Thus I have server-transferred yet again! This time to the pacific time realm of Wyrmrest Accord—currently the youngest RP realm in the game. My new guild is Instinct, and I’m currently of recruit status since I just started this past week. Progression is at 8/12 in Heroic Icecrown Citadel and the guild holds the server-first torch for pretty much everything.

I’m excited to really get back into raiding, though I am admittedly a bit rusty after 3 full months of not raiding at all. I’m not worried though—with a bit of practice I’ll be back in full swing.

In case anyone hasn’t noticed, Lilith and I have been pretty busy with a lot of things lately, both in and out of the game.  Lilith started an exciting new job and moved out of state with her boyfriend (sorry to break your hearts, guys) and is planning on staying away from the game until Cataclysm.  I have been working a lot, as well and have been focusing more on 10 mans and 10 man hard modes lately, with a close group of friends in my guild.  I have also taken up the mantle of a recruitment assistant and bringing in some fresh, strong talent to our ranks to hopefully down some more content before the expansion hits.

With everything happening, I felt like I wanted to take a stab at my own blog and try to bring in some more readership for myself, while Divine Aegis is sort of on hiatus.  At the end of the day, this is Lilith’s blog and I’m thrilled to be on the guest list to the party.  But it would feel weird being here and posting and having her not join me in that endeavor.  I wanted to be here, because we would be posting together.  If she isn’t here, it doesn’t feel right for me to kind of take over her space.  I know she doesn’t feel that way, but I would.  I came here to write with her, to have our entries kind of build off each other.  And that’s clearly not happening, lately.   

I decided to create my own blog at http://thestoriesofo.wordpress.com, with the full support of Lilith.  My plan is to build my own little following and then when the expansion comes, we can reform our ranks (hopefully with a new holy paladin advisor and possibly even a shaman) and really charge out of the gate strong.  There has been talk of Lilith even forming her own 10 man guild and I would love to be a part of that with her.  I think that could provide a neat perspective on the articles, if we’re in the same runs and just writing about it from different angles.  This blog has already proven to be a great resource and I think it can be an even better one, once we’re in the right place to make that happen and the stars can align.

Please stop by and say hello and hopefully we will be seeing you all very soon, in some form. 

Thanks for reading and have a great night!

Your Circle of Healing and Penance spells have a 20% chance to cause your next Flash Heal cast within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.

Which is a pretty interesting bonus. I, personally, wasn’t aiming for it because I’ve been doing more shield-spamming in raids lately than straight tank-healing. However, as Avalonna pointed out during the podcast, it’s a phenomenal bonus for tank healing.

Despite that, though, there have been a lot of complaints about the proc being too sporadic and not well-timed. This has prompted Blizzard to rethink the bonus and give us this instead:

Priest Tier-10 4-Piece Healing Set Bonus: Redesigned. This bonus now increases the effectiveness of the caster’s Power Word: Shield and Renew spells by 5%. (source)

Is this a good or bad thing?

Well, that depends. For Holy Priests, I think this is a terrible change. Renew for them didn’t need a buff, and certainly not a lackluster one like only 5%. But for shield-spamming Discipline Priests, this is a okay new bonus. Even though it’s minor (come on, Blizz, only 5%!?), any buff to Power Word: Shield is a welcome one. And while it’s certainly not as powerful as resetting the cooldown of Penance for someone who is primarily a tank-healer, the bonus is still applicable since you’re also applying PW:S to your tank. (If you’re not, YOU BEST START NOW!)

All-in-all, I think it’s a okay change for Disc (so it’s applicable to both ways that we heal) but really sad for Holy. I’m really, really hoping they’ll improve it a bit before it goes live, though. (5% IS JUST SAD!)

I’m really excited to be among such honored guests as Aliena from Tank Spot, Derevka and Avalonna from Tales of a Priest, Joveta from World of Snarkcraft, and Matticus and Thespius from World of Matticus. It should be a fun show!

If you’re interested in submitting questions for the roundtable, send them to raidwarningpodcast@gmail.com.

I started playing WoW on this day two years ago because my boyfriend at the time convinced me it would be a good thing to do together since we were in a long distance relationship. Previously I had been very steadfast in refusing to try this game, fearing that I’d get too into it and play constantly at the expense of other things. (This was at a time when I was in the middle of college and also had a part time job, with little sense of time management.) However, I decided it couldn’t hurt trying. I was already talking to the boy every night for hours, it might as well be while playing a game too, yes? So I downloaded the trial. And I spent something like 4-5 hours playing a Night Elf Priest—GASP! Alliance!… Just don’t tell anyone—on some random server it assigned me. I didn’t realize that 4 hours had gone by until my boyfriend called me and pointed out that it was 4 am. WTF!

A few days later I bought the BattleChest (with both Vanilla + BC in it) at GameStop and installed it. I rolled a Blood Elf Priest on a friend’s server, and my boyfriend joined me as an Undead Warrior. We leveled 1-70 on Thorium Brotherhood and took our sweet time doing it. It took a few months, if I recall correctly. I reached level 70 in June 2008, and that’s about when the boy quit playing WoW. (Then in September we broke up, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.)

Because I enjoyed WoW so much, I decided to join a raiding guild. Since then I’ve been in… 4 raiding guilds. I stayed in my first one for all of BC raiding, and then joined a new one at the start of Wrath. When that one fell apart, I transferred to Scarlet Crusade and joined Axiom. I remained there for 6 months, but then my schedule changed and I couldn’t raid with them anymore. Now I’m back on Thorium Brotherhood, with the server-first guild there and ready to kick some Arthas ass. Who’s with me?

(For a higher quality version of the UI screenshot shown, click here. For a more recent screenshot of my UI in action, click here.)

Big thanks to Matticus from World of Matticus for interviewing me for the article and scanning it. You can check out all the articles he wrote on his blog. Sadly, he is not credited in the piece(s). :(

And, they have me listed as a Holy Priest. How blasphemous!

EDIT: For those wondering, I have not uploaded this UI, LilUI2, to WoW Interface yet. It’s still a work in progress, I’m not completely happy with it yet! I’m actually just working on the art/textures for it right now.

Phase 1 for resto druids in the Heroic Anub’arak encounter is pretty cut and dry.  Keep a Regrowth and a Rejuvenation on the main tank and the add tank at all times.  Anub’arak will choose 5 targets for a DoT called Penetrating Cold.  Your raid frames or user interface should have a way of marking those targets and DBM calls it out, too.  Place a Regrowth on all 5 of the targets and possibly even a Rejuvenation on them, depending on how much you see them taking.  Regrowth should have a high enough crit chance, where you will eventually proc Nature’s Grace – so casting it on 5 targets shouldn’t take too long. 

The reason why I find Regrowth to be better for the PC is because of how long the DoT lasts.  You can put the HoT on the 5 targets and refresh your HoTs that you initially put on the tanks and keep it all going. 

Once Anub’arak burrows, then comes the scarab phase.  Regrowth is also going to be a big help here.  Players who are killing the adds are bound to get hit by a scarab and they leave a DoT on targets that also hits very hard.  Unlike PT, this DoT can stack and even a short stack can be rough to heal through.  If you see a target with the debuff, place a Regrowth on them, both for the initial heal and the lasting HoT.  Keep an eye out for people that may have missed their spike duties and keep a few HoTs on yourself, just in case you end up being that person.  You can possibly survive one hit from a spike, with a HoT or two on and a Swiftmend to burn.  Obviously, it’s not something you want to try and test out, but I have seen it done.

Rinse and repeat the above until Phase 3 happens and Anub’arak begins his Leeching Swarm effect.  The rest of the fight is going to take you drastically outside of your comfort zone.  It’s going to be up to Healing Stream totems, Judgement of Light and other passive forms of heals to keep the raid alive.  You will be doing very little direct healing and if you do, it’s going to be with one spell:  Healing Touch.  Dig deep in your spellbook, dust off the tooltip and put it back on your action bars – if you don’t have it there already.  Healing Touch will work best if glyphed and you will most likely have to perform a slight re-spec to get the most out of this, making sure you have  points in Empowered Touch and Naturalist.

The reason why this spell is best is because you are going to be assigned to heal the Penetrating Cold targets and the damage from that plus the Leeching Swarm ability is going to be too much for any other heal you have to cover it.  Even with a good amount of haste, Nourish still won’t be fast enough to keep up.  You have to do enough healing to keep the targets up, but not so much that Anub’arak is getting too much health back from the debuff.  Talented and glyphed, Healing Touch is the perfect solution to this.

In my experience, guilds usually assign one healer to cover each PT target and sometimes they get assigned two.  This is your focus – nothing else.  No tank healing, no self healing, just your target or targets.  Using only Healing Touch.  Pop Barkskin when it’s on cooldown to mitigate some of the Leeching Swarm damage or to help out if you end up being a PT cold target 

Do this until Anub’arak is dead and then celebrate your victory!

“Let’s bring the Paladin in. We could use another set of blessings.”

“But what about that Priest? She’s done these fights before and her experience will be invaluable.”

These are one of the many internal conversations that raid leaders have with themselves mentally or their officers. Deciding which healer gets to come to raid and which healer gets to sit isn’t an attractive activity for most people. No one likes being the guy that has to tell a person that they’re taking the night off.

But first, you need to get to that point.

I’ve handled healing assignments for various different guilds and I can tell you that there is a system that is used. There are certain criteria that make different healers desirable over others. In this post, I’ll walk you through what goes on during my head when I’m selecting my healing roster.

Before we do that, let’s look at the activities of the night as it will play an impact on what healers we bring in.

Are we:
• Going back to farm older raids?
• Doing 10 or 25s?
• Pushing the progression content stuff?

Heading back into older raids means I have much more flexibility with my roster. I can give veteran healers the night off if they so choose. I won’t have to worry about specific buffs as much. Pushing into progression content or hard modes means I have to be increasingly picky with who I want to bring in.

The Factors

Availability

My guild employs a strict signout policy. All raiders are expected to be present and ready to jump in any time. But there are occasions where players have things happen in life and I understand that. If they know in advance that they can’t show up (exams, important dinners, family functions, and so forth), they’ll post in the forums. Even though I have a large stock of healers to select from, they might not be there that day.

Raid composition

• Do we have Priest buffs?
• Do we have enough blessings to go around or the totems to cover it?
• Do we even have a Heroism?

I try to make sure that we have all the healing buffs necessary for what we’re working on. I don’t want to stack it too far in one class direction either. That doesn’t mean I won’t do it if I have to (like the time I ran 4 Priests and 2 Paladins). It just sort of kills me if a piece of healing plate drops and there’s no Paladin on hand to grab it.

Experience

This is the not-so-tangible aspect of players that I look at. Stuff like tenure and raid experience plays an impact on which person I bring in. I’m not going to take in a fairly “green” healer who just joined the guild into a progression raid. The players invited tend to be the ones who have healed together long enough that they know what other players will do. They’re comfortable in their surroundings and they’re relaxed with the other healers around them. If they’re new, I might simply swap them in at the last notice on a difficult raid to see how they hold up and how they perform.

Gear Needs

Are there any significant upgrades for a player that drop in this instance? That’s another question I will look to answer. If one of the varsity healers don’t need anything but one of the newer players do, I’ll ask them if they’re willing to sit. If they’re reasonable, they’ll understand and gently sidestep out. After farming Trial of the Crusader 25 for multiple months, some players jump when I ask for volunteers to take the night off.

Those are just some of the significant factors that are looked at when selecting the healers for a raid. Other officers might handle things based on merit (IE, this healer did a great job the night before filling in and I want to see if they can repeat that effort). It’s never easy to choose a healing roster with a large number of players to select from. Sometimes, things take a turn for the worst and there are not enough healers on at all. You’re hard pressed and have to consider things like off specs or alts.

The ultimate concern for me is to ensure that the raid be stabilized as much as possible using whatever healers necessary.

I just wanted to post a quick update about my hiatus in posting on here and to thank everyone who has still been adding us as readers and who have been following along and eagerly awaiting new posts from us.

Personally, I had taken a month off from the game and rolled an elemental shaman, just to relax and get psyched up for Icecrown Citadel.  Throw in a generous helping of holidays, a new position at work and redecorating my loft and it’s been nothing short of hectic, lately.

I’m getting back into the scene, with a great new guild and I’m learning as much about 3.3 as I can (from Heroics, glyphs and everything in between), so I can keep my fellow druids updated with the best advice and opinions that I can.  I’m still deciding what I want to cover first, but it will be very soon, I promise.

I do frequently keep in touch with the other bloggers and I know we have some great things in mind for our readers in the coming weeks and the start of the new year.  There has been talk of another new section on the blog, that is more reader oriented and even rumors of a very special guest blogger in the near future.  You won’t be disappointed!

Again, thank you all for sticking with us and you will be seeing more of us very soon.

This is just a note to let you all know that we’re still around, just busy with real-life stuff. I’ve been both sick, working my ass off on some freelance projects, and preparing for the upcoming holidays. Oestrus has been really busy with work and holiday stuff, too. I’m sure you all know how that is.

However, that doesn’t mean I don’t have that next L2Disc post in the works—I’m just asking you be patient with me and our other writers since other things have priority at the moment.

Wit that said, take care, all! And if you don’t hear from us by Thanksgiving, have a good one! May the food make your bellies happy and full.

Off we go! 

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?  Oestrus, restoration spec druid (currently 14/0/57)

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)  I mostly heal 25 man and 25 man hard modes, with the occasional 10 man and 10 man hard modes.  I dabble in PVP, but nothing too serious. 

What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?  Lifebloom, because I miss the good old days of rolling them on numerous tanks and I love the chime it makes when it blooms. 

I like it because it’s a HoT, but it doesn’t fit in the normal boundaries for such a spell.  It’s strong as it is, but you can let it bloom and enjoy a nice sized heal from it.  It’s not too hard on the mana pool and it’s fast enough to be used on multiple targets.  It can provide a nice buffer for a  Nourish, too. 

And I also feel it’s one of the few spells that has versatility and that has made a strong crossover from PVE to PVP.  Most druid spells still help in PVP, but this one can really save your butt and it can be good against PVE spike damage.  Not many spells can demonstrate that efficiency between play styles. 

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
That would be Tranquility.  It’s only good for use in parties and even then it’s extremely case sensitive.  I mostly just use it for screenshots, due to the great graphics and sounds. 

I would have normally said Healing Touch, but that spell is making a comeback in guilds that are taking on 25 man heroic Anub’arak (which I will probably touch on, at some point).

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
I would have to say the mobility.  I love being able to do almost everything we would normally do, while constantly moving – which has a huge payoff on so many fights that involve not standing in things.  

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?   I honestly don’t feel that we have any weaknesses.  I have always felt that we can do anything any other healer can do, either as well or better. 

But if I had to choose, I would say we lack any kind of damage mitigation on people we’re healing.  Shamans have Stoneskin totem, paladins and priests have bubbles and we have Barkskin, for ourselves.  But we don’t have anything to cushion damage that a tank is receiving. 

Some count a full stack of HoTs as a form of padding, but it’s not the same.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?  Druids definitely excel at raid healing, but we do have the capacity to be strong tank healers, if needed.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?  I can’t really say that I have a favorite.  I know what I don’t like healing with.  See below.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
Other druids.  Anything more than two druids gets really complicated, I feel.  Especially if one of the druids doesn’t glyph for Swiftmend (rare, but it does happen) and you find your HoTs getting consumed when/if they use it.

At that point, it comes down to who can HoT something faster and I feel like heals tend to get clipped more and overhealing becomes more of an issue.  But that sparks another kind of debate, best not explored on a simple survey!

What is your worst habit as a healer?  Being too thrifty with my mana.  I tend to play it very conservative and not too aggressive.  I could probably stand to go “all out” a bit more, but I think that’s also a compliment to the other healers I’m lucky enough to raid with.  I think we all do our share and no one person has to compensate for others not doing their job.

If I felt like situations were getting tight or we were shy on healers, I would definitely push myself harder.  Not to say I’m lazy or don’t impact the meters, or anything.  I just keep an eye on how hard I need to push myself on any given night.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?  People who request a battle res or who I get asked to battle res and who can’t be bothered to ping the map, to let me know where the corpse is.  And then I spend so much time trying to locate them, that I either die or I lose sight of other things I should be doing.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?  Absolutely – Blizzard has been quite kind to us, I think.

I do enjoy the debates that the developers have about us having to take a form to be competitive.  It would be interesting to see if they made enough changes where we could enjoy the benefits of Tree Form without necessary having to shape change. 

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?  I tend to run on instinct and by how well the raid is progressing.  I was at a point recently where I couldn’t take my eyes off the meters and I didn’t like the way it made me feel or how easily I got wrapped up in the competition factor.  It wasn’t healthy for me.

I also go off raid consensus.  We have pretty vocal officers and I would like to think if one of us were suffering, we would know about it.  Or the healers communicate well enough with each other, where they would work together to fix something, if they noticed something we were doing wasn’t working.

If people are surviving and you’re downing content, you all did a good job.  It’s easy to forget the main goal and get lost in competition and all of that nonsense.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?  I haven’t really heard any misconceptions about us – maybe you could tell me some and I could clear them up that way

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?  That we don’t need that much spirit.  I see a lot of new druids just drowning in the stuff.  Two spirit trinkets, spirit enchant on the weapon, pure spirit gems, etc.  It’s nice and God knows we love it, but not that much.  You should never be passing up chances to increase other stats, just for the sake of spirit. 

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)?  The overhealing has definitely increased, since Blizzard made it where HoTs continue to heal, even when a target is topped off. 

I tend to heal in the same cookie cutter fashion other druids do, though I noticeably use Nourish a lot less.  My bread and butter is Rejuvenation, Wild Growth and Lifebloom.  I have been trying to Swiftmend more and there is the occasional Regrowth. 

Haste or Crit and why?  I think a nice balance is important to have.  I use crit head and shoulder enchants, to help out with my tier bonus and I just go with the flow, in terms of gear choices.  I can’t say I have ever favored a piece of gear over another, simply because of haste or crit.

What healing class do you feel you understand least?  The idea of healing as a paladin bores me to tears.  I don’t think I could do that for a living – lol.  I would imagine I’d have really empty action bars.  I can’t see having too many spells that you need to put on there.  Your choices seem kinda limited.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
Right now, I am enjoying a new interface called VuhDo and I use the basic raid addons, like Omen and Deadly Boss Mods.  Otherwise, I try to run pretty mod light.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
Balance is extremely important as a druid (no pun intended) – especially given how versatile the class already is.  Right now though, I’m at a point where I need nothing more than pure spell power.  I have a good sized mana pool, strong mana regen, a good amount of health and I just need stronger heals. 

I do make sure that gear upgrades or swaps provide a definite stat increase, in most areas

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer? Lilitharien, proud Discipline Priest of the 57/14/0 variety for PvE single-target healing and damage mitgation.

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans) Primarily healing 25- and 10-man raids and occasionally the daily 5-man heroic.

What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why? Penance, because it does so many amazing things (like has 3 chances to crit giving it 3 chances to proc and stack Divine Aegis and also stacks Grace to 3, among other things) AND sparkles!

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why? Greater Heal, because it’s expensive, takes forever to cast, and has high over-heal. Penance is half the price, half the cast, and 100x the awesome.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why? Definitely damage mitigation—No other class comes even remotely close.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why? Raid healing. It is just not an optimal spec for such things as whack-a-mole. Prayer of Healing is slow, not smart, and target’s-party-specific and that’s really our only multiple-target healing spell.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you? Main- or off-tanks.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why? Priest. Lots of diversity in spell usage and I can chose to be a strong single-target healer or a strong raid-healer so I can fill all healing roles if need be.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why? I’ve honestly only really healed with my Priest. I’m leveling a Druid now with the intent of going Resto at 80, but she’s level 40 and feral right now. I have plans to make a Goblin Shaman in Cataclysm. However, I do have zero desire to make a Paladin. (No offense, Lyriel!!)

What is your worst habit as a healer? Healer’s tunnel vision. Sometimes, I see only health bars. I’ve perfected the quick-glance technique, however, like you’re supposed to do when you’re driving. Quick-glance at all your mirrors while keeping your main focus on the road: that’s me healing… Road = Health Bars, Mirrors = Ground where I’m standing, Boss, Adds, etc.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing? Not following your healing assignment, especially in an effort to pad your healing-done numbers on Recount. NOT COOL! Oh, and healing players after a wipe is called. DON’T DO THAT!

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing? Yes, except for one thing: Discipline Priests are still the only healing class & spec that does not get spellpower from a base stat.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer? I run Skada Damage Meters during raids and check up on World of Logs reports afterwards.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class? That Discipline Priests can’t heal as well as other classes (WE CAN SO!) or that Disc is strictly a PvP spec.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn? The most common mistake I see new Discipline Priests do is leaving their tank assignment for any length of time without the Weakened Soul debuff. That tank should have as close to 100% uptime on Weakened Soul as humanly possible!

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)? On Recount and Skada the damage-absorbed and healing-done are on two separate tables (with Recount requiring a separate addon altogether) so you’ll usually see lower healing output from a Discipline Priest. However, on combat log readers like WoW Meter Online and World of Logs, damage-absorbed and healing-done are combined to give you your best measurement of a Disc priest against other types of healers.

Haste or Crit and why? Crit, because there’s no cap whereas Haste can start causing lots of problems if your spells start casting faster than your global cooldown.

What healing class do you feel you understand least? Everything except the Priest, but I’m learning the Druid’s style. I guess Paladin would be the one I definitely least understand since I know near-nothing about then and also have no desire (at least not currently) to level one and try ‘em out.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing? I use a combination of Grid + Clique, I use ForteXorcist to monitor CDs, and a few macros like the one that uses my Inner Focus ability on Divine Hymn (making that expensive spell free).

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why? Balance is really key for me, especially with the lack of the spellpower-from-a-base-stat thing. And while I prefer to gear for Crit over Haste, I try to have enough haste to keep my Flash Heal around a 1-sec cast time.

Tag, you’re it!

I can’t say that this particular post will have a lot of advice, per se, but hopefully people can relate to some of the opinions I have and maybe even a healthy debate can come from this.  I’m also going to suggest that you pre-HoT before reading this one – wall of text definitely incoming.   

Rejuv was too good. We nerfed it. The change got labeled as a bug fix, because technically it was a bug. We didn’t mean to buff Rejuv’s duration but once we did we didn’t think it was breaking anything for a time so we let it stay. For 3.3 we decided it was breaking things and reduced the duration. We understood the confusion this caused with the community by labeling it a bug fix so we changed the patch note to no longer refer to it as a bug fix. It doesn’t really matter what it was called — it was a nerf.

I think this argument could go either way.  Yes, Rejuvenation is good.  But I also think based on the healing assignments that most druids are given, it’s the best spell we have for what we are asked to do.  I don’t know of many druids that are asked to stay on tank healing.  Now we certainly assist on certain fights, but it’s rare that we are asked to focus solely on that.  We include the tanks in our raid healing, but that is usually assigned to paladins and priests. 

The other spells we have, like Healing Touch or Regrowth and to some extent Nourish, don’t make the best choice for raid healing.  It’s far more efficient to spread a number of Rejuvs on the raid and follow them up with Wild Growth, which also allows you to set the groundwork for Swiftmend, if those targets need more attention.

So it’s not necessarily the Rejuv alone that makes it so good.  You have the HoT itself, which is strong and is boosted by talents and an amazing Idol and then the potential for a Swiftmend, a buff to Nourish and also some forms of regen, if you put talent points into Revitalize. 

A guildie of mine had crunched the numbers and deduced that the reduction of the extra tick  really wasn’t a big loss.  We would still be healing for the same amount per tick, with the loss of some global cooldowns.  Meaning the healing per second and healing power would remain the same, but the number of Rejuvs we could blanket the raid with may slightly go down. 

But I do appreciate Blizzard coming forward and stating that it wasn’t simply a “We didn’t realize this tick was there all along” thing. 

In the same patch, we decided to change Gift of the Earth Mother because it was adding a gratuitous amount of haste and at the same time making druids avoid haste where they could. We have been too generous with some of the haste talents that coupled with gear and buffs are causing problems.

I have always had a love/hate relationship with Gift of the Earthmother (GotE).  It was something I initially put talent points in, just to spend the points and I remember re-speccing for PVP one day and realizing how slow my HoTs seemed to come out when I didn’t have those talent points there.  It was very underrated and it became something I noticed I couldn’t do without in PVE. 

In the early raiding scene in “Wrath,” we didn’t have that much haste available.  Don’t get me wrong, we had a lot.  But I don’t feel it was as abundant.  I didn’t picked up my Tier 7 4 piece bonus, because I have never been a big fan of Nourish (more on that later) and I felt there were other pieces that were much better.  Most of the available pieces that were best for me already had a large amount of haste on them.

Pieces from Ulduar continued the trend of resto druid gear still coming with a lot of haste, despite Tier 8 being more crit oriented.  Also, some resto druids were still using spellpower trinkets like the Egg of Mortal Essence or had moved on to Scale of Fates, which both come with either a chance of proccing a lot of haste or that come with an “on use” effect that did that. 

The transition to Tier 9 seemed to cement the notion that druids were being directed to have haste on their gear, especially considering the quality of gear available (specifically cloaks, rings and weapons) that happened to have good amounts of haste on them.  This is strange, because the awesome 4 piece bonus seems to thrive on us having a higher critical strike rating.  It’s certainly not something you should be gemming for or going terribly out of your way to improve, but swapping out some of the haste on the more noteworthy pieces for crit would have been a blessing.

Overall, I would agree that we do have too much haste right now.  I personally have more than I know what to do with.  And while I admit that, I also kind of wonder what would happen if I didn’t have it anymore.  I dread the thought of my HoTs coming out that slowly again and I think this is one change I would really have to experience, before I can comment any further or more definitively on. 

While we didn’t change Gift of the Earth Mother with the express purpose of nerfing druids, it still had that effect. We considered the Rejuv nerf and the GotEM nerf and decided we liked the second one more and reverted the first one. Rejuv is back to 18 sec for 3.3.

I certainly won’t turn down an extra tick on Rejuv and since I didn’t feel the change was a nerf, I feel this is pretty positive.  I do think there is a chance the GotE change could be the more negative of the two, if we aren’t casting as many HoTs or casting as fast as we could be, without all the haste we’re used to.  I’m just going by what I remember happening and what I would think would happen if the mass output of our heals wasn’t there.  Again, this is something I believe could be bad, but I hesitate to say for sure until I see it in action. 

We realize the GotEM nerf hurt PvP Resto druids a lot and that is still something we are evaluating.

GotE wasn’t something I remember seeing in any common PVP builds and it wasn’t something I had room for in mine, though I wish it was.  I’m not sure how true this is.

Resto druids have a lot of heal spells. Which ones you go to the most is going to be a function of things like set bonuses, idols, your role in the group as well, as well as the encounters themselves. Druids healing the raid currently seem to use a lot of Rejuv and Wild Growth while those healing tanks use a lot of Nourish and perhaps even Lifebloom. Lifebloom still gets a lot of use in PvP. Regrowth has slipped off the radar a little, IMO, but it has been good at various points in LK and I don’t think it would be that hard to bring it back (and we’ll see what the GotEM change does). Bringing it back would probably slide something else down the bar, at least temporarily. We’re pretty much okay with that. Healing Touch (and maybe Tranq) is the only Resto spell for which we’re really not interested in carving off a major raid-healing niche. It still has situational uses with NS or in 5-player dungeons.

Rereading the above, I am making sweeping generalizations a lot. Your mileage may vary and there are a ton of exceptions. One thing that hits me a lot in my position is that players assume the way they do a thing is the way everyone must do that thing. Players exhibit some pretty diverse behaviors and still get the boss down. Keep that in mind whenever you try to adopt the “accepted” or “cookie cutter” spell rotation for any class.

This is the statement I agree with the most.  I agree with their spell usage being based on your assignments and that Lifebloom does seem to be used more in PVP and that the mechanics behind it seem more intricate in that setting.  Regrowth could stand to see more use and it does see a fair amount in tank healing and even some raid healing scenarios (for serious DoT debuffs or effects like Kologarn’s grip, pot healing on Ignis, etc).

It is nice to note the idea of not necessarily going down the accepted route to get things done.  Sure, you have a job to do and your job is to keep people up.  But you shouldn’t feel limited to only do it one way.  There are fights with various gimmicks where doing it one set way, all the time won’t work.  Understanding that versatility and knowing when you need to switch it up is the key to staying competitive in the current raid environment.

Particularly angry druids like to talk about Nourish getting “shoved down their throat” or whatever. We added Nourish because we recognized the druid need for a “Flash Heal.” Healing Touch is too long to cast without NS and both NS and Swiftmend have a cooldown. The hots all do great healing, and they can definitely save someone’s life, but they just aren’t reliable for e.g. someone being focused by faction champions. In the BC era where we basically mandated that druids are just one arm of the healing machine that must also include paladins, priests and shamans it was okay to have a very narrow niche. In a world of 10-player raids, we want you to be able to heal with say 2 Resto druids and a Disc priest. “Hey, I’m just here to hot the raid,” is fine if it works for your group, but that can’t be the only thing that works. (And this applies to all 5 healing specs.)

Particularly angry druids like to talk about Nourish getting “shoved down their throat” … because it was shoved down our throats.

I have never had a problem with Nourish, per se.  I think it is a wonderful situational spell that is very useful, for the occasions that it is suited for.  For anything else, I really don’t think it’s that great.  What I really resented about it was how I feel Blizzard strong-armed us into using it.

They could have taken the stance of “We have this neat spell and you guys can give it a shot when you’re ready and let us know what you think.”  Instead, I felt like I was dealing with a sleazy car salesman who was leering at me and saying “Well, we’re going to nerf Lifebloom, but we have this neat little spell called Nourish.  Have you heard of it?  Nourish – it’s in your spell book right here…”

The druid community still wasn’t too sold on it, so they had to up the ante a little bit.  “The newest batch of druid glyphs will be a waste and you probably won’t want to use any of them – but we did add a Nourish glyph.  Remember Nourish?  And if the glyph really isn’t working for you, we’ll throw in this incredible offer to include Nourish in some talents that you already have and can’t really avoid taking.  Because we know you are going to love, love this spell!”

No pressure or anything, right? 

Now as the last post mentioned, I find Nourish extremely useful in 10 man raids, particularly the hard modes.  I use it quite a bit there.  I also use it frequently in PVP (thanks to all the healing reduction debuffs) and in the odd situation in 25 man raids (i.e. Plasma Blasts during Mimiron, Deconstructor’s tantrum, Incinerate Flesh on Jarraxus, etc.) 

I just feel like it’s something that we could have discovered on our own and that we didn’t need to have our focus shifted to, by reducing the effectiveness of other spells or altering talents to make room for it.  It was fine as is and would have continued to get more attention, as things progressed.  It also didn’t help that many of the early raids in “Wrath” had no use for it.  The healing in Naxxramas, Malygos and Sarth was entirely manageable with what we already had.  I would like to think most druids would have picked up on the increased need for Nourish in Ulduar and ToC, by simply experiencing the fights first hand and picking up on a need for what Nourish could offer.

In closing, it was great to see Ghostcrawler give some insight into the changes and I look forward to experiencing a number of them for myself and to see how other druids deal with the changes. 

Thanks for reading and look for my post on druid gemming in the next week or so.  You won’t need to pre-HoT for that one, I promise.

Cut to today, where Lifebloom has gone through a string of changes that led one blogger from WoW.com to refer to it jokingly as “FFS, just put it out of its misery.”

How did we get here? How did Lifebloom go from being a revolutionary spell that led to renewed druid healing prevalence in both PVE and PVP to something that most druids barely have room on their action bars for? Is there a place for it now and if so, where is it?

To answer that question briefly, Lifebloom does still have a place in the repertoire of a raiding resto druid. It has taken a backseat to other spells, like Rejuvenation and Wild Growth and may even see less action than Regrowth or Nourish would. But it has a purpose and we will get into what that purpose is and just why those changes over the last year or so may not be so bad after all.

The mechanics behind Lifebloom used to be quite simple. Keep it rolling (a slang term for keeping a full stack up constantly). With the changes that have taken place, letting a Lifebloom bloom is no longer a bad thing. Rolling Lifebloom was still pretty common through Naxxramas and even through most of Ulduar. Most druids were starting to experiment with early blooming and more use of Rejuvenation, but didn’t really start to catch on until hard modes came out, with patch 3.2 and more specifically, with Trial of the Champions.

Keeping a stack of at least 2 or 3 applications of Lifebloom on your main tank is always a good thing. Follow that up with a Rejuvenation and then a Regrowth. See how the fight is going. If you see the damage being pretty even and predictable and the other healers are keeping up with it, feel free to keep the Lifebloom rolling. You shouldn’t be having a problem with mana, where this is too taxing on you. You should also have the free time to spread some Rejuvenation on raid members in between refreshing your stacks.

But if you see your tank taking a lot of raw, hard hitting damage or spike damage (meaning it goes from small to very large hits very quickly), let the Lifebloom bloom. You should start seeing some impressive crits and that heal can be a saving grace in fights where there is already enough going on and tanks can die in the blink of an eye. I always keep a stack of 2 or 3 up, I let it bloom and then I place a whole new set on. Rinse and repeat. Keep other HoTs on the tank and share some with the raid, too. Throw in a Swiftmend (Glyphed, of course) or some Nourish, if the incoming damage is still a bit much.

Lifebloom can also be useful on the raid if they are taking steady damage or face increasing amounts of damage. Examples of this are during Light Bombs on the Deconstructor fight or targets of Legion Flames during Lord Jaraxxus. The best example I have found as a renewed use of Lifebloom is during the Leeching Swarm effect that Anub’arak emits, as the final boss in Trial of the Champion. This effect deals damage to the entire raid and heals him for a portion of the damage he does. For the healers, they have to find a balance between keeping the raid up, but not so much so that Anub’arak gets more life back than the raid can chip away at.

Lifebloom is perfect for this. I literally spend the rest of the fight, from 30% on just Lifeblooming everything. Just one per raid member. Put it on and let them all bloom. It does just the right amount of healing, but not too much and the mana returns from all those blooms will make sure you can keep it going until Anub’arak goes down.

There is also some speculation as to whether Lifebloom blooms can proc Forethought Talisman. I adore my Talisman and the talents we have for improving HoT effects makes the HoT from it very potent and I have seen some blooms do this. It doesn’t seem to happen all the time, but it can happen. Just another good reason to get in the habit of letting Lifebloom bloom, I think.

All in all, it may not be what we were used to and it may not be our bread and butter anymore, but Lifebloom is still entirely relevant and can provide a useful and sometimes surprising healing element to our already impressive array of HoTs and direct heals.

As a Priest, especially one who heals, the main stats you worry about are spellpower, intellect, spirit, stamina, haste, crit, and mp5. Agility, strength, and anything else I didn’t mention (such as hit and armor penetration) need not apply.

Spellpower

Without much explanation, it’s easy to tell what this stat does for you. The more spellpower you have, the more healing your healing spells will do and the more damage your damage spells will do. But what’s interesting about spellpower and the Discipline Priest is that it also increases the amount of damage absorbed by Power Word: Shield thanks to this lovely talent called Borrowed Time. It is also the only stat that does this, so it’s very important as shields are a big part of what being a Discipline Priest is all about. There’s also no such thing as too much spellpower.

Another thing to note about spellpower: Currently every single healing class/spec besides a Disc Priest gets a spellpower boost from a base stat such as intellect (in the case of Holy Paladins and Resto Shaman) and spirit (in the case of Holy Priests and Resto Druids). Thus, we only get spellpower from spellpower.

Intellect

It makes you smarter! No, not really… sometimes, I wish it did. What intellect really does is increases your mana pool and also gives you a bit of crit and mp5, all of which are essential. The bigger your mana pool, the more spells you can cast and the larger your mana returns will be from Rapture and Replenishment. Currently intellect is slotted as the best stat to stack for mana regeneration—However, there can be such a thing as having too much intellect. The majority of the time, this is not a stat you really need to worry about since all cloth caster gear has intellect on it. If a piece of gear has more intellect on it than what you are currently wearing but less of everything else it is not an upgrade. There are many more factors that determine what is an upgrade and what isn’t than just how much intellect it has.

Stacking intellect is not a bad thing, but it has it’s consequences. You’ll be sacrificing other stats such as spellpower, haste, and crit in order to do so. In my opinion, it isn’t the best idea especially since it doesn’t give you spellpower. I’ll give you an example. Compare my spellpower, haste and crit to my friend Matticus. Currently we’re both raiding ToCr/ToGCr on 25-man every week and are wearing gear from those places. However, Matt uses trinkets that have intellect on them whereas I have one with intellect and one with spellpower. Matt also gems solely for intellect whereas I go with intellect/spellpower depending on what color the socket is. (More on gemming in the next article if you’re wondering what I put in blue sockets.) Here’s how our numbers factor out:

As you can see, Matticus has 155 more intellect (for ~2,300 more mana) than me but lacks about 370 spellpower. Sure, he’s able to cast more spells than me… but if you really think about it 2,300 mana is not that much of a difference. Most spells cost between 500-1,000 mana. That means he’s only able to cast between 2-5 spells more than me in any given fight (if there were 0 mana regen, of course, because I like simple math) Even so, his healing spells are not hitting for as much as mine are and his shields are absorbing less.

Spirit vs MP5

The great debate. Should you focus on one or the other or use both? Which is better? Which gives more regen? Well, I’m going to tell you this: For you, they’re pretty much the same. Spirit is a stat that increases your mana regen, and MP5 is just a raw mana regen number. Because we don’t get spellpower from spirit like Holy Priests do it isn’t as important a stat and it doesn’t really matter if you tank a piece of gear with MP5 instead. All of the current cloth caster gear has spirit on it, the only things you’re going to see with MP5 are trinkets, rings, neck pieces, and weapons/off-hands. Thus those are the only items you’ll even have to worry about this debate for.

While spirit is not equal to MP5 it comes very close. In order to get the most out of spirit, you have to have a ratio of it to intellect. Zusterke has a table and a calculating tool to help you figure stuff like that out. Spirit also has the benefit of stacking with buffs like Blessing of Kings. However, I have found that even fully raid-buffed my regen values from spirit have been slightly lower than the MP5 found on similar gear (based on numbers produced by the addon RatingBuster in my comparison tooltips). If you find yourself in a situation where you have two pieces of gear with the exact same stats as eachother except that one has spirit and one has MP5, I would choose the MP5. I would also gem for MP5 over gemming for spirit for the hybrid colors green and purple. (So, int/mp5 green gem instead of int/spirit.)

Haste vs Crit

The second great debate, and for this there’s no real right answer besides “it depends on your play style.” Both haste and crit are amazing stats to have as a Discipline Priest, and while you can choose to focus mainly on one I wouldn’t recommend it. Your best bet is to have a good amount of both, evenly dispersing your gear between the two.

Haste increases your casting speed and lowers the global cooldown (GCD). While the GCD can never become lower than 1 second your spellcasts can. So, if you find yourself with a Flash Heal that casts faster than 1 second (with Borrowed Time) you are not saving yourself any more time by stacking haste. It’s also good to remember that you will already have a base 6% haste due to the Enlightenment talent (which does not show up on your character pane in the haste tooltip). A good number to aim to keep your haste at is at least 10%, so 4% from gear. Currently I have a total of 15% haste with talents and gear and my Flash Heal takes ~1.2 seconds to cast without Borrowed Time. (With it it’s a little under a second, something like .942 seconds.)

Crit increases your chance to cast a critical heal which will heal for 150% of your spell instead of 100%. Crit also does one key amazing, amazing thing for Discipline Priests: It procs Divine Aegis. Thus the more crit you have, the more chances you have to proc DA shields and the more damage that will be absorbed. Unlike haste there’s really no such thing as too much crit. For T7 I aimed to keep my crit between 20-25% and in T8/9 between 25-30% for healing spells. (Which is 15-20% and 20-25% from gear, respectively.) Obviously raid-buffed these numbers will be higher.

Next up in L2Disc: How to make your gear choices, including enchants and gems.

How you choose your glyphs is an integral part of “customizing” your game play. (And by “customizing” you know I mean “maximizing your healing throughput,” right?) Figuring out what works best for you is key to both your enjoyment of the game and, you know, keeping the people you need to be healing alive. They like staying alive, I swear.

The first thing you need to figure out before diving into Glyphs is your role within a raid. Are you primarily the tank healer, like myself, or are you a crazy, insane primarily raid-healing Disc Priest like my dear friend Matticus? Or, are you not raiding at all and instead pwn n00bs in PVP?

Know what you are now? Great! Let’s get started—

The Glyphs, Explained

The Mandatory Glyph

Glyph of Penance
Why You Need It: With Penance being your bread-and-butter, I-just-spent-51-talent-points-to-get-to-you spell you want it to be off cooldown and available as often as possible. The only way to do that is with this glyph.
Why You Don’t: None.

The Tank Healing Glyphs

Glyph of Power Word: Shield
Why You Need It: With a spell you use as often as PW:S it makes sense to glyph it for added benefit. In this case, it adds an instant heal to your bubble that also has a chance to crit and apply Divine Aegis to your target.
Why You Don’t: The argument is often made that the heal from this Glyph has a high chance to overheal. While that may be true (You don’t shield a target after they’ve taken damage, of course! You shield them before!) the additional chance to proc a new or renew the duration of an existing Divine Aegis is reason enough to take this glyph.

Glyph of Flash Heal
Why You Need It: You’ve got PW:S up on your target, and they have Weakened Soul. You’ve used Penance to top them off. But, oh no! Your shield just got completely eaten by a 20k melee swing and your tank has sustained a bit of damage. But, Penance is still on CD! What do you do?… You Flash Heal, of course. And with this glyph you can do so with 10% less mana.
Why You Don’t: None. (Unless you only cast Greater Heal during raids. And if that’s the case, please don’t tell me. I’ll be very upset.)

The Raid Healing Glyphs

Glyph of Prayer of Healing
Why You Need It: With this being your only multi-target heal, you want to squeeze as much out of it as humanly possible. This glyph is especially handy where your raid is taking steady AoE damage such as the keeper Mimiron in Ulduar during Phase 2 and 4.
Why You Don’t: Besides the reasons why you shouldn’t be raid healing as Disc Priest, there’s no reason not to take this glyph as a raid healer.

The PVP Glyphs

Glyph of Pain Suppression
Why You Need It: I don’t know about you, but when I PVP I spend half the time sapped, cycloned, sheeped, stunned, silenced, or otherwise and my poor teammates are getting ganked fast without my heals. This glyph gives you a chance to do something about it when you’re stunned: Hit that PS button and save a friend!
Why You Don’t: If you’re not PVPing, there’s no real reason to take this glyph. If you are, there’s no real reason not to.

Glyph of Inner Fire
Why You Need It: More armor = Less physical damage taken = More time alive = More heals for your friends.
Why You Don’t: Your shield should be up most of the time, and therefore absorbing the majority of the damage you are taking. If not, I’m pretty sure the opposing faction will be slicing your ass so fast Inner Fire will run out of charges in no time at all, and you’ll probably forget to reapply it if you haven’t already died. Moral of the story? I don’t think this glyph really helps that much.

Glyph of Mass Dispel
Why You Need It: There’s no greater satisfaction than dispelling a crap load of buffs off opposing players. Especially Heroism/Bloodlust. I love doing that. And, of course, doing so with less mana means I can do it more!
Why You Don’t: Mana cost of things in PVP can be both negligible and a big deal, depending on your mana pool in your PVP gear. If your mana is above 20k you could probably skip this glyph for something else. If your mana pool is below that and you find yourself constantly spamming Mass Dispel when you’re not healing then this glyph is a good choice.

Choosing Your Arsenal

Tank healing? The choice is easy: Go with Penance, Power Word: Shield, and Flash Heal glyphs.
Raid healing? A little trickier, but not by much. Drop PW:S for Prayer of Healing or Holy Nova, with the former being more preferable.
PVPing? Drop Flash Heal for Pain Suppression, and it’s up to you whether or not to also drop PW:S for Mass Dispel or Inner Fire. Since I don’t PVP all that much, I can’t really advise further. (Side note: if you’re an experienced PVPing Discipline Priest and would like to write a post about it, please let me know! I’d love to feature your insight here where mine is so lacking.)

What About the Other Glyphs You Didn’t Mention?

There are quite a few glyphs I didn’t bother mentioning, actually. These would be Glyph of Dispel Magic, Glyph of Fade, Glyph of Fear Ward, Glyph of Holy Nova, Glyph of Hymn of Hope, Glyph of Psychic Scream, and Glyph of Renew. I didn’t mention them because they’re not really that useful the majority of the time. Sure, there are situations where one or another would be very handy. But you don’t really want to be swapping out glyphs for every boss fight, do you? That could quickly turn into an expensive endeavor for you.

Wrapping Up

I hope this post was helpful to you in choosing your glyphs! Of course if you have any questions, comments, complements or criticisms please feel free to voice your opinions in the comments! I love hearing from you.

Upcoming next: Gear!

In my experience, the only way to choose the right talents for your play style is to first have an understanding of what the talents do. So, I’m going to break down the talents for you one by one before I start getting into full specs. Get ready, set, go!

Holy Tree

I’m going to start with the Holy Tree because you can only really spend a maximum of 18 points in it before you consider yourself a either a Hybrid or a Holy Priest, and not Discipline.

Tier 1

Healing Focus: Pushback reduction is nice, and I have found it handy for fights like Mimiron during Phase 2 where I’m being shot at a lot. A lot of people skip this talent because they feel it doesn’t make much of a difference, but I’d rather not risk losing a tick of Penance, or having added cast time on a Flash Heal.

Improved Renew: Good only as a small improvement for your buffer spell. Additional healing on our one-and-only HoT has it’s advantages, but it’s certainly not an end-all make-it-or-break-it talent. Can be skipped in favor of talents in Tier 2.

Holy Specialization: If I ever see a Discipline Priest with any less than 5/5 in this talent, I die a little inside. CRIT IS IMPORTANT, and you should definitely take this because it’s a free 5% on all of your healing spells, because they’re all holy magic. (Yes, even the Discipline ones like Penance!) More chance for critical heals equals more chance for Divine Aegis procs, and who doesn’t want more of the shiny golden bubbles? There is no reason not to take this talent, and all 5 points will open up Tier 2.

Tier 2

Spell Warding: If you don’t feel strongly about putting 2/2 Healing Focus and 3/3 Improved Renew and will also never use Greater Heal and therefore not waste 5/5 in Divine Fury, then this talent is your only substitute to get to Tier 3. But the magical damage reduction in PvE is pretty much negligible.

Divine Fury: For those of you who cannot get yourself out of the Greater Heal rut, take 5/5 in this talent. Shorter cast times for a spell you refuse to not cast will be beneficial to you. Otherwise, skip it. I feel the 5 points could be better spent filling out Tier 1 completely to get to Tier 3.

Tier 3

Desperate Prayer: SUCH a handy spell! I don’t understand people who don’t take this talent, it’s saved my ass so many times. Definitely worth 1 point in my book.

Blessed Recovery: More or less a PvP talent, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone put any points into this for a PvE spec. Skip it.

Inspiration: If you are ever in your entire healing career going to heal a tank, even if it’s just once, FILL OUT THIS TALENT. The additional 10% mitigation on physical damage on any tank type is an amazing buffer to have. Hell, it’s nice to have on the raid, too!

Tier 4

Improved Healing: This is the only talent in Tier 4 Holy that I’m willing to discuss with you. For those paranoid about your mana pools (though I really have no idea why you should be) the mana reduction this offers to Penance is nice. However, that’s really the only spell that you’ll be casting with alacrity that this talent benefits. (Unless you’re a Greater Heal user.) To even get to this talent you’d have to spend another random point somewhere in the first 3 tiers to open it up, and then another 3 to fill it out. Considering it’s another 4 points spent here just to reduce the mana cost of one spell that you can’t even spam because it has a cooldown this talent is, in my not-so-humble opinion, not needed at all. (I would, however, consider taking it in a Hard Mode Vezax-specific spec. But only then.)

Discipline Tree

Now the fun part. Discipline is unique from Holy as a main tree because it has much less flexibility within it. There are PVP-specific talents and PvE-specific ones, along with those that benefit both. To get the most out of your Discipline Tree for your play style you have to pay careful attention to which talents you are sacrificing for others.

Tier 1

Unbreakable Will: Negligible in PvE, but perfect for PvP. If you’re creating a PvP spec, take this talent.

Twin Disciplines: For anything other than PvP your first 5 points in Discipline should be in this talent. It benefits so many of your spells, including Renew.

Tier 2

Silent Resolve: First things first, Healing has a different type of aggro table than DPS does. When you cast a healing spell approximately 65% of the health you’ve healed (repeat: HEALED, overheal does not effect aggro) is divided evenly among all mobs present at the cast time of the heal. So if you heal your tank for 1,000 you gain 650 aggro. If there are two mobs present, like a boss and an add, each mob gets 325 aggro towards the caster. If there are 3 mobs, each gains ~217 aggro and so on, so forth. With tanks generating as much aggro as they are capable of now and DPS as well, healers are usually on the bottom of the aggro table. Taking this talent makes a negligible difference in the aggro you generate from your spells. It WILL NOT save you from getting gibbed when an add spaws just as your amazing 15k Penance crit lands on the tank and it’s introduced with more aggro on you than anyone else because no one has attacked it yet. Situations like that is what your Fade spell is for, not this talent. With that being said, this talent is kind of mandatory in PvP because of the other benefit it gives you—making your buffs, DoTs, and HoTs harder to dispell.

Improved Inner Fire: In BC, this talent was considered a moot point. It didn’t really do all that much for you unless you PvPed. Now, however, due to the spellpower boost added to Inner Fire this talent is very handy and pretty much mandatory in my book for all specs. The armor bonus is great for PvP, and the spellpower bonus is great for everything. This is especially key for Discipline Priests as we currently have no talents that give us spellpower from a stat like Intellect (such as Pallies and Shaman) or Spirit (such as Holy Priests or Druids). You should take all the spellpower you can get!

Improved Power Word: Fortitude: This boost to stamina can considered base for any spec. However, these points can be sacrificed if you consistently run with other priests who have this talent, and thus your improved buff is not needed. Though, honestly, I don’t understand where else you’d put this point for a PvE spec, and in PvP all stamina is worth having.

Martyrdom: Strictly considered a PvP talent, you should skip this for PvE.

Tier 3

Meditation: Mandatory for all Priests, from Disc to Holy to Shadow, PvP to PvE.

Inner Focus: Incredibly handy for costly spells like Divine Hymn and for situations where you’re running low on mana and need to conserve. Inner Focus is off the global cooldown so you can macro it to Divine Hymn, like I did. When you’re running low on mana, cast Inner Focus and wait until the next heal is needed—the buff does not have a timer so you can wait an infinite amount of time before your next spell and Inner Focus will still be available to eat the mana cost.

Improved Power Word: Shield: Don’t even make me tell you that this talent is MANDATORY.

Tier 4

Absolution: If you are your raid’s designated dispell bitch, this might be a good talent for you to invest in. However, I really only see it being useful on fights were you’re spamming Mass Dispel. Because of this, I consider it a PvP talent.

Mental Agility: Unlike Absolution, this talent will reduce the mana cost of ALL your instant-cast spells and not just your dispell ones. Thus it takes care of Dispel Magic and Abolish Disease along with Renew, Power Word: Shield and all your buff spells, to name a few.

Improved Mana Burn: Another useful-only-in-PvP talent.

Tier 5

Reflective Shield: If you’re still leveling, this talent might be a little handy. The reflective damage only applies when the mob is attacking YOU, not someone else that you’ve cast a shield on. It’s pointless in PvE and situational in PvP.

Mental Strength: Considering the many benefits that you gain from Intellect (to be discussed at length later when I talk about gear) this talent is definitely worth maxing out.

Soul Warding: Another one of those talents where I will revoke your Disc-Priesting license if you don’t have it in your tree. This is what allows PW:S to be spamable.

Tier 6

Focused Power: Additional spell effectiveness to ALL healing spells plus a faster Mass Dispel? Yes, please!

Enlightenment: I would take this talent for the 6% haste increase alone, the increase to Spirit is a nice bonus though.

Tier 7

Focused Will: More free crit? This time not Holy-specific? Sure! The second part of this talent is also very handy for PvP.

Power Infusion: Help your raid help you, or just help yourself. It’s great to cast on random caster DPS to up the anty on any given boss fight if you’re feeling generous. If you’re feeling selfish, macro it to your Penance! You cast Penance often enough that this will keep it on cooldown.

Improved Flash Heal: Definitely worth maxing out for the mana reduction alone, and the added crit is a major plus! (For those of you who spent 18 points in the Holy tree to get Improved Healing and took 5/5 Divine Fury because you like to cast Greater Heal, you can probably skip this talent.)

Tier 8

Renewed Hope: More free crit? PLUS raid-wide mitigation? Mandatory talent. End of discussion.

Rapture: Easily your best and most reliable way to get mana returns, at higher levels of intellect the amount of mana you receive back actually exceeds the cost of the shield. So, uh… Mana producing shields, anyone? The second part of this talent will have your tanks thanking you, too. And maybe even some DPS.

Aspiration: Lower cooldowns for all your main spells? TAKE IT NAO!

Tier 9

Divine Aegis: The lovely crit-procced shields that this blog was named after! I can’t tell you how amazing Divine Aegis is until you really experience for yourself. The shields are stackable up to 10k absorption and each crit will renew it for a full duration. (The only time I’ve ever seen a Disc Priest skip this talent is in a PvP environment because PvP gear has little-to-no crit on it.)

Pain Suppression: Saving the asses of tanks everywhere. This is your mandatory cooldown for fights where your tank can’t live without one, or the occasional “OH SHIT!” situation. Awesome for PvP if you have it glyphed, as well. (Also of note: Contrary to popular belief this spell does not reduce the existing aggro of the target you cast it on. It only reduces the aggro generated while the buff is up, which is a negligible amount.)

Grace: This can be stacked up to 3 in a single Penance, and is renewed thereafter by every Flash Heal, Penance, or (gasp!) Greater Heal. Like Inspiration, if you’re ever going to heal a tank ever, it’s mandatory. (If you’re a crazy raid-healing Disc Priest I can see you forgoing this talent because it can only remain on one target at a time and thus is not ideal for whack-a-mole.)

Tier 10

Borrowed Time: There is no excuse, anywhere, for not putting all 5 points into this talent. None. Seriously. Absolutely none.

Tier 11

Penance: HOLY SPARKLES! …Okay, let’s be serious. This is your main spell besides PW:S and it only costs you a point! It’ll stack Grace to three each time you cast it. It gives you three chances to proc Divine Aegis instead of one like a traditional healing spell with a cast time. It heals just as much as Greater Heal for half the cost, in half the time. The first tick is instant! Did I mention it sparkles?

Putting It All Together

For optimal single-target healing efficiency in a PvE setting (aka: tank healing in heroics/raids) your best choice is a 57/14/0 build with variations in the Holy tree. You can go with one that uses Healing Focus and Improved Renew, which is my choice, or you’re that fan of Greater Heal I don’t understand, go with Divine Fury. Basically this is your starting point; Where you decide to put the talents to get to Tier 3 in the Holy Tree for 3/3 Inspiration and 1/1 Desperate Prayer is up to you. While this can be considered “cookie cutter,” you can see that there’s not really any other good places for your talent points to go.

If you’re going for a PvP build, though, your choices are a little less straight-forward. I would start with something like this as a shell, but since I am not well versed in PvP I can’t really advise you further.

Thank you for reading the first installment of L2Discpline, I hope you enjoyed it and learned something! Next time I get up on my soap box I have a thing or two to say about Glyphs.

Why? Well, you see there’s a million and one guides to holy priests out there. Wynthea’s writing a series for World of Matticus, Ensidia’s priest has one, to name a few. But if you google “Disciple Priest Guide” you get next to nothing. It’s rather sad and off-putting. :( And considering the amount of fail Discipline Priests I’ve seen (from inspecting random priests in Dalaran to PUGing), I feel the need to correct this issue and fill the gap.

Stay tuned—First thing I’m attacking is TALENTS.

It is no joke that this is a considerable nerf to Penance, especially considering that the Glyph was only introduced two patches ago and the Discipline Priest community had enough of an uprising the first time Blizzard suggested they were going to increase the cooldown and prevented it. Originally Blizz was just going to change the glyph, making it increase the crit chance of Penance or something equally underwhelming. This would have effectively put Penance back at to it’s original minimum 8-sec CD with talents.

This time around, Blizzard nerfed the base cooldown instead of the glyph, with the same end result of an 8-sec CD. However you have to have the Glyph along with the talent in order to get to it. As you’re probably already aware, there have been many arguments against this decision. Why not nerf/change the glyph instead, giving back other glyph options to Discipline Priests? Etc, etc.

Whether or not you are happy with the change, however, doesn’t really matter anymore—what’s done is done. Now we have to learn to live with it.

In a 5-minute fight, Penance on a 6-sec CD could be cast (if you spammed it every time the cooldown was up) 50 times. With an 8-sec CD, this is reduced to 37 times. That’s 13 less chances to hit Penance, which in retrospect isn’t a whole lot. This gives you more opportunity to rotate in your other healing spells. Here’s a few things you can do with your 39 extra GCDs. (If you’re wondering where I got 39 from all of a sudden, that includes the extra 2 seconds [assuming, of course, that your GCD is down to a second and there is no lag, which I am assuming this because it makes the math easier] you’ve now gained on every Penance cast because of the increased cooldown. So that’s 3 extra seconds to cast something else. 13 x 3 = 39.)

• Cast Power Word: Shield on yourself or a raid member (assuming your tank is already shielded and/or has the Weakened Soul debuff): There’s no harm in mitigating some raid damage while you wait for your CD to come up. And actually, depending on the size of your mana pool, this can be used as a mana regen method.
• Use Flash Heal: You can either spam it on the tank for Divine Aegis procs or splash some low raid members. (Though be mindful when using it on the raid, as you’ll lose the Grace buff on the tank until you heal him/her again.)
• Use a Borrowed Time-hastened Greater Heal: If you’re one of those people who has the talents for it.
• DPS!: That’s right, I said it. You could throw some DoTs on the boss while you wait if there is no healing to be done. The three seconds gives you enough time to pop Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Shadow Word: Death. (Again, assuming your GCD is 1 second and, like in my perfect math world, there is no lag.)
• Send in an angry GM ticket: Complaining about how you’ve written this entire ticket solely in the extra 3 seconds every time you’ve waited for Penance to come off CD.

There are, of course, a few other options available but these are my most used ones (except for that last one there). What do you do? Let us know via comments!

(Also big thanks to Crutches, our healing lead for standing still while I shot him with holy sparkles and took pictures. :D )

For paladins especially, this question defines almost every aspect of our playstyle. Because our class is built on extremes (more on that later) there is a tendency to say that there are two ways to play a paladin healer in PVE, which sync up fairly exactly with our two core healing spells, Flash of Light (small, efficient) and Holy Light (big, costly.) This leads to a lot of myths: that we only spam Holy Light, that we only want Intellect, that all we do is overheal so spellpower is useless, and the biggest one of all: that Flash of Light and Holy Light are incompatible.

I suspect this post may be a little controversial, because it seeks to question precisely that long-standing dichotomy. Believe it or not, there is a middle ground… even for paladins.

When I said that our class is built on extremes, what I meant is that many of our options fall on the far ends of the throughput vs. longevity spectrum, and there’s almost no room in between. Let’s look at some examples.

Holy Light vs. Flash of Light

This is the big one. Flash of Light has an extremely low base healing value but also an extremely low base cost. What this means is that when you are using primarily Flash of Light, you won’t really need to worry about longevity—the low cost is mostly taken care of by baseline Replenishment, mp5 buffs, etc. On the other hand, you’ll absolutely have to worry about throughput. FoL actually has a decent spellpower coefficient, 100%; it’s better than other spells of its cast time in part because the old fossil Blessing of Light was “folded into” our spells in Wrath of the Lich King.

Holy Light, on the other hand, has massive base healing and a hefty mana cost. If you use primarily Holy Light, throughput will not be much of an issue, but longevity will become paramount. In tiers 7 and 8, common practice was to do absolutely everything you can do to maximize longevity so that you can “spam” Holy Light as much as possible. With the nerf to Illumination in 3.2, some of us are rethinking this strategy. But more on that later.

Glyph of Seal of Wisdom vs. Glyph of Seal of Light

On the surface, this is a pretty straightforward case of throughput vs. longevity. Do you want to heal for 5% more, or do you want to save 5% mana off the cost of each heal? Unfortunately, there’s more involved in this decision than shows up in those tooltips, and Glyph of Seal of Wisdom cheats. This makes it very difficult to choose Light with a clear conscience. Using GoSoL means that you cannot have Seal of Wisdom up, which means you cannot melee for mana and you won’t get mana back when you judge. Instead, you would be healing yourself when meleeing or judging, which isn’t a bad thing but it isn’t an especially helpful thing either. When the decision is between “longevity for all your healing” or “extra healing… on yourself but no one else” it’s not much of a decision. That said, I’d still switch between the two sometimes if it could be done in combat…

Avenging Wrath vs. Divine Illumination

This is my favorite pairing, mostly because it took me forever to realize how parallel these spells have become. Both three minute cooldowns, one that increases longevity and one that increases throughput. The great thing about them, however, is that they pair with one of our main spells to do the exact opposite: Avenging Wrath can be a longevity cooldown if you use Flash of Light during it, since AW will compensate for FoL’s throughput, but the bonus to longevity will remain. Likewise, Holy Light during Divine Illumination will fix HL’s heavy mana cost penalty while providing the throughput advantage that’s built in to HL.

This is the kind of balancing act that we can do all the time, not just when these cooldowns are up. A lot of people on the forums clamor for a “middle” healing spell, between FoL and HL. Other think we need a talent like the moonkin’s Eclipse, to encourage us to use both spells.

Both of those things may be true, and I certainly wouldn’t say no to either. But for the time being, I think the principle challenge of holy paladin healing is to work with what we’ve got, to learn when we can use Flash to conserve mana (my bar actually goes up while I spam FoL) and when we need to bite the bullet and spam HL to keep a tank alive.

 Of course, there are several common objections:

“BUT FLASH ISN’T BIG ENOUGH, MY TANK WILL DIE.”

There are not many encounters in the game where this is true. Assembly of Iron hardmode requires spamming HL for the burn at the end of the fight, but this is a very short window of time compared to the fight as a whole, and balancing our spells prior to that final burn phase means we can start it at nearly full mana. Thorim’s hardmode is another case like this, as he gains a high number of stacks towards the end of phase 2, his melee swings become ridiculously strong. Flash of Light will not sustain a tank through this. But are you noticing a trend? In both of these cases, the period of time for which you’ll need to go all out with throughput is fairly short, and for the rest of the fight the usual balancing act is perfectly viable. The only fight right now that requires maximum throughput throughout the entire fight is Algalon. And it so happens that Ghostcrawler has said several times now that fights like Algalon were balanced around Holy Light spam. It’s a model they want to get away from, because it’s a bad model. And it’s not a necessary one.

 What makes me say it’s unnecessary? Discipline priests. Discipline priests have healed every encounter in the game, and if they could spam nothing but Penance, I’m sure that’s what they’d do. But they can’t because of its cooldown. So they use other spells, like Flash Heal, to cover the gaps. Holy Light has no cooldown, so its restriction is its mana cost. The world will not end if we use Flash of Light occasionally, especially now that it applies a heal-over-time effect.

 “BUT YOU CAN’T USE FLASH IF YOU GEAR FOR HOLY LIGHT.”

 This is patently untrue. I gear mostly for Holy Light, and my Flash of Light’s average value according to a World of Logs report on a fight earlier this week was 4,856. Average crit, 7,285. This is slightly less than Lilitharien’s average Flash Heal on the same fight, but my FoL casts faster. (Hers also procs Divine Aegis shields on crits, so it’s something of a toss-up, but the point is that it’s not apples and oranges. At worst, red apples and green apples.)

 A corollary to this objection is the idea that “spellpower is useless because it only increases overhealing.” This had a little more weight back in T7, when Illumination was twice as strong, we stacked crit, and damage was lower overall. Nowadays, that spellpower doesn’t just boost Flash of Light. With increased tank damage and lower crit rates (from switching to mp5 gear), Holy Light will often not overheal. And the funny thing? The times it does overheal are times you probably could have used Flash of Light safely. In a recent forum debate about the Algalon encounter, with many parses posted, the one in which the paladin did the highest effective health per second was one in which he was using Flash of Light. (Admittedly he was using a Touched by the Light build, but I think it’s still noteworthy, especially because TbtL does zilch on non-crits.)

 There’s also the fact that spellpower boosts our Sacred Shield, which is one of our best means of reducing incoming tank damage, as well as Holy Shock… an inefficient spell, the throughput of which comes in the form of speed rather than value. But it can save lives if it’s big enough.

 “BUT IF I STACK ENOUGH INTELLECT AND MAYBE GET INNERVATES I CAN STILL SPAM HL.”

Sure, so can I. But if there’s something we should learn from the 3.2 nerfs, it’s that the developers don’t want us to be able to spam Holy Light with impunity. I think there’s a substantial advantage to adopting a more balanced playstyle, as you never know when the numerical values you rely on will change.

 So, to close, I just want to stress that I’m not saying it’s wrong to gear/spec/glyph/play for more Holy Light or more Flash of Light—as I said, I myself prefer to gear for longevity. I’m not suggesting that 50% Flash 50% HL is the answer; I’m using the word “balance” far more loosely than that. Some fights will require more of one than the other. But it’s worth being able to shift your balance as the requirements change—whether between fights, phases, patches, or expansions. This is also why I love items that embrace a balance between throughput and longevity in themselves… AKA: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Solace of the Fallen.

My opinions on this boss encounter are somewhat skewed because of the circumstances under which I fought him. On 10-man, he was an absolute breeze, and I found myself seriously questioning the rumors that I’d heard about it being a “healing-intensive” encounter. My second run-in with the big red guy was on 25-man, and it was a nightmare. I’ve since realized, though, that this was less about Jaraxxus and more about the raid. First, we didn’t know about dispelling Nether Power. We thought his Fel Lightning was one-shotting people because it must chain the way Thorim’s does. But in fact it does not. Even after we figured that out, we had a sort of off-raid that night, which meant that we had only two mages to dispel the aforementioned Nether Power, and we had NO REPLENISHMENT. It was rough.

Happily, with proper raid buffs and dispellers, Jaraxxus is not bad at all. On with the show!

Jaraxxus has a variety of abilities that have minimal bearing on a holy paladin’s routine. He buffs himself with Nether Power, which must be dispelled. He casts Fel Fireball, which must be interrupted. He summons two types of add: Infernals and Mistresses of Pain, which must be tanked. But there are still a number of his abilities that we can do something about.

The first and simplest is Touch of Jaraxxus. It’s a magic debuff that seems (in my experience, anyway) to only be placed on his primary aggro target. We just need to dispel it as soon as possible, so it doesn’t spread too many curses.

The second ability to watch for is Incinerate Flesh. This will be cast on a random raid member throughout the fight. I would strongly recommend that you add this debuff to your list of tracked debuffs, whether on Grid, Healbot, or specific tracking add-on. It works like an absorption bubble that absorbs healing instead of damage. The amount that it can absorb fluctuates based on the difficulty setting of the encounter (30k on 10-man normal, 40k on 10-man heroic, 60k on 25-man normal, and a whopping 85k on 25-man heroic.) Once you’ve thrown enough healing its way, the “bubble” will pop harmlessly and the target will resume doing full damage. If, however, you do not pop the bubble by doing the requisite amount of healing after 12 seconds, the target will explode and deal pulses of damage to the raid. You want to avoid this whenever possible.

The nasty thing about this particular debuff is that, as holy paladins, we’re a great option for healing it. Our “big heal” is spammable (unlike Penance, for example), and we tend to gear and spec to maximize our ability to spam it. Why is this nasty? Because the heals are “Absorbed,” which means they don’t transfer via Beacon of Light. It’s a pain, but Jaraxxus’ tank damage is generally not so severe that we can’t afford to Holy Light the Incinerated Flesh a couple times, even without Beacon transfer.

Legion Flame is another debuff to be aware of, as you’ll probably catch it at least once or twice during the encounter. The debuff lasts six seconds and spawns fire under you. However, in my very limited experience, it seems to behave strangely. Whether due to graphical latency or design, the fire doesn’t spawn immediately, and if you spend all six seconds running to the back of the arena, your whole trail will light up with fire when the debuff expires. The important thing is that you do not stand still, and that you do not run the fire through other people.

Finally, there’s Fel Lightning. Your raid should spread out in the usual fashion for dealing with Chain Lightning-style abilities, but as I mentioned in the into, this is not Thorim’s lightning. It doesn’t grow stronger with each jump. It’s very manageable damage, so long as Jaraxxus doesn’t have too many stacks of Nether Power up when he casts it.

And that’s pretty much it for Jaraxxus. Except… his adds have a few tricks of their own.

Mistress’ Kiss is an ability that should worry any holy paladin that reads its description. I certainly was. Unlike every other healing class, we only have access to a single spell school (holy.) If we get this debuff, our only options are to rely on instant spells for the duration, bubble out of it, pop Aura Mastery with Concentration Aura, or just suck it up and eat the interrupt. Unfortunately, I can’t give any first-hand advice as to which of these is the best choice, since I never got the debuff, in 10- or 25-man. And the weird thing? Neither did any of the other healers I talked to. I’ve got nothin’.

Spinning Pain Spike does damage equal to a percentage of the target’s health. That percentage fluctuates with difficulty setting, but on all settings, it’s pretty serious. This, along with Incinerate Flesh above, is something you’ll want to track, because massive damage will follow the three-second “You’re being targeted!” debuff. Power Word: Shield is really the ace in the hole for dealing with this ability, but we can still prime a heal to help with the damage that gets through.

The only other thing of note won’t affect you directly, but you still need to know about it: Shivan Slash. This will keep the damage on the Mistress’ offtank even higher and spikier than the damage on Jaraxxus’ tank. Something to be aware of, both in selecting your spells and your healing assignments.

Fel Inferno is the only thing to really worry about with regard to the Infernals that Jaraxxus will spawn. All it means is that you should always try to be 15 yards away from them.

Now let’s talk about our cooldowns. There’s a lot of raid damage, but it’s all very spiky and hard to predict. This means mitigation cooldowns like Aura Mastery (you’ll notice that most of the damage is Fire, so rock the FR aura if you can) and Divine Sacrifice don’t have an easy “USE ME NOW” moment. If you find yourself forced to bubble, say due to Mistress’ Kiss, then go ahead and use Divine Sacrifice then, while the bubble is up anyway. If infernals start AOEing the raid due to poor placement, it’s another good time to pop something.

Damage will be highest while a Mistress of Pain is active, so if you’re being conservative with Divine Plea, wait until one of them has just died. Based on my limited testing (in a replenishment-free post-battlerez environment of pure chaos) it is mostly safe to melee Jaraxxus for Seal of Wisdom procs. His Fel Lightning seems to always prioritize ranged targets before melee targets. The only time it’s not safe is if Infernals are in range, or if a portal is opening (they cause AOE damage as well.)

Aaand… that’s about it for Big Red. Looking forward to playing with the Faction Champions this coming week, which you’ll be able to read all about in the third installment of this series.

Personally, I keep Renew ticking on any tanks that I am assigned to along with making sure they have a Weakened Soul debuff in any fights where mana isn’t an issue. When mana is an issue, like on General Vezax, I do not cast Renew. Why? Three reasons:

1. It’s expensive and offers no mana returns.
2. I didn’t glyph for it.
3. The healing it could have done will most likely be taken care of by another one of my spells or someone else’s.

Renew is not considered a bread-and-butter spell for Discipline Priests, and with good reason. Only two of the talents in the Disc tree affect Renew: Twin Disciplines and Mental Agility. However, these are not Renew-specific talents and a Disc priest is not taking them specifically to benefit Renew. These talents also affect Power Word: Shield and Prayer of Mending, two very important spells for a Disc Priest along with Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain, and Shadow Word: Death for the occasional DPSing (when healing is light, of course!).

There is a talent available in the first tier of the Holy tree that does buff Renew specifically, Improved Renew. However, I only know a handful of Discipline Priests (including myself) who prefer to take this talent over Divine Fury and Spell Warding. The reason I chose to take Improved Renew over Divine Fury is because I cast Greater Heal an average total of 0 times during a raid. My rotation—if it could be called that—involves Prayer of Mending, Power Word: Shield, Penance, Flash Heal, with Renew following as a buffer and perhaps another Flash Heal until the Weakened Soul debuff drops and/or Penance comes off cooldown. For me, Penance has basically replaced what I used to use Greater Heal for back in BC, so I have no real use for the Divine Fury talent. However, since I do cast Renew as a buffer taking the Improved Renew talent was the next best choice.

On the other hand, I haven’t seen Renew make up more than 5% of my healing on any given night even with 3/3 Improved Renew. As such with HoTs, the healing offered by Renew often gets sniped by other heals landing and topping off the target before Renew has the chance to tick. This, of course, also gives the spell a high overheal percentage. And even though I opted to take the Improved Renew talent, I did not fill a glyph slot with Glyph of Renew. The glyph’s usefulness is up for debate as well. It reduces the amount of ticks Renew has but increases the healing per tick, basically resulting in more-or-less the same total healing amount but in less time. Since I use Renew as a buffer, I don’t really want to shorten its ticking time even if the ticks were healing for more.

So, the bottom line is:

• Can you live without casting Renew? Yes. Casting a Renew certainly won’t make or break your healing rotation. It won’t save a tank in a crisis, either. It does help, but only a little.
• Are you a bad Disc Priest if you do cast Renew? Only if you’re running out of mana because of spamming the spell.
• Should you talent for it? If you never, ever use GHeal, don’t see the point in taking Spell Warding, and do cast Renew as a buffer then yes.
• Should you glyph for it? Probably not.

This post will lay out the key mechanics of the new bosses for a holy paladin. This is not meant to be a full write-up or Bosskillers-style strategy guide… Instead, I look at each encounter in terms of potential holy paladin opportunities: when is it safe to use Divine Plea? Can you melee this boss for mana? When is the best time for Divine Sacrifice or Aura Mastery? There will undoubtedly be things that I do not cover (like the need for Jaraxxus’ buffs to be dispelled or his Fel Fireballs to be interrupted) because they have no real bearing on holy paladins.

I hope this will prove useful not only to my fellow holy paladins, but also raid leaders and healing leaders who want to assign their paladins optimally in the new instance.

All that said, let’s look at the new bosses!

Our first encounter is the “Northrend Beasts”–three of them. Well, four of them. Well, four and some snobolds. Are snobolds beasts?

The encounter is a series of bosses, with no out-of-combat time between bosses. Essentially it’s one boss with three very disparate phases. Unlike Mimiron, these phase changes are so quick that there’s not even really time for a Divine Plea between them. The first phase is a fight against:

Gormok is probably the most straightforward of the three (or four) beasts you’ll be fighting. Here’s the scoop:

Gormok is an absolutely perfect fight for Beacon of Light. He places a stacking DoT called Impale on his primary aggro target. Due to the stacking bleed effect, two tanks will alternate taunting him so that neither of them gain more stacks than can be reasonably healed through. This means that in 10-man, both of your tanks will be taking simultaneous damage for pretty much the entire fight. In 25-man, your raid will have to decide how many tanks to rotate through, but anywhere from 2-4 would be reasonable. This means that we can easily maintain a steady flow of HPS on two tanks at all times. Raid damage is minimal, so you’ll likely find yourself healing your Beacon target through a second tank.

Gormok will also create patches of resistable fire on the ground, so depending on your raid composition and other auras and resistance buffs available, you may want to turn on Fire Resistance Aura to help raid members as they move out of the fire. The fire is a fairly static feature, so there’s no particular moment that popping Aura Mastery will do the most good–just use your best judgement. In addition, Gormok will toss Snobolds onto the backs of random raid members. DPS will need to kill these, unless you’re going for a particularly hilarious achievement, but the damage they do is very minor–no real need to help out on raid healing, especially since you have the ideal two-tank setup already in place for Beacon.

In terms of mana, if you use Seal of Wisdom, all of your procs will have to come from Judgement on Gormok. His Staggering Stomp ability will interrupt (and lock out) spellcasting for eight seconds to all targets within 15 yards, which means we cannot safely melee him for mana without risking interruption. Unlike Freya’s Ground Tremor or Ignis’ Flame Jets, there is not enough time to ensure that you can stop casting before the interrupt goes off. So, just stay at range. As long as your tanks are good at swapping at a reasonable number of stacks, the damage on this fight is not especially difficult to heal, and it should not really tax your mana pool. Do note, however, that Impale will continue to tick even after Gormok is dead, all the way into the next phase. So you’ll need to keep the heals flowing all the way into the next encounter.

Phase two of the fight is what makes three phases equal four beasts: that’s right, not one but two Jormungar worms.

As there are two worms, so too must there be two tanks. Yep, that’s right, another fight right up Beacon’s alley. When Ghostcrawler referred to us as “exceptional dual-target healers,” he may have had this place in mind. Acidmaw is, for convenient shorthand, the poison one. Dreadscale, on the other hand, is the fire one. The worms will occasionally burrow into the ground and re-emerge elsewhere. Each time this happens, they will alternate: one will be rooted into the ground, and the other will be mobile. When Acidmaw is mobile, he’ll drop Slime Pools, very similar to the ones from Grobbulus back in Naxx. Because of this, the tank will be moving him around constantly. This means that the two tanks will often be varying distances from each other. Fortunately the new range on Beacon of Light means that you’ll be able to reliably heal them both throughout the duration of the encounter. This is definitely a fight where you want your assignment to be “the tanks, both of them.”

Raid damage will come primarily from the debuffs placed on random raid members, Burning Bile from Dreadscale and Paralytic Toxin from Acidmaw. Burning Bile will deal periodic damage, and Paralytic Toxin will paralyze you after a short time, causing a highly-damaging long-duration stun that will prevent you from doing anything, let alone healing the tanks. Happily, the bile can be used to cancel out the toxin. So if you are at risk of being paralyzed, you need only move near someone with Burning Bile to remove the debuff, or have them move to you (the toxin will snare you. Hand of Freedom didn’t seem to help.) Nonetheless, fire damage will be happening no matter what, so Fire Resistance Aura remains an excellent choice.

Unlike Gormok, we can safely melee the rooted worm, just so long as we avoid any poison clouds and stay behind them (they both deal constant damage at a very rapid rate to any target in front of them.) This is good, because if your mana will start aching at any point during the Northrend Beasts encounter, now is as likely as ever.

When the first worm is killed, the second enters a soft enrage. Now is a good time to use either Divine Sacrifice or Hand of Sacrifice while bubbled, to alleviate the tank damage during the enrage. That said, the enrage is not particularly rough, and you may wish to save Divine Sacrifice for the next phase.

Icehowl is the last boss you’ll face in the Northrend Beasts encounter, and I have to say: at least on normal difficulty, he’s the easiest.

Icehowl requires a single tank, so Beacon will be slightly less useful here. There’s still some sporadic raid damage you can toss a Holy Light or three on though, so it’s not useless by a long shot. Occasionally he’ll spin around and use his Arctic Breath on a portion of the raid, freezing them solid and dealing a decent amount of damage. Switching to Frost Resistance Aura is a sound move, and popping Aura Mastery during the breath will help. If you’re unfrozen, now’s the time to heal the raid and let Beacon take care of the tank. The damage will not kill anyone on its own, assuming a basic level of gearedness, but they’ll need to be topped off so that they aren’t killed by his big move: Massive Crash.

Massive Crash is what the fight is all about. He hops to the center of the arena and stuns everyone, flinging them against the walls. It does a lot of damage, so when you see him start to leap, it’s a great time to pop Divine Sacrifice (while bubbled, of course) and mitigate 40% of it. Once everyone is stunned and flung against walls, he’ll turn towards a raid member (with a nice easily-visibile yellow text warning as to whom he’s targeting) and then rush towards them. Everyone in the area needs to bolt like lightning out of the way as soon as the stun wears off.

After that, it’s all about whether or not you got out of the way in time. If you didn’t, whoever was hit will almost certainly be dead. In addition (as if that wasn’t punitive enough) Icehow will go into a Frothing Rage, increasing his damage and attack speed by 50-100%, depending on difficulty setting–it’s pretty serious. You’ll need to spam big heals, tanks will need to pop cooldowns, and if the tank should die, a new one will need to pick Icehowl up. It’s bad times for everyone.

If you did get out of the way, he becomes stunned and takes increased damage. Do this reliably and he becomes the biggest cuddliest loot pinata ever. Much like XT’s heart or a stunned tentacle on Yogg, you should take this opportunity to whack him for Seal of Wisdom procs. No damage will be happening, and you might as well. Even without SoW-melee, mana should not be an issue here. Even if your raid fails at dodging his charge, the damage only comes in short, predictable bursts followed by long, long lulls. There’s a lot of time to regen, whether through Divine Plea or just mp5. If you do need the mana, however, make sure to wait until he’s stunned to melee him. Otherwise you’ll likely catch one of his Whirls, which can make healing a little difficult.

And that’s it! Beasts defeated, loot collected, and on to Lord Jaraxxus. Which is where I’ll be picking up this weekend with Part 2 of this little series. Hope it was helpful.

As you may know, in 3.2 paladins were given the gift we didn’t know we wanted (and some of us still aren’t sure): a HoT attached to our Flash of Light spell. In the legalese fine-print style that has become common of so many of our spells (have you read Hand of Protection‘s tooltip recently? void where prohibited) it will only apply if we cast Flash of Light on someone who is currently affected by Sacred Shield—the buff itself, not the proc.

Personally, I’ve wanted a tank-healing HoT ever since Azgalor, but I’ll save discussion of the merits of the HoT for another post. This one is all about tracking the darned thing. Since 3.2 was released, I’ve tried a lot of different add-ons for this, and I thought I’d share the options I’ve found in a brief rundown.

The Contenders:

Power Auras: Classic

This is one of my favorite add-ons. Its versatility is unparalleled in terms of the way you can display cooldowns, used abilities, buff or debuff durations, procs, and more. I’ve had some trouble getting it to read my focus target’s buffs, but I’m told that it is capable of tracking the FoL HoT on your focus target, even if I fail at getting it to do so. I still use it for things like Judgements of the Pure, Light’s Grace, Divine Plea duration, trinket procs, and notably Art of War procs in my ret offspec.

Advantages: Multiple ways of displaying information, much more varied than your standard bars and timers.
Disadvantages: Some problems displaying Focus target information.
3.2 Compatible?: Mostly yes, even though the add-on itself hasn’t been updated in some time.

ClassTimer

This is a new find for me, but it’s one that I ultimately decided had earned a permanent spot on my UI. It’s a fairly standard timer mod, with options for every class and virtually every ability you can imagine. At the time of this writing, you have to add the spell “Flash of Light” manually, but after doing so it worked like a charm. You could very easily use this to track all of your buffs, debuffs, and cooldowns, but since I was already using Power Auras, I limited (by painstakingly unchecking about 4,000 things) my monitoring to Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield, and Flash of Light.

But here’s the big reason I like ClassTimer:

See how there are two Sacred Shield buffs? ClassTimer tracks and displays both the buff itself as well as the proc. They (annoyingly) share the same name, which causes problems for a lot of add-ons.

The reason this is great is because there’s a little skill minigame involved in maximizing your FoL HoT. Many forumites have declared the way Sacred Shield works and the way Flash of Light works to be contradictory: surely the 50% crit means you want to spam FoL on the target, but the HoT means you only want to apply it every 12 seconds. In practice, there’s synergy there, you just have to look at it without our pre-3.2-conceived notions of what SS+FoL is for. Even having dropped a boatload of crit for mp5 in 3.2, with raid buffs and the Sacred Shield proc up, my FoL crit chance is very nearly 90%. That’s an almost guaranteed crit, meaning a HoT worth 150% more. With an addon that lets you track your proc, which tank avoidance will help stay up for the one second you need, you can time your refreshes to ensure that your FoL will crit, meaning maximum HoT coverage.

I also love that it uses the Shared Media library, so I can plaster my frilly Glamour textures on it and make it match my Pitbull frames. >.>

Advantages: Simple, easy to configure, wide-range of uses, tracks SS buff AND proc, Shared Media library!
Disadvantages: As with most of these mods, you’ll need to make your SS target your focus target to track these buffs.
3.2 Compatible?: Yes.

DoTimer

This is another tracking mod very similar to ClassTimer. The configuration is more complicated and it doesn’t use the Shared Media library, but it’ll track Flash of Light and anything else you need tracked.

Advantages: Solid all-purposed tracking mod.
Disadvantages: No pretty glamour textures. QQ.
3.2 Compatible?: Yes.

HealMinder

Here’s one you probably haven’t heard of. It was made by a paladin specifically to track the new Flash of Light HoT, and I have to say: it’s absolutely perfect for what it does. It also displays the information in a way that none of the other mods do: it shows the health value remaining on the HoT, which ticks down in real time. This is useful because it lets you know the strength of the applied HoT. It does not show the duration. As such, I think it’s the perfect complement to one of the timer mods. Configuration is a snap, it’s very lightweight, and it can alert you with text and/or sound when your HoT expires. And best of all? It doesn’t require your Flash target to be your focus target. It’ll even work on random un-grouped bystanders in Dalaran.

Advantages: One of its kind in terms of display, easy config, easy legibility, lightweight.
Disadvantages: Only shows the duration in terms of health value, not time. It’s also a very limited mod, but hey that’s what we’re here for.
3.2 Compatible?: Duh!

GridStatusHoTs

This is a plug-in for the popular raidframe, Grid. It tracks HoTs and buffs like Sacred Shield and Beacon of Light. It can track the FoL HoT just fine. My only problem is that it cannot tell Sacred Shield (buff) from Sacred Shield (proc) and so if you set it to flash or change colors when Sacred Shield is about to expire, it will read the proc before the buff, which is always about to expire. It’s a bit maddening–so much so that I ended up going back to Healbot for a lightweight click-to-heal mod.

Advantages: Tracks the FoL HoT and similar trackable buffs.
Disadvantages: Confounded by Sacred Shield.
3.2 Compatible?: I know Grid has a 3.2 update, but GridStatusHoTs does not. I believe it still functions though.

Aaand, that’s my HoT-tracking roundup. This is by no means an exhaustive list of add-ons capable of tracking our new HoT, but it’s certainly a good place to start. Honorable mentions that did not make this particular list include CLCBPT and TellMeWhen; I haven’t personally used either of them, but I’m told they’re both very good. So do check them out if none of the above float your boat.

Let me be the first to welcome you to Divine Aegis, a new healer-centric blog focused on tank healing maintained by yours truly, Lilitharien, and my fellow guildie and tank healer, Lyriel (who I’m sure will post his own intro later). We’re a Discipline-Priest-and-Holy-Paladin combination, and we’ve been working together to keep the tanks in our guild(s) alive for over 6 months.

Lyriel finally got the idea to make his own blog and made a Blogspot account, and I was lamenting that I’d love to start my own healing blog too but it wasn’t really that much fun doing it by yourself. In fact, it’s a lot of work to maintain a blog! One needs motivation, time, and all that jazz. It’s much easier with two or more people doing it together. So, Lyriel goes “Well, we’re both tank healers. Why don’t you blog with me?”

And thus—Divine Aegis is born!

Expect to find informative, but (we hope!) fun-to-read posts about healing, raiding, gear, talent specs, spell use, rotations, healycrafting, macros, addons, and a whole lot more. We’re excited to start this new venture and share our talents, experience, not-so-humble opinions with you!