Archive for the 'priest' Category

01
Nov
09

And now for something completely different – Valithria Dreamwalker

Warning: Icecrown spoilers!

Newspost from MMO-Champion

wow.com write-up

As soon as I saw information on this fight, I got really excited: a fight where healers get to pose as DPS?  So cool!  New and exciting!  Eeee!

Closer examination, however, leaves me a little disappointed.  It’s no secret that the developers believe (rightly, in my opinion) that healing specs can be more different and niched because there are fewer of them, and healing as a reactive art means it isn’t subject to the strict rotation/maximized output of DPS classes at all times.  This fight kind of turns that on its head, and suddenly it’s becoming very obvious that some healers are going to outperform others in the HPS race, as it were.

As a disc priest, I immediately voiced concern for this and basically have met the following response:  “Oh, well someone has to take care of the real people!  You’ll bubble-spam the raid.”

Sure, sure.  That sounds good and all when you’re not super excited for this new mechanic, I guess?  But this put me back in a dps mentality.  Think of it this way: I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that a dps would get annoyed if on every fight they showed low on the meters for whatever hidden reason, then got a totally different fight that catered to high dps, and got stuck on adds for every single attempt because they knew their dps wasn’t high enough to help.  They get sat out for not being able to pump out the numbers the guild needs.  Eh?  I don’t know.  I’m a bit twitchy over it, and considering I’m in a 10 man guild I’ll probably have to go holy for this fight or something.

Ew.  ;)

Perhaps I’m overreacting, but there are complaints from lots of people over the large theoretical discrepancy between healers, and the fight seems rather exploitable (one of the more interesting, and I hope prohibited, ideas is having pallies chain LoH).

What would’ve been really neat is if you were actively healing against adds beating on her (someone correct me if you DO, but from what I’ve seen it doesn’t look that way) because then my bubbles would definitely count for a lot, since the healers wouldn’t have to make up for as much HP lost during the fight.

Thoughts?

14
Jul
09

Addon Spotlight: Power Auras


Let’s face it, during any given raid, there’s too many boxes over in my little buffs section to look for silly little things like surge of light procs and serendipity stacks.  Power Auras gives me a nice little HEY THERE LOOKIE slap, however, which makes it a great mod for the easily  distracted!

Above you will see my sexy little priestess taking one for the team and going holy.  You’ll note two icons around her-the purple circle, and the white.  The white circle tells me that I have three stacks of serendipity up, and the purple is screaming “SURGE OF LIGHT PROC HOOOO!”. 

There are many, many icons you can chose from, and not all of them are the halo-esque type I favor.  If you peek over at Holy Dueg’s blog, you can see a few of the other icons Power Auras has to offer.   You can shift them around, change the colors, sizes, and the opacity…on top of all the other options, this is a really flexible mod.

Here’s my paladin sporting something a little more subtle, keeping me from Uber Tank Fail. 

Coming later: how the hell to use it!

14
Jun
09

LOL HPS: A Disc Priest’s Guide to Making Healing Meters Useful

I’m sure every disc priest has encountered at least one “no thx” when pugging, or has been kicked for not healing enough, or been asked to go Holy by their guild because they don’t look like they’re pulling their weight as Disc.  Just recently I was in a Maly 10 group.  It was me and a pally healing, so I was on the raid.  I had raid-healed a 2-heal 10 man Ulduar a few days earlier so I was confident.  The tank kept dying.  They kicked me, lolwut?

THAT PRIEST SUCKED OMG THEIR HEALING WAS LOW LET’S NOT PAY ATTENTION TO THEIR ASSIGNMENT OR SPEC LOL

Anyway, before I get off track here: While situations like the one above can be discouraging and tempt us to write off healing meters as a complete waste of time as disc, there ARE several ways to evaluate a discipline priest using them.  Raw healing done is certainly not one of them (except to go “OMG BAD PALLY YOU ARE UNDER THE DISC PREST, WHAT IS WRONG?”) but more detailed dissection of a parse can reveal very interesting things about how a disc priest is doing.

Some things you can check out:

- Uptime of Renewed Hope.  This should be as close to 100% as possible.  Most fights I am at 100% uptime, except for weird things like Vezax.

- Uptime of Divine Aegis on tanks.  This number will be widely variable, but over time or comparing disc priests it’s interesting to look at.  Personally my uptime on main tanks is about 25%, though I’ve had parses as high as 50%.  (It’s also an interesting tool for comparing tanks: a stam/mitigation tank will have a lower % uptime relative to how many applications of DA they got, while an avoidance tank with have a much higher % uptime.)

- Uptime of Weakened soul.  This should be close to 100% as possible, though timing, human error, multiple targets and fight mechanics (saving shield for rune punch, frozen blows, etc) keep it from being possible to hit 100% like you can with Renewed Hope.  Most fights I can usually keep 70-90% uptime on the MT if I’m assigned to them

- How many shields are wasted.  Check how many ticks of Rapture the priest got compared to how many shields they cast (if you’re using a log that doesn’t track absorbs, count the applications of Glyph of PW:S). This is a rough estimate type of deal because partial absorbs won’t trigger rapture, and it’s still unclear to me what that “every 12 seconds” text on the talent actually means (I’m looking through a combat log and it’s hard to tell, ugh).  But a really big difference, like more than 4 times as many shields as rapture procs, means the priest is bubbling at bad times and/or indiscriminately.  Personally for a whole night of Ulduar I usually bubble about twice as much as I get Rapture, and I’m a little shield-happy.  On fights where I am focusing on the MT, it’s much closer to even (ex. this one Hodir parse, 23 shields, 20 rapture procs)

- If you’re using a log that doesn’t track absorbs at all, Prayer of Mending should be one of a disc priest’s top heals, after Penance (Penance is usually about 25% of my direct heals).  There’s no real reason a disc priest shouldn’t be using PoM every cooldown, so if it’s up up there on healing done, they’re probably neglecting it.

- If a disc priest is running oom and has high overheals, they should stop overhealing.  If mana isn’t a problem, overheals with high crit chance are actually pretty good (this is such a 180 turn around from 3.0, when we got insane mana back from effective heals)

Though not very cut and dry, looking at these things can help evaluate how a disc priest is doing, and can help foster a more critical eye for healing meters in general :)

———–

OKAY so during the process of writing this I found out something EXTREMELY ANNOYING.  We’re currently using World of Logs, WMO, and sometimes WWS for parses (though I actually use the above tricks in WWS because I like their layout better, easier to look at buffs, but it’s also the log that does not count absorbs at all).

I discovered, because the WoW combatlog doesn’t have detailed information about absorbs, even in logs that estimate absorbs and give Disc priests some more accurate numbers —- IF YOU’RE RUNNING WITH OTHER PRIESTS IT WILL SOMETIMES COUNT YOUR PW:S AND YOUR DIVINE AEGIS AS *THEIR* HEALING.  I just did some numbers when I found this out. Our log for one night last week has me with 508 DA absorbs, with another 250 split among the holy priests.  That’s like 1/3 of my DA absorbs weren’t even credited to me.  WTF BLIZZARD D:

Healing meters mean nothing here

Healing meters mean nothing here

- Kiv \jj/

LOL HPS: A Disc Priest’s Guide to Making Healing Meters Useful
EDIT!!!:  So apparently that thing I’m complaining about up there is probably not mis-credited DAs.  Word on the street is there’s a DA bug where PoM procs DA on ANY priest’s PoM if there’s  a Disc priest in the raid.  Lame, but at least it’s just extra healing the raid shouldn’t get, and not THEM HOLY PRIESTS STEALING MY NUMBERS :D
08
Jun
09

GOOD PRIEST/BAD PRIEST

GOOD PRIEST understands that Meditation and Inspiration are critical talents to have for any healing spec : )
BAD PRIEST doesn’t like dipping into a healing tree that isn’t his/her primary tree >:(

GOOD PRIEST makes sure to learn all spells upon hitting level 80, and checks back at the trainer if respeccing to something he/she doesn’t normally play : )
BAD PRIEST forgets to train ranks of CoH when going Holy for the first time on a Sarth +3 attempt >:(

GOOD HOLY PRIEST specs into Spirit of Redemption but never really has to use it! : D
BAD HOLY PRIEST dies so often that his/her raid members think that failangel is some kind of awesome cooldown you’re supposed to use all the time >:(

GOOD PRIEST pops a mana pot and shadowfiend before bugging the druids for innervate : )
BAD PRIEST spams an “INNERVATE ME NOW!!” macro two minutes into every boss fight >:(

GOOD PRIEST knows how to MC and isn’t afraid to use it : )
BAD PRIEST never used their MC button before Razuvious, or since, and just ran around like a headless chicken going “WHAT R BONESHILD” the whole time >:(

GOOD PRIEST doesn’t let their spec keep them from performing to their best ability in awkward raid comps : )
BAD PRIEST bitches and moans when they’re on the raid as disc/on the tank as holy and refuses to have dual spec holy/disc if it’s a reccuring problem >:(

GOOD PRIEST is always prepared to buff, but makes sure not to overwrite any priest buffs already out as to not waste anyone’s candles : )
BAD PRIEST doesn’t buff ever, or overwrites everyone’s buffs constantly >:(

GOOD HOLY PRIEST doesn’t bubble when there’s a disc priest in the raid : )
BAD HOLY PRIEST bubbles the tank before a big pull and randomly throws shields on the dps >:(

GOOD PRIEST doesn’t bubble themselves during heavy raid damage, with a disc priest in the raid : )
BAD PRIEST does >:(

GOOD DISC PRIEST recognizes and embraces their role as mass dispel bitch : )
BAD DISC PRIEST doesn’t have it hotkeyed and bitches at the holy priests for not mass dispelling on Hodir >:(

GOOD PRIEST rezzes people who died on a boss kill without being asked : )
BAD PRIEST sits there goin HURR WHERE’S MAH LEWT >:(
GOOD DISC PRIEST gems for Int and SP : )
BAD DISC PRIEST gems for Spirit >:(

GOOD PRIEST pays attention to how well their assignment lives, their own overhealing, and spell breakdown to gauge how well they do : )
BAD PRIEST slaves over the meters >:(

BAD PRIEST

BAD PRIEST

06
Jun
09

Disc tips for Uld-25 regular modes

Here is a rundown on what I do in particular for each boss in Ulduar now that we have most regular-mode stuff on farm.  If anyone has any more tips or corrections feel free to add them, I know a lot of us disc priests are the only ones in our guild and probably don’t get a chance to communicate with other disc priests too often on strats :)

Razorscale – Focus the boss and bubble whoever gets targetted for the flame stuff. Run around a lot so you don’t get hit, this is a good fight to optimize our instant casts. If you’re on the raid, bubble and penance – since there is no raid wide damage you can afford to throw penance on whoever’s taking damage. On tanks, it’s pretty easy healing. DPS during the first ground phase unless you’re afraid you’ll have mana problems (I pop shadowfiend too so I got into p2 at full mana and he does a little dps!) For phase two it helps to blow Pain Suppression on the tank if it takes them too long to switch to the 2nd tank. or if you’re having trouble staying in range (my tanks seem to like to kite her ALLL over the place)

Ignis – I always have one of two roles. 1 is MT healer, 2 is slagpot/OT healer. MT heals, there is nothing special about this fight. Bubble who you can before and during flame jets (and remember instants can’t get you locked out, so go to town), and giggle when you cast penance and swing around to wherever the MT is tanking Ignis. On slagpot, bubble, penance and a few flashes is more than enough to keep anyone up. When there’s nobody in slag, get a feel for how often he casts Flame Jets and start casting bubbles about 10 seconds before if you can. Prioritize clothies. If you time it well you should get about half the raid bubbled before the last tick finishes.

XT – Personally I think Disc shines more on this fight in 10 man than in 25, where you can tank heal and bubble everyone for tantrum. In 25 you’re usually glued to the tank more than some other fights. If you need to bubble the raid before/during a tantrum because of bad raid damage, PS the tank. Bubble + PoM on someone with gravity bomb is also a big help (like on Grobbulus).  I have personally never been assigned to the raid during this fight but it seems like bubble bubble bubble :)

Assembly of Iron – Disc does AMAZINGLY well on Steelbreaker.  I personally overheal like crazy, using penance every cooldown despite the tank’s health, to keep DA up as much as possible.  If you’re on fusion punch dispel duty, try to time your bubbles so there is a fresh one right before you start spamming dispel (not really plausible by sheer timing, so I sometimes leave WS off the tank for a few seconds if I’m expecting fusion punch and then bubble right when he starts casting).  The other thing I like to do on this fight is bubble people who get stuck in the middle of the Rune of Death or whatever that the runemaster drops, to give them a little more time to get out :)

Kologarn – Tank healing this is nothing special, but I often get assigned to people who get snatched.  Bubble them, penance one, PoM, and flash the others, and if your raid is good they’ll be out of the arm by then.  Besides that, get as many bubbles out as you can before Oblivion.  Unlike XT and Ignis, this is an unforgiving fight for disc, because if you’re not reactive your bubbles are pretty useless (their raid damage ticks while Kolo’s is one big shot).  If you have a lot of haste or a haste set, this is a good fight for that because you can help heal the raid post-bubble-explosion.

Auriaya – blow PS on the pull, to whoever you’re assigned to.  Besides that, I have one awesome hint if you’re low on shamans and high on priests — Have your priests rotate fear wards on you, bubble yourself for BT and mass dispel when she casts her fear.  It’ll basically be instant :)

Hodir – Hodir is possibly my favorite fight in Ulduar.  As disc, you don’t need to worry about getting the buffs as much as other classes because shield is going to be like 90% of your healing.  I have one major goal in Hodir:  Keep Frozen Blows from proccing on the tank.  A bubble and hasted set of penance/gheals right when he pops it will guarantee this doesn’t happen.  Besides that, jump CONSTANTLY unless you’re in a haste spotlight and throwing super fast heals on the tank, and bubble the fuck out of everyone.  You will look like absolute trash on the healing meters but everyone secretly loves you, I promise.  Also, despite my TERRIBLE FRAMERATE (2-4 fps on hodir 25) I am always #25 on damage taken, sometimes below people who died early in the fight even.  fuck yes.

Thorim – Disc is amazing in the Arena.  Bubble everybody as much as you can, spam Holy Nova when the commoners come out to help pad AoE damage, and throw Penances like crazy on people who are focused. The results are more dramatic in 10 man but a disc priest is stll an excellent asset in 25 man arena, especially when your other healers are casting real slow raid heals (wtb resto drood).  Save PS for phase 2 when a tank doesn’t taunt in time and the first tank has to eat another Unbalancing Strike :/

Freya – Bubble, bubble bubble.  Bubble whoever gets the lightning debuff on the big add.  Get as many people bubbled as you can during the small lasher phase.  The tank doesn’t take much damage, I usually blow every penance on him, keep WS up, and every PoM and don’t usually have to focus on him too much, so I can help out the raid.  Bubbles make a biiig difference when all that shit is blowing up.

Mimiron – CRY.  I’m nervous to post my hints for Mimiron because I think we’re still tweaking our phase 2 strat.  We’ve downed him I think 4 times now but he’s still way harder than I think he needs to be.  Another fight of bubble spamming though, lol.   Phase 1 is solid for disc, spam shit for lots of DA when the plasma thing goes off — even if healers are blowing cooldowns your tank could still get gibbed without max heals.  For phase 2 right now we usually have each priest heal their own party (…yes, we have that many priests) which is hard on me because I am more effective at “o shit” raid damage than “gotta keep sustained PoH going on my doods,” but I manage pretty damn well I think.

Vezax – We use two sets of healers that rotate on the MT, and no raid healers (dps bandages if they fuck up and eat shadow crash).  We have one of our holy priests go Disc, and keep one of us in each group.  I think I’m still a little mana-wastey on Vez because I’m inclined to overheal a bit to keep DA up, even though I don’t think it’s so necessary.  But I have almost 30k mana at this point so I’m not hitting danger zones yet by spamming when i shouldn’t be ;) We use a DK tank so Vez stays in one place, and the healers stand on the melee so we don’t get targetted for his bad shit. The big thing about healing here is to keep shield up, and only cast penance when you absolutely KNOW it’s going to make a difference.  Nothing sucks more than casting penance when you only needed to flash once, and having the tank take 25k the next hit when your shit’s on CD.  This fight is also a good time to use renew to pad the tank if your mana is going alright.  Also I sometimes uses penance on the other healers’ rotation if I’m good on mana if damage is really spiky — it’s cheap and instant, why not help? :)

Yogg — We haven’t gotten far enough on Yogg for me to write anything, hopefully I’ll have something after Sunday’s raid! :D

Chillin in Vezaxs room

Chillin' in Vezax's room

05
Jun
09

Taz’dingo!

I AM KIVULI
Kivuli

Hello :)   I am a troll discipline priest totally in love with my race/class/spec combination.   I rerolled from a Warlock a while ago because I wanted to heal and I liked my troll better than my undead girl — I’ve never healed outside of Disc and I never want to!  I keep up on Holy and the other healing classes so I don’t sound like a dick, though.  But my focus, passion, and knowledge base is all disc!

My guild is working on Yogg 25 right now and I am REALLY SUPER FUCKING EXCITED YOU HAVE NO IDEA to post things that come from our Continued Adventures in Ulduar.  I’m my guild’s only disc priest THANK GOD, though we do have 42593892 holy priests (so I never have to buff! >_>)

MY FAVORITE THINGS ARE TROLLS, GETTING PISSED OFF AT HOW BLIZZARD DOESN’T TRACK ABSORBS, COLLECTING NEAT GREY ITEMS, STACKING INT AND CRIT, AND BEING INCREDIBLY GORGEOUS.

I have these things in the works:

  • My personal view on Disc gearing, including an explanation of why I favor crit over haste
  • A tip sheet for Disc healing Ulduar bosses in various roles
  • My adventures raid healing a 10 man
  • How to deal with opposition/ignorance to disc, and how it’s made me a better player
  • Sexy troll screenshot posts

\jj/ <– this is a troll with his arms up.  see the eyes and tusks? you do now.




Ellspeth, the Angry Tree

The Angry Healers is a World of Warcraft blog dedicated to the underappreciated and often overlooked role of The Healer (c) from the perspective of a (mostly) angry Tree!Druid. Here will be discussed talents, gear, spells, specs, and other healing related topics, as well as snarks, rants and general grumpiness about my chosen role in WoWlife, and patchnotes, changes, nerfs/ buffs, and expansion myths and legends (and maybe even facts!)

Header art by Triggerman @ dA.

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