LoDBlog

So I have been AWOL for almost the first full month of Firelands due to family related emergencies. I am now “back in the saddle again”. All of my theory crafting, BIS lists, and making sure to know all the other healer classes strengths and weaknesses went on hold until now. I threw together a quick “how to” for the healers after watching a couple videos of firelands encounters but wasn’t really able to make sure they were effective for our raid. Hopefully they were!

Anyways I have had over a month of blogs and forum posts to sift through in the last week and let me tell you…ugh! Read more »

So I got bored a few nights ago and decided to throw together a gear list from what I could find on wowhead. Keep in mind that this may change when the patch is released next week, so please don’t come knocking on my door with fire and pitchforks if I don’t have a BiS item on here. Comment if you feel something is out of place! I love getting feedback from our readers. :D Also, notice that this list does not include any heroic gear. I will do a heroic gear list at a later date when more people start doing them. I guess I’ll start with the obvious!

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Incase you haven’t heard (which I would be surprised if you haven’t, since the Druid forums are teeming with lots of threads on the subject), Blizzard has decided to drastically change the mechanics of Lunar Shower. Incase you’re not a moonkin and have no clue what Lunar shower is here’s the spell: Lunar Shower. The new change to the talent is as follows:

Lunar Shower has been redesigned. When casting Moonfire, the druid gains Lunar Shower. Lunar Shower increases the direct damage done by Moonfire by 15/30/45%, and reduces the mana cost by 10/20/30%. This effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 3 seconds. While under the effects of Lunar Shower, Moonfire generates 8 Solar Energy, and Sunfire generates 8 Lunar Energy. The amount of Lunar/Solar Energy gained does not change based on the number of points spent in the talent, or stacks of Lunar Shower. Those druids who wish to delay transition in or out of an Eclipse state should now cast the one of their two basic attacks which will not move the Eclipse bar (either Starfire or Wrath). Read more »

Ok so I do not like to be a traitor to my class spec and I have stuck with holy since asked to be holy but….  Holy, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways!

1. Body and Soul~ For all the bouncing in between Nefarian and Onyxia to heal raid or tanks in need as well as for getting to my platform in P2.

2. Chakra~ To be able to heal the tanks in P1 comfortably but then to switch to raw raid healing in a push of a button.

3. Holy Concentration ~ More power to the spirit regen! This is a long fight and this talent is a god sent!

4. Lightwell~ On the platform when things are getting overwhelming it’s a simple click for a nice heal!

5.  Serendipity ~ Binding Heal + PoH = more bang for your buck on heavy raid damage (IE: Crackle, Tail Lash, Cinders, Magma, Shadow flame Barrage) Read more »

Ahh the changes in 4.1 were not exactly a big negative or positive impact for holy priests.  I already discussed my thoughts on the overhaul to Holy Word: Sanctuary. Another “big” change was that chakra states now last until canceled rather than constantly having to renew them. I do like this change a lot but at the same time it makes it easier for people that “think” they can heal with a holy priest take advantage of the 4 set tier bonus with ease.  Something I would have liked to have seen changed along with this mechanic was a change to the talent “State of Mind” (reduces the cooldown of your chakra spell by 3/6 seconds), but I think I will save that for another blog.

Next off we have Binding Heal able to proc Surge of Light. Always good to add more spells to cause procs IMO. Other than those 3 things, priests in general had a few changes. Inner Will/Inner Fire now last until canceled.  Awesome, the previous version didn’t really bother me too much, no fights lasted more than 30 minutes so to me it was always easy to remember to refresh pre-pull.  Something less for people to track was the aim for this one I suppose.  100% push back protection while channeling Divine Hymn or Hymn of Hope is a good change, these are cool downs that should be highly utilized and having them go for full duration is a plus!  Healing priests now have the Absolution ability, therefore being the main dispellers for offensive dots/hots. In PVE shadow priests rejoice! Although I am sure it’s a sad time in PVP.

So overall holy priests really didn’t gain or lose anything to lose sleep over!

Let me sum it up: absolute garbage! Now that I have that out of my system let me explain why. First off it is a ridiculous amount of mana for the little healing it does. Second, where was the 35% increase to it? I just love blizzard’s promises, they are like that boyfriend that you want to leave in your past!

When I first started raiding I was using this spell on CD to help with anytime people were grouped up but soon realized that it was a mana drain and a POH provided more throughput rather than placing it. So I then started using it on the major AOE events only (such as feuds on H Chimaeron or on the pillar for H Nefarian) but it just was not meant to be, I couldn’t justify using it when I could waste my mana on other spells.

So the patch came out and I was excited to see just how well it would work now. It sure is pretty but the numbers are just not there. I would use Holy Nova over Sanctuary, at least then I wouldn’t need to yell at people to “stand in good stuff”.  It may be possible that it is part of the patch day problems just like placing the circle or placing Lightwell but I very much doubt that. Thank you for more spells that I will never use Blizzard <3

This boss ended up being a bigger pain than expected. To be honest I just don’t think people were too focused while we did the first few attempts.  There were arguments on vent over where to run when you had the Sonic Breath. There were arguments over who was doing the gongs, there were arguments over holy priests using Body and Soul. By the time we downed this boss I was completely drained and not too happy with our overall group coordination.

To start we ran into problems on our initial strategy of the whole raid grouping up on the gong. There was slow reaction times, bad visibility (because Blizzard thought it would be funny to put a bright lighted gong on top of him that didn’t despawn.), there were range problems with healing the tank. After a lot of grumbling and finger pointing we decided that hey, let’s try this the way we did it on normal.  That was one of the best calls made all night.  Our first attempt at trying it the way we normally spread out by the door we got him down to about 15%. After that it went downhill.

The main problem we had was the Sonic Breath.  Atramedes would choose someone and they were to kite the breath in a circle around him without getting caught. Most of the time that person was safe but anyone in his path that wasn’t paying attention died. Then spawned the blame game. Well you were too close and he went to fast and the person couldn’t move, or you used Body and Soul and you aren’t suppose to use a run speed boost for kiting. OMG after minutes of debate we finally got it through to everyone that if you have low to no sound you can use any type of run speed boost as long as you DO NOT run through him causing him to wig out. While I understand that melee has a harder time coordinating together due to his butt being in their face most times, blocking all view, there are still boss mods that have handy things called timers. I admit at first I may have died once or twice to being caught between the Sonar Pulse discs and the flame breath, I learned to watch the timers like a hawk making sure I was always in a safe place when Sonic Breath was about to go off. At first there were issues with the person having the fiend maxing out on sound but I believe that was worked out fairly early. Once we had most of the kinks worked out for this phase came the kiting of the Roaring Flame Breath. Read more »

Obviously if you are a raider like I am you are going to want some type of boss mod. Reason being: timers and abilities. So I will start there. I personally like to run both Big Wigs and DBM (Deadly Boss Mods).

Big Wigs is nice for the customization of what your role needs to be most aware of. For example, as a healer I need to know on Heroic Magmaw when the tanks will get Mangle so that I can have my Gaurdian Spirit ready. As a raider I need to know when the skeletons/lava parasites will spawn. Dps classes will want to have different timers emphasized. Such as when the Magmaw’s head is about to come down so that they have the right dps increase cool downs up or when they need to switch off on the different Omnotron bosses. Read more »

Patch 4.1 seems to be around the corner! (sort of) and with new content, we’re pleased to bring back our dungeon strategy guides.

The first thing to mention, is that this content is currently being tested. Information might change over the next few days (possibly weeks). We’ll do our best to keep the guides updated with the most recent hotfixes, but for now they seem to be nearly completed, except for the numbers, which need to be tweaked a bit to make them fit the desired difficulty level.

1. High Priest Venoxis.

A fight with a lot of visual and shiny effects. However rather easy to execute properly, unlike other bosses here. As you pull him, poison will begin to draw lines across the room you will be fighting, drawing a random maze shape. Of course, if you stand on the poison you will receive a lot of damage and most likely die in no time.

One of his main abilities is called Whisper of Hesis. A channeled Poison Spit that  should be interrupted to minimize the damage your group takes. Read more »

So I have been bored on my off raiding days and decided to browse some of my fellow priest forums. While it is insightful to see what others are doing, I have done a little more digging and found not all do practice what they preach. WOL doesn’t lie people! This is not the type of thing I promote or even come close to doing, if I say “this is what you do” it is because I myself have found that works for me, not went to someones blog/forum and thought “hey that sounds good, I think i will put that in!”.

One of the things that is a big controversy right now is the fact that a lot of priests say that a point in Spirit of Redemption is a waste because you shouldn’t be dead. Now I do agree with the “you shouldn’t be dead” part but at the same time when you are working on progression there are going to be deaths. There’s no way around that, it’s not an aggro problem or even a standing in fire problem, it’s a “HOLY CRAP this is a long fight and I am running on fumes for mana and there is huge incoming damage” problem. Read more »