Priest Transformed

It has been a long time coming, but finally my priest has arrived in Northrend. The relief is tangible after a long haul in vanilla and Outland. The last was not as bad, but still frustrating enough. I have said it before and I will say it again, the best feature about Cataclysm, World of Warcraft's next upcoming expansion, is the fact that much of the vanilla world will be remade entirely. Personally, I cannot think what really is worse about playing this game, than leveling alts through useless content.

Sure you get quest rewards, you can do dungeons, you gain professions and all that, but in the end, 95% of it is pointless and you can do without. Just spam quests as fast as you can and break through it into greener pastures. Only in Northrend, does it finally start making sense, as the gear and rewards you get begin to not only look good, but also provide a useful function.

Anyway, enough about ranting. Achn has made it to Northrend and the fun has really started. You may have also noticed that he has gone through a serious transformation; not only his name but exterior has been altered. Achn is no more, and instead before us, is Barunn, son of Ironforge. I made the decision for the race change primarily because I wanted the dwarf casting animations, which are way cooler than that of a human. Made me sad to see Achn disappear, but I am still happy with the end result.

So much has changed, but for the better I think. Me and Ylinya, whom have since the beginning, leveled together, have already started our first dungeons, Utgarde Keep and Nexus. So far, everything has gone swell and we are on our way to max level. For me, Northrend has again provided with a play challenge, much like when doing Outland dungeons did. I have reached such spells as Prayer of Mending and Penance, both high end and only now, finally getting to use them, does the class seem to truly come together.

It is a fun experience to go through and I imagine, once heroics become involved, the game will again change to a certain extend. We will see, just how much, one we get that there.

Managing the Priest

I have been writing a whole ton of posts, recently about death knights and tanking, so I decided to take a trip down a different road this morning. Most of you have probably noticed that my priest has been leveling up some and he has indeed been the focus of most of my gaming for the past week. The reason was simple, I had just finished the Tribute to Skill achievement and consciously decided to take a break for something totally different.

And what could be more different than playing a healer? A total opposite to what I usually play, however something I have always, as a tank, felt close to; a bond if you will, between those whom I keep safe and whom struggle and do their very best to not let me be squashed. Aye, never an easy task, but we make due ;)

Achn is actually a character that I have, since inception, been leveling with a partner, my real life partner in fact. Anyone who has not tried it, have my recommendation, for it is a match made in heaven. Her human paladin tanks for me, while I heal and dps for her. I started out all out in holy spec, for I wanted to get to know the class from a healer's point of view. But now, after we have crossed the level 60 threshold, I have moved to two specs; shadow and disc.

I use the shadow spec for our quest marathons, for it is a minor inconvenience for me to occasionally heal her, while doing extra dps to get the mobs down quicker. When going to instances, like the Hellfire Citadel dungeons that we have recently been nearly farming for gear (I know, it is not sexy to care about gear when leveling, but bite me), I will of course go disc.

Why the change from holy to disc? My own personal choice tbh, but I did not very much enjoy the constant threat of ooming as holy. Also, after simply trying disc, with my mana problem removed, I fell in love just the style in which we heal. However, juggling these specs and getting some real healing experience as a level 59 in Hellfire Ramparts, I began to question some of the addons I was using, or rather, the lack of proper ones.

First of all, a proper cast bar. There is no question about it and the only viable option I managed to find was Quartz. There is almost no contest; Quartz is highly configurable and has the most efficient features.

The second a must have addon is ForteXorcist. This is a massive addon, centering around the idea of micro managing all the small whistles that most classes have. These include shards and healthstones for warlocks, cooldowns, spell timers, messages, and so on. The list is almost endless and configuring this mammoth can easily seem daunting. However, it is a lot less complicated than it seems and it truly is invaluable.

The main feature I use for my priest, is the spell timers. I could not possibly live without them, especially in shadow spec, which relies on the exact management of dots on the target to produce quality dps. Xorcist shows me all the spells I have cast on the target, in easy to read rundown bars, with timers.

For my discipline spec, I use the spell timers to keep an eye on my Power Word: Shield and Weakened Soul debuff. Before you say that I can also manage the same by watching the debuff frame, yes, I know and that is what I did before. However, at least in my minimalist UI, the frame is tiny and watching the debuff tick around clock-wise is not very optimal.

Third, but not least, is a reliable way to track your Prayer of Mending. This is actually something I have yet to test, for I will not be able to learn the spell itself until level 68. However, it is something to think and prepare for. One options that I have heard a lot of good about is PoM Tracker; I love the simplicity and that it will be yet one more feature on my screen that will not take a lot of space. Also, what I read is that is a lot more reliable than many of its competitors. For one, it does not get confused by multiple prayers.

That is all for the moment. I would consider the three above mentioned addons crucial to any priest and high recommend you have a look at them, if you have not yet done so.

Good luck and enjoy.

The Priest

Figured, recently had a lot ranting posts and that has just got to change. Aye, it is a personal blog but in the end I write for two reason, the pleasure of writing and the pleasure of reading. For me, a writing only becomes meaningful when someone picks it up and reads it. So, to not utterly neglect my readers I am gonna jump into one of my recent passions; playing a priest.

Specifically, I enjoy my role as a healer and in a reasonably short time I have managed to raise my priest's level a notch of 13 levels. It is a complete role reversal for me, since I am, until now, mostly used to tanking on my death knight. This gives my priest a unique perspective because many do not get to look at it from both directions. Tanks have ideas about healers, and healers have plenty of ideas about tanks, at least as far as what they would hope for them to be.

It is a fascinating interaction between the two as they communicate, though the relationship is not always layered with roses. Tanks can often be fairly arrogant in terms of how they expect the group's healer to perform, while neglecting all the small things that they themselves could do to make the healer's job easier; like staying in range, do not break LOS, be reasonable in your pulls, use cooldowns to mitigate damage input, etc. I recently healed through Maraudon and a persisting annoyance was the tank, first pulling a bunch of flouric creatures and then turning a corner.

He did not do this out of spite of course, but simply did not understand the job of a healer, and I know personally I have been guilty of many such prejudices. The key is to make sure you both communicate properly and educate each other to learn how to play better. A good such example, for me, was in Halls of Lightning. We wiped once on General Bjarngrim while going for the achiement, Lightning Struck.

The simple reason was, with so much incoming damage, once I had to kite him during a whirlwind, I passed beyond our healer's range and it was all it took. He advanced and tried to save the moment, but though valiant, I died. Afterwards while buffing up at the entryway, we examined what went wrong and agreed that he would have to position himself closer, since I could not avoid running around the small space I have to kite the crazy goliath.

I believe this is one of the bigger lessons of the game, to learn how to communicate because the simple fact is, no matter how awesome you are, maybe above all of your peers in finesse and skill, truth remains that no man is an island and to succeed in World of Warcraft, you need team work - and never forget, you always need the team more than it needs you.

Achn of the Holy Light

The time has come, yet again, to begin leveling a lower level. Nothing sounds less pleasing however, to once more be in the shoes of a weakling, before even my first mount and scratching together gear from quests and the few instances that you get a group for. I am in a slightly better position though, since I am leveling a holy priest; pretty much guaranteeing me a spot in any group.

But still, the numbness of reaching my level 80 on Durithim is still fresh in my memory, so I will opt a different method to rising up the ladders; instances. When running solo, quests are the single best way to level with reletive speed, but if you have a dedicated group, running instances is not only quicker but also more interesting. At least for me, since I have already seen most what the game has to offer between the level 1-80.

I am bring my girlfriend along to the Blade Edge for this purpose. As she takes the responsibility of tanking, I will begin to practice on healing, and for the other roles we are getting three dps terrors from Retribution itself. So it is us five low levels versus the world.

The poor world doesn't stand a chance.

The evening today has passed nicely in modifying my UI again. This time for the purpose of my healer, which calls for some additional pieces of software. Most important of these, of course, is Healbot. Aye, some can argue that it is not necessary for effective play but I found it very useful when last I played on my priest; the ability to point click all my healing spells and saving keyboard bindings for other tasks is extremely precious.

I also installed FuBar for more additional functionality and made modifications to my action buttons, since I have less of them on my priest than death knight. For scrutiny and pleasure of the eye, here is the latest screenshot.