the PTR is Wonderful!

With all of the class changes coming out with patch 4.0, I decided to test out the new talents before they went live.

I was like a kid in a candy store. So many changes, it is like relearning how to play. I'll start with some of the broad changes, and get to the priest and pally stuff more. The new glyph interface is very nice. I am really looking forward to this change. Being able to get all of the glyphs that I want, and swap them in an out as I please is going to be a lot less of a hassle than the current system. The new Power Auras addition to the interface is very handy. Not only do shiny things appear around my character, but the button that you get to hit lights up too! This is a very nice change from constantly looking to the upper right of my screen for spells that poped up. And lastly, I am looking forward to Reforging. This looks like ti will add some much needed flexibility when prioritizing gear.

Now to the goods. I started first on my priest. I specced holy using this spec (minus Evangelism and Archangel because you're only lvl 80 on the ptr). To start, Chakra is a nice talent, and I love how it can stay up for as long as you want, and provide a nice boos to the heal that you need. Holy Word: Chastise, is pretty cool. I think that the cooldown is a bit long, but I like how it changes depending on the Chakra state I'm in. Also I am glad that Surge of Light is in the tree and easy to get. I get free Flash Heals, which give me Serendipity buffs which makes the use of the big heals much easier. I like how those talents work with eachother.

Also in case you were wondering I did try out discipline, so that I could get Archangel. It looks awesome (gives you wings), and it makes casting smite boost healing. I decided that I won't pick it up (too many better options, but if you want more about it you can see Miss Medicina's post about the numbers behind it's awesomeness here.

Next I went to my Paladin. The spec that I used here is different from the one that I linked in my previous post. I wanted to test out the healing, later on I'll test out the kind of damage I can dish out as holy, but for now I want to get used to healing. So here is the spec. There are some things off the bat that take some getting used to. Holy power is one of those things. In the spec that i linked, you will gain Holy Power by using Holy Shock and by healing the target of Beacon of Light with your casted heals. You can only have 3 charges of Holy Power, and once you have any number of charges you can use Word of Glory. While Word of Glory doesn't heal for much unless you have 3 charges, it is free and instant so you would only be wasting a global cooldown if you use it with less than 3 charges. Another thing that took me sometime to get used to was all of the buffs the pop up. Casting Holy Shock gives you haste when casting, and if you crit it makes Holy Light even faster. At the same time, casting has a chance to allow you to use Holy Shock without it triggering a cooldown (2 in a row). These buffs are really nice, and they make the playstyle a lot more interactive and fun. Managing the buffs to the casted spells, managing the buffs to Holy Shock, and using Holy Power effectively is a lot more dynamic than spamming the most efficient heal all the time.

The last thing I want to say about Holy paladins is Light of Dawn!!!! It looks really amazing.

All in all, holy priests will still be a lot of fun, and holy paladins will have a much more dynamic playstyle. I am looking forward to playing both when 4.0 goes live.

Excited about the latest beta build

A new Beta Build is availale at wowhead.com, and it has me excited.

I've already decided that, when 4.0 hits the live realms, I'm going to spend my talent points with an emphasis on leveling. For my priest that meant picking up Evangelism and Archangel from the Disc tree, and for my paly that meant getting the talents that boosted Exocism and Holy Shocks damage.

I was expecting this focus on leveling to cause me to sacrafice some points away from the healing bonuses, but it turns out that I won't be missing out on as much as I thought (for my priest at least).

Here is a look at my priest' healing and leveling spec. With the addition of Trinity and Surge of Light, Evangelism and Archangel will be a lot more useful for Holy. Even better is that these talents are almost required for moving further down the tree, and Surge of Light gives Heal a chance for an instant Flash Heal. I am liking this a lot. The way it is now, spending to improve Smite and making it functional is not so good for healing. Now, though, Smite won't be such a non useful option, and the points spent to do that also help with healing!

Here is a look at my pally's healing and leveling spec. Can you say Shockadin? I am looking forward to seeing how this works while leveling. Exorcism and Holy shock look like they will combine to make holy a lot of fun while leveling. The new Spiritual Focus talents, looks like a great addition too. No more missing Judgments. All in all, this spec will allow me to kill things faster while only losing a couple of healing talents.

While I am sure that Ret and Shadow will be the best leveling specs for killing things fast, but I don't care. I like Holy in both cases better, and I'm going to be leveling with my girlfriend's mage and warrior which means we can two man most of those pesky group quests while we move up to 85.

Results after PVPing as a Holy Priest

Previously I posted about pvping as a holy priest. (you can find it here). It's been a couple of week and numerous battlegrounds later, and I think I've come to a decesion. It's really fun!

I'll start by emphasizing that Discipline is still very good, but all in all I've found few draw backs while doing battlegrounds.

Guardian Spirit is great. Lightwell, has been more useful than I thought. Prayer of Mending is much more powerful, and therefore awesome. Renew is very nice. Blessed Resilience and Blessed recovery are great for staying alive. And Body and Soul is full of win.

The only major draw back that I've noticed is my heals are much slower. With the pvp gear, my haste is cut in half, which makes Borrowed Time an awesome reason to be disc.

But all in all I have had a lot of fun, and I've noticed that I am pretty tough to kill, and can keep people alive pretty well. Holy may not be as good as disc as far as single target healing, but there are a lot of cool talents in the tree that are very fun.

Well... that was easy.

I posted earlier about my quest for the priest staff Benediction.. Well, after a couple of nights of two manning Molten Core and an awesome quest chain, I have the staff. *weeee*

And shall I say, that Anathema looks awesome with the priest teir 10 set.

Holy Priest Healing in Cataclysm

Earlier I talked about my excitement for the upcoming paladin changes coming in cataclysm. Now it is the priests turn.

Currently healing as a holy priest offers a variety of different playstyles. With the prevalence of periodic damage in Icecrown Citadel, and consitent raid wide damage two playstyles began to take shape for priests. Most priests would spec to make Renew more powerful, while others would focus more on direct heals like Prayer of Healing. There wasn't a huge different between these specs, but the main staple was that single target healing took a back seat to AoE heals.

In Cataclysm, it looks like things are going to shift slightly. Holy priests have always been very well rounded. We can help with tank healing, raid heal, and offer support to other healers. With the current talent build the range of spots to place talent points allowed a holy priest to either boost spells like Flash Heal and Greater Heal, or spells like Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing (of course there is some overlap here). With the new talent trees, however, it looks like we won't have to choose one or the other. If you decide to be a holy priest you will be able to fill any healing role. Which means that putting points into boosting Greater Heal won't seem like a mistake because there really isn't anywhere else to put them, (and Greater Heal will be more useful).

While one could argue that this could limit our options, I would say it enhances our veratility. Tanks about to take incoming damage, let me swap to Chakra(Heal). The Boss is shooting fire at everyone, let me switch to Chakra(Prayer of Healing). There is a constant stream of damage being dealt to the raid, let me switch to Chakra(Renew). We can tank heal, raid heal, and HoT with the best of them.

We still keep the cool talents like; Spirit of Redemption, Body and Soul (yay for Lifegrip), Guardian Spirit, and Lightwell (yay for the fixes to it), and we gain an awesome spell like Chakra. This is going to be really fun. If you're a holy priest in Cataclysm, you will be fully holy. There won't be a specialization within the spec. You'll be able to be good at everything in cata, and that is going to be awesome.

Why I like bad tanks.

I love it when I see a tank with less than 30k health. I love seeing a tank who is clearly not defense capped. And I love it when that tank is horrible at holding agro. "But CrusaderSev that's crazy, a bad tank couldn't bring any good." Wrong! A bad tank means that I get to heal. And I mean really heal!

My priest is a Kingslayer and has everything from Icecrown (cept a stupid wand). My paladin has his 4 peices of teir 10 (though most everything else is from ToC 10). By no means are my healers in super amazing gear but they vastly out gear the content present in heroics. If I am unlucky enough to get into a group with a tank who is as geared or better than me, then that means a boring run. He takes little damages, the dps take little damage, and I am playing the "you don't need to be topped off" game.

In the past I would resort to wearing level 60 gear sets. Not only did I look awesome (Banana Shoulders FTW!), but my spell power and mana were lowered enough to make me feel like I did when I first started. I had to use my heals more because one was no longer enough. That got to be pretty fun, but I found that most people didn't really like that very much. Because on the off chance that things did go wrong, things got a little bit scary for them. So I have stayed in my normal gear sets hoping for the group that has a poorly geared tank.

I was very disapointed last night. The tank we started with had less than 30k, and couldn't keep agro off my girlfriend's mage, and I was happy. Then my girlfriend and a warlock get one shotted from pulling agro, and our feral druid swaps to bear and tanks the rest. My disapointment arose when said druid had 60k health :(

Now I know that if I want a challenge I can go and play with the LK some more. But I don't really have the time to play with Arthas now that classes have started. So I'm just going to have to wait for that bad tank/group that makes a boring heroic a little less boring. Another reason to look forward to Cataclysm.

Lightwell has some use (at least that I've noticed)

Recently I posted about pvping as a Holy Priest. The spec that I linked includes Lightwell. Why Lightwell you ask? Well I didn't really know at the time, but now that I have done more battlegrounds I have an answer.

When you are stunned, you can still click Lightwell. Meaning, it will heal you when you can't heal yourself. An example I'll site comes from Arathi Basin. Let's say that I am protecting a flag in the Basin. I will put Lightwell near the Flag (i.e. near where I'll be standing). Now some horde players come to attack me and my comrades. I use my spells to keep myself and my group alive, and BAM, I'm stuned. Can't do a thing for a few seconds. Previously I would just sit there (providing that Every Man for Himself was on cooldown), but no more. I can click the Lightwell, and it will give me a nice heal over time (glyphed it heals for about 4k every 2 seconds).

Pretty sweet if you ask me. While someone is just whacking away at me, I can use the Lightwell, and it (combined with my Blessed Recovery and Blessed Resillience talents) can help me stay alive while I'm stunned, spell locked, and feared (I think).

And if that wasn't good enough, here's another tid bit for yah. People will attack your Lightwell. Not that earth shattering? Well think about this, if they are attacking the Lightwell, that means that they aren't attacking you or your friends. Allowing for an added opportunity to turn the tables.

It's funny, the more that I use Lightwell in battlegrounds, the more I am seeing how useful it can be. Hopefully Cataclysm will change it enough to make it more user friendly, and players will accept it like they do their health stones and healing potions.

A few words about the end of Zul'Gurub

What will happen to the mounts?!

Paldin Healing in Cataclysm

Currently paladin healing is pretty easy. By that I mean that there are few desicions that need to be made when it comes to which heal to use. There is a camp that primarily use Holy Light, and they stack the intellect. There are others (myself at the moment) who primarily use Flash of Light, and they stack spell power.

From what I've gathered from the Cataclysm posts, all healers will have more options about which spell to use. For paladins this means the (possible) end to the "one or the other" playstyle of healing. With the introduction of Holy Power (looking forward to this), an altered Beacon of Light, the new Word of Glory, the Holy Radiance* spell and the 31st talent spell Light of Dawn paladins will have a lot to choose from. Finally!

This has me excited. Not only will the mechanics of Flash of Light and Holy be changed with Divine Light being added, but we are getting another single target instant heal in Word of Glory, and two AoE healing abilities. Combine that with the staple Judgments, Holy Shock, Hand ofs, and our other awesome spells, playing a paladin in Cataclysm should get to be very exciting.

Fights with movement won't be too bad with the boosts to Holy Shock, and Word of Glory being instant casts, and there will be more flexibilty available when it comes to healing more than just the tanks. Depending on how the beta finishes, and how the talents look when 4.0 goes live, this could cause me to enjoy healing on my paladin more than my priest. Which is saying a lot considering the introduction of Chakra.