Badass

Let me start by stating that I am not a mount collector. I've never been and it's likely that I will never become one. It's simply too much work to collect all those mounts and frankly I couldn't care less what I'm riding, as long as it's quick.

Thanks to the nice changes made by Blizzard, you can now just buy the maximum riding speed you can afford and it will apply equally to all your mounts, even the ones that were traditionally slow (like the 60% ground mount or 150% flying mount). That is a very nice touch because it allows everyone to use the mount they like best, without any penalty to speed. In my case, all my level 80+ toons have 310% speed mounts.

Since my mount collection is pitiful and can't even be called a "collection", the mount that I like best is the Headless Horseman's Mount that I have on my priest only. It has never dropped for my other characters but it seems fitting that my priest owns it.

You see, a shadow-specced priest makes this mount look even more badass than it is. There are cooler mounts out there and, after all, individual preferences are very subjective but for me, this is the ultimate mount. That, in no small measure, is also because I actually own it, as opposed to gawking at other people's 1337 mounts.

I find this mount baddass for several reasons. First, there's the fact that it is both a ground and a flying mount. Nowadays this isn't such a big deal anymore but in the olden days such a mount was very cool to own because you could use the same mount in both flying and non-flying areas without resorting to macros or multiple hotkeys. Then, there's the concept of riding a fricking flying horse. It looks like Death's horse, like one of the steeds of the Four Horsemen or perhaps like one of the mounts ridden by the Nazgûl in Lord of the Rings.

Combining this mount with a shadow priest really brings out the badassery, no question about it. I also love the way it seems to effortlessly glide through the air without flapping wings or whipping tails to distract me. As a bonus, when it turns, it seems to bank a little in the direction of the turn. Oh and if you look at the screenshot, the mount and the (shadow priest) rider are almost invisible against dark backgrounds.

Forgive me if I seem smitten with the Headless Horseman's Mount but it is the best possible mount I could have on any of my characters but especially on my shadow priest who, with his dark aura, gives the mount an even more foreboding presence.

I will end this by saying that there isn't another mount in World of Warcraft quite like the Headless Horseman's Mount. Which is your badass mount or what do you consider to be the ultimate pony?

Healed heroic Halls of Reflection, done it all

Well folks, I finally did it. I healed Halls of Reflection with my discipline priest. I've always been afraid of this, the pinnacle of Wrath 5-man dungeons. As a dps I've died many times in there but we all know by now that in order to be successful in this dungeon you need to have some very serious dps, among other things.

Thanks to the elemental invasion, I managed to get my hands on some nice ilvl 251 items. I also got some practice healing these new mini-bosses which are actually tougher than many heroic bosses. And then, after acquiring some more Justice Points by running several heroics as shadow dps, I bought a few ilvl 264/245 items from the Emblem of Frost and Triumph vendors.

Afterward I chain-healed almost a dozen heroics and found out that I can really do it.

My problem, of course, was the lack of gear. A healer in <= ilvl 200 gear isn't gonna do a great deal in a heroic unless he's very talented (and I can't claim that I am). Now that my gear is up to speed (average level is 233), I feel very confident in healing any heroic thrown at me.

In all fairness though, Halls of Reflection didn't seem as tough as I'd imagined it to be. Trial of the Crusader and Azjol'Nerub (both of which I healed subsequently) felt more difficult. It's true that in HoR we had really good dps and a good tank so everything went smoothly. I even gained the achievement to finish the gauntlet quickly. On the other hand, for the two other dungeons mentioned (ToC and A'N) some of the people were standing in poison and other crap (so I had to heal like crazy) and they also pulled too many mobs a few times (so I had to heal like crazy).

My main tool as a discipline priest remains Power Word: Shield which currently absorbs a little over 5000 damage self-buffed. What's nice is that at this point mana has ceased to become an issue, meaning that after 90% of fights (including boss fights) I'm left with 90% mana. Occasionally when someone screws up or they're not geared enough, I'll go down to 50% or so but even then I manage to pull through.

My biggest issue as a healer - and this probably comes as a consequence of not being very experienced - is that I often forget about more powerful spells that I have at my disposal. For example I always forget to use Power Word: Barrier which is an awesome spell especially for those moments when there's heavy damage incoming.

I've also been trying to use Smite in combination with Evangelism/Archangel, not that I need the mana but in preparation for Cataclysm. My feelings about this are mixed. On the one hand, it's a nice thing to be able to do some damage (no matter how puny) during downtime, and also heal a group member for 100% of the damage done thanks to Atonement. Now on the other hand, when the fight is frantic and I'm struggling to keep the group alive, there's no time to Smite and the whole concept becomes worthless. And then there's the third issue which is more of a personal one, and that is laziness. As a discipline priest I'm cool with popping PW:S and then taking a break.

At any rate, we'll see how all this comes together in Cataclysm, in a couple of short weeks. Until then I will likely continue to heal some heroics, especially since one piece of my gear is still a lousy ilvl 187 (my bracers).

The pre-Cataclysm elemental invasion!

I have to say I'm enjoying the new pre-Cataclysm events. As you all potentially know, Monday started the last stage of these events and culminated with the introduction of 4 new bosses that you can defeat for ilvl 251 items. Pretty sweet.

I jumped right into the madness with my priest because I'm still insisting on gearing him up to heal dungeons in Cataclysm. That is, assuming that I won't get my butt kicked because from what I've been hearing, healing in Cataclysm dungeons will be orders of magnitude harder than currently, even in normal dungeons. However, some high level Wrath gear should still help at least for a couple of levels.

Believing that I could easily heal one of these new bosses, I joined as a healer and had to heal Gahz'rilla. I will readily admit that I was humbled by the experience as it was the hardest healing experience I've ever had. At one point I thought I'd lost it and it would be a wipe. How embarrassing! Lucky for me, the druid in the group decided to help me and we made it.

The cool thing is that I was extremely lucky that first night and won the Need roll for 3 items! I got the Earth Bride's Gown, Sandfury Sandals and Amulet of Evil Winds. On one occasion I even prevailed over 2 other Need rolls.

Since Monday I've been running these bosses with every chance I get. Unfortunately I've been losing rolls ever since so I haven't gotten anything new yet. I'm still looking for the remaining 3 spell dps/healing pieces.

On two occasions I managed to heal the rest of the encounter in shadow spec after the healer died. I feel pretty good with myself when something like this happens. Great morale booster.

Anyway, it feels like Cataclysm is almost here. Next week in fact we should see The Shattering in the form of patch 4.0.3a. Until then, here are a few screenshots of all the chaos that ensued in the capital cities thanks to the elemental invasion.

Priest is 80

My priest turned 80 the other day. I didn't blog about it because I was busy enjoying the benefits of being 80, namely running heroics. This makes my 5th level 80 character, after my hunter, paladin, death knight and warlock.

Though discipline healing remains my greatest and newest love, I didn't jump straight into healing heroics because I wasn't sure I could handle it with the gear I had. As you all know, when you hit 80 you're equipped with gear up to ilvl 187. It's true that I was 100% equipped with blue dungeon gear but I am of firm opinion that one shouldn't step in heroics without at least ilvl 200 items on average. I don't consider myself sufficiently skilled as a healer to simply jump into these much harder dungeons.

For this reason my plans for the near future are to heal one normal dungeon daily and run at least one heroic every day. It's amazing how quickly you can get good gear by running just a few heroics. I've had a couple of runs where I needed (and won) 2 items in each.

Amongst the nice upgrades I am especially happy with this trinket called Spark of Life which is awesome for healing and not bad for dps either. It has a ton of haste and also helps with mana regen. I will also mention Wand of Ahn'kahet which is another big upgrade for me. Oh and just after 1 day at level 80 I bought Helm of Clouded Sight with emblems and I promptly gemmed and enchanted it.

But wait, there's more! I also won two rings and an amulet which are all ilvl 200 and have some very nice stats on them.

Now you might see a pattern here. I'm concentrating on items with healing stats, dps-ing be damned. Stuff with int, spirit, haste and spell power. Not so much crit rating and I won't even think about hit rating. I'm not doing terribly as shadow, pulling about 2K dps.

Yep, things are looking peachy.

One more thing before I sign off. I've noticed that having crappy gear gets you quicker in a group as dps (using the dungeon finder). This has been happening consistently ever since I hit 80 and the same thing occurred for my death knight who tried a few heroics with crappy gear. The queue timer says something like 10-15 minutes but very often I'm in after only 5 minutes. The perks of sucking, I guess.

Tanking sucks, healing rocks

Just an update on my tanking and healing career on my paladin and priest respectively.

First, I've been apprehensive to tanking heroics on my paladin, in spite of the fact that I spent a lot of gold on his tanking equipment. I'm running most heroics as retribution and I don't mind the long queue, which is actually useful to me because I can do some dailies in the meantime.

Last night I decided to try tanking midway through a heroic (I won't even mention which one) after the tank left and I'm ashamed to say that after managing to wipe the group twice through my blundering, I called it quits in disgrace. From now on I think I'm gonna stick to tanking normal dungeons only, just to get my tanking fix.

My priest, on the other hand, is a different story. Since I turned discipline, I've been having tons of fun healing. To my credit I've only had one wipe so far and it wasn't something I could control. The tank pulled more groups than he could handle and that was that. So far discipline has been amazing. I can handle any dungeon that's been thrown at me.

Not only have I found a lot of nice upgrades up to ilvl 187, but I am currently halfway between 79 and 80.

I've met the usual crowd of random people. Most of them are nice and courteous but there's also the odd asshat.

What warms my heart is whenever someone comments on how good my healing is. On one occasion the tank was amazed by my "mana efficiency". I guess he always saw me with almost full mana. That's, of course, thanks in part to my Mercurial Alchemist Stone and my Endless Mana Potion. And then again, discipline is a fairly thrifty spec. If things get really desperate on some boss for example, I can always use my Shadowfiend as a last resort. In fact I do use him on most end bosses, just to be on the safe side.

Next, I'm planning to heal heroics but I'm a bit scared here as well since heroic mobs hit harder and all that. On the other hand, heroic tanks are also better equipped so things should even out. My main plan is to try and gear myself up as best I can. Speaking of which, I've already got almost 40 Emblems of Triumph which will get me a ilvl 232 item as soon as I hit 80 and it'll most likely be a hat which I can gem nicely with a meta.

10 tips for the budding discipline priest

I found these 10 tips for new discipline priests on World of Matticus and thought I would share it with other would-be disco healers.

Most of them are true words of reason so make sure to read up on them! I know I did.

UPDATE: And a bonus, 4 more awesome discipline tips from Holyform.

Discipline is the ticket

Well folks, after realizing that holy priest healing is the suck, I've decided to switch to discipline and give healing one more try before hanging up my healing hat and resigning myself to a life of dps-ing.

Yesterday I made the switch and the results were... astounding!

First, here's the spec + glyphs that I have at level 75: 57/9/0.

At level 80 I plan to have something like this: 57/14/0.

I ran two random dungeons yesterday and couldn't believe how the difference between holy and discipline seemed like night and day.

The first run was impeccable. My performance was excellent even though it was my first time healing as discipline. Well, to be fair, the spells are about the same as holy with small variations.

The second run might have turned into a disaster if not for the healer, i.e. me. We almost wiped twice.

First time it happened, the tank disconnected in the middle of fighting a boss. I didn't realize what had happened but for some reason the group was taking huge amounts of damage. Two of the dps died and at that point I noticed that the tank was frozen in the same spot. The ret paladin picked up the boss and started tanking it. I healed the pally. After a while the tank reconnected and between the remaining three of us we downed the boss.

The second time it was a very close call. The tank (a different one, as the first one disconnected for good) decided to tank a group of mobs while the rest of the group was elsewhere. At one point I realized that the tank wasn't in range of my heals and she was taking damage. I located her on the minimap and raced to her location. By that time she was close to dying. I popped a quick PW: Shield on her and then blasted with Penance. That saved her life. The next minute or so was total chaos. The rest of the group followed but they aggroed another bunch of mobs so now we had to fight two groups. I was clicking and pushing buttons like mad but in the end we pulled through and no one died. I felt really proud of myself. I'm damn certain that I wouldn't have been able to heal these two situations (or at least the second one) with a holy spec.

I don't know what is about discipline, whether it is made for me, or I'm made for it, or it is simply awesome, but we seem to have hit it off on a very positive note.

I have to mention that I did practice "dry healing" on myself before jumping into the first dungeon. My biggest problem is that sometimes I forget the click-key combinations for the various spells that I have bound to Healbot. Practice makes perfect though and after these two runs I feel very confident in my abilities.

One of the things that make discipline incredible is, of course, Penance. This is (excuse the language) one fucking wicked spell. Not only is it the best oh-shit button ever (it has helped me save a whole bunch of near-dead groupies already) but I can use it to dps a little when no one requires heals and the mob/boss is almost down.

I also love that discipline is very mobile, what with PW:S, Renew, Prayer of Mending and even Penance. Who needs Circle of Healing when you can just pop bubbles on everyone who might take damage? In fact, I have already adopted the habit of putting bubbles on the melee dps and even the rest of the group in boss encounters. I call it "preventative maintenance". I've also learned to substitute Holy Nova for Circle of Healing. Although it admittedly heals for less and it has a smaller radius, it's an instant AoE heal and that's the reason why I plan to fill my 3rd glyph slot at 80 with Glyph of Holy Nova. This will make Holy Nova almost as powerful as CoH but with a smaller radius.

It seems that I have already settled on a "rotation" of sorts. I will start by putting a Prayer of Mending on the tank before he starts the fight. As soon as he starts taking damage I'll place a Renew and then monitor his health carefully. Depending on how much damage he takes I might either use a Flash Heal or a bubble. If there's a big dip in health, Penance will save the day. As I already mentioned, I also bubble the melee dps while I'm sitting idle and will refresh Prayer of Mending if needed. I've also used Penance plenty of time to save some poor dps who swallowed more damage than they could chew. Oh and I will also put a bubble on myself because I've already been in several fights that have nasty trash which try to grab you or have some sort of AoE damage.

If I seem overexcited that's maybe because I am. I had given up on healing after holy couldn't cut it for me anymore but it seems that discipline has taken the slack with aplomb. Time will tell if my new-found excitement is justified. Now I'm off to disco-heal some randoms!

Holy priest healing has been sucking lately

My priest is almost level 75 now but sadly I have been leveling him as shadow lately and in 90% of cases I'm queuing as dps in the dungeon finder.

Something has happened after I hit Northrend and it's not good. I can't heal anymore.

In Azeroth I had no problems healing. I ran most dungeons as a holy healer and I did great. I loved healing and as a result it was always easy to get into a group.

In Outland I started having some problems. Dungeons were somehow much tougher and I started hesitating more and more as a healer as levels went by. I started running a lot more dungeons as dps rather than healer.

In Northrend disaster struck. I couldn't heal for peanuts. I attempted healing about 3 or 4 dungeons. In one of them I gave up and left the group after telling them that I didn't feel capable of healing the rest of it. In another I barely pulled through to the end. In yet another one I dual-healed with the main healer because he had some difficulty doing it, and still we barely pulled through.

I have no idea what's going on. It could be me, or it could be crappy tanks/groups or it could be the dungeons themselves which are a lot tougher. For this reason I have mostly given up on healing. My leveling consists purely of queuing up as dps in the dungeon finder and questing in the meanwhile.

When healing, I use Healbot and I think it's great. My modus operandi is to put a Prayer of Mending on the tank, then when he takes a few hits I'll put a Renew and then Flash of Light whenever he takes too much damage and Renew can't compensate. If excrement hits the cooling device, I will pop a PW: Shield. That's my main rotation and it worked great until Outland. Back then I didn't even have Prayer of Mending.

Now though, it seems that tanks are taking so much damage that I find myself spamming Flash of Light continuously, barely making it through the fight and finding myself drained of mana at the end. I am aware that Greater Heal is a more efficient spell in terms of mana but the cast time is too long and by the time I finish casting it the tank could be dead!

I didn't mention Circle of Healing but I think it's the best feature of holy healing. Unfortunately it does have a weakness: range. I usually have to stand right next to the tank in order to get everyone in its radius and very often it misses one or two people.

Here's what my spec looks like at level 74: 13/52/0.

I really don't know what to do at this point. Leveling is fine as shadow dps but I really wanted to be a good healer, as this is my first healing character. I'm considering going discipline but I've never healed as disc and I'm afraid I'll mess that up too. In fact discipline has it's own perks in my eyes.

I'll relate a short anecdote about discipline healing. I was running a random heroic with my retribution paladin and at one point after a fight, we were heading towards the next group of mobs when the following conversation occured:
Tank: "Healer don't you need mana?"
I look at the healer's mana bar and it was almost empty, perhaps only 1/5 full. The healer was a priest.
Healer: "No, keep going I'm fine."
Tank: "Oh wait I just realized you're disc. You guys don't need mana."
Healer: "lol"

So to my mind discipline priests seem to be very mana efficient. On the other hand they don't seem to have a cool instant AoE heal spell like Circle of Healing. Generally the disco priests I've run with have performed very well.

One other thing that might be a factor here is that people who are running heroics are often very well equipped and also experienced. In leveling dungeons, people don't have the best gear and sometimes they haven't run that dungeon before. Many tanks are also awful and I've had my full share of crappy tanks, having just today run with a major asshole who insulted everyone, complained that he didn't win a roll for a spellpower cloak and then intentionally pulled a boss and wiped the group.

Therefore, maybe one of the reasons why I can't heal properly is that tanks are very bad and they take a lot of damage. Personally I have pretty good gear, most of it being blue items from dungeons and a few heirlooms.

Maybe this looks like a plea for help but until further notice I think I'll just give up healing and level as dps. Less stress and much less responsibility.

Lolhealz

So I ran my first Northrend dungeon today on my priest, as shadow DPS this time. Since I wasn't 70 yet and I didn't have the latest level 70 skills, I didn't want to risk making a mess of healing. Besides, DPS is so much more leisurely...

After a very long wait of about 30 minutes, I finally found myself in Utgarde Keep. We had a paladin tank and a shaman healer.

A couple of minutes into the run it became apparent that the healer was having trouble keeping the tank alive, even when fighting small groups of trash. This wasn't gonna be good. In between DPS-ing I would pop a Power Word: Shield on the tank when her health dipped really low.

The healer was also constantly running out of mana and at one point told us to slow down so she could drink. That's when the tank said "You wouldn't run out of mana so often if you'd use your mana totem". At that point it dawned on me that the healer wasn't using a single totem. I was like, WTF.

From there on, she started using the mana totem. In the words of the tank (with whom I was having a private conversation about the healer), "facepalm".

After our first wipe I decided to switch specs to holy and heal the tank myself so we were pretty much dual-healing during the rest of the run. We tried initiating a kick vote but apparently the other members weren't aware how much she sucked so they declined to kick her.

Eventually we finished the dungeon though we almost wiped at the last boss thanks to those pillars which kept the tank out of line of sight.

There's no purpose to this post except to vent a little bit and wonder how the hell is it possible for some people to be so clueless at bloody level 70. At least, that healer is now on my ignore list so I won't have to suffer her incompetence from now on.

Current affairs

I've returned to WoW for two weeks now and even though I haven't been doing anything out of my usual routine, I believe I have accomplished plenty.


Gold

I made 20K more gold but mostly by getting rid of my stock of mats. I'm trying to sell all my Frozen Orbs because I have no need of them anymore and I don't anticipate they'll have much value in Cataclysm. Same thing goes for blue and epic gems.

One thing that sells like hotcakes is Eternal Belt Buckles. I buy eternals when I find them cheap on the AH and since I already have tons of saronite I can turn a handsome profit. I estimate a profit of 10-20 gold apiece and I've sold dozens of them.


Hunter

I've been running the daily Argent Tournament dailies so I can get as many Champion's Seals as possible. I decided that I need them so I can buy heirlooms for my future alts. I also ran at least one daily heroic for Emblems which I would once again use to buy heirlooms.

One thing that's weird is that my DPS in groups seems to vary wildly. Depending on the instance, it ranges from 3K to almost 5K.

I also completed Halls of Reflection which is the hardest heroic I've ever done so far. It's true that we wiped once because we didn't have enough firepower to burn down the zombies while Jaina was melting the ice but after the wipe the weakest dps decided to leave and was replaced by someone more powerful and we pulled through. In all, this dungeon has some interesting mechanics, although I loathe the unending waves during the first phase.


Shaman

I have an orc shaman on another server and he's level 67. I decided to use the Dungeon Finder to see how a shaman plays in an instance so I ran a few Burning Crusade dungeons as Enhancement. The impressions are good but melee DPS isn't as easy as ranged. On one particular run we wiped repeatedly due to the tank pulling too many mobs at a time.


Priest

I did some more healing on my 67 priest who reached 69 in the process, all in Burning Crusade dungeons. At 68 I took him to Northrend and quested there a little, obtaining some new items which are more powerful than the ones I got in BC dungeons. I'm a bit loathe to heal before 70 due such instances as Mechanar which I assume is pretty tough.

I enjoy healing but it depends on the group. If they know what they're doing, it's a pleasure. Still, healing is stressful and I would like to expand on that in a future post.

An interesting new spell at level 80 is Prayer of Mending but it's a bit tricky to use. I apply it to the tank but then it jumps randomly to another member who might not even take damage until it expires. I've also been using Binding Heal more since I consider it a good mana conservation tool whenever I need to heal both myself and someone else. Circle of Healing continues to rock but it seems to me its range is a bit limiting and I need to talent it in order to increase the radius. For this reason I'm always standing between the tank and the rest of the group so that everyone can benefit from it.


Paladin

Ah, where to start? I haven't played as Retribution ever since they "nerfed" Exorcism and gave it a cast time. I leveled from 77 to 80 as Protection but I never dared set foot in an instance. Yeah, I'm a woos sometimes. Since I'd never run a dungeon with my paladin since vanilla WoW, I decided to give it a try as Ret and in the process get myself some new gear from heroics.

After the required interminable queues, I managed to run a few dungeons and rather enjoyed playing as Ret, except for the fact that my DPS was pretty much at the lowest rung. I also got a few upgrades but nothing outstanding.

The it hit me: instead of running dailies with my hunter and suffering those very long waits, why not start tanking heroics and thus earn emblems which I could use to buy more heirlooms? So I decided to run a non-heroic dungeon with the Dungeon Finder tool just to see if I have it in me.

I had accumulated some average tanking gear made up of mostly blues but also a few epics a long time ago. I adjusted my spec, re-arranged the skills on my bar and queued up. Needless to say, the queue was instant. Advantages of being a tank, doh! As luck would have it, I landed the "worst" dungeon possible for a rookie, namely Forge of Souls.

To cut a long story short, the rest of the group seemed to have been made up of well-geared 80's so we finished the run quickly, in about 15 minutes or so. I even did a speed run, go figure! The last boss (Devourer of Souls) gave me a bit of trouble and I almost died even though the healer was good. Paladins have another trick up their sleeve though, and it's called Lay on Hands. I had to use it to save myself and the group but afterwards the boss dropped quickly.

The next night I decided I was gonna give this tanking thing a try so I spent almost 20K gold gearing myself up with the best BoE gear gold can buy. I enchanted and gemmed it. I ended up with a passable prot paladin. Now the next step is to actually run a heroic or ten but I'm still running the regular dungeons to get my tanking technique in order.


So that's about it for the time being. Things have been hectic but now the main focus is on learning to tank on my paladin and running as many heroics as I can. I would also like to continue leveling my priest because I plan to make him my alchemist. Alchemy is the only profession I'm missing. Even with running dungeons, it's still slow going though.

Outland at 58

I've long been of the opinion that it's a good idea to hop from Azeroth to Outland at 60 instead of 58 and from Outland to Northrend at 70 instead of 68 due to the fact that I'd have some extra talents and skills in my repertoire and also be at a higher level compared to the mobs I'm killing.

With my priest, I've reached the point where I became tired with the old world instances, quests and quest rewards so I decided to take him to Outland as soon as he hit 58. Though I can't run Outland dungeons just yet, though flying won't be available until 60 and though not all quests are available, it was a very good choice.

As I write this, I'm 59 going strongly on 60 and I've already got 3 good gear upgrades from quests. There's a world of different (forgive the pun) between Azeroth and Outland/Northrend in terms of quest design and rewards. Quests are quick, grouped together in the same area and rewards are meaningful. It's a good thing they're revamping the Old World in Cataclysm. I'd go crazy if I had to level just one more character through there.

Speaking of flying, remember the days when couldn't learn flying until 70? Good old days - not.

Exercises in frustration

I've been neglecting my priest since I started the paladin project and he's still level 55. Today I decided to try some more healing with the priest and it made me change my strategy for the time being. There are things that frustrate me as a healer.

So I got into this BRD group and I had my shadow spec active. As soon as I got inside I told everyone to give me a minute until I can buff everyone, change specs and drink some mana. Apparently no one was listening and they started moving forward. I repeated my request. They pulled a bunch of mobs while I was changing my spec and drinking mana. Because they didn't give a shit, I didn't either and of course they all died. I was far enough that I didn't get any aggro.

The tank made a remark about what a shitty healer I am and I explained that I asked them to wait and they didn't listen. We proceeded onward and killed stuff successfully for about 10 minutes during which I gave them ample proof as to how good a healer I am. Then, without a word, the tank and one dps dropped group. And that was it.

This isn't really the first time that stuff like this happens. Many people don't realize that a healer needs to be ready and if he's out of mana, it's game over.

Considering all this and also the fact that classic dungeons are long, tedious and often crappy affairs, I've decided to give up healing until I hit level 60 and Outland. I will continue to run dungeons but as shadow dps only. It so happens that I love shadow and I would like more chances to act as dps in dungeons. This way there won't be undue pressure on me. In Outland, dungeons are more streamlined and to-the-point and also drops are of much higher quality.

So see y'all in Outland!

Discipline Priest roadmap for levels 20-80

This weekend I'm bound to hit level 40 on my Priest, seeing that currently I'm 37 and levels are flying by. Lately I haven't had the chance to level the Priest a lot due to the Love is in the Air event that I had to complete on my Hunter main. On the other hand, I've faithfully completed all the Stormwind dailies that the holiday offers on the Priest, because they are incredibly easy and give a ton of XP.

Level 40 is the "Big One". That's because several things will occur: I will get an epic mount, I will buy Dual Spec and I will get access to some of the Priest's most powerful talents. At 40 I can finally get a proper healing spec and I've decided to focus on Discipline because this tree seems to be the best for healing single targets, or in other words it works best for anything outside raids.

In order to prepare for the Big 40, I've drawn a roadmap for how my Discipline talents will look, up to level 80. I decided to start from level 20, even though I've got a big head start on those who might wish to spec Discipline from level 10. I don't recommend it though. You can heal well enough as Shadow all the way to 40. So here's my roadmap.

Level 20
11/0/0
Key talent: Inner Focus.

Level 30
21/0/0
Key talent: Soul Warding.

Level 40
31/0/0
Key talent: Power Infusion.

Level 50
41/0/0
Key talent: Pain Suppression.

Level 60
51/0/0
Key talent: Penance.

Level 70
57/4/0

Level 80
57/14/0

I'm not sure this is the very best spec but to me it feels right. One thing that I'm not 100% certain of is Pain Suppression because it seems to be mostly a PvP talent from what people are saying. I still think it'll come in handy on myself though because I seem to grab aggro more often than I would like in spite of using Fade every time it's off cooldown.

So what do you guys think?

DPS-ing as a healer

These days I'm spending a lot of time leveling my Priest through dungeons. This is my first time as a healer in all my 4 years of WoW so it's understandable that I had some trepidations during my first couple of times healing.

I'm sure this has been discussed to death before but I've re-discovered it, if I can put it like that. Basically, when I'm the healer in an instance, I also DPS when I can. I do this in two ways, with almost zero impact to my efficiency as a healer but with a few added benefits. To be honest, I don't know if the same tactic will continue to function in later dungeons where the action is more frantic, but for now I can handle both duties easily.

My addon of choice for healing is Healbot. It works just fine for me and it allows me to use a combination of mouse clicks directly on the healthbars of my group mates. Healing is usually a simple matter of just left-clicking on the tank's bar.

1) Usually I don't heal the tank until he's at half health. My Flash Heal is powerful enough to heal him to 100% so I have a lot of "spare" time while I'm waiting for the tank to take sufficient damage so that I don't overheal and thus waste mana. During these dead periods I will wand the tank's target. Not only is this a very low threat attack, but in the long run it adds an extra bit of DPS which is never a bad thing.

2) Since I currently heal as a Shadow Priest, whenever the target is about to die, I will channel a Mind Flay. This is a very low cost spell so it doesn't affect my mana. More importantly, if it becomes the killing blow (fairly high chance for a quick ticking DoT), Spirit Tap will proc, which allows me to regenerate a lot of my mana. This means less downtime after fights since I don't need to stop and drink. As an added bonus, if we are fighting humanoids who have a tendency to run when they are about to die, this slows them down, preventing them to run and bring back all their friends.

So that's how a healer can do a great job healing but also add some DPS and utility to a fight. I will continue to use my wand during fights but my second tactic will pass the way of the dodo when I hit 40 and I can Dual Spec for a proper Discipline healing spec.

Alternative rotation for level 20+ Shadow Priests

Check this out! Last night I was running with my (now) level 33 Shadow Priest through Duskwood, catching up with some old quests. I decided to grab all the gray quests, because some of them lead to a longer chain.

The problem with Shadow Priests and gray mobs, i.e. mobs that are so far below the character's level that they don't give any more XP, is that the Shadow Priest relies a lot on Spirit Tap to regain most of his mana back after a fight. Well, as you can imagine, even though gray mobs go down quickly, you will just as quickly run out of mana if you go on using your standard rotation.
Realizing the problem, I decided to experiment with something new and unheard of. Yeah, it's not like I'm Columbus discovering America. I'm sure others have figured this out by now, assuming it is even such a great idea. For me though, it works.

What follows is a comparison between my "standard" leveling rotation and the "new" gray-mob rotation.
Standard Rotation

- Power Word: Shield
- Mind Blast
- Shadow Word: Pain
- Mind Flay
- wand

At the end of the standard rotation, my Spirit Tap procs and I gain back all of my mana and even more. Of course, my dual heirloom trinkets also proc, giving me some extra mana back. A word on Power Word: Shield, if I may. (See what I did there?) I always use it as a Shadow Priest, even though I'm not sure it is part of the rotation. This, of course, is only while leveling. That's because, for one thing, the shield absorbs most or all of the incoming damage. Secondly, and more importantly, it allows me to cast without being interrupted.

Once again, the problem with gray mobs is that neither Spirit Tap, nor the trinkets proc. So every fight means mana lost and none recuperated. On the other hand, I don't have to go through a full rotation with such mobs so I will give up Shadow Word: Pain, for example.

At one point I remembered that back at level 20 I had picked up a Holy spell that I had never used, (well, except at one point to kill Fangore who's immune to shadow magic) and that spell is called Holy Fire. Here's my new rotation.

Gray Mob Rotation

- Holy Fire
- Mind Flay

Simple, huh? Here's what makes this so efficient. Both these spells are very mana efficient. I am basically substituting Mind Blast for Holy Fire. Yes, it's not a Shadow spell but Holy Fire currently does more damage than Mind Blast, for a lower cost, and adds a quick acting DoT on top of that. I open up from extreme range with Holy Fire and then immediately follow with Mind Flay. By the time the mob gets within melee range, it drops dead. Total mana cost: very little.
Now for some numbers. Here's how my Priests's spells look like at level 33:

Mind Blast
cost: 120 mana
damage: 191-203

Holy Fire
cost: 80 manadamage: 206-258 + 42 over 7 secs.

So Holy Fire does significantly more damage for a lot less mana. Later, when I get all the relevant talents in the Shadow tree, this might change in favor of Mind Blast. Until then, Holy Fire FTW. And if I still haven't convinced you, just take a look at the awesome FX when this spell connects!

Priest DPSes Deadmines and heals Shadowfang Keep

After returning from vacation I decided to give my Hunter a rest and stop doing heroics for a while. Instead, my fingers itched to get some leveling done on my Priest.

Two nights ago I took the plunge and used the Dungeon Finder to join a group for the Deadmines. I signed up as both healer and DPS. I specifically chose Deadmines from the Finder because I have always liked this instance. Of course, I haven't done it in a group for almost 4 years now so I was excited to go back there, and even more so as a healer.

What made me decide to finally do some dungeons with my Priest were two factors:
1) I finally got my Dignified Headmaster's Charge staff and I enchanted it with a scroll of +30 spellpower that I bought from the AH for the not-so-measly price of around 420 gold.
2) I wanted to see how easy and/or fun it is to level by doing instances instead of questing.

Alas, as luck would have it, I was assigned the role of DPS for Deadmines. I didn't mind though. I performed my job well enough. In fact I was the highest level character in the group at level 22. The others were 20, 20, 17 and 16.

All things considered, I believe we overpowered the instance by a comfortable margin. We blazed through it in 40 minutes (I remember in the old days it used to take 2 hours sometimes and countless wipes) and we didn't wipe at all, in spite of several bad pulls of about 6 elites. I think this goes on to prove once again that skill is very important and besides, all the guys in the group probably had high level characters, seeing that some of them were also sporting heirlooms.

Apart from getting the satisfaction of killing Van Cleef's ass yet again, I also got my sweaty paws inside a pair of Gold-flecked Gloves, dropped by Sneed. I gained one whole level while in there, going from 22 to 23.


The second night I used the Dungeon Finder to find a group for either Wailing Caverns or Shadowfang Keep. I got into Wailing Caverns as a healer (first time yay!) and things went ok for a short while but our DPS kept leaving. Eventually the druid tank got tired of this crappy dungeon and said he would leave. Since he was doing well and was also leader, I suggested we queued up for another dungeon.

We ended up in Shadowfang Keep. We started killing things but shortly into our foray we remarked that our DPS paladin was taking a lot of damage so I had to heal two people instead of just one. Both me and the druid tank noticed at the same time that he had Righteous Fury up. We both told him to take it off but there was something very wrong with the guy because he kept pulling mobs in an obvious attempt at tanking, but he was completely silent and oblivious of what we were telling him.

Since he pissed all of us off, we discussed it amongst ourselves and decided to kick him. Unfortunately we couldn't because we had to kick two other people earlier in Wailing Caverns and apparently we had reached our limit for voting to kick people. I know, weird. So we were stuck with him.

The guy kept on "tanking" although we repeatedly told him to stop that. He wouldn't or couldn't listen. Eventually I decided to stop healing him and then he started talking, but in /s, not in party chat. "heal pls". I let him die and he died many times but kept coming back for more.

What amazed me is that the guy was so persistent in his idiocy that I was inclined to believe he was a bot or something. He was basically tanking elites and no one was healing him, he would beg in /s for heals and would eventually heal himself when his health got too low. Amazingly he survived many such encounters by healing his own ass. Unfortunately some of our DPS were helping him out so he didn't die as quickly as me and the tank would have wished.

Well, this story is getting very long as it is but it's one of my weirdest encounters so I will finish it, dammit! To make the whole thing more interesting, he was also wearing a couple of cloth pieces, didn't have all his talents assigned and rolled Need on absolutely everything. For that reason I advised the group that we all roll Need from then on.

Just before the last boss, Arugal, we finally got him to remove Righteous Fury. I'm telling you, there was something very weird and creepy about this guy. In the end the run was worth it because I won the roll for another nice drop, namely Belt of Arugal. This dungeon lasted a couple of minutes over 1 hour and that's all thanks to that asstard. We also wiped once due to him rushing in the middle of a large group of elites.

Now a few thoughts on healing. I was a little bit nervous at first but I shouldn't have been. Healing is fun! I really love it. It seems extremely easy compared to DPS-ing and even more so than tanking, I'm sure. I use Healbot as an addon and even though it's not 100% configured correctly, I just need to click on the tank whenever he's below 3/4 health with Flash Heal and that's about it. Occasionally I would also heal another group member but that would happen rarely.

Easy job, healing. Perhaps it seemed so because I was a bit overpowered for Shadowfang Keep. Hell, I went in there at level 24 and I sported all those heirlooms with close to 100 spell power. Raid healing is a whole different beast altogether but I don't foresee ever healing raids. For that reason, once I hit 40 I'll most likely get Dual Spec and create a Discipline build which, I've heard, is awesome for single-target healing or in other words for healing 5-mans.

One final word about Shadow. I'm still leveling as Shadow, of course, but I'm starting to learn more about Shadow Priests as I go along and I tweaked the proposed build that I posted earlier. Instead of 2/2 Improved Spirit Tap (which I've been told is pretty much useless outside raids), I'm gonna get 2/2 Improved Vampiric Embrace. I've also shifted my talents around a bit so that they look something like this at level 30.

Now I gotta go heal another instance.

Priest love

Heh heh it's not what you think you perverts! *wink*

Nah, it's just that these past couple of days I've become re-acquainted with my low level priest and I'm starting to like the class and the gameplay.

I started this guy a very long time ago, I don't remember when. For a long time he remained at level 4. Then I brought him to 9 and it wasn't very easy. Priests are fragile at low levels, you see. But then, a miracle happened. I discovered the joy of heirlooms.

Since my Hunter main was engaged in the Argent Tournament dailies, he had acquired a large amount of Champion's Seals. I had already bought chest and shoulder heirlooms for my Warlock so it was only fitting that I would pass them on to my priest. Besides, I set my eyes on a couple of trinkets which proved to be awesome. With these 4 heirloom items, my priest transformed from a sheep to a demon... well, figuratively speaking. Suffice to say that leveling is much easier and quicker now.

He started wearing these heirlooms at level 15. Less than a couple of hours later he was 17, of course, with fully rested XP. Here are the heirlooms that he's wearing now:

Shoulders: Tattered Dreadmist Mantle, cost 60 Champion's Seals
Chest: Tattered Dreadmist Robe with +100 HP enchant, cost 60 Champion's Seals
Trinkets: 2x Discerning Eye of the Beast, cost 2x 75 Champion's Seals
Total: 270 Champion's Seals

The next thing I'm working on is the Dignified Headmaster's Charge, a very nice caster staff. Unfortunately weapons are very expensive, costing 95 Seals and I have run out of them. So I need to do the dailies for another week or so before I can get my sweaty hands on that shiny shaft... erm... got carried away there for a second. OK, I promise this is my last pervy lame joke.

So if someone like me decides to deck their young spellcaster in all the heirlooms they can get their hands on, it will cost them a total of 365 Champion's Seals. Here's a piece of trivia: if you gain 1 Champion's Seal a day, you will get all of them in exactly 1 year. Only a genius like me would figure that out. Seriously now, you should gain these Seals at the rate of 10 a day if you do all the dailies, perhaps more if you choose the reward bags instead of rep tokens. That means you should be able to get all 365 seals in roughly 36 days, or a little over a month.

All this assumes that you have at least a level 80 character capable of doing the Argent Tournament dailies.

Now going back to the priest, I'm leveling him as Shadow, obviously. I'm aiming for this 13/0/53 build which also happens to be very popular. At level 17, thanks to Spirit Tap, Improved Spirit Tap and the two trinkets, I'm getting all of my mana back after a fight. Right now I don't have a lot of mana so I only get about 16-19x2 mana back after a kill from the trinkets, meaning 32-38 total but it's not bad at all since it adds up with the mana regained from talents.

Here's a roadmap of what my priest will look like at levels 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80.

Level 20
0/0/11
Key talent: Mind Flay, the Shadow Priest's signature spell which melts faces.

Level 30
0/0/21
Key talent: Vampiric Embrace, which is an awesome buff that heals the Priest when he does damage.

Level 40
0/0/31
Key talent: Shadowform, the Shadow Priest's signature ability, which is too awesome for words.

Level 50
0/0/41
Key talent: Vampiric Touch, an ability which has all kinds of awesome written over it.

Level 60
0/0/51
Key talent: Dispersion, which is mostly a talent useful in groups but it can also come in handy while solo-ing. During leveling it should be particularly useful for mana regeneration and, of course, for clearing various snare effects.

Level 70
3/0/58
From 60 to 70 it's mostly filler talents and I've moved on to the Discipline tree. I have left out Improved Vampiric Embrace, well, because I've seen people recommend against taking it. I'll wait and see how my mana regen is at higher levels and if it's bad, I will get this talent.

Level 80
13/0/58
The final few points go into Discipline and the goal here is to gain access to Meditation which provides even more mana regen, even while casting.

And that's it for my future Shadow Priest's spec. I like this build because not only is it great for grouping, but it is just as good for leveling and solo-ing.

I'm anticipating a different play style than either Warlock or Mage. I also plan on trying my hand at some healing and hopefully I will start doing some of that in the Deadmines. Sorry guys but the grouping aspect still appeals to me because it's a different game than playing on your own. While solo-ing you can only DPS but in a group setting you can heal and you can tank. These are totally different experiences and I want to try them all. Who knows, I might even like healing.

At any rate, I will probably get Dual Spec at 40 and build a Holy off-spec but until then I will try to heal as Shadow. From what I hear, early dungeons can be successfully healed with a non-optimum spec so I'll see how that works for me.

Now I'm off to level my Shadow Priest some more. Hopefully by the end of this weekend he'll be at least 20.