5-man I did as holy spec in about four months. I was a little tired of Disc, and wanted to see what holy was like with some upgraded gear. It’s definitely a different feeling, since you don’t have that cushion that strong bubbles gives you. But with replentishment and Blessing of Wisdom going, I didn’t have to worry about mana and could toss out big heals whenever I wanted. Guardian Spirit is damn awesome, especially with the glyph, even though I only used it once (and it wasn’t consumed).

For those interested in attempting the timed run, here are a few very general tips:

  • Buff yourself with mana regen scrolls/food/elixers. Take Blessing of Wisdom to help with regen. None of the bosses hit particularly hard, and you won’t have much chance to drink so you’ll need mana to regen as you run.
  • You have to move very quickly between the waves of mobs at the beginning. One mishap can make the difference so make sure you know where you’re going and stay together.
  • A single death isn’t the end of the world. Get the player rezzed and buffed quickly.
  • When Arthas tags along, there are periods where he allows you to rest and you have to talk to him to resume. Talk to him immediately.

I lost the roll on the drake but I wasn’t too worried about it.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in | Tagged , | 1 Response

In the Midst of an Annoying Heroic UK Run

By Zejus on July 11, 2009

OK, I’m about 5 Guinesses deep, so forgive my brazenness, but this H-UK run makes me wish I had gone to bed when I had the opportunity. Since I’m in no shape to attempt to construct sentences, I’ll put it in list order:

  • I PUGed the group, because I need badges for the heirloom healing mace. 9 more badges to go.
  • I was invited and summoned, which is a great start.
  • The tank is a DK with 21k health, which negates said great start
  • The stupid shaman is in a rush. Before every pull she makes sure to chatter “Go go!” I asked her if she happened to be in labor. She didn’t respond.
  • The tank died once because the shaman loves to pull aggro to show how awesome she is with her 1.7k dps.
  • The tank died again because I was in the middle of commenting on how it’s weird that a Super Healing Potion would drop from an 80 heroic instead of a Runic Healing Potion. This was a dumb move on my part. Thankfully, we didn’t wipe.
  • The shaman is now commenting on how badass she’s doing by posting the damage meter and mentioning how she’d do even better if she didn’t have her healing glyphs equipped. I think I won’t heal her again.
  • This Guiness is going down smooth.
  • The tank left the group to “pick up his wife” right before the second boss. So I’m writing this post as we wait for him to get back.
  • The shaman and someone else are “LOL” emoting every 4 seconds. I want to kill myself.

PUG life.

Update: The group wound up being nice. Although it was a long run, most of them seemed like good people that I’d group with again.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in | Tagged , | 6 Responses

Started a Shaman for Alt Goodness

By Zejus on July 2, 2009

This week I started an alt with a new friend of mine, Divina, since we’re both nostalgic for old world dungeons. She created a female dwarf warrior, and I originally created a rogue. After some thinking, I felt the urge to switch to an elemental shaman instead so that we ‘d have that pesky ‘tank and healer’ part out of the way for low level instances.

So far it’s…well, what the first 10 levels of any class is: mind-numbingly boring since there are only two different buttons to press, and one isn’t mana-efficient. But I’m sure that once I get Water Shield, Ghost Wolf, and a few different totems the class is going to be a ball to play.

Any of you guys play a shaman? Is there much to do in 5-mans beside HW, or CH spam? Thanks!

Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in | Tagged , | 5 Responses

Longest Culling of Stratholme Run Ever

By Zejus on July 1, 2009

Mal'ganis the Regular

Mal'ganis the Regular

A few nights ago I was toying around in Ironforge, trying to get my new sidegrade weapons enchanted when I received an unexpected whisper from a complete stranger: “Hey, wanna heal cos reg? We’re ready to go.”  Normally I’d decline, since I gave no indication that I wanted to heal anything  (I wasn’t in LFG or anything), but since I enjoy CoS and would have spent the next two hours gathering Lichbloom otherwise, I decided to give it a shot.

They sent the invite and I immediately noticed that people weren’t on the same continent, let alone ‘ready to go’ as stated in the whisper. “That’s ok”, I said to myself as I hearthed to Dalaran, ran up the stairs and through the portal to the Caverns of Time. I went into the instance, got my Arcane Disrupters from Chromie, detected all 5 plagued crates, and rode to the gates of Stratholme…all before anyone in my party got through the portal in Dalaran.

Here’s one of my pet peeves… if you want to do an instance, be ready before you get invited/send invites. Grab your reagents, water, potions…whatever, THEN join LFG or begin inviting, and head to the summoning stone. Don’t sit in IF and duel rogues until other players summon you. If you’re a party of four and just need a healer, get to the instance. Likewise, if you’re looking to join a group, don’t expect a summon just because you’re the missing piece to the magical puzzle; don’t be so egotistical. Accept your invite, head to the stone. If they summon you before you get there, congratulations, you’re in a party with courteous people.

I was worried that, by the time we started, Culling of Stratholme will have aged and become regular Stratholme.

A few things worth mentioning:

  • The tank was choosing a mob, and just tanking that mob. He didn’t use Thunderclap or Shockwave, thus aggro from the other mobs was spread evenly throughout the remainder of the party. Since this wasn’t heroic, I was able to bubble tank while keeping the other four tanks topped off.
  • Meathook almost always chains the party member furthest from him. I never knew that. So I inched up past the warlock and let him eat the chains.
  • Arthas was our 6th tank, although he can’t hold aggro very well. When I healed him and his mobs B-lined to me, I had to make sure they walked through the unsuspecting rogue’s “Fan of Knives” and hope it was enough to pull aggro onto him.
  • If the tank doesn’t listen to your request to keep Mal’ganis turned away from the party then it becomes a mobile fight. You have to continue moving behind the boss while AoE healing the shadow breath that the party is taking in the face.
  • Despite the fact that I don’t need a single item from regular CoS, and was pulled in to heal at random while I was enjoying some leisure time in Ironforge, my participation did not warrant a “thank you”. Now that I’m thinking about it, I should have thanked them for allowing me to pleasure to heal their party. I can be selfish sometimes.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in | Tagged | Leave a response

Question: Have I Finally Upgraded My Titansteel Guardian?

By Zejus on June 28, 2009

grobbulus

For the past three or four months I have been using Titansteel Guardian as my weapon for both holy and disc specs. There are positives and negatives to this item. The positive is the generous amount of spellpower, and a fair amount of critical strike. The downside is that there are no mana regen stats whatsoever, including intellect. Still, I recommend it for any fresh level 80 priest regardless of spec, unless you’re lucky enough to nab War Mace of Unrequited Love from heroic Nexus. The Titansteel’s spellpower alone won’t be touched until Naxx 25, and you can make up for the lack or mana regen with gems.

Forgive my rambling. The point of the post was ask a question. I was lucky enough to get both Infection Repulser, and Blade of Dormant Memories from Naxx 10 last night. Oh and just to clarify, I originally passed on both items since Titansteel Guardian is almost as good, and I’d rather gear another healer if they could use the other weapons…but nobody needed and they would have been DE’d. So are those weapons an upgrade to my Titansteel Guardian?

Titansteel Guardian vs. Infection Repulser

By going with the IR I’d:

  • Lose 25 stamina
  • Gain 37 intellect
  • Gain 40 haste
  • Lose 49 spell power
  • Gain 11 mana per 5 seconds

This would be my new holy weapon. If we throw the stamina stat out of the equation altogether, is 37 intellect, 40 haste, and 11 mp5 worth the cost of 49 spell power? I think it is.

Titansteel Guardian vs. Blade of Dormant Memories

By going with BoDM I’d:

  • Lose 27 stamina
  • Gain 38 intellect
  • Gain 11 crit (about .24%)
  • Gain 27 haste
  • Lose 49 spell power

This would be my primary disc item. So again, throwing out stamina, is 38 intellect, 11 crit, and 27 haste worth the cost of 49 spell power. I’m not really sure about this one. If anyone would like to chime in I’d appreciate it.

So it looks like there’s a possibility that I now have a Holy weapon, a Disc weapon, and a PVP weapon.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in | Tagged | Leave a response

The Midsummer Fire Festival and Me Not Caring

By Zejus on June 25, 2009

I really, really wish that I could get more into these achievements, and in turn, the seasonal events. But the truth is, as it stands, I couldn’t care less. It surprises me because I enjoy the lore and the fantasy aspect of the game. I just haven’t found an incentive to knock out the seasonal quests.

Now we’re enjoying the Midsummer Fire Festival, which offers a few daily quests, a boatload of achievements, and a crack and defeating the boss Ahune who is located in Slave Pens.

One of the things that did manage to get me involved in some of the events last year was the chance at epic loot that drops from bosses such as Ahune and The Headless Horseman (during the Hallows End season). The problem is, for some reason they left Ahune at level 70 which means we’re stuck with level 70 loot. So much for my incentive.

I wonder why they didn’t upgrade him for level 80. I would definitely log on each night to use my summon on him if it meant a chance at an iLevel 200 cloak or ring.

Anyway, I did find two quick and easy daily quests that pay 13g a piece that can be done from any capital city, but besides that, Midsummer Fire Festival is another event that I probably won’t bother with.

What are your feelings on these events? Do you get involved? If not, what could Blizzard do to entice you to participate?

Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in | 4 Responses

I Hate Healing Meters

By Zejus on June 19, 2009

I’ll lead this post off by saying: I acknowledge the fact that I have not pressed ‘end-game content’, as the forum nerds refer to it. With that said, healing meters are a dumb way to measure the value of healers.

  1. Raid healing and tank healing are completely seperate types of healing. The tank is constantly taking damage, the raid may not be taking damage. The potential amount of healing a raid healer can do depends on the encounter itself, and how smart/reactive the raid is to get out of trouble. If the raid moves fast and can avoid extra AoE damage, that’s less damage raid healers have to heal. If raid healers heal less, they show up lower on the meters.
  2. Especially in the case of Disc priests, there’s really isn’t a way to calculate the value of things like absorption from shields, Pain Suppression, Guardian Spirit, etc. Maybe the Disc priest didn’t top meters, but he laid a crucial PS+PW:S that kept the tank from dying and the raid from wiping.
  3. You’re working for a common goal. You’re supposed to be competing against the mobs in front of you, not one another. Healing meters seem to promote players spamming their big AoE heals in order to top the healer next to them, instead of the more mana-efficient/appropriate spell for that particular situation.

I get it. When you’re pressing new raids and every little bit counts, you’d like a way to measure the effectivness of one healer over another. But the better way to do that is this: Assign roles to your healers and if the healer can fullfill their role and the players their responsible for DON’T DIE, then they did fine. If the players their responsible for DID die then figure out why. Were they standing in fire? Was the healer out of position, not managing their mana? Go from there.

WoW has so many variables that you can’t say: “Ok, Zejus had only 29% of the healing while Banjos has 37% and Eriak had 34% of the healing. Since we wiped, it must be because Zejus isn’t pulling his load.” It doesn’t work that way. If Zejus was tank healing and the tank didn’t die, but Banjos was raid healing and 4 dps died which led to slow killing and Zejus OOM’ing then your problem is elsewhere regardless of what the meters say.

I think healing meters are stupid and if my wife divorced me and I was able to raid and was recruited by a guild who is THAT serious that I’d be removed if we wipe and my healing percentage was lower than the rest I’d leave that guild immediately.

Before anything else, WoW is a game. It’s meant to be fun. If your guild is wiping on a particular boss but you’re on Vent with good players, and friends, you make it work. You stick with it and figure it out. Kicking people just so that you can brag on the forums about your fake purple epics does not impress me.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Posted in | 4 Responses

« Previous PageNext Page »