It has taken me way too long to do this but now it is here I hope you enjoy my Weak Aura import strings for priests of all specs. My thanks go to Derevka at Tales of a Priest for getting me off the starting blocks back in September 2012 when Power Auras died and also to TouchyMcFeel for his awesome Weak Aura tutorial videos on YouTube, you really should subscribe to his channel regardless of your Weak Aura abilities.

There are four in total, one for each spec and one for all specs and for them to work effectively you will need at least 2 of them; the one for your main spec and the all specs version.My discipline set up is at the top of the post, the holy one is shown below:



and below is my shadow spec one showing the offensive spells which I do NOT track when in either the Discpline or Holy specs:




Rather than paste all the code here I have uploaded them to pastebin.com and all you need to do is cut and paste them from there into your Weak Aura Import box.

A more detailed look at the auras are on my Weak Auras For Priests page but if you just want the auras, the four imports are:

• All Specs Weak Auras Import String
• Discipline Weak Auras Import
• Holy Weak Auras Import
• Shadow Weak Auras Import

When importing make sure you manually copy and paste from the lower box on pastebin, as whenever I try to import using their clipboard feature my strings get rejected despite it copying exactly the same text. Makes no sense but the manual method does work.

If you have any feedback on these imports or need help with Weak Auras just post a comment below or send an email to evlyxx at evlyxx dot co dot uk.

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A simple sunrise over Elwynn Forest. more »

WARNING: RANTY POST

Finally I have had enough of this Random Loot crap that we're getting with both bonus rolls and the RNG loot system on world bosses and Raid Finder.

A bit of background, I've been killing Sha and Nalak almost all expansion so far I have a combined 26 kills and as I'm a raider I've used my bonus roll hoping for a piece of Tier Loot. That makes a total of 52  chances of loot. So far I have won 2 times once from the drop and another from the bonus roll. Both wins were on the same glorious day that I purchased my 522 legs from the Shado Pan Assault and what did I win? 2x tier legs. These were both downgrades and I have therefore never equipped the 1 pair of pants I didn't disenchant.

I have had better luck in normal raids with my bonus roll but thus far in the expansion I had not actually owned 2 pieces of tier loot that were worth equipping because the non tier loot I have had drop in normal raids has been better even allowing for the 2 set bonus until I got a Raid Finder tier 15 helm to upgrade the 489 rep item I had to go with my tier 15 gloves that I won last week. /cheer

Now this week the bonus roll has screwed me over, on our Megaera kill I decided to use one of my Mogu Runes of Fate as I was hoping for the Inscribed Bag of Hydra Spawn while accepting that this was a 1 in 3 chance I could at least have won the got unlucky and won the Gleaming-Eye Shoulders and used them for my shadow off-spec. The 3rd option is a set of bracers that come with a random enchant, the Frostborn Wristwraps, which while they do not have a spirit option they do come with crit and mastery which are still beneficial for a disc priest so not a total loss.

So when I won loot I was overjoyed, then a little sad when I won the bracers, then angry when I realised that I had won hit items. No fear I'll raise a ticket and get them swapped, not for the trinket I wanted but at least a healer compatible set of bracers. The reply to my ticket is shown below:



That simply is NOT good enough. I'll be appealing against this not because I expect it to be overturned but to make Blizzard aware that I am not pleased with the system overall.

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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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So Blizz have finally announced a date for 5.3, tomorrow! I'm sad it wasn't a week earlier so they did something on my birthday but hey I'm not one to complain about new content.

What am I looking forward to most in 5.3? Well to be honest the patch hasn't interested me until today so what follows is my initial views of the content without having seen any of, so things may well change!

New battleground and arena venues are always a welcome addition, it gives me some more achievements that I'll not stand a hope of hell of getting and gives me something to whine about when trying to keep up in the achievement race with with Artherion, damn him and his PVP prowess. 

Then of course we have some new scenarios and some heroic scenarios too, as a healer though I am worried that there may be no place for me in these heroic scenario groups unless I choose to go shadow or want to be missing out on the challenging times/goals they have built in. I must admit when I heard of scenarios coming to the game I was over joyed as I thought these would be a replacement for the old epic quests we had way back. Sadly my hopes were dashed when they arrived and were basically little more than 3 man dungeons for level capped players. They could be so much more if they were available to players of all levels. I@m hoping things may change as time passes but for me they leave a lot to be desired.

There will sadly be no more 5 mans this expansion, I am saddened by this especially as I was hoping for some extra challenge mode dungeons. I guess they will come in 6.0. While talking about Challenge Modes, there is now a Fail Bag as a reward for doing the daily quest. This item has a chance to drop ilvl 516 items like Immaculate Pandaren Wand or just the usual 28g.

The storyline continuation is of great interest to me and I'll be heading off to the Barrens to see what the heck is going on there. Having max level toons on both factions I can get the full story although being primarily Alliance I think I'll be on the weaker side of that story for most of the time. 

The continuation of the Wrathion questline is also of great interest and I'm hoping that it actually starts to get interesting rather than more "go get lucky in LFR with drops to get the next item". Why can't we have more questing like we had with the Lion's Landing back in 5.1? Here's hoping for something along those lines in 5.3.

There are, as always, a whole load of class changes, the generic one of interest is that intelligent heals will now prefer the most needy players and pets will have a lower priority than players. I will be doing a separate post on the priest changes tomorrow.

The biggest list of changes though goes to Pet Battles. The notable changes are are:

• Pet Battle dues can now be watched by non competing players;
• Battle pets' recent ability loadouts will now be saved when pets are swapped in and out of battle slots;
• New pet drops in the Throne of Thunder, the Thunder Isle and Northrend;
• New pet drops in Burning Crusade raid dungeons;
• Pet Battle daily quests on Pandaria, Beasts of Fable and Spirit Tamer quests will award experience, valor, and Lesser Charms of Good Fortune;

Loot drops in Raid Finder can now be assigned to an off spec rather than the spec you have queued for. This is great especially as it means I can now queue as healer on Evlyxx and get DPS drops for my off-spec. I guess the theory is that hybrid classes are more likely to queue as healer in order to get faster queues, so expect a whole load of under geared healers in your Raid Finder groups.

Then there is the fix to one of my biggest bugbears in this expansion random loot drops and the bonus roll which is going to be weighted so every time you fail to win anything on a boss you're more likely to win next time than you were before. With my track record on world boss kills (including bonus rolls) of 44 chances of loot on the Sha of Anger and 8 chances on Nalak and I have only won 2 items (T14 legs on the same kill of the Sha after I had purchased 522 legs from the Shado Pan Assault) I'm hoping to get some success at last and get a tier set bonus active.

In PvP there have been massive changes. Resilience has been removed from all armour and players nw have 65% resilience regardless of armour worn. However, items that previously had resilience now have extra PvP Power. I am really not sure how this changes anything as PvP will still heavily favour those folks with gear as PvE geared players will still have their damage nerfed hard compared to PvP equipped players, but lets wait and see before we condemn it. Also when entering a PvP arena all gear will be scaled down to ilvl 496 (gear of lower ilvl will NOT be scaled up though).

The Brawler's Guild has had a few more levels added to it, /whoop I don't know of anyone that partakes in this anymore most folks got their pass and a few levels then stopped way before they hit max level. Maybe the mount reward will motivate some more folks to try it out and stick with it.

The void binders are back which means more upgrades for your BiS items this only affects PvE gear as PvP gear is capped at ilvl 496 anyway although the old Dreadful and Malevolent gear can still be upgraded but to be honest, the honor is better spent buying new gear that will be of higher ilvl than even the upgraded items.

Lastly, the best additions in the patch are that the experience to level from 85-90 has been reduced by 33% at each level and the Golden Lotus rep gate has been removed. Finally the expansion is looking alt friendly.

My final words, are concerning the change that we didn't get. Motes/Spirits of Harmony remain soulbound, why the heck aren't these Bind on Account yet. I have loads of them on toons that have no use for them and none on toons that do. Damn you Blizzard!

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This week I have spent a lot of time on my lock, Strigimaga. Part of that has included trying to finalise a non-tier set transmog. 2 items of which has meant spending a lot of time inside Blackrock Mountain and that included a trip to Blackwing Lair in search of a particular trash epic drop, which sadly didn't happen. It did however mean that I had to solo Razorgore which on the 4 tries on Evlyxx I had not managed to do. Seems Strigimaga, is a little more robust than Evlyxx.

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A screenshot today of me flying around Townlong Steppes. Not much of a story here other than a high number of my randomly taken screenshot (thanks to the MultiShot addon) are of me flying around. Enjoy. more »

While I may have been slack lately here on the blog the same hasn't been true in real life or in game. My guild, have been trying all expansion to set up an RBG team and I had been resisting the urge to join in. Partly because I got my hands full with raiding but mostly because I've never been a big PVPer (or particularly good at it). I have however now joined in the and the team is now coming together under the leadership of Dribblebutt and Siyara. 

The raiding has been going well too as we have now added 3 kills in the past 2 weeks after having a few issues with the "farm" bosses slowing us down which meant we were getting very little time to progress and as we still needed gear it was a little early to start extending raid ids.

Annoyingly, my shifts at work have meant I missed the last 3 weeks of raiding Throne of Thunder and that included the first kill on Megaera, missing 1st kills sucks but having had almost no time even wiping on a boss makes that suck a load more as I feel I have missed out on a whole chunk of content. As a raid leader though it pleases me that the guys can perform without me there and is a testament to the work my no. 2, Artherion puts in.

Thankfully, I did get back into raiding this week and Wednesday night we were on fire and managed to clear the first 5 bosses in under 90 minutes 1 shotting everything upto Megaera. This meant that we had a full raid and a half to work on progression and in the 90 minutes after the mid-raid break we managed to kill Ji'Kun.

Thursday was therefore a night for Durumu. Now I have had real issues with Durumu in raid finder, not because I'm a dumbass who dies to the beam but because I simply cannot see a way through the Eye Sores. This was a major worry but after this week it seems that it is a little easier to follow people when using a birds eye view and I did sometimes see the path but only when it was a good route. Just proof that a good idea spoiled by bad implementation, I wonder if colour blind mode makes it easier? hmm.

On top of those two things, I'm still running challenge modes as me and the guys keep pushing to get golds in the remaining ones. Sadly, the ones we have left are the real tough ones and the margin for error is really tiny and one mistake is meaning that we're failing by a few seconds. 

Lastly, my time in game has been absorbed by leveling my warrior to 90, taking my count to seven. I bet the local old folks home haven't got that many! Now all I need to do is gear her up in both tank and dps gear and I'm good to go to the next one. 

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Live action from a recent trip the Scarlet Halls Challenge Mode, although I seem to be very inactive and an evade mob too wtf is that all about. more »

Tortos is a static boss with a single phase. Tortos has 6 main abilities:

1. Furious Stone Breath is cast once his Fury reaches 100. This deals massive raid-wide damage and so MUST be interrupted by kicking a Whirl Turtle at Tortos.
2. Rockfall is an ability that causes stalactites to fall from the roof of the cave, dealing high damage to players within 5 yards and lower damage to anyone within 20 yardsof the point of impact, which are clearly marked several seconds in advance, by blue circles.
3. Quake Stomp is an ability that stuns all players for 1 second, and deals 65% of maximum HP as Physical damage and increasing the frequency of Rockfall for 8 seconds.
4. Snapping Bite is a highly damaging ability used on the tank roughly every 8-10 seconds and deals a large amount of Physical damage.
5. Growling Fury is cast if there is no one in melee range of Tortos which increases his fury generation therefore reducing the cooldown on Furious Stone Breath.
6. Whirl Turtles will be cast every 60 seconds and summons 3 adds which cannot be tanked.

Whirl Turtles deal damage to players within 5 yards and a knock back. They can be attacked by melee players from farther away than 5 yards due to their large hitboxes. When a Whirl Turtle is close to dying, it casts Shell Block making it immune to damage and it becomes harmless and stops moving.

When this happens it can be kicked using the extra action button all players are given during this fight. This ability is only available when the player is close to a Shell Blocking turtle. Using the extra action button kicks the turtle in the direction that the player is facing.

Using Kick Shell causes the turtle to fly through the air. When it comes into contact with an enemy, the turtle interrupts their spell cast and debuffs them with Shell Concussion for 20 seconds, causing them to take 25% increased damage. Kicking turtles in this way is essential for interrupting Tortos' Furious Stone Breath. As 3 Whirl Turtles spawn every minute and Tortos casts 1 Furious Stone Breath every 45 seconds there should always be enough turtles to kick, you should never run out of Turtles to interrupt these casts.

Every 30 seconds a group of Vampiric Cave Bats enters the room. The bats have normal aggro tables and their only special ability is Drain the Weak which deals a small amount of damage but heals each bat for 50x the damage dealt IF the target has <350k hp="" nbsp="" p="" remaining.="">
The strategy is ridiculously simple but execution of this needs to be flawless:

• Tanks: MT tanks Tortos the OT should pick up the bats and tank them next to Tortos.
• Melee DPS: focus on killing Tortos and the bats and when the turtles spawn should try to get a few hits and apply slows
• Ranged DPS: focus all DPS on Whirl Turtles and only DPS Tortos when no Whirl Turtles are still up.
• Healers: Keep MT above 65% HP and OT above 360K HP.
• A ranged DPS/healer should be assigned to kicking a Whirl Turtle at the Tortos to interrupt every Furious Stone Breath.
• Everyone: avoid the falling stalactites caused by Rockfall.
• Everyone: use personal defensive abilities if your HP is below 70% when Quake Stomp is about to be cast.

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The Council of Elders is a single-phase encounter during which you must defeat four Trolls: Frost King Malakk, Kazra'jin, Sul the Sandcrawler, and High Priestess Mar'li. They are helped by the spirit of Gara'jal the Spiritbinder by empowering one of them at a time which eventually starts channeling an ability that deals heavy raid-wide damage. To break the empowerment, the raid must remove 25% of the troll's HP, which forces a new Troll to get empowered.

Frost King Malakk has two abilities:

1. Frigid Assault deals Frost damage to the tank and also applies a stacking debuff on them. The debuff does nothing before it reaches 15 stacks. When this happens, the tank becomes stunned for 15 seconds. Dealing with this debuff requires a tank switch.
2. Biting Cold is cast at a random player, which deals Frost damage to the targeted player and causes them to deal Frost damage every 2 seconds to all allies within 4 yards. This effect lasts 30 seconds.

When Malakk is empowered, Biting Cold becomes Frostbite which targets a random raid member and deals Frost damage to them, applies 5 stacks of Frostbite which causes the player to deal Frost damage every second to all allies within 4 yards for 30 seconds. The damage dealt to the afflicted players and the allies within 4 yards is multiplied by the number of stacks.

To reduce the number of stacks to 1 (and avoid death) 2 players should stand within 4 yards of the afflicted player will cause the afflicted player to lose 2 stacks of the debuff;

Kazra'jin has 1 main ability:

1. Reckless Charge, causes him to rush towards a random player, damaging everyone in his path and knocking back players who are still at the targeted location when he arrives. When Kazra'jin is empowered, he becomes stunned for 20 seconds, during which he will reflect 50% of the damage he takes.

Sul the Sandcrawler has two abilities: 

1. Sand Bolt deals Nature damage to a random victim and anyone within 5 yards of them. This ability can and should be interrupted.
2. Quicksand is a void zone that deals Nature damage to anyone standing in it and applies a stack of Ensnared that reduces their movement speed, if they reach 5 stacks Entrapped for 30 seconds.

When empowered, Sul casts Sandstorm every 40 seconds which transforms Quicksand into a Living Sand add that melee attack. When a Living Sand dies, it leaves behind a Quicksand pool.

High Priestess Mar'li has two abilities:

1. Wrath of the Loa is an interuptable spell that targets a random raid member and deals Holy damage to them.
2. Blessed Loa Spirit runs towards the troll with the lowest remaining HP and will heal them for 10% of their max HP if it reaches them (or after 20 seconds). The spirit can be slowed and rooted.

When Mar'li is empowered she casts Shadowed Loa Spirit that fixates on a random raid member if it reaches it target (or after 20 seconds) the victim will die. The spirit can be slowed and rooted.

Positioning

• spread out 7 yards;
• when Kazra'jin charges, he will turn towards his target giving everyone time to get out of the way;
• when Frost King Malakk is empowered, 2 players should move to within 4 yards of the target of Frostbite;
• melee players, will simply have to contend with more damage taken and will often need to move to avoid the charges from Kazra'jin and the Quicksand pools.
• unless Mar'li is empowered noody should be near her except her tank;

Tanking Concerns

• One of the tanks will take High Priestess Mar'li and the other Sul the Sandcrawler.
• Tanks will need to alternate tanking Frost King Malakk, to avoid getting 15 stacks of Frigid Assault.
• The non Malakk tank should pick up the Living Sands.

Healing Concerns

• The  Malakk tank will take higher damage
• When Sandstorm occurs BOTH tanks will be taking a lot of damage
• If a boss gets 100 Dark Energy, they will start casting Dark Power and the damage it deals increase by 10% every cast which can cause raid wide dmage to get out of control.
• When Kazra'jin is empowered you should expect to use a few healing cooldowns.

DPS Concerns

The DPS priority for the fight is the following:

1. Shadowed Loa Spirit;
2. Living Sands;
3. Empowered boss if Dark Power is over 50;
4. Sul
5. Kazra'jin
6. Empowered boss;

Sul should be burned fast to avoid a Sandstorm cast if possible. We found that the DPS loss from killing the Blessed Loa was more than the heal the Blessed Loa delivers and therefore we ignore it and is the reason it is not in the priority list

Boss Kill Order

Sul the Sandcrawler > Kazra'jin> Any

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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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Been not raiding this week as I've been on night shifts on our raid days. That has meant that I have run a few daily scenarios to help hit the cap as early as possible. This usually means I get thrust into the "Little Patience" scenario but this week it was "Unga Ingoo" 3 days in a row, so much for the randomness.

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Illidan's deathmask. Looks a little scary if you ask me but this was what I found after me and my buddy Kojiro killed Illidan recently as we tried to farm some transmog gear and a 2nd Warglaive. more »