Today is the coming of 5.3 and like most other classes, us priests haven't been left alone this patch. Discipline has been nerfed slightly once again as Atonement heals now only heal for 90% of the damage instead of 100%, but Penance does heal for 10% more but the cost of this is 10% reduction in damage done, also the Glyph of Smite no longer transfers the 20% extra damage dealt by Smite to healing via Atonement. The other Disc change is that Borrowed Time now causes the next spell to be cast/channeled 15% faster not applying a 15% haste boost, which sounds like a buff rather than a nerf.

Holy/Shadow priests in 25 man groups will now see Divine Hymn/Vampiric Embrace cap at heal 12 targets while 10 man group will remain capped at 6 players.

Disc and Holy both get changes to Mass Dispel as it now has a flat cast time of 0.5seconds which means the Glyph of Mass Dispel is is to be changed to dispel buffs/debuffs that are normally undispellable, which was previously a feature of the spell. As a PVE priest that is a buff as it now means the glyph is only needed for PvP.

Whilst talking about PVP, has received a makeover. Healing priests get a 1 minute reduction to the previously 6 minute cooldown while shadow priests get a 4 minute increase to 10 mins on the CD which place the spell into the category of no longer being usable while in Arenas or Rated Battlegrounds.

For our shadowy brethren, there is only one other change, a fix to the Glyph of Mind Flay's movement speed increase bug as this was not stacking correctly.

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Man I have been busy the past few weeks. This sadly has had a negative impact on my blogging. Firstly real life has bitten my ass big time. I work in a team of two, my shift partner recently got the sack which means my employers need to find a replacement and don't have the usual 4 weeks notice to soften the blow on those left behind. This means that I have not had a chance on my night shifts to put together the thoughts I have had for posts. Yeah I guess I have been lucky in the past that I can actually do my blogging at work but that now isn't happening as much as it could.

Secondly, I have now got a second major in game activity that is absorbing a lot of time: Challenge Modes.

If you're finding LFR a tad easy and raiding tough to get into get yourself 4 buddies who you trust and go run challenge modes, it is harder than normal raiding and if you and your friends can pull of the teamwork and coordination needed you get a huge buzz. Just don't expect great times for your first few runs. I'll be posting more detailed tips and stuff as time goes by but a few basics are below:

• Treat it like a raid flask, best food and use pots;
• Some instances NEED Potions of Invisibility, use the 18 second version it allows a bigger margin of error;
• Use your classes complete toolbox, some instances have better uses for specific talents and glyphs;
• Learn from your mistakes you will make a ton of them like you do all the time, now you get penalised;
• Accept that other people will make mistakes, they're not as perfect as you;
• Accept bad luck, you will get a pat at the wrong time, you will get poor dodge rates, the lift in Mogu'shan Palace will be at the top when you want to go up;
• Run the daily when you have your Challenge Mode session this will give you exposure to them all;
• The "easiest" ones are Gate of the Setting Sun, Mogu'shan Palace and Jade Serpent pick one of these and run it over and over again;
• Don't reset the first run of a day, it will let you see the whole instance again and refresh those brain cells of what you need to do;
• Resets can be made from INSIDE the instance, this will prevent you getting the "you have entered too many instances messages";

The good news is that it will make you a much better player, I know I am a better priest for it. But the best advice I'll give is to have fun and I will be back to posting more frequently soon, rather than twice in one day!

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5.0.4 was now 2 weeks ago and so far I have been incredibly quiet about it. The reason for this has been many but now I'm pleased to say I'm breaking my silence.

My initial reaction was one of sheer horror, as a Disc Priest I felt incredibly weak straight away. My heals were amazing but my mana regen was completely inadequate. The first thing I did was to remove Flash Heal out my arsenal as even out of combat I couldn't chain cast it for more than 30 seconds before I was out of mana. Seems Disc Priests need to stack spirit as a primary stat once more. The cost of PW:Shield is also ridiculously high and that combined with the nerf to Rapture is a major problem too. It does seem that Disc is  meant to rely on Divine Aegis and the Spirit Shell shield for our absorbs rather than PW:Shield.

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I have just discovered that Shadowpriest.com is no more, while I wasn't a heavy user of the site, partly due to my infrequent use of the shadow spec, I did occasionally have use for it. 

It was during the Burning Crusade when I discovered the site and as I was raiding as a shadow priest for the greater part of that expansion, and I found the site invaluable as a way of increasing my DPS and knowing the BiS gear from the lists that were supplied. More recently, the help I received from the community (and a guild mate, Ronny, assisted but if I give Ronny too much credit I'll never hear the last of it) gave me a 20% increase in DPS, yes I was THAT bad. The official announcement taken from the US forums is below. 

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The Blog Azeroth shared topic for July 30 - August 5 was suggested by Effraeti from Effraeti's RP:

Some of us have farming professions. Some of us have crafting professions. Some of us have a little bit of everything! Professions are leveled because they fit our style of play, help us in raiding, allow us to outfit our alts, and make us money.

What professions do you have on your main? Do his/her professions fit their personality? Why did you choose them? If you chose professions based on your character and not on gaming needs, would that change some of their professions they use?

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The new off spec

I have recently changed my off-spec to Holy because I no longer "need" to have a shadow spec for grinding daily quests to build up my guild rep and finally getting my 2500 daily quest achievement. I had specced dual-disc for times when I wasn't able to heal effectively with Atonement, but found that I simply wasn't using the non-Atonement spec. This week and last week, I'm working nights on the progression nights so am running with the bench/alt team which already has a Disc priest so decided to give Holy another bash as I haven't tried it seriously since December 2010 just after Cataclysm launched.

My initial task was to revisit the tree and decide how I wanted to spend my talents in the Holy tree.

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Macros, I love em! They are great to enable many "slash commands" into a single button click. I won't go into the basics of what they are are or how to make them (click here for a beginner's guide) but they do come in many levels of complexity.

There are two limits Blizzard have on macros. The first is that macros cannot be more than 255 character long, which while annoying is an anti-botting mechanism of which I approve. The second is you are limited to 18 macros per character and while you can extend this with the use of the account wide General Macros, it  is still annoying for a raving altaholic like myself.

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It is great to see that changes are happening as a direct result of the feedback people like myself posted on the forums. One of my pet peeves, as mentioned in my Class Feedback Post, seems to have been addressed in the latest 4.3 PTR Build with the introduction of a 40 yard range on Resurrection although as Shaman and Paladins also received this fix it seems that I was wrong on us priests being the only victims.

All that remains to improve the quality of life for all res capable classes now is for the standard out of combat res to become mana efficient to allow feral druids, prot/ret pallies and enhancement shaman to res a friend out of combat without having to drink.

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As promised yesterday here are my thoughts on the new priest talents. There are still many unanswered questions and what follows is my gut reactions and hopefully I won't have dissed as perfectly good talent or praised something unjustly


Level 15: Crowd control

• Void Tendrils: Roots with a 30 second cooldown good for running away from stuff and PvP;
• Psyfiend: A pet that pyschic screams every 2 seconds another PvP focused one imho but if a glyph stops the runing away could be great in PvE too;
• Psychic Scream: the old faithful, will be sad to lose it but Psyfiend could be too useful;

Level 30: Movement Speed

• Body and Soul: Speed Bubble - great for all healers and maybe Shadow too;
• Path of the Devout: 25% speed buff while levitating. Why? Running across water will be great but can see no other benefit;
• Phantasm: 3 second run speed buff when fading, also removes movement impairing effects - a PvP talent for those that don't love speed bubble;

Level 45: Self Buffs/Utility

• From Darkness, Comes Light: 6% chance for a free flash heal or a Shadow Orb free Mind Blast - looks like a great shadow option (assuming that Mind Blast has no CD and just requires a Shadow Orb). A waste for any healer;
• Divine Star: A boomerang version of Holy Nova, could be useful when you know you're going to be incapacitated and maybe PvP;
• Archangel: Healing/DPS boost-Looks like the clear cut winner to me and a great boost to Holy priests, I wonder if Atonement will work for them too?;

Level 60: Saving Thine Own Ass

• Desperate Prayer: 30% self heal always nice even for Shadow priests;
• Angelic Bulwark: 30% stronger self shield - could be sweet when levelling not sure on its raiding utility unless we going to see lots of ICC type aura damage;
• Final Prayer: 20% HP auto shield when you HP drops below 30% with 90 second CD. Will it stop a death if the blow takes you from 31% to death? Could be useful for all and maybe more powerful the Desperate Prayer especially for Shadow priests;

Level 75: More Self Buffs

• Twist of Fate: Improved healing on targets at 25% HP or less - they should get that low but useful when they do. My thoughts are this is more PvP than PvE;
• Power Infusion: Haste and mana cost reduction for the target, my money is this will be the best for all flavours of priest;
• Serendipity/Mind Melt: Haste and mana cost reduction for healers and faster (including instacast) Mind Blast for Shadow. a great choice for healers and a good one for shadow;

Level 90: Cross Healing

• Vow of Unity: A cross between Beacon of Light and Hand of Sacrifice the pallies have a useful option but maybe too risky;
• Void Shift: Swap health with your target a great choice for that tank/flag carrier who is about to die and taking a beating while you're at full HP and have no incoming damage;
• Vampiric Dominance: 15% heals to 3 nearby players. If this is in addition to Vampiric Embrace Shadow Priests are going to be even more useful but it looks like a great talent choice for healers especially in 5/10 man groups;

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Following on from my guide on Gemming Your Gear, I thought I would move on to enchanting, the other more "traditional" way of improving the stats on your character and their gear. If you're not an enchanter there are 2 ways of getting an item enchanted, the traditional way was to find an enchanter, give them the required materials (either bought from the auction house or acquired through using the disenchant option during dungeon runs), "trade" the item in the "not to be traded" slot let them use their profession spell to enchant your item and you're done (although I'd always offer a tip even if they don't ask). However, since Wrath of the Lich King, it has been possible to enchant vellums into scrolls which can be sold on the Auction House so it may be worth buying a scroll from there and selling your materials. To transfer the enchant from the scroll simply right click the vellum and left click on the item you want enchanted. Simples! as the cool kids say now.

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Gemming your gear has become a way of life for us since the Burning Crusade, but with all the changes to specs and stats how many of us really know what we're doing when gemming our gear?

The aim of this post is to cover off the basics of filling those lovely sockets in that shiny new piece of gear that the big bad you just killed dropped and then go a little deeper and take at look at maximising the benefits you can gain by adding gems to your gear.
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This weeks post is a response to the Blizzard's request for feedback on classes to give them ideas as what to look for in terms of changes and adjustments for a future game update. While they didn't give a specific point in time I'm sure they are looking beyond 4.3 and probably in WoW 5.0.

The priest threads can be found at EU / US
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Welcome to my Circle of Healing questionnaire answers. This was someting started a few years back by Miss Medicina (source) and seems to be popular among the Warcraft healing community at the moment and being a sheep I thought I'd join in.

Q) What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer? 

A) Evlyxx, Discipline Priest with Holy tendencies.

Q) What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

A) 10 man raiding although this has only been since Cataclysm, prior to this I was in 40 and 25 man raid groups.

Q) What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why? 

A) Atonement, because it is such a unique way to heal and extremely efficient. It heals for more than Heal and has less cast time and because Smite/Holy Fire generates Evangelism it is just as mana efficient despite the extra mana cost.

Q) What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?  

A) Until very recently it was Flash Heal it was just too expensive to cast but with new content I always find it harder to heal using Atonement until I am comfortable with positioning and knowing the incoming damage and  Heal just doesn't cut the mustard anymore, its too weak and too slow so I have replaced it with Flash Heal, so right now the least used spell is Heal.

Q) What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why? 

A) Flexibility, 2 healing specs give us all kinds of options and both specs are awesome as either tank healing or raid healing.

Q) What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why? 

A) That we don't have a real specialization in healing. Pallies are great tank healers and shaman and druids are awesome raid healers. Priests do both very well but we are not the go to class for either which is a curse of our strength.

Q) In a 10 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you? 

A) To be honest it depends what classes I'm healing with. Normally I heal with a Shaman and a resto druid and there I tend to be one of the tank healers and always choose the tank that has the melee group around him so I can heal with atonement for as much of the fight as the incoming damage allows This is because Cork my resto druid buddy is just a freaking God at raid healing and Jibba tha Shaman just loves to tank heal. When Cork vanishes (he works on a boat at sea for weeks at a time) I often end up with  Phöenix, a pally and then I switch to raid healing.

Q) What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

A) Druids would be my number one class to heal with especially now the shaman totem has been nerfed because they make my job so much easier with all them hots bouncing around.

Q) What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

A) In 10 man the worst class is another priest who has played Discipline, simply because even as Holy spec their instant reaction to seeing someone in trouble is to shield them which really should be left to the disc priest but other than that it is druids, cos they make me look bad on the meters!

Q) What is your worst habit as a healer? 

A) Believe it or not as a Disc Priest it is not shielding enough. I think 25 man raiding in Wrath made me hate the spell so much because I did little more than spam bubbles, especially on P1 of the Lich King I now prefer NOT to use it. Blizzard also didn't help by increasing its mana cost and halving the up-time of it too.

Q) What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing? 

A) People either squealing for heals or saying that X person needs heals. If you can't trust your healers judgement then either the healing team is bad or you trust nobody.

Q) Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing? 

A) Yes, extremely well balanced, as stated before we are masters of nothing but good enough at the lot.

Q) What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

A) The initial check is raid deaths and could they have been avoided if I had healed them and Skada for helping make that decision mid-fight outside the game World of Logs is priceless.

Q) What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?  

A) That Holy priests can't tank heal and that Disc priests can't raid heal.

Q) What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn? 

A) Mana conservation. The game until you hit 85 is a breeze on mana and allows the formation of bad habits with Flash Heal and Binding Heal

Q) If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?  
A) I always worry about my healing output and apart from that the other pattern is that I do not use Prayer of Mending enough.

Q) Haste or Crit or Mastery and why?

A) Haste to soft cap then crit. The haste is purely for the extra renew tick and the crit is good now for the Divine Aegis procs and the extra healing now we got 200% from crits.

Q) What healing class do you feel you understand least?  

A) Shaman, I haven't played the resto spec enough and I'm sure there is more to them now than just Chain Heal. I just can't get the time to devote to learning it at the moment. Maybe I should try harder I know.

Q) What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing? 
A) Most of my main heal bar is mouseover macros and my favorite is the one I use for Healing and Smiting with:

/castsequence reset=combat [@mouseover,harm,nodead]Holy Fire, Smite, Smite, Smite, Smite, Smite;[@mouseover,help,nodead][@player]Heal

I use a lot of addons, but my favorites have to be Clique, Grid (inc many modules) and GTFO. Clique just make healing so much easier and is really something Blizzard should build into the game, why they haven't is beyond me. Grid is great for raid frames, the Blizzard ones are getting close to replacing it but it is not quite there yet. GTFO is great especially when in healer tunnel vision mode, I have blogged about its awesomeness so won't bore you again, just get it and never worry about standing in the fire again!

Q) Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
A) I like to get enough spirit until I'm happy I can heal stuff without panicing about being OOM halfway through a fight then stack Intellect in order to get more mana and bigger heals/shields more »

Hot on the heals (see what I did there?) of the Holy Priest 101, I bring to you the guide to being a Discipline priest, OK finally may have worked better I admit). Once again I shall guide you through the talents, tier by tier and by the end of it you will be armed with the knowledge to allow you to make an informed choice on which of the 2 healing methods suits your style of play best.
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I have been asked a few times recently on how I play the priest class, the talents I chose, the gear I pick, the gems and enchants I use. While there is no perfect answer there are a few simple rules that I use to help me be the 2nd greatest priest you know. Today I'm going to cover the first phase of making sure I end up 3rd on your list, that is your talent choices.

Right, you rolled a priest and got it to level 10, the UI is now shouting loudly at you that you must pick talents. This is your first real choice as a priest and one that we all know you're hovering your cursor over on the far right side ready to click shadow, and sure that is a real good DPS spec for levelling, but you know that no one likes a shadow priest as much as they like a healing one so resist that urge, Shadow can come at level 30 when you get dual specs. You need to feel the joy of levelling as a healer and really the first 20 levels will be so fast and easy there is no excuse not to do the healer thing 1st.

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Just go my first really detailed look at the list of changes for the next patch and what a lot of changes there are. One thing is for sure, we're going to have to relearn how to manage our mana all over again just as we did when 4.0.3 and Cataclysm came.

The list of changes doesn't just affect us priests though, all of our friends are getting the same treatment too. Did Blizz get it wrong? Did those beta testers actually do any testing? Well I think the answers there are no and yes but still the changes coming in are really needed but were probably not going to get pickedup on a small scale test as Blizz perform in-house (small is relative here their testing team is nothing compared to 12 million players) and the beta testers were testing so many things that were ever changing that somethings were miss diagnosed or just not discovered.
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