I’ve debated for a bit how to make this post…or whether to.  I’ve been distracted by Cataclysm, and gearing for raids.  I’ve even been too distracted to post my (very much appreciated) Guest Posts and other posts I spent hours writing.  There were also the the holidays, which I have, unfortunately, generally find depressing the last few years.  And also, inconveniently or not, I needed to get my computer repaired again, causing me to be completely off the radar for a bit.  But it’s really been something else.

My favoritest cat passed away recently and this hit me a lot harder than I expected.

Again, feel free to bypass this post if it doesn’t call out to you.

He was a really delightful guy.  He slept with me – right by my pillow – every night for years.  He curled up right next to me when I got on my computer every day, resting his head on my wrist as I played.  Most people I raid with don’t know how often he was there too, nuzzling me when we all wiped.  He spent time with me every single morning when I woke up; every day I came home late from work.  Friends got used to hearing him bleat like a little lamb in the background in vent during quiet times, when he’d come up to me with his favorite toy – a stuffed cherry – and beg me (quite audibly) to throw it for him and play fetch.

He was the bestest cat ever, and I can’t begin to say how brave he was in facing a chronic illness for more than a year.  How he woke up every day ready to play and have fun and love me, regardless of being weak or sick.  He’s made every single day better since I took him home five years ago.

But one day, he couldn’t.

His sister and I are trying to figure things out.

She’s lonely and doesn’t get what happened to her lifetime companion…and I know better and I’m still wondering what happened to the sweet guy who got me through the last few years of trials in my life.  I think we may be adopting soon (since someone won’t let me sleep for trying to play for hours at a time.)  Meanwhile, I’m trying to help her…and find a little peace myself.

I seem fine until I try to talk about it.

So I don’t.

If you have a beloved cat (or even a dog *gasp* or turtle or parrot or petofanysort), please toss him or her a toy or a special treat today.  Just for Merc.

For my turn at the podium, I decided that I would talk about the recently released updates on the new factions that are going to be featured in Cataclysm and which factions should be at the top of your list to grind and why.

So, without further ado, here are my top 3 factions to grind in Cataclysm – in order of overall quality of rewards for priests.

Third Place: Therazane (Deepholm)

Therazane is to Cataclysm what Sons of Hodir were to Wrath of the Lich King.  This is the faction that most of us will be getting out shoulder enchants from.  Unlike the Sons of Hodir offerings, there is no choice between a intellect/critical strike and an intellect/spirit enchant.  There is only one choice for all casters and that one involves intellect/haste. As luck would have it, these are terrific stats for any priest to have, so the lack of choice is not really a bad thing.

Like the Sons of Hodir, this faction has very little to offer other than the shoulder enchants for those that are Exalted with Therazane.  There is a lesser version of the shoulder enchants, which you can receive at Honored with Therazane and then a blue quality caster DPS ring that you could possibly reforge to include spirit on it.  Otherwise nothing else of real value can be found with this faction.

Second Place:  Guardians of Hyjal (Mount Hyjal)

The Guardians of Hyjal have much more to offer, starting with the de facto head enchant for all casters, which includes intellect/critical strike rating.  Critical strike rating isn’t too wonderful for holy priests, with the exception of being useful for Inspiration, but discipline priests should enjoy that small boost to their character sheets.  Similiar to Therazane, there are no real choices for casters seeking a current head enchant.  This is the only one we get.

This faction also offers two blue cloaks to choose from, the Cloak of the Dryads and the Thousand Bandage Drape .  Both have very similiar stats and only require Honored reputation with the Guardians of Hyjal.  Personally, I would lean towards the Cloak of the Dryads, because you can obtain it at level 83 and it offers more spirit and stamina than the other cloak.  The high amount of mastery can be reforged into something else, based on your needs (such as haste) or you can keep it on there, if you feel you are at a point where large amounts of mastery are useful for you.

The most enticing reward from the Guardians of Hyjal, next to the head enchant is the Cord of Raven Queen, an epic quality belt you can receive at Exalted.  It comes with a healthy amount of stamina and spirit and a blue gem slot, which you can place a intellect/spirit gem in and receive a nice socket bonus of 10 intellect.  Again, the mastery can easily be reforged into something else, based on your personal tastes or needs at the time.

First Place:  Horde – Hellscream’s Reach/ Alliance – Baradin’s Wardens (Tol Barad)

Tol Barad has been described as a combination of Wintergrasp and the Isle of Quel’danas, from Burning Crusade.  One portion will consist of an outdoor PVP zone that the Alliance and Horde can fight for control of, which will unlock Baradin Hold and provide encounters similiar to Archavon, Toravon and such.  The other side of Tol Barad will consist of a daily quest hub and will contain more dailies for the faction in control at the time.

First up is the Shimmering Morningstar, a great one handed mace with a strong amount of initial spellpower and nice all around stats, which you can pick up at Revered.  If you prefer staves, there is the Insidious Staff, which could be reforged to include spirit and would also make a nice initial offering for an up and coming priest.  The staff is also available at Revered with your particular branch of Tol Barad faction (depending on whether you’re Alliance or Horde).

The real draw to being Exalted with the Tol Barad factions is the Mandala of Stirring Patterns.  This epic quality trinket is an amazing find and I could easily see this being equivalent to the Majestic Dragon Figurine or the Spark of Hope, in terms of being a solid overall regen trinket that got us through a lot of initial content.  The sizeable amount of spirit works well with Meditiation and Holy Concentration, for holy priests and could go along nicely with the Heartsong enchant that is thought to be a top weapon enchant for priests.

Another trinket available at Exalted is the Mirror of Broken Images.  This one comes with a lot of mastery and has a chance to increase resistances to certain types of spells for a brief period and it comes with a short cooldown.  I wouldn’t rule this one out, just yet.  It could be useful for fights like Sindragosa, where having any form of resistance is certainly welcome.  This trinket could also see more use, if you’re at a point where you are good on all of your other stats and you feel your mastery rating could really use some improvement.  A lesser version of this trinket is available at Honored and comes with the ability to summon a Fallen Grunt to your side temporarily.  No real word yet on what exactly the Fallen Grunt does, but I can’t imagine it would be terribly useful for healing priests.

In addition to the weapons and trinkets available, this is the only faction that appears to offer some form of drake as a reputation reward, available at Exalted, along with a very neat looking ground mount.  For pet enthusiasts, there is a Rustberg Gull available at Honored that you could add to your collection.

Runner Up:  Ramkahen (Uldum)

They have camel mounts.  Need I say more?

I’m impressed with the changes to Org.  I’m going to miss Dalaran, and I’ve been a little disappointed to get stuck in that same old city my bank alt has lived in for years.  But it’s really not the same old city.  I like moving the zeppelins and flight points to Upper Org.  I love how there are several little enclaves you can choose from to make your home base.  The colors are wonderful, as is the contrast between the lush ponds and plants to the preparations for war.

I enjoyed the Plants vs. Zombies mini game as well, and went ahead and got it done on two 80s so far.  My only disappointment is that they appear to have removed the endless mode and the related achievement.  Pout.

That’s all I’ve done so far.  I have to admit that I’ve been a bit distracted with The Move.  All has gone well, and I am in the new place, and I have The Internets back, which is a huge relief.  I did manage to catch a bit of a cold though, so I’m trying to take it easy and drink orange juice and stuff and not kill myself unpacking.  There are a couple more guest posts in the works for your enjoyment while I am occupied with Kleenex and endless boxes.

There are still a few little things I’d like to do before December 7th though…

• Get lit on fire by Deathwing. A girl can hope.
• Finish leveling fishing on my Priest. The new food and fish are going to be very expensive to purchase, and I would like to have my buff food ready for raiding with as little fuss as possible.  As boring as fishing is now, it’s going to be worse when there are levels to gain and new and wondrous things to see.  I’m somewhere in the two hundreds now, so this shouldn’t be too hard.
• Keep up with the new cooking dailies. Why not take a few minutes a day and get a head start on this?
• Complete Pilgrim’s Bounty on my Shaman. I guess I’m weird with holiday achievements.  I can only bear to do one character per holiday per year (if that), but I get inspired to pick a different character for each one.  (Except for Children’s Week.  OMG cute pets.)  There’s no real reasoning much of the time…it just happens.  This year I wanted to take the opportunity of boosting my new to 80 Shaman’s cooking skill up, and it just feels right to complete the achievements.  I have most of it completed…I just need to run around and turn in a couple days worth of dailies for the rouge shooter dealies, and do the PvP achievements.  (I’m really not looking forward to that part; I hope I can drag a few friends along with me for it.)
• Farm more Justice Badges for my Shaman. My Priest of course is maxed out already, but my little Shaman was busy buying his T10 gear.  That’s done now, but I’m only at about 900 badges left.  I’d like to get at least another 2K for him.  We’ll see if I can get motivated enough to get that done.
• Pick out a leveling build for my Priest…and write a post about it. Yes, you can expect at least one post of substance before December 7th.
• Pick an alt to level. It is time to decide on a companion for my leveling buddy’s Goblin Rogue.  I’m vaguely considering a Hunter or a Warlock…but I just don’t know.  I like the idea of having a pet class that can competently “tank” for soloing and paired questing.  I feel weird playing a class without a healing spec, but I don’t really want to level a duplicate.  I have heirlooms for tanking or for any caster, but I’d need to get the shoulders and chest for the Hunter.  (I do already have the bow.)  I’m strongly tempted with reports of how fun and new questing is to give Loremaster a shot as I go instead of doing nothing but five mans until Northrend.  I’ve played both classes until 20, though of course that was before all the changes.  I may need to give one or both a try again to see which appeals more.  Anyone have an opinion?
• Review my financial plan. I didn’t make as much money as I could have on my old server with glyphs.  But I have more than I can really imagine ever spending and feel like I’ll “never have to craft again”.  And plenty of inventory left.  But I want to start out Cataclysm on my new server with my main in a good position.  I don’t have very much capital at all, and honestly don’t have much of a plan.  One thing I do know is that I want to start by focusing on my professions and be diligent with my Jewelcrafting dailies.  I know I under-utilized that as a source of income.  I suppose I should list and plan out ideas for each profession.  And plan out any non-profession related plans I have as well.  I should probably set out at least an hour each week for auctioning and crafting and reviewing how things are going.  Maybe a weekly blog post would motivate me?
• Create a guild for my bank alt. Yeah, it’s time.  I need to get myself organized, and I need a little more space.  But mostly it’s a good way to keep track of how much I’m investing and spending (since I can “deposit” my savings.)

P.S.  Tam lead me to this amusing commercial for the new Smite spec.

When I’m working through raid strategies before our first pull on any boss, I try to work out in advance what we may be looking at as far as healing is concerned. The following are some of the things that I take into consideration when I make preliminary decisions – keeping in mind that sometimes you have to change things if “plan A” doesn’t work out!

Know The Strengths and Weaknesses of Each Healing Class.

The first thing that I try to make sure I am familiar with are the strengths and weaknesses each class possesses. I follow the changes for each of the 4 healing classes, and do fairly regular research on each class. My feedreader has at least 2 blogs for each healing class, and I make regular visits over to EJ to help me get some perspective on how other end game healers are dealing with the current raid content. On top of that, I also have one of each healing class that I try to raid with, to one extent or another, so that I have some first hand experience with what my healing team is experiencing during raids.

It’s imperative to make sure that you thoroughly understand where the strengths and weaknesses of each class lie – so that you make assignments that play to the strengths of each healer. This will help to make the raid smoother, and your healers feel more confident because you are playing towards the strengths of their toolkit.

Know The Strengths and Weaknesses of Each Individual Player.

I think that this is almost as important as familiarizing yourself with each healing class. It is imperative that you know the team that you are working with inside and out.

• Know who has fast reflexes, or who is slower to react.
• Know who plays with some lag – which has a tremendous effect on healing.
• Know who has trouble making snap decisions.
• Know who may struggle with a complex healing assignment.
• Know the play style of each member of your team.

Regardless of the first point made above, you always want to make sure that you make assignments that favor the individual players on your raid team. If you have the member of your healing team that is running at 6 fps during a damage intensive encounter (think Festergut or BQL), you probably don’t want to give them the assignment of “heal the raid”, or if you do, make sure that they have adequate support in that assignment.

Knowing where your players will excel will make your chances of success increase tremendously. And, really, this is true for your entire raid team, not just your healers!

Learn to Work With What is Available to You.

Just as important as knowing your players, is knowing your raid team. I am a firm believer of always thinking outside of the box, and learning to work encounters with the raid team we have. Sometimes this makes some encounters more challenging than they need to be, but our guild puts a lot of focus on the person behind the computer. As such, we are unlikely to bench someone because we think we need more of “class x” to succeed. Every encounter can be achieved with almost any reasonable raid composition.

Hell – we did the majority of this expansion with only one Holy Paladin. That’s right, during the course of this expansion we healed every encounter, save Lich King, on heroic with only one Holy Paladin. And sometimes, we did them with zero Holy Paladins. And yes, folks, no matter what else you may read – you can heal Valithria to full without a Holy Paladin.

However, it also means that we had to give out some healing assignments that may have seemed “unconventional”. For almost the entire expansion, because we had only one holy paladin, we had a disc priest that spent most of their time tank healing. We’ve also had resto druids and resto shaman help out in the tank heal category as well. I guess what I’m trying to hammer home is that you should never box yourself in with a “it can’t be done” mentality. Because yes, it can be done. You just have to work with the tools that you’ve got.

Honestly, with the homogenization of the healing classes coming with Cataclysm – it’s going to be even easier to work with the healers available to you. And you know what? We’ve got a foot up on that one – because we’ve been playing with that mentality for the past 6 years! Who needs Holy Paladins anyhow! ;)

Become Familiar With An Encounters Demands

I think that this one is probably fairly obvious, but it probably needs to be said! In making a healing assignment you need to know what to expect from an encounter – and if you are going into it blind, you need to be ready to make adjustments where they are needed. Some of the key things to take note of when preparing healing for an encounter are:

• Will the tank be getting hit like a truck?
  • Will there be spike damage on the tank?
  • Will there be steady, but heavy, damage on the tank?
• Will there be multiple tanks?
• Will there be constant raid damage?
• Will there be periodic raid damage?
• Will there be spike damage on the raid?

Once you’ve established what you will be dealing with, you can then plan on how to counter that through heals.

Be Open to Making Changes if Something isn’t Working.

No strategy will be perfect and flawless outside of the gate. If something isn’t working – be ready to explore more effective ways to deal with the problems that have been presented. After a wipe, I will often ask in our healing channel “What happened?” and try to evaluate if it was a poor healing assignment, or an error on any given healer’s part. Once that’s been done, I then try to work through how to either fix the problem, or ensure that we don’t have a repeat of the problem.

But sometimes, things just really aren’t working. It’s those times that you have to step back and decide if the entire healing strategy needs to be re-worked. If that is the case, try to work with your healing team to get feedback on what they felt was successful and what wasn’t, and then subsequently what changes can be made.

Don’t Believe Everything the Meters Tell You

This one is important enough, that I think I’d like to reiterate this: Don’t believe everything that the meters tell you.

The problem with meters in evaluating a healer, is that they can’t take into account if the healer truly did their job. I think it’s also important for raid members to come to this understanding as well. What? A disc priest looks like they were outhealed by the shadow priest on Recount? Well…did you look at what their absorbs were? No? Go take a look at World of Logs and then get back to me and tell me what you think. Druid X isn’t healing as much as druid B? Do you know what their healing assignment was for the night? Ohhhh…I see, Druid X was asked to heal the tank and druid B was asked to heal the raid? Well, that would make a huge difference in their numbers then I would imagine, no?

There is so much more to healing than “winning” the meters. When push comes to shove – I don’t really care what the meters look like if the raid stayed alive and we succeeded. Quite frankly, I’d much rather have a healer that put their assignment first – and succeeded at that, than a healer that let their assignment die because they were “healing someone else”. Don’t get me wrong, healing meters can tell you a lot. But make no mistake about it – they will not always tell you who is a good healer.

Looking Forward – Giving Strict Healing Assignments

During WotLK we gave out strict healing assignments when we were learning an encounter – or if we needed to change healing up based on who was present in the raid. However, once we got familiar with content and it went on “farm” I stopped giving out assignments. People largely knew what to do – and we just did it. At most I’d give “xyz on the tanks, abc on the raid”. And frequently I’d give very loose assignments where others were far more rigid – because I felt that it was a better way to heal.

Take Heroic Sindragosa for example. I know that there were many people who were quite rigid in healing assignments allocating certain people to the tanks and certain people to the raid. However – due to the mechanics of the encounter – and the fact that you could not predict who would be affected with Unchained Magic – the only healing assignment that I gave to our team was “everyone is responsible for the entire raid and the tank”. That’s right – I basically told my healers that they were all responsible for…well, everything. And honestly, I think it was probably one of the best healing assignments I gave the entire expansion. We never had the tank die because too many “tank” healers were debuffed…because we had 7 tank healers.

Anyhow – I digress!

Looking forward into Cataclysm, I suspect that healing assignments are going to have to become much more rigid, as they were in Vanilla and TBC. Healers are going to have their assignment, and largely, they aren’t going to be able to stray too much from that assignment because their mana won’t let them. There is a good chance that on some encounters we will have to give raid healers assigned groups that they are responsible for, and not just “heal the raid”, and tank healers are not going to have a lot of leeway to vary from that assignment.

I think it’s going to be an interesting change – and perhaps, if it’s done well – a good change. I truly believe that we have yet to see what our new tool kits will do for us – I, for one, have been religiously trying to do more than just rejuv/wg spam in my raids since 4.0.1 landed. I’m making sure that I always have a Lifebloom active, that I make smart decisions on who I heal, and that I think about what I’m doing. Now, granted, you can only do that to a certain extent in this content, but going forward I think it’s going to be very interesting indeed.

What Kinds of Things Do You Look for in Giving Healing Assignments? What Kinds of Things Do You Look for in Receiving Healing Assignments? Have you ever done things unconventionally, or does thinking outside of the box make you nervous? What are you looking forward too most with Cataclysm Healing? Conversely, what are you least looking forward to?

And for those of you that read this post hoping to get a level of philosophical insight regarding healing akin to that of Robert M. Pirsig, I do apologize! I’m not sure I’ve had the right level of herbal assistance and motor oil to achieve such insight ;)

I’d love to see a few guest posts in the next couple weeks.  Fun or serious, priestly or healy preferred, but anything is game.  Respond to this in a comment or a personal email with a topic, and I’ll throw you into the running for a Nifty Secret Handmade Prize*.

OMG I has prizes!  Really.  You know not my excitement.

*And it’ll take me a few weeks to, you know, hand make it and send it to you, but it’s totally nifty.  And secret.

I was really a bit blown over by the comments I got on that post.

A lot of people dropped by to take the time to offer some words of encouragement.  Some of whom I know a bit in the blogoshpere, and some of whom I don’t know at all.  Okay, it really wasn’t that many people…my readership isn’t even all that huge.  But I found it very touching that anyone took the time.  Thank you so much.  Little bits of encouragement every time I logged on really made a difference in keeping my spirits and motivation up this week.

Once again, I think I’ve gotten so much more out of joining the blogging community than I ever expected.  You guys rock!  It’s really made me feel like I should push myself a little more to comment when I see a post I find helpful or someone could use some encouragement.  I could definitely find the time to do that more often.  It was the first non WoW related post I’ve put up, and that in itself makes the responses surprising.  I feel blessed to have you all.

You may have also noticed that I have a cute new icon for comments now instead of the default WordPress orange thing on both my blog and twitter.  That’s all the doings of Beru.  She took the time  and initiative to Photoshop up some character art for me.  She made me icons in several sizes, and let me know the easiest way to upload them so they’d show up everywhere.  She even remembered me saying a while back how much it meant to me to complete the Algalon quest and see the Dalaran sky turn all dark purple and stary…so she chose that as a background.  It was just about the best surprise ever.  And it was even better that I got her email just as things seemed the worst.

Sometimes it’s the little things that make everything better.

I’m moving.  I got my new apartment lease signed today, and I can move in as soon as I want to.  (/insert terror).  Obviously this is cool.  I really like the apartment.  High ceilings, hardwood floors, and views of Manhattan are all exciting perks.  I’m excited to live alone again for the first time in years.  (OMG closets I can put things in.)  I’ll even have an amazing vintage bathtub, something I can’t even imagine how I survived without for the last two years.

All of this is a Good Thing.  But it’s stressful.  And time consuming.  And I could move as soon as a week from now (though it’s more likely to be two weeks out).  And I can’t be sure when I’ll get Internet switched on there.  But I’m buying appliances, planning my packing, cleaning…everything.  I’m a busy girl.

Oh, and there’s breaking up with my boyfriend, drama with my living situation, problems with work, a cold coming on, and a downturn in my sick cat’s health.  Vet visits!  Post-break-up attempts to be “friends” and raid together!   Unpredictable fights with my roommate!  Sigh.

All I want to do is drink tea, cuddle, and eat comfort food.  At least I can regularly do two of those.  So raiding and blogging are going to get shoved into the “gee, if I have time and an Internet connection” box as needed.

Update:  Thank you for all the support.  I’m sorry if I sound whiny.  That’s not how I really feel right now.  I’m bouncing off the walls.  I’m really thrilled about everything.  I just need to get the energy going to get it all together.  My life is going to be so much better in a month. Or even a few weeks.  I’ll let you know.

Also, you can beg for pictures.  I’ll have to see if I can make that happen with my cheep phone this weekend.

Two Piece Bonus

• Shaman – Increases the critical strike chance of Healing Wave by 5%. Basic.  Simple.  Boring.
• Paladin – Increases the critical strike chance of your Holy Light spell by 5%. Sound familiar yet?
• Priest – Increases the critical strike chance of Heal by 5%. This is a much better bonus for Holy than it is for Discipline.  As Disc is balanced around Smite being the go-to spell, rather than Heal, this is one more reason I don’t really want tier gear.  Even for Holy, its pretty bland.
• Druid – Increases the critical strike chance of the periodic portion of your Lifebloom spell by 5%. Interesting.  A push towards tank healing rather than the default basic heal.

Okay, so it’s the first tier set for the expansion.  I keep getting told it’s supposed to be a bit boring, so there’s somewhere to go with it.  This yawn inspiring?  Sigh.

Four Piece Bonus

Every one of the four piece healing bonuses is an increase to Spirit.  I know Spirit is going to matter more when (and if) mana becomes an issue to manage during a fight.  I get that.  But more Spirit isn’t exactly fun and exciting.  It’ll either turn out to be more situational (because mana only matters on some fights) or it’ll be a required buff to maintain constantly in order to heal at all (kinda think this is Blizzard’s aim).  Either way, I’m not impressed.  What I find particularly lame about it, is how much harder it is for some classes and specs to maintain than others.

• Discipline Priest – Each time your Penance heals someone with Weakened Soul, you gain 540 Spirit for 10 seconds. Penance is one of our best spells, and with raid members consistently low on health, this is the perfect mana efficient option to give them a big boost up.  I’d expect to Penance on most fights on the cooldown (every 10 seconds glyphed).  But it’s a little awkward to have to use it on someone with Weakened Soul…particularly as it’s one of the most useful spells in a emergency when a friend is desperately low on health.  It also takes a little effort to make sure someone is infected with the debuff before each Penance; to maintain this perfectly, one would need to shield the best Penance target in advance – or loose the Spirit boost for 10 seconds.
• Holy Priest – Chakra state grants you 540 Spirit. With the way Chakra works on the beta right now (30 second duration and cooldown), there’s no reason at all you can’t maintain a Chakra state at all times with the most minimal of efforts.  It’s one global cooldown every 30 seconds that’s necessary for healing regardless of the Spirit proc.  Facerollingly easy.
• Druid – Whenever your Lifebloom is stacked to three, you gain 540 Spirit. This is the hardest of all of the bonuses to maintain.  While I always try to give my Lifebloom to a tank even when I’m raid healing on my tree cow, depending on the fight, I’ll only maintain one stack.  Or I’ll let it drop off when the tank is safe but the raid is in critical shape.  Forcing a druid to keep up three stacks of Lifebloom every ten seconds to maintain their mana seems a bit too much.  Most importantly, if it drops off, it would take a minimum of three global cooldowns to renew this proc – assuming the raid is stable enough that you can afford the time to fast-stack Lifebloom.
• Shaman – Grants 540 Spirit for 6 seconds after casting Riptide. By far, the most reasonable proc to keep up.  Riptide is a good enough spell that you’d likely want to cast this on cooldown anyways; now you just have more reason to.  Doesn’t require thought or create more interest for the play style at all.  It might occasionally drop off, but it’s simple as pie – and instant – to pick back up.
• Paladin - When your Holy Radiance is active you gain 1620 Spirit. This amazingly powerful aoe spell lasts for ten seconds and has a 30 second cooldown when talented.  This gives Paladins a bigger burst of mana regen than other classes.  It works out to the equivalent of 540 Spirit constantly.*  The question is will Paladins need to hold off using Holy Radiance on cooldown regularly in order to time it for particular boss abilities?

Does anything about this seem reasonable or fair?  Disc priests didn’t need anything to make their rotation more complex…the rotation is already a bit much.  Shaman could easily handle a little less simplicity.  Meanwhile, Druids are getting pushed heavily back to tank healing.  And Paladins appear to be getting the short end of the stick.  But at least it’s simple.  I have never been the best predictor of things, but I don’t see these going live as they are.

* (10 seconds / 30 seconds) * 1620 Spirit  [thank Kurn for better Paladin math]

“You said recently you were doing some of the holiday achievements and that usually means some PvP. PvP isn’t something I have seen you talk about much so I am curious how you feel disc priests hold up in battlegrounds. I personally find them impossible to kill. How does it look from the other side? With your cheaty, cheaty bubbles?”

First, it isn’t an accident that I don’t talk about PvP.  I don’t do very much of it.  What I do partake of, I’m bad at.  I wouldn’t begin to offer anyone else any insight or advice on the topic.  So I don’t write about it.  Long ago in a galaxy far away, I played a mage as my main.  As much as everyone talks about how mages are all nice and stuff for PvP, I always hated it.  It wasn’t until I had my priesty at 80 and got drug around by my guild that I realized “Hey, maybe I don’t hate this quite as much as I thought.”

Healing in battlegrounds is totally different than dps or PvE healing.  I enjoy how challenging it is, but without all the high stakes of hardcore raiding.  (Feel free to disagree with me on that.)  People in PvP seem to expect to die…so I didn’t “fail” when they did.  It’s nothing like wiping on a boss.  Yet there are complex, always changing, spiky damage healing situations that are really fun to attempt to salvage.  Discipline Priests are perfect for it really.  Disc has always been wickedly overpowered for prevention and spot healing changing targets.  We’re a great mobile healer.  We have cooldowns.  We have a fear.  I’m not convinced at all I’m good at it, but I rely a lot on bubbles and penance, then anything else that makes sense to keep people up.  Healing priority is Me, then people I like who are hitting things, than anyone in range.  Oh, and drink some Pigmy stuff, hide if you can, and get the fuck away from anyone mean.

My priest got the horseman mount this year.  First day of the event, first character I logged on to, first try.  (My guild-mates summarily demoted me and refused to talk to me for…well…all of five minutes.)  Then I realized that I’d actually done all the painstaking candy bucket stuff in a previous year while leveling her for fun XP.  I had the Squashling; I was just missing the Helm and the PvP achievement.  Easy enough, right?  So, it became obvious that I needed to get her the achievement this year.

I dread such things.

So I prodded a PvP loving friend into coming with me for moral support to kill mean people who attacked me and explain what the heck I was supposed to do.  Also, PvP is always more fun with friends and vent.  I was actually a bit surprised at how much I *did* know about what I was supposed to do.  It felt more intuitive than it used to.  Somehow I picked up the basics at least.  Somewhere.

I die though. Seems like melee classes can really kick my ass.  I hate Death Grip.  I hate rogues.  They eat me.  Mostly I try to resolve this by staying with people, hiding, and running away from guys with sharp things attacking me.  Oh, and some Psychic Scream.

I really have a mixed feeling about requiring PvP for holiday achievements.  Hopping around as a little bunny and such or escorting an orphan to the Dark Gate may or may not be considered fun by everyone…but they don’t mess with other people doing what they love in game.  I hear a lot from PvPers stating how obnoxious it is to have uncaring tourists showing up to get their achievements without any care to wining the battles.  And I certainly get how frustrating it can be to experiment with PvP just to get them.

The Hallow’s End achievement is not hard at all.  First, you need to run around the world a wee bit collecting candy from baskets to be able to give yourself the appropriate GNERD buff.  (You really don’t need that many.)  Then you need to remember to buff yourself with it.  (Very important.)  Then queue for a random BG and profit.  I got mine in a single Eye of the Storm.  It took me longer to queue because the system is being all weird than to get enough kills for the achievement.

So it was fun for me, and encouraged me to step outside my comfort zone – without making it overly intimidating or messing up how the BGs work.  Other holiday PvP goals are a lot more challenging.  Might I try them this year?  Oh, probably.  But only if I can get some friends to keep me company.

P.S.  Anyone have any favorite places for Discipline PvP resources?  I know I could use some help.

I made a guest post over at MMO Melting Pot this weekend – a guide to the changes in the dispel mechanics.  And I’ll have some ideas on priestly healing in 4.0.1 soon.  Meanwhile, it seems an appropriate time to consider how well I did at meeting my pre-Cataclysm goals.  Well….

My Shaman

…was leveled and raid ready just in time for 4.0.1.  I farmed a bit of triumph before it hit, so now I can pick out several frost level items which will set him up quite nicely.  I even managed a few attempts at ten and 25 man raiding.  What I’m most proud of though is that I completed an Ulduar drake run with him just in time to get grandfathered into 310 riding.

My Protadin

My baby Protadin got stuck in her fifties and never recovered.  I’d been leveling her with my boyfriend, and he got distracted with other games and had less free time because of holidays, and then a two week trip out of town.  It became obvious I wasn’t going to get her leveled and geared before the patch hit…and with the state of Paladin tanking right now, I’m almost glad I’m not fighting with it myself.  I have to admit I’m sad that I’m going to miss out on tanking Wrath raids.  I’m a little nervous that when I pick her back up, she’ll  be in that awkward place of not really having her toolkit anymore.  I hope she gets picked back up, but who knows when that will be? 

Money

I continue to fail at making money on my Priest on my new server.  I’m just trying to leak gold more slowly.  I’ve decided I’m waiting for the brave new world of Cataclysm when professions get updated to push hard at that.  I feel like I’m just too far behind the curve to catch up this late.  However, on my old server I managed some wonders with glyphs when 4.0.1 was released.  Okay, “wonders” is overstating it a touch.  I did prepare well and make a decent chunk money though, and as my goal was simply to “get rid of my stock of glyphs” and “have more than 10K gold” I succeeded quite well…and profits are still rolling in.

Professions

My Shaman now has mining at max level, and is ready with mats on hand to level his engineering when 4.0.3 profession changes hit.  My Druid is at Northrend level herbalism, and I just need to find a wee bit more time to finish that off.  Then she’ll be set for Alchemy for 4.0.3.  Conveniently, that will again give me the appropriate gathering on each server to support my Jewelcrafting and Inscription.  Yay.

Plans for the Future

My banks and bags are all in order, my gathering is almost leveled on two toons, and I’ve been spending time auctioning and doing holiday achievements.  Can you tell I’m a bit bored?  It’s time to start doing my dailies like a good girl and max out my badges for all my raiding characters.  I’ve been thinking I might try some Glory of the Hero achievements while I’m at it, just to add a fun goal.  Other than that, I’m ready for the world to implode.  I’m a lot more focused right now on settling everything in my personal life so that I can be moved and settled and stress free for the expansion.

I have to admit I’ve never enjoyed the last leg of leveling quite so much, all do to my wondrous leveling friend.  In celebration of the long-awaited moment, he was thoughtful enough to surprise me with end game glyphs for both of my specs, gems for all my crafted gear, and a complete set of enchanting scrolls to save for when I got my first good piece for each slot.  Along with all the crafted gear, I felt positively pampered.

I’ve been sluggishly gearing my way through randoms…but I’ve also done some Big Boy Raiding.  An ICC 25 even.  (What imbecile lets someone without 200 level gear into an ICC 25 anyways?  No idea – but I was doing well on the healing charts, which was scary enough.)  I did the Malygos weekly as well my first week, and two versions of VOA.  I’m happiest about getting together a pug (pug, no less!) for an Ulduar 10 mount run that was so successful we came back and did Algalon.  Yay for the 310 drake!

I hate that part.  Being 80, but not quite geared.  Desperately needing randoms, and the hellish impatience and GOGOGOGO atmosphere of heroics.  Who even considers mechanics anymore?  Politeness?  The entire experience feels like jumping into a vast pool of rabid sharks and choking on their combined bile.  Okay, it really hasn’t been that bad…but I can only attribute that to my leveling friend, who has kindly pulled out his nicely geared alt to tank for my first week.  I truly do find heroics wear down my general faith in the intelligence and competence of humanity at large.

I’m really enjoying the healing style.  I’m particularly fond of how the spells interact with each other…it makes a healing with a small toolbox interesting and flexible.  I’m surprised I’m not finding the immobility more of a restraint since I’m used to very mobile healers.  I’m really not though.  Again, when I’m doing more serious raiding, I may very well notice it a lot more.  Thankfully, Shaman will have a movement cooldown soon, and that should alleviate that issue.

I’m completely surprised at the one thing that has been bothering me.  Whether it’s using Pain Suppression for particularly nasty moments or stacking the tank with HoTs before a Evil Boss Move or a Penance at just the right time…  I miss my cooldowns, particularly a nice short powerful heal like Penance.  Unleash Elements to the rescue.  (Pity I’ll have to wait until 81 to try it.)

I didn’t have as much issue with this as I would have thought.  The most important addons I use to heal were all up and (mostly) working for our first Wednesday night raid: Clique, Dominos, DXE, OmniCC, Pitbull, Power Auras, and Quartz.  A beta of Grid was released and was working well so I decided to stay with that rather than switching back to Vuhdo.  (Hint: Go directly to the WoW Ace site for pre-release updates.)  It was a little awkward with out plugins, but workable.  I quickly checked “on” the most critical debuffs in the Center Icon.  (I have custom debuffs for everything in ICC, but I generally display them using GridIndicatorIconBar.)  I turned on the standard  box displays for Power Word: Shield, Weakened Soul, Prayer of Mending, and Renew.  GridStatusRaid debuff has been a bit buggy, but I hear this version might be working.  And that was it.  Grid was a lot more simple and clean than I’m used to, and it wasn’t too challenging to heal fights I know so well without every single bit of information I’m used to.  Things I definitely missed: mana bars and raid icons.

Most of the major plugins for Grid have been updated (if only as a beta version) at this point.  I am saddened that my beloved GridStatusPWShield appears not to be in development.  (This allows you to see timers for Shields and Weakened Soul color-coded to show how quickly it will expire just like GridStatusHots does for everything else.)  I spent quite a bit of time experimenting with replacements…  But wait!  I noticed just recently (after an hour of trying to figure out how to turn off that lovely shield monitor on my druid when the addon wasn’t even loaded) that PWS and WS functionality has been rolled into GridStatusHots.  I am thrilled.

Another issue I’ve run into is in creating Power Auras for the three Holy Word spells.  It’s a bit annoying since I’m still trying to get used to them, and they are each on a different cooldown.  For some strange reason, I can’t get them working.  But wait!  Derevka  comes to my rescue! Just today, I reworked all of my Power Aura settings into a beautiful spiral of circles to show every meaningful cooldown I have.  The goal is to get more used to casting the new spells and using them effectively on each fight.  There are 12 for Discipline and 11 for Holy.  Geez.  I’m trying to embrace the complication of the priest right now.  I can only hope I won’t find all those indicators distracting.

There are two non-healing addons I’ve been surprised to find that I miss a great deal – RatingBuster and DrDamage.  The benefits of simple numerical comparison between the stats on two items of gear is obvious.  With all the changes to mechanics and spells, I’m pining after the ability to mouseover a spell and see how much it actually heals for with my gear, how many ticks it has, and what the mana efficiency is.  If it isn’t updated soon, I’ll have to find the time to test every spell out by hand.  Meanwhile, I turned on a mod for scrolling combat text, so I can get a better feel for what is effectively healing (or not) as I play.  Unfortunately I’m finding scrolling combat text obnoxiously distracting on many 25 man ICC fights.

Reforging

Yes, I have played around a little with reforging.  I took the four pieces of gear specifically for my “bubble spam” set, and shifted the spirit to mastery.  I can’t seem to run out of mana as a Disc priest now no matter how hard I try, and picking up another 7% to absorbs increases my happiness.

I have not yet bothered to reforge to balance out my haste.  I use a single haste set for Discipline tank healing and Holy…and they both have different hate cap needs.  With Holy I’m looking for that extra Renew tick…while with Disc I’m looking for that extra Penance tick.  (Also, I hear that extra Penance tick is broken right now.)  Throughput is not a problem doing this level of content, and I’m still experimenting with mana consumption for Holy.  So I’m waiting another week or two, playing with the mechanics, and seeing which spec I’ll be playing more and want to fine tune my gear around.

Talents

For Discipline, I’m going with a 31/3/0 build.  I wanted to try out a lot of the new talents, even if I wasn’t convinced they’d be useful at present.  Much of this is obvious.  I opted for haste over mana returns because my haste is a bit low still and mana is infinite.  I might shift around Inner Focus, Train of Though, and Strength of Soul depending on my priorities.

For Holy, I’m liking 3/31/2.  There doesn’t seem a lot that’s up for decision here.  I’m just filing things in where needed to progress, again taking haste over mana returns.

Glyphs

Prime

• Penance – Reduces the cooldown by 2 seconds. This is a staple Discipline glyph.  I know two seconds doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a great glyph now.  It’ll be even better at 80.  Penance is a comparatively strong, quick, mana efficient heal at 85.  You’ll want to use it every chance you get.
• Power Word: Shield – Instantly heals shielded targets for 20% of the absorb. While we won’t be blanketing shields as much as we used to, this has always been a great glyph for Disc.  Beyond the actual heal amount, this allows your shield casts (which don’t count as heals) to proc trinkets and assorted healing effects.
• Prayer of Healing – Adds a HoT to your Prayer of Healing targets, healing them for another 20% of the heal over 6 seconds. I always liked the idea of this glyph, but I never felt like the long cast time of PoH and the current state of overhealing made it very useful.  I am trying it out now in both specs now, and think it’ll be a very decent glyph in Cataclysm.
• Power Word: Barrier – Increases healing under the barrier by 10%. I can’t make up my mind about this one.  On one hand, shields are intended to be preventative, and PWB breaks quickly in a raid.  This makes throwing it up just after heavy damage a more appealing option – to keep people stable and boost AoE healing to get them back to full.  Interesting.
• Renew – 10% to Renew. A solid Holy choice if you favor a Renew Holy style.
• Guardian Spirit – Reduces the cooldown by 30 seconds. I really miss the old glyph.  I liked feeling like a “wasted” GS didn’t rob you of your cooldown for the full time period.  I might use this for fights where I foresee the tank needing help with cooldowns multiple times, however this feels like a very situational choice.
• Lightwell – Adds five charges to your Lightwell. I have trouble imagining this glyph truly shining.  But right now it’s useless; I’m still trying to train my raid to touch the Lightwell at all.
• Flash Heal – Plus 10% crit on targets below 25% health. This is useless in current content, but I could see it being a strong option for progressive encounters in Cataclysm.

Major

• Holy Nova – Reduces the cooldown of your Holy Nova to half a second. I’m still trying to figure out how best to use Holy Nova nowadays, but I’m trying this out to see how I like it.
• Divine Accuracy – Hit cap for Smite. A must have for an Atonement Smiting priest.
• Circle of Healing – Heals one more target. Need I say more?
• Dispel Magic – Adds a heal to your dispels. I’d consider this for specific fights if I was assigned to dispels.  I’m not though, so I doubt I’ll use this much.
• Fear Ward – Reduces the cooldown and duration by a minute. Very situational, but I’d use this on Blood Queen or another relevant predictable fear fight.
• Phychic Scream – Enemies will cower in place now. A must have for crowd control in Cataclysm, but not so useful right now.
• Spirit of Redemption – Increases the duration by 6 seconds. My raid leader calls this the “fail angel”.  As much as it can be embarrassing to die (and to have everyone in the raid see the wings and know it was you), it’s nice to make that death be as meaningful as possible.  Besides, there are not a lot of non-situational compelling options for Holy.  Why not?

Minor

• Fortitude – Reduces mana cost by 50%. Helpful for mid-fight rebuffs.  
• Shadow Protection – Increases the duration by 10 minutes. Eh.
• Shadowfiend – Restores 5% of your mana if your cute shadowy pet dies. I don’t generally find this to be a problem now that pets take reduced aoe damage.
• Levitate – No more feathers. Why not?

In summary:  Power Word: Shield and Penance still feel like requirements for Discipline; choose between Power Word: Barrier or Prayer of Healing depending on your style.  Renew and Prayer of Healing are the strongest Holy prime glyphs.  Consider Guardian Spirit, Lightwell, or Flash Heal depending on the fight and your raid.  Divine accuracy and Circle of Healing are the winners for Discipline and Holy respectively.  Fill in the rest however you prefer for your situation.  There simply isn’t much to say about minor glyphs; it’s the same choices we’ve had for months.  Only Fortitude and Shadowfiend have a chance of (barely) affecting your performance in a raid.

Discipline Mechanics

I have to admit that the initial bugs where Atonement wasn’t healing consistently really turned me off my first tries with this spec.  I want to like it…really I do.   But it’s feeling underpowered and clunky right now.  Maybe I just need to get used to it?  Maybe I needed to fine tune my Power Auras to show the buffs and cooldowns better?  I’ve done that now, and it still feels a bit awkward.  There were a couple fights I didn’t feel like I was consistently in range of a dps target.  For instance, healing the off tank on Blood Princes or on Gunship.  There were times it wasn’t appropriate to dps the boss (say, when managing transitions on Putricide.)  There was the distinct lack of satisfaction in not healing very much…and doing it brainlessly.  As much as smart heals are nifty, having a default heal be non-targeted isn’t an engaging process.  I’m honestly just not sure I can really get used to the dps feel of this.

I also just can’t get over how wimpy my shields are.  Shields are hitting for maybe 2/3rds what they were a couple weeks ago, and I’m having trouble swallowing that.  Shields are such a core part of Disc…having them hit like soggy noodles isn’t helping how I feel.  I don’t need to spam them, but I’d rather have harder hitting shields that sucked my mana dry, than lame ones.  Sure, this will scale better with mastery and intellect, but that’s not making me feel better now.  Also, I simply must set up a Power Aura for my Barrier cooldown.  (Done!)  I cannot ever seem to remember to cast it.

I still prefer playing Discipline on fights with a lot of direct spot healing and little aoe (like Saurfang).  Mana feels limitless, and I haven’t bothered using mana cooldowns.  I’m reserving judgment on how much I’ll enjoy the spec for now.

Holy Mechanics

Chakra is fun.  I’ve heard a lot of mixed reviews, but I’m enjoying it a lot.  I really love the idea of having the flexibility to shift one’s synergies mid-fight to accommodate the encounter.  It’s going to take some experimentation in raids trying out particular states on different fights to gauge what will work best.  I’m finding the spec engaging and enjoyable to play.  I wish I was convinced it was balanced well.  It feels like the much of the problem is with cast times and renewing various Chakra states using State of Mind.  Most of the complaints I’ve heard about this mechanic is how it feels like we’re getting forced to spam a particular spell to artificially maintain a state we need for our throughput.  If Blizzard does reduce the cooldown on Chakra to 30 seconds as it is now on beta, this concern would evaporate.  One could maintain one’s throughput with Chakra, and still cast what was needed at the moment.

• Renew is laughably easy to maintain with it being instant cast on a half second cooldown.  You can almost keep it up 100% of the time accidentally and spend most of your time healing as you like.  It’s the most forgiving state, and I see why many healers are using this as their default.
• Prayer of Healing is a lot harder because of the cast time.   It’s never been a good spell to spam anyways.  It can be rather nice on Decimate for plague wing trash or for aura heavy fights like Blood Queen…but it’s situational.  Sanctuary is brilliant though, so I’m giving it my best.  I wish this state was tied to a different aoe spell or combination.  It seems like there should be excellent results using this on many of the fights where we all stack up and there is lots of raid damage.  (Hi Sindragosa!)
• Heal is…well…we aren’t there yet.  I like the idea, but the current content doesn’t support using Heal as a mainstay.  I have found the Heal Chakra useful when tank healing though.  In that case, I’ll use heal as a filler spell when the tanks are topped off and don’t need healing – just enough to keep the state going – filling in the rest with boosted direct heals, Prayer of Mending, and Circle of Healing.

Update:  All the recent reworkings of Chakra on beta are leaving me to think that Blizzard agrees this still needs some balancing.  I refuse to go more in depth on this until it is more settled.

The Circle of Healing cooldown feels too long now.  I know they increased the cooldown for Wild Growth as well, but that still feels fine when I’m playing my druid.  Circle of Healing is just a bit painful to wait for.  I can’t explain why.  Speaking of which, it feels like Holy Priests have an overwhelming amount of aoe choices: Circle of Healing, Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Mending, Holy Nova, and Sanctuary.  Plus Divine Hymn.  I like big toolkits.  It just started to feel like a little much.  WTB theorycrafting on the priority here.

Of course there’s also Lightwell.  Blizzard has tried hard to revive this spell, and I’m determined to give it a fair shot.  The increased clicky distance and ability to retain your dps target are promising.  I did make some attempts to use it appropriately this week, and was relieved to notice that some people actually clicked on it. There’s still a long ways to go, but it seems worth some time to invest in it.  I’m concerned that some people received nothing but overheal from clicking on it, but that quick topping off definitely won’ t be the same issue in Cataclysm.  I was pleased that when I mentioned where I was planning on putting it down in advance of a pull, my raid leader was enthusiastic and encouraging, reminding people to use it mid-fight.  Here’s hoping this under-loved talent gets a little more opportunity to shine.  I think I might start sending guildmates who click on it cupcakes.  (Everyone needs more Happy.)  I’ve been meaning to post a bit of helpful information and some macros for my guild.  (Note to self: try out some macros this week.)

I need to work on using the Holy Word spells more often.  (I’m sure tracking the cooldowns more efficiently will help.)  I need to get a little more comfortable so that using my cooldowns comes more naturally.  I need to remember I have Body and Soul talented.  I find playing Holy on the fights with Malleable Goo distressing.  I know I shouldn’t be getting hit with it, but it’s scary to have my toolkit break down so much if I make a mistake.  Discipline is a lot more forgiving with instant cast shields.  Mana can also be a bit tight when things get hectic.  That’s a little concerning at a time when other healers aren’t having difficulties.  Ultimately though, I’m enjoying Holy more on most fights.

Raiding

We’ve been clearing ICC (Heroic but for LK), RS, and Ulduar on 25 man on my Priest.  I’ve also done various bits of things on alts.  I have to say that aside from some very silly bugs (like Putricide sending out 25 Malleable Goos), raiding has worked extremely well.  The  biggest impact bug we noticed was projected textures not projecting.  This made fights like Lady Deathwhisper, Sindragosa, and Hodir much more…interesting.  Sure a few things took longer than normal (mostly do to addon issues and disconnects), but there were very few wipes.  Some fights even seemed significantly easier due to the dps increases (Saurfang for instance).

Healing as a team has worked itself out with much less fuss than I imagined.  I know Holy Paladins are flailing right now.  I know they had to be nerfed since they felt “required” on a number of progression fights…but I don’t think the solution was nerfing them into the ground and burying them alive.  Druids and Holy Priests feel a bit overpowered right now, and Shaman seem well placed.  It might not be the greatest balance, but it adds up to people getting healed and bosses getting downed.  I can hope it will work itself out for level 85, but it’s certainly hard to tell.

I’ve always struggled with names.  Sometimes it takes me days of sitting at the character creation screen to find something that works for me.  I’ve done all sorts of things over the years to help me come up with the right name.  All of my Diablo II characters were named from mythology or legends.  Both of my Warlocks are named after favorite heroines from novels (Dianora and Daenerys if you’re curious).  My Paladin is named after one of my ex’s ex’s…though I really just thought it was pretty.  A lot of them just sounded nice…but a few of my methods really stick out to me.

The first video game handle that stuck with me was something my boyfriend came up with.  I was signing a check at dinner one night and he was trying to decipher my signature, and said “It looks like you wrote (fill in giberish here).  So, somehow that’s what I used when I was starting my Zelda game, and that was that.  Then it became my email.  And then my personal journal.  So many years and games later, it doesn’t feel quite right to use in a game.  Aside from being difficult for people to spell and pronounce, using my email address prefix as my WoW toon name is a terrible security faux pas.

My Druid is the only character with a real English word for a name.  Myriad just seemed appropriate for a class with so many possibilities of playstyle, when I had no real idea which I would end up with.  Maybe it was just a rebellion against all those trees you see out there with Moonkin or feral references in their names.

My Shaman has a lore appropriate troll name.  I consulted the Internet to find lists of appropriate prefix and suffix combinations for a male of his tribe.  I then spent days going back and forth between them, even creating and deleting a few trolls before I felt like I’d gotten it right.  Why?  I have no earthly clue.  I think I had run across some information on troll naming conventions a few months before hand and thought it was pretty darn interesting.  So when I started brainstorming, it was the first thing I thought of.  I imagine it helped that trolls feel to me like they have a stronger cultural identity than many of the characters I’ve played.  I’m sure that’s just my personal perception, but it felt right to me.  (I’m still annoyed I can’t put the apostrophe in there.)

The source of my Priest’s name is really the most amusing.  I created her very early on to romp around in the starting zone with a friend of mine.  I was rushing through character creation just to help him out, and wasn’t feeling inspired, so I just hit the Random button and went with the first thing that looked good.  A year later when my boyfriend suggested I level a Priest to try healing, I barely even remembered she existed.  So I gave it a shot.  I’m sure I was level 60 before I really realized that if she was going to be my new main, it might help to decide how I was going to pronounce it since people would probably start calling me by it.  /facepalm  Regardless of its accidental origins, I really do love it now.  When I server transferred I had the option of changing it, but I truly can’t imagine her as anything else.

P.S.  Oh, and my cats are named after elements of the Periodic Table.

My fast pace in getting here is definitely due to my fabulous leveling partner.  We’ve both around the same hours.  We’re both driven at about the same pace.  He’s easy going.  And he knows all the quests, so I can gratuitously abuse my follow macro and count on him to let me know when I should be using that quest item hidden in the mess of my bags. Plus, hanging out on vent chatting makes it all go so much more quickly and painlessly.

Mostly I’m playing a bastardized version of Elemental.  I throw totems.  I Fire Nova and Chain Heal.  I Shock and Wind Shear.  And I heal the silly Fury Warrior who is my Meat Shield.  It’s fun.  I’m still excited about trying Elemental out end game.  Not as a main spec mind you, just sometimes.  I say that, and wonder who is this person?  It’s been years since I’ve liked a dps class, so wow, that’s pretty exciting.

I still do a few instances.  The daily random and anything I have quests for.  They’ve been a lot better than I thought, and at the same time just as hellish as I remember leveling my druid.  Half of them go by and I’m bored out of my mind healing with Earth Shield and Healing Stream Totem.  And half of them have such awful tanks that aggro is running rampant.  Tank gearing for the seventies is still obviously an issue.  I’m not having an OMG save the squishy tank issue the same way I did with my druid.  Is that because I’m just a better player now?  Or is a Shaman toolkit a little more oriented to spot healing?  Druids have this 0-60 issue it took me a while to work with.

I’m going to bed tonight a few percent away from 79, so tomorrow should be The Day.  Expect fireworks.  I have my 213 BOE bracers, and I even splurged on a pair of crafted 264s to get him started on the right foot.  I’ve been gleeful about that.  (You wouldn’t have wanted to be in vent with me tonight.)  I’ve never given so much gearing love to an alt.

There are plans for 80 as well.  Oh the Plans! I’ve been getting an Ulduar meta group together.  We’re a little late for getting him amazingly well geared through running tons of ICC, but I can sure figure out how to save 5K on 310% flying once the expansion hits.  Plus, Ulduar is fun and pretty and they’re great achievements.  After that, I’ll try to do a bit of ICC and see how that goes.

I expect the 4.0 patch is going to drop in a week, maybe two.  So, I’ll be grinding emblems, but I won’t be spending them if I don’t have to.  I’d hate to spend a week getting my T9 set only to have the patch drop and have those same badges buy T10.  With my crafted gear and a friendly tank to heal, I think I’ll be fine with the healing grind until the patch hits.  Hopefully then my stockpile will get me a fairly decent set.

I still can’t decide if I like the whole idea of a 31 point tree

I do like the idea of having less boring filler talents, and understand how that meant less talents altogether.  While we haven’t seen the numbers tuned yet, I’m not convinced I’ve seen enough of those filler talents rolled into passives for each spec.  In particular, if I spec into healing, I want my heals to be a lot stronger than a dps class throwing out a heal…and that doesn’t look as true right now as it used to be.  (Maybe I’m just being a little too possessive?  I can seen some raiding benefits if a dps was better able to step up to heal in a dire emergency or for a particularly strenuous moment in an encounter.)  There was a blue post out recently addressing whether a Ret Paladin in holy gear might do better than a Holy Paladin…and that just scares me.

I know some people have complained about being required to put the full 31 points into a tree before being able to spend points in other specs, but I don’t mind that.  I think it gives a little more leeway to put more interesting things in the lower tiers, so that you don’t have to hit 40 before it starts getting interesting.  On the other hand, I feel a lot more limited in terms of what I can get out of a complementary tree.  I really wouldn’t mind a few more points of flexibility there.

I’m seeing a distinct lack of meaningful choices in the tree.  I keep finding the cookie cutter raid spec without trying too hard.  There are a few points here and there that could go into increased throughput or increased mana regeneration…but that’s really it?  Honestly, I’m annoyed because Blizzard promised this to us.  It’s not the end of the world though.  While I’d enjoy being able to spec to differentiate my character from other Disc Priests…that’s not ultimately what will make the game fun for me.

Discipline is All About Shields…errr…DPS?

I’m getting mixed messages on this whole concept that healers can (should?) dps to get mana returns.  I don’t often find myself bored in any situation where mana would matter.  Is Blizzard planning on me getting bored more often?  I find it distracting to attempt to toss out dps while healing.  I suppose it’s more “fun” than twiddling my thumbs waiting for the five second rule to give me mana, but that isn’t saying much.  I think it will be very helpful for leveling and soloing, and I’m sure some people will get excited to use them as best they can during raids.  I just truly hope it will end there, and healers will not be expected to pick up those talents or use them in progressive content.

Except, every new build in the beta keeps nudging Discipline in that direction.  (I find it interesting that hasn’t seemed half as true for other healers.)  It feels like half the tree affects DPS now.  (Let’s be reasonable – it’s more like a third.)  It’s the only love that Blizzard has given the spec, and I’m taking that as a sign.  As much as I might hate the idea, Blizzard has sure made the concept of damage to heal interesting.  They promised me interesting.  I can’t argue with that part.  So let’s take a look at the changes related to damage doing:

Atonement When you deal damage with Smite, you instantly heal a nearby low health friendly target within 8 yards from the enemy target equal to 40/80/120% of the damage dealt

This looked like a fairly mediocre waste of three points until they upped the healing conversion from 45% to 120% in the last weekish.  This is pretty stunning honestly.  Based on some PTR testing (thank you Tsark), Smite is healing for a decent amount at a very reasonable mana cost.  WTB some beta testing at 85.  There are huge mana benefits to doing this, and more importantly – this is a smart heal.  I’m getting the strong impression that this is the filler spell for Discipline instead of Heal.

Archangel Consumes your Evangelism effects, instantly restoring 3% of your total mana; increases your healing done by 3% per stack (i.e. 15% with five stacks); Lasts 18 seconds with a 15 second cooldown

Blizzard moved Guardian Spirit well out of my reach…but these are my very own wings.  (Fine, Holy can double dip on wings.  Damn them.)  That mana return is going to be nice if nothing else, particularly if you just need to cast cheep smart heals to get it.  The beauty of this is you can use it constantly as a mana return even if you only throw out a single Smite to get the mana bloom.  Alternately, you can stack up the plus to healing for that moment you really need it.  Or…you can roll it constantly.  I have to say I love the flexibility of this.  I can see myself changing how I use it from fight to fight, and that is truly an interesting mechanic.

Evangelism When you cast Smite, you gain Evangelism, increasing the damage done by your Smite, Holy Fire, Holy Nova, and Penance spells by 4%; reduces the mana cost of those spells by 6%; Lasts 15 seconds and tacks to five

This isn’t so thrilling…but taking two points in it is required for Archangel.  Nothing will stop me from getting wings! Archangel seems well worth the three points if you’ll be using Smite on a regular basis.

Train of Thought You have a 50/100% change when healing with Greater Heal to reduce the cooldown of your Inner Focus by 5 seconds; you have a 50/100% chance when casting Smite to reduce the cooldown of your Penance by 1 second

The reduced cooldown on Inner Focus is nice of course, but I’m not sure I’d invest the points just for that.  I’m salivating over the changes for Penance on the other hand.  One second cooldown reduction on Penance doesn’t sound like much.  But it is.  Oh, it is.  First off, Penance is our best spell.  It’s easy on the mana, is almost instant with good haste, and hits like a truck.  Yet another hint from Blizzard that Smite is our new Heal.

Surge of Light You have a 3/6% chance when you Smite or Heal to cause your next Flash Heal to be instanc cast and cost no mana but incapable of a critical hit

Hrmmm.  I don’t think I’ll take this.  There’s just too much else around that is shiny or required.  A six percent chance of a proc on a spell I’m still not entirely sure I’ll use frequently is too much of a gamble.  But Blizzard made a point of putting it in reach.

Glyph of Divine Accuracy Increases your chance to hit with Smite by 18%

Finally, this is the chance to fix hit rating for all that Smiting.  Unfortunately, last I checked, you still can’t get this glyph on the PTR.  That in itself makes it really hard to test out an Archangel centered Discipline build.  I’m somehow doubting I’ll get the healing conversion for Smites if I can’t even  hit the boss.  Fix this please, Blizzard!  Discipline Priests everywhere want to see how this works!

Wait…What Happened to Our Shields?

Most of the talents relating to absorption have stayed the same.  We’re keeping this as a core part of our identity.  They aren’t as powerful.  That’s the bad news.  They just aren’t the 15K  powerhouse they are in ICC right now.  But the mana cost on shields isn’t bad really.  It’s more than Heal, and less than anything else except Penance.    Will I still use them frequently for prevention?  Sure.  Will I spam them on the raid anytime I start getting bored?  No chance.

Power Word: Barrier Summons a holy barrier on the target location that absorbs damage done to friendly targets withing it each time they take damage; While within the barrier, spellcasting will not be interrupted by damage; Lasts 25 seconds or until it absorbs its limit; 3 minute cooldown.

Oh look it’s a shiny!  It’s definitely a pretty spell, even on a cooldown.  We should be able to use it once or twice on each boss fight at critical moments.  I hear it breaks quickly though – so it’s going to be better for preempting burst damage auras and boss effects or protecting people who are grouped up when Things Go Terribly Wrong, rather than real deep healing.  We won’t know until we see the fights.  I’m hardly going to whine about this one though.

Tank Healing

It seems like everyone is getting nerfed such that they can’t bounce back and forth healing two or three tanks at once – whether that is Beacon of Light’s reduced mirror effect, or Druids limit of  single Lifebloom target, or any of the other changes.  I get the feeling that instead of assigning a couple healers to tank heal, we’re going to see more of assigning X person to Y tank.  How do Discipline Priests stand?  Well, there is one big change in how we do things:

Strength of Soul When you heal a target with your Heal spell, the duration of the Weakened Soul debuff on the target is reduced by 4 seconds

This is amazing.  I haven’t done the math on  it, but it’s going to be a great tool to get a cheaper, instant powerful absorb back on the tank more often.  This is a fix to making our most iconic spell really work for tank healing.

So, What Will Discipline Priests Be Doing in Cataclysm?

I have to say I’m not really sure yet.  Holy has been getting some flashy fun mechanics and changes, while Discipline keeps getting these little bitty changes, that seem pretty momentous when they start adding up.  I have to admit I’m a little jealous.  Discipline is finally starting to get that synergy that Shaman have had for so long.  Power Word: Shield creates Borrowed Time giving spell haste for direct heals.  Direct heals stack Grace, increasing single target healing.  Smite reduces the cooldown of your Penance.  Smite stacks to increase your burst healing done; it’s even flexible depending on how you want to spend your Archangel.  There’s a lot there.

Our identity as single target spot healers still seems strong.  It does seem like it’s fighting a bit with our dps skills though.  If I’m assigned to a tank, I might be hard pressed to find cooldowns to keep my Evangelism up.  If I’m raid healing, some of my single target love (Grace and Strength of Soul) could go to waste.  With how people will be hanging out at lower life instead of topped off in overheal land…will it feel right to use filler to dps the boss and throw out a few smart heals?  Is it fun for our filler spell to be smart or does that just mean I won’t even know who I healed?  Does that make me flexible or complicated?  I wonder how much raid leaders and healing leads are going to appreciate the fairly lame dps we’re doing.  Absorbs were finally put into the combat logs.  (At least Shields were.)  This whole dps thing just seems like another way for a lay person to completely misunderstand Discipline.  Oh, the fun.

Life Grip…errr…Leap of Faith

I almost forgot.  We have one more new toy.

Life Grip You pull the spirit of the friendly target towards you, placing them in front of you; 40 yard range; 1.5 minute cooldown

I’ve always hated Blizzard’s reasoning for this spell.  Save the Stupid DPS (who is standing in fire)  isn’t a mantra I can get behind.  On the other hand, there are tons of possibilities.  I can’t say much for Cataclysm raiding, but in ICC, this could be fun.  Pulling the second melee spore into range or back again on Festergut.  The same for a diseased person on Rotface.  Getting everyone together in the dream on Valithria to pop the first spore.  Grabbing the off tank out of melee range to get them right next to an Ice Block on Sindragosa – priceless.  I don’t even know where to start on Lich King.

I don’t want to hear about uses for saving someone stupid.  Except when they’ve disconnected and are stuck in the bad.  There are a ton of fun interesting ways to play with the current mechanics to make strategy more efficient.  I sure hope this is still true in Cataclysm.