I like bubbles.

Boo!

2009-02-02T09:08:00.003-06:00

I think that I am mostly ready to transition over-so you can go ahead and check out http://forthebubbles.wordpress.com/ now!

I'm still working on a banner (or more correctly, working on screen shots to hand to Mach to make me a banner), but I know y'all don't visit me for my quaint, photo-bucket crafted banner.

You visit me for my wit and bubbly personality!

Wordpress made me want to stab it a couple of times, but overall it seems better suited to my desire to arrange and categorize everything percisely. I sort and eat my candies by flavor, for pete's sake, I need to be able to neatly arrange my blog!

Sunday Surprise II

2009-02-01T22:12:00.002-06:00

Two things:

One, I ran around and got enough coins to finally get the rep for this:

Woot! I am not a fan of Elekks. I do eventually want to get her a Talbuk, but that can wait. For now she's the proud owner of a pony. I'm probably the only draenei ever to not go for a night elf cat...

Two:
An 80 orc DK attacked my pally while I was (gasp!) doing dailies.
And I killed him.

MOST HILARIOUS THING EVER.

Eat holy shock, bish.

I'm still sitting here giggling.

You, sir, must be the WORST DK EVAR.

By the way...

2009-01-30T14:35:00.004-06:00

Might be moving this blog because I can't obsessively organize it to my liking. I'm moving to wordpress, but I'm not done with the digs over there yet...so for now, I'll still spam you here.

"Amber, were you bored at work today?"

Yes.

Edit: OMG I have to re-tag everything! This will be awhile.

Edit again: Gah! It's more complicated!

/hides here for the time being

Amber Randomly Responds to Things

2009-01-30T11:05:00.007-06:00

One of the nice things about WoW is that it allows you a variety of choices for your character. You really aren't pigeon holed into one thing or another.

From here, "What's your weapon of choice?"

You clearly have no idea how sick of maces I am, do you? I still have my Spellbade in my bank, just because it's not a damned mace. What other weapon hoices do I have that mages and warlocks won't scream over me taking, hm? Hm? Yeah. Bite me.

But a student at Colorado University has a theory about World of Warcraft that might sound a little out there: he believes the game is a new religion.

From here.

And the subscription fee is a tithe...?

This isn't WoW related, but go look anyway.

I've noted that killer instinct and raw hate is absolutely criticial to unleashing leet sauce dps. You've got to be angry. If you can't be angry, make stuff up. For example, Sartharion is staring at my hair... is there something he wants to say? What? The high-lighted tips on my hair makes me look like Enrique Iglesias? OMFG I'll flip out.I wonder how girls get fired up for boss fights.

From here.

Oh honey, you have no idea. It's called "You fucking men! You think you can out DPS me because I'm a girl and I don't know how to play? EAT THE BOTTOM OF THE DPS METERS FUCKERS."

...see? Not hard at all!

"Amber, I thought you were a healer."

I am. Twice over. But there's another toon currently languishing at 70, decked out in purples and with a Netherdrake from that time in which I was allowed to do something other than dish out my apparently crack-laced heals. I had a hunter main. A BM hunter, who in BC days was a delightfully monstrous creature. My second 60, and my first 70, I'm a little sad that she might get leveled...fourth? FOURTH? Oh my dear Jamethera, I'm sorry. But I was a damned good hunter. Not great, but damned good.

"When you do level her is she going to stay BM?"

Hell yeah! RAWR RED PET FOREVER!!!!!!!

Ahem.

There needs to be a mod out there that visually flips the way life/healthbars for players work. When they are at 100% health, it shows them as 0% and dead. When they take damage, their healthbar fills up. That way when you heal them, it seems like you are killing them (don't lie, I know you want secretly want to be MC'd by KT so you can go postal on certain people). With that kind of mod, my 15K Holy Light crits would turn from "pansy glitter of saving" into "atomic bomb on ur fase".

This quote is from here, and incidentally how I found the crack whore elf-I'm sorry, DPS belfadin-above.

Anyway. I think that would be funny, on one hand, but it would also...just absolutely break my brain after 4 years of training otherwise. I only stuck to leveling First Aid on my hunter because I still had a strong compulsion to fill green bars.

For srs.

"Do you actually talk like that, Amber?"

I may or may not actually go "lawl!" or "kek!" or perhaps slip into lolcat speak when actually talking. I can neither confirm nor deny...

Zuki, shut up, you've sat on vent.

/cue ephiphany music

2009-01-30T10:10:00.004-06:00

Go read this.

It is an eloquent post detailing a healer plight-and it also explains why I've been going nuts.

It would help, I think, if there weren't those couple of fights still in Naxx 10 where we "need" 3 healers. Then we could just bring two, and not be bored, and get cranky when other healers step on our toes because they, too, are bored.

I will try to do a post of my own later, but I had to share that with you.

Raiding is 'Aspensive: Doing Dailies, Healadin Edition

2009-01-29T14:29:00.003-06:00

So now you're 80 and raiding. Cool! But raiding means wiping, especially at first. Wiping means repair bills, and nevermind the cost of consumables (WHY is my alchemist on the wrong server?*)

So how the hell do you manage to chew through dailies?

I'm uberlazy and since I've gotten my coveted egg from the Oracles, I'm terribad about doing my dailies. The best way to see that I do them is to grab a buddy.

Even if it's another healer, you still kill things faster. I highly reccomend the Oracle dailies just for cash, by the way. They can help offset the cost of repairs and the little buddy you get is a built in helper. You can also often avoid killing things in general while doing them! The exception is the one "kill things as a kitty" quest but hey, you're a kitty. DPS doesn't matter when you're looking for sparklies.

Things I Do While Soling:
1) Ret aura kills things an eensy bit faster.
2) Sacred Shield yourself. It helps.
3) Use Seal of Righteousness.
4) Judge Wisdom. You'll be taking less damage with SS up, so this will cut down on downtime.
5) Judge every time it's up for the damage.
6) Holy shock!
7) Consecrate every so often if you make a lot of friends.
8) Die after horde find you.

*I have a flower-picking warrior on Sentinels. I r RP nub.

O hai

2009-01-29T11:25:00.003-06:00

So I was poking through my blog stuffs-play with feeds, trying to figure out how to add a doodad without it offending my sense of order, etc...when I noticed something.

I have TWO followers!

Not just ONE (i c u thar)!

Hi there stranger!

"Amber, I thought you said you'd double post today with USEFUL STUFF."

Shut it. RL is a meanie head right now and I'll take what small pleasures I can get.

I'm in ur feed, spamming ur...feed...wait, no.

Dammit.

Ambrosyne's Adventures With the Horsemen

2009-01-29T09:38:00.007-06:00

You know what I learned during my adventures in the back half of the Four Horsemen?

...I suck!

And you know what else? The moment I get thrust into an unfamiliar role in a raid and am already flailing about in uncertaintly, every single recruit we have will whisper me.

I'm not kidding. First, a resto druid pokes me. Great! She says 'I see that you're busy, so I'll wait." Not a problem. She's in Naxx too, anyway.

I fail and talk with her a bit while we're getting our act back together.

Second pull. I holy shock Mr. Fallen Paladin, cast a heal on myself because I'm already low (wtf?) and then...

...the other resto druid recruit pokes me. I look at his whisper real quick. This means that I'm not staring at my feet. And even though I'm not on the boss that summons void zones, I get one anyway because their range is stupid, right under my feet.

When I'm not looking.

And I die 45 seconds into the fight.

/facepalm

At some point after this the disc priest whispers me (...) for a /ginvite. Sweet!

But OMG guys, all at once? During THAT fight? Srsly?

/flail

We downed them...after we threw my nub ass back up front where it belonged.

Also: if there's a healer shortage, why are most of my apps healers? Holy shit! I mean it's fanatastic, it's great, we need them! But...! OMG!

We definitely need people not priest flavored though. I mean priests are great! But we now have...four? Compared to one resto shaman, two holy pallys, and one resto druid.

But you know what that is? That's a 25 man healing team baby! ....assuming we can make it all on the same night, which I don't know if we can. But! We're close!

"Amber, aren't you going to phase out your paladin for your priest?"

Ssssh! And, not for awhile. Teh boy is feeling a bit of WoW burnout, and he's Lyr's pet tank. So expect me to stop my bitching about my paladin...

...several months from now. But if we need the buffbitch she'll be on duty, no worries. I'm not going to shoehorn a billionth priest into the raid if we need my paladin, especially not if our spanking new disc priest is along. YAY LASER PEW PEW HEALS.

Ahem.

We also tried two things last night: healing assignments (sort of), and my being a "more aggressive" healer. Now I'd half gotten used to That Priest putting a decent amount of healing on the MT, so during one fight I took my heals off Macharious for a second...and he died.

/facepalm

After going "SEE that is why I heal the tank and only the tank omg!" I simply noted Anub as A Fight To Not Do That On. On trash pulls and the less hard hitting bosses, I FoL'd every damn bar that wasn't full.

And ended up on the top of the healing meters.

Wut?

Now healing meters don't really mean a damned thing, but it was interesting to observe a change. I still spun in circles boredly on Gothik, though.

"Are you going to have actual content today, Amber?"

Yes. Later. I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO DOUBLE POST IF I WANT TO!

Amber's Random Picture Post

2009-01-28T13:06:00.008-06:00

This is my first attempt at recreating the original screen shot. I picked Icecrown because I thought the sky was pretty, but it does funky things to colors out there.

Amber & Josh: Mocking your typos since 2004. Vainglory is my DK. No, my other DK. Yes, the third one.

...what?

Why can't they sell this hippogryph somewhere? I actually like the way that this one looks. Though I still want to know when deer started crossbreeding with hippogryphs...

...you know I tried to be clever with placing these pics and just made a mess. And I can't seem to delete them. Bwuh? Curse you, Blogger! Curse you!

Leveling Healy vs Respeccing

2009-01-28T10:23:00.004-06:00

I leveled both of my healers as a healing spec. That said, if you choose to be sane and go the other route (level as DPS, respec heals), I don't blame you (though disc is seriously underrated as far as leveling ease goes).

But which is "better"? *drum roll* It depends!

Benefits of Leveling as a Healer:
-You have an easier time getting groups
-You have the time to become familiar with your healing tools in bits and peices, rather than having them thrown at you all at once at a higher level
-Getting healing gear is easier (presumably, as the healer in the group, you have little/no competition when it drops)
-Practice makes perfect

I will sadly never be able to recreate the healing experience I had with Ambrosine. She healed 5 man and 20/40 man raids at 60. She healed leveling to 70 and did some more 10 and 25 man healing there. Then she healed her way to 80 and thrashed and flailed her way through 5 mans to 10 and 25 man content. I have healed a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot on that toon, in all sorts of circumstances. I had greater finesse with her at 80 than I will on my priest for a long time.

Cons of Leveling Healing:
-Soloing can suck (unless you're a disc priest. Weee holy fire!)
-If you're on a PvP server, I have one word for you: bait. Lyr can defend herself to a point, but Ambrosyne is well nigh helpless. C'mere and let me holy shock you to death!....once every six seconds!
-Soloing can suck A LOT

Pros of Leveling DPS:
-You kill things/level faster
-You can defend yourself in PvP
-Big numbers are fun!

Cons of Leveling DPS:
-It can be harder to find groups
-You get less time to hone your skills
-It can be harder to get gear for later healing (less so if you run with other kinds of healers, but you still might fight over rings and cloaks)
-You might get more irritated with trying to do things as healy specced later (dailies as heals = D: )

Yes, the list of 'cons' I have is longer, but the whole 'killing things faster' is pretty heavily weighted by most people.

If you chose to level as DPS and respec heals, there's a couple of ways to handle it:

-Respec before hitting max level. DPS to 70 and then switch and heal your way through Northrend
-Respec at 80, but throw yourself at a lot of normal instances until you get the hang of things. Reading strats just isn't the same. Progress to heroics later, when you're certain you have the gear for them. Being undergeared in heroics just makes for frustration. Even if you happen to have the gear for heroics right off the bat, they're not the place to start learning!

Lyr learned in the Nexus that if your level 72 Death Knight tank in blues and greens makes pulls as if he were on his 80 warrior in blues and epics, you die!

Murphy's Law

2009-01-27T10:22:00.006-06:00

The quickest way to turn a guild Naxx run into the biggest pit of suck and fail you've ever seen is to bring a recruit.

I was a wreck all night.

"Oh god guys, shut up, shut up! Quit being stupid! Play nice! THERE'S A RECRUIT IN THE RAID OMG OMG." And then we wiped, and wiped some more, on bosses we've killed without even half the difficulty. A rogue who did 2k DPS last time was under the tank. I still want to strangle the priest. I tried to shine with my usual quirky humor in the hopes of not scaring the hunter away.

Ah, well. He'll talk to me again or he won't.

"So Amber, what's with the paladin guide?"

Coming. For srs. But tonight is a fun BC raid night, and I want to take Lyrandre for shits and giggles. Hell, at 72 she might even be able to still use some of the loot, who knows? I never did see all of SSC/TK...

I've got other topics in the meantime, worry not!

I'm also trying to recreat the screenie I used for my banner, only in Icecrown or something. Yes, including the Judgement. It's surprising hard to recapture that pose, though. D: Ideally, I'd get a good one of my priest, too. They should both be up there, especially if I want to shuffle the paladin into semi-retirement.

Hmmm...

To Kings or Not To Kings

2009-01-26T13:57:00.003-06:00

It's a question I hope many paladins ask as they spec: do they want to put the points in kings, or not?

Once upon a time, most holy pallys had kings, because you were tossing points into prot anyway. Hell, I used to have Sanct too. You just didn't see that many healers with points in ret. Now of course we're diving after the crit in the ret tree and I've broken my 4 year long oath against never having a point in ret, ever.

I call myself the holy paladin buffbot. Imp wis, imp might, kings...got all of 'em. I'm a favorite paladin in 10 mans, I'm sure. But is it 'worth' it for you to take kings?

Well, I'll give you the same answer here that I give to a lot of things: it depends.

-What's your raid makeup like?
If you've got another paladin who has kings who shows up to almost all of your raids, then you can spend the points elsewhere. If not, then you need to consider...

-How many others want kings? If it's a sizeable number (tanks almost always love kings and they're pretty important folk to have buffed as much as possible), then you want to consider the fact that the benefit to the raid might well outweigh the benefit of some additional crit to you (as the ret tree is normally where you take those 5 points from). There's a good number of DPS that loves it too. You can get crit elsewhere. Where else can they get kings?

If you don't raid much, then you might want to consider the following:
-Kings on the tank does make it a bit easier on you (more HP! More...er...other things tanks like!).
-Kings on yourself, if you don't need mana regen, is great.
-They'll at least shut up about you not having it.

In Which I Taunt My GM

2009-01-26T06:59:00.003-06:00

"Where a Warrior's Shield Slam looks and sounds like you have busted a skull open with your heavy shield and powerful blow, a Paladin's Shield of Righteousness somewhat sparkles at an opponent threateningly, with an utter lack of aural flair." -WoW Insider

Hey Mach, do you sparkle threateningly?

Post something already if you're going to copy me, you nubtankadin!

/toddles off to go work on her Paladin Leveling Guide Thing

Sunday Surprise

2009-01-25T17:54:00.005-06:00

This video describes WoW PvP far better than I can. It also made me giggle.

I personally find my holy pally useless in PvP, but that might have to do with the fact that when attacked, I just run around and scream like a little girl until my bubble runs out.

Yes, I realize that holy pally is OMG WIN in arenas right now.

But if you catch me alone doing my dailies in my PvE gear, I'm still screwed!

Holy Fire, on the other hand, hurts like a bitch.

Thank you, BRK, for sharing.

/panic

2009-01-23T14:12:00.004-06:00

So I'm sitting here poking my e-mai, and lo! There is message from a potential recruit.

One who, apparently, found their way to me through...here!?

I honestly didn't consider my blog a recruitment method because I'm sitting here thinking that all of 5 people read this thing. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here bitching about one of our healers. Gah!

I'm working on the paladin guide, but it's tougher going than the priest one. So far it's something along the lines of "DON'T SOLO HOLY OMG".

"You started writing it yesterday and haven't touched it since, have you?"

Shut it.

Holy Light Glyph Nerf

2009-01-23T09:26:00.003-06:00

The Holy Light Glyph Nerf - or Why This Paladin is Cranky

Alright, so I can, after calmly reflecting, see why this was deemed "OP". I am, none the less, exceptiontionally cranky.

I'm remembering 5 mans in which I wanted to shriek and stab things, before I got my Naxx25 gear. I remember solo healing AoE happy fights and grimly facing the reality that I can only seem to keep 3 people up at a time in situations like that.

If 20 yards was too much, then 8 yards is too few. For the love of all that is holy, I just want to be able to cope with aoe damage somewhat without giving myself a heart attack in the process.

A raid example of this is last night's 10 man OS. Our new holy priest, bless her heart, just kept going splat. It was a combination of her being new to the group and our DK being relatively new to raid tanking-I don't think he'd tanked OS at all before, and he was having tab targeting issues to boot. So, who ended up the only living healer for a good chunk of time? And early on for one of the drakes to boot? Yup. Me.

Maybe I don't want to play frantic whack a mole, Blizzard. *Makes strangling motions with her hands*

Gwuh.

Looking Ahead

2009-01-22T09:23:00.003-06:00

I still want to test healing strats for Sapph. I don't know when I'll get to try them out, however, because our Naxx raids have been hitting roadblocks. Last night we got only one boss down because the horde managed to keep one of our healers out of the instance for half an hour. This sort of thing tends to send our raid leader, Zoja, into a frothing anger.

Seriously, Blizz, the placement of the Naxx stone? Bad. A DK and mage combo and sit there and death grip/blast wave people to their deaths to their hearts content. A little bit of lag-more than common when an entire horde raid is camping the stone-and you can be denied a quick escape in the enterance portal.

We are also lacking bodies. We have enough healers...when they're all here. Well, they're not. The resto shaman has finals. One of our holy paladins got arrested-and I don't know how any guild leadership can expect that. His brother let us know and /gquit him, so I can't imagine he's coming back aaaanytime soon. Drugs are bad, kids.

So, we're recruiting. More specifically, I'm recruiting, as I was just promoted to that job. Might I mention I'm terrified? I am. Totally. Had a nice chat with a couple of priests, however (one's a disc priest! woo!) and one of them might bring a mage and shaman with. We also might score us a holy pally and a GREAT unholy DK.

It does distract me a little from this blog, however!

Regardless, I'm going to be compiling a Paladin Leveling guide much like my priest one. The main hurdle to this, however is the fact that I rolled my paladin 4 years ago. I leveled holy with no idea what I was doing, and leveling was much different then compared to now. I was prot for a bit but pre 3.0, and I've been ret never. Post 60, I never leveled alone, because I always had a pocket warrior.

Research time!

I'm also going to have to sit down with one of our resident holy priests and have a chat. Especially if we're bringing a disc priest on board. Why? Well, I've ranted a bit about him before. Last night specifically we had him and two holy pallys, so you can guess who got put on raid healing.

His response at not healing the tank was to comment on how he wouldn't be on top of the healing meters then.

...

...

Dude, seriously? And when you're in a raid with a holy pally, why are you tank healing anyway? Get OFF my target! That's even ignoring the part where I prefer to heal Zoja, just because...er...I've always healed Zoja. I've been healing that damned toon since Molten Core. And now I date the player of said toon. My tank. Not yours. >:

I'm in ur raid, overhealin ur tank...

Yay!

2009-01-21T09:22:00.005-06:00

So the FoL Glyph change DID go through and I am a very happy paladin! I shoved it in the slot where I had Spiritual Attunement and will now savor even more crit. I <3 me some Flash of Light.

This change still doesnt' address the issue I have healing certain 5 mans, much, but we'll see. I'm clinging to my theory that the CoH and WG nerf means a nerf to AoE damage in game, which means less stress on holy paladins. That seems more likely than something like, oh, Blizzard giving us another kind of heal.

Leave me to my delusions, okay?

I took my 71 priest an her pet DK into Nexus last night and we got rofflestomped. Part of it is the fact that the instance hurts. A lot. Another part of it is the fact that Josh likes to over-pull thinking that he's on his warrior in mad epix and isn't. We finished the instance, but only after a hunter "DC'd" and we brought Macharious in. 80 > Nexus. I'm not going to let it shake my healing confidence too much. It wasn't that hard on Ambrosyne, but we took a group of guildies in t4/5/6 gear. Not peoples alts in greens and blues. We're also not entirely used to our alts toys yet-while I did heal my way up through a lot of stuff on Lyr, I have a lot more buttons to play with that I did in, say, BRD. And Wrath instances are a whole 'nother type of cookie.

Speaking of healing confidence...I've really been struggling with mine. It was in pretty bad shape before Wrath, even. I need to get patted on the head a lot, so to speak. But that's not a 'yay' post. Perhaps another time.

Back to silly stuff! I've already chased people around pointlessly levitating them. We've also used it to save time riding down by jumping off a cliff. Sadly I could not save the hunter who jumped off the wrong part of a ledge in Nexus. I was too busy laughing and calling him a noob in guild chat anyway (he was a guildie-fair game!). I did enjoy the proper mana returns from PW:S. I also enjoy watching PoM bounce around on my UI-it sparkles!

Now what I really want is an add on that replaces the sound of Penance with laser sounds. Hell, replace the PoM charms with laser sounds! I AM DISC! GIVE ME LASERS!

...ahem.

Hi. My namer is Amber, and I'm a dork.

Brief Patch Day Thoughts

2009-01-20T15:18:00.003-06:00

Paladin
-Judgements of the Pure: This Holy talent now increases the damage done by Seals and Judgements.

Sweet. I can now...er...solo more effectively? Wut? Yeah. I'm on a PvP server. I try not to solo if I can help it (lolololDKfodder).

-Judgement of Wisdom: Now returns a percentage of base mana instead of a percentage of max mana.

This is...uh...hm. You know, honestly, I don't know wtf that means. I mean I understand base mana and max mana. But IS a percentage of base better than max? Or worse? /headtilt A percentage of a smaller number sounds worse than a percentage of a bigger number, but...I...er. Mind. Meeeelting!

-Avenging Wrath: Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Avenging Wrath cannot be used within 30 seconds of each other anymore. Forbearance removed from Avenging Wrath.

This is good, because I go D: when needing to bubble...and not being able to because wings triggered Forbearance.

Priest
-Holy: Circle of Healing now has a 6 second cooldown.

YAY. Now nerf AoE damage plox.

-Levitate is now castable on others.

I will find a way to use this to annoy people.

-Rapture: This talent will now correctly return mana for Power Word: Shield based on the caster’s mana poll instead of the target’s mana pool.

Score! More mana!

Glyph
-Glyph of Holy Light now affects friendly targets in a larger radius.

Yay, more overhealing! It might even be slightly more useful.

...no change to Glyph of FoL? D:

Spirit Vs Mp5

2009-01-19T13:17:00.004-06:00

So I read this totally awesome thread on the PlusHeal forums about Spirit vs Mp5 for disc priests.

Shame I didn't understand most of it. Threads like that or why I have this blog-I can't be the only one who reads that stuff and gets a glazed over expression. Just tell me what to prioritize, people!

I managed to glean this:
It depends on how much time you actually spend spamming. If you tend to spam, as disc priests are wont to do, mp5 is better. If you do find yourself getting acquainted with the 5sr, then you get more benefit from spirit and might want to weight spirit a little more heavily.
And as I said here, after 1k int, int/spirit gems are more beneficial than int/mp5.

Here is a neat calculator if you want to play with math.

The same thread devolves into a Flash vs Greater Heal discussion, but after a certain amount of numbers my brain melted. I'll touch that topic later. Maybe. If I recover.

Frustrated Paladin Preaches Appreciation

2009-01-16T10:05:00.006-06:00

Today's blog fodder: A WoW Insider post about priest roles.

Dear QQing Priests,

Shut the hell up.
No, really. Quit your bitchin'.
O noes, they're nerfing CoH! O noes, we don't have clear and defined roles! We are made of suck and fail!

You want a clearly defined role? Take a paladin! There's your clearly definined role. I heal one thing really damn well. That's GREAT in raids, and I'm not even being sarcastic!

...unless most of your healers are paladins, a la last night's OS (2 pallys and one bad resto shaman who might as well have not even been there).
...unless you're healing a 5 man with aoe damage.
...unless that's all you can do.

Priests, when you look at their spells as a whole product and don't get hung up
on any one ability in particular, work great. ... Holy Priests are great
healers, and there's really no situation where they're completely
helpless. ... The fact that Holy Priests are so well-rounded means that in
situations where only one Healer is needed (such as 5-man groups), Priests are
fantastic. They have all of the tools required to excel in that format. There's
not really a single boss that can give them a lot of trouble. All of the Healing
classes have the tools required to get them through 5-man dungeons and Heroics,
but Paladins, Shaman, and Druids all have encounters that really trip them
up. Priests rarely have this problem. 5-mans are kind of their playground. They
utterly dominate.

And that, ladies and gentleman, is why I rolled a priest. Even a disc priest has the tools nessecary to cope with the varied situations that a 5 man will throw at them. My question is: how does this change in raids?

I don't think it does. In a raid, you can still AoE heal. You can still toss HoTs. You can still heal a single target pretty well. Why does this make you weak in a raid? If you have two holy paladins healing a raid, they're probably going to struggle more than if you had two priests. Now Macharious and I did great, but Mach and I are awesome, even if he is a cranky temporarily converted healadin. I imagine that some of the other healing classes are similarly limited. We can do it, but it's more difficult.

Priests bring versatility to the table. If you don't value that in a raid, you're a fool. What if your holy paladin healing the tank dies? Boom, priest can step in. What if a Shade pounces on you unawares in the middle of explaining a boss fight and half the group all is /afk? The priest is ready, despite being the only healer present and not staring at 4chan on a second monitor. What if you log on to raid and your holy paladin/reso shaman/tree isn't there? The priests can do it!

Problems start coming up when you increase the number of characters in play. Things start shifting from who has the most tools to "Who will heal the tank?" and "Who will heal the DPS?" In bigger raids. You stop looking for versatility and start looking for who's the best at what job. ... The issue is that you fill your niche roles first, and plug in the Priest(s) second.

Versitility should be valued even in a 25 man. I'd be unhappy if I didn't have a priest or two in my 25 man raids. I'd grab one just as quickly as I'd grab anything else. I don't think the problem, then, is not with the priest or with how they work. It's with how some people form raids.

I'd be okay with, as the Insider says later, giving the priests more of a niche...but please, for the love of all that is holy, don't take away their Jack of all Trade skills. Expand on the Hymns or spells like Power Infusion if you want. Those could all lead to fun, useful directions.

But I don't want a repeat of Ambrosyne's leveling process with Lyrandre, where there remain certain instances I just won't do without a lot of inner sobbing. I want to be able to walk through any instance portal and know that I gave the tools at hand to do my job-keep people alive.

Priests have a niche. I just don't think that they-or raid leaders-appreciate it enough.

Oh look, a shiny! /distracted

2009-01-15T15:59:00.004-06:00

Most of my creative effort for the day was sucked into polishing my guild's misson statement. Why was I doing that? Because they made me recruitment officer. Yay! As recruitment officer, though, I want to have a shiny misson statement to point recruits to, and no one else had gotten around to it yet (did I mention this is NOT a new guild? Lazy!).

We tackled Naxx last night, but didn't get to Sapph, so that experiment is...still waiting. I did end up using Blessing of Sacrifice on the MT for Anub to soak some of the damage, a seldom used trick I'll have to remember more often. I honestly never used that thing except for Maiden.

I did an absolutely silly near 6k HPS on the Instructor. I also nearly went OOM, but he died (eventually...) so we win! I definitely don't have the crit for that sort of nonsense on a regular basis, though. I don't remember having that much trouble with him before, but we were also training a new OT among other things, so it wasn't an optimal night.

I'm still almost looking forward to 2-healing things. There are certain fights where I spend the entire time spinning in circles FoLing the tank, hoping the spinning makes it more interesting.

It doesn't.

Can I snap my fingers and make my priest 80 yet?

Guest blog.

2009-01-14T13:52:00.002-06:00

I have a guest blog over at World of Matticus! I am pleased and terrified all at once.

Excuse me while I go and quiver in a corner.

/fade

So You Rolled A Priest...

2009-01-14T08:51:00.010-06:00

So you rolled a priest. Maybe, like me, you just wanted to try something else. Maybe your raid needs a healer. Maybe this is your first character! Now you're level ten and staring at your talent trees.

This is intended as a leveling guide, not an end-game guide. Spell rotations and specs will reflect that.

Priest Specs-The Basics
Ask yourself several questions.
-What do I want to do with this character?
-Do I mostly want to heal? Do I mostly want to DPS?
-Do I want to PvP, or focus on PvE?
-Am I going to be soloing, duoing, or instancing my way to 80?
-How crazy am I?

Shadow
Shadow is considered by many to be the 'default' leveling spec and is arguably the fastest. If you plan on mostly DPSing and/or mostly soloing, this is likely the route you'll take. You will likely get asked to heal as shadow, because people are silly like that. If you don't mind, it's entirely possible to heal as shadow until fairly close to end game.

Holy
Holy is a healing spec. If you plan on soloing/questing, this is...probably not the way to go. If you want to level primarily through instance groups or with a friend, holy is fine. Learning as you go is a great way to get a handle on healing and you probably won't lack for groups!

Disc
Disc is another healing spec, and my personal favorite (warning: bias ahead!). It's good for healing in PvE, with some different talents it's also great for healing in PvP. I leveled as disc on a PvP server and not only was I durable, I was dangerous! If you want to heal instances but know you'll be doing a lot of questing on your own, disc might be for you. And you get to heal with pew pew lazers later on. :D

Regardless of your spec, you're likely going to want to take points in Spirit Tap in the Shadow tree. I didn't, but I'm nuts. I'll post leveling specs when I can get home and can actually look at the talent calculator. :o For now I'll throw up what I've got.

Disc Specs: Here is one leveling path... I put all my points into disc to start and only went into holy later.
Holy Spec: How about this one? I don't know, the mere idea of a holy leveling spec kind of broke my mind.
Shadow Spec: coming!

Spell Rotations
As Disc, my DPS rotation while questing was as follows:
Shield > Holy Fire > Shadow Word:Pain > Devouring Plague > Mind Blast
If mob was at less than 50% health, then I'd wand them to death for mana conservation. If it was not, then I'd bust out the smite until it was. At higher levels, PW: Death is great to finish things off as long as you're careful. It might seem a little slower to wand things to death, but you save time drinking, so it evens out.
While duoing, I holy smite everything I can just because it's funny. My tank is less amused, but tossing dots up on whatever he's aoe tanking does help things go faster.
Can you lolsmite DPS in groups? Yes. Are you going to do awesome DPS? No. Does it matter in Maraudon? Not really.

Holy would switch up the disc rotation a bit. Or more than a bit, I suppose. Er. Here!:
Holy Fire > Smite > PW:S > Smite > Smite
Toss SW:P and Devouring Plague up for tougher mobs that will live long enough for the DoTs to be worth it.

I picked the brain of a shadow priest or two or four, and came out with the following rotation:
Vampiric Embrace > SW:P > Vampiric Touch > Mind Blast > Mind Flay
Use SW:Death judiciously, as always, and use MB in between MFs when it's off cooldown. Rotations are a bit different for max DPS in groups, and you'll want to keep your DoTs refreshed, but that's getting into stuff a little too complicated for this disc priest and her healing-focused blog.

Don't forget to keep Inner Fire up!

Gear
Leveling gear is generally whatever the hell you can grab. With today's quicker leveling until 70, the gear you get before hand isn't terribly important. You're usually looking for stamina, intellect, spirit, and spellpower on your lower level greens. Later on you might pick up some peices with mp5 and crit.

What you want to focus on depends on your build. A holy priest is more focused on spirit/mp5 than a disc priest, who is likely going to lean more towards int/crit. A player on a pvp server might want a bit more stm.

For shadow, you'll want to pick up some hit gear where you can. Spellpower, crit, and haste are what you're after next, in that order. For all specs I'd consider haste the least of your concerns until nearer end-game, however.

If you get a peice with gem sockets, look at what gear you have now. What are you missing? If you have a lot of mp5 peices, consider crit gems. Int gems are always good. Spirit for holy, etc. Don't spend too much money on gems sub 70, because you're likely to replace the gear soon. On your way to 80 the gear replacement slows down...a little. That said, Lyr's had three different weapons in 2 levels.

Sources: the many fine players of the wow_ladies community! <3

In which I am vain.

2009-01-13T13:34:00.005-06:00

I used to mock Judgement. "Plate skirt, what the hell?" But it was pretty bad ass for all of that, although Lightbringer wasn't bad. Belly baring and bananarific, but not bad.

Now I miss it. I miss it so much that I keep it in the bank, all eight lovingly gathered peices. They represent untold hours of raiding, back in the day when I had four/five other paladins in a raid to 'compete' with. I never saw tier three on my character, but didn't think much of the set back then. In BC I tried to collect the purple version of Judgement but never did manage it all, and was...not impressed with tier four.

It was...meh.

I missed t5 and t6. Now we're back at recolored t3, which is awesome for some classes and...not so awesome for others. Like, oh, power rangers. I mean paladins.

Do I care that Ambrosyne doesn't have any of her tier gear? Nooooo. I'm content with my recolored DK armor. It's not very...paladiny, but it's sure as hell better than Random Pointy Objects Jutting Out Gear.

I should totally stand around Dalaran in Judgement. Last time I did that in Stormwind, a warrior dragged out his t2 and stood next to me. Good times!

Dear Blizzard,

WTB bad ass looking paladin gear.

Kthxbai,
-healadin

Priest gear tends to look better. Like I need more incentive to play her, right?

Useful posts coming later. Researching! Gasp.