Cataclysm Changes Announced!!

The initial Cataclysm changes for priests has now been announced. Some we were expecting, others may come as a shock, and some to be frank I don’t really understand the explanation of their addition/removal. Lets see what Cataclysm will bring for Priests.

Heal: I hadn’t really considered the addition/revival of another direct healing spell, but im certainly not going to knock it. This will offer us with a third viable direct healing spell and should fit in nicely between the Flash Heal (1.5s) and Greater Heal (2.5s).

Prayer of Spirit / Divine Spirit removed: With all the recent info on stat mechanics etc… it was inevitable that these would be removed. Essentially spirit will become a bread and butter stat in Cataclysm Healing and having it as an additional buff is unnecessary.

Radiance: I suspect the balancing for this talent may be ongoing for some time, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it reformed as a proc with an internal cooldown. Essentially every direct heal will cause an additional HoT. To little and its not worth having, to much and its overpowered… let the nerfs begin!

Power Word Barrier: This has been on the cards for some time and again how the mechanics and balancing of this spell are worked will be interesting. Personally I still think this will get pulled from the final release, although full credit to the devs if they can work a way of balancing this in grp/raid situations… It’s a lovely concept, but the practicality of introducing it and balancing it are daunting.

Leap of Faith: Firstly, misleading talent name! When you get over the name and read the content, its quite an interesting addition to the priests arsenal. I can certainly see the benefit of having such a spell although not necessarily the need. I think introducing something like this may say more about the sort of content we can expect in the next expansion. PvP whores are going to love this though, but again working the mechanics so that it is not abused is going to be interesting.

I’ve read a few bloggers this morning hesitant of this talent, and for the record I don’t disagree with them one bit. It is clear that this will be a useful utility, but it should not nullify the requirement for raid awareness. My primary function is to keep the raid alive, and whilst recovering dps from the fire may be included in this remit I am not there personal nanny. If you have agro on a mob I will save you, but if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time you will die! FACT!

Inner Will: This will give us a speed increase and reduces the cast of instant-cast spells by 10%. Down side, its either Inner Fire or Inner Will. Assuming they put something in the tree talents to upgrade this I would be quite interested in its situational functionality, although I suspect that 9 times out of 10 I will continue to use Inner Fire.

Chakra Effect: Ok, so they need to sort out a name, Matt has used Holy Form, which is as good as any, so I’ll go with that. Essentially upon casting 3 consecutive types of healing spells, i.e. AOE, Direct, HoT, you will go into a holy state, which will vary depending on the heal consecutively cast. This could work as a boost to haste, increased ticks on HoT’s, or maybe expanding your AOE to the whole raid… who knows, but im positively wetting myself at the prospect of this talent!

Other:

Other things to consider are the changes to mana pools, consumption and replenishement… The FSR is being removed, rightfully, replenishement talents are being worked and the word from blizz is that healing is going to be more fun, which basically means decision making is again paramount to the success of a raid!

Blizz has also coined the idea of lesser/Greater shields for disc(o) priests, i.e. you will have an uber shield which you will cast on the tanks and a lesser shield to bubble the grp/raid damage. Nice idea, could be a real mana drain though, and considering the above not sure what usage this will get.

There are a number of changes to shadow aswell, and whilst I will pass comment on some of these in a later post, I will generally leave this for the experts to mull over.

To conclude, there are some really interesting ideas coming out of this initial cataclysm preview, and I cant wait to get my teeth into some of them. One things for sure, Cataclysm will provide a new (fun) challenge for priests everywhere.

~Cav~

Dear Blizz.....

Why oh why wont you let me trade my badges up rather than just down. Im not stupid, I know one for one is not logical, but please let me trade by surplus badges upwards, even at 10:1 so I can get some bloody use out of them…

With the new tier system, whereby you must get badges to get your tier gear It is exceedingly difficult to “catch up” when you cant raid every week and really just want to get your tier set already!

Presently I am 1/5 on my tier10 and only have 23 badges towards my next piece. Given the current badge set up its going to take me another month to get my leg piece, let alone worrying about other tier gear!

Pretty please Blizz, will you help me,

Yours grudgingly

~Cav~

If at first you dont succeed, find someone better!

This post is a little late in coming, but in an effort to keep this joke running for a few more weeks its well worth mentioning!!

As i was writing this post, i actually remembered that this situation had actually happend twice in the last two weeks!! coincidence much??!

So to set the scene a little bit, we were in ICC10 and had cleared upto Rotface without any real issues. We had a Pally (Brenstorm) healing the Tanks and me, in my 70's disc(o) spec healing the groups.

A couple of wipes into the Rotface encounter, or RotGate as i now referrer to it, the raid leader (Brenstorm) calls for a change in the raid setup. At this point i should probably also clarify that as we are a relatively small raiding guild, we are quite versatile in our spec's and between the raid we can cover various roles.

Now to this day, i still do not think our previous wipes were as a result of poor healing, but i can be overly defensive when i believe i am being criticised, and never the less i was swithced out to my dps role and DJhuxter (druid) was brought in to group heal.

Needless to say we downed Rotface first time with the new setup, admitedly moreso because of my imba dps then the change of healers (in my expert opinion) :P , although it soon transpired that DJ had forgotten to switch to his healing gear, which was slightly embarrasing for me, much to the raids ammusement.

Anyway, I dedicate this post to Brenstorm. Without his insight and bravery in switching me to dps to melt faces like never melted before, we would probably still be wiping now!! Thanks Bren!!!

Holy Tree, how i missed thee...

If you are reading this chances are you probably know more about priests than i do, but nether the less, its worth pointing these things out.

So, a tip for all you priests out there... play to your strengths.

Im all for priests being spec'd a specific way to help their guilds, but no matter how much you work at it, some priests cant play holy and some cant play disc, its just not in their dna. I have learnt over the years that i am a holy spec priest, i eat, sleep and breathe holy and wouldnt have it any other way.

Before my last wow break i had decided that i would ms/os holy/disc, just so i and the guild had options for raiding, and to be perfectly honest it came in really useful on certain fights. However upon my return and due to the loss of raiders i changed my o/s to dps and the expense of my holy spec.

^^This was without a doubt the biggest mistake ive made in wow, period! Over the last few weeks of disc healing 5mans and raids i have come to realise that i cannot heal disc spec for shit, my play style just doesnt suit it, at all! and so with that i had no choice but to respec.

Last night was my first raid using my precious Holy spec again, and to be frank it was fecking amazing!! I wish i had remembered to screenshot the meters before resetting them, as it would have been nice to have a record of my return to form, however im content knowing the improvement even if noone else saw it.

So fellow priesties... dont let the bastards get you down!! We are a very unique class but we have the ability to heal in pretty much any situation! play to your stregths and heal like you've never healed before!!!

You heard it here first!

Finally blizz have fulfilled my dream to play a gnome priest! Whether i actually have the patience to level another character is yet to be seen, but i will try!

Do blizz read my site? Hell No, but none the less, my dreams have finally come true!

~Cav~

The 3 P's

Practice! Practice! Practice!

Most of my wow time consists of completing dailies and raiding, that’s essentially all I have the time or patience for at the moment. However this weekend I took the opportunity to do a few heroics for some rep and shards.

What I came to realise is that ive become a really lazy healer, whether its because you have that extra support in raids, or just because mana isn’t generally an issue when raiding, but I found heroics, whilst not earth shatteringly impossible, sufficiently challenging.

With Misty getting closer to 80 Im going to make it a target of mine that we do more heroics together, which will also give me the opportunity to stay sharp, either with healing hands or the dps stick “pew pew”.

What do you call a raid without a healing coordinator?

……Funny!

Since wrath we have always had two healers with an outstanding commitment to knowing a fight inside out and the pressures each encounter puts on the healers. However one of those people has now quit wow, and who knows if or when he may return. That leaves one! Despite the fact he has fantastic raid attendance, sometimes people just cant make a raid, and last night, he couldn’t.

So, where did this leave us? Right up shit creek tbh.. we had 7 healers all asking the same question…. What do we do? Ive only really been in Ulduar once, and so im not an expert on the encounters, and so in the end we all chipped in, trying to work out the best assignments for each of the healers. Leading a raid, group, or healers is never an easy task, and one I don’t really welcome, but I think im going to take it upon myself to be more aware of the encounters, what happens, where damage spikes occur etc… with a view to fill in the void if ever required again. Its also important that you know what each of your team excels at, be it group healing or MT/OT. For further information on leadership, i refer you to Lodur.

Has anyone else had experience in leading a raid? How did you find it? If you don’t, what would you do to change the way healing is assigned in your guild?

10 vs 25: The Conundrum

Its fair to say that I have quite an open view on raiding, raid difficultly and whinny little bitches! And usually I would say that if you are struggling with content then its probably been pitched at just the right level (despite public opinion, raiding isn’t supposed to be a cake walk). However the more and more I look at the 25man content for Ulduar, the more and more I think there is a need to do some 10man content first.

From a healing perspective I am fairly confident in what I am doing and fairly confident that collectively we are not struggling to heal through the 25man content. However it is obvious to me that we are struggling to dps the things down! On every encounter thus far we have hit the enrage timer on multiple occasions. It is arguable that we are refining strategies and this will impact upon the time taken to kill something, but we are more often then not 20% away from killing stuff when It enrages!

As a guild we have decided that we are going to focus on the 25man content (for now), although 10man groups are going on each week, and to my knowledge are proving more successful. Given this, I would have thought it more sensible to focus on doing 2x10man raids on the allotted (official) raid nights! More to the point, how many raiding guilds did 10man Naxx first? I know we did! So why is Ulduar different, why do we think we can step straight into 25mans.

To argue this I have looked at the 10man content, and more importantly the rewards (gear) acquired, and I have to say, im not all that impressed! There were maybe one or two items I would currently consider to be upgrades, and I mean maybe! It’s debatable. If we applied that rule across the entire guild you would expect that we have a good level of healing/tanking/dps! So why is it that we struggle so much?

My guess is that we just not quite there yet…. And that a few weeks of further strategy refining is required (hopefully). With Thursday comes another fresh Instance for us to tackle, and hopefully some further progression will be achieved.

So, Ulduar was a (fairly) big jump from Naxx etc… How has you guild faired so far? Did you jump right in to the 25man content or have you been refining your strategies in the 10man (easy) mode?

The List

Practically anyone that knows me will tell you im lazy, flaky and crap at planning things out, and they’d all be wrong, I plan things plenty, I just don’t write anything down. Again, that’s probably not completely accurate, in fact every night with out fail I go home with at least two post-it-notes attached to my wallet. The information on these varies from "cook dinner" to titles of potential blog posts, but the one thing they all have in common is that they get lost. Before they hide from me though I usually get a chance to cross 1 or 2 of the jobs up, but needless to say, I completely forget the other 10,000 things I want/need/should be doing.

So, ive decided to come up with a list. A list of things that I still want to obtain or achieve in wow. This doesn’t including raiding as that’s just part of the working week, but instead smaller things that I can work on/through at my own pace.

Anyway, enough rambling, here we go!

• White polar bear!
• Complete all icecrown quests
• Exalted with with argent crusade
• Exalted with knights of ebon blade
• Exalted with timbermaw
• Investigate the argent tournament
• Try out the new fishing dailies
• Obtain 100 cooking tokens (you know what they’re for :P)
• Level Tayend to 80 (warrior)
• Level Masahashi to 80 (hunter)
• Level my Mage and Warlock to 80 (this may take a while as they are 13 and 35 respectively)
• Solo some BC instances
• Exalted with netherwing
• Exalted with skyguard
• Obtain 100 mounts
• Obtain 75 companions
• Complete some fishing achievements

That’s quite a comprehensive list of things id like to do over the coming months, however obviously completing the Wrath goals is my first priority and the rest will follow as and when I have a spare 5 years!

Seeing as at the moment I have only been logging in an hour before raids, which is just enough time to do 2 or 3 dailies, this list could take some time to complete. I’ll keep you posted on my progress

~Cav~

Well it was St.Georges Day

So yea it was St Georges day yesterday and what better way to celebrate the patron saint of England then to slay a dragon in his name, and you know what, that’s exactly what we did.

It was another long and hard night in Ulduar last nigh, although to be fair the time did seem to fly by. Flame Leviathan was fairly straight forward. For last nights attempt we still had some new-commers and so played it safe and took down all the towers, however next week I think we are going to leave one up!

Onwards to Razorscale we went. Having spent the best part of a raid night on him last week we were fairly confident with our strategy for this fight. Although we wiped 3 or 4 times it was far more promising than previous attempts, and we were consistently getting him down to 20%.

Finally we wiped ourselves down, got back up and had another go. This time we were successful, and in the process I actually managed to pocket [Shackles of the Odalisque]

There was more action to report from Ulduar last night, but I think I’ll leave it at that for now!

~Cav~

A week ago

So it’s a week after returning to wow, and how do I feel? Well suffice to say at the moment I think everything is going pretty well. I have managed to slot back into the raid calendar quite nicely and whilst im not logging in on a daily basis, im still managing to integrate into the social side of the guild.

I have quite a few goals still left to achieve in wow, but im not in any urgent rush to accomplish them. If I have half a day to play one weekend then I will, but im not devoting anywhere near as much time as I once was, and for the most part im not sat wishing I was playing wow, which in itself is quite refreshing.

I didn’t mention at the time, but Sunday’s raid itself wasn’t all that successful. In fact we just couldn’t take down Raz? No matter how hard we tried. It wasn’t through lack of trying though, and im pretty confident that we have nailed down a sound strategy. However 3 hours of rinse and repeat wiping is very tiring, and may well have had an affect on Monday nights raid sign-ups. Come kick-off we only had 22 raid members, which just wasn’t going to cut it for Ulduar, so instead another wipefest occurred in VoA when up against Emalon.

So with it being a Thursday today the obligatory raid is scheduled and numbers permitting we will have another crack at Ulduar, and maybe even kill some stuff!

I would be interested to hear from people on there raid make up though. How many healers are you taking to Ulduar in these early days and are you finding DPS more of an issue than healing?

When the Going Gets Tough

I for one have been supremely satisfied with the new raid content that has landed with 3.1. Since wrath launched all those months ago everyone within the warcraft community has been waiting for some new, exciting, and most importantly, challenging raid content, and that is most certainly what we have received.

For those people that are bemoaning the content as over-buffed, pull your thumbs out of your arse and do some fricking work!

Before this patch was launched, we were blessed (if you want to call it that) with some real cake walk content, which has had a significant effect on how we now approach raiding, and not for the better.

We (collectively) have become arrogant, lazy and impatient, and rather than becoming excited by every kill, we criticise every wipe.

I recall a time not so long ago, where every kill was an achievement, a badge of honor you could wear proudly amongst you piers, and its about time those times returned.

For the record, by guild have only managed to clear the first encounter in Ulduar thus far, but we are not down heartened and we are not calling for the content to be nerfed! We are calling for a time where you gave 110% on every encounter, wasted every pot and every cooldown you had to ensure the raid success.

Warcraft is not all about easy kills and new gear! For some it is the excitement of seeing new content and knowing that they worked hard to achieve new goals! This is why I still play, it might also be why I came back, but the exhilaration of succeeding in an new encounter for the first time outweighs any ingame cost to you or your guild!

So next time your raid wipes, don’t be disheartend! Release, Rez, and try Again! And when you succeed! Celebrate!!! That first kill only comes around once!!

~Cav~

Variety is the spice of life

In todays post I wanted to talk a little bit about how you prioritise your play time. Like many people out there I certainly don’t have time, and nor would I want to play all day every day, so the time I do spend in wow is at times limited. To combat this I set myself objectives and prioritise what I want to achieve, although if im honest these seem to change daily.

The last couple of weeks I have been on a bit of an achievement drive, which has taken me back to Azeroth and grinding some reputations. I have found this really enjoyable, even if at times it doesn’t feel like ive done much for an evenings work. The problem with focussing on doing achievements on Cav is that it leaves my other toons somewhat neglected.

This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. For now Tay (warrior) and my death knight are solely reserved for playing with my girlfriend, we go our own little adventures and work through the content together. However it has left Masa (hunter) and my various other lowbie alts to mull around SW aimlessly.

Im torn between wanting to complete everything (and I mean literally everything) on Cav, or levelling all my other characters!! There are a lot of other classes ive always wanted to try and never had the chance, maybe that’s where my time would be better spent.

For now I will continue to focus in on cav! But at some point I really wanna tank some stuff… and maybe even take my hunter for some [yawn!] dps!!

How do you prioritise your game time, do you split it over your toons, focus on your main, or do you just play sporadically without defined objectives?

Missing Content from 3.1

Instead of another post about whats in the current version of 3.1, which by the way, will change before it goes live, so please don’t get to excited or irate if you see game making / breaking changes in the initial notes!! Instead I want to talk about something close to my heart that once again blizz has excluded from their latest patch….

That’s right, whilst many players will be excited with the proposed changes to wow, and others all in a fuss because “blizz have broken >>insert class here<< ”!! I sat and read the notes, nervously scouring for the one change I was begging, wishing, praying for! but alas, blizz failed me again.

[how long can I leave you all in suspense, I guess we’ll see]

To many this change [addition] will seem inconsequential, to others illogical, and to a small minority [lore nerds] it will be insulting, but to me, it is the most inexcusable exclusion from the game… I am of course talking about….

Gnome priests!

that is all.....

Dual spec'ing across the universe!

Annoyingly ive just noticed an article go up on wowinsider from matt regarding dual specs, however i dont have time to read it until tonight. Hopefully i wont repeat to much of what he has said, but heres something i wrote last night

What do dual specs mean to you?

For me, it’s the pleasure I will get out of soloing old content that I have missed, or grinding in places for rewards I was unable to get. Not only this, but the ease in which I can finally complete the quests in northrend. Ive missed whole zones at the moment, whether it be due to time or difficulty.

For some it will be pvp, and the chance to spec in such a way to improve the pvp healing, dmg, or just survivability.

But for the small minority of purists, it will be an opportunity to have to dual healing specs, or, as I will more affectionately refer to it, "situational healing specs".

It all begs the question though, where do dual specs end? If we can chose from two specs, why not three, or four or ten?

I think its safe to say, we have reached the limit on multiple specs, any more would be in my opinion, Game Breaking…but that’s not to say that people, at some time or another, will not demand more!

Raid Etiquette – Loot

Raiding has changed considerably over time, from the 40 man raids in vanilla to the 25 man in burning crusade. With the introduction of wrath we went to normal and heroic raids, reportedly to enable even the casual gamer the chance of raid glory.

My concerns however arise over the distribution of loot. I have been running with the same people for years now, ever since two guilds merged in vanilla wow. Its not always been smooth sailing, but we have a mature bunch of players, with an equal respect of each other, and therefore give or take, raids have always been a pleasant experience.

With the recent changes in wow, loot and raid etiquette has changed. No longer is it our fellow class-mates that we are to be considerate of, but in fact most of the raid. There are many examples, but I’ll pick a recent case that I was not directly involved in.

[Hood of Rationality], which drops from malygos.

In my opinion, based on the current version of wow (excluding forthcoming regen changes), this is the best in slot head piece for priests. However in our short sighted excitement at getting said loot, we forget that arguably, this piece is also best in slot for warlocks. See their spellpower mechanics relate directly to their spirit, and given the crit rating and sockets, they too drool over this piece.

Who should get the [Hood of Rationality]?

Being a priest I know where my allegiance lies, but that’s not to say im right, in fact I am most probably wrong. In these cases it comes down to the individuals. We do not have a loot council and I don’t think its something we would even consider, we have a simple dkp system, and for the most part it works, people are considerate, and if something is a bigger upgrade for person x they can usually have it! But there are still cases where someone will be left seething that a warlock has taken the best priest item in game, but trust that the warlock feels exactly the same when you take the same item!!!

There was a much simpler time, when dps took spellpower and priests took healing gear. However, here and now, we are all equal and the chances are in some cases we want exactly the same things! Whether it be today, next week or next month, you will get the gear you want, and I guarantee the less you worry, the more satisfying new loot is.

Raids are about clearing content…. And I guarantee you cant do it alone!

Heaven on Earth

Okay, so i dont really know where these thoughts come from, but this one sprouted from nowhere earlier today. You're gonna have to bear with me though cos i havent ironed out of the wrinkles in this one, of which there are quite a few.

Essentially i was thinking about that nifty little shammy talent known as heroism. Now, this is an excellent little buff and 30% increase in cast speed is excellent, however i was thinking about this a little more and thought how cool it would be if there was a similar priest talent which directly increased healing.

There are some huge flaws in such a spell, including how overpowered this plus heroism would be in a single boss encounter, however none the less, it would be pretty epic.

Heaven on Earth
20% of base mana
Causes all party and raid members
to become enlightend, increasing
healing taken by 300 for 30 seconds.

After the completion of this effect, players
will suffer from spiritual revelation for 5 minutes
and unable to benefit from enlightment.

Anyway, maybe if i get Kestrel to put this up we may even see it in the next patch..... heres hoping.

Out of Mana

Subsequent to my 3.1 information post, another blue post hit the waves. I should warn you now.... this is not pleasant reading!

From 3.1 changes will be introduced to mana regeneration across the board. However it is the regeneration outside the FSR that will hit the hardest. To implement this change blizz will be reducing mana regeneration granted by spirit, which means all you druids and priests out there who have been stacking spirit for the last 2 months better think again. To balance this effect, blizz will be buffing some of our mana regeneration talents, such as meditation and spirit tap, however like me, you are still likely to be taking quite a knock from these changes.

ive copied the full blue post for further details:

• Regeneration while not casting (outside of the “five second rule”) will be decreased. We think that (1) the ability to cast heal over time spells and then sit back and (2) benefitting from a clearcasting proc that also gets you out of the five second rule both provide too much mana regeneration, even over short time periods.
• To make this change, we are reducing mana regeneration granted by Spirit across the board. However we are also boosting the effects of talents such as Meditation that increase regeneration while casting. The net result should be that your regeneration while casting will stay about the same, but your not-casting regeneration will be reduced. This change will have little impact on dps casters, since they are basically always casting.
• The specific talents and abilities being boosted are: Arcane Meditation, Improved Spirit Tap, Intensity, Mage Armor, Meditation, Pyromaniac and Spirit Tap. Yes this makes these “mandatory” talents even more mandatory, if such a thing is possible.
• Since paladins rely less on Spirit as a mana-regeneration stat, we have to address them in other ways. We don’t want to change Illumination or Replenishment. However, we are going to increase the healing penalty on Divine Plea from 20% to 50%. Divine Plea was originally intended to help Protection and Retribution paladins stay full on mana. It should be a decision for Holy paladins, not something that is automatically used every cooldown.
• In addition, we are also changing the way Spiritual Attunement works. In situations with a large amount of outgoing raid damage, as well as in PvP, this passive ability was responsible for more mana regeneration than we would like. We want to keep the necessary benefit it grants to tanking Protection paladins, while making it less powerful for Holy paladins in PvP or raid encounters with a lot of group damage.
• We are also taking a close look at clearcasting procs themselves. One likely outcome is to change them to an Innervate-like surge of mana so that the net benefit is the same, but healers won’t shift to out-of-casting regeneration so often.
• We balance around the assumption that even 10-player groups have someone offering Replenishment. To make this even easier on players we are likely to offer this ability to additional classes, as well as make sure that existing sources of Replenishment are more equitable.

Once we have a better idea of numbers the theorycrafters will no doubt be able to provide a more formulaic explanation of exactly how noticable these changes are going to be, but in the mean time i am going to start picking up some mp5 gear in anticipation of the bad news....

3.1 at a glance!

The chances are you have already heard about the expected priest changes [enhancements] in 3.1, and if you haven’t…. where the heck have you been all day. For anyone that’s missed it, heres the highlights:

• Divine Spirit – this spell is now a core ability available to all priests.
• Discipline has access to a new talent, Power Word: Barrier. (Think of it as Power Word: Shield for your whole group).
• Several area of effect (AOE) heal spells have been improved: Prayer of Healing can be cast on any groups in your raid party. Holy Nova’s mana cost has been reduced. Circle of Healing now heals for more.
• Shadow priest PvP survivability has been improved: Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.
• Penance – this spell can now be targeted on the priest.
• Serendipity – this talent now reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal are cast.
• We are also working to give Holy additional PvP utility.

As a hybrid build ive tried to absorb the best talents from both trees. Im sure people will disagree, and in fact I probably do too (I’ll talk about the respe later), however I like my current spec, and it seems to like me just fine too.

Where was i… Ah yes! The surprising change for me was the inclusion of divine spirit as a base talent. Undoubtably improved spirit will still be in the discipline tree, but where it sits is yet to be revealed. Personally, if I can afford to spec improved, I will!

Another intresting inclusion to the discipline tree is PowerWord:Barrier, which as I understand it is essentially a raid wide power word shield. Personally at the moment I don’t see there being a great need/use for it, however it may yet prove a useful spell in a priests armory. Moreover, im really excited to play around with it!

Prayer of Healing becoming castable on other groups is potentially massive for those without CoH, although good news for holy spec’d priests!! Following the nerf’ing of COH blizz have seen fit to rebuff the healing output of the spell…. How kind! Whether or not it makes up for the 6 second cast is yet to be seen!

Its fair to say theres some serious healer love in the forthcoming patch, and I cant wait to play around with some alternative specs!

Healing Meters FTL!!!!

I started running Healing meters recently, and was immediately disheartend by the figures it was showing me. I know I don’t do the most healing in the raid, but equally the numbers were depressing. I took solace in the fact that I was not bottom of the metres, however I soon turned them off.

The subject of meters seems to be bouncing around at the moment, so it seems an appropriate time to talk about them.

Past experience of meters tells me that they can lead to too much competition within a raid, and do not give you an accurate representation of a players ability. Is the person at the top of the healing meters the best healer? You could argue either way really, but I tend to tip on the side of no. All this tells you is they did the most healing! For a start its not taking into account their efficiency or their healing assignment. Same goes to DPS. Mage X may be at the top of the meters, but did they do there job to the best of their ability? How do you measure such things!

Before using meters recently I had always measured my success by the guilds success. If we enter a dungeon and clear content we have succeeded. If no one in the raid dies we have succeeded.

So, what do healing meters tell us? They tell us that (it least in our case) that everyone assigned to healing duties is contributing. Sometimes there is a healer who may have done over 25% of the healing, but this doesn’t mean the rest of the team hasn’t contributed.

Despite what ive said, all meters have a purpose and indeed benefit. A bit of extra delving into the data can reveal a lot about how you heal or dps. It can show your strengths and weaknesses, and can help you become a better player.

Meters may have a roll in raids, but they shouldn’t be taken at face value and they shouldn’t be used as a measure of an individual’s ability.